"Prate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He. If I also say, God is a Being, it is not true; He is transcendent Being and superessential Nothingness. Concerning this St Augustine says: the best thing that man can say about God is to be able to be silent about Him, from the wisdom of his inner judgement. Therefore be silent and prate not about God, for whenever thou dost prate about God, thou liest, and committest sin. If thou wilt be without sin, prate not about God. Thou canst understand nought about God, for He is above all understanding. A master saith: If I had a God whom I could understand, ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... everlasting robes This democrat is dressed, Then prate about "preferment" And "station" and ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... will say of you "He loved her"—while of me what will they say? Not that I loved you more than just in play, For fashion's sake as idle women do. Even let them prate; who know not what we knew Of love and parting in exceeding pain, Of parting hopeless here to meet again, Hopeless on earth, and heaven is out of view. But by my heart of love laid bare to you, My love ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... it seems to me ridiculously inconsistent for gentlemen upon this floor to prate so much about a republican form of government, and rise here and offer resolution after resolution about the Monroe doctrine and the downtrodden Mexicans, while they force upon the people of this District a government not of their own choice, because the voter in a popular government is a governor ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... this Congress is more menacing than merely a return to the past—bad as that would be. Our resplendent economic autocracy does not want to return to that individualism of which they prate, even though the advantages under that system went to the ruthless and the strong. They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a people's Government this power is wholesome and proper. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... schooled to weep upon the stage, Tricked for a part of woe and somber-drest. "Lo, who art thou," they ask, "that thou shouldst fret To find, forsooth, one single heart undone? The page thou turnest there is purple-wet With blood that gushed from Caesar overthrown! Lo, who art thou to prate of sorrow?" Yet, This little woe, it is my ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... Guest, Till his Story was told, not a moment cou'd rest; While the OWL her brain rummag'd, (now quite on th' alert,) [p 21] For a few scraps of learning, by way of dessert: But the PEACOCK had no inclination to wait, And the PARROT was still more impatient to prate: So the Poem was read, and the OWL vow'd she never Had heard any Verses she thought ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... I grow a talker!"[637] Let us prate. The next of perils, though I place it sternest, Is when, without regard to Church or State, A wife makes or takes love in upright earnest. Abroad, such things decide few women's fate— (Such, early Traveller! is the truth ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... don't blame them, for, I declare to you, I don't fully appreciate it myself. John Tullis playing nurse and story-teller to a seven-year-old boy, to the exclusion of everything else, is more than I can grasp. Somehow, I've come to feel that he's mine. That must be the reason. But you've heard me prate on this subject a hundred times. Don't let me start it again. There's something else you want to talk to me about, so please don't encourage me to tell all the wonderful things he has said ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... when Izdubar will seek The cool enchantment of the cove, and slake His thirst with its sweet waters bubbling pure, Where Love has spread for him her sweetest lure, The maids expectant listening, watch and wait His coming; oft in ecstacies they prate O'er his surprise, and softly sport and splash The limpid waves around, that glowing flash Like heaps of snowy pearls lung to the light By Hea's[1] hands, his Zir-ri[2] to delight. And now upon the rock each maid reclines, While Ishtar's form beneath them brightly ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... you down the main street of either, and if you don't wish yourself at Cheltenham, or some other unclassical place which never had a Latin name, we are much mistaken! The "Relievo dei Cavalli" at Alcamo offers no relief for you! The Magpie may prate on her sign-post about clean beds, for magpies can be made to say any thing; but pray do not construe the "Canova Divina" Divine Canova! He never executed any thing for the Red Lion of Calatafrini, whose "Canova" is a low ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Fatherhood Is but a small achievement at the best, While motherhood is heaven and hell.) This ever-growing argument of sex Is most unseemly, and devoid of sense. Why waste more time in controversy, when There is not time enough for all of love, Our rightful occupation in this life? Why prate of our defects—of where we fail, When just the story of our worth would need Eternity for telling; and our best Development comes ever through your praise, As through our praise you reach your highest self? Oh! had you not been miser of your ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... over this,—you who preach the gospel of man's pre-eminence;—you who prate of God and know nothing whatsoever about Him! The horse, dog, cat,—even the wild animals, whose vices, perchance, pale beside your own, may go to Heaven before you. The Supreme Architect is neither a Nero, nor a Stuart, nor a clown. He will recompense ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... prate of deserting these dear precious scenes again, and I'll finish your career myself by a coup-de-main. No, no; change churlish dreams and braving trumpets to mellifluous flutes. I am to be ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... purse-strings with one hand while they hold a drawn sword in the other. There is no security to be found in any corner of the State; and no projects, formed for the future of its people. To be sure, certain parties prate and jabber about the Volunteer Service and national defenses; but what have they to defend? If their frontier were bristling to-morrow with forts and bayonets, all they could hope to accomplish would be the ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... tactics, spell disaster to our movement. I am opposed to it, not because it is too radical, but because it is essentially reactionary and non-Socialistic; not because it would lead us too far, but because it would lead us nowhere. To prate about the dictatorship of the proletariat and of workers' Soviets in the United States at this time is to deflect the Socialist propaganda from its realistic basis, and to advocate the abolition of all social ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... to read, and to reflect upon what she read, and to apply it to the purpose for which it is valuable, viz. in enlarging her mind and cultivating her taste; but she had never been accustomed to prate, or quote, or sit down for the express purpose of displaying her acquirements; and she began to tremble at hearing authors' names "familiar in their mouths as household words;" but Grizzy, strong in ignorance, was no wise daunted. True, she heard what she ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... — N. loquacity, loquaciousness; talkativeness &c. adj.; garrulity; multiloquence[obs3], much speaking. jaw; gabble; jabber, chatter; prate, prattle, cackle, clack; twaddle, twattle, rattle; caquet[obs3], caquetterie[Fr]; blabber, bavardage[obs3], bibble-babble[obs3], gibble-gabble[obs3]; small talk &c. (converse) 588. fluency, flippancy, volubility, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... if it did not thus deprave the understanding and the heart, might delight us by its poetical features, and furnish the imagination with much fantastical amusement. Are you not ashamed, old man, to think and prate in this way of the most virtuous, the most beneficent of men? How many human beings are fed and supplied with comforts by his extensive transactions? is he not always giving the needy a share in the blessings with which heaven ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... earliest pretending breaks down quickly. What, after all, is the sum of those doings in the shrub-house? What would Pippa gain, were she in truth great haughty Ottima? She would but "give abundant cause for prate." Ottima, bold, confident, and not fully aware, can face that out, but Pippa knows, more closely than the woman rich ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... notice of the little boys. He dilated their hearts, and set them a prating; and was pleased with their prate. The doctor, who had never seen him before in the company of children, applauded him for his vivacity, and condescending talk to them. The tenderest father in the world, he said, could not have behaved more tenderly, or shewed himself more delighted with his ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... earl has a will of his own. He is a master worth serving though. And there is my lady Elizabeth and my lady Mary—not to mention my lord Herbert!—But,' he concluded, rubbing his injured knee with both hands, 'why do I prate of ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... is coming!" Pleasant truth To all—save the dyspeptic! To most in whom some smack of youth Hath influence antiseptic. Pessimists prate, and prigs be-rate The time of mirth and holly; But why should time-soured sages "slate" The juvenile and jolly? "Though some churls at our mirth repine" (As old GEORGE WITHER put it), We'll whiff our weed, and sip our wine, And watch the youngsters foot it. They did so in quaint ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... their own purity, that the Lucretias of modern life owe their freedom from stain. Charity, as even those of whose religion it makes a formal part have been compelled to acknowledge, creates a multitude of evils. The mere existence of conscience, that faculty of which people prate so much nowadays, and are so ignorantly proud, is a sign of our imperfect development. It must be merged in instinct before we become fine. Self-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress, and self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... aversion are the rabbins. The sublimest passages of the Scriptures they shamefully corrupt. As a case in point, they prate concerning Enoch that, while he was good and righteous, he very much inclined toward carnal desires. God, therefore, out of pity, prevented his sinning and perishing through death. Is not this, I pray you, a shocking corruption of the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price! The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him. And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the day ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... demanding rage or religious fervour, or patriotic enthusiasm, for its inspiration. It was the very law of their life, the essential spirit in them. They were unconscious of it as a man is unconscious of breathing, unless diseased. Their honour was not a thing to talk about. To prate about the honour of the army or the honour of England was like talking about the honour of their mother. It is not done. And yet, as Mark Antony said, "They were all honourable men," and there seemed an austerity of virtue in them ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... this, or sell me that: and when the stranger should aske, What will you giue me for it? the beggar might answere: I haue ten or foureteene children, I will giue you some one or more of them, &c. For this rabble of beggars vseth thus fondly to prate with strangers. Now if there be any well-disposed man, who pitying the need and folly of these beggers, releaseth them of one sonne, and doth for Gods sake by some meanes prouide for him in another countrey: doth the begger therefore (who together with his sonne being ready ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... in darkness; Thought will not work except in Silence; neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of "those secrets known to all." Is not Shame (Schaam) the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals? Like other plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... That would have been too simple and honest and direct. You can't be honest and straightforward to save your lives. You live by deception, and boast about your love of truth. Your deepest craving is for violence, while you prate about your gentle influence over men. I haven't the least doubt in the world that Mrs. Huntington, for all her baby face, is back of all Huntington's violence—thinks she's a wonderful inspiration to him, with a special genius for ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... protectively over their people. Perhaps the Milovka study-house boasted even Cabbalists starving themselves into celestial visions and graduating for the Divine kiss. How infinitely restful after the Milovka market-place! No more, for that day at least, would he prate of Self-Defence and ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... wryteth that, whan Memnon made warre for Darius agaynste Alexander, he harde one of his souldyours crake and speake many yll wordes agaynst Alexander; wherfore he rapte hym on the pate with a iauelynge, sayenge: I hyred the to fyght agaynste Alexandre, and not to crake and prate. ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... now if our young men go abroad, it is no longer for clothes, nor to seek new laws in wretched printing shops, nor to study eloquence in the cafes of Paris. For now Napoleon, a clever man and a swift, gives us no time to prate or to search for new fashions. Now there is the thunder of arms, and the hearts of us old men exult that the renown of the Poles is spreading so widely throughout the world; glory is ours already, and so we shall soon again have our Republic. ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... my company; For if the king of gods can be Full oft in need of recreation,— Who rules the world,—right well may I, Who serve him in that high relation: Amuse me, then, before you fly.' Our cackler, pleased, at quickest rate Of this and that began to prate. Not he of whom old Flaccus writes, The most impertinent of wights, Or any babbler, for that matter, Could more incontinently chatter. At last she offer'd to make known— A better spy had never flown— All things, whatever ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... but laugh to hear the Fools prate about Preheminence: They would all fain be Masters, and yet they know they are but all my Servants; they make their Boast, of this and that, and talk of their great gains: and forget that I rule the Roast, and that ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... others." Yet how many people, who really know better, people who are perfectly capable of intelligent understanding if they didn't let their brains remain asleep or locked tight, go night after night to dinner parties, day after day to other social gatherings, and absent-mindedly prate about this or that without ever taking the trouble to think what they are saying and to whom they are saying it! Would a young mother describe twenty or thirty cunning tricks and sayings of the baby to a bachelor who has been helplessly put beside her at dinner ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of the squires and gentlemen? Very truly does M. Taine say, "These three syllables, as used across the channel, summarize ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... of Asia Minor, and are now almost in sight of Europe. The camp-fire is extinguished; the tent is furled. We are no longer happy nomads, masquerading in Moslem garb. We shall soon become prosaic Christians, and meekly hold out our wrists for the handcuffs of Civilization. Ah, prate as we will of the progress of the race, we are but forging additional fetters, unless we preserve that healthy physical development, those pure pleasures of mere animal existence, which are now only to be found among our semi-barbaric brethren. Our progress ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... guests, with Farmer Crouder, "Began to prate of corn; "And we found out they talk'd the louder, "The oftner ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... always the best company, and one is not expected to undergo the fatigue of listening. Aman. Does your lordship think that the case at the opera? Lord Fop. Most certainly, madam. There is my Lady Tattle, my Lady Prate, my Lady Titter, my Lady Sneer, my Lady Giggle, and my Lady Grin—these have boxes in the front, and while any favourite air is singing, are the prettiest company in the waurld, stap my vitals!—Mayn't we hope for the honour to see you added to our society, madam? Aman. ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... "Idomeneus, why dost thou prate endlessly?[755] Those high-prancing mares run over the vast plain afar. Neither art thou so much the youngest amongst the Greeks, nor do thine eyes see most sharply from thy head: but thou art always ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... flight All the forms of Stygian night That round us rise in grim array, Darkening the meridian day: Bigotry, whose chief employ Is embittering earthly joy; Chaos, throned in pedant state, Teaching echo how to prate; And 'Ignorance, with looks profound,' Not 'with eye that loves the ground,' But stalking wide, with lofty crest, In science's ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... Therefore—therefore I order you to hold your foul prate! (Rises.) It grows late. Go hang helm and harness ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... Aymer, "and therefore scarce angels in disguise, even though you prate of the clouds. So if you wish to measure blades I shall not balk you. Nathless," as he slowly freed his own weapon, "it is a quarrel not ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... Prate'fast (Peter), who "in all his life spake no word in waste." His wife was Maude, and his eldest son, Sym Sadle Gander, who married Betres (daughter of Davy Dronken Nole, of Kent, and his wife, Al'yson).—Stephen Hawes, The Passe-tyme of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the offender, add the brand of infamy, Add mutilation: and if this suffice not, Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst They may lick up that scum of schismatics. I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring 235 What we possess, still prate of Christian peace, As if those dreadful arbitrating messengers Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong, Should be let loose against the innocent sleep Of templed cities and the smiling fields, 240 For some poor argument of policy Which touches our own profit or our pride (Where ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... ye not dronk[e] hance how he be gins to prate The malowperte sleminge is a little ...
— The Interlude of Wealth and Health • Anonymous
... meeting and carried the hostages off to Denmark against his plighted faith. There Gustav was held prisoner a year. All that winter rumors of great armaments against Sweden filled the land. He heard the young bloods from the court prate about bending the stiff necks in the country across the Sound, and watched them throw dice for Swedish castles and Swedish women,—part of the loot when his fatherland should be laid under the yoke. Ready to burst with anger and grief, he sat silent at their boasts. In the spring he escaped, ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... Sydney, thou art a pretty fellow to prate about sallying forth at midnight to do good to thy fellow creatures!—Here we find thee, within an hour after thy departure from thy home, on an 'errand of mercy,' embraced in the soft arms of a pretty wanton, and revelling ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... nothing heeds Time past or time to come, but fills all needs With present kindness. She would laugh and talk, Take arms, suffer embraces, even walk The terrace 'neath the eyes of all her fate, And seem to heed what they might show or prate, As if her whole heart's heart were in this house And not at fearful odds and perilous. And should one speak of Paris, as to say, "Would that our lord might see thee go so gay About his house!" Gently she'd ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... caught himself. No, he would prate no more of 'going to'. "I'll not ask you to believe it," he said, "until I bring it to you and ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... inevitable diminutive—Flossie; or he will build up painfully, inch by inch, a barrier against the name's corroding action. He will boast of his biceps, flexing them the while. He will brag about cold baths. He will prate of chest measurements; regard golf with contempt; and speak of the ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... Dog, who saw the deed, Detesting the vexatious breed, Bespoke him thus: "When coxcombs prate, They kindle wrath, contempt, or hate; Thy teasing tongue, had judgment tied, Thou hadst not like a ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... her to my best ward, instead of merely suggesting it and giving up when she said no. If you had followed your heart, you would have choked the name and amount out of her and paid that devilish debt. You walk away in a case like that, and then have the nerve to come here and prate to me about following your heart. I'll wager my last dollar your heart is sore because you were not allowed to help her; but on the proposition that you followed its promptings I wouldn't stake ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... Don't prate of woman's function, sweet, Your only duty is to charm; Leave platform spouting, as is meet, To men; it cannot do them harm. Your influence comes from gracious ways, Your glory in the home doth lie; The guardian angel of our days, Until you bless us ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... I placed in you, sirrah?' he rejoined, in a terrible voice; and stooping still farther forward he probed me with his eyes. 'You who prate of trust and confidence, who received your life on parole, and but for your promise to me would have been carrion this month past, answer me that? What of the trust I placed ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... doth ache: And Isis now will show what 'scuse to make. Receive him soon, lest patient use he gain, Or lest his love oft beaten back should wane. To beggars shut, to bringers ope thy gate; Let him within hear barred-out lovers prate. And, as first wronged, the wronged sometimes banish; Thy fault with his fault so repulsed will vanish. 80 But never give a spacious time to ire; Anger delayed doth oft to hate retire. And let thine eyes constrained learn to weep, That this or that man may thy cheeks moist keep. Nor, if thou ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... "Prate not to me, my lord, of truth or honor amongst these savages," he replied. "Did not their chief himself but even now lie to me? Well knew the rascally heathen where the Spaniard hides! The truth indeed! They know not the meaning of ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... throne a spider swings And snares the people for the kings: "Luther is dead; old quarrels pass; The stake's black scars are healed with grass"; So dreamers prate;—did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive? But Luther's broom is left, and eyes Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... themselves in dark Holes, Closets, Beds, &c. We are all for Humour, Gallantry, Conversation, and Courtship, and shou'dn't endure the chief Lady in the Play a Mute, or to say very little, as 'twas agreeable to them: Our amorous Sparks love to hear the pretty Rogues prate, snap up their Gallants, and Repartee upon 'em on all sides. We shou'dn't like to have a Lady marry'd without knowing whether she gives her consent or no, (a Custom among the Romans) but wou'd be for hearing all the Courtship, all the rare and fine things that Lovers can say to each other. ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... Doll hangs out a newer face? Nail'd to her window full in sight All Christian people to invite. Or stop and light at Chloe's head, With scraps and leavings to be fed? Then, Chloe, still go on to prate Of thirty-six and thirty-eight; Pursue your trade of scandal-picking, Your hints that Stella is no chicken; Your innuendoes, when you tell us, That Stella loves to talk with fellows: But let me warn you to believe A truth, for which your soul should grieve; That should ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... are we so differently fashioned that thou, Eric, canst prate to me of happiness when my heart is racked with grief? Oh, Eric, I blame thee not, for thou hast not wrought this evil on me willingly; but I say this: that my heart is dead, as I would that I were dead. See those flowers: they smell sweet—for me they have no ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... thrust at all factions and sects. For they also have a word and boast much of their doctrine, but theirs is not the Word of truth whereby men are made children of God. They teach naught, and know naught, about how we are to be born God's children through faith. They prate much about the works done by us in the state derived ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... his own hand. And the nightmare at the cross-roads was the regular punishment, according to the laws of England, for an act which the Romans honoured as a virtue! Whenever an Englishman begins to prate of civilisation (as, indeed, it's a defect they are rather prone to), I hear the measured blows of a mallet, see the bystanders crowd with torches about the grave, smile a little to myself in conscious superiority—and take a thimbleful of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Tarleton; "are you going, by your theoretical treatises on philosophy, to make me learn the practical part of it, and prate upon learning while I ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "But when they prate of you and me, As the two gifts they want, Say Classic lore and Cookery Are things for which they pant; Believe me, my dear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... optimists everywhere; and even the dark days of Dixie proved no exception to the rule. It was not unusual to hear prate of the vast benefits derived from the blockade; of the energy, resource and production, expressed under its cruel constriction! Such optimists—equally at fault as were their pessimistic opponents—pointed proudly to the powder-mills, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... befallen him. For what occasions transcending joy (he saith) is some great impending evil escaped; and in this lies the very nature and essence of good, if a man consider it aright, and contain himself when he hath done, and not ramble and prate idly about it. Oh, the rare satisfaction and felicity these men enjoy, that can thus rejoice for having undergone no evil and endured neither sorrow nor pain! Have they not reason, think you, to value themselves for such things as these, and to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... You prate of duty and honor, of a patriot's glorious death, Of love of country, heroic deeds—nay, for shame's sake, spare your breath! Pray, what have you done for your country? Whose was the blood that was shed In the hellish ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... is a matter for cheers, derisive or otherwise. The Rev. Septimus need not prate of golden days gone by. Boys at heart never change. And the atmosphere is so charged with electricity that a ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... I fear these happy days when we Can loll in cooling shades while others toil For us, on stipends which like widow's mite Are small: will in the future disappear. These men who prate of slavery in these isles Do know full well that witness false they bear. We buy not souls and on the record place Their names among the chattels which we own, But their life's labor for a certain sum We ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... Grace knows best," the lawyer said; "On your commands I wait." "Be silent, sir," says Brentford, "A plague upon your prate! Come take your pen and paper, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... threats of the scholars were renewed, and further intimations of violence were exhibited. Again the peas rattled upon the hands and faces of the halberdiers, till their ears tingled with pain. "Prate to us of the king's favorites," cried one of the foremost of the scholars, a youth decorated with a paper collar: "they may rule within the precincts of the Louvre, but not within the walls of the university. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... join'd to such a son of prate, His queries I anticipate, And thus my lee-way fetch up— "Sir, all my relatives, I vow, Are perfectly in health—and now I'd thank you for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... confident I am Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes And prate of being "happy as a clam!" What though thy shell protects thy fragile head From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed, And bear thee off—as foemen take their spoil— Far from ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of what men were surrounded by in their daily lives and avocations. The houses[61] and oratories of noble and burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic use were beautiful. Men did not prate of art: they wrought in love and simplicity. The very word art, as denoting a product of human activity different from the ordinary daily tasks of men, was unknown. If painting was an art, even so was carpentry. A mason was an ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... loved, but Tedaldo Elisei ay.[176] But tell me, what was the occasion of your falling out with him? Did he ever give you any offence?' 'Certes, no,' replied she; 'he never offended against me; the cause of the breach was the prate of an accursed friar, to whom I once confessed me and who, when I told him of the love I bore Tedaldo and the privacy I had with him, made such a racket about my ears that I tremble yet to think of it, telling ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to dream that I feel nothing? What is your love for Tom Faggus? What is your love for your baby (pretty darling as he is) to compare with such a love as for ever dwells with me? Because I do not prate of it; because it is beyond me, not only to express, but even form to my own heart in thoughts; because I do not shape my face, and would scorn to play to it, as a thing of acting, and lay it out before you, are you fools ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... would not have rested till they had found and punished the culprit. I am robbed of all; and, because I am poor and unfriended—circumstances which make the loss irremediable—the law puts forth no hand to help me. Men will prate about the expense—the burden on the national revenue—as if justice to all were not the very first object of government—as if—but truce to this. My good friend, you see these fragments of snuff that I have collected—could you get them exchanged for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... chance more; how he used it,—grew Out of such unlucky habits, or relapsed, and back again Brought the late-ejected devil with a score more in his train,— That's for you to judge. Reprieval I procured, at any rate. Ugh—the memory of that minute's fear makes gooseflesh rise! Why prate Longer? You've my story, there's your instance: fear ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... gait As that which was my own? Whence did they suck This honey that they stored? Can you recite The vantages which each of these has had And I had not? Or is the argument [104] That my Lord Verulam hath written all, And covers in his wide-embracing self The stolen fame of twenty smaller men? You prate about my learning. I would urge My want of learning rather as a proof That I am still myself. Have I not traced A seaboard to Bohemia, and made The cannons roar a whole wide century Before the first was forged? Think ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... these pretty babes, Rejoicing at that tide, Rejoicing with a merry mind, They should on cock-horse ride. They prate and prattle pleasantly, As they rode on the way, To those that should their butchers be, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... ancient heights! Clouds of the earth-born battle cloak The heaven that our fathers held from of old; And we—shall we prate to their sons of the gain In gold or bread? Through yonder smoke The heights that never were won with gold Wait, still bright with their old red stain, For the thousand chariots of God again, And the steel that swept thro' a hundred fights With the Ironsides, equal ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... wings. What do you think of it, TOBY, my boy? The Session's Bills are half-forgotten things. Is there discussion in our little Isle? Let Parties broken so remain. Factions are hard to reconcile: Prate not of Law and Order—by the main! There is a fussiness worse than death Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, Lost labour, and sheer waste of breath, Sore task to hearts dead beat by many wars, And ears grown dumb with listening to loud ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... what it deserves. Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves, Whose slightest action or inaction serves The one great aim. Why, even Death stands still, And waits an hour ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... your freedom? Peace, babblers—be still; Prate not of the goddess who scarce deigns to hear; Have ye power to unbind? Are ye wanting in will? Must the groans of your ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... silent, audacissime juvenis! Why should I exert myself to explain my opinions to coarse and common folk, who don't know what universalia entia rationis formae substantiales are? It certainly is absurdissimum to try to prate of colors to the blind. Vulgus indoctum est monstrum horrendum informe, cui lumen ademptum. Not long ago a man ten times as learned as you wished to dispute with me, but when I found that he did not know what quidditas was, I ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... sleep. As a fresh miss, by fancy, face, and gown, Render'd the topping beauty of the town, Draws every rhyming, prating, dressing sot, To boast of favours that he never got; Of which, whoe'er lacks confidence to prate, Brings his good parts and breeding in debate; And not the meanest coxcomb you can find, But thanks his stars, that Phillis has been kind; Thus prostitute my Congreve's name is grown To every lewd pretender of the town. Troth, I could pity you; but this is it, You ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... speak from the fulness of the heart—their low, corrupt views are their real convictions: whereas your fine sentiments are but from the lips, outwards; that is why they are so nerveless and dead. It turns one's stomach to listen to your exhortations, and hear of your miserable Virtue, that you prate of up and down. Thus it is that the Vulgar prove too strong for you. Everywhere strength, everywhere victory waits ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... being up with the pike and shillelagh on any or no occasion. God forbid Scotland should retrograde towards such a state—much better that the Deil, as in Burns's song, danced away with the whole excisemen in the country. We do not want to hear her prate of her number of millions of men, and her old military exploits. We had better remain in union with England, even at the risk of becoming a subordinate species of Northumberland, as far as national consequence is concerned, than remedy ourselves by even ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... lad about bein' weak-kneed after you have shown the courage he has within the past four an' twenty hours. You an' your mutinous comrades prate loudly of bravery when there is no enemy in sight; but I'll lay odds that not one out of an hundred like you would dare go alone from here to ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... male; where the young women receive evening calls from young men concerning whose presence in the parlor mamma in the nursery and papa at the "office"—poor, overworked papa!—give themselves precious little trouble,—this prate of ball-room opportunity is singularly and engagingly idiotic. The worthy people who hold such language may justly boast themselves superior to reason and impregnable to light. The only effective reply to these creatures would be a cuffing, the well meant objections of another ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... a secret, says a beau, And sneers at some ill-natured wit below; But faith, if we should tell but half we know, There's many a spruce young fellow in this place, Wou'd never presume to show his face; Women are not so weak, what e'er men prate; How many tip-top beaux have had the fate, T'enjoy from mama's secrets their estate! Who, if her early folly had made known, Had rid behind the coach that's now ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... that talk to me of dishonour?—you that come straying here out of the night with your cicisbeo at your heels? You, with the dew on you and your dress bedraggled, arrive straight from companioning in the woods and prate to me of shame—of the blood of the Colonne!" He smote a hand on the table and spat forth a string of vile names upon her, mixed with curses; abominable words before which she drew back cowering, yet less (I think) from the lash of them than from shock and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... so lightly of it. If you had had as many as I, perhaps you would change your tune. Anyway, I'm a thief—make the most of that—but I'm not a devil from hell, God strike me dead. I would have you to know I've an honor of my own, as good as yours, though I don't prate about it all day long, as if it were a God's miracle to have any. It seems quite natural to me; I keep it in its box till it's wanted. Why now, look you here, how long have I been in this room with you? Did you not tell me you were alone in the house? Look at your gold plate! ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... to prate of the life he gave me. But am I not reminded of the oppressive gift every time he dares to contradict me? Would I endure his interference as I do; would I be shouldered and butted at, by him; would I permit his opinion to be asked, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... where the shoe pinches," replied Eustace; "thou hast found some traitors who have been instilling rebellion into thy youthful ears. Well, if they are found, they shall ere long lack tongues wherewith to prate, and for the present thou must return home with me. Wilt thou go as a ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... intolerable impudence and cant!" said Julian, starting from his seat, aroused by his hypocritical prate into unwonted intolerance; and he suddenly observed, by the cowering attitude which Hazlet assumed, that the worthy youth was afraid of receiving at his head the water-bottle, on which Julian's hand was resting. Julian thought it best to avoid the temptation, and hoping ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... off with a grim smile. It was absurd to prate of life or death in such a strait as this. The ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine |
