"Digress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Each sentence, stuffed with innumerable clauses of restriction, and other parenthetical circumstances, becomes a separate section—an independent whole. But, without insisting on Lord Brougham's oversights, or errors of defect, I will digress a moment to one positive caution of his, which will measure the value of his philosophy on this subject. He lays it down for a rule of indefinite application, that the Saxon part of our English idiom is to be favored at the expense of that part which has so happily coalesced ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Pope of Birds lived in Rome and needed visiting, as, for instance, the Great Auk; or if some old primal relic sacred to birds was connected therewith, as, for instance, the bones of the Dodo.... But I digress. The point is that the straight line takes one over the Brienzer Grat, over the lake, and then over the Wetterhorn. That was manifestly impossible. But whatever of it was possible had to be done, and among the possible things was clambering over the high ridge of the ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... my good lord, your lordship seeth I have made a long digression from my answer, but I trust your lordship can consider what moveth me thus to digress: Surely it behoveth me not only to live uprightly, but to avoid all probable arguments that may be gathered to render me suspected to her majesty, whom I serve with all dutifulness and sincerity; and therefore I gather this, that if it were understood that there were a communication, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... passage from Coleridge is as follows: "The feeling of gratitude which I cherish towards these men has caused me to digress further than I had foreseen or proposed; but to have passed them over in an historical sketch of my literary life and opinions, would have seemed like the denial of a debt, the concealment of a boon; for the writings of these ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... and has the black hair and pale, clear-cut face of the whole family. I cannot but refer it to vanity that he should heighten his personal advantages with black velvet or a red cross of considerable ostentation, and certainly—but I digress. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... you. He knows what will sell, and we don't. Make a good, popular book, and get as much money as you can. By-and-by, when you've got a name, you can afford to digress, and have philosophical and metaphysical people in your novels," said Amy, who took a strictly practical view of ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... myself to digress. "Silk possesses the property of dismissing the evil spirits who inhabit the magnetic fluids of the atmosphere," says the Mantram, book v., verse 23. And I cannot help wondering whether this apparent superstition may not contain a deeper meaning. It is difficult, I own, to part with ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... I digress here in order to give an account of the intimate processes, which, according to my view, take place within the germ-plasm, and which I have called "GERMINAL SELECTION." These processes are of importance since ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... flowery by-paths of your own, quite foreign to the grand paved-ways along which your friend supposes he is so kind as to be leading you. But however digressive your mind may be, do not suffer your eyes to digress. Whatever may be the intensity of your ennui, endeavor to preserve an animated expression, and your success is complete. This is all that is necessary. You will never be called upon for notes or comments. Your little ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... matter but of the artistic value of his introduction of it. Perhaps his enthusiasm does a little run away with him; perhaps he gives us a little too much of it, and avails himself too freely of the license, at least of the temptation, to digress which the introduction of such persons as Elie Magus affords. And it is also open to any one to say that the climax, or what is in effect the climax, is introduced somewhat too soon; that the struggle, first over the body and then over the property of Patroclus-Pons, is inordinately spun out, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... native tribe and one native chief stand out from the confused tangle of petty raids and forays which makes up (after the expulsion of the Matabili) the earlier annals of the Boer communities. This chief was the famous Moshesh, to speak of whose career I may digress for a moment from the thread of this narrative. The Kafir races have produced within this century three really remarkable men—men who, like Toussaint l'Ouverture in Hayti, and Kamehameha I. in Hawaii, will go down in history as instances ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Let me digress one further moment. We have a very sensible habit in the island whence I come, when our country misses fire, to say as little as we can, and sink the thing in patriotic oblivion. It is rather startling to recall that less ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... trees, roots, and plants In strength and growth are daily less, So all things have their wants: The heavenly signs move and digress; And honesty in women's hearts Hath not her former being: Their thoughts are ill, like other parts, Nought else in ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... Let me apparently digress for the moment and bring all clear and straight. The emotions have no basis in reason. We smile or are sad at the manifestation of jealousy in another. We smile or are sad because of the unreasonableness of it. Likewise we smile at ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... "And, to digress for a moment, especially as there are more of them in this state than there are Mormons, though you never can tell what will happen with this vain generation of young girls, that think more about wearing silk stockings than about minding their mothers and learning to bake a good loaf ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... their method, in their simplicity. They have scarcely changed since the days when Solomon built his Temple and draped it with such gorgeous hangings that even the inspired writers digress to emphasise their richness with long descriptions that could not possibly have assisted the cause of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... that his communications might be made apart. Content quietly motioned for him to follow, leading the way into an inner apartment of the house. As a new direction was given by this interruption, to the thoughts of the spectators of the foregoing scene, we shall also take the opportunity to digress, in order to lay before the reader some general facts that may be necessary to the connexion of the subsequent ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... human nature, my friend," he contended, determined not to be forced to digress from the main subject. "Have you got everything you want? Isn't there anything besides what you already have that appeals to you? Have you ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... here digress a moment to draw attention to the three simple diagrams of Fig. 109. The object, O, in each case is assumed to be to the right of the lens. In the topmost diagram the object is so far away from the lens that all rays coming from a single point in it are practically ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... to digress a little to give you the history of the name. Every effect has a cause you know, and after I got old enough to reason things out, I wondered too why my name was Gullins, so I did some investigating and the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... till at last it smelt so strong I could preserve it no longer. Upon which I have been at a great expense to fit up all the bones with exact contexture and in due symmetry, so that I am ready to show a very complete anatomy thereof to all curious gentlemen and others. But not to digress further in the midst of a digression, as I have known some authors enclose digressions in one another like a nest of boxes, I do affirm that, having carefully cut up human nature, I have found a very strange, new, and important discovery: that the public good of mankind ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... and the holy image to which his poor "crazy" mother had held him up still acted upon his imagination. Brooding on these things he may have come to us perhaps only to see whether here he could sacrifice all or only "two roubles," and in the monastery he met this elder. I must digress to explain what an "elder" is in Russian monasteries, and I am sorry that I do not feel very competent to do so. I will try, however, to give a superficial account of it in a few words. Authorities on the subject assert that the institution of "elders" is of recent date, not more than a hundred ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... It is a reprehensible habit. It is much better, as a rule, to die game than it is to digress, though on the present occasion there is no reason why I should do either. By the way, if a man has to choose between having either his leg or his arm amputated, which ought he to choose? Obviously he should choose ether,—that being much ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... tree, the smouldering rim of the sunset over misty fields, are true and symbolical parts of the scene; but if you deal in botany and ornithology and meteorology at such a moment, you cloud and dim the central point—you digress when you ought only ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... annoyance? Furthermore, if it were the custom to eat sugar on baked beans, as it is the custom to put sugar in coffee, this woman would not have been annoyed at all. It was simply the fact of seeing Mrs. Smith digress from the ordinary course of ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... such-and-such a thing, it shall be the probable or necessary outcome of his character; and whenever this incident follows on that, it shall be either the necessary or the probable consequence of it. From this one sees (to digress for a moment) that the Denouement also should arise out of the plot itself, arid not depend on a stage-artifice, as in Medea, or in the story of the (arrested) departure of the Greeks in the Iliad. ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... to all churches & Christians. And it is too great arrogancie for any man, or church [135] to thinke y^t he or they have so sounded y^e word of God to y^e bottome, as precislie to sett downe y^e churches discipline, without error in substance or circumstance, as y^t no other without blame may digress or differ in any thing from y^e same. And it is not difficulte to shew, y^t the reformed churches differ in many circumstances ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... can hide the transgressor; and the tears, the sighs, the blood—aye, the blood—of that solitary cavern are all known to Him, are all put down by the recording angel in the archives of heaven. But we digress. ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... I will here digress for a moment, in the hope that I may be permitted to make mention of my own works, without incurring the charge of undue egotism. Let me, however, by way of apology for calling public attention to the series of forty small Water-Color ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Supply and Joint Demand. Here, however, we are beginning to digress. Let us sum up in a general form our conclusions as to the way in which changes in the supply or demand of a commodity react upon the demand or supply of the other things with which it is jointly demanded or supplied. Everything turns, as we have ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... But to digress no further from the consideration of the Phaenomena, more immediately explicable by this Experiment, we shall proceed to shew, That, as to the rising of Water in a Filtre, the reason of it will be manifest ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... one dull pace, in one dull road, What but that curse of heart and head To this digression could have led? Where plunged, in vain I look about, And can't stay in, nor well get out. Could I, whilst Humour held the quill, Could I digress with half that skill; Could I with half that skill return, Which we so much admire in Sterne, 970 Where each digression, seeming vain, And only fit to entertain, Is found, on better recollection, To have a just and nice connexion, To help the whole with wondrous art, Whence ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... discipline attained a high standard as the men had been together for some months and free from heavy casualties, and it is well here to digress for a while and record what trench duty really meant. "Stand to" would be at say 3-30 a.m., shortly before dawn. At this time all would man the parapet and wait until it became daylight. The rifles, ammunition, gas helmets, and feet of the men would be inspected by the platoon officer. This generally ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... no harm to digress for a moment and explain exactly what the French did at the battle of ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... married life, I thought the dash and loyalty he showed delightful. "Do not be afraid," says he; "if I am killed, there is nobody to miss me." It appears you subsequently thought of that yourself. But I digress. I explained to him it was impossible that I could fight! "Not if I strike you?" says he. Very droll; I wish I could have put it in my book. However, I was conquered, took the young gentleman to my high favour, and tore up ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the name, I must here digress into a chapter of the history of manners in the nineteenth century, very well worth commemoration for its own sake. In some of the studios at that date, the hazing of new pupils was both barbarous and obscene. Two ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he can detail opposite arguments forcibly and luminously, and he is allowed the use of those oratorical powers in which, after all, his great strength lay. In those subjects, on the other hand, which are uninteresting because they are familiar, he may pause or digress before the mind is weary and the attention begins to flag; the reader is carried on by easy journeys and short stages, and novelty in the speaker supplies the want of novelty in the matter. Nor does Cicero discover less skill in the execution ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... out into the woods and lanes, and we will manage to enjoy ourselves there. We can contrive to digress here and there together without being missed. But I think we are judging rather hastily from what we saw this evening even about this family; and we have no right to suppose that all their ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... digress to give the clinical details of a case of smallpox; the eruption may be slight or it may be very extensive. It occurs in three forms, discrete, confluent and hemorrhagic. The most dangerous form of smallpox is the confluent, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... be pardoned, he is willing to hope, by the kind reader, if he digress in one or two paragraphs in this part of his work, purposely to expose the great wickedness of prognostication and fortune-telling; as the whole is not only unsound, foolish, absurd and false, but is most peremptorily forbidden in ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... delusions on the subject of chivalry, and that on every other subject he is discreto, one, in fact, whose faculty of discernment is in perfect order. The advantage of this is that he is enabled to make use of Don Quixote as a mouthpiece for his own reflections, and so, without seeming to digress, allow himself the relief of digression when he requires it, as freely as ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... more cheerful, and, indeed, no symptom of depression is discernible until the early part of September when he was again left alone. And now, indeed, there is evidence that he was incommoded again, and that more pressingly. To this matter I will return in a moment, but I digress to put in a document which, rightly or wrongly, I believe to have a bearing on the thread of ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... But I digress. I forgot that it was the library and its pictures I was attempting to describe. Well, at the other end hangs a portrait of Pope Gregory, by Passerotti; the expression of the face Italian, attitude like Raphael. Over the door a portrait ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... observation, not only as regards the ever-varying aspects of nature, but also as regards the quaint, droll, and humorous varieties of character, concur in rendering their conversation most delightful. I look back on these walks as among the brightest points in my existence. I have been led to digress on this subject. Although more correctly belonging to my father's life, yet it is so amalgamated with my own that it almost forms part of it, and it is difficult for me to separate the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... digress to relate an episode which has only collateral interest Hosuseri and Hohodemi made fishing and hunting, respectively, their avocations. But Hohodemi conceived a fancy to exchange pursuits, and importuned Hosuseri to agree. When, however, the former tried his luck ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... my impression," continued the vicar, completing his period, as if rounding a sentence in one of his sermons, wherein he was frequently prone to digress, "and I'm glad to learn from your acquiescent reply that you agree with me on the ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... Such, not to digress into more minute particulars, may suffice to convey a general idea of the manner in which our churches were internally decorated, and how they were fitted up, with reference to the ceremonial rites of the church of Rome, in and before the year 1535. The walls were covered with fresco ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... victories; each is inclined in its heart to believe that the other one has actually done so—because, as I suppose, the agony of defeat leaves a more lasting impression than the joy of victory. But I digress. We have not even got to Rankin's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... back-breaking and tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe? And did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in Jerico long before you got them half cut? To me it seems as if these things happened yesterday. And they did, to some children. But I digress. I was lying there trying the India-rubber rings. I remember looking at the clock and noticing that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be two weeks old, and thinking how little I had done to merit the blessings ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... boldly go right on, and be a Catholic speaking as a Catholic spontaneously will speak, on the Classics, or Fine Arts, or Poetry, or whatever he has taken in hand. Men think that he cannot give a lecture on Comparative Anatomy without being bound to digress into the Argument from Final Causes; that he cannot recount the present geological theories without forcing them into an interpretation seriatim of the first two chapters of Genesis. Many, indeed, seem to go further still, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... with facility, and furnish him with a better choice of terms, when he attempts to write. And in making such choice, let him remember, that as affectation of hard words makes composition ridiculous, so the affectation of easy and common ones may make it unmanly. But not to digress. With respect to grammar, we must sometimes content ourselves with such explications of its customary terms, as cannot claim to be perfect definitions; for the most common and familiar things are ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... deviate, depart from, turn, trend; bend, curve &c. 245; swerve, heel, bear off; gybe[obs3], wear. intervert[obs3]; deflect; divert, divert from its course; put on a new scent, shift, shunt, draw aside, crook, warp. stray, straggle; sidle; diverge &c. 291; tralineate|; digress, wander; wind, twist, meander; veer, tack; divagate; sidetrack; turn aside, turn a corner, turn away from; wheel, steer clear of; ramble, rove, drift; go astray, go adrift; yaw, dodge; step aside, ease off, make way for, shy. fly ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Michael, William and Alexander, never domiciled themselves at any civil calling. Having caught the roving spirit of camps, they remained in the skirts of the array which the covenanted Lords at Edinburgh continued to maintain; and here, poor lads! I may digress a little, to record the brief memorials ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Here I shall digress long enough to point out by way of contrast the true form of divine government. Every one is familiar with the theocratic government of Israel under the Old Testament dispensation. God ruled. He who carefully reads the New Testament can not fail to discern the ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... Bezae,' one of the most precious of our extant MSS. of the New Testament. I like to think of that fine old Cambridge professor's name as bound up with patient, self-effacing scholarship and a highly developed spirituality. But I digress. Cast your eye over this little group of foreign writers. Here is Dumas,—Jean Baptiste Dumas,—whose 'Lecons sur la philosophic chimique,' delivered in 1835, were considered worthy of being published thirty years later. The quaint volume that comes next is by Du Maurier, who was French ambassador ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... between the nature worship rites and phallic rites. We feel that it is not difficult to show that while the earlier rites were in accord with nutritive demands, phallic ceremonies were an expression of the desire for human reproduction. We shall now digress somewhat in order to discuss nature rites in some detail, as thereby the phallic ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... ceremony, and a breach Of nothing, but a form of speech; And goes for no more when 'tis took, Than mere saluting of the book. 210 Suppose the Scriptures are of force, They're but commissions of course, And Saints have freedom to digress, And vary from 'em, as they please; Or mis-interpret them, by private 215 Instructions, to all aims they drive at. Then why should we ourselves abridge And curtail our own privilege? Quakers (that, like to lanthorns, bear Their light within 'em) will not swear ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... we found it excellent. By the bye, Lord A., to digress to a different latitude, how did you succeed in your last ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... Roosevelt had instituted "hiking." He and the young people and such of the neighbors as chose would start from Sagamore Hill and walk in a bee-line to a point four or five miles off. The rule was that no natural impediment should cause them to digress or to stop. So they went through the fields and over the fences, across ditches and pools, and even clambered up and down a haystack, if one happened to be in the way, or through a barnyard. Of course they often reached home spattered with mud ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... scenery. Nor is it questionable that on these subjects he is seen, on the whole, at his best. True, his faults pursue him even here, and are aggravated by a sort of fashion of the time which made him elaborately digress into politics, into literature, even (God rest his soul!) into a kind of quasi-professional and professorial sermonising on morals and theology, in the midst of his sporting articles. But the metal more ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... not at that time the answer I coveted, I liked none the less the modesty which made her winning difficult. There were also other matters of importance to the world at large, which I must now digress to explain, that at first hindered, but in ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... that as in my peregrinations I turn down any green lane or dark alley that may excite my admiration or my curiosity—hurry through glittering saloons or crowded streets—pause at the cottage door or shop window, as it best suits my humour, so, in my intercourse with you, I shall digress, speculate, compress, and dilate, as my fancy or my convenience wills it. This is a blunt acknowledgment of my intentions; but as travellers are never sociable till they have cast aside the formalities ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... pavane quite well, but refused to allow the conversation to digress into a description of Evelyn's playing of the viola da gamba. But if they were not to talk about Evelyn there was no use tarrying any longer in Dulwich; he had learned all the old man knew about his daughter. He got up.... At that moment the door ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... digress here just a little bit by quoting one thing that Mr. Best said. I wish, by the way, that we could incorporate some of his homey philosophy into some of our minutes so as to really benefit by some of his remarks. I ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... May I digress long enough to speak a little more of this remarkable horse. Dr. Holland says there is always hope for any man who has heart enough to love a good horse. Army life was well calculated to develop the sterling qualities of both man and beast. Hence, ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... I digress again, I see, but my drift I hope is clear. Differ as we may, Belloc and Chesterton are with all Socialists in being on the same side of the great political and social cleavage that opens at the present ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... with the form called realistic—it is more comprehensive; it is a genus of which "realism" is a species. Moreover, the latter expression being reserved by custom for esthetic creation, I purposely digress in order to dwell on this point: that the esthetic imagination has no essential character belonging exclusively to it, and that it differs from other forms (scientific, mechanical, etc.) only in its materials and in its end, not in its ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... beneficent showers, according to the moods during youth—and the composite Lord Fleetwood comes nearer into our focus. Dame Gossip, with her jigging to be at the butterwoman's trot, when she is not violently interrupting, would suffer just punishment were we to digress upon the morality of a young man's legal possession ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "subjoined, in which were collected subsequent decisions bearing on the points reported in the text, and in which doctrines having some obvious connexion with them," were "occasionally discussed," ... "without allowing them to digress so far from the subject matter of the text, as to distract the reader's mind from that to which they ought to be subsidiary." It is difficult to speak in terms too highly commendatory of this masterly performance—one quite of a judicial tone of investigation—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... me, if I digress a little. But is not the knowledge of rare, curious, and beautiful Prints—so necessary, it would seem, towards the perfecting of illustrated copies—is not this knowledge of long ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... To digress a moment: When it comes to the arts, that is quite another matter. If a woman finds herself with a talent (I refrain from such a big word as genius, as only posterity should presume to apply that term to any one's differentiation from his fellows), ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... will have to digress a moment, while I attend to your neglected education," said Little Billy. "Because, from tonight, you will think of ambergris by day, and dream of it by night—ambergris in kegs, oodles of it! I don't suppose your legal training acquainted you with the technical details ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... "this can by no means be otherwise; and the knight-errant who should act in any other manner would digress much from his duty; for it is a received maxim and custom in chivalry, that the knight-errant, who, on the point of engaging in some great feat of arms, has his lady before him, must turn his eyes fondly and amorously towards her, as if imploring her favor and protection in the ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... digress for the moment, to take a bird's-eye view of matters of grave moment passing in distant ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... by M. Scherer's rough treatment of his subject. In no essay, I think, does he quote so much from others, does he seem to feel it such a relief to find a backer, a somebody to fight with on a side point, a somebody (for instance Professor Nichol) to correct and gloss and digress upon while complimenting him. Mr Arnold is obviously not at ease in this Zion—which indeed is a Zion of an odd kind. Yet this very uneasiness gives to the Essay a glancing variety, a sort of animation and excitement, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... certain to be fatal, for his wrist has a magnificent twist which reminds one of a top. I do not know where he learned this wrist movement, but almost invariably it leads him to kill his man. Last year I saw him—I digress. I must look to it that O'Ruddy has quiet, rest, and peace of mind ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... was to have been the subject of the first of the aforementioned books, and in the desire to get at the full meaning of problems which arose during its progress, he was led to digress into a general anatomical survey of the Rodentia, and in testimony to this there remain five or six books of rough notes bearing dates 1880 to 1884, and a series of finished pencil-drawings, which, as works of art and accurate delineations of fact, are among the most ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... I must digress here a bit from my own personal adventures to explain briefly how the fall of Nu-Yok came about, as ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... see I know your writing from having read Burnett all those "Burn this at once" epistles. And I know it still better from having to catalogue them for his ready reference. You know how impatient he is. (But I have run into an open switch and must digress backwards.) ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... allow me, I wish to digress for a moment to deal with a charge that is constantly made, and has recently been repeated, to the effect that there is poverty in India which is largely due to the political and commercial drain on the country year by year, the political, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... digress. Tempus fugit,—which reminds me of a story "Billy" Hallowell once told at a meeting of the American Bar Association in Minneapolis, in 1906. Hallowell was perhaps the most brilliant after-dinner speaker I have ever heard—with the possible exception ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... Philadelphia. Again, the elm tree is in full leaf, yet the "pow-wow" that Penn held with the Indians took place in November, and elm trees do not have leaves on them in this latitude in November. But why digress from the subject about which I started to write, merely to show that artists and those seeking for family distinction are not to be relied upon as truthful ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... Frenchman was careful not to digress or to take too much upon himself, but did his work promptly and carefully, and soon became quite indispensable to the work of the mine. In addition to this he had made himself very popular with the men, and as the months rolled on was looked upon quite as a ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... digress from Eymeric and Pena, in order to describe, from additional authority, of what this torture consisted, and probably, still consists, in Italy. Limborch collects this information from Juan de Rojas, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... can we bring this about? how tell what things you have been used to keep and what to give up? how keen a desire it is well to quell, and which ones? To reach this point, it is necessary to digress again in order to find the element of the magic touchstone which will tell us whether the thing we are looking at is made of gold ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... noted, That this Comet did very much digress from the Hypothesis, delivered by M. Auzout, in regard that, whereas according to that Hypothesis, this Star should not arrive to the Ecliptick till after the space of 3 months, it arrived there the 28 of April. And then, that its first Conjunction ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... to digress from his proper theme: e.g. xxxix. 48, 6, 'cuius belli et causas et ordinem si expromere velim, immemor sim propositi, quo statui non ultra attingere externa, nisi qua ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... their operations. Some say that he came with not more than two hundred horse, but most authors say with a body of two thousand cavalry. But, as this man was by far the greatest king of his age, and rendered most essential service to the Romans, it seems worth while to digress a little, to give a full account of the great vicissitudes of fortune he experienced in the loss and recovery of his father's kingdom. While he was serving in Spain in the cause of the Carthaginians, his father, named Gala, died. The kingdom, according to the custom of the Numidians, came ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... by declining any over-strict observation of method. There are certain points of that which I esteem the first philosophy whereof I shall never lose sight, but this will be very consistent with a sort of epistolary licence. To digress and to ramble are different things, and he who knows the country through which he travels may venture out of the highroad, because he is sure of finding his way back to it again. Thus the several matters that may arise even accidentally before me will have some share in ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... heart to pant; No pleading passions of my extreme love Can mollify her mind of adamant. Ah cruel sex, and foe to all mankind, Either you love or else you hate too much! A glist'ring show of gold in you we find, And yet you prove but copper in the touch. But why, O why, do I so far digress? Nature you made of pure and fairest mould, The pomp and glory of man to depress, And as your slaves in thraldom them to hold; Which by experience now too well I prove, There is no pain unto the pains ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... may be interesting to digress a bit, and consider some of his earlier stories in Adventure Magazine, and more particularly as they apply to his books. No attempt is being made to give a complete listing of his magazine stories here. Adventure Magazine began publication in November ...
— Materials Toward A Bibliography Of The Works Of Talbot Mundy • Bradford M. Day, Editor
... me digress. The few of my age will remember, and the many younger will have been told, that at this time the Italian queen-mother was the ruling power in France. It was Catharine de' Medici's first object to maintain her influence over Charles the Ninth—her son; who, ricketty, weak, and passionate, was ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... case a very short time before he began to make ardent love to her. She was an extremely pretty girl, two years his senior, and, I am convinced, a most worthy and exemplary young woman. She became infatuated with the young man. He asked her to marry him. (Permit me to digress for a moment in order to state that while Courtney Thane was in his freshman year at college his father was obliged to pay out quite a large sum of money to a chorus-girl with whom, it appears, he had become involved.) To make a long story short, our ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... what a kind of Creature a Quack is. Mind what follows. He is one who is fain to supply some higher Ability he pretends to with Craft. He draws great Companies to him by undertaking strange Things which can never be effected. The rest is so valuable, that tho I digress'd in it Ten times more than I do, I would present the Doctor with it, and leave it to his ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... laden with the perfumes of the West. But do not think, Mounton, that it is only good spirits which haunt the recesses of my solitude. To push the metaphor to exaggeration—Memory is my Sycorax, and Gloom is the Caliban she conceives. But let me digress from myself to my less idle occupations;—I have of late diverted my thoughts in some measure by a recurrence to a study to which I once was particularly devoted—history. Have you ever remarked, that people who live the most by themselves reflect the most upon others; ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... should digress from yourself else: for, believe it, your travel is your only thing that rectifies, or, as the Italian says, "vi rendi pronto all' attioni," ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... corner of my house; if anything comes into my head that I have a mind to search or to write, lest I should forget it in but going across the court, I am fain to commit it to the memory of some other. If I venture in speaking to digress never so little from my subject, I am infallibly lost, which is the reason that I keep myself, in discourse, strictly close. I am forced to call the men who serve me either by the names of their offices or their country; ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... quite new matter, or to frame the history to the most tragical convenience? Again, many things may be told, which cannot be showed: if they know the difference betwixt reporting and representing. As for example, I may speak, though I am here, of Peru, and in speech digress from that to the description of Calicut; but in action I cannot represent it without Pacolet's horse. And so was the manner the ancients took by some "Nuntius," {85} to recount things done in ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... the centre, found nothing on a road where its advanced guard itself had to subsist entirely on the leavings of the Russians; it could not digress from its direction, for want of time, in so rapid a march. Besides, the columns on the right and left consumed every thing on either side of it. In order to live better, it ought to have set out later every day, halted ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... is no less fertile in results. I should digress from my subject if I were to examine here how the organization of animals is developed upon the earth; what modifications, or more strictly speaking, what complications it has undergone after each cataclysm, or if I even stopped to describe one of those ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... justified in Poesy by success; but then most perfect and most admirable when most concealed.(45) But whither am I going! This copious and delightful topic has drawn me far beyond my design; I hasten back to my subject, and am guarded, for a time at least, against any further temptation to digress. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... made up of odd pieces from all parts of the house, chosen on account of their suiting his notions, or fitting some corner of his apartment; and he is very eloquent in praise of an ancient elbow-chair, from which he takes occasion to digress into a censure on modern chairs, as having degenerated from the dignity and comfort of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... digress from the main point of this chapter long enough to explain that equality is not synonymous with identity, as seems to be the impression among the many; a misconception which we regret to say is shared by the judge on the bench with the workingman on the construction gang, and the ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... to restore Mrs Tipps her lost ring, and that, therefore, it is our duty to resume the thread of our story, with, of course, a humble apology to the patient reader for having again given way to our irresistible tendency to digress! ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... But to digress thus in the very moment of detection, of recognition, seems irrelevant. The flash of conviction was as instantaneous in its action in my mind as that of the lightning when it strikes its object. I stood confounded, yet enlightened, all ablaze!—but the subject ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... camp. But now I must digress a moment to tell you something that the public—at least the public that has derived its knowledge of northern wilderness life from fiction—may find it hard to believe. And this is what I want to say: ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... 28: The Author trusts to be pardoned, if he suffers these conjectures on Henry's studies in Oxford to tempt him to digress in this note further than the strict rules of unity might approve. They brought a lively image to his mind of the occupations and confessions of one of the earliest known sons of Alma Mater. Perhaps Ingulphus ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... atheistical spirits, as Tully did Atticus, doubting of this point, to Plato's Phaedon. Or if they desire philosophical proofs and demonstrations, I refer them to Niphus, Nic. Faventinus' tracts of this subject. To Fran. and John Picus in digress: sup. 3. de Anima, Tholosanus, Eugubinus, To. Soto, Canas, Thomas, Peresius, Dandinus, Colerus, to that elaborate tract in Zanchius, to Tolet's Sixty Reasons, and Lessius' Twenty-two Arguments, to prove the immortality of the soul. Campanella, lib. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... any leisure we would here digress a little on that ingratitude which so many writers have observed to spring up in the people in all free governments towards their great men; who, while they have been consulting the good of the public, by raising their own greatness, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... apologized, I will venture to transgress and digress anew, and mention here a kind of melodic malady, a singular obsession to which I am subject, and which I will call unconscious ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... dealing with the second phase of Dr. Fu-Manchu's activities in England, I find that one of the worst hours of my life was associated with the singular and seemingly inconsequent adventure of the fiery hand. I shall deal with it in this place, begging you to bear with me if I seem to digress. ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... verses 12-14 that is not given by the Greek we get these eight lines in approximately Jeremiah's favourite Qinah-measure. The Greek also lacks verses 16-20, which irrelevantly digress from the exiles to the guilt and doom of the Jews in Jerusalem, and which it is difficult to think that Jeremiah would have put into a letter to be carried by two of these same Jews.(503) Verse 15 goes with 21-23,(504) ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... hope you will permit me to digress long enough to express something that is much on ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... in such ventures as we are now regarding that fortune seems readiest to favour the daring, and if I may digress briefly to adduce experiences coming within my own knowledge, I would say that it is to his very impulsiveness that the enthusiast often owes the safety of his neck. It is the timid, not the bold rider, that comes to grief at the fence. It is the man who draws back ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... But I digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon announced the Fourth of July, at daylight, to all who were awake. But many of us got our information at a later hour, from the almanac. All the flags were sent aloft except half a dozen that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... think proper, before we proceed any farther together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion, of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic whatever; and here I must desire all those critics to mind their own business, and not to intermeddle with affairs or works which no ways concern ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Let us digress from the scenario a minute to cite a scintillating passage, one of many in the book. Wade ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... gradual, graduate, degrade, digress, Congress, aggressive, progressive, degree; (2) gradation, Centigrade, ingress, egress, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... fully appreciates the struggles of those who are fat—the efforts at starvation, the detested exercise, the long, miserable walks. Well has one of our greatest poets written, "Take up the fat man's burden." But we digress. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... from bad art? Are we to go further, and assume that these two lines of division intersect, so that a work may be akin to great art though it be not good art, while, however perfect a work of art may be, it may remain little art for some wholly non-aesthetic reason? But we digress. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... will digress a bit and explain how these stone-quarries were discovered. Pixodorus was a shepherd who lived in that vicinity. When the people of Ephesus were planning to build the temple of Diana in marble, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... I will digress here to explain our after-dinner games. There were several, but the best were what Laura and I invented: one was called "Styles," another "Clumps"—better known as "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral"—a third, "Epigrams" and the most dangerous of all "Character Sketches." We were given no time-limit, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... I, however, digress. My tale does not primarily concern itself with the hen. If correctly told it will centre on the egg. For ten years my father and mother struggled to make our chicken farm pay and then they gave up that struggle and began another. They moved ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... manufacture of snuff; and with the exception of a little common salt, which is added to make the tobacco keep, and alkalies for bringing out the flavor, nothing is allowed to be used but a few essential oils. And here we must digress for a moment to correct a popular error, viz., that snuff contains ground glass, put there for titillating purposes. What appears to be ground glass is only the little crystals or small particles of alkali that have not been dissolved. So that fastidious snuff-takers may ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... to digress here for the purpose of considering how the generators of an acetylene apparatus themselves should be protected from frost; but it may be said at the outset that it is impossible to lay down any fixed rules applicable ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... digress a moment to explain one feature of German administration and the much vaunted Teuton organisation, which is nothing more nor less than a huge joke, although it is unfortunately quite devoid of humour for the luckless victim. In times of war, Germany is subdivided into districts, each ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... its strong language has drawn out this letter. For as to what actually occurred on the day of your start, it supplied me with absolutely no subject for writing. But as when we are together we are never at a loss for something to say, so ought our letters at times to digress into loose chat. Well then, to begin, the liberty of the Tenedians has received short shrift,[570] no one speaking for them except myself, Bibulus, Calidius, and Favonius. A complimentary reference to you was made by the legates from Magnesia ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... I felt fairly certain that he would not approve, and I do not wish to lay myself open to rebuffs from him after his behaviour concerning the smoking incident. I boil with rage at the thought, but again I digress. ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... be pardoned if I digress at this time to state that the party of one hundred and sixty-nine, both stern and opposite, besieged my castle on the next day but one, with the punctuality of locusts, and despite all of my precautions, all of my devices, all of my objections, ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Junction, a distance of 20 miles from the Treaty Stone. Splendid views of the Galtee ranges can be had, and on towards Clonmel the wooded slopes of the minor ranges and hills are a delightful picture. If time affords, the tourist can digress from the main road and visit the famous Glen of Aherlow. Back to Tipperary for lunch, good hotels, and splendid roads. Visit the Kickham monument, and then on to Clonmel. Excellent accommodation to be had at Clonmel. Next day ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... But I digress: of all appeals,—although I grant the power of pathos, and of gold, Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no Method 's more sure at moments to take hold Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow More tender, as we every day behold, Than that all-softening, overpowering ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... But I digress as my mind goes back to these early dates, and unless I break away, Charley and I will not reach Newmarket in time for the first race. It happened that when we made this memorable visit I had an uncle living at The Priory at Royston, which was some five-and-twenty miles from Newmarket, where the ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... "do not let us digress. You ask me for advice; and I am perhaps the best adviser you could have chosen. Come, then, to the point. How have you learned this? Have you any ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... this love is spiritual. That the love of the man's wisdom is transferred into the wife, has been occasionally observed above, and will be more fully proved in the following sections: at this time it is not allowable to digress from the subject proposed, which is concerning the conjunction of two married partners into one flesh by a union of souls and minds. This union we will elucidate by treating of it in the following order. I. From creation there is implanted in each sex a faculty and inclination, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... being equally admitted to the benefit of those funerary and obsequial festivals with the aged rectors and professed fathers. This is the surest ordinary means whereby from God he may obtain forgiveness. Ho, ho, I am quite mistaken; I digress from the purpose, and fly out of my discourse, as if my spirits were a-wool-gathering. The devil take me, if I go thither! Virtue God! The chamber is already full of devils. O what a swinging, thwacking noise is now amongst them! ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... strongly spiced, and thus they have by degrees fitted themselves up with a loathly dialect of their own which transcends the comparatively harmless efforts of the Black Country potter. Foul is not the word for this ultra-filthy mode of talk—it passes into depths below foulness. I may digress for a little to emphasize this point. The latter-day hanger-on of the Turf has introduced a new horror to existence. Go into the Silver Ring at a suburban meeting, and listen while two or three of the fellows ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... rule of directness to the introduction of new characters in the scenes that follow. There is one main theme, one main line of development, in every well constructed story—and only one. See to it that you do not digress from it except as you bring up from the rear other essential parts of the action. There is absolutely no place in the photoplay for ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... that I digress too much and that I seem to forget that I am writing my autobiography and not an estimate of Walter Bagehot, I shall not yield to the criticism. There is method in my madness. No, I am prepared to contend, and to contend with my last drop of ink, that I am justified in what I have done. If ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... But I digress.—The connexion of scenic exhibitions with the improvement or corruption of the manners of men, has been universally recognized: in other words, the presence or absence of poetry in its most perfect and universal form, has been found to be connected with good and evil in conduct ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... formerly have claimed our attention. In the Liturgy it is prayed that "magistrates may indifferently minister justice." Indifferently originally meant impartially. The word extravagant, in its primitive signification, only signified to digress from the subject. The Decretals, or those letters from the popes deciding on points of ecclesiastical discipline, were at length incorporated with the canon law, and were called extravagant by wandering out of the body of the canon law, being confusedly dispersed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to digress"—Pray, doth he call scurrility upon the clergy, a digression? The apology ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... however, seemed to be in great agitation-of spirits; and Vivian was convinced that his mind must be interested in an extraordinary manner, because he did not, as was his usual practice, digress to fifty impertinent episodes before he came to the point. He only blew his nose sundry times; and then at once said, "I wish to speak to you, Mr. Vivian, about the proposal you did me the honour to make for my daughter Julia. Difficulties have occurred on our side— very extraordinary difficulties—Julia, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... digress, there is one badge of honour in our country, which I never contemplate without serious reflection rising in my mind. It is the bloody hand in the dexter chief of a baronet,—now often worn, I grant, by those who, perhaps, during ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... finished with the personal points that I was recommended to notice, I will forsake the immediate object of this Preface; and, leaving Late Lyrics to whatever fate it deserves, digress for a few moments to more general considerations. The thoughts of any man of letters concerned to keep poetry alive cannot but run uncomfortably on the precarious prospects of English verse at the present day. Verily the hazards and casualties surrounding the birth and setting forth ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... digress. It is a reprehensible habit. It is much better, as a rule, to die game than it is to digress, though on the present occasion there is no reason why I should do either. By the way, if a man has to choose between having ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... to Henry and me, who thought our calling was a torch-bearer of civilization. Indeed, one may digress and say that we found the whole estate of the press in France rather disenchanting. For advertising is not regarded as entirely "ethical" in France. The big stores sometimes do not advertise at all; because people look with the same suspicion ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... trust, without appearing egotistical, digress slightly from the narrative to give an account of how I managed with my own private venture, which I had personally to attend to; for it is scarcely necessary to mention that in blockade-running everyone must ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... their ocelli in an exactly intermediate condition. So that here we have two bodies of sterile workers in the same nest, differing not only in size, but in their organs of vision, yet connected by some few members in an intermediate condition. I may digress by adding, that if the smaller workers had been the most useful to the community, and those males and females had been continually selected, which produced more and more of the smaller workers, until all the workers were in this condition; we should then ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... to digress too much from our subject, to preserve their health the Africans drink a great deal of wine; and this they do to help the digestion of the vast quantity of ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... a little digress from the chronological course of my explanatory narrative to inform the reader that when Lady Ellinor had her interview with Roland, she had been repelled by the sternness of his manner from divulging Vivian's secret. But on her first attempt to sound or conciliate him, she had begun with ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... destination. He has digressed; he has left the road. And he must get back to the road. By this digression he has wasted just as much time as it has taken to come from the direct road to this point added to the time it will take to go back. Do not digress; tell one story at a time; let no incident into your story which cannot answer the question, "Why are you here?" by "I help;" keep your eye on the main incident; things which do not unquestionably contribute something to the main ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... I would here digress for a moment to deal with the argument advanced in the latter part of this sentence. It is very plausible, and, at first sight, appears convincing. It is also very commonly used. Over and over again, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... among children sometimes arouses the ire of teachers; but adults are little better. When a body of them meets for the discussion of a certain question, the probability is that, if the first speaker speaks directly to the point, the second will digress somewhat, the third will touch the subject only slightly, and the fourth will talk about a different matter. Many a discussion that has started off well leads to much excitement without any one's knowing definitely what the subject of dispute is. It is rarely the case that every page of a paper ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... out of place to digress a moment to illustrate the moral effect of such a convulsion. Several weeks after this great mine explosion, the 18th Army Corps, to which I then belonged, was holding a line of works recently captured from the rebels, about six miles from Richmond, when one night the colonel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... with the addition of a couple of pots of porter, were soon procured from the neighbouring alehouse; and while the parties are filling them, and pushing the paper of tobacco from one to the other, I shall digress, notwithstanding the contrary opinion of the other sex, in praise of this ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat |
