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More "Nonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nonsense, which he knew to be such, even while imagining it, but whose imaginary flavor was very pleasant to him, all ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... fresh," said Harry. "Never mind; jump up, Phil, and we'll soon take a little of his nonsense ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... friends," said Dillon. "We'll gain by it exactly what you Earth people gained when you traded freely among yourselves, before blocked currencies and quotas and such nonsense strangled trade. We'll gain what you gained when you'd stopped having every city a fort and every village guarded by the castle of its lord. Look, Coburn: we've got people inside the Iron Curtain. We'll keep them there. You won't be able ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... to himself, or treated after any other method of the drug-system. Let the food be plain, and the patient will scarcely ever eat too much. To stimulate his appetite by constantly asking him whether he would not like this or that, is sheer nonsense; and to satisfy his whims, against our ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... had selected some cloth for trousers undeterred by his tailor's timid remonstrance of "Not quite your usual taste, sir." The result was that the Under-Secretary to Government startled official Calcutta by appearing in brilliant claret-coloured raiment. Baker remonstrated: "Claret-colour! Nonsense, my trousers are silver grey," said Yule, and entirely declined to be convinced. "I think I did convince him at last," said Baker with some pride, when long after telling the story to the present writer. "And then he gave them up?" "Oh, no," said Sir William ruefully, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... yet I fancied there was something which seemed not utterly unfamiliar to me in the expression of his face. Vernor! Vernor! I don't believe I ever heard the name before—it's very odd. Of course, what he says about Miss Saville is all nonsense; and yet there was something in her manner, which made me fancy, if I had time and opportunity—pshaw! what absurdity—I shall have enough to do if I am to imagine myself in love with every nice girl who ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... a youngster without theories. The point is, of what follows, how much, if any, was a dream? Where were the partition lines between sleep and waking,—between what we call Certainty, and—the other thing? Or else, by a freak of nature, might a man live so long—Nonsense!—Never mind; ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it's as universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little. But that about putting an idea into a man's head is stuff and nonsense. In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... thanks to the glorious institution of sleep, comes a break in the narrative again. These absurd young people are safely tucked away now, their heads full of glowing nonsense, indeed, but the course of events at any rate is safe from any fresh developments through their activities for the next eight hours or more. They are both sleeping healthily you will perhaps be astonished ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... in your opposition, my good fellow; I will sound the King's real feelings, and humor him accordingly. [Aloud]. The blockhead talks nonsense, and your Majesty, in your own person, furnishes the best proof of it. Observe, Sire, the advantage and pleasure the hunter derives from the chase. Freed from all grosser influences, his frame Loses its sluggish humors, and becomes Buoyant, compact, and fit ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... him, because mothers have to agree with fathers, and not because it was her own idea) that children who coated a carpet on both sides with thick mud, and when they were asked for an explanation could only talk silly nonsense—that meant Jane's truthful statement—were not fit to have a carpet at all, and, indeed, SHOULDN'T have one ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... 'Nonsense, child,' said Miss Mildmay, impatiently. 'I cannot begin things of that kind, as you might understand. You have companionship at school, and when you are at home you must be content with your own society. ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... skimming miraculously over short bright waves. The air, too, seemed to break in waves against her, sweeping by on its current all the slanted lights and moist sharp perfumes of the failing day. She panted to herself: "This is nonsense!" her blood hummed back: "But it's glorious!" and she sped on till she saw that Owen had caught sight of her and was striding ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... usual brilliancy, and also the" &c. "Sartor Resartus is what old Dennis used to call 'a heap of clotted nonsense,' mixed however, here and there, with passages marked by thought and striking poetic vigour. But what does the writer mean by 'Baphometic fire-baptism'? Why cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and write so as to ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... all this trouble and nonsense about," the General asked, looking first at the girl and then at Alf. "'Od zounds, there oughtn't to be any trouble about a chair. Fifty of ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... its being so considered, the author tautologically repeats what he had said immediately before, "the same was in the beginning with God." Upon the supposition that the Logos is strictly identical with God, the verses make utter nonsense. "In the beginning was God, and God was with God, and God was God. God was in the beginning with God." But suppose the Logos to mean an ante mundane but subordinate being, who was a perfect image or likeness of God, and the sense is both clear and satisfactory, and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... "All nonsense!" said Troy, angrily. "There she is with plenty of money, and a house and farm, and horses, and comfort, and here am I living from hand to mouth—a needy adventurer. Besides, it is no use talking now; ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... she understood their meaning,—the meaning in which he must necessarily take them,—and she blushed up to her forehead. Then she laughed as she strove to recall the encouragement she had given him. "You know what I mean, Mr. Moggs. I don't mean any silly nonsense ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... view, scrap-books are the death of love. Many a very sensible man can "whisper soft nonsense in a lady's ear," when all the circumstances of the scene are congenial. We ourselves have frequently descended to make ourselves merely the most agreeable man in the world, till we unfortunately discovered that the blockheads who could not comprehend us when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... eclipse information in the following words:—"I have not cited one half of Ricciolus's list of portentous eclipses, and for the same reason that he declines giving any more of them than what that list contains, namely, that 'tis most disagreeable to dwell any longer on such nonsense, and as much as possible to avoid tiring the reader. The superstition of the ancients may be seen by the few here copied. My author further says that there were treatises written to show against what regions ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... foreign critics grounded their strictures "upon the tales of some miserable reptiles who, after having abused the hospitality and patience of this country, levy a tax from their own by disseminating a vile mass of falsehood and nonsense under the denomination of Travels through the ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... about their relation. Their common life is developed, and they value each other for individual qualities. I have never found an exception to the statement by teachers of mixed schools, that there is less of nonsense, less of false sentimentality and precocious sexual attraction, than where the boys and girls ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... was early upon the ground. He had quite slept off what he would have called the nonsense of last night, and was very keen upon settlements, consols, mortgages, jointures, and all ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... would be thankful and glad to have silk stockings. Nonsense, your legs are warm enough. I don't believe you. Now, Richard, how perfectly ridiculous! There is no left or right to stockings. You have no time to change. Shoes are a different thing. Well, hurry up, then. Because they are made so, I suppose. ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... 'Tell father that's nonsense,' Simon wrote back. 'The worst individuals we have to deal with come from a Boer mother and an English father, deposited here by the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the reviewing stand refrained from any hilarity until they saw the float that four of the ants were pulling behind them. It was in keeping with the rest of the nonsense they were perpetrating. The float boasted eight larger ray guns, three on either side and two in the rear, that fired the same fascinating blue sparks. Behind each gun an ant stood on its head, wildly waving six legs in the breeze, begging to ...
— Martian V.F.W. • G.L. Vandenburg
... little book I wrote for thee Thy friendly eyes will never see. It was not meant for critics' reading, Nor for the world that scans unheeding. For there are lines washed in with tears, As well as nonsense, mocking fears. Alas! thine eyes will never see This little book I ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... this ship proves to be a wreck, as I more than suspect is the case, there will be no more spoiling for you, and I'll see if I cannot make something like a man of you. Now, just turn that saying over in your mind, and don't let me have any more of your nonsense. Now we will go and see what can be done for your ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... "That's nonsense. Everyone in the county knows Cat-Eye Mose. He wouldn't hurt a fly. If he was present at the time of the crime it was to help his master, and the man who killed Colonel Gaylord killed him too. I've known him all my life and I can ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... to her curt and rather unfeeling about the whole thing, insisting, somewhat indelicately, she thought, on the point that Ann be prepared to earn her own living and that there be no more nonsense about her. She hoped he was kinder with Ann than he sounded in his letters ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... in any such newfangled nonsense. It ain't none of a parson's business what the community does. You're hired, ain't you, an' paid to run the church? That's the end of it. We ain't goin' to have any mixin' of religion an' ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... wid a good massa and missy. Dey not work so hard as de white man. Dey have plenty to eat and drink, dey hab deir gardens and deir fowls. When dey are sick dey are taken care ob, when dey are ole they are looked after and hab nothing to do. I have heard people talk a lot of nonsense about de hard life of de plantation slabe. Dat not true, sar, wid a good massa. De slabe hab no care and he bery happy. If all massas were good, and dere were a law dat if a plantation were broken up de slabes ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... "Stuff and nonsense, my dear, remember your dependent position, and the advantages this match holds out to you. You must not think or talk of delay. He will be here to-morrow, and I hope his lover eloquence will soon decide ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... "Cease your nonsense, you blubbering fool! A precious creature you are to take on yourself to marry any man! Are you going to answer me, Anty?" And he walked away from the fire, and came and stood opposite to her as she sat upon the sofa. "Are you ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... heavens!" The man laughed. "I do mean it, every word! When we were having tea just now I did a lot of thinking. I am a man who makes up his mind quickly and sticks to it. Now, look here, I'm going to make you an offer—without sentiment or any nonsense of that sort. I want a wife, and I want a girl who hasn't been spoilt by the tomfoolery of the world. I want a girl I can mould to my own ideas. I'll treat her well and be a good husband to a woman who could fancy me." He paused. "Well, ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... pitifullest thing in life to see this unhappy, unfriended creature staggering, and dancing, and talking he knew not what. Some of the men laughed, but not all; others would grow as black as thunder (thinking, perhaps, of their own childhood or their own children) and bid him stop that nonsense, and think what he was doing. As for me, I felt ashamed to look at him, and the poor child still comes about me ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Irving's production of "Romeo and Juliet" has been attributed to my ambition. What nonsense! Henry Irving now had in view the production of all Shakespeare's actable plays, and naturally "Romeo and Juliet" would come as early as ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... full of meat and mischief as a lion-cub." He turned again. "Knapp," he said solemnly, "this is your officer. He's coming with you to see you off. He carries the King's commission as truly as I do. You'll obey him as you would me, and no nonsense, d'you see?" ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... likely to pursue that unfortunate woman. There could be no mistake about it; he knew it; he knew it by many subtle and infallible signs. Somewhere he had heard or read that no nice man ever knows these things. That was all nonsense; or, if it had any meaning at all, it could only mean that no nice man ever shows that he knows. The fact remained that if he had loved her he ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... burned their wings and feet With the sides of the smoking pot. He laughed, "Oh, nonsense! Now, my dears, ...
— Merry Words for Merry Children • A. Hoatson
... Jack? Nonsense, Miss Anne is far too good and obedient to do such a wild thing, knowing how it would displease ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... the cabman in tones of unfeigned disgust, "you are green ones after all! He'd have charged a bob a piece for the traps, and landed you up to eight bob, and stood no nonsense too about it. Come, settle up, young gentlemen, please. The Templeton boys I'm used to always fork ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... defects which take root only in masterpieces; it is given only to certain geniuses to have certain defects. Shakespeare is blamed for his abuse of metaphysics, of wit, of redundant scenes, of obscenities, for his employment of the mythological nonsense in vogue in his time, for exaggeration, obscurity, bad taste, bombast, asperities of style. The oak, that giant tree which we were comparing to Shakespeare just now, and which has more than one point of resemblance to him, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... it is foolish. Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring down," she said. "But we are cursed. Waldo, born cursed from the time our mothers bring us into the world till the shrouds are put on us. Do not look at me as though I were talking nonsense. Everything has two sides—the outside that is ridiculous, and ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... it all?" he asked, soothingly. "I don't think the silly nonsense of the servants need trouble you. John is a sad fellow, I know; he courts all the pretty colored girls wherever he goes. I shall have to read him a serious lecture on the subject. But it is very kind of you to ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... note slowly in his hand till it was nothing more than a crumpled ball of paper, and raised his arm to fling it away. Then suddenly his lips relaxed in a smile and a light of relief sprang into his eyes. It was all nonsense, of course—just some foolish, woman's whim or fancy, some ridiculous idea she had got into her head which five minutes' talk between them would dispel. He had been a fool to take it seriously. He unclenched ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... education which does not at the same time seek to teach duty—duty to oneself, to the state, to humanity at large—is no real education at all. But in the world in which we live at present, a sense of duty is regarded as nonsense. Labour does not realise its duties, neither does wealth; neither does the Church, except to churchmen; nor Parliament, except to the party which provides its funds. And yet, as I said before, a sense of duty is the very foundation ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... (supposition) 514. sophistry, paralogy[obs3], perversion, casuistry, jesuitry, equivocation, evasion; chicane, chicanery; quiddet[obs3], quiddity; mystification; special pleading; speciousness &c. adj.; nonsense &c. 497; word sense, tongue sense. false reasoning, vicious reasoning, circular reasoning; petitio principii[Lat], ignoratio elenchi[Lat]; post hoc ergo propter hoc[Lat]; non sequitur, ignotum per ignotius[Lat]. misjudgment &c. 481; false teaching &c. 538. sophism, solecism, paralogism[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... fancy that a Line of Nonsense will catch you before you leave Ely: and yet, now I come to think, you will have left Ely, probably, and will be returning in another Fortnight to Cambridge for the Term. Well, I will direct to Cambridge then; and my Note shall await ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... that I am nothing to you. Only embodied selfishness and callousness could say that. You may not be able to give what I do, but you should give all you can. 'Rivers of blood flowing between us' is morbid nonsense. Forgive me that I speak strongly,—I feel strongly. My soul is in my words. I felt towards my cause as you towards yours, and had I not acted as I have, you would be the first to think me a craven. But what has all this to do with the sacred ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... her charms into old age. As was inevitable to such a dominant personality she made enemies, who resented her airs and scoffed at her graces. Lady Granville called her "a tiresome, quarrelsome woman"; the Duke of Wellington, one of her most abject slaves, once exclaimed, "What —— nonsense Lady Jersey talks!" and Granville declared that she had "neither wit, nor imagination, nor humour." But to the last day of her long life she retained the homage and admiration of hundreds, over whom she cast the spell of her ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... judiciously, that the soldiers assembling for Mazarin upon the frontiers would laugh at all the decrees of Parliament unless they were proclaimed to them by good musketeers and pikemen, was run down as if he had talked nonsense, and all the clamour was that it belonged only to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Opus Imperfectum falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom] says: "If there is a reason for swearing, it seems a small thing to swear by God, but a great thing to swear by the Gospels. To those who think thus, it must be said: Nonsense! the Scriptures were made for God's sake, not God for the sake of the Scriptures." Now men of all conditions and at all times are wont to swear by God. Much more, therefore, is it lawful ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... windows to let the light in, and you want curtains to keep it out; we've plastered the walls to make them white, and now you want to paste blue paper over them; we've waxed floors to walk on, and we must pay two dollars a yard for a carpet to save the oak plank! Begone with your nonsense, ye ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... carving-knife. No more fitting author could be found. They would give their pamphlet to the world as her work, edited by an admiring nephew. The printer appreciated the joke no less than the authors of it. He provided splendid paper and magnificent type; and before long the book of nonsense was in the hands of Oxford readers. It sold for the high price of half-a-crown a copy; and, what is hardly credible, the gownsmen received it as a genuine production. "It was indeed a kind of fashion to be seen reading it in public, as a mark of nice discernment, of a delicate ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... would be a needless trouble; as soon as I began to speak to him of solar powder and aerial genii he would start: "Jacques Tournebroche, remember, my boy, that you must never put faith in absurdities, but bring home to your reason all matters except those of our holy religion. Stuff and nonsense all these globes and powders, with all the other follies of the cabala and the ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... "It isn't nonsense!" exclaimed Olga, flushing angrily. "Why do you come to interfere with me? What right have you, Irene? I'm old enough to live as I please. I don't ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... afraid you will begin to talk nonsense, and make him lose the good opinion he seems to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... is unto the foulest pen, Or fairest handled by the sons of men. 'Twill also show what is upon it writ, Be it wisely, or nonsense for want of wit, Each blot and blur it also will expose To thy next readers, be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hand on Madelon's shoulder. "Now you look at here, gal," said he. "I've had about all this darned nonsense I'm a-goin' to stan'. That chap is in jail for murder, an' in jail he's a-goin' to stay till I git orders from somebody besides you to let him out. An' what's more, don't you come here on no sich tom-fool arrant agin. If you do you won't git in. I ain't no objection ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... An angel! Nonsense! Everybody so describes his mistress; and yet I find it impossible to tell you how perfect she is, or why she is so perfect: suffice it to say she ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... initiative must intervene, and men of goodwill must organize internationally for this humane work!" What mockery would not have met the man who would have dared to speak thus! To begin with, he would have been called a Utopian, and if that did not silence him he would have been told: "What nonsense! Your volunteers will be found wanting precisely where they are most needed, your volunteer hospitals will be centralized in a safe place, while everything will be wanting in the ambulances. Utopians ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... for admiration and to be listened to, and accordingly the least interruption puts him out. I firmly believe he would make just the same impression on half his audiences, if he purposely repeated absolute nonsense with the same voice and manner and inexhaustible flow of undulating speech! In general, wit shines only by reflection. You must take your cue from your company—must rise as they rise, and sink as they fall. You must see that your good things, your knowing allusions, are ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... you will permit me to share your bundle of pelts, I believe I can prove to you that it is not such arrant nonsense, after all." ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... then split up into groups, lingering here and there to discuss my statements as they moved toward the door; and M'Allister told me that, as he stood near a group, he heard one man exclaim, "It's all arrant nonsense! five minutes with my 12-1/16-inch reflector would convince any sane man that there are no fine lines to be seen on Mars, because none exist!" This brought a murmur of assent; then some one else said, "Well, I certainly see some of the lines with my 7-1/2-inch, ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... it! Talk, do, chatter some nonsense, else I'll think: And then I'm feeling like a grub that crawls All abroad in a dusty road; and high Above me, and shaking the ground beneath me, come Wheels of a thundering wain, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... I would have termed nonsense a month ago," replied Sykes, "but now—well, I am afraid you are right. And," he said slowly, "I fear that they are equally correct. They have conquered space; they have ships propelled by some unknown power; they have gas weapons, as you ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... whether she would be afraid. But Friday evening the boys were full of it, and Steve said it was nonsense. She crept up into her father's lap and asked him in a tremulous ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... gossiped a night or two"—such is the conclusion of his Christmas letter of 1893, when Page was thirty-eight, with a growing family of his own—"till I've filled the paper—all such little news and less nonsense as most gossip and most letters are made of. But it is for you to read between the lines. That's where the love lies, dear mother. I wish you were here Christmas; we should welcome you as nobody else in the world can be welcomed. But wherever you are and though all the rest have the joy of seeing ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... round turn by tellin' all hands what you'd said. Says I: 'Now look here, you chaps. We've got the navigator we wants, and if this here treasure place is to be found you may all bet your boots he'll find it. But he won't have no socialism, no runnin' the ship by committees, nor no nonsense of that sort; he'll be Mister Skipper, and don't none of you forget it! Now, you was all quite satisfied when Cap'n Stenson commanded the ship: what difference do it make to any of you whether it's Stenson or Mr Blackburn what gives the orders? It don't make a hap'orth of difference to e'er a one ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... friends be afraid of it. A good deal of nonsense is talked (by meat-eaters I mean, of course) about the properties of food, and they would have us believe that they eat a beef-steak mainly because it contains 21.5 per cent. of nitrogen. But we know better. They ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... artillery officer, applied to General Twiggs, from whose command part of the expedition was making up, for leave to take a little box of military books. "No, sir," was the peremptory response; "no room in the train for such nonsense." Hunt retired chop-fallen; but soon after another officer came in, with "General, our mess has a keg of very nice whiskey we don't want to lose; won't you direct the quartermaster to let it go in the wagons?" "Oh ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... shapely, well-shod foot petulantly. "Rubbish!" she exclaimed. "You don't suppose I believe that nonsense, do you?" ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... what nonsense! cried the impatient gentleman, snatching the packet from her hand; there is no such office in the county. Eh! what! it is, I declare, a commission, appointing Richard Jones, Esquire, sheriff of the county. Well, this is kind in Duke, positively. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... himself had begun to perceive, but he did not put it pleasantly. Deucedly clever girl as she was, he said to himself, she saw that it would be more agreeable to have no nonsense talked, and no ruffling of tempers. He had always been able to convey to people that the ruffling of his temper was a thing to be avoided, and perhaps she had already been sharp enough to realise this was a fact to be counted with. She was sharp enough, he said to himself, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... discount in comparison with gold. Though the Bank directors of that day at last fell into errors, yet on the whole they acted with singular judgment and moderation. But when, in 1810, they came to be examined as to their reasons, they gave answers that have become almost classical by their nonsense. Mr. Pearse, the Governor of the Bank, said: 'In considering this subject, with reference to the manner in which bank-notes are issued, resulting from the applications made for discounts to supply the necessary ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... out of logs standing upright. It was only a hut, you see; no laths, nor plaster, nor any such nonsense. Well, Joe knew by what he heard that old man Brown was inside, firing from the door at the Indians; didn't know where the other two were,—killed, may be,—and so Joe gets up on his knees and looks through a crevice of the stockade wall, and sees the chief crawling stealthily around the ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... yourself. Test him a little. If you and I weren't the greatest pals I shouldn't be such an ass as to talk in this strain to you. But I know you won't misunderstand me. I know you know there's absolutely no conventional nonsense about me, just as I know there's absolutely no conventional nonsense about you. I'm perfectly aware that the old can't teach the young, and that oftener than not the young are right and the old wrong. But it's not a question of old and young between you and me. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... of Colonel Thorneycroft in withdrawing raises also the mooted question of when and how the assumption of responsibility in disobeying orders—express or implied, general or particular—is to be justified; a matter on which much unenlightened nonsense has lately been spoken and written in the United States. No general rule, {p.264} indeed, can be laid down, but this much may surely be re-affirmed—that the justification of so serious a step must ever rest, not on the officer's opinion ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... of Arthur Murphy[R] and David Erskine Baker[S]. A tragedy, called Zingis, written by Alexander Dow, was so totally unintelligible that the audience were continually asking each other—What is it about? What is it about?—That such nonsense should be written is not so very marvellous, as that the miserable farrago should have had a run of nine nights, which has been frequently denied to works ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... Protestant women nurses arrived at Alexandria, where they were made unwelcome. Medical directors, surgeons, ward masters objected, bluntly declaring that they wouldn't endure a lot of women interfering and fussing and writing hysterical nonsense to ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... could see that she was, but at the same time completely and eternally outside her husband's spiritual life. That might have been perhaps in the first place by her own desire—she did not want "to be bothered with all that nonsense." But certainly all these years with him had worked upon her: she was not perhaps so sure now that it was all "nonsense." She wanted, it might be, a closer alliance with him, which she could not have because ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the old maid. "Are you going to pour out all your nonsense once more about poetry and the arts, and to crack your fingers and stretch your arms while you spout about the ideal, and beauty, and all your northern madness?—Beauty is not to compare with solid pudding —and what am I!—You have ideas in your ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... far as the rick-yard hedge. You children talk such nonsense. Jack ran away of his own free-will, and out of downright contrariness. He has repented of it only once, I dare say, and that has been ever since he did it, and every time he thought of it. I wish he was home again, with all my heart, for I can ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... right, then," he agreed. "If it's any consolation doing a fool's trick like that, why do it! Now come along, and let's get inside the mill without any more nonsense. Lanisterre, bring that lantern here so that mademoiselle can see the path to the door. This way, if you please, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... a young lady while you are dancing—what we call in this country—a quadrille. What nonsense do you invariably give and receive in return! No, I am a woman-scorner, and don't care to own it. I hate young ladies! Have I not been in love with several, and has any one of them ever treated me decently? I hate married women! Do they not hate me? and, simply because I smoke, try to ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... knowledge of law, such a steady, upright fellow, always at his post. The grating voice, the drawling accent, the bottle-green coat, were nothing to them; far less noticed, in fact, than Wilkins's expensive habits, the money he paid for his wine and horses, and the nonsense of claiming kin with the Welsh Wilkinses, and setting up his brougham to drive about —-shire lanes, and be knocked to pieces over ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... word to use in relation to this here case," said Philo Gubb grimly. "It won't be nonsense for you when you get through with it. What did ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... my opinion now, boys, in regard to settlin' down," said Bounce, who, having filled and lighted his pipe, now found himself in a position to state his views comfortably. "Ye see, settlin' down may, in a gin'ral way, be said to be nonsense. In pint o' fact, there ain't no sich a thing as settlin' down. When a feller sits down, why, in a short bit, he's bound to rise up agin, and when he goes to bed, he means for to get up next mornin'." (Here Bounce paused, drew several whiffs, and rammed down the tobacco in his ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... from him in the direct line." One would think that a child could perceive this to be a satire at the profiteers of the age, who invented ancestors, and so a child would to-day, but in the seventeenth and even the eighteenth century it was not safe to be funny. In particular, nonsense—the divine charm of which we now admit—had not been acclimatized, and was looked upon with grave displeasure. It wrings the heart that when Goldsmith, in a purple coat, pretended to think himself more attractive than the Jessamy Bride, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... written and published. This was a successful literary venture, and he next published a burlesque life of Van Buren, "heir apparent to the Government, and appointed successor of Andrew Jackson," which, in the mixture of truth, error, wit, sense, and nonsense in about equal parts, has certainly the merit even at this day of being entertaining. Crockett's favorite expression was, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead." When Texas commenced its struggle for independence he went there, and was killed while gallantly fighting at San Antonio. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... who had never suffered his country to be ill-used by any but himself. It must indeed have been difficult for any Englishman to see the salaried viceroy of France, at the most important crisis of his fate, sauntering through his haram, yawning and talking nonsense over a despatch, or beslobbering his brother and his courtiers in a fit of maudlin affection, without a respectful and tender remembrance of him before whose genius the young pride of Louis and the veteran craft of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to be between 'two nymphs, each answering other line for line'; but the simple alternation adopted by Spenser makes nonsense of the present poem. The above arrangement seems to distribute the lines best; viz. the first quatrain to Phillis, with interposition of lines 2 and 4 by Amaryllis, the second quatrain to Amaryllis, with interposition of line ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... unfathomable in a periodical affecting an eternal consistency, and giving itself the airs of continuous individuality, and being careful not to talk sense on a given question to-day because its founders talked nonsense upon it fifty years ago. This is quite true. There is a monstrous charlatanry about the old editorial We, but perhaps there are some tolerably obvious openings for charlatanry of a different kind under our own system. The man who writes in his own name may sometimes be tempted ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... "Oh, stop your nonsense, Katherine," said Gladys. "You make me laugh so I can't think of a thing to do. Captain, how are we going to ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... Polly's basket over to the school, at an early hour, Polly preferring to walk, several of the girls having called for her. So they all, with Jasper, who was going as far as the corner with them, set out amidst a chatter of merry nonsense. ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... clumsy childish way, but he peremptorily ordered me to fetch the "Times" and read to him. I began, as usual, one of the leading articles on the politics of the day, and before I had read many sentences my hearer declared that I was reading badly and made the article nonsense. Why had I put in such and such words of my own? he asked. His own precept that I was always to tell the truth under any circumstances had habituated me to be truthful even to him, so I answered boldly that I had not inserted the words attributed to me. Then I read a little ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... he stammered. "I don't understand.— Is our new-found happiness to be wrecked by such nonsense? Effie, think—think the thing over. What do you care what people say? You have your hole, you can creep into it whenever you like, and if you go down far enough, ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... inconspicuous little figure in the smoke-gloomed light of the two oil-lamps. Man after man would snatch her up to his knee, lay by his pipe, twist her silky, yellow curls about his great blunt fingers, and whisper wood-folk tales or baby nonsense into her pink little ear. She would listen solemnly for a minute or two, then wriggle down and move on to another of her admirers. But before long she would be standing by the bench on which sat Red McWha, with one big knee usually hooked high above the other, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... thousand a year for putting flattering notices of the schools, processions, festivals and such nonsense in his various newspapers; and our party secures the political support of the Vatican in Europe,—which just now is very necessary. The Pope must give his Christian benediction not only to our Educational system, but also ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Ottoman Empire, and thought that with ten years of peace it might again become a respectable Power. "All that we hear about the decay of the Turkish Empire and its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure and unadulterated nonsense." Bulwer's ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... with your talk of reform—all that nonsense about social policy. We know perfectly well what it is they want; they want things for themselves. Those Socialists and Labour men are an absolutely selfish set of people. They have no sense of patriotism, like the upper classes; they simply ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Begg, "amuses ev'ry one. An' then our soldier guest could 'ave 'is fun If 'e'd lost both 'is legs. It makes me sick 'Ere! Don't yeh spread that candle-grease too thick Yeh're wastin' it; an' us men 'as to buy Enough for nonsense, be ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis
... "What nonsense! As if that dainty scarf will hide your outlandish dress and mountainous figure!" came insultingly ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... voice that she had never heard before. Could it be possible that she really cared for Allen? But she pushed the thought from her mind resolutely. If such a thing could have been possible, she certainly would have discovered it before this. The mere thought was nonsense of course. And ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... grass—"the adjustment of the individual and the race to external reality." The real aim of evolution is purely external, the adjustment of man to environment; consciousness has value in so far as it promotes this adjustment. Flatly, to me, this is pure nonsense, a putting of the cart before the horse, a vulgar hysteron-proteron, none the less execrable because it is the working principle not of a single man, but of the whole of soctety to-day. Consciousness, I hold, is the supremely valuable thing, and progress, evolution, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... fashion, no nonsense, intrude on your walk, But rational moments of rational talk, Asserting that soiries, with jewels and dress, Make a very small part of life's happiness. Ah! this I believe, most sincerely I do, And sympathize freely, most truly ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... his shoulders impatiently: "Nonsense! When did you grow so chicken-hearted, South? It is I who have to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... school-girl reading), but who is very handsome, brilliant, merry, and audacious; and two others, the handsome and dashing wives of men high in the employment of the Emperor. These ladies spend enormous sums on their toilette, and are perpetually inventing some merry and brilliant nonsense for the amusement of the Empress. Among the persons from the "outside" most in favor just now, in the inner circle of the court, is a very handsome and accomplished American lady, the youthful wife of a millionaire, possessing ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... I—I was telling them. Bag of diamonds. No. Nonsense! All rubbish! Poor man. Going home. 'Nough to pay his passage. All nonsense. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... head of hair! Keep away from the women! And a Maloney! Hasn't he got a license? But, nonsense aside, what do you think of the prospects? It's a species of filibustering out ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... were about as transparent. Some might imagine them deep. They puzzled and nonplussed you, and you slunk away. Now I, while rating them at their worth, was able from previous associations to talk a little congenial nonsense, and pass on. They amused me, too. You know I have a sort of laughing philosophy, and everything and everybody amuses me. The fellows would call these creatures angels, and they would flap their little butterfly wings as if they thought they were. How ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... is all one, nobody looks at the thermometer! "And so the poor ship was left all alone." Such gay times she has had with all these brave young men on board! Such merry winters, such a lightsome summer! So much fun, so much nonsense! So much science and wisdom, and now it is all so still! Is the poor "Resolute" conscious of the change? Does she miss the races on the ice, the scientific lecture every Tuesday, the occasional racket and bustle of the ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... Philip to his father, who held him in awkward fashion, till the nurse came to the rescue and soothed his faint wailing by the usual nonsense words of endearment which then, as now, nurses seem to consider the proper language in ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... once more the "Romance of Immortality," as the sub-title of the English edition calls it. "I have not found it possible," he wrote to Mr. Bridge, who remained his confidant, "to occupy my mind with its usual trash and nonsense during these anxious times; but as the autumn advances, I myself sitting down at my desk and blotting successive sheets of paper as of yore." Concerning this place, The Wayside, he had said in a letter to George ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Merchant's Table? Only a big heap of old stones! What with the storm, and thinking I was going to die, and being afraid about your father, I must have been light-headed. Don't give another thought to that nonsense, Gabriel! I'm better now. We shall all live to laugh at poor grandfather for talking nonsense about crime and bloodshed in his sleep. Ah, poor old man—last night—light-headed—fancies and nonsense of an old ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... was that?"—a sudden thud, as if something had fallen somewhere in the house; then silence, except for the loud beating of my heart, that threatened to suffocate me. "Nonsense," I said to myself, "I am foolishly nervous to-night. It is nothing here, or Bogie would bark;" so I tried again to sleep. Hush! Surely that was a footstep going up or down the stairs! I could not endure the agony of being alone any longer, but would go to my ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... unknown real interconnection, by filling out the missing facts with mind-pictures and by bridging the chasms by empty imaginings. It had many happy thoughts in these transports (of imagination), it anticipated many later discoveries, but it also caused the survival of considerable nonsense up to the present time which could not otherwise have been possible. At present, when the results of the investigation of nature need only be conceived of dialectically, that is in the sense of their mutual interconnection, to arrive at a system of nature sufficient for ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... gentlemen-amateurs, who are almost always political mugwumps, and hardly ever associate with revolutionists. The earlier attempts to translate his numerous pamphlets and essays into English, resulted in ludicrous mixtures of pure nonsense with the absurdest distorsions of his ideas into the ideas of the translators. We now have a translation which is a masterpiece of interpretation and an eminent addition to our literature; but that is not because its author, Mr. Ashton Ellis, knows ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... the way. "Just nonsense stuff for Lily," he said. "Nothing but fooling, only the prayer ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... has to bear the weight of his body and his disproportionately large head, while the mother has a head and body which are proportionally lighter and smaller. The child is tired and stands and cries, and the mother exclaims, "Come on, you naughty little thing! I won't have any nonsense. Do you want me to carry you, lazybones? No, I won't give ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... is nonsense. Why don't you tell me something about her? Is she fat and fifty and rich, or bread-and-buttery and white-skinned and promising, or twenty and just generally fair to look upon, or twenty-five and piquant and knowing, or some ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... is said to be between 'two nymphs, each answering other line for line'; but the simple alternation adopted by Spenser makes nonsense of the present poem. The above arrangement seems to distribute the lines best; viz. the first quatrain to Phillis, with interposition of lines 2 and 4 by Amaryllis, the second quatrain to Amaryllis, with interposition of line 2 only ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... which miracle, as they term it the king of England sent to the pope, to have some cardinals and learned men brought to England, as intending that all the people of England should become Roman catholics. I pray you pardon me for writing of such nonsense, which I do that you may laugh; yet I assure you there are many Spaniards and Portuguese here who firmly believe it. I know not what more to write you at this time: But I hope to come to England in the next shipping that comes here; and I ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... the following sentences, and adapt the interjections to the emotions expressed by the other words: Aha! aha! I am undone. Hey! io! I am tired. Ho! be still. Avaunt! this way. Ah! what nonsense. Heigh-ho! I am delighted. Hist! it is contemptible. Oh! for that sympathetic glow! ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Nonsense. Margaret took them. They are a bulky package and not easily hidden. If they aren't in the room, then ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... talking nonsense. There couldn't be a choice, because I've made my choice. Will you ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... me butting in. Nonsense! What's the use of having a grandson if a fellow doesn't hustle up something for the boy to sharpen his teeth on when he grows up? Here I've been living from day to day, just marking time on the road to eternity and figuring life wasn't worth while because the stock ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... once nor look around, so I went on singing. Nonsense words now, with no coherence or meaning, and all in French that a cowherd would have been ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... that he do think the Parliament will hardly ever meet again; which is a great many men's thoughts and I shall not be sorry for it. Read a ridiculous nonsensical book set out by Will. Pen for the Quakers; but so full of nothing but nonsense, that I was ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... see how, in a Welsh slate-quarry, before a blast, a horn is blown, and at its sound all along the face of the quarry the miners run to their shelters, where they stay until the explosion is over? What do you suppose would become of one of them who stood there after the horn had blown, and said: 'Nonsense! There is nothing coming! I will take my chance where I am!' Very likely a bit of slate would end him before he had finished his speech. At any rate, do not you, dear friend, trifle with the warning that says: 'Flee for refuge to Christ and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... habit of mind of course reiterated the shallow and threadbare nonsense about "virtual," or as it would be called nowadays constructive, representation of the colonies, likening them to Birmingham, Manchester, and other towns which sent no members to Parliament—as if problems in politics followed the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... country! What nonsense is this? How can anybody see a country which is ravaged by brigands and convulsed with civil war? And where is ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... on everything; she seems to have the whole wisdom of the world in her, which was just the important matter I wished to acquire. She said a great deal which was no doubt very clever; yet to me it sounded like nonsense. She said the ant-hill was the loftiest thing in the world, and yet close to the mound stood a tall tree, which no one could deny was loftier, much loftier, but no mention was made of the tree. One evening an ant lost herself on this tree; she had crept up the stem, not nearly to ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... among the people of this country, people of different churches, of many different religious factions, and tell them that they must become atheists before they can become Socialists? That would be nonsense. We must first get these men convinced of the rationality of our economic and political program, and then after we have made Socialists of them and members of the Socialist Party, we can talk to them inside of our ranks, talk ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... worst. They are endless—and sometimes when I cannot sleep I feel like surrendering to my fate—" Here again he broke off sharply. "That's nonsense, of course. I mean, it seems as if a life were too much to pay for a crazy act—I mean a mine. You'll ask why I don't sell it, but it's all I have and, besides, no one has any faith in it but myself. I cannot sell, and I can't live ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... also; were it in my power to relieve your sorrows you would soon recover your spirits; as it is, I sympathize better than you yourself expect. But really, after all (pardon me my dear Sister), I feel a little inclined to laugh at you, for love, in my humble opinion, is utter nonsense, a mere jargon of compliments, romance, and deceit; now, for my part, had I fifty mistresses, I should in the course of a fortnight, forget them all, and, if by any chance I ever recollected one, should laugh at it as a dream, and bless my stars, for delivering ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... independent of the Deity; and the only conclusion to which the inquiry leads us is that the Creator has made a world with as little of evil in it as the nature of things,—that is, as the laws of nature and matter—allowed him; which is nonsense, if those laws were made by him, and leaves the question where it was, or rather solves it by giving up the omnipotence of the Creator, if these laws ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... spend a whole day alone there with him? Was it just proper? Was it really safe? Nonsense! The vile thoughts which Jane had uttered had poisoned her, after all. She hated her self that she could remember them. And yet they filled her heart with dread in spite of every ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... remarks for some time. Jim was the first to speak, an' he seemed a trifle put out. "What do you mean by such nonsense, Happy?" sez he. Then they all looked at him on account of him usin' the tone he had. I turned to Barbie an' sez easily: "I was tellin' Bill down at Frisco about a month ago that I rather doubted if Jim here would take the job; but if so be that he wants it, it's open for him. If not, that ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense. ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... who seemed to have been made rather restless and uneasy by his remarks about ghosts, evidently regarded this talk as something more of the same sort, and said to her granddaughter, "I wish, Laura, you wouldn't let him read such a quantity of fairy tales and heathenish nonsense—'field o' the cloth o' gold, indeed!' Who ever heard ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... corporation, Abe, is that it ain't a copartnership where one partner could get every day a headache from listening to the other partner talking a lot of nonsense, Abe," Morris declared, "which you must got to remember that, beginning the first of May, if you would go to a soda-fountain and say, 'Give me something for a headache,' they would give you a United States Internal Revenue stamp for which you would got to pay two cents ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... o' nonsense,' said Mr. Hackit, sticking one thumb between the buttons of his capacious waistcoat, and retaining a pinch of snuff with the other—for he was but moderately given to 'the cups that cheer but not inebriate', and had ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... were at college then, and your father was managing it, so we could not take the yacht out as expected, and I run down to Hatton to hev a talk with Stephen Hatton. There was a big strike meeting that afternoon, and I went and listened to the men stating 'their grievances.' They talked a lot of nonsense, and I told them so. 'Get all you can rightly,' I said, 'but don't expect Stephen Hatton or any other cotton lord to run factories for fun. They won't do it, and ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... all the Galimatias he ever met with, none comes up to some verses of this poet, which have as much of the ridiculum and the fustian in them, as can well be jumbled together, and are of that sort of nonsense, which so perfectly confounds all ideas, that there is no distinct one left in the mind. Further he says of him, that he hath prophesy'd his own poetry shall be sweeter than Catullus, Ovid and Tibullus; but we have little hope of the accomplishment of it from ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... that, in the examples above, or others to be found in sacred history, those persons did, notwithstanding their own practice in rejecting the authority of wicked rulers, still view it as the duty of the rest of the nation, to acknowledge them? This is pure jargon and nonsense, contrary both to reason and religion. By what law could the opposite practices of those that disowned, and those that still continued to own the authority of unlawful rulers, be justified? It could not by the divine law, which never condemns that as sin in one, which it approves as duty in ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... reverie. The most feasible solution she could come to, was the one adopted by Judith—that Hamish passed his nights at the books. If so, how sadly he must idle away his time in the day! Did he give his hours up to nonsense and pleasure? And how could he contrive to hide his shortcomings from Mr. Channing? Constance was not sure whether the books went regularly under the actual inspection of Mr. Channing, or whether Hamish went over them aloud. If only the latter, could ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Augustan age, retarded the progress of polite literature in this island; and it was then found, that the immeasurable licentiousness, indulged or rather applauded at court, was more destructive to the refined arts, than even the cant, nonsense, and enthusiasm of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... Bird could not control them nor force them to show mercy to their captives. [Footnote: Collins, Butler, etc. Marshall thinks that if the force could have been held together it would have depopulated Kentucky; but this is nonsense, for within a week Clark had gathered a very much larger and more efficient body of troops.] He did not even get his cannon back to Detroit, leaving them at the British store in one of the upper Miami ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... themes could be broached except those of business and the events and politics of the day in their relation to trade. His sister-in-law was absorbed in household and family cares, but Madge's great black eyes responded with quick appreciation to all that he said, and their merry nonsense often provoked a smile upon even the face of Mr. Muir. The good-natured sympathy of the young man therefore passed gradually into a genuine fraternal regard, and he rarely came home of an evening without bringing flowers, bonbons, or some other evidence that he had remembered ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... men and officers have learnt to know and to respect one another upon the battlefield is acknowledged, but those who imagine that herein is contained a solution of social and labour problems are likely to prove grievously disappointed. A great deal of nonsense is being talked about the effects of "discipline" upon the men. Military discipline has its admirers: but men of mature years and civilian traditions who in the present conflict have served in the ranks of His Majesty's Army are not included among their number. They have submitted to ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... music, the orchestra would play what of the part had to be played. At that moment lounged in Monsieur VAN DYCK, just to see how things were going on without him. "I'm a little hoarse to-night," quoth VAN DYCK, pleasantly. "Nonsense!" cries Sir DRURIOLANUS, cheerily, "a 'Van' can never be a little hoarse." Much merriment. "DYCK, my boy," continues Sir D., "you've come in the very nick of time—quite a Devil's Dyke, you are,"—the accomplished vocalist was in ecstasies at his Manager's joke,—"and you shall distinguish ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... us of the first century of medical practice, in the hands of Winthrop and Oliver, is comparatively simple and reasonable. I suspect that the conditions of rude, stern life, in which the colonists found themselves in the wilderness, took the nonsense out of them, as the exigencies of a campaign did out of our physicians and surgeons in the late war. Good food and enough of it, pure air and water, cleanliness, good attendance, an anaesthetic, an opiate, a stimulant, quinine, and two or three common drugs, proved to be the marrow of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... friend says that he had a habit of attributing all his doubtful pictures to Corregoio. "He cannot," Browning continues, "in the least understand that he is at all wrong, or injudicious, or unfortunate in anything.... Whatever he may profess, the thing he really loves is a pretty girl to talk nonsense with." ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... not who, imagined he was making a charming play upon words when he described those beautiful creations, the whole world of which deserved to live, as "the childish nonsense with which those brutes of Bretons amuse themselves." The Bollandists [Footnote: A group of Jesuits who issued a collection of "Lives of the Saints". The first five volumes were edited by John Bolland.] found it incumbent to exclude ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... grievously, before he would have sought to defend himself. Then the king says to his son: "So help me God, now thou must make peace and surrender the Queen. Thou must cease this quarrel once for all and withdraw thy claim." "That is great nonsense you have uttered! I hear you speak foolishly. Stand aside! Let us fight, and do not mix in our affairs!" But the king says he will take a hand, for he knows well that, were the fight to continue, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... "Really, that's nonsense, Sonia! If these assassins meant to set a trap for me, they have a thousand other means of doing so ... besides, it would be remarkably daring of them to advise me to show you these pearls, and draw my attention to the question of their being stolen ones!... No, Sonia, this ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... me downstairs," observed the lady. "But this provoking nonsense of yours, this crying about going a journey, has made you not fit to be seen. If any friend of my lord's saw your red eyes, he would go and say that my own maid was on my lord's side. I ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... greatly excited when the news of Bagot's concessions arrived. Arbuthnot describes his chief's mood as one of anger and indignation. "What a fool the man must have been," he kept exclaiming, "to act as he has done! and what stuff and nonsense he has written! and what a bother he makes about his policy and his measures, when there are no measures but rolling himself and his country in ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... surprise at her action the scholar had recoiled a step: he was fiercely angry. "Come, girl, no nonsense," he said roughly and brutally. "Make way! Or we shall have a little to say to you of what you did in my room last night! Do you mark me?" he continued. "I might have you punished for it, wench! I might have you whipped and branded for it! Do you mind me? You robbed me, and that ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... I am a fairly strong man, and I have the poker handy—besides being invisible. There's not the slightest doubt that I could kill you both and get away quite easily if I wanted to—do you understand? Very well. If I let you go will you promise not to try any nonsense and do what I ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... that I have any foolish superstitions about the matter,—I, the Professor, who have seen enough to take all that nonsense out of any man's head! It is not our beliefs that frighten us half so much as our fancies. A man not only believes, but knows he runs a risk, whenever he steps into a railroad car; but it does n't worry ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Jones, this is sheer nonsense. We get wind at Wakefield and water at Turner's Tank; now, what excuse is there for putting in a siding ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... explanations. The steps came nearer. Out of the darkness a shadowy form approached her. It seemed to her that it was that of a man of superhuman size—one of the giants who, Biddy had told her, lay buried in the long barrows on the edge of the bog. But this was nonsense. She planned what words she would say to him. Abreast of her he stopped, and stared at her white dress. Then suddenly he cried, "Gabrielle!" in a voice that she remembered well. It was Radway's. In a moment she found herself crying, beyond control, in his arms. She clove to him, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you — this? Look around you and be sorry you're not living in an attic, With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent. I say words that ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... freedom of human actions is totally of another class. To say that in our choice we reject the stronger motive, and that we choose a thing merely because we choose it, is sheer nonsense and absurdity; and whoever with a sound understanding will fix his mind upon the state of the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... flower from the bunch and putting it into his coat.] Yes, and how to brew tea as'll curl up anyone's tongue within the mouth for a year—and fancy drinks for sheep with foot rot, and powders against the murrain and any other nonsense that you do please. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... nature. Nevertheless, I suffered this martyrdom with exemplary outward patience, though the spirit flagged, and the thoughts wandered, and the head often grew confused, with sitting and talking trifling nonsense, through a poor interpreter. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... "ass—no. Fact is, dear old fellow, I've a temperament. You aren't going to make me go about in that beastly forest diggin' rifle pits an' pitchin' tents an' all that sort of dam' nonsense; it's ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... wish to say one thing plainly, before I write another line. As for falling into the narrow, self-adulatory, provincial feeling of the American who has never left his mother's apron-string, and which causes him to swallow, open-mouthed, all the nonsense that is uttered to the world in the columns of newspapers, or in the pages of your yearling travellers, who go on "excursions" before they are half instructed in the social usages and the distinctive features of their own country, I hope I shall be just as far removed from such a weakness, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... impatient Griffith; "enough of this nonsense, Captain Manual: we have other matters to discuss now. What course have you determined to ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... should be chary of calling up her young men acquaintances by telephone. If forced to do so, she should make her communication as brief as possible. It is annoying to a young man to be called from his business to answer social or "nonsense" calls—the latter when some idle, ennuied or "smitten" girl takes a notion she would like to chatter to somebody awhile. It exasperates an employer to have his men called from their duties to answer ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... translated for him, in a somewhat milder form, Byron's words, which happened to be fresh in my memory: 'They have been crucifying Othello into an opera; the music good but lugubrious, but, as for the words, all the real scenes with Iago cut out, and the greatest nonsense instead, the handkerchief turned into a billet-doux, and the first singer would not black his face—singing, dresses, and music very good.' The maestro regretted his ignorance of the English language, and said, 'In my day I gave much ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... "Oh, nonsense! After we've travelled all these millions of miles together do you really expect me to believe stuff ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... something deeper than popularity. His judgment of persons was penetrating, but its process was internal; no one felt on good behavior with a man who seemed always to be enjoying himself. Whether he was in a mood for floods of nonsense or applying himself vigorously to a task, his face seldom lost its expression of contained vivacity. Apart from a sound knowledge of his art and its history, his culture was large and loose, dominated by a love of poetry. At thirty-two he had not yet passed ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... hurry! Nonsense, Phil, why do you alarm a body? See how the sun shines. It is going past. Now—down at ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... addition to his sincere approbation of some of its contents, had also the motive of gratitude for standing by its author, as one of the poems was a warm and, I need not add, well-deserved panegyric on himself. We were, however, too far gone in nonsense for even this eulogy, in which we both so heartily agreed, to stop us. The opening line of the poem was, as well as I can recollect, "When Rogers o'er this labour bent;" and Lord Byron undertook to read it aloud;—but ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... intellectual sounding to which he had ever been exposed. He was in fact quite to cherish his vision of it, to play with it in idle hours; only speaking of it to no one and quite aware he couldn't have spoken without appearing to talk nonsense. Was what it had told him or what it had asked him the greater of the mysteries? Was it the most special flare, unequalled, supreme, of the aesthetic torch, lighting that wondrous world for ever, or was it above all the long straight shaft sunk by a personal acuteness that life had seasoned to steel? ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... well as our own, that they would pay in solid pudding instead of empty praise; and adhere, at least in this instance, to the good old system of rewarding their champions with places and pensions, instead of puffing their bad poetry, and endeavouring to cram their nonsense down the throats of all the loyal and ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... farce when the fancy seized him. At the time when a certain kind of nonsense verse was popular, he, with Sir Noel Paton and others, added not a few facetious sonnets to Edward Lear's book, which lay on Madame Novikoff's table. His authorship is betrayed by the introduction of familiar Somersetshire names, Taunton, ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... "You're talking nonsense, Bruce," Jim said emphatically. "Sheer rot. She's just Betty Gordon and in a peck of trouble. It's up to you and me, being countrymen of hers, to see her through instead ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... you anything that is in an English Blue-book, Harry, although those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. When I was in the Diplomatic, things were much better. But I hear they let them in now by examination. What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... sitting down on the piano stool, her hands on the leathern seat, her neatly shod feet stretched out in front of her, just as she had sat on her wedding eve talking nonsense to Willie Connor. "I wasn't mistaken. I was never addicted to silly school-girl fancies. I know my own mind. I cared a lot for ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... perhaps only one truth for which he was quite unprepared: he would have been quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched; hard, bandy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that she made a goddess and an only child of the effete and tearful lady; and even as she waited at table her hands would sometimes itch for ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disco, m., disk. discontento,-a, dissatisfied. disculpar, to palliate, excuse. discurrir, to discuss, converse; think out. discusion, f., discussion. disgusto, m., annoyance, trouble, vexation. disimular, to dissemble, disguise; hide. disparate, m., nonsense. dispensar, to excuse, pardon; spare, get along without. disponer, (see poner), to dispose. distancia, f., distance. distinguido,-a, distinguished. distinguir, to distinguish; —se, to distinguish one's self, be famous. distintamente, distinctly, plainly. distraer, (see ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... as it is of mine, to establish newspapers, write books, and hold public meetings for the promotion of the cause of temperance. The current idea, that modesty should hold women back from such services, is all resolvable into nonsense and wickedness. Female modesty! female delicacy! I would that I might never again hear such phrases. There is but one standard of modesty and delicacy for both men and women; and so long as different standards are tolerated, both sexes will be perverse and corrupt. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... always answered him either by a brief but appropriate remark—showing that it did not interest her—or by a silent look and smile which more palpably than anything else showed Pierre her superiority. She was right in regarding all arguments as nonsense in ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... edification: but, lo! a pun trails accidentally off the journalist's pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the writer at once stops his instructive reasoning; he goes off the main line and careers bounding down some devious side-path of entertaining nonsense. Our home papers are almost uniformly staid; they are written conscientiously, laboriously, commendably. But, after all, the French are right in trying to inject as much entertainment as possible into the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... boys, but we love them, For under their nonsense we know They've hearts that are honest and loving, And souls that are whiter than snow. So out with that bottle of Roederer! Large glasses, boys! Up goes the cork! All charged? To the belles of creation, The glorious girls of ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... not in a hurry." "Yes I am." "You said you would give me an hour and a half." "Yes, but you have done me, and what is the good of keeping me?" "I mean to do it again." "Double journey double pay." "Nonsense,—you so excited me, that I've never had a proper poke yet." "Well that is no fault of mine." She laughed, and turned questioner. "Do you often have the women from Regent Street?" "Yes." "Do you know many?" "Yes, I vary so." "Ah! you are fond of change,—I ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... that's right. Now that you've left off 'speaking your mind,' as you used to call it, you're becoming quite docile and useful. Perhaps, I'll give Ripon another fifty dollars a year. I'm not a hard man, you know, when people understand that I stand no nonsense. But I always have my own way. No one can get over me. You and I understand each other, Mrs. Ripon, eh? Yet, I doubt if you'd have remained so long, if Ripon hadn't married you. He's made a sensible woman of you. Tell ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... the book very much, especially as it was so completely free from my own influence, being evidently founded on a very hazy recollection of a five-year-old perusal of Man and Superman; but a lot of it was fearful nonsense. There was one good thing about the scientific superstition which you came a little too late for. It taught a man to respect facts. You have no conscience in this respect; and your punishment is that you ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... loves to have a hand in all kinds of nonsense," thundered the brewer Santerre, in another group. "She wanted to see whether a pretty girl from the street could play the part of the Queen of France, and at the same time she wanted to avenge herself upon the cardinal because she knew that he once ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... and surprise, those white women found the tables turned, and that their enemy could be as chivalrous to them as German soldiers—their own brothers—had been vile to the wretched people of Belgium. There was no nonsense about the Belgian General; stern and just, but very strict, he brought the German population to heel and kept them there. Cap in hand, the German men came to him, and begged to be allowed to work for the conqueror; ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... but that is tame sport. I go to 'functions' once in a while, and if I dance twice with a pretty girl who has no dot, mother glares at me, and says I've no family pride. Most of the girls talk silly nonsense that wearies a fellow, and the more passe they are the worse they gush. The only thing I really enjoy that is respectable is yachting, and then I have trouble to find good fellows who have time to go with me. Once in a while I get disgusted with myself, and ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... confession. He peered in vain in the direction of his companion. Even his cigarette revealed no sign of him. 'I know, I know,' he went gropingly on; 'I felt it would sound to you like nothing but frantic incredible nonsense. YOU can't see it. YOU can't feel it. YOU can't hear these hooting voices. It's no use at all blinking the fact; I am simply on the verge, if ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... began to lose patience. "Now, look here, Mrs. Lorrigan! You're dealing with the law, you know. We can't have any nonsense." ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... to suspect that it might be one of his chums trying to find his place of concealment, and that something dreadful might have happened in camp that required his immediate presence. This thought, however, he immediately put aside as nonsense. It must be the inmate of the strange cabin who, having stolen the provisions, just as Max had expected he would, was now making a bee line for his retreat with the intention of ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... put up with all this nonsense!" cried Mrs. Dennistoun, with a flush on her cheek. "You are just as bad as they are, Elinor, to suggest such a thing! I have held my own place in society wherever I have been, and I don't choose to be condescended to or laughed at, in fact, by any ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... terrible at all in this, mother. It's only a shame for people to occupy themselves with such nonsense. Grown-up men in gray come in with sabers at their sides, with spurs on their feet, and rummage around, and dig up and search everything. They look under the bed, and climb up to the garret; if there is a cellar ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... BEST PAIR OF SKATES to be had in York City, made for work, and no nonsense about 'em. We Dunderbunk boys give 'em to you, one for all, and hope you'll like 'em and beat the world skating, as you do in all the things ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... regard to the Shays rebellion. While Washington was looking solemnly at this manifestation of weakness and disorder, and was urging strong measures with passionate vehemence, Jefferson was writing from Paris in the flippant vein of the fashionable French theorists, and uttering such ineffable nonsense as the famous sentence about "once in twenty years watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants." There could be no better illustration of what Washington was than this contrast between the man of words and the man of action, between the astute leader ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... undisputed dignity of his station, or the authority of books. This course is easily accounted for. Rather than expose his own ignorance, the teacher quotes the printed ignorance of others, thinking, no doubt, that folly and nonsense will appear better second-handed, than fresh from his own responsibility. Or else on the more common score, that ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... Athol; "but is it customary for princes to allow that subject to sit on their throne? It is nonsense to talk of Wallace having refused a coronation. He laughs at the name; but see you not that he openly affects supreme power; that he rules the nobles of the land like a despot? His word, his nod is sufficient!—Go here! go there!—as if he were ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... conceive what delightful nonsense this barbaric elucidation might suggest, if a carouse, or love, woman or drunkenness were defined in this vein; and he would weave in amusing attacks on earlier, less intrepid speakers, who, as Vilsing put it, reminded one of the bashful forget-me-not, inasmuch as you could ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... reading some of the stories, and they all seem silly. Everybody appears to be in love with somebody else's wife. Then the people are all divided so strictly into two classes, the good and the bad! As for the other man's wife, prairie-life would soon knock that nonsense out of people. There isn't much room for the Triangle in a two-by-four shack. Life's so normal and natural and big out here that a Pierre Loti would be kicked into a sheep-dip before he could use up his first box of face-rouge! You want your own wife, and want her so bad you're satisfied. ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... have not been too precipitate,' he said, in a serious tone. 'You must have known that it was not my way to flatter and talk soft nonsense, or even to speak the admiration that I felt; and that a single word or glance of mine meant more than the honied phrases and fervent protestations of most ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... marriage, "No, no, my clear aunt," said the king; "I honor you more than I do the pope, and I love my sister more than I fear him. I am not a Huguenot, but no more am I an ass. If the pope has too much of his nonsense, I will myself take Margot by the hand and carry her off to be married in open conventicle." Toligny, for his part, was so pleased with the measures that Charles IX. had taken in favor of the Low Countries in their quarrels with Philip II., and so confident himself ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... make it all right," he said, and he handed me the letter to read. It was a strictly business letter. No nonsense about the folks at home. He said that was the kind of business letter his father liked. It ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... midmost of them could not be killed even that way, but had to be buried alive. Only in proportion as I mean more, I shall certainly appear more absurd in my statement; and at last when I get unendurably significant, all practical persons will agree that I was talking mere nonsense from the beginning, and never meant anything ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... sensation which was disturbing and unknown. The magnetic personality of the man was so strong. He bent and whispered something to the Princess, and then as though sharing a secret, he leaned the other way, and whispered to Tamara, too. The words were nothing, only some ordinary nonsense, of which she took no heed. But as he spoke his lips touched her ear. A wild thrill ran through her, she almost trembled, so violent was the emotion the little seemingly accidental caress caused. A feeling she had never realized in the whole of her life ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... yes. That's been runnin' in my head. It's nonsense, anyhow, because Hilton was in the house. I wouldn't believe a word he said, but Sylvia, and Tomlinson, and Brodie, and Harris all tell the same yarn. No; Hilton couldn't have done it. He's ripe for any mischief, is Hilton, but he can't be in this ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... much in stability of character. Frivolity and silly nonsense are not the rule. Our boys and girls who go out to teach, carry a load of responsibility with them. Some of the parishes have been almost entirely transformed by their work. Three of our boys last ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... The nonsense about a magneto-ionic effect he discarded without hesitation. Obviously it was sabotage, possibly by someone with a plan of his own, more probably by someone in the pay of one of the big power ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... best story-teller among his companions; and even the slight training gained from his studies greatly broadened and strengthened the strong reasoning faculty with which he had been gifted by nature. His wit might be mischievous, but it was never malicious, and his nonsense was never intended to wound or to hurt the feelings. It is told of him that he added to his fund of jokes and stories humorous imitations of ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... not," cried Burney. "The rules say that the fellows are not to go up to their rooms between hours, and you have been here long enough to know that. Now then, no nonsense. Here, you, Singh, you've got to come and field while old Slegge practises batting, and Tompkins has got ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... woman, that made her look at me in sich a way a while agone? I could not mistake her eye. She surely knows more than I thought, or she would not fix her eye into mine as she did. Could there be anything in that dhrame about Dalton an' my coffin? Hut! that's nonsense. Many a dhrame I had that went for nothin'. The only thing she could stumble on is the Box, an' I don't think she would be likely to find that out, unless she went to throw down the house; but, anyhow, it's no harm to thry." He immediately mounted the old table, and, stretching up, searched ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... education raised their still familiar outcry about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a scheme, if properly carried out, ought rather to expel nonsense. Above ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... my butler comes out, waits for you at the entrance, and puts you through a cross-examination like a criminal. That has happened to me, a mere postman. He took me for an eavesdropper in disguise, he said, laughing at his nonsense. As for the servants, don't hope to get aught out of them; I think they are mutes, no one in the neighborhood knows the color of their speech; I don't know what wages they can pay them to keep them from talk and drink; the fact is, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... or illustrator, this book is a jewel rarely to be found nowadays. Not a whit inferior to its predecessor In grand extravagance of imagination, and delicious allegorical nonsense."—Quarterly Review. ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... and smiles, on seeing me order the things out for the march, begged I would have patience, and wait till the messenger returned from the king; it would not take more than ten days at the most. Much annoyed at this nonsense, I ordered my tent to be pitched. I refused all Maula's plantains, and gave my men beads to buy grain with; and, finding it necessary to get up some indignation, said I would not stand being chained like a dog; if he would ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... been a national rebellion against ship-money, and a national rebellion against a trumpery duty on tea, but English writers and English public men seem quite unable to explain the national outcry against Wood's patent, except on the theory that a clever writer, pouring forth captivating nonsense, bewitched the Irish Parliament and the Irish people, and sent them out of their ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Persons, without body, form, or face, and, consequently, without difference of sex, are nevertheless Father and Son, and that they produced by their mutual love a third person, whom they called the Holy Ghost, who has, like the other two, no body, no form, and no face. What abominable nonsense! ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... 1778. "I wonder," said Mrs. Thrale, "you bear with my nonsense." "No, madam, you never talk nonsense; you have as much sense and more wit than any woman I know." "Oh," cried Mrs. Thrale, blushing, "it is my turn to go under the table this morning, Miss Burney." "And yet," continued the doctor, with the most comical look, "I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... address women as you started to address me, as if there existed no common ground of serious thought between them. They condescend, they flatter, they indulge in fulsome compliment, they whisper soft nonsense which they would be sincerely ashamed to utter in the presence of their own sex, they act as if they were amusing babies, rather than conversing with intelligent human beings. Their own notion seems to be to shake the rattle-box, and awaken a laugh. I am not ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... the first place space does not extend beyond nature in the sense that time seems to do. Our thoughts do not seem to occupy space in quite the same intimate way in which they occupy time. For example, I have been thinking in a room, and to that extent my thoughts are in space. But it seems nonsense to ask how much volume of the room they occupied, whether it was a cubic foot or a cubic inch; whereas the same thoughts occupy a determinate duration of time, say, from eleven to twelve on a ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... go out and dig a little sassafras root to please him," thought Uncle Wiggily to himself, "and then I'll come back and stay in bed as long as I please. It's all nonsense thinking I have to have fresh root—the ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... not very complimentary to the speaker, signifying that he was talking nonsense. He then ordered some of his attendants to carry the three prisoners to a hut close by, and to place a guard over them until he had determined how ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... skewbald seem with his new friends that he refused to stir from the melee into which an unforeseen chance had plunged him. Laying his muzzle lovingly upon the neck of one of his recently-acquired acquaintances, he seemed to be whispering something in that acquaintance's ear—and whispering pretty nonsense, too, to judge from the way in which that confidant kept shaking ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... having inveigled Joan of Arc into signing this farrago of blasphemous nonsense, her judges, it seems, added fraud to their crime by reading to the prisoner a different recantation from that to which they had forced her to sign her mark. The one she marked contained only six lines, and it did not take longer to read ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... he had been asking Gowrie to stop sending the cattle to that bit of pasture, because the stepping-stones made it a thoroughfare, and that bull had been getting more savage lately, and he could not always persuade people that it was dangerous to pass near him; but Gowrie had said it was nonsense, and so forth. Well, you see, I'm not very fond of old Gowrie, and when I saw how meekly Geordie submitted to him, I felt provoked, and began to speak a little strongly, as we middies sometimes do—swore, in fact. ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... in less than five minutes that it can never answer." "If Mr. Robert Stephenson is not at liberty, I can call again," said his Lordship. "He's certainly occupied on important business just at present," was George's answer; "but I can tell you far better than he can what nonsense the atmospheric system is: Robert's good-natured, you see, and if your Lordship were to get alongside of him you might talk him over; so you have been quite lucky in meeting with me. Now, just look at the question of expense,"—and then he proceeded in his strong Doric ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... such a preposterous name, and that you all have the habit of calling her by it. The other evening that idiot, young Halkett must needs say, 'What a lovely pet name!' I can tell you I took him up pretty short. You really must not have her down so much, if these boys think they may talk nonsense ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... a limitation of the rights of war seems to imply nonsense and contradiction. Grotius himself is lost in an idle distinction between the jus naturae and the jus gentium, between poison and infection. He balances in one scale the passages of Homer (Odyss. A 259, &c.) and Florus, (l. ii. c. 20, No. 7, ult.;) and in the other, the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... heavens and earth and the manner in which they came into existence, are all inventions of men who exercised all their ingenuity over the problem, and inferred that such things must actually be the case. As for the Indian account, it is nonsense fit only to deceive women and children, and I do not think it worthy of reflection. The Chinese theories, on the other hand, are based upon profound philosophical speculations and sound extremely plausible, but what they ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... ridiculous nonsense, I tell you," said Paul angrily, "ridiculous nonsense! And, once for all, I'll put a stop to it. I don't approve of public schools for boys like you, and, what's more, I can't afford it. As for private tutors, that's absurd! So you will just make up your mind ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... passed, it will be best for you and me to try to forget each other. Give my compliments to your sister Julia. By the way, do you know that I always admired her very much? What a sensation she would make in the fashionable world of New Orleans. But pshaw! What nonsense I'm writing." ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... letter, and paused, as if considering what were best for him to do. Meanwhile, Woodcock took Roland side, and addressed him as follows:—"Now, look, Mr. Roland, that you do not let any papestrie nonsense lure either the priest or you from the right quarry. See you, you ever bore yourself as a bit of a gentleman. Read that, and thank God that threw old Abbot Boniface in our way, as two of the Seyton's men were conveying him towards Dundrennan here.—We searched him for intelligence ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... the man to his own heart; and that fine-spun airy theory of friendship, so devoid, as I complained, of any quality of flesh and blood, a mere anodyne to lull his pains. The most temperate of living critics once marked a passage of my own with a cross and the words, "This seems nonsense." It not only seemed; it was so. It was a private bravado of my own, which I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits that I had grown at last wholly to believe it, and had ended by setting it down as a contribution to the theory of life. So with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so. She sulk'd. So did I. If I ask'd her to sing, she look'd ready to cry. I was contrite, submissive. She soften'd. I harden'd. At noon I was banish'd. At eve I was pardon'd. She said I had no heart. I said she had no reason. I swore she talk'd nonsense. She sobb'd I talk'd treason. In short, my dear fellow, 'twas time, as you see, Things should come to a crisis, and finish. 'Twas she By whom to that crisis the matter was brought. She released me. I linger'd. I linger'd, she thought, With too sullen an ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... foulest pen, Or fairest handled by the sons of men. 'Twill also show what is upon it writ, Be it wisely, or nonsense for want of wit, Each blot and blur it also will expose To thy next readers, be they friends ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... all this nonsense mean?" I said, in a voice which frightened them, as I could see by the light of our own mutton candles: "John Fry, you be off to your wife at once, or you shall have what I owe you ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... but a merry jest, and Peter felt at once that the Porter was a friendly sort with no nonsense about him. But later the words came back to Peter ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... proceeded, wondering whether such abominable nonsense was interesting the child, whose gaze had now begun to reach out to sea. In reality Rupert was thrilled, and did not like to disturb the flow of a story so affecting. But the strength of his feelings was too much. He was obliged ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... made mischief between us; he has actually made you believe it would be a sin to marry me. My darling, what nonsense; I know all about your poor mother—many families have this sort of thing; do you think that ever keeps people from marrying? If we had known before, as I told my father, well, perhaps it might have made a difference, but now it is ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... those words I remember a strange, soft, half-scornful look came over Pasiance's face; and once she said, "But that's all nonsense, isn't it...?" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Simmons' wife an' young uns, Andy'd been worth two of him to anybody who was consid'rin' savin' life. But I give the boy a good punch in the ribs to stop his dreamin', fur I was as hungry as Tom was, an' couldn't stand no nonsense ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... only nonsense. Hurry up home from school. I've some shopping to do, and likely won't be home till late." She put sugar on the bread Ditte took to school, and sent ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... head inshore. "Nonsense!" he said. "Your friends are making as much noise as ever. You must have seen old Kerick polishing off a drove. He's ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... the two went off into the splendid fantastic nonsense that the wits loved to talk; that grotesque, exaggerated phrasing made fashionable by Lyly. It was like a kind of impromptu sword-exercise in an assault of arms, where the rhythm and the flash and the graceful turns are of more importance ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... what they could do in reading and recitation in combination with their gymnastics. The chapel was crowded to the doors. A plump little German girl was the star of the evening. She stood perfectly serene, her chubby arms stuck out stiffly from her sides, and in a loud, clear voice she recited this nonsense: ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... him back. "It's all nonsense, Tweddle," he said, "you can't back out of it now! Don't make a fuss about nothing. Ada don't look as if she'd been breaking her ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... fellow,' he said, 'you can't lodge ladies in this barrack. It's all very well for two watchmen, or for you, if you like, to rough it—but for women—nonsense, it ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the young painter, as he inquired about them, made the poet feel genuinely uneasy. He was impressed, above all, by Maurice's simple exclamation, "Ah!" which seemed to him to be enigmatical and mysterious. But nonsense! all this was foolish; his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that is nonsense." But in order that his spoken word might not sound stern to her, he took her in his ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... arrive at the island until next day. The blacks had then all disappeared; and, as the men wanted something to eat, Davy told them to dig up some potatoes, while he went and shot six rabbits. When he returned with his game, the men said they could not find any potatoes. He said, "That's all nonsense," and went himself to the garden; but he could not find one potato. The blackfellows had shipped the whole crop in their canoes, so that there was nothing but rabbit ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... said No. 6 to her mother, "Aunt Judy said something about grown-up people having to learn to be thankful. Surely you and papa never cry for nonsense, and things you ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... snorted, and vowed that she deserved all that she had received for supporting the new-fangled nonsense that was spreading like a new social evil in the heart of all she ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... dazzling and popular traits of his hero, has depicted him as the very personification of romantic chivalry. This certainly was not his character, which might be said to have been formed after a riper period of civilization than the age of chivalry. At least, it had none of the nonsense of that age,—its fanciful vagaries, reckless adventure, and wild romantic gallantry. [19] His characteristics were prudence, coolness, steadiness of purpose, and intimate knowledge of man. He understood, above all, the temper of his own countrymen. He may be said in some degree to have formed ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... talk nonsense. You're twelve years old. You've a lot to learn before you're a grown-up, and most of it must be learned by experience. If you never do anything, you'll never get any experience, and at twenty you'll only know as much as you did at twelve! How ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... more of this unparliamentary and irregular nonsense. What has got into this convention? Don't you understand that no speaker is allowed to break the rules and attack a man under guise of nominating another? Mr. Chairman, I demand that this slanderer be removed from the hall and ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... My engagement? Gracious! Yes. Rumor's hit the mark this time. And the victim? Charley Gray. Know him, don't you? Well, he's prime. Such mustachios! splendid style! Then he's not so horrid fast— Waltzes like a seraph, too; Has some fortune—best and last. Love him? Nonsense. Don't be "soft;" Pretty much as love now goes; He's devoted, and in time I'll get used to him, I 'spose. First love? Humbug. Don't talk stuff! Bella Brown, don't be a fool! Next you'd rave of flames and ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... time, I am desirous of adding a few words as to the history of the two previously published volumes, and more particularly of the first or original "Book of Nonsense," relating to which many absurd reports have crept into circulation, such as that it was the composition of the late Lord Brougham, the late Earl of Derby, etc.; that the rhymes and pictures are by different persons; or that the whole have a symbolical meaning, etc.; ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... course, is nonsense," he said, "but there are people who can wield such influence as this over others, the power of a stronger will over a weaker, I suppose. One hears of it often in India. Probably the boy will recover in a day or two, when he ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... "'You are talking nonsense,' began Hemorrhoid Jack anew. 'Give up your grocery and set up a wholesale business. Manage it according to the European plan, and you shall see how thankful to me you will be in time. Do you believe that I am your enemy? Would I advise you badly? Now, the matter is settled. ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... it was all nonsense, that Nino was meant for a scholar and not for the stage, and I was quite angry with De Pretis for putting such ideas into the boy's head. But it was of no use. You cannot argue with women and singers, and they always get their own way in the end. And whether I liked it or not, Nino began to go ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... I don't like?—please say that; because I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like," said Gwendolen, finding herself in the woman's paradise, where all her nonsense ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... so zealous in observing them and took so much care of them that I was regarded, not altogether wrongly, as a good veterinary surgeon. I am told that the people of thy sect claim an immortal soul for themselves, but refuse one to the animals. That is a piece of nonsense that makes me doubt their judgment. Perhaps I love the flocks and the shepherds a little too much. That would not seem right amongst you. There is a maxim to which I endeavour to conform my actions, "Nothing too much." More even than my feeble health my philosophy teaches me to use things with measure. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... "My precious Ettie, what nonsense—for a violent exercise like bicycling! Where one gets so hot! So unbecomingly hot! You'd be simply stifled, darling." I caught a darted glance which accompanied the words and which made Ettie recoil into the recesses of ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... art the foremost of sovereigns! The Munis praise thee, and besides thee there is none so versed in religious lore'! To him the Rishi Gautama, of great ascetic merit, then indignantly replied saying, 'Atri, do not repeat this nonsense. (It seems) thou art not in thy proper senses. In this world of ours, Mahendra the lord of all created beings (alone) is the foremost of all sovereigns!' Then, O, great prince, Atri said to Gautama, 'As Indra, the lord of all creatures, ruleth over our ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... she meant, though at the time her explanation of Moira seemed just nonsense to me. Though I'll say I could tell myself when Moira lost what she called "her good." She'd be like a lost child; she'd be like a plant without water ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... men will be saved; all mock men will be damned. When a person has the Holy Ghost, then he is a man, and not till then. They who teach women are of the wicked. The communion is all nonsense; so is prayer. Eating a nip of bread and drinking a little wine won't do any good. All who admit members into their church, and suffer them to hold their lands and houses, their sentence is, "Depart, ye wicked, I know you not." All females who lecture their husbands, their sentence is the same. ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... done this expressly, deliberately. But at the moment when head and body were severed, and fell into the trough, I groaned, and apprehended, not with my mind, but with my heart and my whole being, that all the arguments which I had heard anent the death-penalty were arrant nonsense; that, no matter how many people might assemble in order to perpetrate a murder, no matter what they might call themselves, murder is murder, the vilest sin in the world, and that that crime had been committed before my very eyes. By my presence ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... see what an infernal lie has been practised on you, and all the rest of us who had any conscience or heart in us, all this while? There is no purgatory; and it is nonsense to think, that, if there were, money could buy a man out of it. Jesus Christ is the one sole atonement for sin. And by faith in Him shall a man save his soul alive. That is the only way. If I lose my soul, and am gone, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... added fretfully, with a certain impatient forgetfulness of Clarence's presence, and as if following his own thought. "Just as you are becoming of service to me, and justifying your ridiculous position here—and all this d—d nonsense that's gone before—I mean, of course, Clarence," he interrupted himself, catching sight of the boy's whitening cheek and darkening eye, "I mean, you know—this ridiculousness of my keeping you from school at your age, and trying to teach ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... middle ages of this world's history and of the history of Christianity, he would have told you that you must retire from the world altogether in order to become holy. Paul says, "Away with all that nonsense!" We are living in a real world; Christ lived in a real world: Christ did not retire from men. And He says all that you have to do in order to be like Christ is to carry His image with you in your heart. That is all. To be with Him, to let Him stand ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... say, I will describe the company to you. First, there is the old gentleman on my left hand, at the head of the table, who is now leaning the other way to talk to my brother. He is a good- tempered, half-informed person, very unreasonably fond of reasoning, and of reasoning people; people that talk nonsense logically: he is fond of disputation himself, when there are only one or two, but seldom does more than listen in a large company of illumines. He made a great fortune in the city, and has the comfort of a good conscience. ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... deuce with your nonsense!" the attorney replied, his cheek flushing as he lighted his cigar. "If you had listened to the twaddle that I have all day, you would be glad to talk to almost ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... other fish to fry before this time. It's a marvel to me, Bagwax, that they should give way to all this nonsense. If anything could be done, it could be done in half the time,—and if anything could be done, it could be done here. By the time you're back from Sydney, Caldigate's time will be half out. Why don't you let Sir John see your proof? You don't want ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... marriage is very important. If a marriage contract exacts sexual fidelity till death, divorce is nonsense. Yet, in practice, it is obvious cruelty to keep two individuals legally bound together who can no longer live with each other. Thus, the provision and license of divorce are necessities of civil law which are certainly not ideal, but which cannot ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... creatures) during all that time—and without any kind of exercise to stretch and supple your limbs—besides many other inconveniences which I will not pain you by mentioning—how tall should you have been, my dear sister?—answer, four feet nothing: but enough of nonsense.' ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... enough, may be; but if you want to set a fellow up when he's kinder run down, there's nothing like a fishing trip to Labrador, 'specially if he's been bothering himself with studying, and writing, and such like. There's nothing like fish chowders, hard bunks, and sea fog to take that nonsense out of him. Now, this chap," (the Skipper here gave me a thrust in the ribs by way of designation,) "if I could have him down with me beyond sunset for two or three months, would come back as hearty as a Bay ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... tommy-rot about dead people in this world—a lot of damned old-woman nonsense. There's more sympathy wasted over dead and rotten skunks than there is justice done to straight, honest-livin' chaps. I don't b'lieve in this gory sentiment about the dead at the expense of the living. I b'lieve in ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... chary of calling up her young men acquaintances by telephone. If forced to do so, she should make her communication as brief as possible. It is annoying to a young man to be called from his business to answer social or "nonsense" calls—the latter when some idle, ennuied or "smitten" girl takes a notion she would like to chatter to somebody awhile. It exasperates an employer to have his men called from their duties to answer such calls, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... "Come, come! that's nonsense! If M. de Talleyrand should hear you, he would form a very poor idea of your political sagacity. You don't treat this question like a statesman. I must unite in defence of my crown those at home and abroad who are still hostile to ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... myself to you," he said. "What nonsense you talk! You're going back the way you came. You can play ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... after. Hence the cave was called Uaimh Bealach Conglais, or the cave of the road of Cuglas (now Baltinglass, in the County of Wicklow). It is about this cave, nevertheless, that so many of our pretended Irish antiquarians have written so much nonsense in connection with some imaginary pagan worship to which they gravely assure the world, on etymological authority, the spot was devoted. The authority for the legend of Cuglas is the Dinnoean Chus on the place Bealach Conglais (Book of Lecain). ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... Sorr, coming down here though the Saints know you're as welkim as the daylight whin you do come - an' upsettin' Terence's head wid your nonsense about - about fwhat's much betther forgotten. He bein' a civilian now, an' you niver was aught else. Can you not let the Arrmy rest? 'Tis ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... "That was Hartley's nonsense. Hartley put that idea into her head. But since you came, of course she's realized there was ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... left. The note I wrote was what Mr. Frederick Seward carried to Mr. Lincoln in Philadelphia. Mr. Lincoln has stated that it was this note which induced him to change his journey as he did. The stories of disguise are all nonsense; Mr. Lincoln merely took the sleeping-car in ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... who has tried to draw a straight line and failed knows that he fails chiefly in nerve, as he might fail to jump off a cliff. And similarly all great literary art involves the element of risk, and the greatest literary artists have commonly been those who have run the greatest risk of talking nonsense. Almost all great poets rant, from Shakespeare downwards. Mrs. Browning was Elizabethan in her luxuriance and her audacity, and the gigantic scale of her wit. We often feel with her as we feel with Shakespeare, that ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... sure it would not; she said he was so much like a woman in the traits he had borrowed from himself that Salome would be all the truer for being like him; or, at any rate, she would be finer, and more ideal. She said that it was nonsense, the way people regarded women as altogether different from men; she believed they were very much alike; a girl was as much the daughter of her father as of her mother; she alleged herself as proof of the fact that a girl was often ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... think he troubled himself about the matter. In 'the old days' he delighted in chaffing Horace Mayhew, with whom he exchanged 'slang' in French. With the jovial proprietor, William Bradbury, he was always on the best of terms of friendly nonsense, being invariably his left-hand neighbour at 'The Table.' He was a genuine Bohemian of the artistic fraternity (as given in his Trilby) with the true polish of an English gentleman, of the kindest disposition, and of the warmest heart. All who knew him ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... He'd be hanged if he'd take that other whimpering little thing. It wasn't natural. But if I gave him Allegra, he would bring her up as his own child, and see that she was provided for for the rest of her life. Did I have any right to cut her out from all that just for a lot of sentimental nonsense? The family was already broken up; the best I could do for them now was to provide for them individually. "Take all three," ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... please, had discovered a new stage star, for down comes a little reporter to interview me—me, Nancy Olden! Think of that, Mag! I receive him all in my Charity rig, and in Obermuller's office, and he asks me silly questions and I tell him a lot of nonsense, but some truths, too, about the Cruelty. Fancy, he didn't know what the Cruelty was! S. P. C. C., he calls it. And all the time we talked a long-haired German artist he had brought with him was sketching Nance Olden in different poses. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... you to emigrate? Perhaps for you, too, it would be better elsewhere. But, to be sure, you are too large—you did not place yourself here, and who knows if you would not die in some other place. You can only be hewn down, not transplanted. Nonsense! I also had to leave my home. If it were my father, I should be obliged to go with him—he would not need to ask me. And he who asks too much, goes astray. No one can advise me in this matter, not even Marianne. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... child could perceive this to be a satire at the profiteers of the age, who invented ancestors, and so a child would to-day, but in the seventeenth and even the eighteenth century it was not safe to be funny. In particular, nonsense—the divine charm of which we now admit—had not been acclimatized, and was looked upon with grave displeasure. It wrings the heart that when Goldsmith, in a purple coat, pretended to think himself more attractive than the Jessamy Bride, his contemporaries severely censured ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... even get word to him—not a message of love or of repentance or of hope. His brain was in a turmoil of its own. His white lips were muttering delirious nonsense; his soul was fluttering from scene to scene and year to year, like a restless dragon-fly. He was young; he was old; he was married; he was a bachelor; he was at home; he was in his store; he was pondering campaigns of business, slicing pennies ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... time they had reached the lawn, and Mary was able to turn away from the path which led up to the house. As she left them she said in a voice, now low enough, "I cannot prevent him from talking nonsense, Augusta; but you will bear me witness, that I do not willingly hear it." And, so saying, she started off almost in a run towards the distant part of the gardens, in which ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... in the morning instead of sneaking into bed at one: these are his terms:" and these few lines, it may be added, give a graphic picture of Porson. According to Maltby, Porson once remarked that when smoking began to go out of fashion, learning began to go out of fashion also—which shows what nonsense a learned man ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... had heard something of the fabulous tale of the wren sitting upon the eagle's wing, and he had applied it to a linnet. Gibber's familiar style, however, was better than that which Whitehead has assumed. Grand nonsense is insupportable[1180]. Whitehead is but a little man to inscribe verses ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... nations depends upon those brown furrows. But there are the bigger furrows that Mars makes, the long brown trenches of war; the life of nations depends on these too; Dick Cheeser had never pictured these. He had heard talk about a big navy and a lot of Dreadnoughts; silly nonsense he called it. What did one want a big navy for? To keep the Germans out, some people said. But the Germans weren't coming. If they wanted to come, why didn't they come? Anybody could see that they never did come. Some of Dick Cheeser's pals ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... rambles and wanders like a ship without a helm; attempted to tell a story which took up almost all the evening. * * * In one word, Otis will spoil the club. He talks so much, and takes up so much of our time, and fills it with trash, obsceneness, profaneness, nonsense, and distraction, that we have none left for rational amusements or inquiries. * * * I fear, I tremble, I mourn, for the man and for his country; many others mourn over him ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... man she loves because you don't like him? Is that the way girls live now-a-days? She won't run away with him, because she's not one of that sort; but unless you're harder-hearted than I take you to be, she'll make your life a burden to you. And as for betraying you, that's nonsense. You've no right to say it. I'm not going to quarrel with you whatever you may say, but you've no right ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the Holy Alliance, the pet offspring of his pietism, does not deserve the sinister reputation it has since obtained. To the other powers it seemed, at best "verbiage'' and "exalted nonsense,'' at worst an effort of the tsar to establish the hegemony of Russia on the goodwill of the smaller signatory powers. To the Liberals, then and afterwards it was clearly a hypocritical conspiracy against freedom. Yet to Alexander himself it seemed the only means of placing ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... All this is nonsense. The simple truth is: that whether men destroy their corn and cloth by fire or by use, the effect is the same as regards price, but not as regards riches, for it is precisely in the enjoyment of the use, that riches—in other words, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... own—visions that flew out into the future. Aye, he WOULD be a priest. He might be a sinner now, and a wild young scamp; he certainly did curse and swear like a trooper at times, if only to show the other boys that it was all nonsense about the earth opening and swallowing you up. But a priest he would be, all the same. None of your parsons with spectacles and a pot belly: no, but a sort of heavenly messenger with snowy white robes and a face of glory. Perhaps some day he might even come so far that ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... it is, friend," he said calmly, throwing hack at the same time the blanket that concealed his uniform, and—what was more imposing—a brace of large pistols stuck in his belt. "you'd better have no nonsense with me, I promise you, or—" and he tapped with the fore finger of his right hand upon the butt of one of them, with an expression that could ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... mean," she said, smiling. "But it's nonsense. Besides, look at yourself and Amy! She ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... hear you if you don't take care," said Nance, "and I would be ashamed, for one, that he should hear a brave, old, honest, hard-working man like Jonathan Holdaway talk nonsense like a boy." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trials were then abandoned, a Royal Commission reported against the licence system, and Parliamentary representation was given to the goldfields. It came to be universally acknowledged that the talk of "treason" was nonsense, that the outbreak had been provoked by laws which could not be constitutionally changed, and that the moral was to change them, not to expatriate and persecute those who had suffered under them. Lalor reappeared, entered political life, became ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... "Fir-trees? What nonsense! We are not in a wood. Come with me now to see what you have done." When Heidi saw the devastation that she had caused, she was greatly surprised, for she had not noticed it ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... these two contrary meanings were implied, the legend would be nonsense. But it is not so, if you consider well, for it cannot be that in one instant, which is an atom or point, love persists or endures; therefore one must of necessity understand the instant in another signification. And for the sake of getting out of ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... giving of the physic in the morning the man's hand had been scratched; a youth had suffered the dog to lick his sore finger, and the animal had also been observed to lick the sore ear of an infant. He was a remarkably affectionate dog, and was accustomed to this abominable and inexcusable nonsense. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... anchored near the said cape to ascertain if it contained gold. For the people I had taken from the island of San Salvador told me that here they wore very large rings of gold on their arms and legs. I really believed that all they said was nonsense, invented that they might escape. My desire was not to pass any island without taking possession, so that, one having been taken, the same may be said of all. I anchored, and remained until to-day, Tuesday, when I went to the shore with the boats armed, and landed. The ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... little sweet mother, you'll remember occasions that were fitted by each of these—you look at me with those shrewd sweet eyes that always somehow have a laugh in them, and say some little thing that shows you are brushing aside all the ugly froth of nonsense, and are intelligently and with perfect detachment searching for the reason. And having found the reason you understand and forgive; for of course there always is a reason when ordinary people, not born fiends, are disagreeable. I'm ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... Menippus. Nonsense, my good man; if you had looked on Mausolus[119] himself—the Carian so famous for his tomb—I assure you, you would never have stopt laughing; he was a miserable unconsidered unit among the general mass of the dead, flung aside in a dusty hole, with no profit of his sepulcher but its extra weight ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... him. "This is all nonsense, Indaba-zimbi," I said. "Whoever heard of an Englishman building a house in these wilds, and how do you know anything about it? I think that we had better strike ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... "That is nonsense, Carley," he went on. "You'll have to marry. What else can you do? With all due respect to your feelings—that affair with Kilbourne is ended—and you're not the wishy-washy heartbreak ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... me in such a public place as the top of Mount Ida! Impossible! I could never show my face in Olympus again, but I have a private room of my own and"—"What nonsense, my love!" exclaims the sire of gods and men as he catches her in his arms. On this Sleep sends him into a deep slumber, and Juno then sends Sleep to bid Neptune go off to help the Greeks ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... round him flock; E'en sober aged grand-dame quits her seat, Where by the door she twines her lengthen'd threads, Her spindle stops, and lays her distaff by, Then joins with step sedate the curious throng. She praises much the fashions of her youth, And scorns each gaudy nonsense of the day; Yet not ill-pleas'd the glossy ribband views, Uproll'd, and changing hues with ev'ry fold, New measur'd out to deck ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... The Good Natured Man. When Goldsmith resisted this, 'he proposed a sort of arbitration,' and named as his arbitrator Whitehead the laureate. Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 41. It was of Whitehead's poetry that Johnson said 'grand nonsense is insupportable.' Ante, i. 402. The Good Natured Man was brought out by Colman, as well as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
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