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More "Prate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would show how utterly unworthy and false are the vulgar taunts which attribute "treason" to those who, in the late secession of the Southern States, were loyal to the only sovereign entitled to their allegiance, and which still more absurdly prate of the violation of oaths to support "the Government," an oath which nobody ever could have been legally required to take, and which must have been ignorantly confounded with the prescribed oath ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... because vainglory finds no vent in words, creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault so gross and obvious. If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of the squires and gentlemen? Very truly does M. Taine say, "These three syllables, as used across the channel, summarize the history of English society." ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... am Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes And prate of being "happy as a clam!" What though thy shell protects thy fragile head From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed, And bear ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... begin explaining and apologizing, first at the levee and then at the drawing-room; and he reprehended him very sharply at both places. An explanation afterwards took place through Lord Camden, to whom he said that he was angry because de Saumarez would prate at the levee, when he told him that it was not a proper place ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... remainder after the death of a tenant in tail without issue." "Spoke like a true disciple of Geber," cries Ferret. "No, sir," replied Mr. Clarke, "Counsellor Caper is in the conveyancing way—I was clerk to Serjeant Croker." "Ay, now you may set up for yourself," resumed the other; "for you can prate as unintelligibly ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Davy. My wits are nothing to yours. You'll shoot ahead of all your old friends, my boy, some day. But there's one thing you know nothing about—absolutely nothing—and you prate as if you did. Perhaps you must turn Christian before you do. I don't know. At least, so long as you're not a Christian you won't know what we mean by it—what the Bible means by it. It's ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... companions-in-arms in the service of the French king, and I came over from Ireland especially to take a dying message and a token from my father to the Earl. That is all you need know about that; but I would have you leave off your prate of your friend the Earl of Westport, for I understand full well you couldn't distinguish between him and a church door, although 'tis scandalously little you know of church doors. So we will stop there on that ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... brought her to my best ward, instead of merely suggesting it and giving up when she said no. If you had followed your heart, you would have choked the name and amount out of her and paid that devilish debt. You walk away in a case like that, and then have the nerve to come here and prate to me about following your heart. I'll wager my last dollar your heart is sore because you were not allowed to help her; but on the proposition that you followed its promptings I wouldn't stake a penny. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... everywhere; and even the dark days of Dixie proved no exception to the rule. It was not unusual to hear prate of the vast benefits derived from the blockade; of the energy, resource and production, expressed under its cruel constriction! Such optimists—equally at fault as were their pessimistic opponents—pointed proudly to the powder-mills, blast-furnaces, foundries and rolling-mills, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... secret triumph now elate, His grinning Rival 'gan to prate. Oh, fie! my friends; upon my word, You're too severe: he should be heard; For Mind can ne'er to glory reach, Without the usual aid of speech. If thus howe'er, you seal his doom, What hope have I unknown to Rome? But since the truth be your dominion, I beg to hear your just ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... there was a henchman page, A peasant boy, who serv'd his master well; And often would his pranksome prate engage Childe Burun's[40] ear, when his proud heart did swell With sullen thoughts that he disdain'd to tell. Then would he smile on him, and Alwin[41] smiled, When aught that from his young lips archly fell, The gloomy ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... born and began, and there was no resource left to me but to be born and follow, which I did as fast as possible; but that one false move could never be redeemed. I know there are shallow thinkers who love to prate of the supremacy of mind over matter,—who assert that circumstances are plastic as clay in the hands of the man who knows how to mould them. They clench their fists, and inflate their lungs, and quote Napoleon's proud boast,—"Circumstances! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... sentence gave these Sages four, Above the buried Emperor; It was no foolish women's prate That held ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... fare?" Finn cried. "Strong drink, if it be too freely supplied, Or the prate of a fool," ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... You prate of duty and honor, of a patriot's glorious death, Of love of country, heroic deeds—nay, for shame's sake, spare your breath! Pray, what have you done for your country? Whose was the blood that was shed In the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... perhaps, dear my Lord, among other worse crimes, The whole was no more than a lie of The Times. It is monstrous, my Lord! in a civilis'd state That such Newspaper rogues should have license to prate. 90 Indeed printing in general—but for the taxes, Is in theory false and pernicious in praxis! You and I, and your Cousin, and Abb Sieyes, And all the great Statesmen that live in these days, Are agreed that no nation secure is from vi'lence 95 Unless all who must think are maintain'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... their affairs, and to feel quite as though one had known many of them personally for years, and been distinctly the better, too, for that knowledge. Such boys stand at the antipodes alike of the unreal abstractions of an effeminate sentimentalism—the paragons who prate platitudes and die young—and of the morbid specimens of youthful infamy only too frequently paraded by the equally unreal sensationalism of to-day to meet the ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... made warre for Darius agaynste Alexander, he harde one of his souldyours crake and speake many yll wordes agaynst Alexander; wherfore he rapte hym on the pate with a iauelynge, sayenge: I hyred the to fyght agaynste Alexandre, and not to crake and prate. ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... saw the deed, Detesting the vexatious breed, Bespoke him thus: "When coxcombs prate, They kindle wrath, contempt, or hate; Thy teasing tongue, had judgment tied, Thou hadst not like ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... or demon? 290 With new kings rise new altars. But, proceed; You are sent to prate your master's will, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... cackle, gabble, murmur, prattle, blurt, chat, gossip, palaver, tattle, blurt out, chatter, jabber, prate, twaddle. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... fifty years, at the climate, the country, and the people; to drawl out her maudlin regrets for olive groves, and pout for the Bay of Naples; to talk of her loves; exhibit a cameo or a crucifix, (the parting pledge of some inamorato, probably since hanged), prate papistry, and profess liberalism; pronounce the Roman holidays "charming things," and long to see the carnival, and the worship of the Virgin together, imported to relieve the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... exchanged a word, in the silly belief they are raising themselves in the estimation of their auditors. It is an odd conceit, yet it prevails with the would-be fast young men of the present day. To hear some of these mollycoddles prate one who was not acquainted with their weaknesses would imagine these chaps were on intimate terms with players—who, as a rule, are slow to cultivate new acquaintances, attend strictly to their own business, and do not particularly relish that ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... brazen-voiced, grumbling at every thing—then blind, querulous, with white, uncared-for beard. He remembered how one day at dinner, when he had taken a little too much wine, the old man suddenly burst out laughing, and began to prate about his conquests, winking his blind eyes the while, and growing red in the face. He thought of Varvara Pavlovna—and his face contracted involuntarily, like that of a man who feels some sudden pain, and he gave his head an impatient toss. Then his thoughts rested on Liza. "There," ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... could you know all I have endured. To me, earth has been a hell—not the place of flames and torments of which your divines prate, but the true hell—that of the conscience and the soul. I, too, a man whose whole nature was athirst for truth. I sought it first among its professors; there I found that they who, too idle or too weak to demonstrate their creed, took it upon ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... reflection: He wanted to know all of life. This was the under-life, the under-current, of which reformers prate so much and know so little. Why not be greater than they? Why not have been a part of it, and in time to come speak knowingly? He was but a part of this world, as accident had made it. He hoped if the world wagged well to be a protector ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... children.' But the restless women who do these things have generally no homes or children to mind; what is the use of preaching the sacredness of motherhood when you will not allow them to be mothers? To what end prate of the duties of wifehood when you do not ask them to ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... right. Besides, consult the grand thermometer of opinion, the price of the funds: on the 17th Brumaire at 11 francs, on the 20th at 16 and to-day at 21. In such a state of things I may let the Jacobins prate as they like. But let them not ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... herders, unshaved and hairy, Whose old tongues are never weary, Just outside my chamber-door Prate of sheep dips ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... handiwork. Why shouldn't you look at it? You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would believe you. If they did believe you, they would like me all the better for it. I know the age better than you do, though you will prate about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... deserves what he will get. For once I shall not be sorry to see a lad get on, who has been brought up in the school of adversity. But, pshaw! he will be like all the rest. Prosperity will turn his brain. Already he begins to prate of his ancestors. . . . Poor humanity he almost made me laugh. . . . But it is mother Gerdy who surprises me most. A woman to whom I would have given absolution without waiting to hear her confess. When I ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... love stale instead of fresh, withered better than blooming, excellence in the abstract rather than the palpable. With their idle prate of feminine intellect, and a grotto nymph, and a mother of Gracchi! Why, he must think me dazed with admiration of him to talk to me! One listens, you know. And he is one of the men who cast a kind of physical spell on you while he has you by the ear, until you begin to think of it by talking ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... men who prate about Bibliolatry, and labor to lower men's estimate of the Bible. They may spare their breath. The people who idolize the Bible too much are creatures of their own imagination only, and not living men and women. People may love the Bible unwisely, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... somewhat nearer. "If you had taken a journey through Siberia before you offered your services to the czar, you would have strangled yourself, or have cut out your tongue, rather than have gone to him with any such dastardly proposition as you confess yourself to have fathered. You prate of stultifying yourself by taking the oath of nihilism, and repudiating your word to Alexander. YOU! YOU! A PROFESSIONAL SPY!" She threw back her head and laughed aloud, not with glee, but with utter derision of spirit, and I shrank from the sound of ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... and a little new family; just two of them, and just six months since they were made into a family, and set up housekeeping. As a matter of course everything in the house was new also. One may prate of antiquities, and the associations clinging about them that render them beautiful, but after all, every couple will always look back with delight to the time all their surroundings were fresh and pretty, yes, even ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... to Doctor Keltridge over a cigar, one day; "we are bound by all our articles of indenture, we preachers, to prate about the hand of the Lord and special Providences, when all the time we know the trouble came out of somebody's running up against simple, scientific law. It's theology, not science, we poor beggars are set up to preach, even in funeral sermons of men like ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... seems talk of "time's compensation"! Who now may prate, "Evil is good misunderstood"? Surely such cogent blending requires some powerfully ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... that he had done well by Maestro Diego. Plainly the quick wit of the lad betokened good blood, let him prate ever so surely on his ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Deny him oft; feign now thy head doth ache: And Isis now will show what 'scuse to make. Receive him soon, lest patient use he gain, Or lest his love oft beaten back should wane. To beggars shut, to bringers ope thy gate; Let him within hear barred-out lovers prate. And, as first wronged, the wronged sometimes banish; Thy fault with his fault so repulsed will vanish. 80 But never give a spacious time to ire; Anger delayed doth oft to hate retire. And let thine eyes constrained ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... "But when they prate of you and me, As the two gifts they want, Say Classic lore and Cookery Are things for which they pant; Believe me, my dear Heptarchy, They ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... joyously. "Could one be anything else, in such a country? And then—you don't know Manley, you see. It's horribly bad form, and undignified and all that, to prate of one's private affairs, but I just can't help bubbling over. I'm not looking for heaven, and I expect to have plenty of bumpy places in the trail—trail is anything that you travel over, out here; Manley has coached me faithfully—but I'm going to be happy. My mind is quite made up. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... confronting him with an anger before which he recoiled, appalled. "Do you dare to stand there and prate of honour—you? Do you forget why he stood his trial? Do you forget why he is dying, and can you not see the vile thing that you are doing in arguing flight, that you talk of honour thus, and deny his claim to ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... replied Blueskin. "Take my life, if you're so disposed. You're welcome to it. And let's see if either of these women, who prate of their love for you, will ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... join'd to such a son of prate, His queries I anticipate, And thus my lee-way fetch up— "Sir, all my relatives, I vow, Are perfectly in health—and now I'd thank you for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... You may prate of the fervour of Phoebus Of days that are calm and serene, When a tint as of teak is imposed on the cheek That is commonly pallid (when clean); But we have a taste that's aesthetic; Mere sunshine seems vulgar ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... this I have guessed, and this I have heard men say, And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway." —"Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! Ye have hampered Heaven's Gate; There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate! O none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within; Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for doom has yet to run, And. . .the faith that ye share with Berkeley Square uphold ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... command, moreover,' said Diabolus, 'that there be spies continually walking up and down the town of Mansoul, and let them have power to suppress and destroy any that they shall perceive to be plotting against us, or that shall prate of what by Shaddai ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... knows best," the lawyer said "On your commands I wait." "Be silent, Sir," says Brentford, "A plague upon your prate! Come take your pen and paper, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Meantime we prate comfortable blasphemies, scientific or other; natural selection or the inscrutable decrees of God. Whereas this was manifestly a Hobson's selection, most unnatural and forced, to choose want of all that makes life sweet and dear; to choose gaunt babes, with ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... slaves. We declare that to be President of the United States is the most honorable office a man can hold, and our elected candidates (except when they have the splendid self-abnegating courage of a Cleveland!) wade to Washington through a perfect bog of venal promises. We prate of our democratic institutions, and forget that free trade is one of the first proofs of a free people, and that protected industries are the feudalism of manufacture. We sneer at the corruption of a Jeffreys or a Marlborough in the past, and concede ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... can judge, to be that the anti-foreign feeling, which is undoubtedly intense especially in the south of the Empire, may come to a head any day and prematurely explode. The nincompoops and quidnuncs and newspaper men ravenous for copy who prate about a "yellow peril" may, in this latter fact, find some slight excuse for their blatant lucubrations. There is no real "yellow peril." Poor old China, which has been so long slumbering, is just rousing ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... that now if our young men go abroad, it is no longer for clothes, nor to seek new laws in wretched printing shops, nor to study eloquence in the cafes of Paris. For now Napoleon, a clever man and a swift, gives us no time to prate or to search for new fashions. Now there is the thunder of arms, and the hearts of us old men exult that the renown of the Poles is spreading so widely throughout the world; glory is ours already, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... "Now cease thy prate," quoth Little John, "Thou japest but in vain; An he have not a groat within his pouch, We may find ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... to the Fools! Flouting the sages Through history's pages And driving the dreary old seers into rages— The humbugging Magis Who prate that the wages Of Folly are Death—toast the Fools of all ages! They have ridden like froth down the whirlpools of time, They have jingled their caps in the councils of state, They have snared half the wisdom of life ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... godfather, and Mrs. Holder (her husband, a good man, I know well) and a pretty lady that waits, it seems, on my Lady Bath at Whitehall, her name Mrs. Noble, were godmothers. After the christening comes in the wine {400} and sweetmeats, and then to prate and tattle, and then very good company they were, and I among them. Here was Mrs. Burroughs and Mrs. Bales (the young widow whom I led home); and having staid till the moon was up, I took my pretty gossip to Whitehall with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... You used to prate of plates and prints And "quick developers" before, In spite of not unfrequent hints That these in time become a bore; But then this photographic craze Seemed little but a foolish fad, While now its very latest phase Appears ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... speaking of a conversation with Arbuthnot, a Boston physician, says: "He began to prate upon the presumption of philosophy in erecting iron rods to draw the lightning from the clouds. He railed and foamed against the points and the presumption that erected them. He talked of presuming upon God, as Peter ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... it. If not—why prate about it? It's on my own feet I must stand and not on my father's. If I am of any use you will find it out fast enough, father or no father; if I'm not 'twere best you found ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... there the Patriarchs yet hovered protectively over their people. Perhaps the Milovka study-house boasted even Cabbalists starving themselves into celestial visions and graduating for the Divine kiss. How infinitely restful after the Milovka market-place! No more, for that day at least, would he prate of Self-Defence and ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... now, it was to a dear, stupid lot of old marketwomen and overworked men and mischievous children. Oratory is a collaboration—let him wax eloquent about the precession of the equinoxes, and prate of Plato and Pythagoras if he wished—no one could understand him! Rome is wise—the crystallized experience of centuries is hers. Responsibility tames a man—marriage, political office, churchly ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... to read, and to reflect upon what she read, and to apply it to the purpose for which it is valuable, viz. in enlarging her mind and cultivating her taste; but she had never been accustomed to prate, or quote, or sit down for the express purpose of displaying her acquirements; and she began to tremble at hearing authors' names "familiar in their mouths as household words;" but Grizzy, strong in ignorance, was no wise daunted. True, she heard what she could not comprehend, but she thought she ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... infidelity prate of the horrors of slavery and defend a Godless theory of the State, I remember that those who had it in its purity did not regard the slave as a man. When I read the story of slavery and hear an exponent of ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... insight and the power with which the significance and worth of the great facts of nature are interpreted and stated. "Complement of human kind, having us at vantage still, our sumptuous indigence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! We fool and prate; thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense the constant mountain doth dispense; shedding on all its snows and leaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, oh, watchman tall, our towns and races grow and fall, and imagest the stable good for which we all our lifetime ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... let you go! But tempt me not! Tempt me not!" he repeated, turning from her and turning back again with a gesture of despair, as if he mistrusted the strength of the restraint which he put upon himself. "I am no more than other men! Perhaps I am less. And you—you who prate of love, and know not what love is—could ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... prate o' right and wrang, While knaves laugh in their sleeve; But wha blaws best the horn shall win, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to preach—I hate to prate - - I'm no fanatic croaker, But learn contentment from the fate Of this East India broker. He'd everything a man of taste Could ever want, except a waist; And discontent His size anent, And bootless perseverance blind, Completely wrecked the ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... me. When I kneeled down to pray, the strangest alarms took hold of my mind. He to whom I had been accustomed to prate with flippant volubility in a set form of heartless words, seemed to my startled mind so exceedingly terrible in unapproachable majesty, and so very angry with me in particular, that I became paralyzed with fear. I strove against this with characteristic pertinacity; ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... of the living child, as of the dead one. Out upon the honour which is harmed by gossip! What slanderous tongues say of me as a disgrace I deem the highest honour; but if you are of a different opinion, and held it when you wooed me, you would be wiser to prate less loudly of the proud word 'honour,' ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... impudence and cant!" said Julian, starting from his seat, aroused by his hypocritical prate into unwonted intolerance; and he suddenly observed, by the cowering attitude which Hazlet assumed, that the worthy youth was afraid of receiving at his head the water-bottle, on which Julian's hand was resting. Julian thought it best to avoid the temptation, and hoping Hazlet would take ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... prating what the gurus prate, But to love, as God hath loved them, all things, be they small or great; And true bliss is when a sane mind doth a healthy body fill; And true knowledge is the knowing what is ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... tried to comfort her; "ay, words are easy. Wait till you see your own child's blood. Wait till you stand by and see his young limbs hewn away, and the groans come thicker and thicker that you cannot soothe; and then let them prate to you of the good cause." Bitter words! God knows what is in store for us;—all day this strange ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... adopted is not only rigorously in accordance with the canons of scientific logic, but that it is the only adequate method. Critics exclusively trained in classics or in mathematics, who have never determined a scientific fact in their lives by induction from experiment or observation, prate learnedly about Mr. Darwin's method, which is not inductive enough, not Baconian enough, forsooth, for them. But even if practical acquaintance with the process of scientific investigation is denied them, they may learn, by ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... man. "Silence your senseless prate! They will neither eat nor drink here. Tell the coachman that there are excellent accommodations at the Hurdlestone Arms for himself and his horses. But first see to your mistress—she is in a swoon. Carry her into the next room. And, mark me, Ruth—lock the door, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... a good long talk with Alessandro. "He was fond enough of me last year, I know," she said to herself, recalling some of the dances and the good-night leave-takings at that time. "It's because he is so put upon by everybody now. What with Juan Can in one bed sending for him to prate to him about the sheep, and Senor Felipe in another sending for him to fiddle him to sleep, and all the care of the sheep, it's a wonder he's not out of his mind altogether. But I'll find a chance, or make one, before this day's sun sets. If I can ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... sit there; who or what, then, is to follow? "Free Parliament," right of election, constitutional formulas of one sort or the other—the thing is a hungry fact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured by it! And who are you that prate of constitutional formulas, rights of Parliament? You have had to kill your king, to make pride's purges, to expel and banish by the law of the stronger whosoever would not let your cause prosper: there are but fifty or threescore of you left there, debating in these days. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... shall thou, Claribel, Measure us back[407-62] to Naples? Keep in Tunis, And let Sebastian wake! Say, this were death That now hath seized them; why, they were no worse Than now they are. There be[407-63] that can rule Naples As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate As amply and unnecessarily As this Gonzalo: I myself could make A chough[407-64] of as deep chat.[407-65] O, that you bore The mind that I do! what a sleep were this For your advancement! Do ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Americans to stand on inviolate shores and prate of the wickedness of wrath. Moreover, this evil is not to be exorcised by a pious wish for it not to be. It is. And there is every excuse under the arch of heaven ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... undoubtedly have been, by the law of Scotland, punished with imprisonment till he should retract his errors and do penance before the congregation of his parish; and every man of sense and humanity would have thought this a sufficient punishment for the prate of a forward boy. But Stewart, as cruel as he was base, called for blood. There was among the Scottish statutes one which made it a capital crime to revile or curse the Supreme Being or any person of the Trinity. Nothing that Aikenhead ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a great sinking at his heart. They prate who say it is success that tries a man. He flung himself ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... proud an the wealthy may prate, An booast o' ther riches and land, Some o'th' laadest 'ul sink second-rate To that lad with his little ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... whole church, that understands somewhat besides English: shall I not think that he understands that better? Must I (out of courtship to his Worship and Understanding; and because, perhaps, I am to dine with him) prate abundance of such stuff, which, I must needs know, nobody understands, or that will be the better for it but himself, and ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... consolidated my position that I have now made open capture of the main roving factor. The latter is you, young man. A very disturbing influence and so very necessary to the conduct of this private war. You prate of my attitude, Mr. Cornell. You claim that such an attitude must be defeated. Yet as you stand there mouthing platitudes, we are preparing to make a frontal assault upon their main base at Homestead. We've waged our war of attrition; a mere spearhead will break them and scatter ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... somebody's else picture published for her that time; but later she had her very own published by the thousand until the little commoner, born in the most neglected corner of oblivion, grew impudent enough to weary of her fame and prate of the comforts ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... would have been hue and cry—the officers of government would not have rested till they had found and punished the culprit. I am robbed of all; and, because I am poor and unfriended—circumstances which make the loss irremediable—the law puts forth no hand to help me. Men will prate about the expense—the burden on the national revenue—as if justice to all were not the very first object of government—as if—but truce to this. My good friend, you see these fragments of snuff that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... thou prate endlessly?[755] Those high-prancing mares run over the vast plain afar. Neither art thou so much the youngest amongst the Greeks, nor do thine eyes see most sharply from thy head: but thou art always prating with words. Nor ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... of the nobler attributes of man, and whose mission seems but destruction to his race, and deadly enmity to his country. The Times, who in these days of victory and triumph of Union arms, would "steal the livery of heaven to serve the devil in," and prate of its devotion to the Union, furnishes us some information it were well for good citizens to know, and which we will presume is (unlike most statements ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... Rome this brawling fencer die, When Spectacus by Crassus was subdued. Why so? but, sir, I hope you will apply, And say like Spectacus that I shall die. Thus peevish eld, discoursing by a fire, Amidst their cups will prate how men aspire. Is this the greeting, Romans, that you give Unto the patron of your monarchy? Lucretius, shall ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... shouted Judge Harlin. "A nice lot to prate about law and order, and ready to do murder yourselves! That is what you are preparing to do! Murder! As cold-blooded a murder as ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... can't chuse but laugh to hear the Fools prate about Preheminence: They would all fain be Masters, and yet they know they are but all my Servants; they make their Boast, of this and that, and talk of their great gains: and forget that I rule the Roast, ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... me too wrought the same Alcimedon A pair of cups, and round the handles wreathed Pliant acanthus, Orpheus in the midst, The forests following in his wake; nor yet Have I set lip to them, but lay them by. Matched with a heifer, who would prate of cups? ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... a different thing indeed! Justice wears a sword, because she is of gentle birth. Work-people with axes must not prate of rights, or a prison will be their next one. Your right is to be disdained, young man, because you were not born a gentleman; and your duty is to receive scorn with your hat off. You like it, probably, because your father did. But come in, Daniel; I will not deny you of the only right an English ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... "What heart can bear Such slanders false, devised by hate and spite? Or with stayed patience, reproaches hear, And not revenge by battle or by fight? The Norway Prince hath bought his folly dear, But who with words could stay the angry knight? A fool is he that comes to preach or prate When men with swords their ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... thou art a pretty fellow to prate about sallying forth at midnight to do good to thy fellow creatures!—Here we find thee, within an hour after thy departure from thy home, on an 'errand of mercy,' embraced in the soft arms of a pretty ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... assumed, its program and tactics, spell disaster to our movement. I am opposed to it, not because it is too radical, but because it is essentially reactionary and non-Socialistic; not because it would lead us too far, but because it would lead us nowhere. To prate about the dictatorship of the proletariat and of workers' Soviets in the United States at this time is to deflect the Socialist propaganda from its realistic basis, and to advocate the abolition of all social reform planks in the party platform means to abandon the concrete class struggle as it ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... a business man. I am a methodical man. Method is the thing, after all. But there are no people I more heartily despise than your eccentric fools who prate about method without understanding it; attending strictly to its letter, and violating its spirit. These fellows are always doing the most out-of-the-way things in what they call an orderly manner. Now here, I ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... My feeling had too, too much gall in it To let truth shape like that!—I also said That when my arms were round him I forgot That I was not his mother. So spoke I, But oh me,—I remembered it too well!— He was a lovely child; in his fond prate His father's voice was eloquent. One might say I am well punished for my ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Atlantic Comes scornful menace? it is naught to thee— 'Tis but the jealous raving, wild and frantic, Of those who would, but never can, be free;— Who, slaves to selfish passions bold ambition, Hold up their shackled arms in heaven's broad light, And prate of freedom, boast their high position, And strive to turn to ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... secret, says a beau, And sneers at some ill-natured wit below; But faith, if we should tell but half we know, There's many a spruce young fellow in this place, Wou'd never presume to show his face; Women are not so weak, what e'er men prate; How many tip-top beaux have had the fate, T'enjoy from mama's secrets their estate! Who, if her early folly had made known, Had rid behind the coach that's now ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Jews prate that Japheth stands for the neighboring nations around Jerusalem which were admitted to the temple and its worship. But Noah makes little ado about the temple of Jerusalem, or the tabernacle of Moses; ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... which his own feet dislodged as he feverishly climbed the rocks. Above him, on the other side of the road, towered the hill where he had sat and dreamed as a boy, where Rochester had come and encouraged him to prate of his ambitions. ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and quake gradually until at length the whole bench shook. Then rising up she began to pray, shrieking so that she could be heard as far as the river. This done, she was quickly in the dish, and her mouth began immediately to prate worldly and common talk in which she was not the least ready. When the meal was finished, Ephraim obtained a horse for himself and his wife, and we followed him on foot, carrying our travelling bags. Our host took us to the path, and Ephraim's servant ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... What is Antiochus, that he should prate Of peace to me, who am a fugitive? To-day he shall be lifted up; to-morrow Shall not be found, because he is returned Unto his dust; his thought has come to nothing. There is no peace between us, nor can be, Until this banner floats upon the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... from the skins of beasts and had to be sewn with backbone sinews. Because you despise fine clothes, and because you have seen me only decked out as fan-girl, you think I am useless. Bah, Deucalion! Never let people prate to me about your perfection. You know less about a woman than a boy new ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... pretty babes, Rejoicing at that tide, Rejoicing with a merry mind, They should on cock-horse ride. They prate and prattle pleasantly, As they rode on the way, To those that should their butchers be, And work their ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... desertion turns this people from us, they will become the prey of our recent enemies, and if that happens we can prate about the Treaty of Paris as much as we like. The Teuton will have more than balanced ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... top-knot.—Now, you sir, pour me in some more water; if my head begins to ache, I shall be sending for your master to talk to you.—You know, gentlemen, what megrims I get, and what a numskull mine is. After drinking, we will chirp a little as is our wont; 'tis not amiss to prate in one's cups' ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... trying to knock down a mountain or wipe out a continent. If this man sprained his ankle, a million miles of telegraph would carry the news over mountains —valleys—uninhabited deserts—under the trackless sea—and ten thousand newspapers would prate of it; if he were grievously ill, all the nations would know it before the sun rose again; if he dropped lifeless where he stood, his fall might shake the thrones of half a world! If I could have stolen his coat, I would have done it. When I meet a man ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a fresh miss, by fancy, face, and gown, Render'd the topping beauty of the town, Draws every rhyming, prating, dressing sot, To boast of favours that he never got; Of which, whoe'er lacks confidence to prate, Brings his good parts and breeding in debate; And not the meanest coxcomb you can find, But thanks his stars, that Phillis has been kind; Thus prostitute my Congreve's name is grown To every lewd pretender of the town. Troth, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... do you prate to me?' said Redgauntlet, bending his brows. 'I, sir, transact my own business; you, I am told, act by ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... capital wherein was Alaeddin, he alighted at one of the Khans; and, when he had rested from the weariness of wayfare, he donned his dress and went down to wander about the streets, where he never passed a group without hearing them prate about the pavilion and its grandeur and vaunt the beauty of Alaeddin and his lonesomeness, his liberality and generosity, his fine manners and his good morals. Presently he entered an establishment wherein ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... who had committed many barbarous murders, and being at last upon the point of discovery fell of his own hand. And the nightmare at the crossroads was the regular punishment, according to the laws of England, for an act which the Romans honoured as a virtue! Whenever an Englishman begins to prate of civilisation (as, indeed, it's a defect they are rather prone to), I hear the measured blows of a mallet, see the bystanders crowd with torches about the grave, smile a little to myself in conscious superiority—and take a thimbleful of brandy ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... modern disciples are a mere crowd of very slimly educated people who have no natural taste or impulses; who do not really know the best things in literature; who have a feverish desire to admire the newest thing, to follow the latest artistic fashion; who prate about "style," without the faintest acquaintance with the ancient examples of style in Greek, French, or English; who talk about the classics and—criticize the classical critics and poets, without being able to read a line of them in the original. Nothing of the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... spit in his face as he walks the streets, but then they have done with him; and a man may live an age in their country without hearing a dozen words from them. But of all the people I ever saw, heaven defend me from the French! With their damned prate and civilities, and doing the honour of their nation to strangers (as they are pleased to call it), but indeed setting forth their own vanity; they are so troublesome, that I had infinitely rather pass my life with the Hottentots than set my foot in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... himself had wrought. But, lest his offspring should her fate partake, Spite of the immortal mixture in his make, He ripped her womb, and set the child at large, 120 And gave him to the centaur Chiron's charge: Then in his fury blacked the raven o'er, And bid him prate in his ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... scene. I might go to Milton, and steal, bit by bit, A description to suit my Spirit of Cant, A second-hand suit, but a "shplendid fit," As a Jew would assure me—but then I sha'nt. His work is to preach the humbug which passes For gospel among the "down-trodden masses;" And to prate of the "wrongs and indignities," which Are heaped on their heads by the ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... time to curse. I had never heard my giant prate of agriculture; the camp and the tap-room had been his haunts. This appeared to be a method of working toward ill news. I lay back on my rushes and tried to ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... it becomes you well to prate of confidence and affection, who have ceased to think of your own wife, and have eyes alone for the wife ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... and "grandees" in English society, to secure good appointments and assume leading parts, and to be elected members of the venerable Westminster Assembly! They had not even had the courage to go to New England, though some of them had talked of doing so! And then their prate of this emigration to New England, which they had themselves declined, as the greatest undertaking for the sake of pure Religion, next to Abraham's migration out of his own country, that the world had ever seen! ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... end thy lonely road, All for thy task and toward thy God, Thy footsteps day by day. That evil must exist, we prate, And wisely leave it to its ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... a reason that shall be told, he was sorry that it had ever passed his lips. Still in the boat Sir Geoffrey applauded him, saying that his lady's melancholy had grown beyond all bearing, and that she did little but prate to him about his will and what colour of marble ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... practise enough; for, of free will, I would do little else, only my father and tutor are angry sometimes, and only Miss Lucy there gives herself airs about my being busy, for all she can sit idle by a well-side the whole day, when she has a handsome young gentleman to prate with. I have known her do so twenty times, if ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark. The world," added he, "is chiefly unjust and ungenerous in this, that all are ready to encourage a man who once talks of leaving it, and few things do really provoke me more than to hear people prate of retirement, when they have neither skill to discern their own motives, or penetration to estimate the consequences. But while a fellow is active to gain either power or wealth," continued he, "everybody ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... schooled to weep upon the stage, Tricked for a part of woe and somber-drest. "Lo, who art thou," they ask, "that thou shouldst fret To find, forsooth, one single heart undone? The page thou turnest there is purple-wet With blood that gushed from Caesar overthrown! Lo, who art thou to prate of sorrow?" Yet, This little woe, it is ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... their freedom from stain. Charity, as even those of whose religion it makes a formal part have been compelled to acknowledge, creates a multitude of evils. The mere existence of conscience, that faculty of which people prate so much nowadays, and are so ignorantly proud, is a sign of our imperfect development. It must be merged in instinct before we become fine. Self-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress, and self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage, part of ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... precedence of him in the council of state, and that the appointment of this or any Spaniard was a violation of the charters of the provinces and of the promises of his Majesty. As if it were for the nobles of the obedient provinces to prate of charters and of oaths! Their brethren under the banner of the republic had been teaching Philip for a whole generation how they could deal with the privileges of freemen and with the perjury of tyrants. It was late in the day for the obedient Netherlanders to remember their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... time Hal struck a false note. Newspaper men, as a class, abhor public speaking. So much are they compelled to hear from "those bores who prate intolerably over dinner tables," that they regard the man who speaks when he isn't manifestly obliged to, as an enemy to the public weal, and are themselves most loath thus to add to the sum of human suffering. Merely by way of saving the situation, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fast, brave land! The Huns are thundering toward the citadel; They prate of Culture but their path is Hell; Their light is darkness, and the bloody sword They wield and worship is their only Lord. O land where reason stands secure on right, O land where freedom is the source of light, Against the mailed ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... danger to the fruit of their womb and to themselves, rather than not to fast when the others fast. They make a matter of conscience where there is none, and where there is matter of conscience they make none. This is all the fault of the preachers, because they continually prate of fasting, and never point out its true use, limit, fruit, cause and purpose. So also the sick should be allowed to eat and to drink every day whatever they wish. In brief, where the wantonness of the flesh ceases, there every reason for fasting, watching, laboring, ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... breaks down quickly. What, after all, is the sum of those doings in the shrub-house? What would Pippa gain, were she in truth great haughty Ottima? She would but "give abundant cause for prate." Ottima, bold, confident, and not fully aware, can face that out, but Pippa knows, more closely than the woman rich and proud ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... foolishness for us to prate of old-world castes when it is a part of our national creed that any one among us may rise as high as the best of us, provided he can grow the wings wherewith to soar. That little speech which almost broke your heart is a part of our creed, ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is furled. Even the face of Heaven itself seems lost Behind a veil. It takes a fervent soul In these tense times To visualise a God so long defamed By insolent lips, that send out prayers, and prate Of God's collaboration in dark deeds, So foul they put to shame the fiends ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... you should not recollect it till this moment," replied Parravicin. "But be your inamorata whom she may—even the rich widow of Watling-street, of whom you prate so much—you must ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... whether it was ready to stand and work for the principles it claimed to have for its foundation. Be it said to the credit of each society, sect and organization, they all responded heartily and co-operated with Penloe and Stella in helping forward the grand reform; for they saw it was useless to prate about love, purity, justice and freedom, with woman debarred by law from her legal and political rights and tolerating a social custom which excited the worst passions and bred prurient curiosity. It was a grand and glorious sight, such ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... colours just and true. The countess of ten thousand see,{55} The dear delightful Savante B-, Who once was sold and bought: The magic-lantern well displays The scenes of long forgotten days, And gives new birth to thought. Nay, start not, here we'll not relate The break-neck story gossips prate Within the Em'rald Isle: No spirit gray, or black, or brown, We'll conjure up, with hideous frown, To chase the dimpled smile. In fleeting numbers, as we pass, We find these shadows in our glass, We move, and they're no more. But see where chief ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... konfidatesto. Powerful multepova. Powerless senpotenca. Practical praktika. Practice (custom) kutimo. Practice praktiko, kutimo, uzado. Practise praktiki. Prairie herbejo. Praise lauxdi. Prank petoleco—ajxo. Prate babili. Prattle babili. Pray (religious) pregxi. Pray (to request) peti. Prayer pregxo. Prayer-book pregxlibro. Preach prediki. Preacher predikisto. Preaching predikado. Preamble antauxparolo. Prebendary kanoniko. Precarious duba, necerta. Precaution antauxzorgo, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... afflict us prate Of Plasters unsurpassable, and hate To Cut a corn—ah cut, and let the Plaster go, Nor murmur if the Solace come ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thy peace, old man! Neither good nor ill wilt thou ever prate of mortal more, for I've drawn thy sting. Once thou wert kind to me; twice, in return, did I steal for thee, and once took a beating from thy shoulders. But thou wert more loyal to thy master than thou wert friend to me—and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... officers and men of the Grenadier Guards ceased to be objects of admiration, and the War Office would have howled with exquisite torture at sight of their hair and clothes. Speak of wrapping clothes around head or body to keep out the dust? It is sheer nonsense to prate so. Why it is hard enough to gape and gasp and catch a mouthful of sanded breath, without that added worry. There is nothing for it, but to grin and bear it and get through with the swallowing of that proverbial ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... precepts and maxims inculcated into their minds in the churches and Common Schools of the North; precepts which impressed upon them the duty of manliness and honor in all the relations and exigencies of life; not the "chivalric" prate of their enemies, but the calm steadfastness which endureth to the end. The highest tribute that can be paid them is to say they did full credit to their teachings, and they died as every American should when duty bids ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... critic who wishes to maintain the thesis that Ghosts, or any other modern play, is immoral, is not to hurl mud at it, but to prove by the sound processes of logic that the play tells lies about life; and the only sane way to defend such a piece is not to prate about the "moral lesson" the critic supposes that it teaches, but to prove logically that it ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... all! Prate not of most or least, Painful or easy! Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, Ay, nor feel queasy." Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give! ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... "They ceased not to bring [ill] news of my slave- girl, till she died; methinketh Aboulhusn's death was grievous to her and that she died after him."[FN39]. Quoth the Khalif, "Thou shalt not forestall me with talk and prate. She certainly died before Aboulhusn, for he came to me with his clothes torn and his beard plucked out, beating his breast with two bricks, and I gave him a hundred dinars and a piece of silk and said to him, 'Go, carry her forth [and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... "Nowadays we prate less priggishly about honor because it is no longer a word with a single meaning." He paused a moment, then went on in a climax of vehemence. "From this moment on your New England code and my inherited chivalry may be ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... vision flashed before him and changed that thought. Along with the loving, trusting ones were cold faces, that begun to press on him and judge him. Such as these would buy and sell his pictures for garniture and household-stuff. His pictures, so sacred to his soul, would be the subject of their prate, "This I love, or this I hate, this likes me more, and this affects me less!" To avoid such sacrilege, he has chosen his portion. And if his heart sometimes sinks, while at his monotonous work of painting endless cloisters and eternal aisles, with the same series, Virgin, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... If you had had as many as I, perhaps you would change your tune. Any way I'm a thief - make the most of that - but I'm not a devil from hell, God strike me dead. I would have you to know I've an honour of my own, as good as yours, though I don't prate about it all day long, as if it was a God's miracle to have any. It seems quite natural to me; I keep it in its box till it's wanted. Why now, look you here, how long have I been in this room with you? ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me, You shall have time to prate. My Lord Brachiano— Alas! I make but repetition Of what is ordinary and Rialto talk, And ballated, and would be play'd a' th' stage, But that vice many times finds such loud friends, That preachers ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... so degrading, and consists of such obscenities, that it would even be scouted at the table of the bribed, queen-slandering Italian witnesses in Cotton Garden. Yet some of these canting hypocrites, I understand, now begin to prate about morality! But I ought, and I do apologize to the reader for this digression, which I was led into by the circumstance of a gentleman, who dined with me yesterday, having given me a description of one of these monstrosities, who does not live ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... views are their real convictions: whereas your fine sentiments are but from the lips, outwards; that is why they are so nerveless and dead. It turns one's stomach to listen to your exhortations, and hear of your miserable Virtue, that you prate of up and down. Thus it is that the Vulgar prove too strong for you. Everywhere strength, everywhere victory ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... a melancholy, dignified Othello, but not great as Salvini was great. Salvini's Hamlet made me scream with mirth, but his Othello was the grandest, biggest, most glorious thing. We often prate of "reserved force." Salvini had it, for the simple reason that his was the gigantic force which may be restrained because of its immensity. Men have no need to dam up a little purling brook. If they do it in acting, it is tame, absurd and pretentious. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... he blandly, "your zeal in the cause hath much endeared you to me, yet, it were well to proceed with due caution in so grave a matter. Perchance King James hath it in his mind to extend to us that kind indulgence which we crave for. Ye know that the Parliament of England is composed of many who prate much about their liberties, and if James seek to aid us by dissimulation, 'twere an ill thing to cut ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... the little boys. He dilated their hearts, and set them a prating; and was pleased with their prate. The doctor, who had never seen him before in the company of children, applauded him for his vivacity, and condescending talk to them. The tenderest father in the world, he said, could not have behaved more tenderly, or shewed himself more delighted ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... it and thee! I never heard a man yet begin to prate of his conscience, but I knew that he was about to do something more than ordinarily cruel ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... what it deserves. Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves, Whose slightest action or inaction serve. The one great aim. Why, even Death stands still, And waits an hour sometimes ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the main street of either, and if you don't wish yourself at Cheltenham, or some other unclassical place which never had a Latin name, we are much mistaken! The "Relievo dei Cavalli" at Alcamo offers no relief for you! The Magpie may prate on her sign-post about clean beds, for magpies can be made to say any thing; but pray do not construe the "Canova Divina" Divine Canova! He never executed any thing for the Red Lion of Calatafrini, whose "Canova" is a low wine-shop, full ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... repeat, Such time I've squandered o'er the history: A contradiction thus complete Is always for the wise, no less than fools, a mystery. The art is old and new, for verily All ages have been taught the matter,— By Three and One, and One and Three, Error instead of Truth to scatter. They prate and teach, and no one interferes; All from the fellowship of fools are shrinking. Man usually believes, if only words he hears, That also with ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... was more or less rheumatic and asthmatic, but a cheerful old man withal, and quite ready to prate of old times, when Barbican and Aldersgate-street were pleasanter places than they are to-day, or had seemed so to this ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... bring this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price! The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him. And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the day ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... John Adams, speaking of a conversation with Arbuthnot, a Boston physician, says: "He began to prate upon the presumption of philosophy in erecting iron rods to draw the lightning from the clouds. He railed and foamed against the points and the presumption that erected them. He talked of presuming upon God, as Peter attempted to walk upon the water, and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... read, and to reflect upon what she read, and to apply it to the purpose for which it is valuable, viz. in enlarging her mind and cultivating her taste; but she had never been accustomed to prate, or quote, or sit down for the express purpose of displaying her acquirements; and she began to tremble at hearing authors' names "familiar in their mouths as household words;" but Grizzy, strong in ignorance, was no wise daunted. True, she heard what ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... great truth that faithfulness and loyalty are general human traits, nowhere more so than among those from whom they should not be expected; nowhere more so than among those who are debarred from hope. The great captains of industry so-called, themselves blown full of pride of circumstance, prate often of the inefficiencies of human cattle; yet continually the wonder remains that these same cattle continue to do that which their conscience tells them is right for them to do, and to do it for the sake of the doing. The lives of all of us are daily put in charge of beings entitled ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... was going!—Dear sirs, how I trembled! Stay, stay, sir, said I: we have a great deal to say first; I have a deal of silly prate to trouble you with!—Well, say then, in a minute, replied he, the most material: for all we have to say may be talked of while the parson is coming.—O, but indeed, and indeed, said I, it cannot be ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... They prate and prattle pleasantly As they rode on the waye, To those that should their butchers be, And work their ...
— The Babes in the Wood - One of R. Caldecott's Picture Books • Anonymous
... tables, is so degrading, and consists of such obscenities, that it would even be scouted at the table of the bribed, queen-slandering Italian witnesses in Cotton Garden. Yet some of these canting hypocrites, I understand, now begin to prate about morality! But I ought, and I do apologize to the reader for this digression, which I was led into by the circumstance of a gentleman, who dined with me yesterday, having given me a description of one of these monstrosities, who does not live a ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... falsifying of all the pet Wagner doctrines—Ah! that odious, heavy, pompous prose of Wagner. In this erotic comedy there is no action, nothing happens except at long intervals; while the orchestra never stops its garrulous symphonizing. And if you prate to me of the wonderful Wagner orchestration and its eloquence, I shall quarrel with you. Why wonderful? It never stops, but does it ever say anything? Every theme is butchered to death. There is endless repetition in different ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... far as I can judge, to be that the anti-foreign feeling, which is undoubtedly intense especially in the south of the Empire, may come to a head any day and prematurely explode. The nincompoops and quidnuncs and newspaper men ravenous for copy who prate about a "yellow peril" may, in this latter fact, find some slight excuse for their blatant lucubrations. There is no real "yellow peril." Poor old China, which has been so long slumbering, is just rousing herself and making arrangements for defence against the "white peril," materialistic ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... dost thou prate of all that man shall do? Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be Glad in his gladness that comes after thee? Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to: Cover thy countenance, and watch, ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... when she said no. If you had followed your heart, you would have choked the name and amount out of her and paid that devilish debt. You walk away in a case like that, and then have the nerve to come here and prate to me about following your heart. I'll wager my last dollar your heart is sore because you were not allowed to help her; but on the proposition that you followed its promptings I wouldn't stake a ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... deserving of aversion are the rabbins. The sublimest passages of the Scriptures they shamefully corrupt. As a case in point, they prate concerning Enoch that, while he was good and righteous, he very much inclined toward carnal desires. God, therefore, out of pity, prevented his sinning and perishing through death. Is not this, I pray you, a shocking ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... used to prate of plates and prints And "quick developers" before, In spite of not unfrequent hints That these in time become a bore; But then this photographic craze Seemed little but a foolish fad, While now its very latest phase Appears ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... gentle-voiced, and playful as a child That sups the moment's joy, and nothing heeds Time past or time to come, but fills all needs With present kindness. She would laugh and talk, Take arms, suffer embraces, even walk The terrace 'neath the eyes of all her fate, And seem to heed what they might show or prate, As if her whole heart's heart were in this house And not at fearful odds and perilous. And should one speak of Paris, as to say, "Would that our lord might see thee go so gay About his house!" Gently she'd bend her head Down to her breast and pluck a vagrant thread Forth from her ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... he cried, "what doth this fellow prate of? ... Past love? ... Thou profane boaster! ... how darest thou speak of love to the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... hovered protectively over their people. Perhaps the Milovka study-house boasted even Cabbalists starving themselves into celestial visions and graduating for the Divine kiss. How infinitely restful after the Milovka market-place! No more, for that day at least, would he prate of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... been asked, it has accomplished good works; yea, it is always engaged in doing good works. Whoever does not do such good works is void of faith; he gropes and mopes about, looking for faith and good works, but knows neither what faith nor what good works are, though he may prate and babble ever so much about faith and ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... the German. With each minute he became more loquacious, and soon began to address his new friend as "Dear old chap," and to narrate all manner of more or less compromising stories. He also, induced by several adroit questions on the part of Heideck, began to prate of his family affairs. He mocked at an old aunt of his, who was wont to cover her hair with roses the better to conceal bald spots, and added that this aunt was a great favourite at the Court of the Tsar, on account of her incomparable gossiping stories. It apparently never occurred ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... I graunte it; but does his grave majestie looke like a lorde of that mettall? Come, come, be not seveare; let us prate whylst ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... not, dandy, poetical, rose-water thieves; but real downright scoundrels, leading scoundrelly lives, drunken, profligate, dissolute, low; as scoundrels will be. They don't quote Plato, like Eugene Aram; or live like gentlemen, and sing the pleasantest ballads in the world, like jolly Dick Turpin; or prate eternally about "to kalon,"[*] like that precious canting Maltravers, whom we all of us have read about and pitied; or die whitewashed saints, like poor "Biss Dadsy" in "Oliver Twist." No, my dear madam, you and your daughters have no right to admire and sympathise with any such persons, fictitious ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was fond enough of me last year, I know," she said to herself, recalling some of the dances and the good-night leave-takings at that time. "It's because he is so put upon by everybody now. What with Juan Can in one bed sending for him to prate to him about the sheep, and Senor Felipe in another sending for him to fiddle him to sleep, and all the care of the sheep, it's a wonder he's not out of his mind altogether. But I'll find a chance, or make one, before this day's sun sets. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and confronting him with an anger before which he recoiled, appalled. "Do you dare to stand there and prate of honour—you? Do you forget why he stood his trial? Do you forget why he is dying, and can you not see the vile thing that you are doing in arguing flight, that you talk of honour thus, and deny his claim ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... sick man. "Silence your senseless prate! They will neither eat nor drink here. Tell the coachman that there are excellent accommodations at the Hurdlestone Arms for himself and his horses. But first see to your mistress—she is in a swoon. Carry her into the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... a pretty fellow to prate about sallying forth at midnight to do good to thy fellow creatures!—Here we find thee, within an hour after thy departure from thy home, on an 'errand of mercy,' embraced in the soft arms of a pretty wanton, and revelling in the delights of voluptuousness. We might have portrayed ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... or witlings pass'd my days, To spread about the itch of verse and praise; Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town, To fetch and carry sing-song up and down; Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cried, With handkerchief and orange at my side; But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate, To Bufo left ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Why prate of peace? when, warriors all, We clank in harness into hall, And ever bare upon the board Lies the necessary sword. 1319 ROBERT ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... honour," said the traitor, for traitors love to prate of honour, "and will now admit you to the castle; but until we are in the courtyard there must ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... wall-papers. These show the distinctive gifts by which Morris most widely influenced the Victorian traditions. It is not easy to explain why one design stirs our curiosity and quickens our delight, while another has the opposite effect. Critics can prate about natural and conventional art without helping us to understand; but a passage from Mr. Clutton-Brock seems worth quoting as simply and clearly phrased.[53] 'Morris would start', he says, 'with a pattern in his mind and from the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... greater Than our Rome's memories? Never be her banner Usurped by you! In prison and in darkness Was born your eagle, that did but descend Upon the helpless prey of Roman dead, But never dared to try the ways of heaven, With its weak vision wounded by the sun. Ye prate of Germany. The whole world conspired, And even more in vain, to work us harm, Before that day when, the world being conquered, Rome slew herself. ... Of man's great brotherhood Unworthy still, ye change not with the skies. In Italy the German's fate was ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... cast over Hell, and if you were here, you might see the fire on the farther side of your walls kindling, to burn you down into Hell." Some mocked them, others threatened to stone them unless they ceased their unmannerly prate; but some few asked, "whither shall we fly?" "Hither," said the watchman, "fly hither to your lawful king, who yet offers you pardon through us, if you return to your obedience, and abandon the rebel Belial and his deceitful daughters. Though their appearance is so splendid, it is only deception; ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... preach the gospel of man's pre-eminence;—you who prate of God and know nothing whatsoever about Him! The horse, dog, cat,—even the wild animals, whose vices, perchance, pale beside your own, may go to Heaven before you. The Supreme Architect is neither a Nero, nor a Stuart, nor a clown. He will recompense all who deserve ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... that love for naught. Deny him oft; feign now thy head doth ache: And Isis now will show what 'scuse to make. Receive him soon, lest patient use he gain, Or lest his love oft beaten back should wane. To beggars shut, to bringers ope thy gate; Let him within hear barred-out lovers prate. And, as first wronged, the wronged sometimes banish; Thy fault with his fault so repulsed will vanish. 80 But never give a spacious time to ire; Anger delayed doth oft to hate retire. And let thine eyes constrained learn to weep, That this or that man may thy cheeks moist keep. Nor, if thou ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... so about was SHE - The maiden I wronged in Peninsular days . . . You may prate of your prowess in lusty times, But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays, And see ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... experiment upon pure metal, at least to see that it was not mere dross they were casting into the crucible. Plainly, however, they despise any such nice distinctions. The most earnest prayer and the emptiest ceremonial prate are both alike to them. What sort of a process they imagine prayer to be may be at once perceived from the sort of trials to which they desire to ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... we, the latest seed of Time— ... not only we that prate Of rights and wrongs, have loved the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... of him in the council of state, and that the appointment of this or any Spaniard was a violation of the charters of the provinces and of the promises of his Majesty. As if it were for the nobles of the obedient provinces to prate of charters and of oaths! Their brethren under the banner of the republic had been teaching Philip for a whole generation how they could deal with the privileges of freemen and with the perjury of tyrants. It was late in the day for the obedient Netherlanders ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... thrust at all factions and sects. For they also have a word and boast much of their doctrine, but theirs is not the Word of truth whereby men are made children of God. They teach naught, and know naught, about how we are to be born God's children through faith. They prate much about the works done by us in ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... of his material and nothing else, is, for awhile at least, the king's highway of progress. Here, in England, too many painters and writers dwell dispersed, unshielded, among the intelligent bourgeois. These, when they are not merely indifferent, prate to him about the lofty aims and moral influence of art. And this is the lad's ruin. For art is, first of all and last of all, a trade. The love of words and not a desire to publish new discoveries, the love of form and not a novel reading of historical events, mark ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... solitary, dying alone, unregretled, unmourned. What is the wickedness you are plotting? Your father is dead, you can do him neither good nor harm. This girl is alive. She loves you. Love her. Let the canting hypocrites prate as ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Prate not of thy repentance. But believe The spark divine dwells in thee: let it grow. That which the upreaching spirit can achieve The grand and all-creative forces know; They will assist and strengthen as the light Lifts up the acorn ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... gradually until at length the whole bench shook. Then rising up she began to pray, shrieking so that she could be heard as far as the river. This done, she was quickly in the dish, and her mouth began immediately to prate worldly and common talk in which she was not the least ready. When the meal was finished, Ephraim obtained a horse for himself and his wife, and we followed him on foot, carrying our travelling bags. Our host took us to the path, and Ephraim's servant was to act as ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway." —"Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! Ye have hampered Heaven's Gate; There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate! O none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within; Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for doom has yet to run, And. . .the faith that ye share with Berkeley Square ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... The old ones prate of!—Bah, what is't they want? 'Some one to work for me, when I am old; Some one to follow me unto my grave; Some one—for me!' Yes, yes. There is not one Old huddler-by-the-fire would shift his seat To a cold corner, if it ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... flesh and blood, as a matter of course! You may talk of iron, and prate of force; But, after all, and do what you can, The best—and cheapest—machine is Man! Wealth knows it well, and the hucksters feel 'Tis safer to trust them to sinew than steel. With a bit of brain, and a conscience, behind, Muscle works better than steam or wind. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... Instead of a sensible and wary man, we call him a disguised and subtle fellow. And is any one more open, [and less reserved] than usual in such a degree as I often have presented myself to you, Maecenas, so as perhaps impertinently to interrupt a person reading, or musing, with any kind of prate? We cry, "[this fellow] actually wants common sense." Alas! how indiscreetly do we ordain a severe law against ourselves! For no one Is born without vices: he is the best man who is encumbered with the least. When my dear friend, as is just, weighs my good qualities against my bad ones, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... triumph now elate, His grinning Rival 'gan to prate. Oh, fie! my friends; upon my word, You're too severe: he should be heard; For Mind can ne'er to glory reach, Without the usual aid of speech. If thus howe'er, you seal his doom, What hope have I unknown to Rome? But since the truth be your dominion, I beg to hear your just opinion. ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... naught to thee— 'Tis but the jealous raving, wild and frantic, Of those who would, but never can, be free;— Who, slaves to selfish passions bold ambition, Hold up their shackled arms in heaven's broad light, And prate of freedom, boast their high position, And strive to turn to interest Truth ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... qualms, This shrinking backwards at the bugbear conscience; In early life I heard the phantom nam'd, And the grave sages prate of moral sense Presiding in the bosom of the just; Or planting thongs about the guilty heart. Bound by these shackles, long my lab'ring mind, Obscurely trod the lower walks of life, In hopes by honesty my bread ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... somewhat caustically: "Pre-eminently distinguished for detestion of inhumanity and outrage, he has been, with astounding falsehood, represented as instigating his troops to the most infamous excesses; but from a people holding millions of their fellow-beings in the most horrible slavery, while they prate and vaunt of liberty until all men turn in loathing from the sickening folly, what can be expected?" (Vol. v, p. 31.) Napier possessed to a very eminent degree the virtue of being plain-spoken. Elsewhere (iii, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Being, it is not true; He is transcendent Being and superessential Nothingness. Concerning this St Augustine says: the best thing that man can say about God is to be able to be silent about Him, from the wisdom of his inner judgement. Therefore be silent and prate not about God, for whenever thou dost prate about God, thou liest, and committest sin. If thou wilt be without sin, prate not about God. Thou canst understand nought about God, for He is above all understanding. A master saith: If I had ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... themselves in dark Holes, Closets, Beds, &c. We are all for Humour, Gallantry, Conversation, and Courtship, and shou'dn't endure the chief Lady in the Play a Mute, or to say very little, as 'twas agreeable to them: Our amorous Sparks love to hear the pretty Rogues prate, snap up their Gallants, and Repartee upon 'em on all sides. We shou'dn't like to have a Lady marry'd without knowing whether she gives her consent or no, (a Custom among the Romans) but wou'd be for hearing all the Courtship, all the ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... Balzac. The more he be read, the harder to detect his bias: he seems, one is almost tempted to say, more like a natural force than a human mind. Persons read two or three—perhaps half a dozen of his books—and then prate glibly of his dark view, his predilection for the base in mankind; when fifty fictions have been assimilated, it will be realized that but a phase ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... fathoms deep in brine, and the glittering water falling from her tresses like golden stars; but never have I read an untruth in her pages. There is good intelligence between her and some on board; and, trust me, she knows the paths of the ocean too well, ever to steer a wrong course. But we prate like gossiping river-men.—Wilt see ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Hast forgotten that the five-and-thirtieth rule of the order is that in the presence of a woman the face should be ever averted and the eyes cast down? Hast forgot it, I say? If your eyes were upon your sandals, how came ye to see this smile of which ye prate? A week in your cells, false brethren, a week of rye-bread and lentils, with double lauds and double matins, may help ye to remembrance of the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tyranny; but do not say, For that, Forgive our Romans.—O, a kiss Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge! Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip Hath virgin'd it e'er since.—You gods! I prate, And the most noble mother of the world Leave unsaluted: Sink, my knee, t'the earth; [Kneels.] Of the deep duty more impression show Than ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... your freedom? Peace, babblers—be still; Prate not of the goddess who scarce deigns to hear; Have ye power to unbind? Are ye wanting in will? Must the groans of your bondman still ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... fable; that the Deluge, for instance, is an old wives' story, and the economy of times and seasons a human fabrication:—when Astronomical and Mechanical Science strut up to the Throne whereon sits the Ancient of Days,—prate to Him, (the first Author of Law,) about the "supremacy of Law,"—and tell Him to His face that His miracles are things impossible:—when Physiology insinuates that Mankind cannot be descended from one primval pair; ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... least important. Purcell liked daring harmonies, and they arise organically out of the firm march of individual parts. Excepting sometimes for a special purpose, he does not dump them down as accompaniment to an upper part. The "false relations" and "harsh progressions" of which the theorists prate do not exist for an unprejudiced ear. In writing the flattened leading note in one part against the sharpened in another he was merely following the polyphonists, and it sounds as well—nay, as beautiful—as ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... N. loquacity, loquaciousness; talkativeness &c adj.; garrulity; multiloquence^, much speaking. jaw; gabble; jabber, chatter; prate, prattle, cackle, clack; twaddle, twattle, rattle; caquet^, caquetterie [Fr.]; blabber, bavardage^, bibble-babble^, gibble-gabble^; small talk &c (converse) 588. fluency, flippancy, volubility, flowing, tongue; flow of words; flux de bouche [Fr.], flux de mots [Fr.]; copia ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... difference, lad," Cross pointed out, setting down the tankard of beer from which he had been drinking. "You talk sometimes that white-livered stuff about not hitting a man back if he wants to hit you, and you drag in your conscience, and prate about all men being brothers, and that sort of twaddle. A full-blooded Englishman don't like it, because we are all of us out to protect what we've got, any way and anyhow. But that doesn't alter the fact that there's something wrong in the ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... woman, hold your tongue!" said Bridgenorth, his patience almost completely exhausted; "or, if you will prate, let it be to your playfellows in the kitchen, and bid them get ready some dinner presently, for Master ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the Lucretias of modern life owe their freedom from stain. Charity, as even those of whose religion it makes a formal part have been compelled to acknowledge, creates a multitude of evils. The mere existence of conscience, that faculty of which people prate so much nowadays, and are so ignorantly proud, is a sign of our imperfect development. It must be merged in instinct before we become fine. Self-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress, and self-sacrifice ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... hope those canoes and blankets and grub will follow suit; for it'd sure tickle me to be able to restore the same to the right owners. I keep on hopin' that Ned here won't think of leavin' this neck of the woods without makin' a real des'prate effort to recover what ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... and oratories of noble and burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic use were beautiful. Men did not prate of art: they wrought in love and simplicity. The very word art, as denoting a product of human activity different from the ordinary daily tasks of men, was unknown. If painting was an art, even ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... a great deal, Davy. My wits are nothing to yours. You'll shoot ahead of all your old friends, my boy, some day. But there's one thing you know nothing about—absolutely nothing—and you prate as if you did. Perhaps you must turn Christian before you do. I don't know. At least, so long as you're not a Christian you won't know what we mean by it—what the Bible means by it. It's ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is amazing how the use of language blunts the faculties of man—-that because vainglory finds no vent in words, creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault so gross and obvious. If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our love. I was ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bronze, but our treasures are wasted out of our houses, and much goods have been sold away to Phrygia and fair Meonia, for the hand of Jove has been laid heavily upon us. Now, therefore, that the son of scheming Saturn has vouchsafed me to win glory here and to hem the Achaeans in at their ships, prate no more in this fool's wise among the people. You will have no man with you; it shall not be; do all of you as I now say;—take your suppers in your companies throughout the host, and keep your watches and be wakeful every man of you. If any Trojan is uneasy about his possessions, let him gather ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent, and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the reader's rights or ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Fatherhood Is but a small achievement at the best, While motherhood comprises heaven and hell.) This ever-growing argument of sex Is most unseemly, and devoid of sense. Why waste more time in controversy, when There is not time enough for all of love, Our rightful occupation in this life? Why prate of our defects, of where we fail, When just the story of our worth would need Eternity for telling, and our best Development comes ever through your praise, As through our praise you reach your highest self? ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... uncertain: "Time to taste life," another would have said, "Up with the curtain!" This man said rather, "Actual life comes next? Patience a moment! Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, Still there's the comment. 60 Let me know all! Prate not of most or least, Painful or easy! Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, Ay, nor feel queasy." Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it. Image ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... would the old God of war himself were dead, Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice, Not to be molten out.' And roughly spake My father, 'Tut, you know them not, the girls. Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think That idiot legend credible. Look you, Sir! Man is the hunter; woman is his game: The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us for it, and we ride them down. Wheedling and siding with them! Out! for shame! Boy, there's ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... in Rome this brawling fencer die, When Spectacus by Crassus was subdued. Why so? but, sir, I hope you will apply, And say like Spectacus that I shall die. Thus peevish eld, discoursing by a fire, Amidst their cups will prate how men aspire. Is this the greeting, Romans, that you give Unto the patron of your monarchy? Lucretius, shall I play a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... came to disclose to me the intrigues of Metternich: at present, the opportunity is gone by; and he would every where proclaim me for a suspicious tyrant, who had sacrificed him without any cause. Go to him: say nothing to him of Montron or Bresson; let him prate at his ease, and bring me a full ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... inspiration. It was the very law of their life, the essential spirit in them. They were unconscious of it as a man is unconscious of breathing, unless diseased. Their honour was not a thing to talk about. To prate about the honour of the army or the honour of England was like talking about the honour of their mother. It is not done. And yet, as Mark Antony said, "They were all honourable men," and there seemed an austerity of virtue in them which no temptation would betray—the ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... climate, the country, and the people; to drawl out her maudlin regrets for olive groves, and pout for the Bay of Naples; to talk of her loves; exhibit a cameo or a crucifix, (the parting pledge of some inamorato, probably since hanged), prate papistry, and profess liberalism; pronounce the Roman holidays "charming things," and long to see the carnival, and the worship of the Virgin together, imported to relieve ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... leaf, ma'am, without that which should accompany old age, sir, one has a right to suspect that some time or other, he has done something or other, ma'am, which makes him fear lest the very stones prate of his whereabout, sir. And you did not deny, ma'am, that the mystery was suspicious; but you said, with uncommon good sense, that it was nothing to me what Mr. Waife had once been, so long as he was of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with Farmer Crouder, "Began to prate of corn; "And we found out they talk'd the louder, "The oftner ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... loan of a gridiron, and howld your prate. (The Frenchman shakes his head, as if to say he did not understand; but Patrick, thinking he meant it as a refusal, says, in a passion:) Bad cess to the likes o' you! Throth, if you were in my counthry, it's not that-a-way they'd ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... cannot take hold of a river, how should they? Water slips through your fingers. Where it was set running in the beginning of the world, there it will go on running till the crack of doom. Let them look; let them prate; they can't take it." ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... force me to write a book about Italy myself, to give them 'the loud lie.' They prate about assassination; what is it but the origin of duelling—and 'a wild justice,' as Lord Bacon calls it? It is the fount of the modern point of honour in what the laws can't or won't reach. Every man is liable to it more or less, according to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... me by far the most luminous. In human life it is invariably the lower nature that needs to be reconciled and conciliated; whilst the higher nature, in proportion to its development, is forgiving and tolerant and wide-minded, and does not prate about its own high sense of justice requiring to be appeased. The best type of man punishes a wrong-doer in order that he may learn to do better and leave off tormenting and wronging his fellow-creatures; ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... it's folly; but so it stands, honest as daylight. When did you help a man down on his luck? or forgive your debtor? You'll get my money because you never did aught of the kind. Yet somehow you're a Christian, and prate of your mean life as an acceptable sacrifice. In my belief you're a Christian precisely because Christianity—how you work it out I don't know—will give you a sanction for any dirty trick that comes in your way. When ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... chuse but laugh to hear the Fools prate about Preheminence: They would all fain be Masters, and yet they know they are but all my Servants; they make their Boast, of this and that, and talk of their great gains: and forget that I rule the Roast, and ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... bestow a short curse upon him, or spit in his face as he walks the streets, but then they have done with him; and a man may live an age in their country without hearing a dozen words from them. But of all the people I ever saw, heaven defend me from the French! With their damned prate and civilities, and doing the honour of their nation to strangers (as they are pleased to call it), but indeed setting forth their own vanity; they are so troublesome, that I had infinitely rather pass my life with the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... you knew it. If not—why prate about it? It's on my own feet I must stand and not on my father's. If I am of any use you will find it out fast enough, father or no father; if I'm not 'twere best you found that out ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... papers prate of the competition of Bombay with Manchester and the like. The real competition is the competition of Regent Street with the Rue de Rivoli, of Brighton and the south coast with the Riviera, for the spending money ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... these Sages four, Above the buried Emperor; It was no foolish women's prate That held them ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... differently fashioned that thou, Eric, canst prate to me of happiness when my heart is racked with grief? Oh, Eric, I blame thee not, for thou hast not wrought this evil on me willingly; but I say this: that my heart is dead, as I would that I ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... trifling talke, might saye: Giue me this, or sell me that: and when the stranger should aske, What will you giue me for it? the beggar might answere: I haue ten or foureteene children, I will giue you some one or more of them, &c. For this rabble of beggars vseth thus fondly to prate with strangers. Now if there be any well-disposed man, who pitying the need and folly of these beggers, releaseth them of one sonne, and doth for Gods sake by some meanes prouide for him in another countrey: doth the begger therefore (who together with his sonne ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... may prate of the fervour of Phoebus Of days that are calm and serene, When a tint as of teak is imposed on the cheek That is commonly pallid (when clean); But we have a taste that's aesthetic; Mere sunshine seems vulgar and crude, As we gather to gaze ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... certainly not: but the joy of the people was real. They know what is right. Besides, consult the grand thermometer of opinion, the price of the funds: on the 17th Brumaire at 11 francs, on the 20th at 16 and to-day at 21. In such a state of things I may let the Jacobins prate as they like. But let them not talk ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... what thou'lt do: Woo't weep? Woo't fight? Woo't fast? Woo't tear thyself? Woo't drink up eisel? Eat a crocodile? I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine? To outface me with leaping in her grave? Be buried quick with her, and so will I: And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... in that abundance which is the common birthright of all. Do the political bully, the grafter, the tout, know the meaning of love? No; but they can be taught. Oh, not by the hypocritical millionaire pietists who prate their glib platitudes to their Sunday Bible classes, and return to their luxurious homes to order the slaughter of starving women and babes! They, like their poor victims, are deep under the spell of that mesmerism which tells them that evil is good. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Universal Suffrage. By clinging with desperate tenacity to the Restrictive law of May 31st, they virtually confess that their hopes of success involve the continued exclusion of Three Millions of adult Frenchmen from the Registry of Voters. When they prate, therefore, of the people's desire for Revision, the Republican retort is ready and conclusive—"Repeal the law of May 31st, and we can then tell what the people really desire. But so long as you maintain that law, you ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... not prate of one's duty, of course," she agreed. "Not that you do—far from it. But, as I was saying, our ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... woman's calling them down, that she thought me a dangerous man. Whereas now, John and I have shaken hands together, and dame Smith having seen that I have the face, and hands, and looks of a man, and walk upright, and prate, and laugh, and joke, like other people; and Joseph, that I can talk of taking his teeth out of his head, without doing him the least hurt; they will all, at my next visit, be much more easy and pleasant ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... here's to the Fools! Flouting the sages Through history's pages And driving the dreary old seers into rages— The humbugging Magis Who prate that the wages Of Folly are Death—toast the Fools of all ages! They have ridden like froth down the whirlpools of time, They have jingled their caps in the councils of state, They have snared half the wisdom ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... mistress!" broke out the Red King, as the young girl was ushered into the banquet-hall, where the disordered tables, strewn with fragments of the feast, showed the ungentle manners of those brutal days. "How now, mistress! do you prate of kings and queens and of your own designs—you, who are but a beggar guest? Is it seemly or wise to talk,—nay, keep you quiet, Sir Atheling; we will have naught from you,—to talk of thrones and crowns as if you did even ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... been at liberty; but now—you go with me. And, one word more. Walk gently if you value life, or what may be dearer than life. I am not one to have my will disputed. You will learn as much; but now, I say, walk gently. I wish not to disturb this giddy household: they prate, like others of their sort, of people's doings, and 'tis not meet ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... broke in the Prior in a quivering voice, his eyes glistening and his cheeks red with anger, "dost thou prate to my very beard, sirrah? By Saint Hubert, thou hadst best save thy breath to cool thy pottage, else it may scald ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... this wur a damper an' th' biggest i'th' lot, An th' folks thay declared it wur Keighla plot, But one Jack o' Ludges sed he'd stop 'em thair prate, He'a learn 'em i' Keighla to insinuate, Thay'st hev no excurshuns for nowt but thair lip, And Shipla an' Bradford shud hev the ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... silly belief they are raising themselves in the estimation of their auditors. It is an odd conceit, yet it prevails with the would-be fast young men of the present day. To hear some of these mollycoddles prate one who was not acquainted with their weaknesses would imagine these chaps were on intimate terms with players—who, as a rule, are slow to cultivate new acquaintances, attend strictly to their own business, and do not particularly relish that particular ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... blindly prating what the gurus prate, But to love, as God hath loved them, all things, be they small or great; And true bliss is when a sane mind doth a healthy body fill; And true knowledge is the knowing what is ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... Hence! prate no more! Or, by thy villans bloud, thou prat'st thy last! A barbarous groome grudge at his masters bountie! But since I know he would as much abhorre His hinde should argue what he gives his friend, 220 Take that, Sir, for your ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... look at it? You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would believe you. If they did believe you, they would like me all the better for it. I know the age better than you do, though you will prate about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption. Now you shall look on ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... going, by your theoretical treatises on philosophy, to make me learn the practical part of it, and prate upon learning while I am supporting myself ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thee speak, thou cursed traitor thou! I'll shame thee, bearing truth of thee to men.' 'Away!' he answered: 'what thou wilt, relate: But, shouldst thou get from hence with breath again, Mention him too so ready with his prate." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... island, Duke Athol the great, They would gladly persuade, with their parle and their prate, The corner-stones high of his house to lay low, And to King, Duke and Mona are ...
— Brown William - The Power of the Harp and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... Such slanders false, devised by hate and spite? Or with stayed patience, reproaches hear, And not revenge by battle or by fight? The Norway Prince hath bought his folly dear, But who with words could stay the angry knight? A fool is he that comes to preach or prate When men with swords their right ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... why? because, forsooth, so many moons, Here dwelling voiceless by the voiceful sea, Thou hast not set thy thoughts to paltry tunes In song or sonnet. Them these golden noons Oppress not with their beauty; they could prate, Even while a prophet read the solemn runes On which is hanging some imperial fate. How know they, these good gossips, what to thee The ocean and its wanderers may have brought? How know they, in their busy vacancy, With what far aim thy spirit may be fraught? Or that thou ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... here, and desires to be my bedfellow to-night. So I shall not have an opportunity to sit down with that seriousness and attention which the subjects of yours require. For she is all prate, you know, and loves to set me a prating; yet comes upon a very grave occasion—to procure my mother to go with her to her grandmother Larking, who has long been bed-ridden; and at last has taken it into her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Fools! Flouting the sages Through history's pages And driving the dreary old seers into rages— The humbugging Magis Who prate that the wages Of Folly are Death—toast the Fools of all ages! They have ridden like froth down the whirlpools of time, They have jingled their caps in the councils of state, They have snared half the wisdom of life in a rhyme, And tripped into nothingness grinning ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... Quoth the pilgrim, 'The hapless youth who is dead you never loved, but Tedaldo Elisei ay.[176] But tell me, what was the occasion of your falling out with him? Did he ever give you any offence?' 'Certes, no,' replied she; 'he never offended against me; the cause of the breach was the prate of an accursed friar, to whom I once confessed me and who, when I told him of the love I bore Tedaldo and the privacy I had with him, made such a racket about my ears that I tremble yet to think of it, telling me that, an I desisted not therefrom, I should go in the devil's mouth to the deepest ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and thee! I never heard a man yet begin to prate of his conscience, but I knew that he was about to do something more than ordinarily ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... pet Wagner doctrines—Ah! that odious, heavy, pompous prose of Wagner. In this erotic comedy there is no action, nothing happens except at long intervals; while the orchestra never stops its garrulous symphonizing. And if you prate to me of the wonderful Wagner orchestration and its eloquence, I shall quarrel with you. Why wonderful? It never stops, but does it ever say anything? Every theme is butchered to death. There is endless repetition in different keys, with ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price! The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him. And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the day of ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the bridal gifts for the bridal day; And the fair Wiwaste was happy-hearted, For Wakawa promised the brave Chaske. Birds of a feather will flock together. The robin sings to his ruddy mate, And the chattering jays, in the winter weather, To prate and gossip will congregate; And the cawing crows on the autumn heather, Like evil omens, will flock together, In common council for high debate; And the lass will slip from a doting mother To hang with her lad on the garden gate. Birds of a feather will flock together— 'Tis an adage old—it ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... advantage. The immediate danger in China seems, so far as I can judge, to be that the anti-foreign feeling, which is undoubtedly intense especially in the south of the Empire, may come to a head any day and prematurely explode. The nincompoops and quidnuncs and newspaper men ravenous for copy who prate about a "yellow peril" may, in this latter fact, find some slight excuse for their blatant lucubrations. There is no real "yellow peril." Poor old China, which has been so long slumbering, is just rousing herself and making arrangements for defence against ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... misunderstand me, those are the worst!—especially the ill-natured people, the classical people who bray about music, stride straight to the notes, and have no patience till they come to Beethoven; who foolishly prate and fume about my unclassical management, but at bottom only wish to conceal their own unskilfulness, their want of culture and of disinterestedness, or to excuse their habitual drudgery. Lazy people without talent I cannot undertake to inspirit, to ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... not behoove Americans to stand on inviolate shores and prate of the wickedness of wrath. Moreover, this evil is not to be exorcised by a pious wish for it not to be. It is. And there is every excuse under the arch of ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... factions and sects. For they also have a word and boast much of their doctrine, but theirs is not the Word of truth whereby men are made children of God. They teach naught, and know naught, about how we are to be born God's children through faith. They prate much about the works done by us in ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... speaker can make his side dwarf the other. And of course no party could exist five minutes unless it had some good in it. There are several admirable principles in the Populist creed; there are enough windy theories to upset the Constitution of which they prate; and, by the way, the more wrong-headed a would-be statesman is the more hysterically does he plead for the Constitution. As to the other Senator—I sympathize as deeply with the farmer as any man, and I hoped against hope for the success of the bimetallic envoys; but the farmer ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... such obscenities, that it would even be scouted at the table of the bribed, queen-slandering Italian witnesses in Cotton Garden. Yet some of these canting hypocrites, I understand, now begin to prate about morality! But I ought, and I do apologize to the reader for this digression, which I was led into by the circumstance of a gentleman, who dined with me yesterday, having given me a description of one of these monstrosities, who does not live a hundred miles ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... murmur, prattle, blurt, chat, gossip, palaver, tattle, blurt out, chatter, jabber, prate, twaddle. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... verse and praise; Nor like a puppy, daggled thro' the town, To fetch and carry sing-song up and down; Nor at Rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cry'd, 225 With handkerchief and orange at my side; But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate, To Bufo left the whole ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... then we to christen the child. I was godfather, and Mrs. Holder (her husband, a good man, I know well) and a pretty lady that waits, it seems, on my Lady Bath at Whitehall, her name Mrs. Noble, were godmothers. After the christening comes in the wine {400} and sweetmeats, and then to prate and tattle, and then very good company they were, and I among them. Here was Mrs. Burroughs and Mrs. Bales (the young widow whom I led home); and having staid till the moon was up, I took my pretty gossip to Whitehall with us, and I saw her in her ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... loquacity, loquaciousness; talkativeness &c adj.; garrulity; multiloquence^, much speaking. jaw; gabble; jabber, chatter; prate, prattle, cackle, clack; twaddle, twattle, rattle; caquet^, caquetterie [Fr.]; blabber, bavardage^, bibble-babble^, gibble-gabble^; small talk &c (converse) 588. fluency, flippancy, volubility, flowing, tongue; flow of words; flux de bouche [Fr.], flux de mots [Fr.]; copia verborum [Lat.], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... "Hold your prate and listen to me. The next time you look at a public-house say to yourself, Peter Crawley, that is not a public-house to you—it is a hospital, a workhouse, for a dunghill—for if you go in there John Meadows, that is your friend, will ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... and maxims inculcated into their minds in the churches and Common Schools of the North; precepts which impressed upon them the duty of manliness and honor in all the relations and exigencies of life; not the "chivalric" prate of their enemies, but the calm steadfastness which endureth to the end. The highest tribute that can be paid them is to say they did full credit to their teachings, and they died as every American should when duty bids him. No richer heritage was ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... fiddlesticks! Hold thy prate. Do I know my own mind, or do I filter my wits through thee? Did I not say that it is thine? Good, then—'tis thine, although it were thrice somebody else's; and thrice as much thy very own through having other owners. Dost hear? Well, then, enough—we'll ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... stale instead of fresh, withered better than blooming, excellence in the abstract rather than the palpable. With their idle prate of feminine intellect, and a grotto nymph, and a mother of Gracchi! Why, he must think me dazed with admiration of him to talk to me! One listens, you know. And he is one of the men who cast a kind of physical ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... DOWNRIGHT. Prate again, as you like this, you foist* you. Your consort is gone. Had he staid he had shared with ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... but that the venter of them doth little skill the use of speech, or the rule of conversation, but meaneth to sputter and prate anything without judgment or wit; that his invention is very barren, his fancy beggarly, craving the aid of any stuff to relieve it? One would think a man of sense should grudge to lend his ear, or incline his attention ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... the brand of infamy, Add mutilation: and if this suffice not, Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst They may lick up that scum of schismatics. I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring 235 What we possess, still prate of Christian peace, As if those dreadful arbitrating messengers Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong, Should be let loose against the innocent sleep Of templed cities and the smiling ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... pudro. Power povo, potenco. Power (of attorney) konfidatesto. Powerful multepova. Powerless senpotenca. Practical praktika. Practice (custom) kutimo. Practice praktiko, kutimo, uzado. Practise praktiki. Prairie herbejo. Praise lauxdi. Prank petoleco—ajxo. Prate babili. Prattle babili. Pray (religious) pregxi. Pray (to request) peti. Prayer pregxo. Prayer-book pregxlibro. Preach prediki. Preacher predikisto. Preaching predikado. Preamble antauxparolo. Prebendary kanoniko. Precarious ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... direction which it has assumed, its program and tactics, spell disaster to our movement. I am opposed to it, not because it is too radical, but because it is essentially reactionary and non-Socialistic; not because it would lead us too far, but because it would lead us nowhere. To prate about the dictatorship of the proletariat and of workers' Soviets in the United States at this time is to deflect the Socialist propaganda from its realistic basis, and to advocate the abolition of all social reform planks in the party platform means to abandon the concrete class struggle ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... prime lot of jackasses we Americans are!" he continued. "We talk of liberty and demand license; we prate of democracy and we're ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... seek The cool enchantment of the cove, and slake His thirst with its sweet waters bubbling pure, Where Love has spread for him her sweetest lure, The maids expectant listening, watch and wait His coming; oft in ecstacies they prate O'er his surprise, and softly sport and splash The limpid waves around, that glowing flash Like heaps of snowy pearls lung to the light By Hea's[1] hands, his Zir-ri[2] to delight. And now upon the rock each maid reclines, While Ishtar's form beneath them brightly ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... with desperate tenacity to the Restrictive law of May 31st, they virtually confess that their hopes of success involve the continued exclusion of Three Millions of adult Frenchmen from the Registry of Voters. When they prate, therefore, of the people's desire for Revision, the Republican retort is ready and conclusive—"Repeal the law of May 31st, and we can then tell what the people really desire. But so long as you maintain that law, you confess that you dare not abide the verdict of the whole People. ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... you young reprobate! You must be a man of wit, forsooth, and a man of quality! You must spend as if you were as rich as Nicias, and prate as if you were as wise as Pericles! You must dangle after sophists and pretty women! And I must pay for all! I must sup on thyme and onions, while you are swallowing thrushes and hares! I must drink water, that you ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... dishonoured by me, the mother of the living child, as of the dead one. Out upon the honour which is harmed by gossip! What slanderous tongues say of me as a disgrace I deem the highest honour; but if you are of a different opinion, and held it when you wooed me, you would be wiser to prate less loudly of the proud word 'honour,' and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... faithfulness and loyalty are general human traits, nowhere more so than among those from whom they should not be expected; nowhere more so than among those who are debarred from hope. The great captains of industry so-called, themselves blown full of pride of circumstance, prate often of the inefficiencies of human cattle; yet continually the wonder remains that these same cattle continue to do that which their conscience tells them is right for them to do, and to do it for the sake of the doing. The lives of all of us are daily put in charge of beings entitled ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... "All this parrot-prate, I suppose, is only intended to vex me," cried the warrior king, who always considered himself, and very naturally, a person of such consequence as ever to be uppermost in the thoughts and minds of others. "If thou must ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Ah, thorny Roses, prate ye still of ruth And would me my brief hour of bliss deny? And yet all happy things to love are sooth, But I, ah me, this destiny so high Weighs on my spirit like a drowsy spell, I cannot joy like those, nor stay, I fail ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... friend. The days of chivalry are not gone. Let me remark that this assertion does not apply to the blatant, nigger-driving article that whilom flourished in Dixie, for that is about 'played out,' though they still rant and prate about the 'flower of chivalry.' At Fort Lafayette, there is an herbarium of choice specimens (rather faded and seedy) of that curious 'yarb;' and at the old Alton Penitentiary, and at Camp Douglas, Chicago, there are collections, not so choice and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... his innocent prate He will awake my mercy which lies dead. (Aloud.) Read this, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... poetical, rose-water thieves; but real downright scoundrels, leading scoundrelly lives, drunken, profligate, dissolute, low; as scoundrels will be. They don't quote Plato, like Eugene Aram; or live like gentlemen, and sing the pleasantest ballads in the world, like jolly Dick Turpin; or prate eternally about "to kalon,"[*] like that precious canting Maltravers, whom we all of us have read about and pitied; or die whitewashed saints, like poor "Biss Dadsy" in "Oliver Twist." No, my dear madam, you and ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at Castile in the fifteenth century. A dispute having arisen at Esalo'na upon the question whether Achill[^e]s or Hector were the braver warrior, the Marquis de Ville'na called out, "Let us see if the advocates of Achill[^e]s can fight as well as prate." At the word, there appeared in the assembly a gigantic fire-breathing monster, which repeated the same challenge. Every one shrank back except Juan de Melo, who drew his sword and placed himself before King Juan ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... hardly courteous," replied Aymer, "and therefore scarce angels in disguise, even though you prate of the clouds. So if you wish to measure blades I shall not balk you. Nathless," as he slowly freed his own weapon, "it is a ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... burst out to Doctor Keltridge over a cigar, one day; "we are bound by all our articles of indenture, we preachers, to prate about the hand of the Lord and special Providences, when all the time we know the trouble came out of somebody's running up against simple, scientific law. It's theology, not science, we poor beggars are set up to preach, even in funeral sermons of men like Opdyke, although it's not theology, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... punished with imprisonment till he should retract his errors and do penance before the congregation of his parish; and every man of sense and humanity would have thought this a sufficient punishment for the prate of a forward boy. But Stewart, as cruel as he was base, called for blood. There was among the Scottish statutes one which made it a capital crime to revile or curse the Supreme Being or any person of the Trinity. Nothing that Aikenhead had said could, without the most violent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... now, every stroke, is a matter for cheers, derisive or otherwise. The Rev. Septimus need not prate of golden days gone by. Boys at heart never change. And the atmosphere is so charged with electricity that a spark sets the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... old-fashioned, too—out-o'-place here, out-o'-date? The modern sort, the sort that gets on in this country, is a prime hand at cuttin' his coat to suit his cloth; for all that the stop-at-homes, like the writer o' that line and other ancients, prate about the Ethiopian's hide or the leopard and his spots. They didn't buy their experience dear, like we did; didn't guess that if a man DON'T learn to fit himself in, when he gets set down in such a land as ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... were now preparing, and after a little further chat, Captain Bouchier asked me for the honour of my hand, but I had previously resolved not to dance, and therefore declined his offer. But he took, of the sudden, a fancy to prate with me, and therefore ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... a secret, says a beau, And sneers at some ill-natured wit below; But faith, if we should tell but half we know, There's many a spruce young fellow in this place, Wou'd never presume to show his face; Women are not so weak, what e'er men prate; How many tip-top beaux have had the fate, T'enjoy from mama's secrets their estate! Who, if her early folly had made known, Had rid behind the ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... fools together prate, O'er punch or tea, of this or that, What silly poor unmeaning chat Does all their talk engross! A nobler theme employs my lays, And thus my honest voice I raise In well-deserved strains to praise The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... to prate to him about the shameful way he had been jilted by Cecilia, and, by constantly reiterating the same thing, they at last succeeded in persuading him that he was an ill-used man. His self-esteem being roused by this silly chatter, he began to affect ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... dreamers are not your last word in America. They tell me your ancestral Protestantisms are fast breaking down. Your churches are turning into concert and lecture rooms. Catholicism is growing among you,—science gaining on the quack-medicines! But there—there—I'll not prate. Forgive me. This has been a fascinating half-hour. Only, take care! I have seen you a ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... those pretty babes, Rejoicing at that tide, Rejoicing with a merry mind They should on cock-horse ride. They prate and prattle pleasantly, As they ride on the way, To those that should their butchers be And work their ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... that amiable passion? But, my good friend, you have all this time spoke nothing but the paltry gossip which simpletons repeat from play-books and romances, till they give mere cant a real and powerful influence over their minds. Boys and girls prate themselves into love; and when their love is like to fall asleep, they prate and tease themselves into jealousy. But you and I, Frank, are rational beings, and neither silly nor idle enough to talk ourselves ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... brave land! The Huns are thundering toward the citadel; They prate of Culture but their path is Hell; Their light is darkness, and the bloody sword They wield and worship is their only Lord. O land where reason stands secure on right, O land where freedom is the source of light, Against the mailed Barbarians' ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... conscientiously performed rites of those, whether men or women, whether strangers or kinsfolk, from whose religion he disagrees. 'It is not ancient impressions only,' said Pascal, 'which are capable of abusing us. The charm of novelty has the same power.' The prate of new-born scepticism may be as tiresome and as odious as the cant of gray orthodoxy. Religious discussion is not to be foisted upon us at every turn either by defenders or assailants. All we plead for is that when the opportunity meets the freethinker full in front, he is ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... hell.) This ever-growing argument of sex Is most unseemly, and devoid of sense. Why waste more time in controversy, when There is not time enough for all of love, Our rightful occupation in this life? Why prate of our defects, of where we fail, When just the story of our worth would need Eternity for telling, and our best Development comes ever through your praise, As through our praise you reach your highest self? Oh! had you not been miser of your praise And let our virtues be their own reward, ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... that—let them mind their homes and their children.' But the restless women who do these things have generally no homes or children to mind; what is the use of preaching the sacredness of motherhood when you will not allow them to be mothers? To what end prate of the duties of wifehood when you do not ask them ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas[215] equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent.[216] To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... woe and somber-drest. "Lo, who art thou," they ask, "that thou shouldst fret To find, forsooth, one single heart undone? The page thou turnest there is purple-wet With blood that gushed from Caesar overthrown! Lo, who art thou to prate of sorrow?" Yet, This little woe, it is my ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... my lord, we will not stand to prate; Talkers are no good doers: be assur'd We go to use our hands, and ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... you know all I have endured. To me, earth has been a hell—not the place of flames and torments of which your divines prate, but the true hell—that of the conscience and the soul. I, too, a man whose whole nature was athirst for truth. I sought it first among its professors; there I found that they who, too idle or too weak to demonstrate their creed, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... silence rendered bold, The very gulls stand round with furled wings. What do you think of it, TOBY, my boy? The Session's Bills are half-forgotten things. Is there discussion in our little Isle? Let Parties broken so remain. Factions are hard to reconcile: Prate not of Law and Order—by the main! There is a fussiness worse than death Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, Lost labour, and sheer waste of breath, Sore task to hearts dead beat by many wars, And ears grown dumb with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... things of the world, save pleasant life, by the boon of Allah Almighty!" He answered, "O my lady Zayn al-Mawasif, ask of me what thou wilt of the goods of the world." Quoth she, "What shall I ask of thee? For sure thou wilt fare forth and prate of me in the highway and I shall become a laughing-stock among the folk and they will make a byword of me in verse, me who am the daughter of the chief of the merchants and whose father is known of the notables of the tribe. I have no need of money or raiment and such love will not be ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... school; that I sought occasions of absence, and finally, on being struck by the master, determined to enter his presence no more. I loved to leap, to run, to swim, to climb trees and to clamber up rocks, to shroud myself in thickets and stroll among woods, to obey the impulse of the moment, and to prate or be silent, just as my humour prompted me. All this I loved more than to go to and fro in the same path, and at stated hours to look off and on a book, to read just as much and of such a kind, to stand up and be seated, just as another thought proper to direct. I hated to be classed, cribbed, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... to perform great feats of strength, or to climb a tree, or to suck their paws through the long nights of winter?—The panther would teach them savage cruelty and a speedy step, and the deer would counsel them to fly from the pursuit of a snail, or a land-tortoise, or the cry of a wren, or the prate of a jackdaw; the fox might teach them cunning, and the dog sagacity, and the wild cat nimbleness, and the antelope fleetness, and the wolf courage, and the owl an insight into my ways. But there must be a being to repress the insolence, and controul the rage, of the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... with his cloak up to his mouth, 'the night grows cold; I cannot stay here while you prate to that blind girl: come, let her follow you home, if you wish to speak ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... one word more. Walk gently if you value life, or what may be dearer than life. I am not one to have my will disputed. You will learn as much; but now, I say, walk gently. I wish not to disturb this giddy household: they prate, like others of their sort, of people's doings, and 'tis not meet to grant ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... swings And snares the people for the kings: "Luther is dead; old quarrels pass; The stake's black scars are healed with grass"; So dreamers prate;—did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive? But Luther's broom is left, and eyes Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... old man! Neither good nor ill wilt thou ever prate of mortal more, for I've drawn thy sting. Once thou wert kind to me; twice, in return, did I steal for thee, and once took a beating from thy shoulders. But thou wert more loyal to thy master than thou wert friend to me—and in a matter such as this, I take no chances. As I ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Shakspeare. We have been obliged to criticise Shakspeare, and this criticism of him. Dryden measures himself with Juvenal, Lucretius, and Virgil. We, somewhat violently perhaps—with a gentle violence—construe a translation into a criticism, and prate too of those immortals. Glorious John modernizes Father Geoffrey; and to try what capacity of palate you have for the enjoyment of English poetry some four or five centuries old, we spread our board with a feast of veritable Chaucer. Yet not a word, all the while, of the Wife of Bath's Tale of Chivalry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... Lord, among other worse crimes, The whole was no more than a lie of The Times. It is monstrous, my Lord! in a civilis'd state That such Newspaper rogues should have license to prate. 90 Indeed printing in general—but for the taxes, Is in theory false and pernicious in praxis! You and I, and your Cousin, and Abb Sieyes, And all the great Statesmen that live in these days, Are agreed that no ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Mervale, he leaned his face on his hands, and endeavoured to recall the words of Zanoni in their last meeting. Yes, he felt Nicot's talk even on art was crime; it debased the imagination itself to mechanism. Could he, who saw nothing in the soul but a combination of matter, prate of schools that should excel a Raphael? Yes, art was magic; and as he owned the truth of the aphorism, he could comprehend that in magic there may be religion, for religion is an essential to art. ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... if I lie you. What is it who want you? Why you no helps me to? Upon my live. All trees have very deal bear. A throat's ill. You shall catch cold one's. You make grins. Will some mutton? Will you fat or slight? Will you this? Will you a bon? You not make who to babble. You not make that to prate all day's work. You interompt me. You mistake you self heavily. You come ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... they prate of you and me, As the two gifts they want, Say Classic lore and Cookery Are things for which they pant; Believe me, my dear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... evil. My singularity is, that when I say that Freedom is of God, and Slavery is of the devil, I mean just what I say. My fanaticism is, that I insist on the American people abolishing Slavery, or ceasing to prate of the rights of man. My hardihood is, in measuring them by their own standard, and convicting them out ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... and intermarried with one another until the stock is worthless, and impotent for any further achievement. For here, you know, we have the best blood in America, and —for utilitarian purposes—that means the worst blood. Ah, we may prate of our superiority to the rest of the world,—and God knows, we do!—but, at bottom, we are worthless. We are worn out, I tell you! we are effete and stunted in brain and will-power, and the very desire of life is gone out of us! We are contented simply to exist in Lichfield. ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... gay student was riding past, when he noticed the crowd, and asked what had brought them together. He was told that the people had come out to hear one Bunyan, a tinker, preach. He instantly dismounted, and gave a boy twopence to hold his horse, for he declared he was determined to hear the tinker PRATE. So he went into the church, and heard the tinker; but so deep was the impression which that sermon made on the scholar, that he took every subsequent opportunity to attend Bunyan's ministry, and himself became a renowned preacher of the gospel in Cambridgeshire. ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... away from whales, for fear of after-claps in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones. Peleg! Peleg! said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, thou thyself, as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, Peleg, what it is to have the fear of death; how, then, can'st thou prate in this ungodly guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with Captain Ahab, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... most confident I am Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes And prate of being "happy as a clam!" What though thy shell protects thy fragile head From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed, And bear thee off—as foemen take their spoil— Far from thy friends ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... But why prate history, why evoke phantoms of the past, when we can gaze on this exquisitely concrete thing—this glad and simple creature of Hokusai? Let us emulate his calm, enjoy his enjoyment as he sprawls before us—pinguis, iners, placidus—in the pale twilight. Let us not seek to identify ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... He commands, we are free only to obey. His will is supreme, and when it is asserted, we purely and simply have no choice to do as we list. This privilege is called license, not liberty. We have certain rights as men, but we have duties, too, as creatures, and it ill-becomes us to prate about our rights, or the duties of others towards us, while we ignore the obligations we are under towards others and our first duty which is to God. Our boasted independence consists precisely in this: that we ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... nothing forgotten, for the facts were probably never known to those who prate about the conquered rights from the crown. As you say, however, the civilization of a community is to be measured by its consciousness of the existence of all principles of justice, and a familiarity with its own history. The great bulk of the population ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... kind of fairy-land to many writers. Tennyson, Spenser, Matthew Arnold, Reade, all locate some one of their choicest scenes there. The reason is not, perhaps, very remote. We prate about the Anglo-Saxon blood; yet, in reality, there is very little of it to prate about, especially in the educated classes. When the British were driven from their island, they took refuge in Wales and Brittany. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... but fills all needs With present kindness. She would laugh and talk, Take arms, suffer embraces, even walk The terrace 'neath the eyes of all her fate, And seem to heed what they might show or prate, As if her whole heart's heart were in this house And not at fearful odds and perilous. And should one speak of Paris, as to say, "Would that our lord might see thee go so gay About his house!" Gently she'd bend her head Down to her ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... shoot the pheasant, but it costs too much And does not tend to decimate the Dutch; Your duty plainly then before you stands, Conscription is the law for seagirt lands; Prate not of freedom! Since I learned to shoot I itch to ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... been accustomed to read, and to reflect upon what she read, and to apply it to the purpose for which it is valuable, viz. in enlarging her mind and cultivating her taste; but she had never been accustomed to prate, or quote, or sit down for the express purpose of displaying her acquirements; and she began to tremble at hearing authors' names "familiar in their mouths as household words;" but Grizzy, strong in ignorance, was no wise ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... only we, the latest seed of Time— ... not only we that prate Of rights and wrongs, have loved ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my where-about, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives; Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. [A bell rings.] Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... come up against that confounded artist-fellow! That had upset him, most absurdly. A half good-looking sort of fellow: a fellow who could prate with a certain brio; not unlikely to make something of a figure in the eyes of a girl ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... ''Sdeath, sir, do you prate to me?' said Redgauntlet, bending his brows. 'I, sir, transact my own business; you, I am told, act ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Here's no such subject for you to out-doe, Out-shine, out-live (though well you may doe too In other Spheres:) For Fletchers flourishing Bayes Must never fade while Phoebus weares his Rayes. Therefore forbeare to presse upon him thus. Why, what are you (cry some) that prate to us? Doe not we know you for a flashy Meteor? And stil'd (at best) the Muses Serving-creature? Doe you comptroll? Y'have had your Jere: Sirs, no; But, in an humble manner, let you know Old Serving-creatures oftentimes are fit T' informe young Masters, as in Land, in ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... time for birds to mate; To-day the dove Will mark the ancient amorous date With moans of love; The crow will change his call to prate His hopes thereof. ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... definite idea. He wished to give up his shop, to retire from business, and for some time he had been thinking of going to see Sidonie, in order to interest her in his new schemes. That was not the time, therefore, to make disagreeable scenes, to prate about paternal authority and conjugal honor. As for Madame Chebe, being somewhat less confident than before of her daughter's virtue, she took refuge in the most profound silence. The poor woman wished that she were deaf and blind—that she never ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... an the wealthy may prate, An booast o' ther riches and land, Some o'th' laadest 'ul sink second-rate To that lad with his ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... me, love, forgive a timorous soul. Through brightest hours untimely vapours rise— But while I prate, the lucky moment flies. The work, the weather, and the world are fair; A few more strokes—and fame ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... the trust I placed in you, sirrah?' he rejoined, in a terrible voice; and stooping still farther forward he probed me with his eyes. 'You who prate of trust and confidence, who received your life on parole, and but for your promise to me would have been carrion this month past, answer me that? What of the ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... whose husband was so meek, That only from her lips the truth he'd seek, When seated with him 'neath a pear tree's shade, Contriv'd at ease and her arrangement made. The story I shall presently relate; The butler, strong, well dress'd, and full of prate: Who often made the other servants trot, Stood near when madam hit upon her plot, To whom she said, I wish the fruit to taste; On which the man prepar'd with ev'ry haste, To climb the tree, and off the produce shook; But while above, the fellow gave a look Upon the ground below, and feign'd ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... hadn't come up against that confounded artist-fellow! That had upset him, most absurdly. A half good-looking sort of fellow: a fellow who could prate with a certain brio; not unlikely to make something of a figure in the eyes of a girl like ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... ourselves, not move the crowd. Our gravity prefers the muttering tone, A proper mixture of the squeak and groan; No borrow'd grace of action, must be seen, The slightest motion would displease the dean. Whilst every staring graduate would prate, Against ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... treasures are wasted out of our houses, and much goods have been sold away to Phrygia and fair Meonia, for the hand of Jove has been laid heavily upon us. Now, therefore, that the son of scheming Saturn has vouchsafed me to win glory here and to hem the Achaeans in at their ships, prate no more in this fool's wise among the people. You will have no man with you; it shall not be; do all of you as I now say;—take your suppers in your companies throughout the host, and keep your watches and be wakeful every man of you. If any Trojan is uneasy ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... with state affairs, I prate of Pitt and Fox; I ask the price of rail-road shares, I watch the turns of stocks: And this is life! no verdure blooms Upon the withered bough. I save a fortune in perfumes,— I'm not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... women, whether strangers or kinsfolk, from whose religion he disagrees. 'It is not ancient impressions only,' said Pascal, 'which are capable of abusing us. The charm of novelty has the same power.' The prate of new-born scepticism may be as tiresome and as odious as the cant of gray orthodoxy. Religious discussion is not to be foisted upon us at every turn either by defenders or assailants. All we plead for is that when the opportunity meets the freethinker ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... he will get. For once I shall not be sorry to see a lad get on, who has been brought up in the school of adversity. But, pshaw! he will be like all the rest. Prosperity will turn his brain. Already he begins to prate of his ancestors. . . . Poor humanity he almost made me laugh. . . . But it is mother Gerdy who surprises me most. A woman to whom I would have given absolution without waiting to hear her confess. When I think that ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Don't prate of woman's function, sweet, Your only duty is to charm; Leave platform spouting, as is meet, To men; it cannot do them harm. Your influence comes from gracious ways, Your glory in the home doth lie; The guardian angel of our days, Until you bless ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... rich, a man of great affairs, Steeped to the lips in monetary cares Down at Clazomenae: and some dispute 'Twixt him and King had festered to a suit. Tough, pushing, loud was he, with power of hate To beat e'en King's; so pestilent his prate, That Barrus and Sisenna you would find Left in the running leagues and leagues behind. Well, to return to King: they quickly see They can't agree except to disagree: For 'tis a rule, that wrath is short or long Just as the combatants are weak or strong: 'Twixt ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... rose-water thieves; but real downright scoundrels, leading scoundrelly lives, drunken, profligate, dissolute, low; as scoundrels will be. They don't quote Plato, like Eugene Aram; or live like gentlemen, and sing the pleasantest ballads in the world, like jolly Dick Turpin; or prate eternally about "to kalon,"[*] like that precious canting Maltravers, whom we all of us have read about and pitied; or die whitewashed saints, like poor "Biss Dadsy" in "Oliver Twist." No, my dear madam, you ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... white men, the men of the Anglo-Saxon blood, tireless, restless, working. Only when men of other races, dark-skinned, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, passed his mental vision, was there the stillness of lazy rest; and Marmot was pleased, for he loved to prate of the Anglo-Saxon and the work they had done, and would do, for the world ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... Minstrels—may they be the last!— On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast. While mountain spirits prate to river sprites, That dames may listen to the sound at nights; . . . . . . Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan, The golden-crested haughty Marmion, Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight, Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight, The gibbet ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... reply was, I fear, very painful to the pacificists. The German CHANCELLOR'S statement he found to be one of "colossal and shameless audacity." German Socialists might prate of peace, but only twenty out of five times that number in the Reichstag had the courage to vote against the War Credit. Our terms were already on record in the speech which he made at the LORD MAYOR'S Banquet in 1914. Until Belgium—"and I will add Serbia"—has been fully reinstated, until France ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... Aymer, "and therefore scarce angels in disguise, even though you prate of the clouds. So if you wish to measure blades I shall not balk you. Nathless," as he slowly freed his own weapon, "it is a quarrel not ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... has assumed, its program and tactics, spell disaster to our movement. I am opposed to it, not because it is too radical, but because it is essentially reactionary and non-Socialistic; not because it would lead us too far, but because it would lead us nowhere. To prate about the dictatorship of the proletariat and of workers' Soviets in the United States at this time is to deflect the Socialist propaganda from its realistic basis, and to advocate the abolition of all social reform planks in the party platform means to abandon ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... accustomed to read, and to reflect upon what she read, and to apply it to the purpose for which it is valuable, viz. in enlarging her mind and cultivating her taste; but she had never been accustomed to prate, or quote, or sit down for the express purpose of displaying her acquirements; and she began to tremble at hearing authors' names "familiar in their mouths as household words;" but Grizzy, strong in ignorance, was no wise daunted. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... bitter thing, although you speak so lightly of it. If you had had as many as I, perhaps you would change your tune. Anyway, I'm a thief—make the most of that—but I'm not a devil from hell, God strike me dead. I would have you to know I've an honor of my own, as good as yours, though I don't prate about it all day long, as if it were a God's miracle to have any. It seems quite natural to me; I keep it in its box till it's wanted. Why now, look you here, how long have I been in this room with you? Did you not tell me you were alone in the house? ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... liveries, and crests, and coats-of-arms; to resent the friendly advances of your baker's wife, and the lady of your butcher (you being yourself a cobbler's daughter); to talk much of the "old families" and of your aristocratic foreign friends; to despise labor; to prate of "good society"; to travesty and parody, in every conceivable way, a society which we know only in books and by the superficial observation of foreign travel, which arises out of a social organization entirely unknown to us, and which is opposed to our fundamental and essential principles; if ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... harde one of his souldyours crake and speake many yll wordes agaynst Alexander; wherfore he rapte hym on the pate with a iauelynge, sayenge: I hyred the to fyght agaynste Alexandre, and not to crake and prate. ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... earliest pretending breaks down quickly. What, after all, is the sum of those doings in the shrub-house? What would Pippa gain, were she in truth great haughty Ottima? She would but "give abundant cause for prate." Ottima, bold, confident, and not fully aware, can face that out, but Pippa knows, more closely than the woman ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... somewhat aggressively burst into a guffaw of derisive laughter. "Miss Loomis is just one of those admirable women," said he, "that empty-headed idiots prate about. I wish other people had half her sense." A luckless way of essaying the defence of the absent, for it reflected on many a ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... untravelled heart of Asia Minor, and are now almost in sight of Europe. The camp-fire is extinguished; the tent is furled. We are no longer happy nomads, masquerading in Moslem garb. We shall soon become prosaic Christians, and meekly hold out our wrists for the handcuffs of Civilization. Ah, prate as we will of the progress of the race, we are but forging additional fetters, unless we preserve that healthy physical development, those pure pleasures of mere animal existence, which are now only to be found among our semi-barbaric brethren. Our progress is nervous, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... cursed traitor thou! I'll shame thee, bearing truth of thee to men.' 'Away!' he answered: 'what thou wilt, relate: But, shouldst thou get from hence with breath again, Mention him too so ready with his prate." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... these superfluities signify, but that the venter of them doth little skill the use of speech, or the rule of conversation, but meaneth to sputter and prate anything without judgment or wit; that his invention is very barren, his fancy beggarly, craving the aid of any stuff to relieve it? One would think a man of sense should grudge to lend his ear, or incline ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... dissensions needed help from England against the savage on their borders have become a nation that may defy every foe but that most dangerous of all foes, herself, destined to a majestic future if she will shun the excess and perversion of the principles that made her great, prate less about the enemies of the past and strive more against the enemies of the present, resist the mob and the demagogue as she resisted Parliament and King, rally her powers from the race for gold and the delirium ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... follow? 'Free Parliament,' right of Election, Constitutional Formulas of one sort or the other,—the thing is a hungry Fact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured by it! And who are you that prate of Constitutional Formulas, rights of Parliament? You have had to kill your King, to make Pride's Purges, to expel and banish by the law of the stronger whosoever would not let your Cause prosper: there are but fifty or three-score of you left there, debating ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... in any portion of the Dominion; for the government seem to grasp the purse-strings with one hand while they hold a drawn sword in the other. There is no security to be found in any corner of the State; and no projects, formed for the future of its people. To be sure, certain parties prate and jabber about the Volunteer Service and national defenses; but what have they to defend? If their frontier were bristling to-morrow with forts and bayonets, all they could hope to accomplish would be the shutting out of American liberty and ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... the elder was more or less rheumatic and asthmatic, but a cheerful old man withal, and quite ready to prate of old times, when Barbican and Aldersgate-street were pleasanter places than they are to-day, or had seemed so ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Metternich: at present, the opportunity is gone by; and he would every where proclaim me for a suspicious tyrant, who had sacrificed him without any cause. Go to him: say nothing to him of Montron or Bresson; let him prate at his ease, and bring me a full ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... nicer sense, Deep sunk in vice and indolence, 950 The spirit of old Rome was broke Beneath the tyrant fiddler's yoke) Banish'd the rose from Nero's cheek, Under a Brunswick fear to speak. Drawn by Conceit from Reason's plan, How vain is that poor creature, Man! How pleased is every paltry elf To prate about that thing, himself! After my promise made in rhyme, And meant in earnest at that time, 960 To jog, according to the mode, In one dull pace, in one dull road, What but that curse of heart and head To this digression could have led? ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the epilogue, by rule, Should come and turn it all to ridicule; Should tell the ladies that the tragic bards, Who prate of Virtue and her vast rewards, Are all in jest, and only fools should heed 'em; For all wise women flock to mother Needham. This is the method epilogues pursue, But we to-night in everything are new. Our author then, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Antiochus, that he should prate Of peace to me, who am a fugitive? To-day he shall be lifted up; to-morrow Shall not be found, because he is returned Unto his dust; his thought has come to nothing. There is no peace between us, nor can be, Until this banner floats upon the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... high companions may delusion keep, Lords are a footboy's cronies in his sleep. As a fresh miss, by fancy, face, and gown, Render'd the topping beauty of the town, Draws every rhyming, prating, dressing sot, To boast of favours that he never got; Of which, whoe'er lacks confidence to prate, Brings his good parts and breeding in debate; And not the meanest coxcomb you can find, But thanks his stars, that Phillis has been kind; Thus prostitute my Congreve's name is grown To every lewd pretender of the town. Troth, I could pity ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... can but kill a fly, Or prate, doth please his majesty, Tis known to every one; The Duke of Guise gave him a parrot, And he had twenty cannons for it, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... wolf, Whose howl's his watch,—thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost.—Thou sure and firm-set earth! Hear not my, steps, which way they walk; for fear The very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror for the time Which now ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... if I don't succeed in organizing a little crusade against you." And animated by the sound of his own words, his anger came back to him, and in a louder and ever louder voice he continued: "Ah! you prate of the scandal that would be created by my resistance to your demands. That's your system; but, with me, it won't succeed. You threaten me with a law-suit; very good. I'll take it upon myself to enlighten Paris, for I know your secrets, Mr. Dressmaker. I know the goings on in your ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... How did he prate against wedlock! how did he strut about as a wit and a smart! and what a wit and a smart did all the boys and girls of our family (myself among the rest, then an urchin) think him, for the airs he gave ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... thing," Selingman replied; "your Press, written for and inspired with the whole spirit of the bourgeoisie. You prate about your Empire, but you've never learnt yet to think imperially. But there, it is not for this I crossed the Channel. It is ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Hood, "Thou dost prate like an ass, For were I to bend my bow, I could send a dart quite thro' thy proud heart, Before thou couldst ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... at the table, began to groan and quake gradually until at length the whole bench shook. Then rising up she began to pray, shrieking so that she could be heard as far as the river. This done, she was quickly in the dish, and her mouth began immediately to prate worldly and common talk in which she was not the least ready. When the meal was finished, Ephraim obtained a horse for himself and his wife, and we followed him on foot, carrying our travelling bags. Our host took us to the path, and Ephraim's ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... interrupted Diomed, with his cloak up to his mouth, 'the night grows cold; I cannot stay here while you prate to that blind girl: come, let her follow you home, if you wish to ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... emotions has not already been delved within her, though she is but five years old. I, a stranger, a passer-by, know more of her life than she does and, in consequence, I am more truly she than she herself. After that let him who will prate of the feeling of identity and the ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... to shine; The rue de la Gaite was more his line. She doted on Barclay and Dell and Caine; He quoted Mallarme and Paul Verlaine. She was a triumph at Tango teas; At Vorticist's suppers he sought to please. She thought that Franz Lehar was utterly great; Of Strauss and Stravinsky he'd piously prate. She loved elegance, he loved art; They were as wide as the poles apart: Yet—Cupid and Caprice are hand and glove— They met at a ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... "Oh, you prate! Are not the graves dug over at certain fixed periods anyway? What evil is there in that it happens some ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... take it and thee! I never heard a man yet begin to prate of his conscience, but I knew that he was about to do something more than ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... echoed joyously. "Could one be anything else, in such a country? And then—you don't know Manley, you see. It's horribly bad form, and undignified and all that, to prate of one's private affairs, but I just can't help bubbling over. I'm not looking for heaven, and I expect to have plenty of bumpy places in the trail—trail is anything that you travel over, out here; ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... old, and all alone, I shall have killed one grief, at any rate; For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown. The devil only knows what I have done, But here I am, and here are six or eight Good friends, who most ingenuously prate About my songs to ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... place, When Doll hangs out a newer face? Nail'd to her window full in sight All Christian people to invite. Or stop and light at Chloe's head, With scraps and leavings to be fed? Then, Chloe, still go on to prate Of thirty-six and thirty-eight; Pursue your trade of scandal-picking, Your hints that Stella is no chicken; Your innuendoes, when you tell us, That Stella loves to talk with fellows: But let me warn you ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... expression of what men were surrounded by in their daily lives and avocations. The houses[61] and oratories of noble and burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic use were beautiful. Men did not prate of art: they wrought in love and simplicity. The very word art, as denoting a product of human activity different from the ordinary daily tasks of men, was unknown. If painting was an art, even so was carpentry. A mason was an artist: ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... mere child, schooled to weep upon the stage, Tricked for a part of woe and somber-drest. "Lo, who art thou," they ask, "that thou shouldst fret To find, forsooth, one single heart undone? The page thou turnest there is purple-wet With blood that gushed from Caesar overthrown! Lo, who art thou to prate of sorrow?" Yet, This little woe, it is ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... bowl that shall be quaff'd To loyalty's devotion, And here's to fortune that shall waft Your ship across the ocean, And here's a smile for those who prate Of Davy Jones's locker, And here's a pray'r in every fate— God ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... gabble, murmur, prattle, blurt, chat, gossip, palaver, tattle, blurt out, chatter, jabber, prate, twaddle. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... women shouldn't do this or that—let them mind their homes and their children.' But the restless women who do these things have generally no homes or children to mind; what is the use of preaching the sacredness of motherhood when you will not allow them to be mothers? To what end prate of the duties of wifehood when you do not ask them to ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... said a tabby, "cease your prate, Enough to break a pussy's pate. What is our lot beneath your roof? Within, starvation; out, reproof: Elsewhere we had been honest mousers, And slept, by, fireside carousers. Here we are imps who serve a hag, And ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... are you that talk to me of dishonour?—you that come straying here out of the night with your cicisbeo at your heels? You, with the dew on you and your dress bedraggled, arrive straight from companioning in the woods and prate to me of shame—of the blood of the Colonne!" He smote a hand on the table and spat forth a string of vile names upon her, mixed with curses; abominable words before which she drew back cowering, yet less (I think) from the lash of them than from shock and horror of his incredible ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... words," she answered sternly when I tried to comfort her; "ay, words are easy. Wait till you see your own child's blood. Wait till you stand by and see his young limbs hewn away, and the groans come thicker and thicker that you cannot soothe; and then let them prate to you of the good cause." Bitter words! God knows what is in store for us;—all day this strange dread has ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... carried the hostages off to Denmark against his plighted faith. There Gustav was held prisoner a year. All that winter rumors of great armaments against Sweden filled the land. He heard the young bloods from the court prate about bending the stiff necks in the country across the Sound, and watched them throw dice for Swedish castles and Swedish women,—part of the loot when his fatherland should be laid under the yoke. Ready to burst ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... snorted. "Sure as we're both alive here sittin' on this sooty London grass," he cried. "This Call of the Wild they prate about is just the call a fellow hears to go on 'the bust' when he's had too much town and's got bored—a call to a little bit of license and excess to safety-valve him down. What I feel," his voice turned grave and quiet again, "is quite a different affair. It's the call of real ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... They prate and prattle pleasantly While riding on the way, To those their wicked uncle hired, These ...
— My First Picture Book - With Thirty-six Pages of Pictures Printed in Colours by Kronheim • Joseph Martin Kronheim
... Guiche's wound—a mere dream; the bullet, a dream. So, take my advice, and prate ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... our soldiers, it is easy to understand their contempt for those civilians who go on strike, prate of weariness, scream their terror when a few Hun planes sail over London, devote columns in their papers to pin-prick tragedies of food-shortage, and cloud the growing generosity between England and America by cavilling criticisms and mean reflections. Their contempt ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... hear me, You shall have time to prate. My Lord Brachiano— Alas! I make but repetition Of what is ordinary and Rialto talk, And ballated, and would be play'd a' th' stage, But that vice many times finds such loud friends, That preachers are charm'd silent. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... together prate, O'er punch or tea, of this or that, What silly poor unmeaning chat Does all their talk engross! A nobler theme employs my lays, And thus my honest voice I raise In well-deserved strains to praise ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... I command, moreover, said Diabolus, that there be spies continually walking up and down the town of Mansoul, and let them have power to suppress, and destroy, any that they shall perceive to be plotting against us, or that shall prate of what by Shaddai ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I grow a talker!"[637] Let us prate. The next of perils, though I place it sternest, Is when, without regard to Church or State, A wife makes or takes love in upright earnest. Abroad, such things decide few women's fate— (Such, early Traveller! is the truth thou learnest)— But in old England, when a young bride errs, Poor thing! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... a good thing. He had tried to obtain it for Poland and had failed; he had not tried to obtain it for Italy, because he was afraid of offending Austria. At least he had the courage to tell the truth, and did not prate about the felicity of being subjects of the Austrian Emperor, as many English partisans of Austria prated in days ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... holds that little hand! I think I see him paddle with it; and then the dog's earnest, intent look,—and she all blushes, though she dare not look up to meet his gaze, feeling it by intuition. Oh, the demure, modest, shamefaced hypocrite! How silent she is! She can prate enough to me! I would give my promised garter if she would but talk to him. Talk, talk, laugh, prattle, only simper, in God's name, and I shall be happy. But that bashful, blushing silence,—it is insupportable. Thank Heaven, the dance is over! ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... apologizing, first at the levee and then at the drawing-room; and he reprehended him very sharply at both places. An explanation afterwards took place through Lord Camden, to whom he said that he was angry because de Saumarez would prate at the levee, when he told him that it was not a proper place for discussing ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... girth the giant form, Still struggling for the earth: but she no more Could give her offspring rigour. Slowly came The chill of death upon him, and 'twas long Before the hero, of his victory sure, Trusted the earth and laid the giant down. Hence hoar antiquity that loves to prate And wonders at herself (19), this region called Antaeus' kingdom. But a greater name It gained from Scipio, when he recalled From Roman citadels the Punic chief. Here was his camp; here can'st thou see the trace Of that ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... asserted of Lord George Bentinck that true sportsmen 'loved his prate,' because his speech recalled the 'four-mile course,' his arguments the 'feather-weight.' One is reminded, in this connection, of the preacher of whom it was observed that he 'so lengthily his subject did pursue,' that it was feared 'he had, indeed, eternity in view.' ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... Buss. Hence! prate no more! Or, by thy villans bloud, thou prat'st thy last! A barbarous groome grudge at his masters bountie! But since I know he would as much abhorre His hinde should argue what he gives his friend, 220 Take that, Sir, for your aptnesse ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... dawn. Dearest, dearest, don't sob so. It is a case of two affirmatives making a negative; two great nationalities decried, derided, rendered null and void in their offspring through the dictates of those who, in religion, prate that we are all brothers. I have just got to stick it, my mother, and life is not very long. But I shall never marry." And as he spoke, Fate flicked a page of an illustrated paper, which was but the volume of the Book of Life, and perhaps only a mother's eyes would have ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... intolerable impudence and cant!" said Julian, starting from his seat, aroused by his hypocritical prate into unwonted intolerance; and he suddenly observed, by the cowering attitude which Hazlet assumed, that the worthy youth was afraid of receiving at his head the water-bottle, on which Julian's hand was resting. Julian thought it best to avoid the temptation, and hoping ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... "'How you prate!' said the mother, checking her. 'If you do not instantly tie up your tongue, and think more respectfully of the good people, I shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... important. Purcell liked daring harmonies, and they arise organically out of the firm march of individual parts. Excepting sometimes for a special purpose, he does not dump them down as accompaniment to an upper part. The "false relations" and "harsh progressions" of which the theorists prate do not exist for an unprejudiced ear. In writing the flattened leading note in one part against the sharpened in another he was merely following the polyphonists, and it sounds as well—nay, as beautiful—as any other discord, or the same discord on another degree of the scale.[2] This ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... confident I am Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes And prate of being "happy as a clam!" What though thy shell protects thy fragile head From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed, And bear thee off—as foemen take their spoil— Far from thy friends and family to ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the country, and the people; to drawl out her maudlin regrets for olive groves, and pout for the Bay of Naples; to talk of her loves; exhibit a cameo or a crucifix, (the parting pledge of some inamorato, probably since hanged), prate papistry, and profess liberalism; pronounce the Roman holidays "charming things," and long to see the carnival, and the worship of the Virgin together, imported to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the end thy lonely road, All for thy task and toward thy God, Thy footsteps day by day. That evil must exist, we prate, And wisely leave it to its fate, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... greater part of the Madrilenian Carlists capable of bearing arms departed long ago to join the ranks of the factious in the Basque provinces. Those who remain are for the most part grey-beards and priests, good for nothing but to assemble in private coffee-houses, and to prate treason together. Let them prate, Don Jorge; let them prate; the destinies of Spain do not depend on the wishes of ojalateros and pasteleros, but on the hands of stout gallant nationals like myself and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Shall I prate of rural joys Far from civic smoke and noise? Shall I, like the others, drool "But the nights are always cool?" If I hate to rise at six Shall I praise the suburbs? Nix! If the country's not for me, What care I ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... povo, potenco. Power (of attorney) konfidatesto. Powerful multepova. Powerless senpotenca. Practical praktika. Practice (custom) kutimo. Practice praktiko, kutimo, uzado. Practise praktiki. Prairie herbejo. Praise lauxdi. Prank petoleco—ajxo. Prate babili. Prattle babili. Pray (religious) pregxi. Pray (to request) peti. Prayer pregxo. Prayer-book pregxlibro. Preach prediki. Preacher predikisto. Preaching predikado. Preamble antauxparolo. Prebendary kanoniko. Precarious duba, necerta. Precaution antauxzorgo, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... minister or some of the deacons when they came round collecting money. Some ministers, no doubt the majority of them, talk about holding on to the old landmarks and being orthodox for the very reason that to make a move implies labour, which they are not willing to give, hence they prate about orthodoxy and landmarks as a pretext to cover over their indifference. He is the most orthodox who searches after the truth and keeps up with the age. "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good," says Paul. These pretended followers of Paul say: "Prove nothing, hold fast ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... Slack Jaw," says Captain Night. "I shall be thirstier anon from listening to your prate. Will you hurry now, Gadfly, or is the sun to sink before we ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... shallow as to dream that I feel nothing? What is your love for Tom Faggus? What is your love for your baby (pretty darling as he is) to compare with such a love as for ever dwells with me? Because I do not prate of it; because it is beyond me, not only to express, but even form to my own heart in thoughts; because I do not shape my face, and would scorn to play to it, as a thing of acting, and lay it out before you, are you fools enough to think—" but here ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... perhaps they have never exchanged a word, in the silly belief they are raising themselves in the estimation of their auditors. It is an odd conceit, yet it prevails with the would-be fast young men of the present day. To hear some of these mollycoddles prate one who was not acquainted with their weaknesses would imagine these chaps were on intimate terms with players—who, as a rule, are slow to cultivate new acquaintances, attend strictly to their own business, and do not particularly relish that particular class of hanger-on. No man knew ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... century. A dispute having arisen at Esalo'na upon the question whether Achill[^e]s or Hector were the braver warrior, the Marquis de Ville'na called out, "Let us see if the advocates of Achill[^e]s can fight as well as prate." At the word, there appeared in the assembly a gigantic fire-breathing monster, which repeated the same challenge. Every one shrank back except Juan de Melo, who drew his sword and placed himself before King Juan II. to protect him, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... hold your tongue!" said Bridgenorth, his patience almost completely exhausted; "or, if you will prate, let it be to your playfellows in the kitchen, and bid them get ready some dinner presently, for Master ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... referring to the one person in half a million to whom Art is anything more than a name. Dismissing the countless hordes who have absolutely never heard the word, and confining attention to the few thousands scattered about Europe and America who prate of it, how many of even these do you think it really influences, entering into their lives, refining, broadening them? Watch the faces of the thin but conscientious crowd streaming wearily through our miles of picture galleries and art museums; gaping, with guide-book in hand, ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... failures and diplomatic slights. Let Napoleon III., they said in effect, imitate the policy of his uncle, who, as long as he dazzled France by triumphs, could afford to laugh at the efforts of constitution-mongers. The big towns might prate of liberty; but what France wanted was glory and strong government. Such were their pleas: there was much in the past history of France to support them. The responsible advisers of the Emperor determined to take a stronger tone in foreign affairs, while ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the sick man. "Silence your senseless prate! They will neither eat nor drink here. Tell the coachman that there are excellent accommodations at the Hurdlestone Arms for himself and his horses. But first see to your mistress—she is in a swoon. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... to be found in perfection among the sons of men. The very fact of his greatness made his failings all the more dangerous and unfortunate. To be blinded by the splendor of his fame and the lustre of his achievements and prate about the sin of belittling a great man is the falsest philosophy and the meanest cant. The only thing worth having, in history as in life, is truth; and we do wrong to our past, to ourselves, and ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... transcendent Being and superessential Nothingness. Concerning this St Augustine says: the best thing that man can say about God is to be able to be silent about Him, from the wisdom of his inner judgement. Therefore be silent and prate not about God, for whenever thou dost prate about God, thou liest, and committest sin. If thou wilt be without sin, prate not about God. Thou canst understand nought about God, for He is above all understanding. A master saith: If I had a God whom I could understand, I would ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... of chips and glue, Who paper oft does blot in town, From the Mechanics' Institu- tion, comes to prate of wedge and screw, Lever and axle at the U- niversity we've Got in town— ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... he can no longer fly after his wings are broken! Give us but our independence, allow us to take care of ourselves, grant us but a little strip of land like that of the Servians and Rumanians, give us a chance to lead a national existence, and then prate about our lacking manly virtues. What we lack is not genius (Genialitaet) but self-consciousness (Selbstgefuehl) and appreciation of our value as men (Bewusstsein der Menschenwuerde), of which ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... this I would the old God of war himself were dead, Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice, Not to be molten out.' And roughly spake My father, 'Tut, you know them not, the girls. Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think That idiot legend credible. Look you, Sir! Man is the hunter; woman is his game: The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us for it, and we ride them down. Wheedling ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... said the traitor, for traitors love to prate of honour, "and will now admit you to the castle; but until we are in the courtyard there must ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... him). The same applies to the artificial disparity of circumstances that you prate about with tears in your eyes! I heard you once. Class distinctions ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... question, and a clever speaker can make his side dwarf the other. And of course no party could exist five minutes unless it had some good in it. There are several admirable principles in the Populist creed; there are enough windy theories to upset the Constitution of which they prate; and, by the way, the more wrong-headed a would-be statesman is the more hysterically does he plead for the Constitution. As to the other Senator—I sympathize as deeply with the farmer as any man, and I hoped against hope for the success of the bimetallic ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... "do not play at cat's cradle with the Douglas. You might tempt me to that I should afterwards be sorry for. A man once dead comes not to life again, whatever monks prate. But tell me, how knew you whither I had gone yester-even? For, indeed, I knew not myself when I set out. And in any event, was it a thing well done for my foster father to spy upon me the son who ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... after they have driven their wives and families from their tables, is so degrading, and consists of such obscenities, that it would even be scouted at the table of the bribed, queen-slandering Italian witnesses in Cotton Garden. Yet some of these canting hypocrites, I understand, now begin to prate about morality! But I ought, and I do apologize to the reader for this digression, which I was led into by the circumstance of a gentleman, who dined with me yesterday, having given me a description of one of these monstrosities, who does not live a hundred miles from this place. More, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... is well to preach and prate of law: Methinks, my haughty lords of Padua, If ye are hurt in pocket or estate, So much as makes your monstrous revenues Less by the value of one ferry toll, Ye do not wait the tedious law's delay With such sweet patience as ye ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... Selingman replied; "your Press, written for and inspired with the whole spirit of the bourgeoisie. You prate about your Empire, but you've never learnt yet to think imperially. But there, it is not for this I crossed the Channel. It is ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... company; For if the king of gods can be Full oft in need of recreation,— Who rules the world,—right well may I, Who serve him in that high relation: Amuse me, then, before you fly.' Our cackler, pleased, at quickest rate Of this and that began to prate. Not he of whom old Flaccus writes, The most impertinent of wights, Or any babbler, for that matter, Could more incontinently chatter. At last she offer'd to make known— A better spy had never flown— All things, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... are not conscious of any such painstaking; it remains therefore to be the business of their childhood. And surely the great and multiplied labour of framing abstract notions will be found a hard task for that tender age. Is it not a hard thing to imagine that a couple of children cannot prate together of their sugar-plums and rattles and the rest of their little trinkets, till they have first tacked together numberless inconsistencies, and so framed in their minds ABSTRACT GENERAL IDEAS, and annexed them to every common ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... from my heart.' Quoth the pilgrim, 'The hapless youth who is dead you never loved, but Tedaldo Elisei ay.[176] But tell me, what was the occasion of your falling out with him? Did he ever give you any offence?' 'Certes, no,' replied she; 'he never offended against me; the cause of the breach was the prate of an accursed friar, to whom I once confessed me and who, when I told him of the love I bore Tedaldo and the privacy I had with him, made such a racket about my ears that I tremble yet to think of it, telling me that, an I desisted not ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... suggestion appeared to me by far the most luminous. In human life it is invariably the lower nature that needs to be reconciled and conciliated; whilst the higher nature, in proportion to its development, is forgiving and tolerant and wide-minded, and does not prate about its own high sense of justice requiring to be appeased. The best type of man punishes a wrong-doer in order that he may learn to do better and leave off tormenting and wronging his fellow-creatures; not to appease any instinct in his own breast, for that would be egotism, no matter how ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... it is the only adequate method. Critics exclusively trained in classics or in mathematics, who have never determined a scientific fact in their lives by induction from experiment or observation, prate learnedly about Mr. Darwin's method, which is not inductive enough, not Baconian enough, forsooth, for them. But even if practical acquaintance with the process of scientific investigation is denied them, they may learn, by the perusal of Mr. Mill's admirable chapter "On the Deductive Method," ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... cant!" said Julian, starting from his seat, aroused by his hypocritical prate into unwonted intolerance; and he suddenly observed, by the cowering attitude which Hazlet assumed, that the worthy youth was afraid of receiving at his head the water-bottle, on which Julian's hand was resting. Julian thought it best to avoid the temptation, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... reprobate! You must be a man of wit, forsooth, and a man of quality! You must spend as if you were as rich as Nicias, and prate as if you were as wise as Pericles! You must dangle after sophists and pretty women! And I must pay for all! I must sup on thyme and onions, while you are swallowing thrushes and hares! I must drink water, that you may play the cottabus (This game consisted in projecting ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... up against that confounded artist-fellow! That had upset him, most absurdly. A half good-looking sort of fellow: a fellow who could prate with a certain brio; not unlikely to make something of a figure in the eyes of a girl like Cecily. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... your anger And why you prate thus: I have found your melancholy: Ye all want mony, and you are liberal Captains, And in this want will talk a little desperately: Here's gold, come share; I love a brave Commander: And be not peevish, ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... in the latter city, while only twenty in London. Nor is Chicago the leading city in crime, since it is only seventh on the list, which is headed by four Southern cities, and San Francisco and Los Angeles. In view of such a terrible condition of affairs, it seems ridiculous to prate of the protection society derives from ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... you are!" shouted Judge Harlin. "A nice lot to prate about law and order, and ready to do murder yourselves! That is what you are preparing to do! Murder! As cold-blooded a murder ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... intend that our children shall be taught to love and revere their holy Church. We wish to teach them that that Church has been, for over eighteen hundred years, the faithful guardian of that very Bible of which Protestants prate so loudly, and which they dishonor so much. We wish our children to learn that the Catholic Church has been, in all ages, the friend and supporter of true liberty; i.e., liberty united to order and justice. We wish ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... "Zooks!" he said, "I prate like a death's-head. A thing done hath an end, God have mercy on us all! And I will read no more ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... soul!" he cried, "what doth this fellow prate of? ... Past love? ... Thou profane boaster! ... how darest thou speak of love to the Priestess ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the Fools! Flouting the sages Through history's pages And driving the dreary old seers into rages— The humbugging Magis Who prate that the wages Of Folly are Death—toast the Fools of all ages! They have ridden like froth down the whirlpools of time, They have jingled their caps in the councils of state, They have snared half the wisdom of life in a rhyme, And tripped into nothingness grinning ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... "time's compensation"! Who now may prate, "Evil is good misunderstood"? Surely such cogent blending requires some powerfully ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... that made us friends; Men prate of wealth in empty words, I Sit here content as '90 ends. And sip my grog, and smoke ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... incredulous voice, he said:— "What prate is this of fathers and revenge? The mighty Rustum never had ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... for her to accept such a proposition as mine, especially after all that has happened, and still prate of ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... think not then to say 'Tis others' fault, nor foolishly upbraid The lot thyself for thine own self hast made. Say not the world's askew! with idle prate Of never-ending grief the hour grows late. Strike off my head! with many a tear he cries, And might, in sooth, draw tears from ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... I had not sown for, I shunned from day to day her very sight. The father was far off. He comes, he hears, He seeks me, thanks me, wishes that his daughter May please me; talks to me of dawning prospects - I listen to his prate, go, see, and find A girl indeed. O, sultan, ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... (turning on him). The same applies to the artificial disparity of circumstances that you prate about with tears in your eyes! I heard you once. Class distinctions are ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... give up his shop, to retire from business, and for some time he had been thinking of going to see Sidonie, in order to interest her in his new schemes. That was not the time, therefore, to make disagreeable scenes, to prate about paternal authority and conjugal honor. As for Madame Chebe, being somewhat less confident than before of her daughter's virtue, she took refuge in the most profound silence. The poor woman wished that she were deaf and blind—that she ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... pour me in some more water; if my head begins to ache, I shall be sending for your master to talk to you.—You know, gentlemen, what megrims I get, and what a numskull mine is. After drinking, we will chirp a little as is our wont; 'tis not amiss to prate in one's cups' ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... hear infidelity prate of the horrors of slavery and defend a Godless theory of the State, I remember that those who had it in its purity did not regard the slave as a man. When I read the story of slavery and hear an exponent of free thought ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... do you want to prate such nonsense as that to these folks for? They won't need any kind of fertilizers in this country for twenty years. You'd better be resting instead of shooting such useless stuff as that ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... childish man are discussed grimly and at length in the newspapers and magazines. Our poor hobby-horses are dragged out of the stable, and made to show their shambling paces before the mob of gentlemen who read with ease. There has been much prate lately of as innocent a foible as ever served to make men self-forgetful for a few seconds of time—the collecting of first editions. Somebody hard up for 'copy' denounced this pastime, and made merry over a virtuoso's ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... and most attentive service on the part of natives, and they are deserving of the kindest and most considerate treatment; but it has often made me indignant to hear people, who have had little or no experience of living in the midst of a native population, prate of the rights of our "black brothers," and argue as if the latter thought, judged, amused themselves, or, in short, behaved, as the white men do, who have the advantage of hundreds of years ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... record of Time a fable; that the Deluge, for instance, is an old wives' story, and the economy of times and seasons a human fabrication:—when Astronomical and Mechanical Science strut up to the Throne whereon sits the Ancient of Days,—prate to Him, (the first Author of Law,) about the "supremacy of Law,"—and tell Him to His face that His miracles are things impossible:—when Physiology insinuates that Mankind cannot be descended from one primval pair; ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... myself. John Tullis playing nurse and story-teller to a seven-year-old boy, to the exclusion of everything else, is more than I can grasp. Somehow, I've come to feel that he's mine. That must be the reason. But you've heard me prate on this subject a hundred times. Don't let me start it again. There's something else you want to talk to me about, so please don't encourage me to tell all the wonderful things he ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the mystery! God knows how else you could have come, unless you are a modern Ganymede. Where then's your aquiline steed, sir? We have no neighbours here—none to stare, and pry, and prate, and slander." ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... woman with the evil eye, do you suppose that I wish you here to bring all the ills you prate of upon my head? I say that I am afraid of you. Why, for your sake, once, years ago, I made a vow to the Blessed Virgin that, whatever I worked on men, I would never again lift a hand against a ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... language blunts the faculties of man—-that because vainglory finds no vent in words, creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault so gross and obvious. If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but it costs too much And does not tend to decimate the Dutch; Your duty plainly then before you stands, Conscription is the law for seagirt lands; Prate not of freedom! Since I learned to shoot I itch to use my ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... kindred 230 Of the offender, add the brand of infamy, Add mutilation: and if this suffice not, Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst They may lick up that scum of schismatics. I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring 235 What we possess, still prate of Christian peace, As if those dreadful arbitrating messengers Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong, Should be let loose against the innocent sleep Of templed cities and the smiling fields, 240 For some poor argument of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... at the sincere beliefs and conscientiously performed rites of those, whether men or women, whether strangers or kinsfolk, from whose religion he disagrees. 'It is not ancient impressions only,' said Pascal, 'which are capable of abusing us. The charm of novelty has the same power.' The prate of new-born scepticism may be as tiresome and as odious as the cant of gray orthodoxy. Religious discussion is not to be foisted upon us at every turn either by defenders or assailants. All we plead for is that when the opportunity meets the ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... world A long black veil is furled. Even the face of Heaven itself seems lost Behind a veil. It takes a fervent soul In these tense times To visualise a God so long defamed By insolent lips, that send out prayers, and prate Of God's collaboration in dark deeds, So foul they put to shame the ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... man. I am a methodical man. Method is the thing, after all. But there are no people I more heartily despise than your eccentric fools who prate about method without understanding it; attending strictly to its letter, and violating its spirit. These fellows are always doing the most out-of-the-way things in what they call an orderly manner. Now here, I conceive, is a positive paradox. True method appertains ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... solemnised the death himself had wrought. But, lest his offspring should her fate partake, Spite of the immortal mixture in his make, He ripped her womb, and set the child at large, 120 And gave him to the centaur Chiron's charge: Then in his fury blacked the raven o'er, And bid him prate in his white plumes ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Thomas. Hold thy prate, nor be busy, For I will not believe thee; The body was seen by me Fastened on the cross with nails; With a sharp spear they pierced him, So that it passed through the heart; To the earth the blood fell, And made him soon dead. That body cannot live, Nor rise up again, ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... men of the Anglo-Saxon blood, tireless, restless, working. Only when men of other races, dark-skinned, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, passed his mental vision, was there the stillness of lazy rest; and Marmot was pleased, for he loved to prate of the Anglo-Saxon and the work they had done, and would do, for the world ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... down quickly. What, after all, is the sum of those doings in the shrub-house? What would Pippa gain, were she in truth great haughty Ottima? She would but "give abundant cause for prate." Ottima, bold, confident, and not fully aware, can face that out, but Pippa knows, more closely than the woman rich and proud ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... very neat, no doubt; But after all they MAY fall out: I think they will - some think they won't. My hands are small, as you may see, But not as small as they might be, At least, I think so - others don't. But there, a girl may preach and prate From morning six to evening eight, And never stop to dine, When all the world, although misled, Is quite agreed on any head - And it is ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... now elate, His grinning Rival 'gan to prate. Oh, fie! my friends; upon my word, You're too severe: he should be heard; For Mind can ne'er to glory reach, Without the usual aid of speech. If thus howe'er, you seal his doom, What hope have ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... would not, could you know all I have endured. To me, earth has been a hell—not the place of flames and torments of which your divines prate, but the true hell—that of the conscience and the soul. I, too, a man whose whole nature was athirst for truth. I sought it first among its professors; there I found that they who, too idle or too weak to demonstrate ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... all of Mrs. Prate's stairway in two moderate leaps and was at her side instantly. A moment of explanation consoled the troubled looking woman for the appearance of a stranger in Dr. Belford's stead, and then on tip toe they ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... the most honorable office a man can hold, and our elected candidates (except when they have the splendid self-abnegating courage of a Cleveland!) wade to Washington through a perfect bog of venal promises. We prate of our democratic institutions, and forget that free trade is one of the first proofs of a free people, and that protected industries are the feudalism of manufacture. We sneer at the corruption of a Jeffreys or a Marlborough ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... reason that shall be told, he was sorry that it had ever passed his lips. Still in the boat Sir Geoffrey applauded him, saying that his lady's melancholy had grown beyond all bearing, and that she did little but prate to him about his will and what colour of marble he desired for ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... "You prate like a play-actor," he snarled. Halfman's whole being flashed into activity again. He was no more a sentimentalist but ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... write to you, you said, frequently and copiously: you did not mean, I suppose, that I should always be scribbling, but I cannot help it. I can do nothing but converse with you. When present, my prate is incessant; when absent, I can prate to you with as little intermission; for the pen, used so carelessly and thoughtlessly as I use it, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... die?" asked Ghek. "Your people prate of the just laws of Manator, and yet you would slay three strangers without telling them of ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... understand me, or who choose to misunderstand me, those are the worst!—especially the ill-natured people, the classical people who bray about music, stride straight to the notes, and have no patience till they come to Beethoven; who foolishly prate and fume about my unclassical management, but at bottom only wish to conceal their own unskilfulness, their want of culture and of disinterestedness, or to excuse their habitual drudgery. Lazy people without talent I cannot undertake to ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... sell me that: and when the stranger should aske, What will you giue me for it? the beggar might answere: I haue ten or foureteene children, I will giue you some one or more of them, &c. For this rabble of beggars vseth thus fondly to prate with strangers. Now if there be any well-disposed man, who pitying the need and folly of these beggers, releaseth them of one sonne, and doth for Gods sake by some meanes prouide for him in another countrey: doth the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... agent of Pitt: hence this sale of sugar. To the Mother Society, again, it is clear that the scarcity is factitious; is the work of Girondins, and such like; a set of men sold partly to Pitt; sold wholly to their own ambitions, and hard-hearted pedantries; who will not fix the grain-prices, but prate pedantically of free-trade; wishing to starve Paris into violence, and embroil it with the Departments: hence this ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... passed my days, To spread about the itch of verse and praise; Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town, To fetch and carry sing-song up and down; Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouthed, and cried, With handkerchief and orange at my side; But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate, To Bufo left the whole Castalian state. Proud as Apollo on his forked hill, Sat full-blown Bufo puffed by every quill; Fed with soft dedication all day long, Horace and he went hand in hand in song. His library (where busts ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... talk to me about knowing," said the other, rather contemptuously. "Sure I gev in to you that he has a power o' prate, and the gift o' the gab, and all to that. I own to you that he has the-o-ry, and che-mis-thery, but he hasn't the craps. Now, the man that has the craps is ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... of a tenant in tail without issue." "Spoke like a true disciple of Geber," cries Ferret. "No, sir," replied Mr. Clarke, "Counsellor Caper is in the conveyancing way—I was clerk to Serjeant Croker." "Ay, now you may set up for yourself," resumed the other; "for you can prate as unintelligibly as ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... "What dost prate about?" he asked, still speaking roughly for he was wroth with her and hated to see the gaping crowd of young, empty-headed fools congregating round him and this persistent suppliant hanging round ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a narrow life, prate in the North of our sympathy with the universal man, don't we? And so we extend a stomachic greeting to our Spanish brother that sends us wine, and a bow from our organ of ideality to Italy for beauty incarnate in Art,—see the Georgian slaveholder only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... "If you had taken a journey through Siberia before you offered your services to the czar, you would have strangled yourself, or have cut out your tongue, rather than have gone to him with any such dastardly proposition as you confess yourself to have fathered. You prate of stultifying yourself by taking the oath of nihilism, and repudiating your word to Alexander. YOU! YOU! A PROFESSIONAL SPY!" She threw back her head and laughed aloud, not with glee, but with utter derision of spirit, and I shrank from the sound of it as I might have ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... thou fiend! Not unawares The sinner swallows Satan's bait, Nor pits conceal'd nor hidden snares Seeks blindly; wherefore dost thou prate Of destiny ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... not. That would have been too simple and honest and direct. You can't be honest and straightforward to save your lives. You live by deception, and boast about your love of truth. Your deepest craving is for violence, while you prate about your gentle influence over men. I haven't the least doubt in the world that Mrs. Huntington, for all her baby face, is back of all Huntington's violence—thinks she's a wonderful inspiration to him, with a special genius for the cattle ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... weakling, crushed beneath the inevitable diminutive—Flossie; or he will build up painfully, inch by inch, a barrier against the name's corroding action. He will boast of his biceps, flexing them the while. He will brag about cold baths. He will prate of chest measurements; regard golf with contempt; and speak of the West as ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... me ridiculously inconsistent for gentlemen upon this floor to prate so much about a republican form of government, and rise here and offer resolution after resolution about the Monroe doctrine and the downtrodden Mexicans, while they force upon the people of this District a government not of their own choice, because the voter in ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... this,—you who preach the gospel of man's pre-eminence;—you who prate of God and know nothing whatsoever about Him! The horse, dog, cat,—even the wild animals, whose vices, perchance, pale beside your own, may go to Heaven before you. The Supreme Architect is neither a Nero, nor a Stuart, nor a clown. He will recompense all who deserve ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... perfection among the sons of men. The very fact of his greatness made his failings all the more dangerous and unfortunate. To be blinded by the splendor of his fame and the lustre of his achievements and prate about the sin of belittling a great man is the falsest philosophy and the meanest cant. The only thing worth having, in history as in life, is truth; and we do wrong to our past, to ourselves, and to our posterity if we do ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... as to dream that I feel nothing? What is your love for Tom Faggus? What is your love for your baby (pretty darling as he is) to compare with such a love as for ever dwells with me? Because I do not prate of it; because it is beyond me, not only to express, but even form to my own heart in thoughts; because I do not shape my face, and would scorn to play to it, as a thing of acting, and lay it out before you, are you fools enough to think—" but here I stopped, having ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... should I set you on? Even for my love then, I beseech you, sir, To seek him out, and lest he prate of me To put your knife into him ere he come forth: Meseems this were not such wild work ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... I order you to hold your foul prate! (Rises.) It grows late. Go hang helm and harness in ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... Othello, but not great as Salvini was great. Salvini's Hamlet made me scream with mirth, but his Othello was the grandest, biggest, most glorious thing. We often prate of "reserved force." Salvini had it, for the simple reason that his was the gigantic force which may be restrained because of its immensity. Men have no need to dam up a little purling brook. If they do ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Columella to Virgil, and from Virgil back to some pleasant Idyl of Tibullus, and from Tibullus to the pretty prate of Horace about the Sabine Hills; I stroll through Pliny's villa, eying the clipped box-trees; I hear the rattle in the tennis-court; I watch ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... busy now with state affairs, I prate of Pitt and Fox; I ask the price of rail-road shares, I watch the turns of stocks: And this is life! no verdure blooms Upon the withered bough. I save a fortune in perfumes,— I'm ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... sooth, The old ones prate of!—Bah, what is't they want? 'Some one to work for me, when I am old; Some one to follow me unto my grave; Some one—for me!' Yes, yes. There is not one Old huddler-by-the-fire would shift his seat To a cold corner, if it might bring back All of the Children in ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... told his grievance about the usher, and Firth thought that though it was not wise in Hugh to prate about Crofton on the top of the coach, it was worse to sit by and listen without warning, unless the listener meant to hold his own tongue. But he fancied the usher had since heard something which made him sorry; and the best way now was ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... poor the prate Of statute and state, We once held with these fellows— Here, on the flood's pale-green, Hark how he bellows, Each bluff old Sea-Lawyer! Talk to them, ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... doctor, he is more trouble to you than your disease: if he is on board ship with you, he disgusts you more than sea-sickness; if he praises you, he is more fulsome than blame. It is more pleasure associating with bad men who have tact than with good men who prate. Nestor indeed in Sophocles' Play, trying by his words to soothe exasperated Ajax, said to ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Powder pulvro, pudro. Power povo, potenco. Power (of attorney) konfidatesto. Powerful multepova. Powerless senpotenca. Practical praktika. Practice (custom) kutimo. Practice praktiko, kutimo, uzado. Practise praktiki. Prairie herbejo. Praise lauxdi. Prank petoleco—ajxo. Prate babili. Prattle babili. Pray (religious) pregxi. Pray (to request) peti. Prayer pregxo. Prayer-book pregxlibro. Preach prediki. Preacher predikisto. Preaching predikado. Preamble antauxparolo. Prebendary ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Izdubar will seek The cool enchantment of the cove, and slake His thirst with its sweet waters bubbling pure, Where Love has spread for him her sweetest lure, The maids expectant listening, watch and wait His coming; oft in ecstacies they prate O'er his surprise, and softly sport and splash The limpid waves around, that glowing flash Like heaps of snowy pearls lung to the light By Hea's[1] hands, his Zir-ri[2] to delight. And now upon the rock each maid reclines, While Ishtar's form beneath them brightly shines; ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... soul must win what it deserves. Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves, Whose slightest action or inaction serves The one great aim. Why, even Death stands still, And waits an hour sometimes ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... when all the kings that promise peace while they swell their armouries and armies; when all the statesmen that chatter of the people's weal as they steal up to the locked casket where coronets are kept; when all the men who talk of "glory," and prate of an "idea" that they may stretch their nation's boundary, and filch their neighbour's province—when all these are no longer in the land, and no more looked on with favour, then I will believe your cry that you hate ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... and protoplasm you matter-mongers prompt to prate; Of jelly-speck development and apes that grew to ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... a timorous soul. Through brightest hours untimely vapours rise— But while I prate, the lucky moment flies. The work, the weather, and the world are fair; A few more strokes—and ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... of bearing arms departed long ago to join the ranks of the factious in the Basque provinces. Those who remain are for the most part grey-beards and priests, good for nothing but to assemble in private coffee-houses, and to prate treason together. Let them prate, Don Jorge; let them prate; the destinies of Spain do not depend on the wishes of ojalateros and pasteleros, but on the hands of stout gallant nationals like myself and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... stroke, is a matter for cheers, derisive or otherwise. The Rev. Septimus need not prate of golden days gone by. Boys at heart never change. And the atmosphere is so charged with electricity that a spark sets the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... The preachers prate of fallen man And choirs repeat the chant, While unco' guid with unction urge Repression of the joys that surge, And jail for those who can't. The poor deluded duds forget That something drew the sting When Adam tiptoed to his fall, And made it hardly hurt ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... a small achievement at the best, While motherhood is heaven and hell.) This ever-growing argument of sex Is most unseemly, and devoid of sense. Why waste more time in controversy, when There is not time enough for all of love, Our rightful occupation in this life? Why prate of our defects—of where we fail, When just the story of our worth would need Eternity for telling; and our best Development comes ever through your praise, As through our praise you reach your highest self? Oh! had you not been miser of your ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... Peace, thou thing! Thou hast done a worthy deed, and earned the price Of blood, and they who use thee will reward thee. But thou wert sent to watch, and not to prate, As thou said'st even now—then do thine office, But let it be in silence, as behoves thee, Since, though thy prisoner, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... study-house boasted even Cabbalists starving themselves into celestial visions and graduating for the Divine kiss. How infinitely restful after the Milovka market-place! No more, for that day at least, would he prate of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... of distinction, are to all intents and purposes married, except the consideration of different sexes. They are directly under the conduct of their whisperer; and think they are in a state of freedom, while they can prate with one of these attendants of all men in general, and still avoid the man they most like. You do not see one heiress in a hundred whose fate does not turn upon this circumstance of chusing a confident. Thus it is that the lady is addressed to, presented and flattered, only by proxy, in her woman. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... you will, I deserve it. A man may prate of his own secrets if he like, but he should be careful of those of other people. I trusted yours to another, and ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... jealous, in all the tenses and moods of that amiable passion? But, my good friend, you have all this time spoke nothing but the paltry gossip which simpletons repeat from play-books and romances, till they give mere cant a real and powerful influence over their minds. Boys and girls prate themselves into love; and when their love is like to fall asleep, they prate and tease themselves into jealousy. But you and I, Frank, are rational beings, and neither silly nor idle enough to talk ourselves into any other relation than that of ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... are long. Such is the doctrine drawn from Holy Scripture, says Cosmas, and as for the vain blasphemers who pretend that the earth is a round ball, the Lord hath stultified them for their sins until they impudently prate of Antipodes, where trees grow downward and rain falls upward. As for such nonsense, the worthy ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... patriotism, no gratitude, none of the nobler attributes of man, and whose mission seems but destruction to his race, and deadly enmity to his country. The Times, who in these days of victory and triumph of Union arms, would "steal the livery of heaven to serve the devil in," and prate of its devotion to the Union, furnishes us some information it were well for good citizens to know, and which we will presume is (unlike most statements in that ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... opportunely and somewhat aggressively burst into a guffaw of derisive laughter. "Miss Loomis is just one of those admirable women," said he, "that empty-headed idiots prate about. I wish other people had half her sense." A luckless way of essaying the defence of the absent, for it reflected ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the world, save pleasant life, by the boon of Allah Almighty!" He answered, "O my lady Zayn al-Mawasif, ask of me what thou wilt of the goods of the world." Quoth she, "What shall I ask of thee? For sure thou wilt fare forth and prate of me in the highway and I shall become a laughing-stock among the folk and they will make a byword of me in verse, me who am the daughter of the chief of the merchants and whose father is known of the notables of the tribe. I have ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... professing to experiment upon pure metal, at least to see that it was not mere dross they were casting into the crucible. Plainly, however, they despise any such nice distinctions. The most earnest prayer and the emptiest ceremonial prate are both alike to them. What sort of a process they imagine prayer to be may be at once perceived from the sort of trials to which they desire ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... thing, although you speak so lightly of it. If you had had as many as I, perhaps you would change your tune. Any way I'm a thief - make the most of that - but I'm not a devil from hell, God strike me dead. I would have you to know I've an honour of my own, as good as yours, though I don't prate about it all day long, as if it was a God's miracle to have any. It seems quite natural to me; I keep it in its box till it's wanted. Why now, look you here, how long have I been in this room with you? Did you not tell me you were alone ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... half world Nature seems dead.... Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... Tarleton; "are you going, by your theoretical treatises on philosophy, to make me learn the practical part of it, and prate upon learning while I am supporting ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this frog, As like as is the puppy to the dog. He is of nature cold, his mouth is wide To prate, and at true goodness to deride. He mounts his head as if he was above The world, when yet 'tis that which has his love. And though he seeks in churches for to croak, He neither loveth Jesus nor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... could see the snow dust of Chilcoot yet powdering his shoulders. And then he strewed the table with the nuggets, stuffed ptarmigans, bead work and seal pelts of the returned Klondiker, and began to prate ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... but to pretend to be greatly grieved at his vagary, to have the act lauded as an instance of Roman virtue. I look upon the famed Brutus, when he thought it a matter of conscience to witness, as well as order, his sons' execution, to have been a vain unfeeling fool or a madman. Let us have no prate about conscience proceeding from a hard heart; these are frightful notions when they become infectious. A handful of such madmen are enough, if allowed to have their way, to enact the horrors of a French Revolution. All this you know, Eusebius, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... ever think for to make a man, Sir; no, I promise you no. [He killed Kincairnes father by boyling the antimonian cup, which ought only to seep in.][132] Inter bonos bene agier.[133] When any plead a prate[134] and all denied it, I know the man, yet neminem nominabo, Honest Cicero hes ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... you prate to me?' said Redgauntlet, bending his brows. 'I, sir, transact my own business; you, I am told, act by a ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... will force me to write a book about Italy myself, to give them 'the loud lie.' They prate about assassination; what is it but the origin of duelling—and 'a wild justice,' as Lord Bacon calls it? It is the fount of the modern point of honour in what the laws can't or won't reach. Every man is liable to it more or less, according to circumstances or place. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... or hiding themselves in dark Holes, Closets, Beds, &c. We are all for Humour, Gallantry, Conversation, and Courtship, and shou'dn't endure the chief Lady in the Play a Mute, or to say very little, as 'twas agreeable to them: Our amorous Sparks love to hear the pretty Rogues prate, snap up their Gallants, and Repartee upon 'em on all sides. We shou'dn't like to have a Lady marry'd without knowing whether she gives her consent or no, (a Custom among the Romans) but wou'd be for hearing all the Courtship, all the rare and fine ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... Harrison's Rota Club, with his noddle full of new fangled notions about government, the clearest object of which is to establish the tail upon the head; a fellow who leaves you the statutes and law of old England, to prate of Rome and Greece—sees the Areopagus in Westminster-Hall, and takes old Noll for a Roman consul—Adad, he is like to prove a dictator amongst them instead. Never mind—d—n ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... joy of the people was real. They know what is right. Besides, consult the grand thermometer of opinion, the price of the funds: on the 17th Brumaire at 11 francs, on the 20th at 16 and to-day at 21. In such a state of things I may let the Jacobins prate as they like. But let them ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Roses, prate ye still of ruth And would me my brief hour of bliss deny? And yet all happy things to love are sooth, But I, ah me, this destiny so high Weighs on my spirit like a drowsy spell, I cannot joy like those, nor stay, I fail Before the greatness of my high ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
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