"Nothings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carriage, Mademoiselle de Seilles and Mr. Sowerby facing them. Lady Grace Halley, in the carriage behind, heard Nesta's laugh; which Mr. Barmby had thought vacuous, beseeming little girls, that laugh at nothings. She ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... artificial nothings! and that beings can be found, and those too the flower of the land, who, day after day, can act the same parts in the same dull, dreary farce! The officer had discoursed sufficiently about "his intimate friend, the Soudan," and about the chain armour of the Sockatoo ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... she ran on, saying all kinds of lively nothings; while we drank our coffee out of Saxon porcelain which would have shone on the table of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... so happy now—so happy that I scarcely dare to speak, for fear lest I should break the spell, and I feel so good—so much nearer heaven. When I think of all my past life, it seems like a stupid dream full of little nothings, of which I cannot recall any memory except that they were empty and without meaning. But the future is worse than the past, because it looks fair, and snakes always hide in flowers. It makes me afraid. How do I know what the future will bring? I wish that the present—the pleasant, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the looks accompanying it, that made Edith Sudbury conscious that the hunter loved her. She would have been an exception to her sex had she not suspected this before. The thousand and one acts, and little, airy nothings, had given her a suspicion of the truth long since, but she had never felt ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... nominated James Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge and carried the election. The Whigs and the Know-nothings then disappeared from ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Aloysius Diamantstein, in slight disparagement of his rival's powers as a cicerone; "well, I ain't seen no lions, nor no rubber-neck-boat-birds. Und we ain't had no rides on nothings. Und I ain't heard ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Without, and grope as best they can." No, freely I would praise the man,— Nor one whit more, if he contended That gift of his, from God descended. Ah friend, what gift of man's does not? No nearer something, by a jot, Rise an infinity of nothings Than one: take Euclid for your teacher: Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings, Make that creator which was creature? Multiply gifts upon man's head, And what, when all's done, shall be said But—the ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... discourage in young people the taste for frivolous ingenuity, will be, never to admire these "laborious nothings," to compare them with useful and elegant inventions, and to show that vain curiosities can be but the wonder and amusement of a moment. Children who begin with trifling inventions, may be led from these to general principles; and with their ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... saw, of course. But after she had spoken you saw much more. Mrs. Mountstuart said it just as others utter empty nothings, with never a hint of a stress. Her word was taken up, and very soon, from the extreme end of the long drawing-room, the circulation of something of Mrs. Mountstuart's was distinctly perceptible. Lady Patterne sent a little Hebe down, skirting the dancers, for an accurate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... civilities, the coarse loud lover proceeded to particular attentions; when he affected to press her delicate hand, and ventured to look what he called love into her eyes, and to breathe silly nothings in her ear—he could deceive himself no longer, notwithstanding all his vanity; as legibly as looks could write it, he read disgust upon her face, and from that day forth she shunned him with undisguised abhorrence. Poor innocent maid! she little knew the man's black mind, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sermon I was thankful to have heard, and the like of which I would walk a long way to hear again. As I stood outside the building waiting for a friend, the congregation came out, and I heard the usual interchange of verbal nothings. The only reference I did hear to the service was from a well-dressed young man to a girl by his side, and this is what he said: "A long-winded fellow, that; let us go on the parade." The remark did not unduly surprise me. "I wonder," said a man to me lately, "why some people go ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... without saying that this means of communication is also found in the home of almost every well-to-do family. The invention of a telephone is a great blessing to mankind; it enables friends to talk to each other at a distance without the trouble of calling.[1] Sweethearts can exchange their sweet nothings, and even proposals of marriage have been made and accepted through the telephone. However, one is subjected to frequent annoyances from wrong connections at the Central Office, and sometimes grave errors are made. Once, through a serious blunder, or a mischievous joke, I ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... after death, a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, the genial face of John Kenyon, Mrs. Browning's good friend and relative, little paintings of the boy Browning, all attracted the eye in turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. A quaint mirror, easy-chairs and sofas, and a hundred nothings that always add an indescribable charm, were all massed in this room. But the glory of all, and that which sanctified all, was seated in a low arm-chair near the door. A small table, strewn with writing-materials, books, and newspapers, was always ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the goblets of silver, gold and crystal; faster babbled the pretty lips; brighter grew the eyes beneath the stupendous towers that crowned the heads of the court ladies. All talked at once without disturbing the king, who now whispered soft nothings in the ear of the countess. From the other tables in the hall arose a varying cadence of clatter and laughter, which increased with the noise and din of the king's own board; a clamor always just subservient ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... a tap with the toe of her shoe and said: "Go away, then, you good-for-nothing; you are one as bad as the other, all good-for-nothings." And as she turned away from him, Reinhard went slowly up the ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... excited, "she refused because she had too much good sense: aye, and too much common decency to accept. It is all very well for us fortunate good-for-nothings to resort ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... stimulus, and the young men were right. Although they were not aware of the fact, they were never so handsome in their uneasy Sunday costume and awkward social ways, as thus in their free, joyous, and graceful element of labor. Greetings were interchanged, laughter and cheerful nothings animated the company, and when Martha ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... dost return On the wave's circulation, Behold the shimmer, The wild dissipation, And, out of endeavor To change and to flow, The gas become solid, And phantoms and nothings Return to be things, And endless imbroglio Is law and the world,— Then first shalt thou know, That in the wild turmoil, Horsed on the Proteus, Thou ridest to ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... just ONE evening, Mr. Berkeley,' said Lady Hilda Tregellis, as she sat on the centre ottoman in Mrs. Campbell Moncrieff's drawing-room with Arthur Berkeley talking lightly to her about the nothings which constitute polite conversation in the nineteenth century. 'Just one evening, any day after the next fortnight? We should be so delighted if you ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... her thoughts, softening gradually, gave tone to the general tenor of her life and united all its parts in an indefinable harmony, expressed by the exquisite neatness, the exact symmetry of her room, the few flowers sent by Savinien, the dainty nothings of a young girl's life, the tranquillity which her quiet habits diffused about her, giving peace and composure to the little home. After breakfast and after mass she continued her studies and practiced; then she took her embroidery ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... ever-baffled chase of these filmy nothings often seems, for one of sober years in a sad world, a trifling occupation. But have I not read of the great Kings of Persia who used to ride out to hawk for butterflies, nor deemed this pastime ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... far, and talking of nothings the two strolled that way. There was much rejoicing over Philip's return, and much curiosity expressed as to where he had been and what he had been doing for a long time past. Finally, Mrs. Caruthers proposed that he should go on to ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Vowel-Sound, would be precisely equivalent to Silence. This, then, illustrates the famous fundamental aphorism of the Philosophy of Hegel: SOMETHING (equal to) NOTHING; and the seemingly absurd Hegelian affirmation that the real Something is the resultant of the conjunction of two Nothings. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... thing, by the bye, which marks the difference between public and private education. The fault was far less with Pierrette than with her cousins. It took her an infinite length of time to learn the rudiments. She was called stupid and dull, clumsy and awkward for mere nothings. Incessantly abused in words, the child suffered still more from the harsh looks of her cousins. She acquired the doltish ways of a sheep; she dared not do anything of her own impulse, for all she did was misinterpreted, misjudged, and ill-received. In all things she ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... not take counsel how to form his letters, for this is determined by art. Secondly, from the fact that it little matters whether it is done this or that way; this occurs in minute matters, which help or hinder but little with regard to the end aimed at; and reason looks upon small things as mere nothings. Consequently there are two things of which we do not take counsel, although they conduce to the end, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. iii, 3): namely, minute things, and those which have a fixed way of being done, as in works produced by art, with the exception of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... by mine furniture und talks. What do they know over takin' care on mine house? They ain't ladies. They is educated only on the front. Me, I was raised private und expensive in Russia; I was ladies. Und you ist ladies. You ist Krisht[79-1]—that is too bad—but that makes me nothings. I wants you shall ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... whose face Heaven itself and earth will flee away—and be brought back again for judgement. And by Heaven, and by Him who sits on the Throne, men will swear falsely for an "anna" or two. How can they? It is because "nothings grow something"; the words make a mist about the thing. In later days Jesus told his followers to swear not at all—to ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... tears in her eyes, and in the renewed stress of parting which he thought he had put from him, March went on taking note, as with alien senses, of the scene before him, while they all talked on together, and repeated the nothings they had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... least the reflected inchoate thoughts of ancestors which I am unable in any clearer way to bring out of darkness. But enough! I must say no more, for I again find myself in the land of vague fancy, gliding phantoms and illusive nothings. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... enclose you some lines written not long ago, which you may do what you like with, as they are very harmless.[72] Only, if copied, or printed, or set, I could wish it more correctly than in the usual way, in which one's 'nothings are monstered,' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Shereef, who expresses sincere sympathy for my state of "judicial blindness," told me to-day that I should not go down to the real bonâ fide pit or abode of perdition, but to a dull shadowy place, "the region of nothings," and I might get out again and ascend to Jennah, (جنّة) "paradise;" and this, because I was near to them (the Mussulmans), and read and wrote Arabic, and was not afraid to write or repeat a verse of the Koran. In our prophets we have, "Thus saith the Lord, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... have a decent sample or two of passengers on board, you can discuss men and things, and women and nothings, law, physick, and divinity, or that endless, tangled ball of yarn, politicks, or you can swap anecdotes, and make your fortune in the trade. And by the same trail of thought we must give one or two ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... who takes a soft delight These amorous nothings in revealing, Must credit all we say or write, While ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... am not of the world's people, if thee means the flaunters of various colors and loud-voiced nothings. And I do not think of marriage—nay, will not—until thy daughter has taken me into full acquaintanceship and approbation. Thee knows I am not advanced in the world's wealth, and that I am but a beginner in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... us fly, Fiesco! let us with scorn reject these gaudy nothings, and pass our future days only in the retreats of love! (She presses him to her breast with rapture.) Our souls, serene as the unclouded sky, shall never more be blackened by the poisonous breath of sorrow; our lives ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... being accustomed to conquest, was peevish in consequence. Not that Jeff was in the least rude. On the contrary, he was especially polite and charming to all of his sisters' friends, fetching and carrying for them, dancing with them, playing tennis with the athletic, talking sentimental nothings with the romantic, and gravely discussing the Einstein theory with the high-brows. He did everything that was required of him but fall in love ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... been rubbed clean by that passionate housewife, Grizel. She was on her knees at present ca'ming the hearth-stone a beautiful blue, and sometimes looking round to address her mother, who was busy among her plants and cut flowers. Surely they were know-nothings who called this woman silly, and blind who said she painted. It was a little face all of one color, dingy pale, not chubby, but retaining the soft contours of a child's face, and the features were singularly delicate. She was clad in a soft gray, and her figure was of the smallest; there was such ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... subsequent explanation, that Cranstoun, who had been whispering soft nothings in the ear of Julia D'Egville, (here the Captain was observed to prick his ear without materially altering his position) hem! Cranstoun, I say, it appeared had also taken it into his head to give her a specimen of his agility, by an attempt to clear a space between two masses ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... make the best of it, and if Mathilde could not be comforted in any other way, why he must promise to let her have it back again. He decided all this as he petted the baroness, and tried to comfort her by whispering fond nothings into her ear; but he soon found all his caresses were useless, unless he yielded to her entreaties and told her where the baby was, and as all he knew about it was that it was on board Leon's yacht, on which it was being ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... his wife did not long survive. Just long enough to leave him a son and a daughter, who grew up knowing little restraint, chumming around with all the good-for-nothings of the vicinity, plaguing all the neighbors, who on their part, were not slow to punish the rascals. Thus several years went by. The son became a notorious character, the daughter an impudent, cynical little runabout who, on certain occasions, would fill their rickety abode with ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... of the colonel were of the most delicate and insinuating kind; and Mrs. Wilson several times turned away in displeasure at herself, for listening with too much satisfaction to nothings, uttered in an agreeable manner, or, what was worse, false sentiments supported with the gloss of language and a fascinating deportment. The anxiety of this lady on behalf of Emily kept her ever on the alert, when chance, or any chain of circumstances, threw her in the way of forming new connexions ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... talk about disagreeable things to-night! We will just be happy!" she said coaxingly; and Ned assented, only too thankful to banish anxiety for a few hours, and to talk sweet nothings among the flowers. Lilias was the most delightful plaything in the world, and queened it over him with such amusing little airs of sovereignty, that he asked nothing better than to play the part of adoring slave. So the first evening passed happily enough; but the next day brought the lovers ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Martines, that jacknape of mine is driving me mad with all his carrying on. I say to him, I say: 'Anything wrong in this house, jail-bird? Well, then, why go tearing around with that gang of good-for-nothings, who will die at the end of a rope, every one of them!' now oste sinor Martines, you know how to talk in good grammar. You just tell him what is what. You tell him they'll put him in the lock-up at Valencia if he ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... there were only ten of the female pupils at school, and poor Dora and Sophia both cried all church time. They thought their hasty measures had condemned their poor girls to be heathens and good-for-nothings for ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Exchanging such sweet nothings, they slowly made their way back to rejoin the company. Mademoiselle de Fontaine had never found her lover more amiable or wittier: his light figure, his engaging manners, seemed to her more charming than ever, since the conversation which had made ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... over, till sick of them. So, I have taken to breaking soda-water bottles with my pistols, and jumping into the water, and rowing over it, and firing at the fowls of the air. But why should I 'monster my nothings' to you, who are well employed, and happily too, I should hope? For my part, I am happy, too, in my way—but, as usual, have contrived to get into three or four perplexities, which I do not see my ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... had suddenly dwindled into mere nothings, and life's long years appeared as but a moment in the Glass of Time, while earthly joys seemed trivial and shallow and meaningless. All at once it became clear to Gertrude how she was to order ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... the tragic moment, when the spectators hold their breath, and the blue flame is turned on, and the man manages the lime-light so that its radiance shall fall on the face of the chief actor—or Actress! And the bassoons and 'cellos grumble inaudible nothings to the big drum! Administer ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... tongue-lashed the servant with harsh, tooth-rasping words that brought him up to attention. Whether he interpreted or not the exact meaning of what Cunningham had said, he at least produced the desired effect; the servant mumbled apologetic nothings and slunk off the veranda backward—to go away and hold his sides with laughter at the back of the dak-bungalow. There Mahommed Gunga found him afterward and administered a thrashing—not, as he was careful to explain, for disobedience, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... and war—the two themes discussed by the two parties occupying the kitchen—which, as the parts were sung together, duetwise, formed together some very curious harmonies. Thus, while the Captain was whispering the softest nothings, the Corporal was shouting the fiercest combats of the war; and, like the gentleman at Penelope's table, on it exiguo pinxit praelia tota bero. ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with easy carelessness, and that slow drawl of his, as if he were talking airy nothings in a London drawing-room, instead of recounting the most daring, most colossal piece of effrontery the adventurous ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... whose slogan was "America for Americans." Foreigners should be barred from citizenship and Catholics should be ostracized. In the South most followers of Clay and in the East many admirers of Webster avoided a complete surrender to the Democrats by stopping in this halfway house. The "Know-Nothings," as the party was called in derision of their failure to answer questions about their platform, gained so many followers from the dissatisfied elements of the older parties that in 1855 it seemed likely they would sweep the country. In Virginia they made their most spectacular campaign. ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... notice met the eye. If this was actually the old Committee of 1851, it meant business. There was but one way to find out and that was to go and see. Number 105-1/2 Sacramento Street was a three-story barn-like structure that had been built by a short-lived political party called the "Know-Nothings." The crowd poured into the hall to its full capacity, jammed the entrance ways, and gathered for blocks in the street. There all waited patiently ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... exceptionally good tempers, as Amphillis soon found out, since she was invariably a sufferer on these occasions. They declared themselves, the next morning, far too weary to put in a single stitch; and occupied themselves chiefly in looking out of the window and exchanging airy nothings with customers. But when Clement came in the afternoon with an invitation to a dance at his mother's house, their exhausted energies rallied surprisingly, and they were quite able to go, though the same farce was played over again on ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... could possibly be expected of him. His manner was perfect. He sat still And gazed with delightfully friendly eyes into Miss Maliphant's pleased countenance, and anon skipped across room or lawn to whisper beautiful nothings to Miss Kavanagh. The latter's change of fortune did not, apparently, seem to affect him in the least. After all, even now she was not as good a parti as Miss Maliphant, where money was concerned, but then there were other things. Whatever his outward manner might ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... doctor to answer polite nothings to all her questions. "Oh, the poor, dear lady!" I thought to myself. The poor, dear lady! What a tearing away of veils and sentimental bandages was written in her book of fate for ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... my son,' cried the sultan. 'You do not take after those fools, those good-for-nothings. But, tell me, what did you do with the bird, for it was you, and you only who ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... can read between the lines that he had no use for the theories of ministers, and would obviously have liked to have said in brutal English, "Here I am, gentlemen, do not encumber me with your departmental jargon of palpable nothings. You continue to trust in Providence; give me your untrammelled instructions as to what you wish me to do, and leave the rest to me." Here is another letter from Lord Radstock: "No official news have been received from ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... you." And very gently, with a firm hand under one arm, he escorted her to the bench where Larry sat scribbling nothings. He then raised his hat and returned ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... parliament are certain that official recognition must be extended to art. Art is an educational influence, and the Kensington galleries are something more than agreeable places, where sweethearts can murmur soft nothings under divine masterpieces. The utilitarian M.P. must find some justification for art; he is not sensible enough to understand that art justifies its own existence, that it is its own honour and glory; and he nourishes a flimsy lie, and votes that large ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... dull and empty again. I went out alone, aping myself and shouting: "Bricks for the palace! The calf is much stronger today!" And when this was done, I did other nothings, and when my money began to run out, I wrote to my publisher, pretending I would soon send him an unbelievably remarkable manuscript. In short, I behaved like a man in love. These were the ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... many little things to women in my time, so many little nothings. It is hard to remember them all. They have become confused now, and blended into an interesting background, whose elements I can no longer separate. Your pardon, my lady, but I have forgotten, forgotten so completely that even the stairs ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... answered Fleuri; "a nobleman of great quality, who keeps a diary of all the king says and does. It will perhaps be a posthumous publication, and will show the world of what importance nothings can be made. I dare say, Count, you have already, in England, seen enough of a court to know that there are some people who are as human echoes, and have no existence except in the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said Cyril, 'and Robert will hold him down. Anthea and Jane and the Phoenix can whisper soft nothings to ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... mere nothings. My common sense tells me that much. Yet I find myself forming words for myself between the written lines, and twice read that dainty card, with the crest and motto of Pelham. Of course I'll go with him; for to go with ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... The teacups and cake-basket are a real addition to the scene, because they cause a little lively social bustle, a little chatter and motion,—always of advantage in breaking up stiffness, and giving occasion for those graceful, airy nothings that answer so good a ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Honours, Pow'r, Had giv'n with every other toy, Those gilded trifles of the hour, 15 Those painted nothings sure to cloy: He dies forgot, his name no son shall bear To shew the man so blest once breath'd the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... laughed; and there seemed some danger of a break in that kindliness of feeling which their father had vaunted, till Mrs. Landholm spoke. A word and a look of hers, to one and the other, made all smooth; and they went on again talking, of happy nothings, till it was time to separate for the night. It was only then that Mr. Landholm touched on any matter of more than ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... sight Able to face an owl's, they still are dight 10 By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests, And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts, Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount To their spirit's perch, their being's high account, Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones— Amid the fierce intoxicating tones Of trumpets, shoutings, and belabour'd drums, And sudden cannon. All! how all this hums, In wakeful ears, like uproar past and gone— Like thunder clouds that spake to Babylon, 20 And set those old Chaldeans to their tasks.— ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... for it was the interval between two of his important undertakings, there was no periodical yet to make demands on him, and only the task of finishing his Haunted Man for Christmas lay ahead. But he did even his nothings in a strenuous way, and on occasion could make gallant fight against the elements themselves. He reported himself, to my horror, thrice wet through on a single day, "dressed four times," and finding all sorts of great things, brought out by the rains, among the rocks ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... grand inquiries are descried, Mean faction reigns where knowledge should preside, Feuds are increased, and learning laid aside. Thus synods oft concern for faith conceal, And for important nothings show a zeal: The drooping sciences neglected pine, And Paean's beams with fading lustre shine. No readers here with hectic looks are found, Nor eyes in rheum, through midnight watching, drowned; The lonely edifice ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... dying Is lost worth having? What the daily things Lived through together make them worth the while For their sakes or for life's? Where's the denying Of souls through separation? There's your smile! And your hands' touch! And the long day that brings Half uttered nothings of delight! But then Now that I see you not, and shall again Touch you no more—memory can possess Your soul's essential self, and none the less You live with me. I therefore write to you This letter just as if you were away Upon ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... doubt is never free; The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. But stay! ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... never knew them so out of hand. And then another rotten jog along the road to the next draw. Why on earth couldn't Bill get into the country and let them have a school at least, and get away from these damned motors? He was hoarse from shouting replies to Tishy's airy nothings, all winged with his name, and all, he felt, addressed as much to the public as to him. She looked stunning, of course, and he was glad he had given her those furs, but three miles trying to keep a suspicious fool of a horse up to the elbow of a car roaring ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... our walk my guest's conversation was of the many happy nothings I suppose most girls indulge in, but as we went farther she had less to say. Her eyes grew wider and darker as the beauty of the place pressed in upon her. We found a seat arched over with a blossoming vine ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... valiant effort to do so. There were also in evidence, barbers, joiners, plumbers, grocers, fruit-sellers, bakers and venders of small wares, and there was the largest and most splendidly recruited army of do-nothings that the sun ever shone upon. These forever-out-of-workers, leaning against every lamp post, fence picket, corner house, and barber pole in the vicinity, were all male, but they were mostly mated to women ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... bespoke a refined and luxurious taste: easy chairs of all descriptions, most inviting couches, cabinets of choice inlay, and grotesque tables covered with articles of vertu; all those charming infinite nothings, which a person of taste might some time back have easily collected during a long residence on the continent. A large lamp of Dresden china was suspended from the painted and gilded ceiling. The three tall windows opened on the gardens, and admitted a perfume so rich and various, that Ferdinand ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... on in their career, without mending or plastering up the defects that this comparison has laid open to my own view. And, in plain truth, a man had need of a good strong back to keep pace with these people. The indiscreet scribblers of our times, who, amongst their laborious nothings, insert whole sections and pages out of ancient authors, with a design, by that means, to illustrate their own writings, do quite contrary; for this infinite dissimilitude of ornaments renders the complexion of their own compositions so sallow and deformed, that they ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... at once suggests an objection which we cannot ignore. A business advertisement, as it appears in the newspapers, is such an extremely trivial thing and so completely devoted to the egotistical desire for profit that it seems undignified for the scientist to spend his time on such nothings and to shoot sparrows with his laboratory cannon-balls. But on the one side nothing can be unworthy of thorough study from a strictly theoretical point of view. The dirtiest chemical substance may become of greatest importance ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... picture to ourselves the handsome, free-spirited young fellow, with his ruddy Saxon face and ready Saxon wit, in the joyous capital of fair France; now whispering pretty nothings into the dainty ear of some dark-eyed grisette, now going home through the streets at daybreak, with a band of merry companions, shouting out in questionable French a jolly chorus; and now riding gayly forth to see how in a foreign land they ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... too, in a quiet way, Small treatises, and smaller verses; And sage remarks on chalk and clay. And hints to noble lords and nurses: True histories of last year's ghost, Lines to a ringlet, or a turban; And trifles for the Morning Post, And nothings for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... white teeth gleamed, her black eyes shone alluringly in sudden flashes from under their long-fringed covers, and her sweet, soft voice prattled airy, beguiling flatteries and dear little complimentary nothings. As she talked, she tossed her head and swayed her body and made graceful, eloquent little gestures with her hands and arms. There was unconscious coquetry in every movement and a mischievous "you dare not" ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... head, to whom I owe All that I am in Arts, all that I know. How nothings that, to whom my Country owes, The great renown and name ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... and his beloved, they dwelt apart in an ephemeral world where only the prosaic hours when they were separated were unreal. Their realities were smiles, sighs, glances,—the thousand and one nothings that make up the joys and agonies of a lover's ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... to fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; 325 Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile. Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play, } These sparks with awkward vanity display } What the fine gentleman wore yesterday; } 330 ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... had thought that such things couldn't happen! She had thought that people's private belongings, like their persons, were inviolable. They all always talked, she had talked, about such things as if they were mere nothings. They had talked about the very taking of the Crew Idol as if it were a splendid joke! But she had not dreamed what such things were like when they were near. When they were held up to you naked they were like this! In the shame of it she could no more have ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... whole length of one wall stood an enormous press in mahogany, with sliding-doors. Two of the doors were slightly open, for Folly knew that clothes, like people and flowers, need a lot of air. Leighton caught a glimpse of filmy nothings hanging on racks; of other nothings, mostly white, stacked on deep shelves; of a cluster of hats clinging like orchids to invisible bumps; and last and least, of tiny slippers ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... KNOW-NOTHINGS, a party in the United States that sprung up in 1853 and restricted the right of American citizenship to those who were born in America or of an American parentage, so called because to those inquisitive ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sleep-walker, whose eyes and mind perceive other things than what are present. Frederick came briskly in, with a forced cheerfulness, grasped her hand, looked into her eyes, and burst into tears. She had to try and think of little nothings to say all breakfast-time, in order to prevent the recurrence of her companions' thoughts too strongly to the last meal they had taken together, when there had been a continual strained listening for some sound or signal from ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bliss! Who can estimate your worth? One of you will outweigh a life, such as the dull round of common place nothings can yield. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... who spends his time at night in wasteful or sinful ways so that he gets to bed at one or two o'clock in the morning and sleeps until nine or ten o'clock the next day? Why, bless your soul, the street cleaner and the 'garbage gentleman' are worth a dozen good-for-nothings like that! ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... in a quiet way, attending one or two salons, but he was not splendid. And he seems really to have thrown himself with his customary vigour into his Armenian studies; but of those I speak elsewhere. They were for the day: in the evening, he tells Moore, "I do one of many nothings—either at the theatres, or some of the conversaziones, which are like our routs, or rather worse, for the women sit in a semi-circle by the lady of the mansion, and the men stand about the room. To be sure, there is one improvement ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... nurse left yesterday and I had my first real squint at myself in the mirror. She wouldn't let me look while she was here. After what I saw staring back at me from that glass a whole ballroom full of French courtiers whispering sweet nothings in my ear couldn't make me believe that I look like anything but a hunk of Roquefort, green spots included. When I think of how my clothes won't fit it makes ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... fashionable preacher, the ladies a little sleepy after the last night's opera, but dressed in the most elegant morning toilet, and casting furtive glances at Lady ——-'s bonnet and feathers, and at Mrs. ——-'s cashmere shawl or lovely ermine pelisse, and exchanging a few fashionable nothings at the door, as the footmen let down the steps of their gay equipages—the other, solemn, stately, and gloomy, and showing no distinction of rank. The floor covered with kneeling figures—some enveloped in the reboso, others in the mantilla, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... I know myself, Betty, will I let you undertake such a red-cross expedition as that. They'll have to wait. I came in to call on you and whisper sweet nothings to you in the ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and effectiveness, with their sure results in history, which distinguished Him from other gods, the gods of the nations, who were ineffective, or as Jeremiah puts it unprofitable—no-gods, nothings and do-nothings, the work of men's hands, lies or frauds, and mere bubbles.(765) On this line Jeremiah's monotheism marks a notable advance; for alongside of faith in the Divine Unity and Sovereignty there had lingered even in Deuteronomy a belief in the existence of other gods.(766) ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... yoke on your necks. The Pretoria lawyers have talked you round. You see that map,' and he pointed to a big one on the wall. 'South Africa is coloured green. Not red for the English, or yellow for the Germans. Some day it will be yellow, but for a little it will be green—the colour of neutrals, of nothings, of boys and young ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... me! Here I am babbling these silly nothings when I have some real news up my sleeve. We have a new worker, a gem of ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... down? Frankly, nothing, unless his strength holds. I advise such a one never to seek for help from any one but himself, and never to try for any of the employments which are supposed to be "easy." Cool neglect, insulting compassion, lying promises, evasive and complimentary nothings—these will be his portion. If he cannot perform any skilled labour, let him run the risk of seeming degraded; and, if he has to push a trade in matches or flowers, let him rather do that than bear the more or less kindly flouts which meet the supplicant. To all who are young and strong I ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... royal-brace; haul taut to leeward, well there, belay! Lee to'gallant-brace haul taut; topsail and fore-braces, well there, belay of all. Forecastle there! ease up that flying-jib sheet. What do you mean, you know-nothings, by flattening the sail like that? So, that's better, belay!" And so the old fellow went on, making the round of the decks and trimming every sail until it drew to the ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... rather perturbed yet unshaken in her convictions, returned to the office and Constantine had decided his blood pressure could not stand any traipsing round after folderols, Gaylord was eagerly taking notes and saying pretty nothings to the doleful Mrs. Todd, who relied utterly on his artistic ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... then, should history be written? In the first place, by men of some experience in real life; who have acted and suffered; who have been in crowds, and seen, perhaps felt, how madly men can care about nothings; who have observed how much is done in the world in an uncertain manner, upon sudden impulses and very little reason; and who, therefore, do not think themselves bound to have a deep- laid theory for all things. They should be men who ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... blunders. They were not men, as a rule, from university quadrangles nor college cloisters. They were not the wise, nor the erudite, nor the cultivated, nor the rich. They were the good men. Brilliant men tire us; wits soon bore us with their gilt-edged nothings, but men with clean, holy hearts, fixed convictions, bold antipathies to sin, sympathetic natures and tender consciences never weary us, and they bear the intimate and familiar acquaintance which so often causes the downfall of the ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... by, days filled with the busy nothings of prosperity, they bore no meaning. I shifted the hours, as one shifts the kaleidoscope, with an eye only to their movement. Neither the remembrance of yesterday nor the hope of to-morrow stimulated me. The mere fact of breathing had ceased to be a happiness, since the day I entered Miss ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... God's works are not like men's; He does not always take the wise, the learned, the rich of the world to manifest Himself in, and through them to others, but He chooses the despised, the unlearned, the poor, the nothings of the world, and fills them with the good tidings of Himself, whereas He sends the others empty away." He further apprehends that his view, that "the curse that was declared to Adam was temporary," and that ultimately the curse shall be removed off the ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... like that man," said Clay, emphatically. "I was just a plain, common, or garden, sappeur, and I showed the other good-for-nothings how to dig trenches. Well, I contaminated the Foreign Legion for eight months, and then I went to ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Mrs. Madison's placid weather talk as if it had been a flaunting challenge; he made it a matter of conscience and for argument; for he was a doughty champion, it appeared, when nothings were in question, one of those stern men who will have accuracy in the banal, insisting upon portent in talk meant to be slid over ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... there have arisen in our midst a band of hooligans, scamps, good-for-nothings who are making false accusations against the most respected householders of the village, therefore we, the leaders of the community, warn these false accusers openly that we most strongly condemn their falsehoods, and if we catch any of them, we will punish ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... ladies sitting disconsolately, waiting for some one to speak to them, and wishing they had the wherewith to occupy their fingers. You see the hostess standing about the doorway, keeping a factitious smile on her face, and racking her brain to find the requisite nothings with which to greet her guests as they enter. You see numberless traits of weariness and embarrassment; and, if you have any fellow-feeling, these cannot fail to produce a feeling of discomfort. The disorder is catching; ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... anyway." He spoke feelingly, for he had very likely been weighed in Ruth's calm eyes sometime, and thoroughly scared by the little laugh that accompanied a puzzling reply to one of his conversational nothings. Such young gentlemen, at this time, did not come very distinctly into Ruth's ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... a lie," he answered. "I was not notorious. I was no better and no worse than many another man. I played, I danced attendance, I said soft nothings, but I was tied to no woman in all Ireland. I was frolicsome and adventurous, but no more. There is no woman who can say I used her ill or took from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sister well; and although Miss Faith's face was swollen with crying, she spoke with almost exaggerated cheerfulness to Ruth. Indeed, as they all stood at the front door, making-believe to have careless nothings to say, just as at an ordinary leave-taking, you would not have guessed the strained chords of feeling there were in each heart. They lingered on, the last rays of the setting sun falling on the group. Ruth once or twice had ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... morning from my favourite place, without anything having happened since last night that is worth recording—save perhaps the thousand flitting nothings in the landscape. I got up with the sun, which now floods all the space with silver. The cold is still keen, but by piling on our woollen things we get the better of it on these nights in billets. There is only this to say: that to-morrow ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... satire on myself,— These dreamy nothings scrawled in air, This thought, this work! Oh tricksy elf, Wouldst drive thy father ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the follies of one's youth! The mercy of God rather than any virtue in me kept these from being not only infinitely more numerous, but infinitely worse. Yet I had better confess them, such as they are, in this place. For it was some such nothings as those which follow that first brought Helene and me into one way of thinking, though by paths ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... me so sad," said the Old Maid. "Sometimes it is the woman's fault, sometimes the man's; more often both. The little courtesies, the fond words, the tender nothings that mean so much to those that love—it would cost so little not to forget them, and they would make ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... drowning man will clutch at a straw; the truth of the remark applies to the half-informed in Fiddle connoisseurship. It is very amusing to note the pile of nothings that these persons heap up under the name of "guiding points" in relation to Fiddles. I will endeavour to call to mind a few of these. I will begin with those little pegs seen on the backs of Violins near ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... amount of competition between the workmen themselves.' Yes, my dear children, you must eat each other; we are far too fond parents to interfere with so delightful an amusement! Curse them—sleek, hard-hearted, impotent do-nothings! They confess themselves powerless against competition—powerless against the very devil that is destroying us, faster and faster every year! They can't help us on a single point. They can't check population; and if they could, they can't get rid of the population which ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... with Mademoiselle du Plessis in a leading part. "... La Plessis has a quartan fever. It is pretty to see her jealous fury when she comes here and finds the child with me. The fuss there is to have my stick or muff to hold! But enough of these nothings...." ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... then not talking with Veronica when he could help it. For each time that he saw her, he felt that soft mystery of attraction in which great passion begins; that something which touches and draws gently on, and presses and draws again more gently, yet with stronger power, growing great on nothings by day and night, till it drives the senses slowly mad, and overtops the soul, and pricks, then goads, then drives—then, at the last, tears men up like straws in its enormous arms, rising on sudden wings to outstrip wind and whirlwind in the wild race that ends in death or ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... polished man of the world, as if eight-dollar opera-hats were mere nothings. He held it out for Kitty to inspect, smiling. Then he crushed it under his arm (where the broken spring behaved like an unlatched jack-in-the-box) and led the way to the ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath |
