"Balderdash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that there can scarcely be a cockney so spoony as not to "spy a great peard under her muffler," and know that it is a man awkwardly masquerading in women's clothes. It is a libel on the women of the country, to put such balderdash into the mouth of one who may be supposed to have been finished at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... sea if you go on talking balderdash," said Bob. "Now, look here, you hain't got nothin' to do, ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... from either of his nephews. Not that they had openly separated themselves from him, or even ceased to be deferential to him and proud of the relationship, but that they had more and more gone into those courses of literary Bohemianism those habits of mere facetious hack-work and balderdash, which he must have noted of late as an increasing and very ominous form of protest among the clever young Londoners against Puritanism and its belongings. The Satyr against Hypocrites by his younger nephew in 1655 had been, in reality, an Anti-Puritan and Anti-Miltonic production; and, since ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... elate with his success, did not let the gaiety of the party flag for a moment during their return. They drank, sang, and talked balderdash and indecencies in a way to bring a look of disgust upon the cheeks of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... can fling Art aside, And in a Book of Balderdash take Pride, Wer't not a Shame—wer't not a Shame for him A Conscientious Novel to ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... Balderdash; cheerful Sack has a generous Virtue in't, inspiring a successful Confidence, gives Eloquence to the Tongue, and Vigour to the Soul; and has in a few Hours compleated all my Hopes and Wishes. There's nothing left to raise a new Desire ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... hear the chiming dotterel gabble in rhyme. What o' devil has he swallowed? His eyes roll in his loggerhead just for the world like a dying goat's. Will the addle-pated wight have the grace to sheer off? Will he rid us of his damned company, to go shite out his nasty rhyming balderdash in some bog-house? Will nobody be so kind as to cram some dog's-bur down the poor cur's gullet? or will he, monk-like, run his fist up to the elbow into his throat to his very maw, to scour and clear his flanks? Will he take a hair ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... If ever a man realised himself to be on the verge of the abyss, I am sure it was Adrian Boldero. Some haunting fear was set at the back of his laughing eyes—the expression of an animal instinct for self-preservation which discounted the balderdash about the soaring yet ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... "Shaf on your balderdash," said Dick of the Syke; "die-spensying and die-spensying. You've no' but your die-spensy for everything. Tommy's rusty throat, and John's big toe, and lang Geordie's broken nose, as Giles Raisley gave him a' Saturday neet at the Pack ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... McClellan a Norman chin, the other muscle, the third a brow for laurels (of thistle I hope), another a square, military, heroic frame, another firmness in lips, another an unfathomed depth in the eye, etc., etc. Never I heard in Europe such balderdash. And the ladies—not the women and gentlewomen—are worse than the men in thus stupefying themselves and those ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... him. . . . Yes, that was it: that was what had happened. The marvellous peacemaker of Europe, the fire-engine who, as Hermann had said, was ready to put out all conflagrations, the fatuous mountebank who pretended to be a friend to England, who conducted his own balderdash which he called music, had changed his role and shown his black heart and ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... carpet-knights; honesty for courtiers; truth for monks, and chastity for nuns: a good saleable stock that costs the vender nothing, defies wear and tear, and when it has served a hundred customers is as plentiful and as marketable as ever. But, sirrahs, I'll none of your balderdash. You pass not hence without clink of brass, or I'll knock your musical noddles together till they ring like a pair of cymbals. That will be a ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... balderdash, which expresses not a single character nor feature. Some other time—but no, not some other time, now, this very instant, will I tell you all about it. Now or never. Well, between ourselves, since I commenced my letter, I have been three times on the point of throwing down my pen, of ordering ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... attached great importance to my discoursing on the subject personally. Quite uncertain as to whether I could really persuade myself to do this, I attended the meeting, and there, owing to the intolerable balderdash uttered by a certain barrister named Blode and a master-furrier Klette, whom at that time Dresden venerated as a Demosthenes and a Cleon, I passionately decided to appear at this extraordinary tribunal with my paper, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... captivated by the balderdash, "there is, after all, colour in words. Don't you remember how delighted you were with the name of a little town we passed through on our way to Orleans—Romorantin? You were haunted by it and said it was like the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... turns up. But I am speaking of you now, and not of Monk. You are not a man of fortune. You cannot afford to make ducks and drakes. You are excellently placed, and you have plenty of time to hark back, if you'll only listen to reason. All that Irish stump balderdash will never be thrown in your teeth by us, if you will just go on as though it ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... the words of this text appear to be so carelessly put together, as to make nothing but jargon, or a sort of scholastic balderdash. But, according to Critical Note 8th, "To jumble together words without care for the sense, is an unpardonable negligence, and an abuse of the human understanding." I think the learned author should rather have said: "There are two numbers called the singular and the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... even doggerel overlooked, but one has only to turn to almost any of the current standard translations of foreign songs to see that the matter is worse than this. To expect a student to get up and participate in this verbal foolishness and ineptitude, by endeavouring to express as genuine the balderdash that poses as sentiment and sense, is an insult to his ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... ejaculated Jenkins, "that's enough of your sophisticated balderdash. Do you not know that a London pledge is not valid ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... had vanished as so many old fashions, and those who knew fragments seemed ashamed to acknowledge it, as old people who sung old songs only sung to be laughed at; and those who were proud of their knowledge in such things knew nothing but the senseless balderdash that is bawled over and sung at country feasts, statutes and fairs, where the most senseless jargon passes for the greatest excellence, and rudest indecency for the finest wit. So the matter was thrown by, and forgotten, ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry |
