"Prolixity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the late war had been carried on. That profusion, he said, had made taxes necessary. He called on the gentlemen opposite to him to say where they would have a tax laid, and dwelt on this topic with his usual prolixity. "Let them tell me where," he repeated in a monotonous and somewhat fretful tone. "I say, sir, let them tell me where. I repeat it, sir; I am entitled to say to them, Tell me where." Unluckily for him, Pitt had come ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Japan returned a "respectful address;" to China's expression of ineffable superiority Japan replied that the coming of the embassy had "dissolved her long-harboured cares;" and to China's grandiloquent prolixity Japan made answer with half a dozen brief lines. Imoko was now accompanied by eight students four of literature and four of religion. Thus was established, and for long afterwards maintained, a bridge over which the literature, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... thirty-four years the topography of the moon and planets. The field was then almost untrodden; he had but few and casual predecessors, and has since had no equal in the sustained and concentrated patience of his hourly watchings. Both their prolixity and their enthusiasm are faithfully reflected in his various treatises. Yet the one may be pardoned for the sake of the other, especially when it is remembered that he struck out a substantially new line, and that one of the main lines of future advance. Moreover, his infectious ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... verifies and completes the results of analysis in the wet way, but it gives in many cases direct evidences of the presence or absence of many substances, which would not be otherwise detected, but through a troublesome and tedious process, involving both prolixity and time; for instance, the detection ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... declining day. We bear our shades about us: self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste without a tree. Thanks to Benevolus [A]—he spares me yet These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines, And though himself so polished still reprieves The obsolete prolixity ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... intelligibility, adds much to their force and liveliness. The lovers of proverbial wit, for many of these characters are strings of judicious adages, are therefore greatly obliged to Mr. Bliss for his pleasing republication of so pregnant a volume. The notes are instructive without prolixity: the index is extremely useful, for it is really astonishing[ES] how large a quantity of good matter is scattered up and down the present duodecimo (the advt. calls it octavo), and the appendix ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... general poetical characteristics. The first is simple enough in its complexity. The poem is a long Roman d'Aventure (which it is perhaps as well to say, once for all, is not the same as a "Romance of Chivalry," or a "Romance of Adventure"), redeemed from the aimless prolixity incident to that form by its regular plan, by the intercommunion of the adventures of the several knights (none of whom disappears after having achieved his own quest), and by the constant presence of a not too ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... was a humorous idea, certainly; but when Howells came home and read it in the usual way he declared that, while the opening was killingly funny, when he got into the story itself it seemed to him that he was "made a fellow-sufferer with the Sultan from Scheherazade's prolixity." ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... affirmeth to have sufficiently proved) against the stone and stopping of urine, and many other outward maladies and diseases, (Andernaeus and Gesner adde to these the Apoplexy) all which, for avoyding of prolixity, ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... called upon him, and he fancied that a slight glimpse of remembrance crossed his mind, when, in a moment, he silently passed to his library, and taking down a book, (from mechanical habit) turned over the pages, without reading, or the power of reading. Pardon prolixity, where the heart is so full. Surely the world does not present a more melancholy, or a more humiliating sight, than the prostration of so noble a mind as that of my old and highly-prized friend, Robert Southey. When I first knew him, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... rest of the uncials and, what is of more importance, the whole body of the cursives, exhibit [Greek: hote],—which, as every one must see, is certainly what St. John wrote in this place. Tischendorf's assertion that the prolixity of the expression [Greek: ephonesen ek tou mnemeiou kai egeiren auton ek nekron] is inconsistent with [Greek: hote][101],—may surprise, but will never convince any one who is even moderately acquainted with St. John's ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... country quite new, and full of most interesting objects in this science, and that he had no means of measuring heights, or ascertaining the temperature or pressure of the air; and notwithstanding a want of method, and a heaviness and prolixity in the style, this book possesses great interest, from the scenes of nature and pictures of manners which ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... tragic one throughout, and the prevailing air of sombreness is rarely lightened by any success in the management of minor incidents. The introduction too was marked by (p. 075) one of Cooper's besetting faults, intolerable prolixity. But the main cause of his failure lay in his inability to delineate the Puritan character. It was not knowledge that was wanting, it was sympathy; or perhaps it is better to say that it was his lack of sympathy which prevented his having any genuine knowledge. He tried in all ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... helpless as animals of the male kind generally do when appealed to with such prolixity on feminine details; in reply to it ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Drayton with Holinshed we find him omitting some circumstances which he might have been expected to have retained, and adding others with good judgment and in general with good effect, but which by some fatality usually tend in his hands to excessive prolixity. This is certainly not the case with his dignified and spirited exordium, but in the fourth stanza he begins to copy history, and his muse's wing immediately flags. No more striking example of the superiority of dramatic to narrative poetry in vividness of delineation could ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... and around it; as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden houses and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my life; I am a citizen of somewhere else. My good townspeople will not much regret me, for—though it has been as dear an object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some importance in their ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Reader find them but little worthy of his approval, he will not have reason at the same time to condemn their prolixity: their brevity will, at least in some degree, atone for their ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... laudably intended by the Publication. And as you have in Confidence submitted to my Opinion some of those Variations, I am much pleased that you have so managed the Matter, as to make no Alteration in the Facts; and, at the same time, have avoided the digressive Prolixity too frequently used ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... light of a maniac, an incendiary, or a foreign spy—whether he would not have handed him immediately over to the exterminators of the law, as a being too depraved, too degraded for human sympathy. And yet—for our prolixity warns us to conclude—and yet the festering contagion of this baneful example is now-a-days hidden under the mask of fashion. FASHION! and has it indeed come to this? Is fashion to trample on the best and finest feelings ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... into sentiment; and next, from that dread of what overtaxes their intellectual energies, either by difficulty, or monotony, which gives them an instinctive fondness for lightness of treatment and airiness of expression, thus making them cut short all prolixity and reject all heaviness. When these womanly characteristics were brought into conversational contact with the materials furnished by such minds as those of Richelieu, Corneille, the Great Conde, Balzac, and Bossuet, it is no wonder that the result was something piquant and charming. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... practiced extortions to verify the matter, he was unable to ascertain who the person was, or why he was going, because the matter had been managed by a priest. And although a long relation can be made here of his objectionable acts, we shall, in order to excuse prolixity, touch on ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... rather natural gift of the art of narrative, is the mainstay of the fabric her imagination has reared. That incomparable style of hers is like some magic fairy-ring, that bears the wearer, safe and victorious, through manifold perils—perils these of prolixity, exaggeration, and disdain of careful construction. Both Indiana and Valentine, moreover, contain scenes and passages offensive to English taste, but it is impossible fairly to criticise the fiction ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... instruction and entertainment. We have been deceived in the latter quality, though we must admit that in judicious hands, a volume of untiring interest might be wrought up from the State records. As they are, their dulness and prolixity are past endurance. As the present work proceeds in chronological order, it will doubtless improve in its entertaining character, since no class of literature has been more enriched by the publication of journals, diaries, &c., than historical biography, which will thus ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... and novelty must now be considered by the patient reader, as they affect the catenations of action; and, I hope, the curiosity of the subject will excuse the prolixity of this account of it. When any violent stimulus breaks the passing current or catenation of our ideas, surprise is produced, which is accompanied with pain or pleasure, and consequent volition to examine the object of it, as explained ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... century when it was desired to restore Plain Song to its primitive purity, one met with insurmountable obstacles due to its prodigious prolixity of long series of notes, repeating indefinitely the same musical forms; but in considering this in the light of explanations given by St. Isidore, and in view of the Oriental origin of the Christian religion, ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... a thick tail curling out into preposterous prolixity from beneath his tartans, took his station at the Italian's feet. He turned a wrinkled and abominable little visage to every passer-by, and to the circle of children that soon gathered round, and ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... volumes behind him, which have been printed at various times, the greater number of them after his death. It would be possible to reduce them to a tenth part if we could rid them of all useless and foreign matter, and of a prolixity which I find almost overwhelming; were this only done, his books should be regarded as among the best we have on the subject of natural history in its entirety. The plan of his work is good, his classification ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... fatal carouse, Raphael had stifled every least whim, and had lived so as not to cause the slightest movement in the terrible talisman. The Magic Skin was like a tiger with which he must live without exciting its ferocity. He bore patiently, therefore, with the old schoolmaster's prolixity. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... during the seventeenth century, when the Jansenists, in their inveterate obstinacy, identified him with the defence of their cause? The reputation of sour austerity and of argumentative and tiresome prolixity which attaches to the remembrance of all the writers of Port-Royal, save Pascal—has that affected too the work of Augustin, enlisted in spite of himself in the ranks of these pious schismatics? And yet, if there have ever been any beings who ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... pleasing, abounding in vowels and liquids, destitute of gutturals, and sparing in aspirates and other harsh consonants. At the same time, like the rest of the family, it is clumsy and unwieldy, whilst immense prolixity and frequent repetition must develope the finer shades of meaning. Its peculiarity is a greater resemblance to the Zanzibarian Kisawahili than any tongue known to me on the Western Coast: often a question asked by the guide, as "Njia hapa?" ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... embodied in a small sacramental narrative, which we possess under four forms,[1] very similar to one another. John, preoccupied with the Eucharistic ideas,[2] and who relates the Last Supper with so much prolixity, connecting with it so many circumstances and discourses[3]—and who was the only one of the evangelists whose testimony on this point has the value of an eye-witness—does not mention this narrative. This is a proof that he did not ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... have been possible with the artillery, means of locomotion, and other machinery of destruction and communication now so terribly familiar to the world, can hardly be a question. The preterhuman prolixity of negotiation which appals us in the days when steam and electricity had not yet annihilated time and space, ought also to be obsolete. At a period when the news of a great victory was thirty days on its travels from Gibraltar to Flushing, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Captain Runacles enjoyed so thoroughly as to discover the connection between effects and their causes. When such a chance offered, it was a common experience with him to be drawn into prolixity. But he was pained and surprised, nevertheless, after twenty minutes' discourse (in which he proved Sophia, and Sophia alone, to be responsible for the disasters of the day), to find that she had dropped asleep. He ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
