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More "Terse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... followers at this time was a man named William Calk, who jotted down in his diary the events of each day.[10] It is a short record, but as amusing as it is instructive; for the writer's mind was evidently as vigorous as his language was terse and untrammelled. He was with a small party, who were going out as partners; and his journal is a faithful record of all things, great or small, that at the time impressed him. The opening entry contains ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... discussion on the action of the State Jackson had spoken strongly on the side of the majority. In terse phrase he had summed up his view of the situation. He was no advocate of secession. He deprecated the hasty action of South Carolina. "It is better," he said, "for the South to fight for her rights in the Union than ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... continues: "It is precisely at this epoch that the civilized world finds itself face to face with the Jewish faith. Based upon the clear and simple dogma of the divine unity, discarding naturalism and pantheism by the marvelously terse phrase, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,' possessing a law, a book, the depository of grand moral precepts and of an elevated religious poetry, Judaism had an incontestable superiority, and it might have been ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... see, I am short of material. Accordingly, I return to Callisthenes and Philistus, in whom I see that you have been wallowing. Callisthenes is a commonplace and hackneyed piece of business, like a good many Greeks. The Sicilian is a first-rate writer, terse, sagacious, concise, almost a minor Thucydides;[589] but which of his two books you have—for these are two works—I don't know. That about Dionysius is my favourite. For Dionysius himself is a magnificent intriguer, and was familiarly ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... had just begun to pall on his fancy, when the ANTIQUITIES fell into his hands. It was like a draught of some generous southern wine, after a course of barley-water. Here was Latin worth reading; rich, sinewy, idiomatic, full of flavour, masculine. Flexible, yet terse. Latin after his own heart; a cry across ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... inward sense of things, the purity of this medium, its laws or tricks of refraction: nothing is to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter save that. Style in all its varieties, reserved or opulent, terse, abundant, musical, stimulant, academic, so long as each is really characteristic or expressive, finds thus its justification, the sumptuous good taste of Cicero being as truly the man himself, and not another, justified, yet insured inalienably to him, thereby, as would have been his portrait ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... age, or profession." Those who came to consult the seer on affairs of the heart, therefore, received only the scantiest mention from his biographer, and never were the languishing and sighing of Mr. Campbell's devotees described with any romantic glamor. On the contrary, Defoe portrayed in terse and homely phrases the follies and affectations of the dumb man's fair clients. The young blooming beauty who found little Duncan "wallowing in the dust" and bribed him with a sugarplum to reveal the name of her future husband; the "sempstress with ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... we felt our way through lonely woods and deserted villages, being continually stopped by ditches or barbed wire or a barrier across the road. Often ahead of us we would suddenly see bayonets flickering through the mist as our head-lights shone out upon them, and immediately the terse cry of "Halte-la!" followed; a sergeant would come forward, lantern in hand, to examine our papers and suspiciously look us over. All the time we felt that a dozen unseen rifles were leveled at us from somewhere out ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... with personality and obscenity. His style, Campbell observes, is 'almost a texture of slang phrases, patched with shreds of French and Latin.' His verses on Margaret Hussey, which we have quoted, are in his happiest vein. The following lines, too, on Cardinal Wolsey, are as true as they are terse:— ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... gave a list of George's school studies, each one headed by a flourishing capital; and also told the names of four new colts that appeared on the premises since Tom left; and stated, in the same connection, that father and mother were well. The style of the letter was decidedly concise and terse; but Tom thought it the most wonderful specimen of composition that had appeared in modern times. He was never tired of looking at it, and even held a council with Eva on the expediency of getting it framed, to hang up in his room. Nothing ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... household word, was the editor of an ill-fated society journal. I was a contributor to its little-read pages, and I came one day upon an article entitled 'Pompa Mortis.' This article was written in such astonishingly good English, so clean, so hardbitten and terse, and yet so graceful, that I could not resist the temptation to ask its author's name. My editor modestly acknowledged it for his own, and when I told him what I thought of its style he confessed to a close study of Defoe and a great admiration for him. I saw nothing more from ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... famous military men. The autograph of General Grant is plain and simple in its construction, not an unnecessary movement or mark in it—a signature as bare of superfluity and ostentation as was the silent soldier and hero of Appomattox. In the autograph of R.E. Lee we have the same terse, brief manner of construction as in Grant's. It is more antiquated and formal in its style, more stiff and what might be called aristocratic. Its firm upright strokes, with angular horizontal terminal lines, indicate ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... first time the boy had seen that name, and he blinked and smiled and got very red. "Terse and literary," he said, dying to put his arms round her and kiss her before all mankind. "They'll have something to talk about at dinner to-night. A nice whack in ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... noblest and most perfect specimen of our prose, the stiff and bald, the vapid and turgid manner of the Orientalist who "commences" and "concludes"—never begins and ends, who never uses a short word if he can find a long word, who systematically rejects terse and idiomatic Anglo-Saxon when a Latinism is to be employed and whose pompous stilted periods are the very triumph of the "Deadly-lively"! By arts precisely similar the learned George Sale made the Koran, that pure and unstudied inspiration of Arabian ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... said Buttons, "I must write a letter which will have weight with the old gentleman. He likes the terse business style. I think that little hint about her fortune is well managed too. That's a great deal better than boring him with the state of ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... favourite mood. You live on sorrow," she said, pelting me with the terse, sharp sentences. Then, for I twitched at her telling me I lived on sorrow, she melted at once, and said, "Oh, Oliver, I'm so sorry. Why did you not send for me and let me nurse it better? Surely that was my right as ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... that same wavering road to Paris, dated as early as the 5th of August and addressed to the good people of Rheims, some of whom had evidently written to her to ask what was the meaning of the delay, and whether she had given up the cause of the country. There is a terse determination in its brief, indignant sentences which is a relief to the reader weary of the wavering ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... of Lamarck as a scientific observer, "were width of scope, fertility of ideas, and a preeminent faculty of precise description, arising not only from a singularly terse style, but from a clear insight into both the distinctive features and the resemblance of forms" (Encyc. ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... home; while Mrs. Verrier, in a corner of the carriage, shut her hollow eyes, and laid her thin hands one over the other, and in her purple draperies made a picture a la Melisande which was not lost upon her companions. Boyson's mind registered a good many grim or terse comments, as occasionally he found himself watching this lady. Scarcely a year since that hideous business at Niagara, and here she was in that extravagant dress! He wished his sister would not make a friend of her, and that Daphne ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... never prevented Gregory from what he considered the chiefest duty of his office, that of preaching. His sermons, which were as famous as those of Chrysostom in Constantinople, were {65} direct in their appeal, vivid in their illustration, terse and epigrammatic in their expression. Paul the Deacon sums up his work by saying that he was entirely ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... brevity, the soul of wit, laconism^; Tacitus; ellipsis; syncope; abridgment &c (shortening) 201; compression &c 195; epitome &c 596; monostich^; brunch word, portmanteau word. V. be concise &c adj.; condense &c 195; abridge &c 201; abstract &c 596; come to the point. Adj. concise, brief, short, terse, close; to the point, exact; neat, compact; compressed, condensed, pointed; laconic, curt, pithy, trenchant, summary; pregnant; compendious &c (compendium) 596; succinct; elliptical, epigrammatic, quaint, crisp; sententious. Adv. concisely &c adj.; briefly, summarily; in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... where the telegraph service at that time was under military law, although the operators received $125 a month. Here again Edison began to invent and improve on existing apparatus, with the result of having once more to "move on." The story may be told in his own terse language: "I was not the inventor of the auto repeater, but while in Memphis I worked on one. Learning that the chief operator, who was a protege of the superintendent, was trying in some way to put New York and New Orleans ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... officiated as his secretary, after the appointment of Mr. Gooch as Resident Engineer to the Bolton and Leigh Railway, has informed us that he then remarked—what in after years he could better appreciate—the clear, terse, and vigorous style of Mr. Stephenson's dictation. There was nothing superfluous in it; but it was close, direct, and to the point,—in short, thoroughly businesslike. And if, in passing through the pen of the amanuensis, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... rather long book is just pitched right, for it gives interesting detail of some important voyages made from the earliest days up to the end of the nineteenth century. It is not too terse, and not too profuse, just right to capture your interest ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... time the Commodore had sat down, and was writing his report as fast as he could get his pencil over the paper. It was a short, terse, but quite comprehensive account of the happenings of the last three hours, and a clear statement of the strength and position of the torpedo and cruiser squadron under his command. When he had finished, he put the paper into an ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... said the terse and epigrammatic Painter. "Made rings round them. Haven't you finished yet? Well, chuck it, and ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... you've made the biggest discovery of the year in this point of the woods," was Hyman's terse comment. "I reckon, too, the captain ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... lacks in poetic strength and beauty. It contains more commonplace verses and ideas than either of the other two. Of the stories of the old masters, "Mona Lisa's Picture," "The Duke's Commission" and "Woman's Art" are perhaps the best, and the last poem especially is very spirited and terse. Mrs. Preston's style has the rare merit in these days of uniting conciseness and directness to grace and beauty of expression. Her greatest failing is a lack of the sense of climax. There are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... gratifying to Mr. Dangler. He is an active, energetic and impulsive member, though not without considerable tact, and generally successful in putting his measures through. As a speaker he is clear-headed, terse and forcible, and on subjects appealing ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... which she had never tried to understand, had always dismissed, according to her habit, with a single label? "Labels don't help. Labels get you nowhere." How often the children had told her that, finding her terse terminology that of a shallow mind, endowed with inadequate machinery for acquiring and retaining knowledge, as indeed ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... students of our literature. His Instauratio was in Latin, written mostly by paid helpers from short English abstracts. He regarded Latin as the only language worthy of a great work; but the world neglected his Latin to seize upon his English,—marvelous English, terse, pithy, packed with thought, in an age that used endless circumlocutions. The first ten essays, published in 1597, were brief notebook jottings of Bacon's observations. Their success astonished the author, but not till fifteen years later were they republished ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Faith, it is surprising. 'Mid all the poets, good, and bad, and worse. Who've scribbled (Hock or Chian eulogizing) Post and papyrus with "Immortal verse"— Melodiously similitudinising In Sapphics languid or Alcaics terse No one, my little brown Arabian berry,. Hath sung thy praises—'tis ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the case for the crown, and Mr. Crean, counsel for Mr. Lalor, rose to address the jury on behalf of his client. His speech was argumentative, terse, forcible, and eloquent; and seemed to please and astonish not only the auditors but the judges themselves, who evidently had not looked for so much ability and vigour in the young advocate before ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... money. Such a manual of rhetoric has been preserved to us, composed under Sulla's dictatorship by an unknown author, who according to the fashion then prevailing(36) taught simultaneously Latin literature and Latin rhetoric, and wrote on both; a treatise remarkable not merely for its terse, clear, and firm handling of the subject, but above all for its comparative independence in presence of Greek models. Although in method entirely dependent on the Greeks, the Roman yet distinctly and even abruptly rejects all "the useless matter which the Greeks had gathered together, solely ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was ornate, his style was terse and beautiful; in conversation he was voluble and transcendently entertaining; knew everybody and everything; never seemed to read, and yet was always prepared in his cases, and seemed to be a lawyer by intuition. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... these, the hopping-sallows are in greatest esteem, being of a clearer terse grain, and requiring a more succulent soil; best planted a foot deep, and a foot and half above ground (though some will allow but a foot) for then every branch will prove excellent for future setlings. After three years growth (being cropped the second and third) the first ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... cabbage and roast turkey go?" Dan called, finding himself confronted with the great slabs of cabbage; and the traveller, thinking it was supposed to be a joke, favoured us with another nervous grin and a terse "Thanks!" Then Dan reappeared, laden, and the man's eyes glistened as he forgot his first surprise in his second. "Real cabbage!" he cried. "Gosh! ain't tasted cabbage for five years"; and the Maluka telling him to "sit right down then and begin, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... eventful four months, and in making himself master of the situation. His first act is to transmit to all the (Buchanan) subordinates abroad copies of the President's Message, accompanying it with a score of terse and sparkling paragraphs regarding the rebellion; yet, in those few paragraphs, demonstrating the illusory and ephemeral advantages which foreign nations would derive from any connection they might form with any 'dissatisfied or discontented ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that some of the crew were Englishmen who had served under Miller in the Chilian War; and though I did not know that, I could plainly see how interested they were in the discussion. The colonel saw it too, and in a few simple but terse and vigorous words he laid the case ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... was the smile of one who had almost forgotten what it meant to have the companionship of his fellow-man. Both men were surprised by the eager, sincere manner in which he greeted them. He clasped their hands in a grip that belied his terse, uncompromising manner at the telephone; his eyes were not those of the domineering individual whom conjecture had appraised so vividly a ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... delicate snow crust was to her an open book; yet Prince caught the appreciative twinkle in her eye as she read the Rules of the Camp. These rules had been fathered by the Unquenchable Bettles at a time when his blood ran high, and were remarkable for the terse simplicity of their humor. ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... 29 is highly terse. The words are grammatically unconnected with one another. Only a few substantives have been used. These represent the heads of the different arguments urged by sceptics for showing the non-existence of anything besides the body which is seen and felt. I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... in a strange way, as if he liked her terse creed, and would fain have heard it a second time. Then suddenly he leant back with his head against a corner of the piano. The fronds of a maidenhair fern hanging in delicate profusion almost hid his face. He was essentially muscular ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... was given in a number of sharp, terse, letters, sent to the Liberator from various places where the sisters stopped while lecturing. A few passages will convey some idea of the spirit and style of these letters, thirteen in number. In the latter part of ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... had, in his letters to the selected number, timed each candidate at an interval of ten or fifteen minutes from those preceding and following. They were shown in as they arrived, and had short conversations with Mr. Nyttleton—terse, and to the point. Miss Aldclyffe neither moved nor spoke during this proceeding; it might have been supposed that she was quite unmindful of it, had it not been for what was revealed by a keen penetration ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... occasion when a gawsterer was gloppened sorely. There was an ancient mansion, wainscoted and floored with shining oak, glib—I have not heard that apposite, terse little monosyllable since I went slurring with the village boys—glib as glass; and in that ancient mansion there was a banquet; and to that banquet came, with other guests, "a fop in a gay coat," ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Hicks, Jr. turned as a hand rested grippingly on his shoulder. Head Coach Patrick Henry Corridan, his face grim, had come to him, and in quick, terse sentences, he outlined ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... in its wake. Commencing by supporting the Government, it soon became bitterly inimical to President Davis and the whole administration. The invective in which it indulged was not so violent as in the past, but it was even more powerful and dangerous. Every department was lashed, in those brief, terse sentences which all will remember—sentences summing up volumes in a paragraph, condensing oceans of gall into a drop of ink. Under these mortal stabs, delivered coolly and deliberately, the authors of public abuses shrank, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... never shown to Gale that daring side of her character which had been so suggestively defined in Belding's terse description and Ladd's encomiums, and in her own audacious speech and merry laugh and flashing eye of that never-to-be-forgotten first meeting. She might have been an entirely different girl. But Gale remembered; and when the ice had been somewhat broken ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... de Longueville even than the grandeur of her soul; for that is an incontestable feature which all must recognise, whether partisans or adversaries:—in spite of her errors and deviations, she certainly possessed greatness of soul. If a terse judgment then were summed up of her character, it might be said without flattery that, take her all in all, she was not unworthy of being the sister of ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... parliamentary constitution, not only in its correspondence with, but, what is more important to notice, in its occasional partial deviations from, strict theory. The theory has sometimes been expressed in the formula, "The King reigns, but does not govern." But, like many another terse apophthegm, it conveys an idea which requires some modification before it can be regarded as an entirely correct representation of the fact; and the King himself, especially if endowed with fair capacity and force of character, imbued with ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Patel could see in it I can't say." As she sat down to the table—not at the head: that was significantly empty—he admired her figure, maidenly still despite her majestic bearing; admired the terse contour of her head and noticed, not without a sigh, her small selfish ear. Madame Patel was nearing forty and her November hair had begun to whiten, but in her long gray eyes was invincible youth, poised, self-centred youth. ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... terse, comprehensive character, which distinguishes his former productions. It is full of entertainment and instruction, clear and judicious in style and arrangement, discriminating in the selection of topics, abundant in details, and conducted with that peculiar brevity which leaves not a word ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... professor of horticulture, university of Vermont. A treatise on the general principles governing outdoor art; with sundry suggestions for their application in the commoner problems of gardening. Every paragraph is short, terse and to the point, giving perfect clearness to the discussions at all points. In spite of the natural difficulty of presenting abstract principles the whole matter is made entirely plain even to the inexperienced reader. Illustrated. 152 pages. 5 ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... handwriting. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me—a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating. My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative character, nor one on the recesses of whose mind and feelings even ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... published his "Vanity of Human Wishes," for which he received the sum of fifteen guineas,—a miserable recompense for a poem which Byron pronounces "sublime," and which is as true as it is magnificent in thought, and terse in language. In the same year, Garrick had "Irene" acted, but it was "damned" the first night, although it dragged on heavily for eight nights more. When the author was asked how he felt at its ill-success, he replied, "Like the Monument!" How different from Addison, walking restlessly, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... Private Mucklewame literary composition presents no difficulties. Here is a single example of his terse and masterly style:— ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... overthrow the laws which had bound it so long. So, too, it seems to us, despite all the rhythmical innovations of our time. The personality that could beat out exuberantly music as rhythmically various and terse and free must indeed have possessed a primitive naivete and vitality and spontaneity of impulse. What manifestation of unbridled will in that freedom of expression! Berlioz must have been blood-brother to the savage, the elemental creature who out of the dark and hidden needs of ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... of men, all of whom looked more or less continuously at something that lay upon the polished deal. One of the party, none other than the Commissioner himself, had just finished speaking, and in silence now we stood about the gruesome object which had furnished him with the text of his very terse address. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... that the first sentence of a paragraph of exposition and of argument is usually a terse statement of the proposition; and that after the proposition has been established there follows a longer sentence gathering up all the points of the discussion into a full, rounded period which forms a suitable climax and conclusion ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... testimony of Peter and the other disciples, the 3,000 would not on that day have seen Jesus as He really was and received Him and been baptized in His name. The Holy Spirit added His testimony to that of Peter and that of the written Word. Mr. Moody used to say in his terse and graphic way that when Peter said, "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ (Acts ii. 36), the Holy ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... in the external form of this preaching was its terse unceremonious directness. Putting aside the verbiage and dulled circumlocution and stiff hazy phraseology of pulpit etiquette and dignity, it went straight to its point. There was no waste of time about customary formalities. The preacher had something to say, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... had happened before he entered her room, not omitting a terse word as to the character of the men he ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... know," Westerling proceeded, referring very insistently to a secret of the Browns which had baffled Bouchard. "Try a woman," he went on with that terse, hard directness which reflected one of his sides. "There is nobody like a woman for that sort of thing. Spend enough to ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... herself with the thought that it was for her father's sake Dave had galloped to town, found a doctor, secured a fresh team and driven back along the little-used foothill trails. She recalled the doctor's terse description of that journey. No doubt Dave would have done it all for her father, had her father been there alone, but as things were she had a deep conviction that he had done it for her. And it was with a greater effort than seemed reasonable that she laid her fingers on his arm ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... one-act play, nonetheless, has an obvious right to existence, as much as the short story, and there are plentiful proofs that it can be as terse, vivid, and significant. Most novelists don't tack on a short story at the end of their books for full measure, but issue their contes either in collections or in the pages of the magazines. What similar chances are there, or can there be, for ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... through the medium of an extraordinarily terse and unspoiled language, a language that has not lost its earthy freshness by mauling and softening at the hands of literary generations, what a lilting crystal-bright vision of things. It is as if the air of the Mediterranean itself, thin, brilliant, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... there was much else than Napoleon and Shakespeare in the pages. There were the moral and poetic insights, and, moreover, there was the style, the vital and penetrating Emersonianism, which aroused, and no doubt, dazzled the youthful and impressionable reader. Emerson's terse epigrammatic method of writing was congenial to my inability to follow difficult logic. His style seemed to me the poetical foil of all the prosers of all time. Through the reading of this book eventually I became acquainted with Emerson, ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... proportion to the lower part of his face, gave an unmistakable character of intellect to the finely placed head. Indeed, he liked to observe that the gods of the Greek sculptors owed much of their elevation to being similarly out of drawing! The lower features were terse, succinct, and powerful,—from the bold, decided jaw, to the large, firm, ugly, good-humored mouth. His very spectacles aided the general expression; they had a look of the man. But how shall I attempt to tell you of his brilliant conversation, of his rapid, energetic manner, of his quick turns ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... joyful sound of the Borah's voice brings promise of relief; but no! for what interest can there be in the Borah if you have no Dirzee? In the spirit of fair play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is "rank bosh." She declares that the Dirzee is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... a fellow does when he knows he's really got to," was the young skipper's terse advice ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... public attention. Critics were, however, by no means unanimous as to their merits. They had so much individuality—stood so far apart from the standards of contemporary fiction—that there was considerable difficulty in applying the usual tests in their case. The terse, condensed style, the exactitude of expression, and the constant use of illustration, naturally suggested to some the notion that the new writer must be a man of science relaxing himself in the walks of fiction. The editor's ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... golden grains and eke of diamond-dust in its composition. The thoughts are not given in the bullion lump, but are well refined, and having passed through the engraver's hands, they shine with the true polish, ring with the true sound. In terse, pregnant, and somewhat oracular diction, we are here instructed how to avoid the evils contingent upon bold commercial enterprise—how to guard against excesses of the accumulative instinct—how to exercise a thoroughly conscientious mode of regulating ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... under the blow. The terse directness, a part of the girl's nature and training, was embarrassing to the man of ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... sit down. He stood in the middle of the room. With some gesticulation which added greatly to the force of the story, he gave a most terse and vivid account of Mr. John's arrival at the embankment by the grove—of his charging a whole regiment of Union volunteers. Here was honesty again. Mr. Sherman did not believe in mincing matters even ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... is made brilliant by the presence of Henry Clapham McGavack's terse and lucid exposure of hyphenated hypocrisy, entitled "Dr. Burgess, Propagandist". Mr. McGavack's phenomenally virile and convincing style is supported by a remarkable fund of historical and diplomatic knowledge, and the feeble fallacies of the pro-German ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... many else which I have never known. Thus have I thought; and days on days have flown Slowly, or rapidly—unwilling still For you to try my dull, unlearned quill. Nor should I now, but that I've known you long; That you first taught me all the sweets of song: The grand, the sweet, the terse, the free, the fine; What swell'd with pathos, and what right divine: Spenserian vowels that elope with ease, And float along like birds o'er summer seas; Miltonian storms, and more, Miltonian tenderness; ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... gives some extracts from his letter to one Aristides, reconciling the apparent discrepancy between Matthew and Luke in the genealogy of Christ by a reference to the Jewish law, which compelled a man to marry the widow of his deceased brother, if the latter died without issue. His terse and pertinent letter to Origen, impugning the authority of the apocryphal book of Susanna, and Origen's wordy and uncritical answer, are both extant. The ascription to Africanus of an encyclopaedic work entitled ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... execution of the last adherents of the Stuarts in 1759 the town was hardly at any time in a state of quietude. As described by an observant writer, "every man became a soldier and every house that was not a mere peasant's hut was a fortress." A local poet of the Seventeenth Century summed it up in a terse if not elegant couplet ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... view, i.e. the interval in which the surgeon was busy dislodging the clots from the cellular membrane, the sac of the false aneurism. The procedure devised by Mr. Syme to obviate this difficulty, and which was put in practice by him in several very trying cases, is best given in his own terse description of an operation in a case ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... himself opened the door, and throughout the brief conversation that ensued they remained in darkness—not even a candle was lighted. Tall, lean, cadaverous, dressed in a much- worn day suit, his cap under his arm, Constantine stonily listened to Vilyashev's terse account of their sister's ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... Fillmore Flagg, "of course we understand that you were joking in what you said just now: that you really admire the terse, clear, and wonderfully complete description of this strange rock by Miss Fenwick, quite as much as we do." Turning to Fern Fenwick, he continued: "I believe, Miss Fenwick, that I can throw some light on the puzzling questions you have ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... shape the "Mahabharata" contains some two hundred thousand verses. The style is forcible, often terse and nervous: the action is well sustained, and the whole effect produced is that of a poem written in commemoration of actual conflict between members of rival clans who lived somewhere southeast of the Punjab. In portrayal of character the Hindoo ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... With this terse observation he turned his back on the boy, and after loitering a moment to make sure that he had nothing more to say, the lad slipped away, triumphantly bearing with him the coveted morsel of yellow pasteboard. That its import was noncommittal and even contained a tang of skepticism troubled him ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... mercifully, though in it she was not of it. This was Gregory's relieving thought as his eye ran over them, the women with powdered faces and extravagant clothes and the men with the oddest collars and boots and hair. "Shoddy Bohemians," was his terse definition of them; an inaccurate definition; for though, in the main, Bohemians, they were ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... subscribers what was going on in Paris. The admirers of Diderot profess to look on this Conversation as one of the most precious pearls in his philosophic casket. It turns upon the conditions of belief and unbelief, represented by the two interlocutors respectively, and is a terse and graphic summary of the rationalistic objections to the creed of the church. The most conspicuous literary passage in it is a parable which has been attributed to Rousseau, but with which Rousseau had really nothing to do, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... himself adopt this style, particularly when age and iteration had made the use of certain formulae familiar to him. But though these repetitions and subdivisions of arrangement are often wearisome, there are not wanting traces of another manner, which suggest a terse and racy preacher going straight to the point and driving home his ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... stories easily available for the private reader and public teacher. Mr. Moody's idiom has been strictly preserved. He tells the story. "Gold" will be found scattered through the volume, which includes Mr. Moody's terse declarations of many ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... the scope of her male companion flies the heavenward imagination of the girl. It is he who questions, it is she who answers; and soon there steals upon you, as you read, the conviction that the youth loves the girl, and loves in vain. All in this writing, though terse, is so truthful! Leonard, in the youth, already recognizes the rude imperfect scholar, the village bard, Mark Fairfield. Then there is a gap in description; but there are short weighty sentences, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which are the heaviest and most confused are so for no other reason but because the writers are not good draughtsmen and are not very skilful in drawing and dividing up their work; and the most facile and terse are those of the best draughtsman. And even Quintilian in the perfection of his Rhetoric lays it down that not only in the division of the words his orator should draw, but that with his own hand he should know how to sketch and ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... gorge, and the litter of old provision cans, general refuse, and discarded boots could not spoil the beauty of the scene. Prescott asked for a room; and sitting outside after dinner, he gathered from some men, who were not working, the story of Kermode's next exploit. Their accounts of it were terse and somewhat disconnected, but Prescott was afterward able to amplify them from the narrative ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... like a freight engine climbing a grade. This is calculated to frighten the rest of the family into convulsions and stampede all the cattle in the neighborhood, but you will be enabled to while the remaining hours of the night away by listening to the terse remarks hurled at you from time to time by the other members ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... the customary rant and bombast is on his lips when those two steal in. 'While the trumpets are sounding, Death slays Herod and his two soldiers suddenly, and the Devil receives them'—so runs the terse ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... all sundered, all broken, he floats away, a worthless atom in the universe; its proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation, and death. A man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describe, in such terse but terrific language, as living "without God in the world." Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away, far, far away, from the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... we slipped and stumbled through the endless cutting. At one spot the parapet, soaked by water, had caved in. In the breach thus made had been planted a neatly lettered sign. It was terse and to the point: "The Hun sees you here. Go away." And we did. The trench had gradually been growing narrower and shallower and more tortuous until we were walking half doubled over so as not to ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... gives such inexpressible vividness and transparency to his diction? Who that reads the concentrated sense and melodious versification of Dryden and Pope, does not perceive in them the disciples of the old school, whose genius was inflamed by the heroic verse, the terse satire, and the playful wit of antiquity? Who that meditates over the strains of Milton does not feel that ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... really coming ashore, and, this presently becoming evident, he at once started for the treasure-cave. Knowing the way by this time perfectly well, an hour's easy walking took him to the spot, where he found Nicholls and Simpson on the watch. A few terse sentences sufficed to put the men in possession of the material facts of the situation, and he then hurried down aboard the cutter to see Flora and assure her of his safety, and that everything was going well. Then, returning ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... ponderous work, and 'tis written in prose, For some mystical reason that nobody knows; And it tells in a style that is terse and correct Of the rule of the Swanks and its baneful effect On the commerce of Gosh, on its morals and trade; And it quotes ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... of new knowledge were more willing to expound their discoveries in ways that could be "understanded of the people." No one objects very much to technicalities in a game or on board a yacht, and they are clearly necessary for terse and precise scientific description. It is certain, however, that they can be reduced to a minimum without sacrificing accuracy, when the object in view is to explain "the gist of the matter." So this OUTLINE OF SCIENCE is meant for the general reader, who lacks both ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... built up to eighteen hands high, with a width and weight infinitely more than proportionate to his height, if we compare him to the southern horse. In the arid south, by no contrivance of man or "natural selection" can a horse of weight be produced; though you may breed the terse horse of the south in the north by keeping him ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... from Ichi and hallooed forward. A man who was sitting on the sunny deck, abaft the galley, arose and came aft in obedience to the hail. Martin saw the fellow carried one of the Cohasset's rifles. He paused while Ichi gave him some terse directions, then he passed Martin and entered the cabin. Ichi and Asoki then proceeded to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... a fine day and altogether suitable for the purpose, General Longstreet reined in his prancing black charger (during this distressed period all the horses in both armies were charged: there was no other way to pay for them), and in a few terse words, about three pages, gave his views on the Constitution of ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... Prussia. The work which has given Mr. Bancroft his great literary reputation is his "History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent." The first volume appeared in 1834. Philosophical in reasoning, interesting, terse in style, and founded on careful research, under the most favorable advantages, the work ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... those respectable and tidy mountain villages, once full of such vigorous life, one sometimes comes upon little isolated groups of wretched hovels whose local reputation is sufficiently indicated by such terse epithets as "Hardscrabble" or "Hell-huddle." Their denizens may in many instances be the degenerate offspring of a sound New England stock, but they sometimes show strong points of resemblance to that "white trash" which has come to be a ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... natives. For a number of years representations were made by the Chamber of Mines on behalf of the industry, by individuals and by public petitions, with the object of controlling the liquor trade and properly enforcing the laws which already existed. The following terse summary of the evils resulting from this sale of liquor is taken from the report of the Chamber of Mines for 1895. Unfortunately the remarks ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... your last club was more congenial? M. de Talleyrand insists on conveying this letter for you. He has been on a visit here, and returns again on Wednesday. He is a man of admirable conversation, quick, terse, fin, and yet deep, to the extreme of those four words. They are a marvellous set for excess ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... original savage state. Their offspring waxed in size and fierceness beyond their progenitors. They became at last proverbial for their fighting qualities, and to be able to "whip one's weight in wild cats," is a terse expression signifying strength. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the variety of the prayers, of which we have already had several proofs. There are still two prayers to be considered in the second Epistle, very terse petitions, yet full of suggestiveness and importance. It will be convenient to consider these two together, not only because of their brevity, but also because of the spiritual connection ...
— The Prayers of St. Paul • W. H. Griffith Thomas
... proved thy wit and power of verse, That is at will diffuse and terse: Lest thou commence to lie—be dumb! I am content: the time ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was at the tightest, just as the feathers quivered, and the barb thrilled, about to leap from the terse string, the tall form of the soldier sprang up into the clear moonlight from the underwood, and crying "Hold! hold!" mastered her bowhand, with the speed of light, and dragged her down into ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... memoranda of his adventures, and signal defeat by Uncle Sam, have no claim to be copied here, though differing much from my account. With their terse unfeeling strain, they might make people laugh who had not sadder things to think of. And it matters very little how that spy escaped, as such people almost ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... floor it was soon evident that he had studied the weak points in what Carpenter had said, and was ready to let fly a volley of satire-tipped arrows with deadly aim. His sentences were terse, crisp, strong, and entirely without ornamentation, but every one told. He began by alluding to his having been often reminded in the debate that he was not a lawyer. The wit would have been brighter and the thrust would have ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... expression, free from redundancy and tautology, a style terse and clear and simple enough to enable the hearer or reader to comprehend immediately the meaning of the speaker or writer. It forbids, on the one hand, all long and involved sentences, and, on the other, those that are too short and ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... State at the service and for the protection of the individual and of the family. "To Caesar what belongs to Caesar; to God what belongs to God." Before the ever recrudescent forces of neo-paganisim it is most useful, we contend, to reassert in plain, terse language the principles, the reasons that explain and justify our persistent attitude on the school problem. They will be our answer to the question which is ever thrown ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... rests on the testimony of three or two witnesses. They have but few laws, and these short and plain, and written upon a flat table and hanging to the doors of the temple, that is between the columns. And on single columns can be seen the essences of things described in the very terse style of Metaphysic—viz., the essences of God, of the angels, of the world, of the stars, of man, of fate, of virtue, all done with great wisdom. The definitions of all the virtues are also delineated here, and here is the tribunal, where the judges of all the ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... the author of the Ottimo Comento says: "I the writer saw followers of his [Fra Dolcino] burned at Padua to the number of twenty-two together."[233] Clearly, in such a time as this, one must not make "the veil of the mysterious Terse" too thin.[234] ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... partly a visionary drama, "the biggest and most consistent exhibition of fatalism in literature." While its powerful simplicity and tragic impressiveness overshadow his shorter poems, many of his terse lyrics reveal the same vigor and impact of a strong personality. His collected poems were published by The Macmillan Company in 1919 and reveal another phase of one of the greatest living writers ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... bent his head. They eyed each other with the measuring glance. Keith said in his dry, terse way: "I asked Miss Gower to come with me because I wish her to hear what I have to say ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... to use the instruction cards were both masters of English, but this is hardly to be expected. The best substitute for such special English training is a "System" for the use of the instruction card clerk that will give him some outline of English that will by degrees make his wording terse, ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... time. Thus the first complete books which appeared in Jewish literature after the loss of nationality were historical works written by two men, Justus and Josephus, both of whom bore an active part in the most recent of the wars which they recorded. Justus of Tiberias wrote in Greek a terse chronicle entitled, "History of the Jewish Kings," and also a more detailed narrative of the "Jewish War" with Rome. Both these books are known to us only from quotations. The originals are entirely lost. A happier ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... day and night! "Well! but our fathers Plautus lov'd to praise, Admir'd his humour, and approv'd his lays." Yes; they saw both with a too partial eye, Fond e'en to folly sure, if you and I Know ribaldry from humour, chaste and terse, Or can but scan, and have ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... a class, are being more and more segregated by their economic masters; and this process, with its jamming and overcrowding, tends not so much toward immorality as unmorality. Here is an extract from a recent meeting of the London County Council, terse and bald, but with a wealth of horror to be read ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... there is no doubt that it established a rule which had only been an exception before. But, as will have been seen earlier, the continuation of romance genealogically had been not uncommon, and there had been a constant tendency to lengthen from the positively terse Roland to the prolix fifteenth-century forms. In fact this went on till the extravagant length of the Scudery group made itself impossible, and even afterwards, as all readers of Richardson know, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... office?)—without some quirk that left a sting! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now extinct, or survive but in two forgotten volumes, which I had the good fortune to rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these fastidious days—thy topics are staled by the "new-born gauds" of the time:—but great thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon Chatham, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... on actively at work, forming little pictures of the events of the afternoon, while his thoughts in his mental musings took the form of short, terse sentences. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... was while under the tutelage of Doctor Johnson that Jay began to acquire the ability to turn a terse sentence; and this gained him admittance into the world of New York letters, whose special guardians were Dickinson ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... have all answered the above question in the strongest affirmative. "Chastity does no harm to body or mind; its discipline is excellent; marriage may safely be waited for," are Sir James Paget's terse and emphatic words[4]. Still more emphatic are the words of Sir William Gowers, the great men's specialist, who counts as an authority on the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... not meant to deliver my information quite so abruptly, but there was no help for it now, and I repeated the statement, giving him a terse account of my two encounters with ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... pausing, with more grave and important hesitation than I thanked him for, "there is not much to be said against the manner. The style is terse and intelligible, Mr. Croftangry, very intelligible; and that I consider as the first point in every thing that is intended to be understood. There are, indeed, here and there some flights and fancies, which I comprehended ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... noted the black figure of a man leap high into air, and disappear beneath the dark surface of the river. So it was the Captain-General wrote also the name "Charles de Noyan" with those of the other four, endorsing it with the same terse military record, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Barras in command of the defenders of the Convention against the attacks of the Sectionists, Napoleon was asked the chairman of the Assembly to send them occasional reports as to how matters progressed. His reply was terse. ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... correctly, in preliminary fashion, for the evening was still young; and inspecting the moving crowd at the bar. At the head of the table sat the ex-cowboy and ex-pugilist, Stormy German, his face usually, and now, reddened with liquor—square-shouldered, square-faced and squat; a man harsh-voiced and terse, of iron endurance and with the stubbornness of a mule; next him sat Yankee Robinson, thin-faced and wearing a weatherbeaten yellow beard. And Dutch Henry was there—bony, nervous, eager-eyed, with broken English stories of drought and hardship on the upper ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... disappointed that giants, enchanters, demons, and dark supernatural agencies, should form so large a part of the dramatis personae. Surprise has been expressed,[2] that the kindlier affections come in for notice at all, and particularly at the occurrence of such refined and terse allegories as the origin of Indian Corn, Winter and Spring, and the poetic conception of the Celestial Sisters, &c. I can only add, that my own surprise was as great when these traits were first revealed. And the trait may be quoted to show how deeply the ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... D.C., June 25, 189—," he begins, and then briskly rattles away at the terse official paragraphs: "The following assignment of graduates of the United States Military Academy are hereby announced to take effect from June 14th." It begins with that highly scientific and enviable body, the Corps of Engineers, ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... little girl to a portly, substantial farmer. "I suppose they does it for company, my dear," was the simple and cautious reply. So far as appearances went, that farmer looked as guiltless of theories as man could be. And yet he gave terse expression to what may perhaps be regarded as the most satisfactory hypothesis as to the primary purpose of animal sounds. They are a means by which each indicates to others the fact of his comforting presence; and they still, to a large extent, retain their primary function. The ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... burst of oratory, it seemed quite proper that every one else should also be elated. So he thought nothing of it and hurried Mead out to the waiting crowd, where everybody, Democrats and Republicans alike, gathered about him and shook hands and made terse, complimentary remarks, until Jim Halliday presently took him away ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... warmth into his utterance of the general thanksgiving, as he might have done had he been a more effusive man; but, on the contrary, read it with a more than ordinary calmness, and preached to the excited people one of those terse little unimpassioned sermons of his, from which it was utterly impossible to divine whether he was in the depths of despair or at the summit and crown of happiness. People who had been used to discover a great many of old Mr Bury's personal peculiarities in ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the Discourse, unlike Morelly's terse exposition, contains no clear account of the kind of inequality with which it deals. Is it inequality of material possession or inequality of political right? Morelly tells you decisively that the latter is only an accident, flowing from the first; that the key to renovation ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... “je le sais.” These answers of mine, as given above, are not meant as specimens of mere French, but of that fine, terse, nervous, Continental English with which I and my compatriots make our way through Europe. This language, by-the-bye, is one possessing great force and energy, and is not without its literature, a literature of the very highest order. Where will you find more sturdy specimens of downright, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... apparent an air of probability about this terse statement of the case, that it has satisfied the insatiable curiosity of infantile minds for long ages. Little girls never doubt it, and little boys never contradict it. If Paterfamilias has any thoughts upon the subject, he probably thinks this expenditure of snaps ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... present moment under arrest," was the terse reply. If the news were a shock to Thew, he showed it in none of the ordinary ways. His face seemed to fall for a moment into harder lines. His mouth tightened ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a man should not go on trusting until his seventieth year that there is still plenty of daylight. He contributed five biographies to the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The articles on Bentley, Erasmus, Grotius, More, and Macaulay are from his pen. They are all terse, luminous, and finished, and the only complaint that one can make against them is that our instructor parts company from us too soon. It is a stroke of literary humour after Pattison's own heart that ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... Humphrey, of Cambridge, Professor Millar, of the Edinburgh University, Sir William Gowers, F.R.S., have all answered the above question in the strongest affirmative. "Chastity does no harm to body or mind; its discipline is excellent; marriage may safely be waited for," are Sir James Paget's terse and emphatic words[4]. Still more emphatic are the words of Sir William Gowers, the great men's specialist, who counts as an authority on the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... necessary to outline in only the most terse and condensed form the political and military events which succeeded the destruction of the "Maine" and led up to the declaration of war. The news of the great disaster was received at home with horror, speedily turning to anger. The Government, rightly desiring to ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... visual word-plays after the manner of Jules Renard. He is fond of "artistic writing," a typically Parisian product, a style which in ordinary times seems to "powder puff" the emotions, but which, amid the convulsions of the war, exhibits a certain heroic elegance. The narrative is terse, gloomy, stifling; but there come episodes of repose, which break its unity, and by these the tension is relieved for a moment. Few readers will fail to appreciate the charm, the discreet emotion, of these episodes, as for instance in the chapter ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... splendid, noble, and magnificent vein of eloquence." And in a letter to Cornelius Nepos, he writes of him in the following terms: "What! Of all the orators, who, during the whole course of their lives, have done nothing else, which can you prefer to him? Which of them is more pointed or terse in his periods, or employs more polished and elegant language?" In his youth, he seems to have chosen Strabo Caesar for his model; from whose oration in behalf of the Sardinians he has transcribed some passages literally into his Divination. In his delivery he is said to have had a shrill voice, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... author of the Letter: but it was found impossible to procure legal evidence against him. Some imagined that they recognised the sentiments and diction of Temple. [245] But in truth that amplitude and acuteness of intellect, that vivacity of fancy, that terse and energetic style, that placid dignity, half courtly half philosophical, which the utmost excitement of conflict could not for a moment derange, belonged to Halifax, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... first meeting of Committee No. 9 can be best reported in the words of the Assembly Journal for the following day. This journal, with its terse and yet detailed accounts of current happenings, its polite yet lucid style, and its red-hot topicality (for it is truly a journal), makes admirable reading for those who like their literature up-to-date. Those who attend the meetings of the ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... instance: does the general management propose to place my work upon the stage with the outlay indispensable to a brilliant effect? On this point W——writes me: 'The general management will leave nothing undone to equip your opera in a suitable manner.' You will understand how terribly terse this seems to me! I am not greatly surprised at receiving no letter from Reissiger since last March: he has worked for me—that is the best and most honourable answer; besides, it would be foolish on my part to expect that Reissiger, now that his own opera must be fairly engrossing ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... Richardson justified his fiction writing upon moral grounds and upon those alone is shown in the descriptive title-page of the tale, too prolix to be often recalled and a good sample in its long-windedness of the past compared with the terse brevity of the present in this matter: "Published in order to cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the mind of youth of both sexes"; the author of "Sanford and Merton" has here his literary progenitor. The sub-title, "or Virtue Rewarded," also ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... thing or the other. Yet it might be neither. There was a disquieting alternative. No doubt the message disposed of the delicate affair for good and all in ten terse words. The maid had made up her mind; she had disclosed it in haste: that was all. It might be, however, that the dispatch conveyed news of a more urgent content. It might be that the maid lay ill—that ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... except for a few terse words among themselves and a barked order to march, delivered to the prisoners. Very shortly they were in the entrance hall facing the wreckage of the crawler and doors through which a ragged gap had been burned. Ali viewed the scene with ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... poor sons of song Oft find 'tis fancied right that leads us wrong. I prove obscure in trying to be terse; Attempts at ease emasculate my verse; Who aims at grandeur into bombast falls; Who fears to stretch his pinions creeps and crawls; Who hopes by strange variety to please Puts dolphins among forests, boars in seas. Thus zeal to 'scape ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... not leave her much to stand upon. She had expected him to go about it in an entirely different way. She had counted upon an impassioned plea for himself, not this terse, cold-blooded, almost unemotional summing up of the situation. For an instant she was at a loss. It was hard to look into his honest eyes. A queer, unformed doubt began to torment her, a doubt that grew into a question later on: was he still in love ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... not well lighted, but the pulpit lamps shone upon him. He had a smooth, strong face; his complexion was healthy and weather-beaten; his dark eyes flashed brightly under bushy brows. His manner was calm; his style, even in prayer, was that of keen, terse argument; he spoke and behaved like a man who, having spent the emotional side of his nature in some private gust of passionate prayer, had come forth nerved to cool and ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... tortuous to the straight path. He published, accordingly, the Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis. But Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great master of invective and sarcasm; he could dissect a character in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithesis; but of dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had written a lampoon on Dennis, such as that on Atticus or that on Sporus, the old grumbler would have been crushed. But Pope writing ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... others that there is an intimate relation between acromegaly and gigantism, but they go further and compare both to the growth of the body. They call attention to the striking resemblance to acromegaly of the disproportionate growth of the boy at adolescence, which corresponds so well to Marie's terse description of this disease: "The disease manifests itself by preference in the bones of the extremities and in the extremities of the bones," and conclude with this rather striking and aphoristic proposition: "Acromegaly is gigantism ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... his wife being each 52 years old; and that they owned 520 acres of land without any mortgage hanging over their heads. He had himself done well, and his views as to why many of his neighbors had done less well are entitled to consideration. These views are expressed in terse and vigorous English; they cannot always be quoted in full. He states that the farm homes in his neighborhood are not as good as they should be because too many of them are encumbered by mortgages; that the schools do not train boys and girls satisfactorily for life on the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... down the "Seraphic Theology" of Saint Bonaventure, "for he condenses the means of self-examination, of meditation for communion, of thoughts on death, then in these 'Selections' is a treatise on the Contempt of the World, whose terse phrases are admirable; it is the true essence of the Holy Spirit, a jelly of unction firm set—we will ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... is both terse and pregnant. The history of this great and flourishing industry, stretching back now over two centuries and a half, is a history of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... strength and beauty. It contains more commonplace verses and ideas than either of the other two. Of the stories of the old masters, "Mona Lisa's Picture," "The Duke's Commission" and "Woman's Art" are perhaps the best, and the last poem especially is very spirited and terse. Mrs. Preston's style has the rare merit in these days of uniting conciseness and directness to grace and beauty of expression. Her greatest failing is a lack of the sense of climax. There are several of these poems, like the two ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... in Song, is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood, which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive the radical and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... formation of the "Irish Confederation" by the seceders. In the proceedings of the new Society Mr. Mitchel took a more prominent part than he had taken in the business of the Repeal Association. And he continued to write in his own terse and forcible style in the Nation. But his mind travelled too fast in the direction of war for either the journal or the society with which he was connected. The desperate condition of the country, now a prey to all the horrors ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... and yet as gentle and kindly as women. Hardships and dangers in common had bound the four together, and the difference in years did not matter. It seemed that he had known them and been associated with them always. He could hear now the joyous whistling of the Little Giant, the terse, intelligent talk of Boyd, and the firm Biblical allusions of the beaver hunter. They could not be dead! It could not be so! And yet in his heart he believed ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... This terse despatch the hunchback Burleigh read Thrice over, with the broad cliff of his brow Bending among his books. Thrice he assayed To steel himself with caution as of old; And thrice, as a glorious lightning running along And flashing between ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... went into a terse though rapid review of the origin of the Mexican War, and the connection of the administration and General Taylor with it, from which he deduced a strong appeal to the Whigs present to do their duty in the support of General Taylor, and closed with the warmest ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... press closely backward, as if awed by her mysterious presence, influenced insensibly by her terse sentence of command, each dusky face a reflex of its owner's perplexity. Drunken as most of them were, crazed with savage blood-lust and hours of remorseless torture of their victims, for the moment that sweet vision of womanly purity held ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... Grossbrittanischer und Amerikanischer hier zusammengetroffen in Bruderliche concord, ist zwar a welcome and inspiriting spectacle. And what has moved you to it? Can the terse German tongue rise to the expression of this impulse? Is it Freundschaftsbezeigungenstadtverordneten- versammlungenfamilieneigenthuemlichkeiten? Nein, o nein! This is a crisp and noble word, but it fails to pierce the marrow of the impulse which has gathered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... poetical form. But all that I know of you indicates a predominance of reflective intellect—a habit of mind quite foreign from the lyrical. I think it may be very good practice to compose in verse, as it exercises you in terse and rhythmical expression; but I question whether your vocation lies in ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Tom radioed a terse report of their experience to the task-force commander and in turn was told that none of the naval craft had either sighted or picked up any sign of a ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... as a speaker and a writer, ultimately became plain, terse, and with occasional faults of taste, caused by imperfect education, pure as well as effective. His Gettysburg address and some of his State Papers are admirable in their way. Saving one very flat expression, the address has no superior in literature. But it was ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... of government his ideas were terse and decided. He was strongly attached to the present, heedless of the future, and the socialists troubled him little. Without caring whether the sun and capital should be extinguished some day, he enjoyed them. According to him, one should let himself be carried. None but fools resisted ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... think these have been sufficiently admired. As an epigrammatist Mr. Watson has no rival in Victorian or in contemporary verse. The epigram is a quite definite form of art, especially cultivated by the poets in the first half of the seventeenth century. Their formula the terse expression of obscene thoughts. Mr. Watson excels the best of them in wit, concision, and grace; it is needless to say he makes no attempt to rival them as a garbage-collector. Of the large number of epigrams that he has contributed to English literature, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... Sarge, you've made the biggest discovery of the year in this point of the woods," was Hyman's terse comment. "I reckon, too, the captain will see ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... these few terse lines, the long dissertations in the Sixth Book, tenth chapter, of the Praeparatio Evangelica of Eusebius. (See Marcus ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... great delight, Mr. Tresayle took Mr. Mortmain's view of the case. Nothing could be more terse, perspicuous, and conclusive than the great man's opinion. Mr. Quirk was in raptures, and that very day sent to procure an engraving of Mr. Tresayle, which had lately come out, for which he paid 5s., and ordered ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... how it had arisen, and how it had been conducted; and he did so with admirable simplicity and truth. He thought the North were right about the war; and as I thought so also, I was not called upon to disagree with him. He was terse and perspicuous in his sentences, practical in his advice, and, above all things, true in what he said to his audience of themselves. They who know America will understand how hard it is for a public man in the States to practice such truth in his addresses. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... range of subjects, not one of which but will be found to contain some terse, sparkling truth worthy of thought and attention. A spare ten minutes devoted to such reading ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... shown to Gale that daring side of her character which had been so suggestively defined in Belding's terse description and Ladd's encomiums, and in her own audacious speech and merry laugh and flashing eye of that never-to-be-forgotten first meeting. She might have been an entirely different girl. But Gale remembered; and when the ice had been somewhat broken between them, he was always trying to ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... fixed his bright eyes steadily on Lord Montacute's face. He on his side, after a brief silence, began again in clear, terse phrases: ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... whether any traveller, including the honest missionary, disagrees with the terse sentence of the great Wallace in The Malay Archipelago: "We may safely affirm that the better specimens of savages are much superior to the lower examples of civilised peoples." Revolting customs are found, to be sure, among native ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... in tolerable spirits, he was an entertaining, though never a frank nor a communicative companion. His conversation then was lively, yet without wit, and sarcastic, though without bitterness. It abounded also in philosophical reflections and terse maxims, which always brought improvement, or, at the worst, allowed discussion. He was a man of even vast powers—of deep thought—of luxuriant, though dark imagination, and of great miscellaneous, though, perhaps, ill arranged erudition. He was fond of paradoxes in reasoning, and supported ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the quarter, who seeing one of her Majesty's carriages in trouble thought he must interfere. "Hilloa," he said, "what's all this?" And the cabman, who was a good fellow though in too much trouble to aid Sybil, explained in the terse and picturesque language of Cockaigne, doing full justice to his ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... writing. If the characters did not speak in a terse and homely way, their idea and language would be inconsistent with their dress and station, and they would lose, as characters, before the audience. The dialogue seems to be exactly what is wanted. Its simplicity (particularly in Mr. Boucicault's part) is often very ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... an ill-fated society journal. I was a contributor to its little-read pages, and I came one day upon an article entitled 'Pompa Mortis.' This article was written in such astonishingly good English, so clean, so hardbitten and terse, and yet so graceful, that I could not resist the temptation to ask its author's name. My editor modestly acknowledged it for his own, and when I told him what I thought of its style he confessed to a ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... partly a historical play, partly a visionary drama, "the biggest and most consistent exhibition of fatalism in literature." While its powerful simplicity and tragic impressiveness overshadow his shorter poems, many of his terse lyrics reveal the same vigor and impact of a strong personality. His collected poems were published by The Macmillan Company in 1919 and reveal another phase of one of the greatest living writers ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... right, and when Motty turned up at three in the morning with a collection of hearty lads, who only stopped singing their college song when they started singing "The Old Oaken Bucket," there was a marked peevishness among the old settlers in the flats. The management was extremely terse over the telephone at breakfast-time, and took a lot ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... secretary, after the appointment of Mr. Gooch as Resident Engineer to the Bolton and Leigh Railway, has informed us that he then remarked—what in after years he could better appreciate—the clear, terse, and vigorous style of Mr. Stephenson's dictation. There was nothing superfluous in it; but it was close, direct, and to the point,—in short, thoroughly businesslike. And if, in passing through the pen of the amanuensis, his meaning happened in any way to be ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... a short while it would overthrow the laws which had bound it so long. So, too, it seems to us, despite all the rhythmical innovations of our time. The personality that could beat out exuberantly music as rhythmically various and terse and free must indeed have possessed a primitive naivete and vitality and spontaneity of impulse. What manifestation of unbridled will in that freedom of expression! Berlioz must have been blood-brother to the savage, the elemental creature who out of the dark ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... accepted to fill the position of teacher in the Kedarville school." Then followed terse directions as to the best way of reaching Kedarville, and, finally: "Mrs. Philander Keeler will board you for two Dollars and ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... remark parenthetically, the habit of dealing in parentheses being one I especially dislike, only necessity compelling me thereto, and before I proceed further, that the word "confugium," which, both on account of its terse expressiveness, as well as its curiosa felicitas in the present application, I have chosen in order to define my den, has not, I hope, escaped the notice of the discriminating scholar. Moreover, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... episcopacy,[135] and which is quite as distinctively Calvinistic as the Westminster Confession, while it ventures incidentally to determine some points the Westminster divines have wisely left undetermined.[136] The old Confession can advance no claim to the terse English style, the logical accuracy, the judicial calmness, and intimate acquaintance with early patristic theology which characterise that mature product of the faith and thought of the more learned Puritans of the south. I am not ashamed to avow that it has long appeared ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... American, then edited by Charles King, signing his articles R. M. T. H.—Regular Member Third House. Dr. Bacon wielded a powerful pen, and when he chose so to do could condense a column of denunciation, satire, and sarcasm in to a single paragraph. He was a fine scholar, fearless censor, and terse writer, giving his many readers a clear idea of what was transpiring at the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... for April is made brilliant by the presence of Henry Clapham McGavack's terse and lucid exposure of hyphenated hypocrisy, entitled "Dr. Burgess, Propagandist". Mr. McGavack's phenomenally virile and convincing style is supported by a remarkable fund of historical and diplomatic knowledge, and the feeble fallacies of the pro-German embargo advocates collapse in speedy ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... newspapers, and is believed to have the largest audience of any living writer. Among his books are "Rhymes of the Range," "Uncle Walt," "Walt Mason's Business Prose Poems," "Rippling Rhymes," "Horse Sense," "Terse Verse," and "Walt Mason, His Book." Lions and Ants; The Has-Beens; The ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... somewhat too sweeping. Interspersed among those respectable and tidy mountain villages, once full of such vigorous life, one sometimes comes upon little isolated groups of wretched hovels whose local reputation is sufficiently indicated by such terse epithets as "Hardscrabble" or "Hell-huddle." Their denizens may in many instances be the degenerate offspring of a sound New England stock, but they sometimes show strong points of resemblance to that "white trash" which has come to be a recognizable strain of the English ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... Monkshaven could lay claim—to take him into his employment as an odd-job man. How she accomplished this feat it is impossible to say, but the fact remains that she did accomplish it, and perhaps Jane Crab delved to the root of the matter in the terse comment which the circumstances elicited from her: "Miss Tennant has a way with her that 'ud make they stone sphinxes gallop round the desert if so be she'd a ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... of one of the proprietors of The Colored American in 1838 and upon the withdrawal of Bell from the enterprise the following year, he became the sole editor and continued in that capacity until 1842 when he suspended publication. He was regarded by his contemporary, William Wells Brown, as a terse and vigorous writer and an able and eloquent speaker well informed upon all subjects of the day. "Blameless in his family relations, guided by the highest moral rectitude, a true friend to everything that tends to better the moral, social, religious and political condition ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... for?" she asked Anna-Felicitas, when she had edged through the crowd staring at the Vaterland, and got to where Anna-Felicitas stood listening abstractedly to the fireworks of American slang the young man was treating her to,—that terse, surprising, swift hitting-of-the-nail-on-the-head form of speech which she was hearing in such abundance ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... as if nothing but the ordinary business had occurred, Jasper sat down and went carefully over every detail of the commission he had been sent on, heard Mr. Marlowe's terse, "That's good, Jasper; you've done it all well," and passed out for the last time, from the private office, and joined his father in silence, for ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... see them, adopt them, and carry them out, we can work together and make things hum. Now here's a bit of advice. Old Tom Sayers likes plain, practical statements that he can weigh and consider. Put all your proposed plans into writing. Put down hard, concrete facts in terse English. Make it as brief as possible. Don't be afraid to criticise if you can suggest improvements. Don't mince words. He loves simplicity and frankness. And if you do as I say in that regard, and make plain to him ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... personalities and gave them the form of permanent types. It is a literature peculiarly adapted to the flexibility and fine perception of the French mind, and one in which it has been preeminent, from the analytic but diffuse Mlle. de Scudery, and the clear, terse, spirited Cardinal de Retz, to the fine, penetrating, and exquisitely finished Sainte-Beuve, the prince of modern critics and literary artists. It was this skill in vivid delineation that gave such point and piquancy to the memoirs of the period, which are little ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... of chroniclers, who might well have been expected in his realism to treat such phantasies as puerile and absurd, seems to justify to his own mind the extreme penalties of the scaffold and the stake as a fitting punishment for sorcerers and magicians: declaring them, as he records in his usual terse and matter-of-fact style, to be dictated by justice, and essential to the repression of an intercourse between ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... state that each of these colleges has morning devotions every day at the breakfast hour. They are very terse, consisting chiefly of the Lord's Prayer or a blessing sung or recited. Seventeen have night devotions closing the study hour except on the night appointed for the weekly prayer meeting. The benefit ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... at the shore, directing the movements of the men; he was once more the drive master, his cant dog in his hand, terse in his commands, obeyed ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... had in the smallest degree inveigled a young man of the highest prospects into a match—there is nothing of the matchmaker about me; but Maud is in a degree well-connected; and, as you know, she will be what the country people here call 'well-left'—a terse phrase, but expressive! I do not see that she would be in any way unworthy of the position—and I feel that her life here is a little secluded—I should like her to have a little richer material, so to speak, to work in. Well, well, we mustn't be too diplomatic about these things. 'Man proposes'—no ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... did their job, and returned to routine duty. They did not receive any extra pay, or promotion, or official recognition. Neither did Bass, beyond Hunter's commendation in a despatch. He wrote up his modest little diary, a terse record of observations and occurrences, and got ready ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Further limitations may be specified, as "Tuesdays in February," "Tuesdays until Lent," "Tuesdays after October," etc. Any definite idea of time may be given to meet the facts, the wording being made as terse as possible. If the regular "at home" day is Tuesday (unlimited), and the card is so engraved, any of the special limitations may be penciled in to meet special conditions. Sometimes an informal invitation is thus conveyed; as, by the addition, ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... author of the Ottimo Comento says: "I the writer saw followers of his [Fra Dolcino] burned at Padua to the number of twenty-two together."[233] Clearly, in such a time as this, one must not make "the veil of the mysterious Terse" too thin.[234] ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... the only known incursion of its author into literature, if we except the brief articles he has written for technical papers and for the magazines. It contained what was at once a full, elaborate, and terse explanation of a complete isolated plant, with diagrams of various methods of connection and operation, and a carefully detailed description of every individual part, its functions and its characteristics. The remarkable success of those early years ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... glance meeting that of Mr. Sharpe, seemed to ask why proceedings, which could only have one termination, were delayed. He had not long to wait. The jury were sworn, and Mr. Gurney rose to address them for the crown. Clear, terse, logical, powerful without the slightest pretence to what is called eloquence, his speech produced a tremendous impression upon all who heard it; and few persons mentally withheld their assent to his assertion, as he concluded what ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... at Jane, Marian complied with the terse invitation. Maizie dropped lazily down beside her, her slow smile in evidence. Matters promised ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... Dr. Samuel Warren of England, in his Introduction to Law Studies, "is dry, terse, and exact—not fitted, perhaps, for the historical tyro, but most acceptable to the advanced student who is in ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... cannot determine with precision from its opposite; but the caution based upon it might remind one of our proverb about shutting the barn door after the horse is stolen. The words, acta agimus, so terse that they can be translated only by a paraphrase, are probably the converse of the proverb, which may have been something like non agenda sunt acta.] take counsel after acting, and attempt to do over again what we have done; for after having become closely connected ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... brief and troubled splendour, her monarchs realize, even at the hazard of a temporary eclipse of the nation's independence, the aspirations of the race, which slowly arising, and growing in force and intensity, had become the fixed, tyrannous desire of a people, until, in Camoens' terse phrase of Manuel, "from that one great thought it never swerved." Another policy and other aims than those which her monarchs pursued—tolerance instead of fanaticism, prudence instead of heroism, national patriotism instead of imperial, homely common sense ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... said Allison, letting the car ride out under full power over the smooth country road. But, though Julia Cloud questioned several times, she could get no explanation except Allison's terse "Too provincial," whatever he meant by that. She doubted whether he knew himself. She wondered whether it were that they each felt the same homesick ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... there was no message of congratulations, nor even any acknowledgment of the new contract. Instead, there was only a terse message: ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... with a full broadside. The Drake replied with the same, and the two ships ran along together at close quarters, pouring in broadsides for more than an hour, when the enemy called for quarter. The action had been, as Jones said in his terse official report, "warm, close, and obstinate." There was little manoeuvring, just straight fighting, the victory being due, according to Jones, to the superior gunnery of the Americans. At first Jones's gunners hulled ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... with each other. Authors had already tried to escape from this wide- spread disease, with more or less success. Haller and Ramler were inclined to compression by nature: Lessing and Wieland were led to it by reflection. The former became by degrees quite epigrammatical in his poems, terse in "Minna," laconic in "Emilia Galotti,"—it was not till afterwards that he returned to that serene /naivete/ which becomes him so well in "Nathan." "Wieland, who had been occasionally prolix in "Agathon," "Don Sylvio," and the "Comic Tales," becomes condensed ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... and there built up of according laws and their phenomena, as under the influence of a scientific inspiration, his theory of Nature. I will not attempt the difficult task of condensing his propositions; to be apprehended they must be studied in his own terse and simple language; but in this we have a summary of that which he regards as fundamental: "The law which we call Gravity," he says, "exists on account of matter having been radiated, at its origin, atomically, into a limited sphere of space, from ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... rather, the latter end of October, her first story was published in the Argonaut. It was sufficiently striking, terse, and original to receive immediate attention from more than one good review. She was spoken of as a young writer of great promise, and a well-known critic took the trouble to write a short paper on her story. This mention gave her, as Tom assured her, a complete success. ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... more terse and sententious, besides involving a much higher moral signification, that it may well be an original itself; but in that case, the verbal coincidence is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... learned saws, Through the cracked and crazy wall Came the cradle-rock and squall, And the goodman's voice, at strife With his shrill and tipsy wife, Luring us by stories old, With a comic unction told, More than by the eloquence Of terse birchen arguments (Doubtful gain, I fear), to look With complacence on a book!— Where the genial pedagogue Half forgot his rogues to flog, Citing tale or apologue, Wise and merry in its drift As was Phaedrus' twofold gift, Had the little rebels known ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... engaged for an early marriage, and hence declined to volunteer. When his betrothed, a charming girl and a devoted lover, heard of his refusal, she sent him, by the hand of a slave, a package inclosing a note. The package contained a lady's skirt and crinoline, and the note these terse words: "Wear these, or volunteer." ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... "When, in the terse vernacular of his calling, he gives voice to the sorrows and impatience, the humour and the resignation of his workmen comrades, and lets his songs find their own natural bent, then at length he attains real lyrical strength and sincerity.... For we need ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... the constant factor is usually his style, while subject and treatment vary. Balzac, however, is an exception in this respect as in most others. He attains terse vigour in not a few of his books, but in not a few also he disfigures page after page with loose, sprawling ruggedness, not to say pretentious obscurity. His opinion of himself as a stylist was high, higher no ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... a masterpiece of lucid explanation and terse precision. The book evolved into something much more than a mere manual of drill. For it is also a treatise on cavalry tactics, a guide to modern strategy, and a complete code of regulations for the ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... professional as well as general information which he had amassed during a long, active, and earnest life: the material for this "Digest" outstanding as the last, largest, and most important part of it. Had he survived but a few months more, a preface in his own terse and peculiar style, containing his last ideas, would have rendered these remarks unnecessary; but he was cut off on the 8th of September, 1865, leaving this favourite manuscript to the affectionate care of his family and friends. By ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... movement, and then had been frightened back by clamour. His reply was the single word "infirmus," accompanied by that peculiar sniff which every one who ever conversed with him must remember as adding so much to the piquancy of his terse judgments. When he was asked his opinion of a famous biography in which a son had disclosed, with too absolute frankness, his father's innermost thoughts and feelings, the Cardinal replied, "I think that —— has ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... city in the United States, and the fine, clear handwriting was obviously feminine. He didn't have to rub the paper between his thumb and forefinger to mark its rich, heavy quality and its beauty,—the stationery of an aristocrat. The message was singularly terse: ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... introduced an anecdote nor essayed a witticism; and the first half of it does not contain even an illustrative figure or a poetical fancy. It was the quiet, searching exposition of the historian, and the terse, compact reasoning of the statesman, about an abstract principle of legislation, in language well-nigh as restrained and colorless as he would have employed in arguing a case before a court. Yet such was the apt choice of words, the easy precision of sentences, the simple strength ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... pretty strong letter to his son, in which he set forth in terse language the facts he had heard, and demanded as a right, that restitution be ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... Anthology." This true poet and master-critic, in pursuit of another idea, alludes to poetry as "being a rhythmical expression of emotion and ideality." Here at last we have form, spirit, and theme combined in one terse utterance. In poetry we look for the musical metre, the recurrent refrain of rhythm; while that which inspires it arises from the universal motives which Coleridge names ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... the most interesting of British creatures. The Encyclopaedia Britannica is as terse and simple as ever about him. "Grasshoppers," it says, "are specially remarkable for their saltatory powers, due to the great development of the hind legs; and also for their stridulation, which is not always an attribute of the male only." To translate, grasshoppers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... their material ready to spin into generalization. Then there is a popular education toward prolixity in the telegraphic part of newspapers. The associated press writers from Washington seem to be selected for their inability to be terse and pithy, and dribble out the simplest fact with pitiful iteration. The special news-writers, being often at their wits' end for their dole of day's work, can hardly be asked to be laconic. The special ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... typical villain. This is a terse version, with concrete cases, of Bolingbroke's vaguer generalities. "The laws of gravitation," he says, "must sometimes be suspended (if special Providence be admitted), and sometimes their effect must be precipitated. The tottering edifice must be kept miraculously from falling, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... prospect of help from that quarter as from the mainland. Becoming more accustomed to the swayings of the big globe, he stood up. What a fool he had been to come so far, and he used French words between his teeth that sounded terse and emphatic. Still there was little use thinking of that. Here he was, and here he would stay, as a President of his country had once remarked. The irksomeness and restraint of his position began to wear on his nerves, ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... days before he was allowed to talk to his own satisfaction. Then, one afternoon in her rest hour, Alice Mellen let him have his way and, seated by his cot, she answered tersely to a raking fire of terse questions. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... the case, for he was like the rest of the tribe, always ready to fight with words, not acts; but in the midst of his gabble Joan interrupted with the terse order: ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... describe the preparations of William on his landing with a graphic vigor, which would be wholly lost by transfusing their racy Norman couplets and terse Latin prose into the current style of modern history. It is best to follow them closely, though at the expense of much quaintness and occasional uncouthness of expression. They tell us how Duke William's own ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... miscreant ain't ha'nted about Wolfville more'n four days before he shows how onnecessary he is to our success. Which he works a ha'r copper on Cherokee Hall. What's a ha'r copper? I'll onfold, short and terse, what Silver Phil does, an' then you saveys. Cherokee's dealin' his game—farobank she is; an' if all them national banks conducts themse'fs as squar' as that enterprise of Cherokee's, the fields of finance would be as safely honest as a church. Cherokee's turnin' his game one evenin'; ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... the shipwrecked pair, though Anstruther squirmed inwardly when he thought of the manner in which Iris would picture the scene. As it was, he had the first innings, and he did not fail to use the opportunity. In the few terse words which the militant Briton best understands, he described the girl's fortitude, her unflagging cheerfulness, her uncomplaining ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... find such lines as those in the work of an unknown author. The verses gain strength as they advance, and the diction is terse and keen. This one short extract would suffice to show that the writer was a literary craftsman of ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... Castle, the first of his poems, I think, that has indisputable genius plainly stamped on its terse and fiery lines, was composed in 1802, when he was already thirty-one years of age. It was in the same year that he wrote the first canto of his first great romance in verse, The Lay of the Last ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... It was decreed by the States-General in A. D. . But though no other nation has ever had any written whaling law, yet the American fishermen have been their own legislators and lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's Business. Yes; these laws might be engraven on a Queen Anne's farthing, or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so small are they. I. A Fast-Fish ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... vocabulary of Bradshaw is nervous and terse, but limited. The selection of words would hardly lend itself to the sending of general messages. We will eliminate Bradshaw. The dictionary is, I fear, inadmissible for the same reason. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... literature after the loss of nationality were historical works written by two men, Justus and Josephus, both of whom bore an active part in the most recent of the wars which they recorded. Justus of Tiberias wrote in Greek a terse chronicle entitled, "History of the Jewish Kings," and also a more detailed narrative of the "Jewish War" with Rome. Both these books are known to us only from quotations. The originals are entirely lost. A happier fate has preserved the works of another Jewish historian of the ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... now takes him to read an auction bill?" Suddenly a happy thought struck me: it was to write a novel, in which only the actual spirit of the narration should be retained, rejecting all expletives, flourishes, and ornamental figures of speech; to be terse and abrupt in style—use monosyllables always in preference to polysyllables—and to eschew all heroes and heroines whose names contain more than four letters. Full of this idea, on my returning home in the evening, I sat to my desk, and before I retired ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... book is just pitched right, for it gives interesting detail of some important voyages made from the earliest days up to the end of the nineteenth century. It is not too terse, and not too profuse, just right to capture ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... Phono means a sound, Phonography so terse, Just pictures out or tells about The sounds ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... Tables consists not in any approach to symmetrical classification or even to terse clarity of expression, but in the publication of the method of procedure to be adopted, especially in civil cases, in the knowledge furnished to every Roman of high or low degree as to what were both his legal ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous
... case for the crown, and Mr. Crean, counsel for Mr. Lalor, rose to address the jury on behalf of his client. His speech was argumentative, terse, forcible, and eloquent; and seemed to please and astonish not only the auditors but the judges themselves, who evidently had not looked for so much ability and vigour in the young advocate before ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... But his latest biographer says of it, that "it may, perhaps, be regretted that Burke ever wrote the 'Observations on the Conduct of the Minority.' It is certainly the least pleasing of all his compositions."[A] In style, it is direct, terse, and compact, beyond any other composition of Burke's. Perhaps, as it was not intended for the public, he was less tempted to rhetorical indulgence. But the manuscript now before us exhibits the minute care with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... took long and careful aim, but my hands were shaking pitifully. The ball started on a grotesquely wrong line, turned on a rise in the ground, cannoned off a worm-cast and plopped into the tin. Mabel gave a shriek of joy, and Lucy—well, I regret to say that Lucy made use of a terse expression the French equivalent of which her employer had been at great pains to remember. Haynes and I lay flat on the ground, overcome as much by emotion as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... school studies, each one headed by a flourishing capital; and also told the names of four new colts that appeared on the premises since Tom left; and stated, in the same connection, that father and mother were well. The style of the letter was decidedly concise and terse; but Tom thought it the most wonderful specimen of composition that had appeared in modern times. He was never tired of looking at it, and even held a council with Eva on the expediency of getting it framed, to hang up in his room. Nothing but the difficulty of arranging ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... over, and a terse and business-like agreement (by her urging) drawn up and signed, Sheldon paced up and down for a full hour, meditating upon how many different kinds of a fool he had made of himself. It was an impossible situation, and yet no more impossible than the previous one, and no more ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... went on the speaker, "go up there and get the guns he wanted." The steward, with two bright revolvers in his hands, was met at the companion-hatch by a man with but one; but that one was so big, and the hand which held it was so steady, that it was no matter of surprise that he obeyed the terse command, "Fork over, handles first." The captain's nickel-plated pistols went into the pockets of 'Pache's coat, and the white-faced steward, poked in the back by the muzzle of that big firearm, marched to the main-deck and joined ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... deals with the facts of science he interests and instructs, but when he speculates he only amuses or perplexes, without advancing knowledge. His terse and luminous description of the astral firmament deeply impresses with the might and the magnitude of the vast design; but when he attempts to account for the elimination of suns and worlds, their formation and arrangement, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... feeling so sick and miserable and down-hearted. He opened the yellow paper slowly, and then sprang up with a cry that made the boy stop in the hall and listen. Roderick stood in the middle of the room reading the terse message again ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... doubt but that Secretary Stanton made many critics by his brusque manner. One did not need to waste words with him, but if a communication was couched in terse language it pleased him. He disliked a cringing interviewer. I did not dislike to have business with him, nor have I ever with men ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... curiously as he turned sheet after sheet of the papers the man handed him, seeming to absorb the pages at a glance, while a running fire of quick questions, short answers, terse comments and clear-cut instructions accompanied ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... the Miniature Bulldog scale of points is quite unnecessary, as it is simply that of the big ones writ small. In other words, "the general appearance of the Miniature Bulldog must as nearly as possible resemble that of the Big Bulldog"—a terse sentence which comprises in itself all that can be ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... of Willy Hammond, in whom an interest, not unmingled with concern, had already been awakened in my mind. I found him engaged in a pleasant conversation with a plain-looking farmer, whose homely, terse, common sense was quite as conspicuous as his fine play of words and lively fancy. The farmer was a substantial conservative, and young Hammond a warm admirer of new ideas and the quicker adaptation of means ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... authoress has given us, in her straightforward simple style, a terse, unaffected, and picturesque description of her visit ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... author of Junius. We should have rather said that he was the last man in the kingdom who ought to have been suspected. The styles of Burke and Junius are totally different: the one loose and flowing, the other terse and pungent; the one lofty and imaginative, the other level and stern; the one taking large views on every subject, and evidently delighting in the largeness of those views, the other fixing steadily and fiercely upon the immediate object of attack, and shooting every arrow point-blank. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
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