"Mealy-mouthed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of what he was in his worst days is to be expressed in a single word, the full meaning of which no circumlocution can convey; and which, though it may hardly be deemed presentable in serious composition, I shall use, as Bunyan himself (no mealy-mouthed writer) would have used it, had it in his days borne the same acceptation in which it is now universally understood;—in that word then, he had been ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and many for gain, and that our adversaries, knowing this, leave no device or stratagem untried to sow sedition among the Lords and Leaders of the Congregation. This very day the Earl of Argyle has received a mealy-mouthed letter from that dissolute papist, the Archbishop of St Andrews, entreating him, with many sweet words, concerning the ancient friendship subsisting between their families, to banish from his protection that good and pious proselyte, Douglas, his chaplain, evidently presuming, from the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... not justified? Were you not engaged to me? Am I to have you to visit me here, and to risk her insults, perhaps to be told to take myself off and to find accommodation elsewhere, because I am too mealy-mouthed to tell the truth as to the cause of my being here? I am here because you have promised to make me your wife, and, as far as I am concerned, I am not ashamed to have the fact advertised in every newspaper in the town. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... critics are much to blame, and blamed, for not trying to force the entry of good sense. Some of our forebrothers never hesitated to talk bluntly about the physical unsuitability of players for their parts, but we have grown so mealy-mouthed that if Miss Florence Haydon were to play Rosalind or Mr Louis Calvert Romeo, we should merely use some obscure phrases about unsuitability of temperament instead of saying something usefully brutal about the folly of these admirable artists. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... But mealy-mouthed propriety, the semblance of virtue, the hypocritical ways of a married woman who never allows anything to be seen but the vulgar needs of the household, and affects to refuse every kind of extravagance, leads ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... business, apprises us, had in those days grown old, grown rather blind, and his eyes were somewhat darkened, aliquantulum caligaverunt oculi ejus. He dwelt apart very much, in his Talamus or peculiar Chamber; got into the hands of flatterers, a set of mealy-mouthed persons who strove to make the passing hour easy for him,—for him easy, and for themselves profitable; accumulating in the distance mere mountains of confusion. Old Dominus Hugo sat inaccessible in this way, far ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... then the mealy-mouthed, filthy hag came over me. I on'y guessed, but you knew. Answer me;" and his grip tightened on her throat, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... of being mealy-mouthed? I owe you five hundred dollars. Every dollar beyond that you get from me you rob me of; and it doesn't matter whether it is a pistol or a writ that you ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... can safely say that it is only recently that selfishness came to be held a very sin. In the day of lance, and fort, and mailed right hand, the Knight took what he could, and held what he could, and there were no mealy-mouthed words about the rights of others, and a broad Christian charity, either. To-day, all of society has the precise motive of ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern |
