"Verbose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with apparent indifference to the discussions of her friends. Frequently tempted to take a share in the conversation, she bit her lips in order to check her desire. Her soul of energy and action was inspired with secret contempt for the tedious and verbose debates which led to nothing. Action was expended in words, and the hour passed away taking with it the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... T'rese," with a rising inflection on the "whar." "I yain't seed her sence mornin', time she sont Unc' Hi'um yonda to old Morico wid de light bread an' truck," replied the verbose Betsy. "Aunt B'lindy, you ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... preserved by Dudo of St. Quentin, a verbose and confused writer, whose work was abridged and continued by William of Jumieges, a contemporary of the Conqueror. William's work in turn served as the basis of the "Roman de Rou" composed by Wace in the time of Henry the Second. The ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... the Pantiles in company with Captain Audaine. The latter has been at pains to record the events of the afternoon and evening, so that I give you his own account of them, though I abridge in consideration of his leisured style. Pompous and verbose I grant the Captain, even in curtailment; but you are to remember these were the faults of his age, ingrained and defiant of deletion; and should you elect to peruse his memoirs [Footnote: There appears to have been no American edition since that, in 1836, printed ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... will see his predictions accomplishing yet for a long time, for Mazzini has a mind far in advance of his times in general, and his nation in particular,—a mind that will be best revered and understood when the "illustrious Gioberti" shall be remembered as a pompous verbose charlatan, with just talent enough to catch the echo from the advancing wave of his day, but without any true sight of the wants of man at this epoch. And yet Mazzini sees not all: he aims at political emancipation; but he sees not, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... political tastes. Send him to a public school, having first eliminated as much youthfulness as is compatible with continued existence. Add some flattering masters, and a distaste for games. Season with the idea that he is born for a great career. Let him be, if possible, verbose and argumentative, and inclined to contradict his elders. Eliminate more youth and transfer hot to a University. Add more verbosity, and a strong extract of priggishness. Throw in a degree, and two speeches at ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... sitting, be the Season ever so rigorous, or their Affairs at home ever so pressing. But sometimes, by the sudden and hasty turning in of a Coach, these Committees are all suspended, and squeez'd up against the Walls, or else oftentimes, through their being a little too verbose and vociferous; the Court, by their Officer upon the Leads, calls them ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... loquacious people as lived in Paris in the eighteenth century! ineffective, sardonic, verbose, sociable, intellectual, elegant, immoral—grand gentlemen and ladies, with tears for mimic woes and none for actual ones, praise for wit, rewards for cleverness, and absolute ignorance of the destinies they were preparing for themselves;" such is the story of women and society of the eighteenth ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... of all the principal authors, who had died within a century of the present time; and, in this revision, paid no sort of regard to the reputation they had acquired — Milton was harsh and prosaic; Dryden, languid and verbose; Butler and Swift without humour; Congreve, without wit; and Pope destitute of any sort of poetical merit — As for his contemporaries, he could not bear to hear one of them mentioned with any degree of ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Directorate derived its authority from the moderate Social Revolutionary party composed of the "Intelligenzia"—republican, visionary, and impractical. Kerensky was, from all accounts, a perfect representative of this class, verbose and useless so far as practical reconstructive work was concerned. This class blamed the unswerving loyalty of the Cossacks and the old army officers for all the crimes of which the Tsars were guilty, and had hunted them like rats in cellars ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... equal or excel, (Macrob. Saturnal. l. v. c. i.) But the luxcriancy of Symmachus consists of barren leaves, without fruits, and even without flowers. Few facts, and few sentiments, can be extracted from his verbose correspondence.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... set and hard in an expression that conveyed even to the men of Birralong the fact that they were in the presence of something which over-ruled them and subjugated them into a state of mental inferiority. The verbose Marmot, wordless; the listless Slaughter, dominant. It was a psychological crisis that ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... what chance Mr. Wordsworth had of escaping their enchantment,—with his natural propensities to wordiness, and his unlucky habit of debasing pathos with vulgarity. The fact accordingly is, that in this production he is more obscure than a Pindaric poet of the seventeenth century; and more verbose "than even himself of yore"; while the wilfulness with which he persists in choosing his examples of intellectual dignity and tenderness exclusively from the lowest ranks of society, will be sufficiently apparent, from the circumstance of his having thought fit ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... advice to inexperienced collectors. Avoid the jolie edition printed at Paris by F. A. Didot, par ordre de monseigneur le comte d'Artois, in 1781. It is the very worst specimen of editorship. Avoid also the London edition of 1792. The preface is a piratical pasticcio; the verbose notes are from the most accessible books; the portraits, very unequal in point of execution, I believe to be chiefly copies of prints—not d'apres des tableaux originaux. The most desirable editions are, 1. The edition of 1760; 2. That of 1772, as a curiosity; 3. That edited by M. Renouard, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... little or no taste for classical music, who have sat in the dark (mentally and physically), applauding what they didn’t understand, and listening to vague German mythology set to sounds that appear to us outsiders like music sunk into a verbose dotage. I am convinced the greater number would have preferred a jolly performance of Mme. Angot or the Cloches de Corneville, cut in two by ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... it to be amusing; they made the most of what they had to do, which was not much, and of what they had to say, which was a great deal too much; for the piece would be far more tolerable if considerably shorn of its unfair proportions. The translator seems to have followed the verbose text of his original with minute fidelity, except where the idioms bothered him; and although the bills declare it is adapted by Mr. Charles Selby to the English stage, the thing is as essentially French as it is when performed at the Palais Royal, except where the French ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... needed. He struck at cherished rights of States, upheld by their highest courts, and struck them down, at a time when the country was unfamiliar with the conception of the United States as a national force. Many of those of judges of inferior ability do not rise above their source. They are verbose, repetitious, slovenly, inaccurate in statement, loose in form; perhaps sinking into a humor or sarcasm always out of place in the reports;[Footnote: See, for instance, Mincey v. Bradburn, 103 Tennessee Reports, 407; Terry v. McDaniel, ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... Maud, Dreda discussed the change in her sister's manner; but Maud's explanation, though verbose, was ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the Danes after he has slain his uncle. "The situation of Hamlet is almost identical with that of Brutus after he has dealt the blow, and the burden of Hamlet's too lengthy speech finds an echo in Brutus's sententious utterance. The verbose iteration of the Dane has been compressed to suit 'the brief compendious manner of speech of the Lacedaemonians.'"—Gollancz. As the English translation from which Professor Gollancz quotes in support of his theory is dated 1608, and is the earliest known,[1] it cannot have been from this that ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... more than cast an eye on your manuscripts. To say the truth, my patience is not tough enough to go through Wolsey's negotiations. I see that your perseverance was forced to make the utmost efforts to transcribe them. They are immeasurably verbose, not to mention the blunders of the first copyist. As I road only for amusement, I cannot, so late in my life, purchase information on what I do not much care about, at the price of a great deal of ennui. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Mr. Arnold should tell us on the title-page that his version is after that of Goethe. Nothing could be truer,—and it is a very long way after, too. By substituting the slow and verbose pentameter of what is called the classic school of English poetry for the remarkably forth-right and simple eight-syllabic measure of the original, the translator has contrived to lose almost wholly that homely flavor of the old poet, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... of early Buddhism consists of a number of historical works embodying the life and teaching of the master, some of more didactic and epigrammatic intent, and, in the writings of the Northern Buddhists, some that have given up the verbose simplicity of the first tracts in favor of tasteless and extravagant recitals more stagey than impressive. The final collection of the sacred books (earlier is the Suttanta division into Nik[a]yas) is called Tripitaka, 'the three baskets,' one containing the tracts on discipline; one, the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... and verbose was the sermon that day, for not only was the preacher aware that bright eyes looked upon his deeds, but he saw his enemies in the front of the battle. Surely all extemporaneous speakers, in court, pulpit, or senate, must be accessible ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the unnatural light still glittered in her eyes. The excitement which she was under held her in so strong a spell that neither her mind nor her body seemed to have any consciousness of fatigue. However verbose I may be in my description of her feelings, I can never describe a tithe of her thoughts or her sufferings. She suffered agonies that would fill closely printed volumes, bulky with a thousand pages, in that one horrible night. She underwent volumes of anguish, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... though of an ingenious order of intellectual employment, are apt to bewilder some minds with vague speculations. They never know how far they have advanced, or what may be the correctness of their favorite theory. They render many of our young men verbose and declamatory, and prone to mistake the aberrations of their fancy for the ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... relieved him from duplicity of conduct. His talents were of a high order: in debate, he was argumentative and explicit; never pretending to any of the arts of the orator; but logically pursued his subject to a conclusion; never verbose, but always perspicuous. As a lawyer, he was well read; and the analytical character of his mind appeared to have been formed upon the model of Judge Blackstone. Before the juries of the country he was all-powerful. These, in the main, were composed of men of very limited information—and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... was fitted by nature as well as by training for the work to which he happily turned his hand. Possessed of a charming style; precise and clear instead of verbose; completely conscious of what he intends to convey and perfectly competent to convey it; and dowered with a perspicacious breadth of view which dwells on all that is important and passes over all that is irrelevant, Captain ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... a musical drama, and to 'the Monch von Carmel.'—These letters of Schiller were found among his papers at his death; rescued from destruction by two of his executors, and published at Carlsruhe, in a small duodecimo, in the year 1819. There is a verbose preface, but no note or comment, though some such aid is now ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... verbose way of trading is most ridiculous, as well as offensive, both in buyer and seller; and as it adds nothing to the goodness or value of the goods, so, I am sure, it adds nothing to the honesty or good morals of the tradesman, on one side or other, but multiplies trading-lies on every side, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... when Little Teacher had given him a verbose definition of the word "pestiferous," David looked at her comprehendingly. ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... that there was any particular gift in Mr. Chadband's piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of their determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody's experience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Gradus ad Parnassum and Mattheson's Volkommener Capellmeister—heavy, dry treatises both, which have long since gone to the musical antiquary's top shelf among the dust and the cobwebs. These "dull and verbose dampers to enthusiasm" Haydn made his constant companions, in default of a living instructor, and, like Longfellow's "great men," toiled upwards in the night, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... mind there had been some lurking belief in her innocence, it was so supreme an agony to him to imagine that she had taken a step which must make her guilt a certainty. He did not waste much time in questioning the verbose Brobson. The child was missing—that was quite clear—and his wife, and his wife's maid. It was some small relief to him to know that she had taken the honest Yorkshire girl. If she had been going ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... to vote implies the right to rule, to legislate, to go to Congress, and to take the Presidential chair. On this point hear Miss Muloch. "Who that ever listened for two hours to the verbose confused inanities of a ladies' committee, would immediately go and give his vote for a Female House of Congress, or of Commons? or who, on the receipt of a lady's letter of business,—I speak of the average,—would ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... arm, one on the shoulder and one across the ankle. I don't waste time in words, like you two, my verbose friends. That gives the three of us combined twelve wounds, a fair average of ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... think fit to insert something[4] {of my own}, that variety of subjects may gratify the taste, I trust, Reader, you will take it in good part; provided that my brevity be a fair return for such a favour: of which, that {my} praises may not be verbose, listen to the reason why you ought to deny the covetous, {and} even to offer to the modest that for ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... and complex. Sometimes, indeed, he is quite beyond the comprehension of his students—but when they do not understand, they admire, and feel they are in the presence of greatness. His writings contain many of the faults of his lectures. They are often laboured and obscure, diffuse and verbose. ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... search of copy, joined the Santa Fe Expedition sent by the Republic of Texas to annex New Mexico. Lost on the Staked Plains and then marched afoot as a prisoner to Mexico City, he found plenty of copy and wrote a narrative that if it were not so journalistically verbose might rank alongside Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. Fayette Copeland's Kendall of the Picayune, 1943 but OP, is a biography. An interesting parallel to Kendall's Narrative is Letters and Notes on the Texan ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... exact, lucid, concise, trenchant, vigorous, impressive, lively, figurative, polished, graceful, fluent, rhythmical, copious, elevated, flexible, smooth, dignified, terse, epigrammatic, felicitous, euphonious, elegant, and lofty. Undesirable qualities are the diffuse, verbose, redundant, inflated, prolix, ambiguous, feeble, monotonous, loose, slip-shod, dry, flowery, pedantic, pompous, rhetorical, grandiloquent, artificial, formal, ornate, halting, ponderous, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... precisely the same. The capital of the country would be the same, though a greater number of pieces might be requisite for conveying any equal portion of it from one hand to another. The deeds of assignment, like the conveyances of a verbose attorney, would be more cumbersome; but the thing assigned would be precisely the same as before, and could produce only the same effects. The funds for maintaining productive labour being the same, the demand for ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... the matter clear to you I must begin by telling you a story,—if I may trespass on your patience to that extent. I will endeavour not to be more verbose than the occasion requires.' ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... with the see of Rome, and became autocephalic. Even bishops in Tuscany abandoned communion with the see of Rome because the council and Vigilius had condemned Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas (v. supra, 93). Justin II attempted to heal the schism, and his verbose edict may be found in Evagrius, Hist. Ec., V, 4. A serious problem was presented to the Roman see. In dealing with them, however, it was possible to treat each group separately. On account of the Lombard ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Hall was the ultra-respectable Abram S. Hewitt, a millionaire capitalist. The Republican party nominated a verbose, pushful, self-glorifying young man, who, by a combination of fortuitous circumstances, later attained the position of President of the United States. This was Theodore Roosevelt, the scion of a moderately rich New York family, and a remarkable character whose pugnacious ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... slang, miss! I told you before! If my herald says much, Yet he only says such As by heralds was said in those days; Though their trumpets they blew, It is none the less true That they blew them in other folks' praise. If my herald verbose is And gives us large doses Of high-sounding rodomontade, You'll find they spoke so In the long, long ago, So blame not—O, blame not the bard. But while we are prating Our herald stands waiting In a perfectly terrible fume, So, my dear, here and now, The poor chap we'll allow His long-winded ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... apparatus of a protecting magistrate, to rescue those who had survived the slaughter of the first day: nothing of this. On the 3rd of September, (that is, the day after the commencement of the massacre,[3]) he writes a long, elaborate, verbose epistle to the Assembly, in which, after magnifying, according to the bon-ton of the Revolution, his own integrity, humanity, courage, and patriotism, he first directly justifies all the bloody proceedings of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with the fixtures of the school-house tied to her." But she has talents. What is she, an authoress? "Yes, she is." But, like other authoresses, she isn't appreciated, and has returned to her legitimate occupation, the Wash-Tub; but still doth she itch for fame, and so, between times, she writes verbose essays on Female Suffrage, composed during the process known as "wringing." And when there's a Woman's Rights Convention in that locality, she sits on the platform, and applauds all the Red-Hot Resolutions with that trenchant female weapon, the umbrella, in one ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... After a verbose, pious, and pedantic diatribe, Abbot comes to the point. Sprot was arrested in April 1608, first on the strength 'of some words that fell from himself,' and, next, 'of some papers found upon him.' What papers? They are never mentioned in the Indictment of ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... be said Shakespeare was but a poor actor. He could write Hamlet and As You Like It; but when it came to casting the parts, the Ghost in the one and old Adam in the other were the best he could aspire to. Verbose biographers of Shakespeare, in their dire extremity, and naturally desirous of writing a big book about a big man, have remarked at length that it was highly creditable to Shakespeare that he was not, or at all events that it does not appear that he was, jealous, after the true theatrical ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Racine said that their works were "the admiration of scholars and the consolation of all pious persons." But she seems to have had the cleverness to observe that in one respect the literature of Port Royal, as it expressed itself before "Les Provinciales," had the fault of being verbose and redundant. Mme. de Sable deserves more merit than seems to have been given to her for her fervent cultivation of ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... looked to Erasmus as the man! At Brussels, he was continually bothered with visits from Spaniards, Italians and Germans who wanted to boast of their interviews with him. The Spaniards, with their verbose solemnity, particularly bored him. Most exuberant of all were the eulogies with which the German humanists greeted him in their letters. This had begun already on his first journey to Basle in 1514. 'Great Rotterdamer', ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... little pert minx, whom any man of common sense or address might have had on his own terms in a week or a fortnight, Harriet appears to be every thing, and yet may be nothing, except a ready scribe, a verbose letter-writer; and as to Clarissa, I believe you will own yourself, that I have done you ample justice. I now leave you seriously to contemplate the merit of your performances, and shall only add, that I hope you will have the candour not to impute these ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... exhaustive details of the affair had not, perhaps, been laboriously collected as yet, but luckily Mrs. Heth was not the sort that requires a mass of verbose testimony and dull statistics. The right note awaited her touch six floors below, and time was pressing. Already her mind had flown well ahead, perceived with precision just what was required. Willie must be seen, and at least two ladies, of different sets, great gossips, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... whose composition was so obscure that Gil Blas could not comprehend the meaning of a single line of his writings. His poetry was verbose fustian, and his prose a maze of far-fetched expressions ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... naturally anxious, as we thought that in steering straight ahead, as we had done, we ought to have reached the ships with which we had the rendezvous. So far as we could, with the roar of the wind and the propeller, we held a consultation—nothing verbose—in mid-air to determine what would be the best move. We decided to alter our course so as to be sure of getting in sight of land. Half an hour later we saw the first sign of life since we had been ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... and fired his manly soul—the beat of the rolling drum. Then comes a description of the terrible conflict that occurred in his native village, between the three most prominent men of the day. This, not to be too verbose, he simply likens to being "in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... been expressed about Wagner in his capacity of philosopher. To some he appears as a verbose dilettante totally unable to put two ideas logically together, while others look up to him as a teacher of the profoundest truths. I cannot say that either view is wrong. On the one hand he possessed ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... book with reluctance. It is verbose and dull, but it has led us along the path of American renown; it recites a story which, however awkwardly told, can never fall coldly on an American ear. It has, besides, given us an opportunity, of which we have gladly availed ourselves, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... come some day. As individuals, Englishmen have already returned to Him. But a corporate crime must be expiated by corporate reparation, and it is that reparation which has already waited too long. I am an old man, gentlemen. That, no doubt, is why I have been so verbose, but my one prayer for the last thirty years has been that that corporate reparation may be made within my own lifetime. ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... chronicles, the principal specimen is that of Don Roderic, a fabulous account of the reign of King Roderic, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the first attempts to recover it in the beginning of the eighth century. The style is heavy and verbose, although upon it Southey has founded much of his beautiful poem of "Roderic, the last of the Goths." This chronicle of Don Roderic, which was little more than a romance of chivalry, marks the transition to those ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... at the impossible metres, the grandiose phrases, the verbose repetitions of my poem. Years ago I must have laughed at it, when I threw my only copy into the wastebasket. The copy I am now turning over was loaned me by Miss Dwight, who faithfully preserved it all these years, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... his observations and conclusions in a verbose essay entitled Of the excellent qualities of coffee and the art of making it in the highest perfection, published in London in 1812. In this treatise he describes ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... a man very well educated for his time, whether self taught or not one cannot say; but that he was an excellent draughtsman, and had a complete knowledge of geometry, is evident from the wonderful drawings in his book, and the careful though rather verbose directions he gives for perspective drawing. Many of his numerous designs for furniture and ornamental items, are drawn to a scale with the geometrical nicety of an engineer's or architect's plan: he has ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... feast-offerings. If a European makes voluntary gratuities to the natives, he is considered a fool—they entertain a contempt for him, which develops into intolerable impertinence. If the native comes to borrow, lend him a little less than he asks for, after a verbose preamble; if one at once lent, or gave, the full value requested, he would continue to invent a host of pressing necessities, until one's patience was exhausted. He seldom restores the loan of anything voluntarily. On being remonstrated with for his remissness, after ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... was avoided, but only with great difficulty, owing to her criticism of Mr. Stobell's signature. It took the united and verbose efforts of Messrs. Chalk and Tredgold to assure her that it was in his usual style, and rather a good signature for him than otherwise. Miss Vickers, viewing it with her head on one side, asked whether ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Valiantly Vaccinated a Vapouring, Verbose Varmit of a Vulgar Villainous Vagabond, who Very Verdantly Ventured on a Versatile, Veteran, Valueless Velocipede to Visit the Viceroy of Venice, instead of ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... thought of spending fifty of my own dollars, privily and without collusion with his publisher, to advertise that remarkable book of his called "WE" which is probably the ablest and most original, and certainly the most verbose, book that has been written about the war. Now Mr. Lee (let me light my pipe and get this right) is the most eminent victim of words that ever lived in New England (or indeed anywhere east of East Aurora). Words crowd ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... cowardly submission to monotony under some word like duty, loyalty, conscience. If you have ever been an office-holder or been close to officials, you must surely have been appalled by the grim way in which committee-meetings, verbose reports, flamboyant speeches, requests, and delegations hold the statesman in a mind-destroying grasp. Perhaps this is the reason why it has been necessary to retire Theodore Roosevelt from public life every now and then in order to give him a chance to learn something ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... his teeth, but from the victor's privilege of verbose taunting he had no redress. After all, it would be a transient victory. Parish might "rub it in" now, but in a few hours he would be dangling at ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... parcel of papers, which General Johnston said were from Mr. Reagan, Postmaster-General. He and Breckenridge looked over them, and, after some side conversation, he handed one of the papers to me. It was in Reagan's handwriting, and began with a long preamble and terms, so general and verbose, that I said they were inadmissible. Then recalling the conversation of Mr. Lincoln, at City Point, I sat down at the table, and wrote off the terms, which I thought concisely expressed his views and wishes, and explained that I was willing to submit ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... on that basis: the composition of both is the same, i.e. the parts, which they have in common, follow in the same order. The same may be said of the Constantinopolitan liturgy, commonly attributed to S. Chrysostom, of that of the Armenian church, and of the florid and verbose composition in use among the Nestorians of Mesopotamia. So that the liturgy of Antioch, commonly attributed to S. James, appears to be the basis of all the oriental liturgies". Tracts for the Times, N. 63. The author then proceeds to state the grounds ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... rendered very concise, preferring the main points in each to a verbose and tiresome description of the minutiae; and although the number might have been extended to many hundreds, I trust a sufficiency have been detailed to establish the success of my practice, ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... argued was a long-pending one between Sir John Stewart and an architect, who had superintended the erection of some buildings on one of Sir John's farms. The counsel were not over clever, but sufficiently verbose, and full enough of 'instances,' both ancient and modern. The counsel for Sir John laid great stress upon the erroneous manner in which the action had been laid, and contended that as the English form of' assumpsit' had been taken, in ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... a solemn promise, couched in the most impressive words, that the traitor shall be punished; which will make all the more noticeable the utter defeat which verbose royalty soon afterward suffers. Renard worsts the king's messengers; Bruin the bear has his nose torn off; Tybert the cat loses half his tail; Renard jeers at them, at the king, and at the Court. And all through ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... intensely uninteresting conversation about the maladies to which chickens are subject. He was verbose and reminiscent. He took me over his farm, pointing out as he went Dorkings and Cochin Chinas which he had cured of diseases generally fatal, with, as far as I could gather, Christian ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... that the process of wading through Mr. "Commissioner's" verbose and clumsy pleadings has given me a "hot fit," which, I undertake to say, will be followed by not so much as a passing shiver of repentance. And it is under the influence of the genial warmth diffused through the frame, on one of those ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... he stared at Clutton with astonishment: he had no notion what he meant, Clutton had no gift of expression in words, and he spoke as though it were an effort. What he had to say was confused, halting, and verbose; but Philip knew the words which served as the text of his rambling discourse. Clutton, who never read, had heard them first from Cronshaw; and though they had made small impression, they had remained in his memory; and lately, emerging ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Business-Oriented Language] (Synonymous with {evil}.) A weak, verbose, and flabby language used by {card walloper}s to do boring mindless things on {dinosaur} mainframes. Hackers believe that all COBOL programmers are {suit}s or {code grinder}s, and no self-respecting hacker will ever admit to having learned ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... lives of celebrities he had never heard of. To be printed, anywhere and anyhow, was a form of glory for a man so unable to be acted, and to be paid, even at encyclopaedic rates, had the consequence of making one resigned and verbose. He couldn't smuggle style into a dictionary, but he could at least reflect that he had done his best to learn from the drama that it is a gross impertinence almost anywhere. He had knocked at the door of every theatre in London, ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... seen. And yet the picture of Hallam at Eton represents a young man of an apparently solid and commonplace type, with a fresh colour, and almost wholly destitute of distinction or charm; while his extant fragments of prose and poetry are heavy, verbose, and elaborate, and without any memorable quality. It appears indeed as if he had exercised a sort of hypnotic influence upon his contemporaries. Neither does he seem to have produced a very gracious impression ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the old marvels of Neoplatonism. But he draws no conclusion except that spiritualism is retrogressive. His book is wonderfully ill-printed, and, though he had some curious reading, his style was cumbrous, jocular, and verbose. It may, therefore, be worth while, in the light of anthropological research, to show how very closely human nature has repeated ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... and accurate. His drawings surpass all others in accuracy and spirit, while his enthusiasm and devotion to the work he had undertaken have but few parallels in the history of science. His chapter on the wild goose is as good as a poem. One readily overlooks his style, which is often verbose and affected, in consideration of enthusiasm so genuine ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... evening, and it was continued the next day at Ferneres, Baron Rothschild's house, in which the King was at that time quartered. The French envoy did not make a favourable impression; a lawyer by profession, he had no experience in diplomatic negotiations; vain, verbose, rhetorical, and sentimental, his own report of the interview which he presented to his colleagues in Paris is sufficient evidence of his incapacity for the task he had taken upon himself. "He spoke to me as if I were a public meeting," said Bismarck ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... Cardiff? "Well, perhaps the past is all right; but consider the future! Eight hours are going to drive capital out of the country!" Rubbish! I'm not a political economist, thank God; I never sank quite so low as that. And I'm not speaking for or against Eight Hours: I'm only discounting some verbose nonsense. But I know enough to see that the capital of a country can no more be exported than the land or the houses. Can you drive away the London and North-Western Railway? Can you drive away the factories of Manchester, the mines of the Black Country, the canals, the buildings, the machinery, ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... part of the script you are writing, be constantly on the alert to avoid including non-essential details. Take pains, of course, to show the director just what bit of by-play it is that is responsible for a certain situation that will "get a laugh," but do not be verbose, and do not go into tiresome details. "It is a very easy matter, for a writer fired with ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... and the mood is still one of assurance, enthusiasm, and hope. The only noteworthy change is in the style. Political Justice belongs to the generation of Gibbon, eloquent, elaborate and periodic at its best; heavy and slightly verbose at its worst. With The Enquirer we are just entering the generation of Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. The language is simpler and more flexible, the construction of the sentences more varied, the mood more vivacious, and the tone ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... essays are assigned, the scholars will indeed dislike the work of writing, and derive little benefit from it. The mass of pupils in our schools are not to be writers of moral essays or orations, and they do not need to form that style of empty, florid, verbose declamation which the practice of writing composition in our schools, as it is too frequently managed, tends to form. Assign practical subjects—subjects relating to the business of the school, or the events ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... short sermon as irreligious, and lacking in reverence, and besides, would have felt that they had not received in it their full due, their full money's worth. They often fell asleep and were fiercely awakened by the tithingman, and often they could not have understood the verbose and grandiose language of the preacher. They were in an icy-cold atmosphere in winter, and in glaring, unshaded heat in summer, and upon most uncomfortable, narrow, uncushioned seats at all seasons; but in every record and journal which I have read, throughout ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the cause why many people were so silent. It was common to hear that a man was afraid to hear himself talk. By reducing therefore the signs of speech, a stimulus would be given to the reserved and a curb imposed upon the verbose. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... diddler copies the facts of this advertisement, with a change of heading, of general phraseology and address. The original, for instance, is long, and verbose, is headed "A Pocket-Book Lost!" and requires the treasure, when found, to be left at No. 1 Tom Street. The copy is brief, and being headed with "Lost" only, indicates No. 2 Dick, or No. 3 Harry Street, as ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... paused, out of breath with the length and vehemence of the tirade, which her feelings had prompted her to utter with crescendo violence. She was verbose; but the lawyer had listened with the most perfect patience and unflagging attention to every word ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... quiet modern domestic feeling; while Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh" is, as far as I know, the greatest poem which the century has produced in any language. Cast Coleridge at once aside, as sickly and useless; and Shelley, as shallow and verbose; Byron, until your taste is fully formed, and you are able to discern the magnificence in him from the wrong. Never read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry yourself; there is, perhaps, rather too much than too ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... justified the prediction, he scarcely surpassed the favorable sense which it incloses. Verbose, incorrect, poor in form, pale and washy as diluted Indian ink, his verses occasionally display witty touches, because every one was witty in the eighteenth century; but to class them with the works of the poets of his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... ventroparolisto. Venture riski. Venture risko. Venturous riska. Veracious verema. Veracity vereco. Verandah balkono. Verb verbo. Verbal parola. Verbena verbeno. Verbatim (adv.) lauxvorte. Verbiage babilajxo. Verbose parolegema. Verbosity parolegeco. Verdant verdanta. Verdict jugxo. Verdigris verdigro. Verdure verdajxo. Verger pedelo. Verify verigi, ekzameni. Verily vere. Veritable vera. Verity vereco. Vermicelli vermicxelo. Vermifuge kontrauxvermajxo. Vermilion ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the god may make no mistake. If a libation is offered, one says, "Receive the homage of this wine that I am pouring"; for the god might think that one would present other wine and keep this back. The prayers, too, are long, verbose, and ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... deliciously innocent or singularly uninformed. Year after year a host of municipal and State officials throughout the United States issued reports showing this widespread condition. Yet aside from their verbose complainings, which served political purpose in giving an air of official ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... that you want to hire Lydia as a nurse for the children," Dundee interrupted the fond father's verbose explanations. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... unstained by blood and perjury, by hypocrisy and verbose genuflection. Can I not worship and say my prayers among the clouds?" And she pointed to the lofty ceiling and the ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... set aside as a basic principle, the reason invoked by the dramatist is positive reason, the reason of science, of justice, of rational logic. In verbose monologues, he combats the superstitions and fanaticism of the orthodox. The whole force of the Maskil's hatred against obscurantism is expressed through the character named Zibeon, Jewish hypocrite and chief adjutant in the camp of Sheker (Falsehood). This Jewish Tartufe is very different in ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... supposed,' was the prompt answer. 'Well, what did you think of the Dare-all,—as the vicar calls her sometimes? is she not like a pleasant edition of Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy,—verbose and full of long sentences? How many words did she coin ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Attorney was equally verbose in his apology; he was almost in tears because of his "deep contrition at having cast aspersions on the spotless character ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... ("Supernatural Religion," pp. 220, 221). "There is a second epistle ascribed to Clement, but we know not that this is as highly approved as the former, and know not that it has been in use with the ancients. There are also other writings reported to be his, verbose and of great length. Lately, and some time ago, those were produced that contain the dialogues of Peter and Apion, of which, however, not a syllable is recorded by the primitive Church" (Eusebius' ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... the world was to repose for ever in the soft wrappings of universal peace. Questions of national defence bored Englishmen. The judgment of the greatest strategical authority of the age weighed less than one of Lord Haldane's verbose platitudes, and the urgent warnings of Lord Roberts less than the impudent snub administered to him by an Under-Secretary. Speakers on public platforms found that sympathy with Ulster carried a more potent appeal ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... more clear to him; her meaning faded again into the agreeable vague, and he simply felt her presence, tasted her voice. Yet the act of reflexion was not suspended; he found himself rejoicing that she was so weak in argument, so inevitably verbose. The idea that she was brilliant, that she counted as a factor only because the public mind was in a muddle, was not an humiliation but a delight to him; it was a proof that her apostleship was all nonsense, the most passing of fashions, the veriest of delusions, and that she was meant for something ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... of some former sponsor, by reason of the nearness of its location to the former Bunhill residence of the great epic poet. But modern Fleet Street exists to-day as the street of journalists and journalism, from the humble penny-a-liner and his product to the more sedate and verbose political paragrapher whose reputation extends throughout ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... nineteenth century by Arthur Hassall, 6 vols. (1901), somewhat antiquated but still valuable for its vast store of political facts; Victor Duruy, History of Modern Times from the Fall of Constantinople to the French Revolution, trans. by E. A. Grosvenor (1894), verbose and somewhat uncritical, but usable for French history. More up-to-date series of historical manuals are now appearing or are projected by Henry Holt and Company under the editorship of Professor C. H. Haskins, by The Century Company under Professor G. L. Burr, by Ginn ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Accounts be laid before the Grand Jury at least twice a year.' That the grand jury was to be purged of all its French-Canadian members is evident from the addendum slipped in behind their backs. This addendum is a fine specimen of verbose invective against 'the Church of Rome,' the Pope, Bulls, Briefs, absolutions, etc., the empanelling 'en Grand and petty Jurys' of 'papist or popish Recusants ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... culture. An average Southern negro, for example, affected with indigestion, might derive some therapeutic advantage from snail diet, but would be more likely to be benefited by the mental stimulus afforded by the verbose formula. ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... tandems—at the astonishing age of twenty-six he began his memoirs under the title "New York Society as I Have Seen It." On the rumor of its conception this work was eagerly bid for among publishers, but as it proved after his death to be immoderately verbose and overpoweringly dull, it never ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... different negotiations; he was blunt, awkward, and slovenly, an orator without eloquence, an ambassador without dignity, and a plenipotentiary without address. The other had natural parts and acquired knowledge; spoke with confidence; and in dispute was vain, sarcastic, petulant, and verbose. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... manipulation of delicate form, than the manifestation of a free conception of a grand spirit. Walt Whitman is spontaneous without being careless. His style is unhesitating, his diction is flowing, smooth, without being searching or verbose! It seems as if his soul were responsive—not plaintively, but appreciatively responsive—to all the chords, influences, and objects of nature; and that his imagination were absorptive enough to embrace and ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... MONK Lewis, from his once popular romance of that name, was a good-hearted man, and, like too many of that fraternity, a disagreeable one—verbose, disputatious and paradoxical. His Monk and Castle Spectre elevated him into fame; and he continued to write ghost-stories till, following as he did in the wake of Mrs. Radcliffe, he quite overstocked the market. Lewis visited his estates in Jamaica, and came back perfectly negro-bitten. ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... tragic. Besides being powerful, his voice was sweet and resonant. His gestures and movements, elegant though they were, had nothing theatrical about them, and his oratory, though quick and fluent, was neither redundant nor verbose.' [Sidenote: Financial crisis at Rome.] The year before his tribunate had been a turbulent one at Rome. The Social War and Asiatic disturbances had brought about a financial crisis. Debtors, hard pressed by their ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... people. In Tragedy, nothing was so sure to Surprize and cause Admiration, as the most strange, unexpected, and consequently most unnatural, Events and Incidents; the most exaggerated Thoughts; the most verbose and bombast Expression; the most pompous Rhymes, and thundering Versification. In Comedy, nothing was so sure to please, as mean buffoonry, vile ribaldry, and unmannerly jests of fools and clowns. Yet even in these our Author's Wit buoys ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... read some socialistic and communistic literature; but it had not satisfied him; it had seemed to him vain, verbose, alluring, but unreal, no better adapted to cure any real hunger than the soaked rag ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... assay. 32 In such proud lodging (friend) wouldst self denay? 14 Tell us where haply dwell'st thou, speak outright, Be bold and risk it, trusting truth to light, Say do these milk-white girls thy steps detain? If aye in tight-sealed lips thy tongue remain, All Amor's fruitage thou shalt cast away: Verbose is Venus, loving verbal play! 20 But, an it please thee, padlockt palate bear, So in your friendship ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... asked her, she would have claimed rigid economy—she rarely, for instance, paid more than a hundred dollars for a morning gown, or more than a thousand for a ball-dress. It was simply that the idea of counting words had never yet occurred to her. And so now, she complacently handed this verbose message to the clerk, who—thoroughly well-trained—understood it was to be charged on her father's perfectly ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... in later years. He employs the semi-dramatic form of easy dialogue throughout the book with extraordinary lightness and skill. The familiar hexameter, which Lucilius had left still cumbrous and verbose, is like wax in his hands; his perfection in this use of the metre is as complete as that of Virgil in the stately and serious manner. And behind this accomplished literary method lies an unequalled perception of common human nature, a rich ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... praetorship by the votes of a capricious people. The acquisition of knowledge seldom engages the curiosity of the nobles, who abhor the fatigue and disdain the advantages of study; and the only books which they peruse are the Satires of Juvenal and the verbose and fabulous histories of Marius Maximus. The libraries which they have inherited from their fathers are secluded, like dreary sepulchres, from the light of day. But the costly instruments of the theatre-flutes, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Swift had composed a poem, not in honour of her, but of Vanessa, she replied, with exquisite feminine amenity, that it was well known that the Dean could be eloquent over a broomstick. If he that night extolled Bristol above her other rivals, it would be said of him that he was a verbose individual, who had called in past years Leeds a beautiful and inspiring city, Liverpool a rising seaport, and Glasgow a town where urbanity and sweet reasonableness prevailed. It might be remembered of him that he had praised the Birmingham ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... had listened in deepening distaste. Surely the young man very much magnified his office, was in manner exaggerated, in matter aggressive and verbose? Notwithstanding its attempted solemnity and heat, his sermon seemed to be conventional, just a "way of talking," and a conceited one at that. But, as he proceeded to set forth his promised examples of local ill-living, distaste passed into bewilderment and finally into a sense of outrage, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet |
