"Moralize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ruminate stupidly as the cows do, the 'county families' es-chewing all men who are not 'landed proprietors,' and the farmers never looking higher than to the fly on the uppermost turnip-leaf! Do you know at all what English country-life is, which the English praise so, and 'moralize upon into a thousand similes,' as that one greatest, purest, noblest thing in the world—the purely English and excellent thing? It is to my mind simply and purely abominable, and I would rather live in a street ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... is ill done. Time has avenged you. Be contented with that knowledge, and, for Heaven's sake, do not endeavor to moralize over the ruin which Heaven has made, and justly made, of Queen Jehane, as I perceive you mean to do." She leaned backward in the chair, very coarsely clad in brown, but knowing that her coloring was excellent, that she had ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... once makes even the slightest allusion to smoking? Who can suggest a reason? Our great poet knew the human heart too well, and kept too steadily in view, the universal nature of man to be afraid of painting the external trapping and ephemeral customs of his own time. Does he not delight to moralize on false hair, masks, rapiers, pomandens, perfumes, dice, bowls, fardingales, etc? Did he not sketch for us, with enjoyment and with satire, too, the fantastic fops, the pompous stewards, the mischievous pages, the quarrelsome revellers, the testy gaolers, the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... counsels that people are so anxious to give her with better intentions than competence. Otherwise, Sulzer and his school might have made German poetry adopt a very equivocal style. It is no doubt a very honorable aim in a poet to moralize the man, and excite the patriotism of the citizen, and the Muses know better than any one how well the arts of the sublime and of the beautiful are adapted to exercise this influence. But that which poetry obtains excellently by indirect means ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the Peace which tyrants make; The calm she breeds let the sword's lightning break! It is the tyrants who have beaten out Ploughshares and pruning-hooks to spears and swords, And shall I pause and moralize and doubt? Whose veins run water let him mete his words! Each fetter sundered is the whole world's gain! And rather than humanity remain A pearl beneath the feet of Austrian swine, Welcome to me whatever breaks a chain. 80 That ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... some barbarian scalping-cult. Seen at that hour, in the pale luster of the flashlight, this sorry plunder of lost teeth and dead hair made upon one a melancholy impression, disparaging to humanity. I had scant time to moralize on hair and teeth, however, for Flint was stopping before a door the neat brass plate of ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... like dark streams along a field of snow, 15 Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed In light of some sublimest mind, decay? Nor putrefaction's breath Leave aught of this pure spectacle But loathsomeness and ruin?— 20 Spare aught but a dark theme, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids To watch their own repose? 25 Will they, when morning's beam Flows through those wells of light, Seek far from noise and day some western cave, Where woods and streams with soft and pausing ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of men, and of a good art struggling to free itself from self-consciousness. But it does mean that Balzac, when he wrote it, was under the burden of the very traditions which he has helped fiction to throw off. He felt obliged to construct a mechanical plot, to surcharge his characters, to moralize openly and baldly; he permitted himself to "sympathize" with certain of his people, and to point out others for the abhorrence of his readers. This is not so bad in him as it would be in a novelist of our day. It is simply primitive and inevitable, and he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Prince spoke of Italy in phrases to which we have already alluded.[30] He reminded her of the Risorgimento and of the principles with which her great sons had then been inspired. But the Italian Press preferred to moralize in column after column on the variety of the political groups of Yugoslavia, with the object of showing to the world that they were a people of no cohesive capacities and of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... successful, and pretending to shut the door, watched my receding footsteps till I turned a distant corner. I now pass the house of the other physician to whom I was recommended to apply, several times every week, and I often moralize over the apprehension and anxieties with which I then viewed the two or three steps which led to his dwelling. When I arrived opposite his house I stopped and calculated the chances of mounting these steps without falling. I first rested my hand upon the wall and then endeavored to ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... had a mind to moralize, I should add, these alternations of pleasure and disappointment which I have so often experienced since I have been travelling, are very proper to make us sensible that there is no kind of life more capable of representing to us ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... are buried. If he could speak, he would say, Build temples: I will lord it in their ruins; build palaces: I will inhabit them; erect empires: I will inherit them; bury your beautiful: I will watch the worms at their work; and you, who stand here and moralize over me: I will crawl over your corpse ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the old well-remembered landing-place, and she finds herself so near, so very near her lost home. How precious are such moments—how few we have in life! They are created from our very sorrows; without our cares our joys would be less lively. But we have no time to moralize. Catharine flies with the speed of a young fawn to climb the cliff-like shoulder of that steep bank; and now; out of breath, she stands at the threshold of her log-house. How neat and nice it looks compared with ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... departed," is not very elegant—yet it is better calculated to recall the wanderings of morality, than the flattering epitaph, a Fame hovering in the air, or the suspended wreath of the remunerating angel.—But I moralize in vain—the rage of these new Goths is inexorable: they seem solicitous to destroy every vestige of civilization, lest the people should remember they have not always ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... might moralize if we had the room, but moralizing is out of the question. We have a history, a complication of incidents to relate that caused certain effects to develope themselves, and it is our only aim to cause others to moralize—to lead ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... The notes are numerous and lengthy, constituting a quarter to a third of the book, but are replete with padding, pointless babble and occasional puerile inaccuracies. They are largely attempts to explain and to moralize upon Yorick's emotions,—averbose, childish, witless commentary. The Wortregister contains fourteen pages in double columns of explanations, in general differing very little from the kind of information given in the notes. The Allgemeine ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... that of our young gentleman, who, when he was heated with wine, misled by example, invited on one hand, and defied on the other, forgot all his maxims of caution and sobriety, and, plunging into the reigning folly of the place, had frequent occasions to moralize in the morning upon the loss of the preceding night. These penitential reflections were attended with many laudable resolutions of profiting by the experience which he had so dearly purchased; but he was one of those philosophers who always put off till another ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and rhyme and think on Chatterton; And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him Four laurell'd spirits, heaven-ward to intreat him. With reverence would we speak of all the sages Who have left streaks of light athwart their ages: And thou shouldst moralize on Milton's blindness, And mourn the fearful dearth of human kindness To those who strove with the bright golden wing Of genius, to flap away each sting Thrown by the pitiless world. We next could tell Of those who in the cause of ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... "Jesse James." But we do not know what "Billy Gashade" it was who first made rhymes about Robin Hood or Johnny Armstrong, or just how much help he had from the crowd in composing them. In any case, the method of such ballads is purely objective. They do not moralize or sentimentalize. There is little description, aside from the use of set, conventional phrases. They do not "motivate" the story carefully, or move logically from event to event. Rather do they "flash the story at you" ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... But what said Iaques? Did he not moralize this spectacle? 1.Lord. O yes, into a thousand similies. First, for his weeping into the needlesse streame; Poore Deere quoth he, thou mak'st a testament As worldlings doe, giuing thy sum of more To that which had too ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... do at least once or twice every year, for the sake of our ever-mellowing friendship, and those good old times in which it began. Like all who are ripe enough to have memories, we delight to recall the period of our vernal equinox, and to moralize, with gentle sadness and many wise wags of our frosty polls, upon the events in which that period was prolific; and so, when the cloth was removed yesterday, and we sat toying with our cigars and our Sherry, our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... "For goodness sake don't moralize. I know well enough what they were. Ruin. And it doesn't gild the pill to remember that I ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... did it, upon the embroidery of the fore-part, which being dismally tarnish'd and fray'd moreover in some of the principal leaves and boldest parts of the pattern, he lay'd it down again between his two feet, in order to moralize upon ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... but he seized the first opportunity to get away where he could think. Once outside the house, he hailed a cab, told the driver to jog around for an hour or two, and then land him at the —— Hotel. Once started, he settled back and began to cross-question himself, and to moralize ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... the one case I recognize—even—or especially—when the presumption may have been against the particular attempt, a consummate illustration of what art can do. In the other I moralize indulgently upon human rashness. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... dying lyric flame, and he began to write verses in the gallant erotic vein then and there fashionable—verses that tell of love-lorn shepherds and shepherdesses, give sage advice to girls about keeping their innocence, and moralize on the ways of this wicked world. They show no signs of lyric genius. His short-lived passion for Annette, as he called her, whom he tormented with his jealousy until she lost patience and broke off the intimacy, was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Lycurgus taught To moralize the human thought Of mad opinion's maze, To erring zeal they gave new laws, Thy charms, O Liberty, the cause ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the calm, self-restrained, meditative tranquillity enjoined by Maurice, as had been the previous restless, querulous state. Both were body more than mind, but Mrs. Ferrars was much more ready to be merry with Albinia than to moralize about her. And it was droll that the penny club was one of the first stages in ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were beat. As long as the monks existed, the people, when aggrieved, had property on their side. And now 'tis all over," said the stranger; "and travellers come and stare at these ruins, and think themselves very wise to moralize over time. They are the children of violence, not of time. It is war that created these ruins, civil war, of all our civil wars the most inhuman, for it was waged with the unresisting. The monasteries were taken by storm, they were sacked, gutted, battered with warlike instruments, blown up with ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... moralize in closing this story. We know that your tears will fall and that your heart will ache, but oh! be warned, and warn others. Full well do we who are rescue workers know there are thousands of cases today ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... answered, "lots! Of course, myself, I am not given to archaeology, like poor Higgs, but the sight struck me as absolutely unique. If I were inclined to moralize, for instance, what a contrast between those dead rulers and their young and beautiful successor, full of life and love"—here he looked at me sharply—"love of her people, such as I have no doubt ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... I shall not make an unworthy correspondent altogether, for I can get into thy grave way, and moralize a little now and then: and if you'll promise to oblige me by your constant correspondence in this way, and divest yourself of all restraint, as if you were writing to your parents (and I can tell you, you'll write to one who will ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... moralize, for Mr. Humphreys has already divulged his plan of disposing of the property. He has a friend, one Thomas A. Parkins, who has money, and who will buy the farm at two hundred dollars. He could procure the money in advance any day by going to the village of Bethany, the ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... It is easy for persons with plenty of money to moralize on the shortcomings of others. I'll tell you a secret. I'm writing a book, and if it's a success, then good-bye to journalism. I don't like the spy business myself any too well; I'm afraid England is ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... time to moralize or eppisode to any extent amidst the music, laughter and gay voices, the endless procession passin' by. To most a seen of happiness, but to me they seemed like shadders; the Reality of life, my beloved pardner, wuz lost, lost to me. A ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... his Gods before he becomes sufficiently developed to formulate moral rules for his own guidance, and to create moral laws for his fellowmen. The moralization of the Gods will follow as a matter of course. Man really modifies his Gods in terms of the ideal human being. It is not the Gods who moralize man, it is man who moralizes the Gods." (Chapman Cohen: ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... ramble my person at my own free will, and my mind rambles quite indifferent as to its intimate connexion with the former. I look at the stars, and my thoughts are of women—I look at the earth, and my thoughts run upon heaven—I frequent the opera, and moralize upon the world and its vanities—I sit in my pew at church, and my thoughts ramble every where in spite of my endeavours and those of the parson to boot—I live in town all the year, because it's the fashion to be here in the season, and because I prefer London most when I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... but six of the eighteen numbers concerned with the narration of the parable. The remainder moralize upon the story and illustrate its teaching. After a short, simple orchestral prelude, an opening chorus, beginning with soprano solo ("There is Joy in the Presence of the Angels of God"), and containing also alto and bass solos, gives the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... and you will have it! You will burn your wings off as millions have done before you and as millions will do after you. What then? Wings are made to be burned! I burned mine. Probably if I had another pair I would burn them also. It is as useless to moralize to a lover as to a tiger. I am a fool to waste my breath on you. Let us get down to business. You say that she loves you, and that she will be glad to learn that ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... that children love; and, on the other hand, there are few grown ladies that could entice me from the side of little Annie; for I delight to let my mind go hand in hand with the mind of a sinless child. So, come, Annie; but if I moralize as we go, do not listen to me; only look about you, and ...
— Little Annie's Ramble (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... well kept within. Fed upon such food daily, what will the mind of a nation be? I say that there is no flame at which we can light the Lamp of Fiction purer or brighter than the genius of him in honour to whose memory we are assembled here to-day. Scott does not moralize. Heaven be praised that he does not. He does not set a moral object before him, nor lay down moral rules. But his heart, brave, pure and true, is a law to itself; and by studying what he does we may find the law for all who follow his calling. If seven lamps ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... judge would say, 'upon which, if one seek to moralize, he must do so with an eye to them. It is terrible that one creature should so regard another, should make it conscience to abhor an entire race. It is terrible; but is it surprising? Surprising, that one should hate a race which he believes to be red from a cause akin to that which makes ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... spoke untruly—that I had abjured the world, and all its joys, for ever; and that, henceforth, William Mowbray would not be as other men. But so it is. I state the fact, and leave others to account for and moralize on it." ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... England the middle and lower classes dress hideously. Why should the first generation of Victorians show a disposition to abandon the ugly? I leave it to some aesthetic philosopher to find out the reason, and content myself with noting the fact. If I wanted to moralize, I have little doubt that the drapers' and milliners' accounts of these 'young ladies' would furnish a redundant text, and that, although a large number of them make up their dresses themselves from paper patterns or illustrations in Myra's ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, and speaks, and feels the truth best we regard him, esteem him—sometimes love him. And, as his business is to mark other people's lives and peculiarities, we moralize upon his life when he is gone—and yesterday's preacher becomes ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the now famous preface of 1855, that "the greatest poet does not moralize, or make applications of morals,—he knows the soul." There is no preaching or reproof in ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... me there, though she doesnt know it, poor innocent lamb! Public scandal exaggerates enormously, of course; but moralize as you will, superabundant vitality is a physical fact that cant be talked away. [He sits down between the writing table and the sideboard]. Difficult question this, of bringing up children. Between ourselves, it has beaten me. I never was so surprised in my life as when I came to know Johnny ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... not stop the reader to moralize on this disastrous event. The feelings of the family can better be conceived than detailed. Hurled in a moment from the lofty summit of affluence to the low and barren vale of poverty! Philosophy came ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... Agellius himself? Why, it will be some little time before Agellius will be in a condition to moralize upon anything. His faithful slave half-carried, half-drew him into the cottage, and stretched him upon his bed. Then, having sufficient skill for the ordinary illnesses of the country, though this was more than an ordinary fever, he drew blood from him, gave him a draught ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... superstition end in accurate science. Meanwhile, many, even of the enlightened, will cling to the unforgotten fancy which gave rise to the word lunatic, and in cases of mental derangement will moralize with young Banks in the Witch of Edmonton (1658), "When the moon's in the full, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... some, the sport of Destiny, who must either have heaven or hell, the hospice of St. Bernard or riotous excess. Only just now I lacked the heart to moralize about those two," and he pointed to Euphrasia and Aquilina. "They are types of my own personal history, images of my life! I could scarcely reproach them; they stood before ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... ancient world, recorded in the music of the ancient tongue. All day the words rang in my head, even as at Rome I have gone about murmuring to myself: "Aedificabo ecclesiam meam." What a noble solemnity in this Latin speech! And how vast the historic significance of such monumental words! Moralize who will; enough for me to hear with delight that deep-toned harmony, and to thrill with the strangeness of ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... with stranger eyes, Could pick no meaning from their parling looks, Nor read the subtle-shining secrecies Writ in the glassy margents of such books; She touch'd no unknown baits, nor fear'd no hooks; Nor could she moralize his wanton sight, More than his eyes were open'd to ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... what he is doing without any need of his telling you. When, however, he does tell you something which happened in the school play-ground or otherwise out of the range of your knowledge, be careful not to moralize over it. Make yourself as agreeable a secret-keeper as his best friend of his own age; let your moralizing be so rare that it is effective for that very reason. If the occasion needs moral reflection at all—and ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... it may be fitly called their last seat; and, if it is true that none of plebeian blood may enjoy the order's privileges, the place will afford another of those satisfactions which the best of all possible worlds is always offering its admirers. Even if one were disposed to moralize the comfortable end of the poor Knights harshly, one must admit that their view of Rome is one of the unrivalled views, and that the glimpse of St. Peter's through the key-hole of their garden-gate is little short of tin-rivalled. I could not manage the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... moralize comes on with advancing middle age, and I could not help philosophizing on this perennial optimism of the Captain's. He had used these very words when, so long ago, we had begun our "cruise." The financial cycle was complete. The world had passed from hope to intoxication, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... calling kettle black! If you want to moralize, where's the line between the thief and the receiver? Fie on you! Dare you hang that Da Vinci, that Dolci, that Holbein in your gallery home? No! Stolen goods. What a passion! You sail across the seas ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... Pyrrhus his Death, and at the Conclusion of it, told me it was such a bloody Piece of Work, that he was glad it was not done upon the Stage. Seeing afterwards Orestes in his raving Fit, he grew more than ordinary serious, and took occasion to moralize (in his way) upon an Evil Conscience, adding, that Orestes, in his Madness, looked ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... success would, as usual, have reconciled the people of England to any means, however arbitrary, by which it had been attained. But the calamities, and, at last, the hopelessness of the conflict, inclined them to moralize upon its causes and character. The hour of Lord North's ascendant was now passing rapidly away, and Mr. Sheridan could not have joined the Opposition, at a conjuncture more favorable to the excitement of his powers, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... admirable works, displaying, as they do, a deep study of human nature, and a great discrimination of character, or that the hand of a habitual drunkard could operate with such beauty and precision. Nor is it probable that a mind besotted by drink, and debased by low intercourse, could moralize so admirably as he has done on the evil consequences of intemperance and the indulgence ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... blackness. This lantern the girl set upon the head of an empty barrel that stood in a corner, and its fitful, shivering rays, faintly illuminating the murkiness around, was at least strong enough to allow any philosopher among the bravos—and AEsop was in his way a philosopher—to observe and moralize upon the contrast between the appearance of this Monsieur Peyrolles who employed bravos and the bravos that this Monsieur ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... grumblingly recognized that, "Plus ca change, plus ca reste la meme chose," and went on enduring. [Footnote: If a student of philology were allowed to touch on such high matters as legislation, I would moralize on the word kiddle, meaning an illegal kind of weir used for fish-poaching, whence perhaps the surname Kiddell. From investigations made with a view to discovering the origin of the word, I came to the conclusion that all the legislative powers in England ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... to moralize this fable, when our attention was called off to a warm dispute between my wife and Mr Burchell, upon my daughters intended expedition to town. My wife very strenuously insisted upon the advantages ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... writing of the ninth and tenth weeks of his work; he now has time to stop and moralize about his garden. Do not take what he says too seriously; look for the fun in it. Is he in earnest about the moral qualities of vegetables? Why cannot the bean figure in poetry and romance? Can you name any prose or verse in which corn does? Explain what is said about ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... is such a moralizing or muddizing, if I may be for once admitted to coin a new word to give these men their due, of Christianity now introduced and coming in fashion, many of the late pieces in request do evince. Now that Christianity should moralize men above all things, I both give and grant; for he who is partaker of the divine nature, and hath obtained precious faith, must add virtue to his faith. But that it should be only conceived and conceited as an elevation of nature to a more clear ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... commonplace chapter of accidents; but the events recorded did not present themselves to Cardan in this guise. He sits down to moralize over the succession of momentary events: his meeting with Vincenzio; Vincenzio's meeting with the driver, and directions given to the man to drive to the money-changers'; the presence of the Governor, his exit from the bank, his consequent meeting with the carriage, and his discovery of the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... content to moralize upon sympathy for some time. Alfred was fascinated, and a little afraid. Fanny moved her Junonine shoulders, bent her swan-like neck, drew off one glove and played with her rings, fanned herself gently at intervals, and, with just enough embarrassment not to frighten her companion, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... reasons, pros and cons. V. reason, argue, discuss, debate, dispute, wrangle^, argufy^, bandy words, bandy arguments; chop logic; hold an argument, carry on an argument; controvert &c (deny) 536; canvass; comment upon, moralize upon; spiritualize; consider &c (examine) 461. open a discussion, open a case; try conclusions; join issue, be at issue; moot; come to the point; stir a question, agitate a question, ventilate a question, torture a question; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... truly independent than he, whose father has bequeathed him half a million. Reader! you may as well pardon this digression first as last, for it is ten chances to one that you fall in with a whole fleet of them before you have sailed through these pages. If I do not moralize as I go along, I shall not have a chance to do it ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... other is the way of faith: the ancient saints felt as keenly as any moralist could feel the brokenness of its promises; they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims here; they said that they had here no continuing city; but they did not mournfully moralize on this; they said it cheerfully, and rejoiced that it was so. They felt that all was right; they knew that the promise itself had a deeper meaning: they looked undauntedly for "a city which ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... verge. He is most wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or frown ... by that flash of the moment of parting the one that sees it shall be encouraged or terrified afterward for many years. The greatest poet does not moralize or make applications of morals ... he knows the soul. The soul has that measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons but its own. But it has sympathy as measureless as its pride and the one balances the other and neither can stretch too far while it stretches ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... met as unrestrainedly, only far more cordially. Neither of us had much time to spare in Oxford, but we dined together of course; talked over old friends, and told old stories. As to the first, it was strange enough to moralize upon the after-fortunes of some of our contemporaries. One—of whom, for habitual absence from lectures, and other misdemeanours many and various, the tutors had prophesied all manner of evil, and who had been dismissed by the Principal at his final leave-taking, with the remark that he was the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... Homer was, to have had Golden Dreams. Fuvenal indeed mentions a drowsy Husband who raised an Estate by Snoring, but then he is represented to have slept what the common People call a Dog's Sleep; or if his Sleep was real, his Wife was awake, and about her Business. Your Pen, [which [5]] loves to moralize upon all Subjects, may raise something, methinks, on this Circumstance also, and point out to us those Sets of Men, who instead of growing rich by an honest Industry, recommend themselves to the Favours of the Great, by making themselves agreeable Companions ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... must doubtless have escaped our notice; but enough remains to shew the singular felicity with which Dryden, in the present instance, as in that of "Absalom and Achitophel," could adapt the narrative of ancient or foreign transactions to the political events of his own time, and "moralize two meanings in one word." Altogether abstracted from this consideration, the "Duke of Guise," as a historical play, possesses merit amply sufficient to rescue it from the oblivion into ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... inexperienced, whose admiration is not worth a straw, applaud; but the wise, for whose good-will Ambition toils, look on with indifference; for they know the emptiness of human greatness. But while we stop to moralize, the reader grows a-weary; and even thou, DEIDRICH, who art so constitutionally polite, compressest thy labial muscles, and thumpest nervously the floor with thy gold-headed walking stick. What a pity that we ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... progress of nations or the natural growth of institutions which fill modern treatises on political philosophy seem hardly ever to have attracted the attention of Plato and Aristotle. The ancients were familiar with the mutability of human affairs; they could moralize over the ruins of cities and the fall of empires (Plato, Statesman, and Sulpicius' Letter to Cicero); by them fate and chance were deemed to be real powers, almost persons, and to have had a great share in political ...
— The Republic • Plato
... tongue!" cried Jo, covering her ears. "'Prunes and prisms' are my doom, and I may as well make up my mind to it. I came here to moralize, not to hear things that make ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... leaned back critically, at the imminent risk of capsizing her camp-stool, and herself with it, in her absorption, some ill-suppressed token of amusement most have caught her ear, for she turned upon me with suspicion, and was instantly moved to moralize upon the reluctance I had shown to accept her as a companion for my excursions; taking as her theme, in contrast, her own present display of ambition; all in all a warm, if over-coloured, sketch of the idle master and the industrious apprentice. It made me laugh again, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... although not always reason in everything. It is the part of the historian to seek in the archives of a nation the reasons for the facts of common experience and observation, it is the part of the philosopher to moralize upon antecedent causes and present results. Neither of these positions is taken up by the author of this little book. He merely, as a rule, gives the picture of Dutch life now to be seen in the Netherlands, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... no time, however, to reflect or to moralize, for the loud crackling of fire amid the woodwork warned of my imminent peril. Flinging the skirt of my robe across my face, I made one frantic dash for safety through the splintered panels of the door, the only exit from the room, regardless of ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... hearth is sacred, and that armies and nations have no right to violate it. It should have made him feel that England's triumph and increased dominion could not compensate to mankind nor atone to Heaven for the ashes of a single Acadian cottage. But it is not thus that statesmen and warriors moralize. ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the wires of the continent; it was bulletined; it was cried in the streets; it was the all-absorbing talk of the town. Already, before the dead man was removed to his own house, people were beginning to moralize about him and his career. Perhaps the truest thing was said by the old broker in the board whose reputation for piety was only equaled by his reputation of always having money to loan at exorbitant rates in a time of distress. He said to a group of downcast operators, "In ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... namely, a means, not an end; its prestige declined and its infallibility was questioned.... Above all, it was clear from too evident social symptoms that if science can satisfy some very distinguished minds, it can do nothing to moralize and discipline societies.... ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... "he has no suspicion of you, I'm sure. Shake hands. When shall we meet again? Is it not odd, I, who am a republican by theory, taking King George's pay to fight against the French? No use stopping now to moralize on such contradictions. John, Tom,—what's your name?—here, my man, here, throw that portmanteau on your shoulder and come to the lodge." And so, full of health, hope, vivacity, and spirit, John Walter ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that he would never return. This suits me capitally; there would be something ominous in starting an imitation Nouvelle Heloise. I have just been reading Rousseau's, and it has left me with a strong distaste for love. Passion which can argue and moralize seems to me detestable. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... color rising. Then her face grew earnest. "It would make me very happy if I thought that, as the head of Harlowe House, I could inspire my girls to love Overton as deeply and truly as I do. I don't intend to preach to them or to moralize, but I do wish them to gain real college spirit. If they strive to cultivate that, it will mean more to them than all the talks and lectures one could give them. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... constant investigations of everybody and everything must become the rule where there is a forcible attempt to moralize society from the top. Nobody's heart is in the work very long; nobody's but those fanatical and morbid guardians of morality who make it a life's specialty. The aroused public opinion which the Commission ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... Stockton was a slave in the family of Major George Stockton of Fleming county. He was a regular Negro, and though a slave, was devoted to his master. He hated an Indian and loved to moralize over a dead one; getting into a towering rage and swearing magnificently when a horse was stolen; handled his rifle well, though somewhat foppishly, and hopped, danced and showed his teeth when ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... all-engrossing—enthusiasm was over. He loved her not only for her beauty, but for her faithful enthusiasm; but the power of others to provoke in him a momentary interest, and passion even, was something which he did not pretend to understand, explain, or moralize about. So it was and so he was. He did not want to hurt Aileen's feelings by letting her know that his impulses thus wantonly strayed to others, but ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... yellowish brown—supposed to have been once purple—which is shown as Our Lord's seamless garment, has been pronounced by learned men to be of very high antiquity. But what possesses the Rhine tourist to moralize? He is a restless creature in general, more occupied in staring than in seeing—a gregarious creature too, who enjoys the evening table d'hote, the day-old Times and the British or American gossip as a reward for his having ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... like the tree, unconscious of his worth: Meek as the poorest Publican is he, And strict as lives the straitest Pharisee; Of both, in him unite the better part, The blameless conduct and the humble heart. Yet he escapes not; he, with some, is wise In carnal things, and loves to moralize: Others can doubt if all that Christian care Has not its price—there's something he may share: But this and ill severer he sustains, As gold the fire, and as unhurt remains; When most reviled, although he feels the smart, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... moralize to his womankind; he had a way of standing before the fire and haranguing his family—anything would serve as a text for his discourse. Some of his daughters certainly thrived on his homely prescriptions, but Hatty ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... E. Griffith's comment on the work is typical of the tendency to moralize even the amusements of the day. See A Collection of Novels, (1777), II, 162. "The idea on which this piece is founded, has a good deal of merit in it; as tending to abate envy, and conciliate content; ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... from me. There is no torture which I could not more easily endure than their insulting pity. I will die, as I have lived, the envy and admiration of the world. When I am gone, let them find out their mistake; and moralize, if they will, over my grave." She paused. Belinda had no power ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... grand parties;—those who ride and those who are ridden. The great struggle of life seems to be which shall keep in the saddle. This, it appears to me, is the fundamental principle of politics, whether in great or little life. However, I do not mean to moralize; but one ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Kings and Chronicles, turned Dr. Frank Crane and so botched his Writ with Proverbs.... A weakness that we must allow for. Whenever Dreiser, abandoning his fundamental scepticism, yields to the irrepressible human (and perhaps also divine) itch to label, to moralize, to teach, he becomes a bit absurd. Observe "The 'Genius,'" and parts of "A Hoosier Holiday" and of "A Traveler at Forty," and of "Plays of the Natural and the Supernatural." But in this very absurdity, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... conquests. It is, he claims, really Shishak's invasion of Jerusalem which the Greek historian narrates, as is proved by the fact that he speaks of circumcised Syrians, who can be no other than Jews. The fate of Omri and Zimri[1] moves him to moralize again about God's Providence in rewarding the good and punishing the wicked; and Ahab's death evokes some platitudes concerning fate, "which creeps on human souls and flatters them with pleasing hopes, till it brings them to the place where it will be too ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... to more mundane things, to moralize at last upon the waiter's fate and the folly of quarrelling with our lot in life. It is interesting to learn from Fitzgerald that the Cock's plump head-waiter read the poem, but disappointing to know that his only remark on the performance was, "Had Mr. Tennyson dined ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... mere talking's sake. Speak only when you have something to say, and then talk quietly, deliberately and with sincerity. Never criticize, antagonize or moralize and your company will be ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... here thrust his hand into his waistcoat. All men have their little ways, which denote much; and when my father thrust his hand into his waistcoat, it was always a sign of some mental effort,—he was going to prove or to argue, to moralize or to preach. Therefore, though I was listening before with all my ears, I believe I had, speaking magnetically and mesmerically, an extra pair of ears, a new sense supplied to me, when my father put his ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... began to moralize about the corrupt morals of the Italian race, and went on to speak of tyranny, priestcraft, slavery, aristocracy, monarchy, primogeniture, brigandage, and ten ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... "You always moralize so unpleasantly." He looked so desperate that she laughed her silver, ringing laughter that shook ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... world's evil speaking of her. Wisely or not, she chose this course devotedly to protect him from the perils she foresaw in connection with the name of the once famous Countess Fanny in the British Isles. And thus are we stricken by the days of our youth. It is impossible to moralize conveniently when one is being hurried by a person ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of instruction and assistance provided for the developing of this new agriculture in Ontario, reference should be made to one thing that is generally overlooked by those who periodically discover this rapid urban increase, and who moralize most gloomily upon a movement that is to be found in nearly every progressive country of the civilized world. In the days of early settlement the farmer and his family supplied nearly all their own wants. The farmer produced all his own food; he killed his ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James
... star, his light and ambitious spirit had successively dropped from the firmament of Prussia, of France, and of Austria; and his faults, which he styled his misfortunes, had driven him into philosophic exile in the Pays de Vaud. He could now moralize on the vanity of the world, the equality of mankind, and the happiness of a private station. His address was affable and polite, and as he had shone in courts and armies, his memory could supply, and his eloquence could adorn, a copious fund of interesting anecdotes. His first enthusiasm was that ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon |
