"Nonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he had been asking Gowrie to stop sending the cattle to that bit of pasture, because the stepping-stones made it a thoroughfare, and that bull had been getting more savage lately, and he could not always persuade people that it was dangerous to pass near him; but Gowrie had said it was nonsense, and so forth. Well, you see, I'm not very fond of old Gowrie, and when I saw how meekly Geordie submitted to him, I felt provoked, and began to speak a little strongly, as we middies sometimes do—swore, in fact. ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... in less than five minutes that it can never answer." "If Mr. Robert Stephenson is not at liberty, I can call again," said his Lordship. "He's certainly occupied on important business just at present," was George's answer; "but I can tell you far better than he can what nonsense the atmospheric system is: Robert's good-natured, you see, and if your Lordship were to get alongside of him you might talk him over; so you have been quite lucky in meeting with me. Now, just look at the question of expense,"—and then he proceeded in his strong Doric ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... such a preposterous name, and that you all have the habit of calling her by it. The other evening that idiot, young Halkett must needs say, 'What a lovely pet name!' I can tell you I took him up pretty short. You really must not have her down so much, if these boys think they may talk nonsense ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... a limitation of the rights of war seems to imply nonsense and contradiction. Grotius himself is lost in an idle distinction between the jus naturae and the jus gentium, between poison and infection. He balances in one scale the passages of Homer (Odyss. A 259, &c.) and Florus, (l. ii. c. 20, No. 7, ult.;) and in the other, the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... heavens and earth and the manner in which they came into existence, are all inventions of men who exercised all their ingenuity over the problem, and inferred that such things must actually be the case. As for the Indian account, it is nonsense fit only to deceive women and children, and I do not think it worthy of reflection. The Chinese theories, on the other hand, are based upon profound philosophical speculations and sound extremely plausible, but what they ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... ridiculous nonsense, I tell you," said Paul angrily, "ridiculous nonsense! And, once for all, I'll put a stop to it. I don't approve of public schools for boys like you, and, what's more, I can't afford it. As for private tutors, that's absurd! So you will just make up your mind ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... passed, it will be best for you and me to try to forget each other. Give my compliments to your sister Julia. By the way, do you know that I always admired her very much? What a sensation she would make in the fashionable world of New Orleans. But pshaw! What nonsense I'm writing." ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... letter, and paused, as if considering what were best for him to do. Meanwhile, Woodcock took Roland side, and addressed him as follows:—"Now, look, Mr. Roland, that you do not let any papestrie nonsense lure either the priest or you from the right quarry. See you, you ever bore yourself as a bit of a gentleman. Read that, and thank God that threw old Abbot Boniface in our way, as two of the Seyton's men were conveying him towards Dundrennan here.—We searched him for intelligence ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... the man to his own heart; and that fine-spun airy theory of friendship, so devoid, as I complained, of any quality of flesh and blood, a mere anodyne to lull his pains. The most temperate of living critics once marked a passage of my own with a cross and the words, "This seems nonsense." It not only seemed; it was so. It was a private bravado of my own, which I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits that I had grown at last wholly to believe it, and had ended by setting it down as a contribution to the theory of life. So with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so. She sulk'd. So did I. If I ask'd her to sing, she look'd ready to cry. I was contrite, submissive. She soften'd. I harden'd. At noon I was banish'd. At eve I was pardon'd. She said I had no heart. I said she had no reason. I swore she talk'd nonsense. She sobb'd I talk'd treason. In short, my dear fellow, 'twas time, as you see, Things should come to a crisis, and finish. 'Twas she By whom to that crisis the matter was brought. She released me. I linger'd. I linger'd, she thought, With too sullen an ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... foulest pen, Or fairest handled by the sons of men. 'Twill also show what is upon it writ, Be it wisely, or nonsense for want of wit, Each blot and blur it also will expose To thy next readers, be they friends ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "Nonsense, Archie! So has my white parasol. Shall I keep it in tissue paper forever? Such sentimental ideas are awfully behind the times. Your grandfather's coat and shoes will not dress you to-day; neither, my dear, can his notions and ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... all this nonsense mean?" I said, in a voice which frightened them, as I could see by the light of our own mutton candles: "John Fry, you be off to your wife at once, or you shall have what I owe you ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... but a merry jest, and Peter felt at once that the Porter was a friendly sort with no nonsense about him. But later the words came back to Peter ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... nonsense! I don't believe anything about it. You shall stay here with me; if I have to be kept prisoner I will ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... proceeded, wondering whether such abominable nonsense was interesting the child, whose gaze had now begun to reach out to sea. In reality Rupert was thrilled, and did not like to disturb the flow of a story so affecting. But the strength of his feelings was too much. He was obliged ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... "Nonsense!" His irritated voice shrilled high above the rest. "Shut up, you fools! Why, what do you know about East Africa? When I tramped from Fort Rosebury to Kituta in my bare hide I got nothing worse than mosquito bites, and I've had to make moccasins many a time or go barefoot. ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... made mischief between us; he has actually made you believe it would be a sin to marry me. My darling, what nonsense; I know all about your poor mother—many families have this sort of thing; do you think that ever keeps people from marrying? If we had known before, as I told my father, well, perhaps it might have made a difference, but now it is ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... those words I remember a strange, soft, half-scornful look came over Pasiance's face; and once she said, "But that's all nonsense, isn't it...?" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Simmons' wife an' young uns, Andy'd been worth two of him to anybody who was consid'rin' savin' life. But I give the boy a good punch in the ribs to stop his dreamin', fur I was as hungry as Tom was, an' couldn't stand no nonsense ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... only nonsense. Hurry up home from school. I've some shopping to do, and likely won't be home till late." She put sugar on the bread Ditte took to school, and sent ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... "Nonsense. Badshah wasn't mad," he replied. "It was just as I guessed when you first told me of these fits of his—merely the jungle ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... head inshore. "Nonsense!" he said. "Your friends are making as much noise as ever. You must have seen old Kerick polishing off a drove. He's ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... the two went off into the splendid fantastic nonsense that the wits loved to talk; that grotesque, exaggerated phrasing made fashionable by Lyly. It was like a kind of impromptu sword-exercise in an assault of arms, where the rhythm and the flash and the graceful turns are of more importance ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... nonsense," laughed Dick. "I saw that Marshall wished to reach the deck of the Spaniard; I noticed that the Spanish crew had all congregated together in one place to stop him; and it struck me that I could best help by falling upon them in ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... what they could do in reading and recitation in combination with their gymnastics. The chapel was crowded to the doors. A plump little German girl was the star of the evening. She stood perfectly serene, her chubby arms stuck out stiffly from her sides, and in a loud, clear voice she recited this nonsense: ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... him back. "It's all nonsense, Tweddle," he said, "you can't back out of it now! Don't make a fuss about nothing. Ada don't look as if she'd been breaking her ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... fellow,' he said, 'you can't lodge ladies in this barrack. It's all very well for two watchmen, or for you, if you like, to rough it—but for women—nonsense, it ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the young painter, as he inquired about them, made the poet feel genuinely uneasy. He was impressed, above all, by Maurice's simple exclamation, "Ah!" which seemed to him to be enigmatical and mysterious. But nonsense! all this was foolish; his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that is nonsense." But in order that his spoken word might not sound stern to her, he took her in his ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... arrive at the island until next day. The blacks had then all disappeared; and, as the men wanted something to eat, Davy told them to dig up some potatoes, while he went and shot six rabbits. When he returned with his game, the men said they could not find any potatoes. He said, "That's all nonsense," and went himself to the garden; but he could not find one potato. The blackfellows had shipped the whole crop in their canoes, so that there was nothing but rabbit ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... said No. 6 to her mother, "Aunt Judy said something about grown-up people having to learn to be thankful. Surely you and papa never cry for nonsense, and things you ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... snorted, and vowed that she deserved all that she had received for supporting the new-fangled nonsense that was spreading like a new social evil in the heart of all she ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... dazzling and popular traits of his hero, has depicted him as the very personification of romantic chivalry. This certainly was not his character, which might be said to have been formed after a riper period of civilization than the age of chivalry. At least, it had none of the nonsense of that age,—its fanciful vagaries, reckless adventure, and wild romantic gallantry. [19] His characteristics were prudence, coolness, steadiness of purpose, and intimate knowledge of man. He understood, above all, the temper of his own countrymen. He may be said in some degree to have formed ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... talk nonsense. You're twelve years old. You've a lot to learn before you're a grown-up, and most of it must be learned by experience. If you never do anything, you'll never get any experience, and at twenty you'll only know as much as you did at twelve! How ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... more of this unparliamentary and irregular nonsense. What has got into this convention? Don't you understand that no speaker is allowed to break the rules and attack a man under guise of nominating another? Mr. Chairman, I demand that this slanderer be removed from the hall and ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... "What nonsense!" murmured Nattie, laughing to herself; but' she put the picture away in her writing desk as carefully as ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... My engagement? Gracious! Yes. Rumor's hit the mark this time. And the victim? Charley Gray. Know him, don't you? Well, he's prime. Such mustachios! splendid style! Then he's not so horrid fast— Waltzes like a seraph, too; Has some fortune—best and last. Love him? Nonsense. Don't be "soft;" Pretty much as love now goes; He's devoted, and in time I'll get used to him, I 'spose. First love? Humbug. Don't talk stuff! Bella Brown, don't be a fool! Next you'd rave of flames and ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... "Nonsense! it isn't anything to lose an arm; it's not half so bad as having your head blown off or both legs carried away. After going nearly through the war without a scratch, I caught it just before Appomattox, but thousands were less fortunate and ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... time, I am desirous of adding a few words as to the history of the two previously published volumes, and more particularly of the first or original "Book of Nonsense," relating to which many absurd reports have crept into circulation, such as that it was the composition of the late Lord Brougham, the late Earl of Derby, etc.; that the rhymes and pictures are by different persons; or that the whole have a symbolical meaning, etc.; ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... course, is nonsense," he said, "but there are people who can wield such influence as this over others, the power of a stronger will over a weaker, I suppose. One hears of it often in India. Probably the boy will recover in a day or two, when he ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... "'You are talking nonsense,' began Hemorrhoid Jack anew. 'Give up your grocery and set up a wholesale business. Manage it according to the European plan, and you shall see how thankful to me you will be in time. Do you believe that I am your enemy? Would I advise you badly? Now, the matter is settled. ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... it was all nonsense, that Nino was meant for a scholar and not for the stage, and I was quite angry with De Pretis for putting such ideas into the boy's head. But it was of no use. You cannot argue with women and singers, and they always get their own way in the end. And whether I liked it or not, Nino began to go ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... I don't like?—please say that; because I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like," said Gwendolen, finding herself in the woman's paradise, where all her nonsense ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... so zealous in observing them and took so much care of them that I was regarded, not altogether wrongly, as a good veterinary surgeon. I am told that the people of thy sect claim an immortal soul for themselves, but refuse one to the animals. That is a piece of nonsense that makes me doubt their judgment. Perhaps I love the flocks and the shepherds a little too much. That would not seem right amongst you. There is a maxim to which I endeavour to conform my actions, "Nothing too much." More even than my feeble health my philosophy teaches me to use things with measure. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... "My precious Ettie, what nonsense—for a violent exercise like bicycling! Where one gets so hot! So unbecomingly hot! You'd be simply stifled, darling." I caught a darted glance which accompanied the words and which made Ettie recoil into the recesses of ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... all this nonsense, I then simply related the story as it had occurred, and sent for the quarter-master, who was with me, and who confirmed all my statement. From that moment he was a mark of contempt in the ship. Every lie was a Murphy, and every Murphy a liar. He dared not ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... art the foremost of sovereigns! The Munis praise thee, and besides thee there is none so versed in religious lore'! To him the Rishi Gautama, of great ascetic merit, then indignantly replied saying, 'Atri, do not repeat this nonsense. (It seems) thou art not in thy proper senses. In this world of ours, Mahendra the lord of all created beings (alone) is the foremost of all sovereigns!' Then, O, great prince, Atri said to Gautama, 'As Indra, the lord of all creatures, ruleth over our ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... she meant, though at the time her explanation of Moira seemed just nonsense to me. Though I'll say I could tell myself when Moira lost what she called "her good." She'd be like a lost child; she'd be like a plant without water ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "Nonsense!" he answered. "There is no danger here; less probably than in an ordinary drive, certainly less than in a balloon. Don't spoil her, my friend. If you begin by yielding to so silly a caprice as this, you will end by breaking her heart before the two ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... men will be saved; all mock men will be damned. When a person has the Holy Ghost, then he is a man, and not till then. They who teach women are of the wicked. The communion is all nonsense; so is prayer. Eating a nip of bread and drinking a little wine won't do any good. All who admit members into their church, and suffer them to hold their lands and houses, their sentence is, "Depart, ye wicked, I know you not." All females who lecture their husbands, their sentence is the same. ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... done this expressly, deliberately. But at the moment when head and body were severed, and fell into the trough, I groaned, and apprehended, not with my mind, but with my heart and my whole being, that all the arguments which I had heard anent the death-penalty were arrant nonsense; that, no matter how many people might assemble in order to perpetrate a murder, no matter what they might call themselves, murder is murder, the vilest sin in the world, and that that crime had been committed before my very eyes. By my presence ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... see what an infernal lie has been practised on you, and all the rest of us who had any conscience or heart in us, all this while? There is no purgatory; and it is nonsense to think, that, if there were, money could buy a man out of it. Jesus Christ is the one sole atonement for sin. And by faith in Him shall a man save his soul alive. That is the only way. If I lose my soul, and am gone, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... added fretfully, with a certain impatient forgetfulness of Clarence's presence, and as if following his own thought. "Just as you are becoming of service to me, and justifying your ridiculous position here—and all this d—d nonsense that's gone before—I mean, of course, Clarence," he interrupted himself, catching sight of the boy's whitening cheek and darkening eye, "I mean, you know—this ridiculousness of my keeping you from school at your age, and trying to teach ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... middle ages of this world's history and of the history of Christianity, he would have told you that you must retire from the world altogether in order to become holy. Paul says, "Away with all that nonsense!" We are living in a real world; Christ lived in a real world: Christ did not retire from men. And He says all that you have to do in order to be like Christ is to carry His image with you in your heart. That is all. To be with Him, to let Him stand ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... say, I will describe the company to you. First, there is the old gentleman on my left hand, at the head of the table, who is now leaning the other way to talk to my brother. He is a good- tempered, half-informed person, very unreasonably fond of reasoning, and of reasoning people; people that talk nonsense logically: he is fond of disputation himself, when there are only one or two, but seldom does more than listen in a large company of illumines. He made a great fortune in the city, and has the comfort of a good conscience. ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... deuce with your nonsense!" the attorney replied, his cheek flushing as he lighted his cigar. "If you had listened to the twaddle that I have all day, you would be glad to talk to almost ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Nonsense. By Edward Lear. From the Tenth London Edition. With Many New Pictures and Verses. Philadelphia. Willis P. Hazard, long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... other fish to fry before this time. It's a marvel to me, Bagwax, that they should give way to all this nonsense. If anything could be done, it could be done in half the time,—and if anything could be done, it could be done here. By the time you're back from Sydney, Caldigate's time will be half out. Why don't you let Sir John see your proof? You don't want ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... marriage is very important. If a marriage contract exacts sexual fidelity till death, divorce is nonsense. Yet, in practice, it is obvious cruelty to keep two individuals legally bound together who can no longer live with each other. Thus, the provision and license of divorce are necessities of civil law which are certainly not ideal, but which cannot ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... creatures) during all that time—and without any kind of exercise to stretch and supple your limbs—besides many other inconveniences which I will not pain you by mentioning—how tall should you have been, my dear sister?—answer, four feet nothing: but enough of nonsense.' ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... enough, may be; but if you want to set a fellow up when he's kinder run down, there's nothing like a fishing trip to Labrador, 'specially if he's been bothering himself with studying, and writing, and such like. There's nothing like fish chowders, hard bunks, and sea fog to take that nonsense out of him. Now, this chap," (the Skipper here gave me a thrust in the ribs by way of designation,) "if I could have him down with me beyond sunset for two or three months, would come back as hearty as a Bay ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... tommy-rot about dead people in this world—a lot of damned old-woman nonsense. There's more sympathy wasted over dead and rotten skunks than there is justice done to straight, honest-livin' chaps. I don't b'lieve in this gory sentiment about the dead at the expense of the living. I b'lieve in ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... chary of calling up her young men acquaintances by telephone. If forced to do so, she should make her communication as brief as possible. It is annoying to a young man to be called from his business to answer social or "nonsense" calls—the latter when some idle, ennuied or "smitten" girl takes a notion she would like to chatter to somebody awhile. It exasperates an employer to have his men called from their duties to answer such calls, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... nonsense, sir," she said, in tones of strange emphasis. "It was no more Pike than it was me. The man keeps himself to himself, and troubles nobody; and for that very reason idle folk carp at him, like the mischief-making idiots ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "Come, come! that's nonsense! If M. de Talleyrand should hear you, he would form a very poor idea of your political sagacity. You don't treat this question like a statesman. I must unite in defence of my crown those at home and abroad who are still hostile to ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... myself to you," he said. "What nonsense you talk! You're going back the way you came. You can play ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... after. Hence the cave was called Uaimh Bealach Conglais, or the cave of the road of Cuglas (now Baltinglass, in the County of Wicklow). It is about this cave, nevertheless, that so many of our pretended Irish antiquarians have written so much nonsense in connection with some imaginary pagan worship to which they gravely assure the world, on etymological authority, the spot was devoted. The authority for the legend of Cuglas is the Dinnoean Chus on the place Bealach Conglais (Book of Lecain). ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... Sorr, coming down here though the Saints know you're as welkim as the daylight whin you do come - an' upsettin' Terence's head wid your nonsense about - about fwhat's much betther forgotten. He bein' a civilian now, an' you niver was aught else. Can you not let the Arrmy rest? 'Tis ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... "That was Hartley's nonsense. Hartley put that idea into her head. But since you came, of course she's realized there was ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... left. The note I wrote was what Mr. Frederick Seward carried to Mr. Lincoln in Philadelphia. Mr. Lincoln has stated that it was this note which induced him to change his journey as he did. The stories of disguise are all nonsense; Mr. Lincoln merely took the sleeping-car in ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... who has tried to draw a straight line and failed knows that he fails chiefly in nerve, as he might fail to jump off a cliff. And similarly all great literary art involves the element of risk, and the greatest literary artists have commonly been those who have run the greatest risk of talking nonsense. Almost all great poets rant, from Shakespeare downwards. Mrs. Browning was Elizabethan in her luxuriance and her audacity, and the gigantic scale of her wit. We often feel with her as we feel with Shakespeare, that ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... sure it would not; she said he was so much like a woman in the traits he had borrowed from himself that Salome would be all the truer for being like him; or, at any rate, she would be finer, and more ideal. She said that it was nonsense, the way people regarded women as altogether different from men; she believed they were very much alike; a girl was as much the daughter of her father as of her mother; she alleged herself as proof of the fact that a girl was often ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... "Nonsense!" said Mac, "you don't even know where you are! You are coming with us to Monte's; that's what you ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... think he troubled himself about the matter. In 'the old days' he delighted in chaffing Horace Mayhew, with whom he exchanged 'slang' in French. With the jovial proprietor, William Bradbury, he was always on the best of terms of friendly nonsense, being invariably his left-hand neighbour at 'The Table.' He was a genuine Bohemian of the artistic fraternity (as given in his Trilby) with the true polish of an English gentleman, of the kindest disposition, and of the warmest heart. All who knew him ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... He'd be hanged if he'd take that other whimpering little thing. It wasn't natural. But if I gave him Allegra, he would bring her up as his own child, and see that she was provided for for the rest of her life. Did I have any right to cut her out from all that just for a lot of sentimental nonsense? The family was already broken up; the best I could do for them now was to provide for them individually. "Take all three," ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... please, had discovered a new stage star, for down comes a little reporter to interview me—me, Nancy Olden! Think of that, Mag! I receive him all in my Charity rig, and in Obermuller's office, and he asks me silly questions and I tell him a lot of nonsense, but some truths, too, about the Cruelty. Fancy, he didn't know what the Cruelty was! S. P. C. C., he calls it. And all the time we talked a long-haired German artist he had brought with him was sketching Nance Olden in different poses. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... you to emigrate? Perhaps for you, too, it would be better elsewhere. But, to be sure, you are too large—you did not place yourself here, and who knows if you would not die in some other place. You can only be hewn down, not transplanted. Nonsense! I also had to leave my home. If it were my father, I should be obliged to go with him—he would not need to ask me. And he who asks too much, goes astray. No one can advise me in this matter, not even Marianne. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... child could perceive this to be a satire at the profiteers of the age, who invented ancestors, and so a child would to-day, but in the seventeenth and even the eighteenth century it was not safe to be funny. In particular, nonsense—the divine charm of which we now admit—had not been acclimatized, and was looked upon with grave displeasure. It wrings the heart that when Goldsmith, in a purple coat, pretended to think himself more attractive than the Jessamy Bride, his contemporaries severely censured ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... even get word to him—not a message of love or of repentance or of hope. His brain was in a turmoil of its own. His white lips were muttering delirious nonsense; his soul was fluttering from scene to scene and year to year, like a restless dragon-fly. He was young; he was old; he was married; he was a bachelor; he was at home; he was in his store; he was pondering campaigns of business, slicing pennies ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... time they had reached the lawn, and Mary was able to turn away from the path which led up to the house. As she left them she said in a voice, now low enough, "I cannot prevent him from talking nonsense, Augusta; but you will bear me witness, that I do not willingly hear it." And, so saying, she started off almost in a run towards the distant part of the gardens, in which ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... "Nonsense!" said the father in his kind, matter-of-fact way. "This little stranger must be brought in out of the snow. We will take her into the parlor, and you shall give her a supper of warm bread and milk and make her as comfortable as ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... in the morning instead of sneaking into bed at one: these are his terms:" and these few lines, it may be added, give a graphic picture of Porson. According to Maltby, Porson once remarked that when smoking began to go out of fashion, learning began to go out of fashion also—which shows what nonsense a learned man ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... had heard something of the fabulous tale of the wren sitting upon the eagle's wing, and he had applied it to a linnet. Gibber's familiar style, however, was better than that which Whitehead has assumed. Grand nonsense is insupportable[1180]. Whitehead is but a little man to inscribe verses ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... nations depends upon those brown furrows. But there are the bigger furrows that Mars makes, the long brown trenches of war; the life of nations depends on these too; Dick Cheeser had never pictured these. He had heard talk about a big navy and a lot of Dreadnoughts; silly nonsense he called it. What did one want a big navy for? To keep the Germans out, some people said. But the Germans weren't coming. If they wanted to come, why didn't they come? Anybody could see that they never did come. Some of Dick Cheeser's pals ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... "Nonsense, Jenny; I can't help it if I would. Do you think I should enjoy dancing, if I knew you were sitting alone in this dark corner, while grandpapa and Aunt Agnes are playing chess! You are looking a great deal more woe-begone than you ought to, now ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... rambles and wanders like a ship without a helm; attempted to tell a story which took up almost all the evening. * * * In one word, Otis will spoil the club. He talks so much, and takes up so much of our time, and fills it with trash, obsceneness, profaneness, nonsense, and distraction, that we have none left for rational amusements or inquiries. * * * I fear, I tremble, I mourn, for the man and for his country; many others mourn over him ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... man she loves because you don't like him? Is that the way girls live now-a-days? She won't run away with him, because she's not one of that sort; but unless you're harder-hearted than I take you to be, she'll make your life a burden to you. And as for betraying you, that's nonsense. You've no right to say it. I'm not going to quarrel with you whatever you may say, but you've no right ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the Holy Alliance, the pet offspring of his pietism, does not deserve the sinister reputation it has since obtained. To the other powers it seemed, at best "verbiage'' and "exalted nonsense,'' at worst an effort of the tsar to establish the hegemony of Russia on the goodwill of the smaller signatory powers. To the Liberals, then and afterwards it was clearly a hypocritical conspiracy against freedom. Yet to Alexander himself it seemed the only means of placing ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... All this is nonsense. The simple truth is: that whether men destroy their corn and cloth by fire or by use, the effect is the same as regards price, but not as regards riches, for it is precisely in the enjoyment of the use, that riches—in other words, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... nonsense," Philippa insisted. "You say that you saw Major Felstead fifty-six hours ago. You cannot mean us to believe that fifty-six hours ago ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dozen Protestant women nurses arrived at Alexandria, where they were made unwelcome. Medical directors, surgeons, ward masters objected, bluntly declaring that they wouldn't endure a lot of women interfering and fussing and writing hysterical nonsense ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... own—visions that flew out into the future. Aye, he WOULD be a priest. He might be a sinner now, and a wild young scamp; he certainly did curse and swear like a trooper at times, if only to show the other boys that it was all nonsense about the earth opening and swallowing you up. But a priest he would be, all the same. None of your parsons with spectacles and a pot belly: no, but a sort of heavenly messenger with snowy white robes and a face of glory. Perhaps some day he might even come so far that ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... it is, friend," he said calmly, throwing hack at the same time the blanket that concealed his uniform, and—what was more imposing—a brace of large pistols stuck in his belt. "you'd better have no nonsense with me, I promise you, or—" and he tapped with the fore finger of his right hand upon the butt of one of them, with an expression that could ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... mean," she said, smiling. "But it's nonsense. Besides, look at yourself and Amy! She ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... hear you if you don't take care," said Nance, "and I would be ashamed, for one, that he should hear a brave, old, honest, hard-working man like Jonathan Holdaway talk nonsense like a boy." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trials were then abandoned, a Royal Commission reported against the licence system, and Parliamentary representation was given to the goldfields. It came to be universally acknowledged that the talk of "treason" was nonsense, that the outbreak had been provoked by laws which could not be constitutionally changed, and that the moral was to change them, not to expatriate and persecute those who had suffered under them. Lalor reappeared, entered political life, became ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... "Fir-trees? What nonsense! We are not in a wood. Come with me now to see what you have done." When Heidi saw the devastation that she had caused, she was greatly surprised, for she had not noticed it ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... these two contrary meanings were implied, the legend would be nonsense. But it is not so, if you consider well, for it cannot be that in one instant, which is an atom or point, love persists or endures; therefore one must of necessity understand the instant in another signification. And for the sake of getting out of ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... giving of the physic in the morning the man's hand had been scratched; a youth had suffered the dog to lick his sore finger, and the animal had also been observed to lick the sore ear of an infant. He was a remarkably affectionate dog, and was accustomed to this abominable and inexcusable nonsense. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... anchored near the said cape to ascertain if it contained gold. For the people I had taken from the island of San Salvador told me that here they wore very large rings of gold on their arms and legs. I really believed that all they said was nonsense, invented that they might escape. My desire was not to pass any island without taking possession, so that, one having been taken, the same may be said of all. I anchored, and remained until to-day, Tuesday, when I went to the shore with the boats armed, and landed. The ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... little sweet mother, you'll remember occasions that were fitted by each of these—you look at me with those shrewd sweet eyes that always somehow have a laugh in them, and say some little thing that shows you are brushing aside all the ugly froth of nonsense, and are intelligently and with perfect detachment searching for the reason. And having found the reason you understand and forgive; for of course there always is a reason when ordinary people, not born fiends, are disagreeable. I'm ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... Menippus. Nonsense, my good man; if you had looked on Mausolus[119] himself—the Carian so famous for his tomb—I assure you, you would never have stopt laughing; he was a miserable unconsidered unit among the general mass of the dead, flung aside in a dusty hole, with no profit of his sepulcher but its extra weight ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... him. "This is all nonsense, Indaba-zimbi," I said. "Whoever heard of an Englishman building a house in these wilds, and how do you know anything about it? I think that we had better strike ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... "That is nonsense, Carley," he went on. "You'll have to marry. What else can you do? With all due respect to your feelings—that affair with Kilbourne is ended—and you're not the wishy-washy heartbreak ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... me in such a public place as the top of Mount Ida! Impossible! I could never show my face in Olympus again, but I have a private room of my own and"—"What nonsense, my love!" exclaims the sire of gods and men as he catches her in his arms. On this Sleep sends him into a deep slumber, and Juno then sends Sleep to bid Neptune go off to help the Greeks ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... "Nonsense, Dick," she replied, and her face flushed. She stepped into the carriage quickly to avoid questions, and as she stepped in Dick noticed that she was carrying a little paper-covered book. Pettifer followed. "Good-night, Dick," he said, and he shook hands with ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... "Nonsense! I am not in such a hurry to find a new inmate. I shall not like any one as well as you. I wish I could give up and live in a neat little cottage, but I cannot. Indeed, if you think I may, I should like to mention ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... round him flock; E'en sober aged grand-dame quits her seat, Where by the door she twines her lengthen'd threads, Her spindle stops, and lays her distaff by, Then joins with step sedate the curious throng. She praises much the fashions of her youth, And scorns each gaudy nonsense of the day; Yet not ill-pleas'd the glossy ribband views, Uproll'd, and changing hues with ev'ry fold, New measur'd out to deck ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... The Good Natured Man. When Goldsmith resisted this, 'he proposed a sort of arbitration,' and named as his arbitrator Whitehead the laureate. Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 41. It was of Whitehead's poetry that Johnson said 'grand nonsense is insupportable.' Ante, i. 402. The Good Natured Man was brought out by Colman, as well as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill |
