"Sententious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day have put the acquirements of a "Clerk of Oxenford" in Aristotelian logic, supplemented perhaps by a knowledge of Priscian, and the rhetorical works of Cicero? Chaucer's scholar, however much his learned modesty of manner and sententious brevity of speech may commend him to our sympathy and taste, is a man wholly out of the world in which he lives, though a dependent on its charity even for the means with which to purchase more of his beloved books. Probably no trustworthier ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Commonwealth. From its own point of view, this is a meritorious performance, making no pretensions to the character of a philosophical history, but a clear, easy narrative, sometimes interrupted by sententious disquisition, of transactions down to the Conquest. Like Grote, though not precisely for the same reason, Milton hands down picturesque legendary matter as he finds it, and it is to those who would see English history in ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... days of old comedy, and in the '40's it dwindled to nothing, and England and America waited until the early '60's. Then came Tom Robertson with his so-called "tea-cup and saucer" school, which consisted of sententious dialogue, simple situations, conventional characterizations, and threads of plots, until Pinero and Jones put a stop to ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... these remarkable and well-known words of the Roman general, I beg to forward two more sententious ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... toiling after us somewhere; we could only hope the enemy might delay his attack until they should arrive. "He may delay his defense if he like," said a sententious young officer to whom I had imparted this natural wish. He had read the signs aright; the words were hardly spoken when a group of staff officers about the brigade commander shot away in divergent ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... time was no more than Richard. How a man should say only Richard, it is not easy to imagine. But it was thus: Dr. Douglas was talking of Dr. Zachary Grey, and ascribing to him something that was written by Dr. Richard Grey. So, to correct him, Taylor said, (imitating his affected sententious ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... wildness of the suffering patient. Mr. Hastings on his part seemed anxious and angry, both in one. He said to Dora savagely that he hoped it would teach the reckless fellow a lesson that he would never forget, and resented with haughty silence Dr. Arnold's sententious reply, that "it was likely to do just that." Then he openly and unhesitatingly regretted Dr. Armitage's absence, sent twice to his home to learn concerning his whereabouts, and was not improved in temper by learning that he was lying ill at Buffalo; and, finally, with much ...
— Three People • Pansy
... grandfather was hardly realized at first; 'the sense of loss' deepened: 'it has been greater with me every year that followed.' He corresponded with his college friends, and of this date is a letter of remonstrance at his overstudious habits from the sententious H. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... councillors is the apothecary, a short, and rather fat man, with a pair of prominent eyes, that diverge like those of a lobster. He is the village wise man; very sententious; and full of profound remarks on shallow subjects. Master Simon often quotes his sayings, and mentions him as rather an extraordinary man; and even consults him occasionally in desperate cases of the dogs and horses. Indeed he seems to have been overwhelmed by the apothecary's philosophy, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... I do not see any good reason you have for intimating that in the present case the right direction has not been taken." There was just perceptible a touch of indignation in the voice of Mrs. Markland, which, being perceived by Grace, brought the sententious remark,— ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... good thing to love the classics and devotion," he went on presently with a sententious air, "they are solaces in time of trouble. I have found ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... over-condensation in our preaching. Highly concentrated foods are proverbially hard of digestion, and the same may be true of highly concentrated sermons. "Words packed with profoundest meanings" are apt to pass over the mind carrying much of their meaning with them undiscovered. A "highly sententious style" may have some of the qualities of a thunder shower, in which the rain falls so fast as to be of little use in watering the thirsty ground, over which it courses unabsorbed to join the brook down yonder in the vale. The maxim "multum in parvo" ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... be brief in explaining my real opinion,) to speak in a well-arranged and suitable manner without good ideas is to act like a madman. But to speak in a sententious manner, without any order or method in one's language, is to behave like a child: but still it is childishness of that sort, that those who employ it cannot be considered stupid men, and indeed may often be accounted wise men. And if a man is contented with that sort of character, why let him ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... moment upon this sententious drivel, then very properly ignored it, reverting to ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... afterwards much greater fame as a man of science. In 1732, after he had taken his degree in medicine at Leyden, and had visited England and France, he published a small collection of poems entitled Versuch Schweizerischer Gedichten. They are characterized by moral fervor, trenchant thought, and sententious pregnancy of expression—a new combination up to that time. Haller is at his best in The Alps, which, notwithstanding its abundant description, is not so much a landscape poem as a philosophic eulogy of the simple life. The text below follows Bibliothek lterer Schriftwerke ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... numerous speeches made by Tecumseh have been preserved. Tradition speaks in exalted terms of several efforts of this kind, of which no record was made. All bore evidence of the high order of his intellectual powers. They were uniformly forcible, sententious and argumentative; always dignified, frequently impassioned and powerful. He indulged neither in sophism nor circumlocution, but with bold and manly frankness, gave utterance to his honest opinions. Mr. Ruddell, who knew him long and intimately, says, ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... lofty converse hold With after times.—The patriot shall feel My stern alarum, and unsheath his steel; Or, in the senate thunder out my numbers To startle princes from their easy slumbers. The sage will mingle with each moral theme My happy thoughts sententious; he will teem With lofty periods when my verses fire him, And then I'll stoop from heaven to inspire him. Lays have I left of such a dear delight That maids will sing them on their bridal night. Gay villagers, upon a morn of May When they have tired ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... the people over whom he presided. Loyal and dutiful addresses, expressing such sentiments, were presented to the young monarch by the city of London, the two universities, and from various bodies of people, to all which he returned sententious but suitable replies, declaring his fixed resolve to respect their rights and conciliate their esteem. A letter was addressed to him by the venerable Bishop of London, Dr. Sherlock, as a parting benediction, in which he gave him the following ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... him roundly as conventional and academic and prejudiced and old-fashioned and all that to youth is most odious and that to Bob, when not playing a part, was most impossible. In harmony with his new role, he showed himself a miracle of forbearance under Beardsley's reproaches and sententious beyond endurance, actually called Beardsley young, his cardinal offence, for the young hate nothing so much as to be reminded of the youth for which the old envy them. Bob's almost every sentence began ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for good books, but new books." And then comes the ever-recurring wail of the playwright, Elizabethan as well as Georgian, respecting the taste of audiences. "Should a man," he says, "present to such an auditory the most sententious tragedy that ever was written, observing all the critical laws, as height of style, and gravity of person, enrich it with the sententious chorus, and, as it were, enliven death in the passionate and weighty Nuntius; yet after all this divine rapture, O dura messorum ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... well as I can remember a little old man, red-faced and fat, wearing a robe of black watered silk. He questioned me about the fate of the Captain Mironoff, whom he called his chum, and often interrupted me by sententious remarks, which, if they did not prove him to be a man well versed in war, showed his natural intelligence and shrewdness. During this time other guests arrived. When all had taken their places, and to each had been offered a cup of tea, the General carefully stated the ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... bowels yearned with sympathy, and putting in his hand a small token of my gratitude and goodness, I departed with a hearty benediction on him, Dame Honeyball, and the parish club of Crooked Lane—not forgetting my shabby, but sententious friend, in the oil-cloth hat and ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... who is allowed full liberty of speech, being himself a universal butt. His attempts at wit, which are rarely very successful, and his allusions to the pleasures of the table, of which he is a confessed votary, are absurdly contrasted with the sententious solemnity of the despairing hero, crossed in the prosecution of his love-suit. His clumsy interference in the intrigues of his friend only serves to augment his difficulties, and occasions many an awkward dilemma. On the other hand, the shrewdness of the heroine's confidantes never seems to ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... trifle sententious, and Rowland turned to the bust of Miss Light. Like every one else in Rome, by this time, Miss Blanchard had an opinion on the young girl's beauty, and, in her own fashion, she expressed it epigrammatically. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... recent play, The Virgin Widow (1850), Mr Taylor declines from the promise of his earlier efforts. The preface suggests great things; but they are not forthcoming. There is much careful finish, much sententious rhetoric, much elegant description; but there is little of racy humour (the play is a 'romantic comedy'), little of poetical freshness, little of lively flesh and blood portraiture, and more of melodramatic expedience than dramatic ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... which, like poetry, is born in a man, not acquired—the result, generally, as in his case, of an innate power, combined with large, varied, and calming experience. Like most men of this stamp, he had both a keen sense of the humorous, and a racy talent for it; abounded in sententious, remarkable sayings; and had a dash of playfulness and eccentricity which gave a zest to his many solid excellences. The physician who attended his deathbed, often expressed regret that he had not kept a memorandum ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... thanksgiving in more appropriate language. A few exclamations also escaped Mrs. Budd, and Jack Tier had his sententious eulogy on the precious qualities ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... ask themselves what possible interest there can be in the narrative of a simple episode in the life of a humble fugitive. What reply can be made, what explanation can be offered? Fortunately, what remains to be told may mostly be put in the sententious language of ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... be found for this crying evil; and then the world may hope to see the several branches of the trade a little better ordered. The true Augustan age of literature can never exist until works shall be as accurate, in their typography, as a "log book," and as sententious, in their ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... if they do delight therein, yet are so closed with wit, As with sententious lips to set a title vain on it; Oh let them hear these sacred tunes, and learn in Wonder's schools To be, in things past bonds of wit, fools if they be ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... aside his pipe, for he still retained a little of his treasured tobacco, and in a slow, sententious tone repeated one of those tribal legends which are all that keep alive the fire of patriotism and national pride, in the breasts of a people who find themselves strangers, outcasts, and without a country in the land of their ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... Delia shortly found herself, basket in hand, making her way along the dusty High Street to Mrs Hurst's house. Dornton and the Dornton people seemed to her at that moment almost unbearable. Should she ever get away from them? she wondered. Would her life be spent within the hearing of Mrs Winn's sententious remarks, the tedious discussions of tiny details, the eternal chatter and gossip, which still seemed to buzz in her ears, from the meeting that afternoon? Then her thoughts turned to their usual refuge, the Professor, and she began ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... sententious and didactic that night. If he had been simply loving, he would have done Little Dorrit more good; but she accepted him as he was—when had she not accepted him as he was!—and made the most and best of him. Mrs General at length retired. Her retirement ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... those times, that the Duke trusted the Duchess with the secret, and she her sister the popish Duchess of Tyrconnel, who was as poor and as bigoted as a church mouse. A corroboration of this was the wise and sententious answer of King William to the Duke, whom he taxed with having betrayed the secret. "upon my honour, Sir," said the Duke, "I told it to nobody but my wife." "I did not tell it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... about art, which would alone have carried conviction even if he had not had a thick, dark bang coming almost to the brows of his mobile gray eyes, and had not spoken English with quick, staccato impulses, so as to give it the effect of epigrammatic and sententious French. One of the ladies said that you always thought of him as having spoken French after it was over, and accused herself of wrong in not being able to feel afraid of him. None of the ladies was afraid of him, though they could ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... meantime had been absorbing. In the course of an earnest conference at the Tuscarora House the evening of the quarry accident, the Hon. Samuel Bowers had removed his cigar to let fall a sententious observation. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... her on the front step with foggy allusions to the mysterious past. I may mention that his own conduct in the interval had been such as I can only regard as a lamentable relapse from the altitude of the earlier chapters. But it is all vastly serious—it would perhaps be unkind to say sententious—and wholly unruffled by the faintest suggestion of comedy. For which reason I should never be startled to learn that HARRY TIGHE was either youthful, Scotch, or female (or indeed, for that matter, all three). In any case I can only hope that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... and the reader can with very little trouble verify the truth of the assertion, that the mode of our Lord's teaching, as set forth in St. John, is more terse, axiomatic, and sententious—more in accordance with these words of Justin, "brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him," than it appears in ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... a new one to the first century of our era, and so it was in Europe and Syria. But in India, Sakyamuni, probably five hundred years before, had laid down in sententious maxims the philosophical principle which underlies the higher religious doctrine of a future life. These are his words, and if through the efforts of reasoning we ever reach a demonstration of the immortality of the soul, we shall do it by pursuing the argument here indicated: ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... and dare-devil Scotchman of history. His conduct and conversation, as recounted in the fifth chapter of the novel, are unnatural and improbable; and we cannot wonder that the first lieutenant did not know what to make of so melodramatic and sententious a gentleman, in the guise of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... servant. His works, which were chiefly pub. after his death, consist of tragedies and sonnets, and poems on political and moral subjects, including Caelica (109 sonnets). He also wrote a Life of Sir P. Sidney, whose friend he was. His style is grave and sententious. He is buried in the church at Warwick, and the inscription on his tomb, written by himself, is a compendious biography. It runs: "Fulke Greville, servant to Queen Elizabeth, counsellor to King James, friend ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... And the sententious towel, like a person who has nothing to say, but thinks he must say something all the same, gave him this reflection, full of good sense but not very apposite, that "to enjoy the morning ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Kipling of lack of patriotism. It is, said one angrily, "unbecoming to spend most of his time criticising his contemporaries." "His sense of mental perspective is an extremely deficient one." "The manufacture of paradoxes is really one of the simplest processes conceivable." "Mr. Chesterton's sententious wisdom." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... manners were very simple. He spoke little. He usually expressed his meaning by short sententious phrases uttered in a soft voice. After the Revolution, the epoch at which he first came into notice, the good man stuttered in a wearisome way as soon as he was required to speak at length or to maintain an argument. This stammering, the incoherence of his language, the flux of words in which ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... he'll ever have," was his sententious remark. No other word was uttered until they were inside the house, Mrs. Braddock's gasp of relief could not have ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin' their own business," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley, as she speared a ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... exercise attained a sufficient skill to be able to make public addresses and to plead a cause; but in Greek, he must be noted for affecting the sententious and short Laconic way of speaking in sundry passages of his epistles; as when, in the beginning of the war, he wrote thus to the Pergamenians: "I hear you have given Dolabella money; if willingly, you must own you have injured me; if unwillingly, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... that had wrought much fear in his time," answered the soldier, for I had lighted on a sententious fellow—"one that made many swift ends, and now has ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... be wished that all biography were equally amusing, and carried its own credentials equally upon its face. These portraits are racier than many anecdotes, and more complete than many a volume of sententious memoirs. You can see whether you get a stronger and clearer idea of Robertson the historian from Raeburn's palette or Dugald Stewart's woolly and evasive periods. And then the portraits are both signed and countersigned. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... utterance to this sage opinion with the sententious solemnity of an oracle, or the portentous gravity of "an ass"—as modern slang might put it—the youth resumed his pipe and continued the stupefaction ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... He'd tell her to apply for the position. It would take about five minutes to put out that independent Amanda Reist and vote in the other girl—it just takes some people to plan! He, Mr. Mertzheimer, had planned it! Probably in his limited education he had never read that sententious line regarding what often happens to the best laid plans of ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... portable form for popular guidance. He possessed Benjamin Franklin's immense common sense, and gift of terse proverbial speech, but none of his lusts and sceptical infirmities. The immortal twenty-line address at Gettysburg is the high water mark of sententious eloquence. With that speech should be placed the pathetic and equally perfect letter of condolence to Mrs. Bixby of Boston after her five sons had fallen in battle. With that speech also should be read that wonderful second Inaugural address which even the hostile London Times pronounced to ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... was the strongest contrast to his brother. He was methodical and sententious, expressed his opinion on all subjects with the air of a man whose judgment was infallible, and was an ardent disciple of Voltaire and Rousseau. It was very seldom that he entered his father's house, where his opinions on religious ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... Popenjoy." "We have to regard, in the first place, the honour of the family. No remissness on his part should induce us to forget for a moment what is due to the title, the property, and the name." The letter was very long, and was full of sententious instructions, such as the above. But the purport of it was to tell the ladies at Cross Hall that they must go through the first burden of receiving the Marquis without any ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... keeping a House, and have even been suspected of occasionally conniving in the beneficent plot of dispersing it. But just now private members' nights stand in the same relation to the Session as the sententious traveller found to be the case with snakes in Iceland. There are none. Every night is a Government night, and weariness of flesh and spirit naturally suggests a count-out. The regular business of the Whip is to see that there are within call sufficient members ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... broadside of the enemy. The heavier metal of Perry's guns soon reduced them to unmanageable hulks. The carnage was dreadful. In three hours, all their officers and half of their crews were killed or wounded. Perry dispatched to Washington the sententious message: "We have met the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... persistent, while the judge's last sententious remark regarding the recent subdivision of the estate awakened a new interest ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Press Gallery. The Times staff appropriated the room to the right, still occupied by their telephonic service; the corresponding room to the left being for general use. The room at the top of the stairs—where Wright still presides and entrances the telegraph messengers with sententious remarks on political, social, and philosophic affairs—was also used for writing-out purposes, if a man could find a corner at the table at ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... could not manage the great ladies. "Male swells," he would say laughingly, "I have measured physically and intellectually." The golden youth of the country seemed fascinated by his society, repeated his sententious bons-mot, and applied for shares in every company which ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... a cigar to Tom, lighted one, and had begun to talk with a rhetorical and sententious balancing of periods—which, to his mind, full of the oratory of Prentiss, was the essence of impressiveness—when a negro woman entered the room. And ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... a Materialist, and Kopy-Keck was a spiritualist. The former was slow and sententious; the latter was quick and flighty: the latter had generally the first word; the ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... results of my reflections upon the most important points in quite brief, precise, compact propositions. The manner in which Montesquieu has treated his subject floated before me in idea. I thought that concise, sententious chapters, which I proposed at first to call grains, would attract the attention of the intelligent just as much by that which was to be developed from them, as by that which they contained in themselves. I had, therefore, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... "That is so sententious, Kenneth, that I shall have to take it home and ravel it out gradually in my mind in little shreds. In the mean while, dear, suppose we stop in the village, and get some little brown-ware cups for top-overs. You never ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the story leaked out, as it soon did, in an exaggerated and distorted form, he straightway ceased his visits. Thus he was wholly unprepared for the family's hurried departure, the news of which was broken to him by Maurice. Dove was dumbfounded. Not a single sententious phrase crossed his lips; and he remained unashamed of the moisture that dimmed his eyes. But he maintained his bearing commendably; and it was impossible not to admire the upright, manly air with which he walked down ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... effort at sententious English pronounced this speech, the brothers stood stolidly awaiting the result; while the captain, still gnashing his teeth, bent over the prostrate ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... mistress, who knew his understanding, uprightness, and inviolable attachment to herself, and returned it. Claude Anet was of an uncommon temper. I never encountered a similar disposition: he was slow, deliberate, and circumspect in his conduct; cold in his manner; laconic and sententious in his discourse; yet of an impetuosity in his passions, which (though careful to conceal) preyed upon him inwardly, and urged him to the only folly he ever committed; that folly, indeed was terrible, it was poisoning himself. This tragic scene passed soon after my arrival, and opened my eyes to ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... gales quivered among the branches. He roved from walk to walk as chance directed him, and sometimes listened to the songs, sometimes mingled with the dancers, sometimes let loose his imagination in flights of merriment; and sometimes uttered grave reflections, and sententious maxims, and feasted on the admiration with which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... on the fate of Ivan Kouzmitch, whom he called his gossip, and he often interrupted me by many questions and sententious remarks, which if they did not show a man versed in the conduct of war, yet showed that he was possessed of natural wit, and of intelligence. During this time the other guests had assembled. When all were seated, and each one had been offered a cup of tea, the General explained ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... that Flinders had promised himself the pleasure of re-reading in maturity the tale that had so delighted his youth. Had he lived to do so, he might well have underlined, as applicable to himself, a pair of those sententious observations with which Defoe essayed to give a sober purpose to his narrative. The first is his counsel of "invincible patience under the worst of misery, indefatigable application, and undaunted resolution ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... just joined us, cast down his eyes at this tale about him, and murmured in a sententious tone of voice, "Pipes are an ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... painfully necessary by the political temperature of the times or the unforgiving suspicions of the past. But I am becoming sentimental when I ought to be humorous, contemplative when I should be characteristic, and seriously sententious when I ought to be playfully satirical. Forgive me, gentle reader, if from the collapse of the spirit, I have for a moment turned aside from the natural gaiety of my 24style, to give utterance to the warm feelings ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... type is found in the conflict of wills. Could such a play as the "Suppliants" of Euripedes find any aesthetic justification, save that it has the one dramatic essential—confrontation, balance of emotions? The very scenes of short speeches, of objurgation or sententious repartee, which cannot but have for us an element of the grotesque, must have been as pleasing as they were to the Greek audience, from the fact that they brought to sharpest vision the confrontation ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... before it, and made what was perhaps the most carefully prepared speech of his whole life. Every word of it was written, every sentence had been tested; but the speaker delivered it without manuscript or notes. It was not an ordinary oration, but, in the main, an argument, as sententious and axiomatic as if made to a bench of jurists. Its opening sentences contained a political prophecy which not only became the ground-work of the campaign, but heralded one of the world's great ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... stuck I know not how many naked swords upon the grave of this corpse, which was disinterred three or four times a day, according to the caprice of the first comer, an Albanian, who chanced to be at Mico accidentally, bethought himself of saying in a sententious tone, that it was very ridiculous to make use of the swords of Christians in such a case. Do you not see, blind as ye are, said he, that the hilt of these swords, forming a cross with the handle, prevents the devil from coming out of that body? why do you not rather ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... that curling brow down; You can't, for the soul of you, learn how to frown. Well, first I premise, it's my honest conviction, That my breast is a chaos of all contradiction; Religious—deistic—now loyal and warm; Then a dagger-drawn democrat hot for reform: This moment a fop, that, sententious as Titus; Democritus now, and anon Heraclitus; Now laughing and pleased, like a child with a rattle; Then vex'd to the soul with impertinent tattle; Now moody and sad, now unthinking and gay, To all points of the compass I veer ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... and with difficulty, Weed was for twenty years the most sententious and pungent writer of editorial paragraphs on the American press."—Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... addressed. He adapted himself to all, contradicting no one, and, while austere himself, he flattered the tastes of others. In the various houses where he visited his conversation was serious, grave, and sententious; and, as we have seen, he could quote Scripture with the readiness of a theologian. In the shop, when he had to deal with the lower classes, he showed himself acquainted with their modes of expression, and spoke ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... History of Hamlet, in the oration which Hamlet makes to the Danes after he has slain his uncle. "The situation of Hamlet is almost identical with that of Brutus after he has dealt the blow, and the burden of Hamlet's too lengthy speech finds an echo in Brutus's sententious utterance. The verbose iteration of the Dane has been compressed to suit 'the brief compendious manner of speech of the Lacedaemonians.'"—Gollancz. As the English translation from which Professor Gollancz quotes in support of his theory is dated 1608, ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... of the Brehon Law Tracts point out that early laws are handed down "in a rhythmical form; always in language condensed and antiquated they assume the character of abrupt and sententious proverbs. Collections of such sayings are found scattered throughout the Brehon Law Tracts."[128] The sagas contain many verses which partake of the character of legal formulae, and in Beowulf there seems to be a definite example. It occurs in the passage ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... forms of genius. She does not gossip delightfully; at times she may seem a little hard or dry; but her reason is really guided by human kindness. "Her style," wrote a high authority, Dollinger, "is clear, terse, refined, often sententious; her business letters are patterns of simplicity and pregnant brevity. They might be characterised as womanly yet manly, so well do they combine the warmth and depth of womanly feeling with the strength and lucidity of a masculine mind." The foundation of Saint-Cyr, for the education of girls ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... dinner have been sharp and sententious] I know not well what degree of respect Shakespeare intends to obtain for this vicar, but he has here put into his mouth a finished representation of colloquial excellence. It is very difficult to add any thing to this character of the school-master's table-talk, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... Greek as sentiments! Both nervous grown, to keep our spirits up. We now and then take down a hearty cup. What shall we do? If Comedy forsake us, They'll turn us out, and no one else will take us. But why can't I be moral?—Let me try— My heart thus pressing—fixed my face and eye— With a sententious look, that nothing means, (Faces are blocks in sentimental scenes) Thus I begin: "All is not gold that glitters, "Pleasure seems sweet, but proves a glass of bitters. "When Ignorance enters, Folly is at hand: "Learning is better far than house and land. "Let not your virtue ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... in his sly, sidewise comment, and often when several of us were in hot debate, his sententious or humorous retorts cut or stung in defence of some esthetic principle much more effectively than most of my harangues. Sculpture, with him, was a religious faith, and he defended it manfully and practiced it with skill and an industry ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... honesty of the King, the good-natured impetuosity of old Lafeu, the maternal indulgence of the Countess to Helena's passion for her son, seem all as it were to vie with each other in endeavours to overcome the arrogance of the young Count. The style of the whole is more sententious than imaginative: the glowing colours of fancy could not with propriety have been employed on such a subject. In the passages where the humiliating rejection of the poor Helena is most painfully ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... nor his wife repeated any of those sententious admonitions, which had almost become rebukes, and which had been so common in their mouths. The fall with which they had threatened Phineas Finn had come upon him, and they were too generous to remind him of their wisdom and sagacity. Indeed, when he got up to ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... from his ordinary field, and here as elsewhere he shows himself prone to quote from the drama.[160] But Scott was interested in plays for what he found in them of characters and manners, of witty and sententious speech, of situations and incidents, and only secondarily in the technical aspects of the drama. Reading his novels we could guess that he would care more for the concrete elements of a play than for the orderly ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... Anne poetry took a serious turn, the generalizing spirit of the age led it almost always into the paths of ethical and didactic verse. "It stooped to truth and moralized its song," finding its favorite occupation in the sententious expression of platitudes—the epigram in satire, the maxim in serious work. It became a poetry of aphorisms, instruction us with ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... becoming wiser at every page, in the fulness of our minds we still perceive that our emotions have been seldom stirred by passion. The poem falls from our hands! yet is there none of which we wish to retain so many single verses. D'Avenant is a poetical Rochefoucault; the sententious force of his maxims on all human affairs could only have been composed by one who had lived in a constant intercourse ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... musn't believe mamma when she pretends to be grand and sententious. It's only put on as a sort of company air, but we don't mean to ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... While in some cases the application of the parable which the Lord himself makes at the moment is full and perspicuous, it is in other cases like the parables themselves, and doubtless for good reasons, short, sententious, and partially veiled. In some cases the subjoined doctrine must be read in the light of the parable itself ere it can be understood. "Majus vero et certius auxilium interpreti paratur in illis locis, in quibus ipse Jesus sensum parabolarum explicat, quod quidem modo ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... woman and the girl held almost diametrically opposite opinions, but so far Darsie had contrived to subdue her impatience, and to listen with some appearance of humility to Lady Hayes's somewhat sententious criticism. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to move a cat," said Nora, in her sententious fashion; "but we don't believe in it. We've moved him twice already. And you just put a little ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... sprightly youths, quite flushed with hope and spirit, Who think to storm the world by dint of merit, To you the dotard has a deal to say, In his sly, dry, sententious, proverb way; He bids you mind, amid your thoughtless rattle, That the first blow is ever half the battle: That tho' some by the skirt may try to snatch him, Yet by the forelock is the hold to catch him; ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... understood all that passed, though with Indian gravity and finesse he had sat with averted face, seemingly inattentive to a discourse in which he had no direct concern. Thus appealed to, however, he answered his friend in his ordinary sententious manner. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... was in it a very attractive blending of tenderness and humour. Mike was also one of those whom life at the beginning had impressed with the delight of one kind of work and no other. When a mere imp of a boy, the heartless tormentor of a large and sententious stepmother, the despair of schoolmasters, the most ingenious of truants, a humorous ragamuffin invulnerable to punishment, it was already revealed to him that his mission in life was to be the observation and reproduction of human character, particularly in its humorous ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... was to see her and perhaps renew his offensive talk, have taken prompt measures to resist. Well, even if lettered "Private Office" on the door, it was a public office in point of fact; and that public office was not for personal use or benefit he had the authority, in one sententious form or other, of many an Executive, from Jefferson down. So Elmendorf rapped, and rapped loudly. The clicking presently ceased, a light footstep was heard, then the voice ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... ideas with lucidity, brilliance, charm. The French quality of mind allows that expression to be at once dignified and happily urbane. Sometimes these sayings take the form of the cynical epigrams of a La Rochefoucauld; are expanded into sententious aphorisms by a La Bruyere; or reveal more earnest and athletic souls, who pierce below the social surface froth to do battle with the demons of the intellect. To this class belong men like the seventeenth-century Pascal and the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... indifference to time made deliberative assembly a prolonged, never-wearying joy. The chiefs met in council like Homer's heroes—the commons sitting round and muttering guttural applause or dissent. The speeches abounded in short sententious utterances, in proverbs, poetic allusions and metaphors borrowed from legends. The Maori orator dealt in quotations as freely as the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, and his hearers caught them with as much relish as that of a House of Commons of Georgian days enjoying an apt ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... quite as appetising as (in the text itself) I had expressed my conviction that it would be: and things not noticed before cropped up most agreeably. There is no space to notice all or many of them here. But one of the earliest, due to Hylas, cannot be omitted, for it is the completest and most sententious vindication of polyerotism ever phrased: "Ce n'etait pas que je n'aimasse les autres: mais j'avais encore, outre leur place, celle-ci vide dans mon ame." And the soul of Hylas, like Nature herself, abhorred a vacuum! (This approximation is not intended as "new and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... reason, friend Leary, because we have taken proper precautions to prevent an accident," observed Mr Ragget, who had adopted a peculiarly sententious tone in speaking to Pat, a great contrast to the other's ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... were, as usual, scribbled over by those who would obtain cheap celebrity. I always read these productions; they are pages of human life. The majority of the scribblers leave a name and nothing more: beyond that, some few of their productions are witty, some sententious, mostly gross. My thoughts, as I read over the rubbish, were happily expressed by the following ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... 1601, Marston is complimented as the "Second English Satirist", or rather as dividing the palm of priority and excellence in English satire with Hall. The individual characteristics of the various leading Elizabethan satirists,—the vitriolic bitterness of Nash, the sententious profundity of Donne, the happy-go-lucky "slogging" of genial Dekker, the sledge-hammer blows of Jonson, the turgid malevolence of Chapman, and the stiletto-like thrusts of George Buchanan are worthy of closer and more detailed study ...
— English Satires • Various
... Lamothe, who, in 1815, was an old man seventy-five years of age, had nothing remarkable about him except his silent and sententious air, his cold and angular face, his perfectly polished manners, his coat buttoned up to his cravat, and his long legs always crossed in long, flabby trousers of the hue of burnt sienna. His face was the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... fond of the book of Proverbs. Its short, sententious sentences were altogether to his mind. "There is that scattereth," he read, "and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." "I scatter," he said; "but I don't want to increase. Lord, spare me the consequences of my scattering! ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... observed with sourness of aspect, "methinks you ought not to be so enamoured of the sound of your own voice, for that most unfortunate propensity to prating has brought you to the present pass: remember that it was on account of your growing sententious, that your master so unceremoniously ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... of the flowers," observed old Mr. Delamere, with sententious gallantry, "is reflected upon all around them. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... money and started a remarkable campaign of education by issuing speeches and articles by the millions in a number of different languages, in providing excellent arguments for the country press, and in convincing those who would listen only to arguments of sententious brevity by a well-devised circulation of "nuggets" of financial wisdom. McKinley had also the support of the greater part of the Independent and Democratic press. While financial magnates and the bankers of the country ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... has applied to us for a gossiping Preface. Were we disposed to be grave and didactic, which is as foreign to our mood as it was twenty years ago, we might draw the attention of the reader, in a fine sententious paragraph, to the trifles upon which the fate of empires, as well as a four-and-sixpenny volume of parodies, occasionally hangs in trembling balance. No sooner was the idea of our work conceived, than it was about to be abandoned in embryo, from the apprehension ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... blaze, and traces, in a series of vigorously sketched scenes, the intrigue and counter-intrigue which hurry the action onward toward its logically prepared climax—a mutual reconciliation. The dialogue is pithy, simple, and sententious. Nevertheless the play, as a whole, makes the impression of incompleteness. It is a dramatic sketch rather than a drama. It marks no advance on Bjoernson's previous work in the same line; but perhaps ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... in the sententious manner of his race; and by a trifling effort the canoe was raised from the rock, held a moment in the air to empty it, and then placed carefully on the water in its proper position. All three held it firmly, lest it should escape from their hands under the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... talker, his flippancy ceases in a tete-a-tete, and he becomes sententious, abandoning himself to the subject and seeming to think aloud, though his language has the appearance of stiffness, and is quite opposed to the trifling chit-chat that he enters into when in general ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... esteemed as supplements to the dictionaries, and have not by any manner of means lost their value. The guide to familiar quotations, the index to similes, the grammars, the readers, the machine-made letter-writer of mechanically perfect letters of congratulation or condolence—none are sententious enough to supply the need. By the compilation of this praxis, Mr. Kleiser has not only supplied it, but has furnished a means for the increase of one's vocabulary by practical methods. There are thousands of persons who may profit ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... palliating its sententious absurdity, made Cecilia give up her faint attempt to soften him; and her chair being ready, she arose to ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... after that, Davy, who was fifteen years of age, went to live as farm lad with Kinvig, of Ballavolley. Kinvig was a solemn person, very stiff and starchy, and sententious in his way, a mighty man among the Methodists, and a power in the pulpit. He thought he had done an act of charity when he took Davy into his home, and Davy repaid him in due time by falling in love ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... this sentiment, and the younger Pliny, who happened also to be within hearing, uttered the sententious word "gosh" and clenched his fist, which was taken as proof of assent also, on his part. But, the Americans of the guard, all of whom were the tools of Joel's and the miller's arts, manifested a coldness that even exceeded the usual cold ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... the sententious remark of Inspector Val; "not a sign of him. But I've thought it out. Do you know why we don't find Storri? The reason is the best in ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... over which Avdotia and Katenka would laugh and jest with Dubkoff from one end of an evening to the other. I should have remembered that seldom did an evening pass but Dubkoff would first have, an argument about something, and then read in a sententious voice either some verses beginning "Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive" or extracts from The Demon. In short, I should have remembered what nonsense they used to chatter for ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... chapters, which I promised to write before I went to sleep, I thought it meet to ease my conscience entirely before I laid down, by telling the world all I knew about the matter at once: Is not this ten times better than to set out dogmatically with a sententious parade of wisdom, and telling the world a story of a roasted horse—that chapters relieve the mind—that they assist—or impose upon the imagination—and that in a work of this dramatic cast they are as ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... previously gotten the praise for what was not his merit, so now this sinner was blamed for what was not his fault. Had the sub-committee waited till the crack of doom, it would have made no difference whatever to the general trend of Mr. Keith's sententious irrelevancies. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... parody is made up of allusions to previous poems by Wordsworth, and shows no acquaintance with the story of Peter Bell. Reynolds's whole pamphlet—preface, text, and notes—is excessively clever, and touches up the bard at a score of tender points. It catches the sententious tone of Wordsworth deliciously, and it ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... exaltation was proof against the depressing influence of the scene. I was about to save the life of my friend—to restore a crack shot to society. Indeed I scarcely thought of That Jim, whose heels were grinding the hard gravel close behind me, except when he saw fit occasionally to propound the sententious, and I thought derisive, query, "Tired?" Of course I was, but I would have died ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... craft. For months or years he is condemned to entire seclusion, receiving no visits but from the brethren of his order. At length he is initiated with ceremonies of more or less pomp into the brotherhood, and from that time assumes that gravity of demeanor, sententious style of expression, and general air of mystery and importance, everywhere deemed so eminently becoming in a doctor and a priest. A peculiarity of the Moxos was, that they thought none designated for the office but such ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... white men are humorous. All Indians are witty. Dry wit, with a proverbial philosophy in it which would have delighted the soul of Tupper, is indigenous to the Indian. The Indian is the finest epigrammist on earth. His sentences are pithy and sententious, because short—never long and involved. A book of Indian wit and wisdom would have an enormous sale, and reveal the very core of his ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... and, doubtless, very true, as well as sententious and profound. But hark you, Mr. Wiseman, to something not dreamt of in your philosophy! We women dress, not to be simple, genuine, and harmonious, or even to please you men, but to brave each other's criticism; and so, when the time comes to get our Fall things, Laura and I will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... what it is this year," he sagely replied. "It's diamonds in the heels!" He gave a sententious nod of his head. "I overheard Kathleen and her mother discussing plans. And—do you want to know next season's innovation? By George! I'm a regular spy." He stopped and laughed heartily at ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... be duly considered, different, far different would be my station. What! am I thus exalted in situation above my [sic] situated, (as I may say,) in the very van, exposed to the sneer of every satirical reader and sententious critic? Am I placed in a post so dangerous, and are contempt and humiliation my only reward? O, mankind, where is your gratitude? Think, generous reader, on the services I have so often rendered you: think how often, when you were about to enter upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... effect of their writings and their adaptation (though that is a bad word in the present case) to the capacity of every reader. But still if we turn to a volume of Paine's (his Common Sense or Rights of Man) we are struck (not to say somewhat refreshed) by the difference. Paine is a much more sententious writer than Cobbett. You cannot open a page in any of his best and earlier works without meeting with some maxim, some antithetical and memorable saying, which is a sort of starting-place for the argument, and the goal ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... as a camel's track between Mourzouk and Darfour. It is a comment on the flow and freshet of modern books. The reader leaps from sentence to sentence, as from one stepping-stone to another, while the stream of the story rushes past unregarded. The Bhagvat-Geeta is less sententious and poetic, perhaps, but still more wonderfully sustained and developed. Its sanity and sublimity have impressed the minds even of soldiers and merchants. It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... not so frequently to make us good as to make us wise, that our friends employ the officiousness of counsel; and among the rejectors of advice, who are mentioned by the grave and sententious with so much acrimony, you will not so often find the vicious and abandoned, as the pert and the petulant, the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... criticisms of servants far more than the observations of their masters. To undergo the scrutiny of the first, as he said to me, when we were going to breakfast with Mr. Rogers one morning, was "terrible." His speech was brief and pithy; not too often humorous; never sententious nor didactic. Although he sometimes talked whilst walking up and down the room (at which time he seldom looked at the person with whom he was talking), he very often spoke as if impelled by the necessity of speaking—suddenly, precipitately. If he could have spoken very easily, he might possibly ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... assured that "instead of the graphic, detailed description by which this Evangelist is distinguished, we meet with an abrupt, sententious manner, resembling that of brief notices extracted from larger accounts and loosely linked together."(251) Surely if this be so, the only lawful inference would be that S. Mark, in this place, has "extracted brief notices from larger accounts, ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... he even ventured to ask the pilot in a low voice. The pilot turned out to be a good-natured specimen of his kind, condescending, sententious. He had been down to his meals in the main cabin, and had ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... with very much salivated wafers. His writing too was very slow, and his choice of language not extensive; a letter on such a subject from a brother to a sister should be well turned, impressive, terse, sententious: that scheme would ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... This sententious answer struck them with astonishment, as I expected it would, and they looked at ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... weapons, accoutrement, and apparel. Everything expressive is welcome to him, gesture or inarticulate sound reinforces the spoken word or replaces it. Unusually sensuous language and comparative fulness of sententious passages go hand in hand with a laconic habit which indulges in many ellipses and is content to leave to the actor the task of making a single word convey the meaning of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... held by an oriental sovereign. When the Queen of Sheba, attracted by the reports of his glory, came from Southern Arabia to visit the monarch, she exclaimed, "The half was not told me." He was the wisest king of the East. His proverbs are famous specimens of sententious wisdom. He was versed, too, in botany, being acquainted with plants and trees "from the hyssop upon the wall ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... him to advantage, seldom thought of himself, and kept up the conversation rather by assenting to what was said by the others than by advancing any ideas of his own. The Alto was a grave, learned, and sententious man. He supported the discourse of the first Violin by laconic maxims, striking for their truth. The Bass was a worthy old lady, rather inclined to chatter, who said nothing of much consequence, and while she was talking the other interlocutors had time to breathe. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... village far from the rail and the noise of the world, with the Downs within hail, and fine sparsely-inhabited country between them and it to wander in. The church is largely modern. I find the following sententious paragraph in the county paper for 1792:—"This is an age of Sights and polite entertainment in the country as well as in the city.—The little town of Storrington has lately been visited by ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... his friends may have placed him at the head of the bar. His opponents ranked him second only to their particular favourite. As a speaker, Colonel Burr was calm and persuasive. He was most remarkable for the power which he possessed of condensation. His appeals, whether to a court or a jury, were sententious and lucid. His speeches, generally, were argumentative, short, and pithy. No flights of fancy, no metaphors, no parade of impassioned sentences, are to be found in them. When employed on the same side of a cause with ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... boat. Norman, when he started, had intended to employ the evening in giving good counsel to his friend, and in endeavouring to arrange some scheme by which he might rescue the brand from the burning; but he had not the heart to be severe and sententious while Charley was full of his fun. It was so much pleasanter to talk to him on the easy terms of equal friendship than turn Mentor ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Artful Madge's sententious observation with regard to adversity was the fruit of bitter experience. Misfortune's arrows had been raining thick and fast about her, and although she was holding her ground against them very ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... by quoting Janet's common sense. For that I should be sorry. I remember her words because so often, when sinking in sloughs of childish despond, they afforded me firm foothold. More often than I can tell, when compelled to listen to the sententious voice of immeasurable Folly glibly explaining the eternal mysteries, has it comforted me to whisper to myself: "I don't believe it of Him. He's got ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Lecoq affirm that women had taken part in the horrible scene at the Poivriere, his joy was extreme—"A fine affair!" he exclaimed; "an excellent case!" And suddenly recollecting a maxim that has been handed down from the time of Cicero, he added in sententious tones: "Who holds the ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... of John Adams and the predecessor of Flint, had lived among his people as a chieftain. He was not only the spiritual teacher, he was supreme in most other matters. Unlike the Adams family generally, he had a rough wit and a sententious practical wisdom about common things not unlike the kindred conspicuous qualities in Dr. Franklin. If the traditions that existed in my boyhood were trustworthy, he said and did things that would have ruined an ordinary minister. Adams ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... within the bounds of probability that he should be willing, at the bidding of his guardian, to adopt as Mentor his very correct and sententious cousin, a poor subaltern, and the next in the entail? Depend upon it, it is a fiction created either by papa's hopes or Philip's self-complacency, or else the unfortunate youth must have been brought very low ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mr. Mason was one of the greatest common-lawyers this country has ever produced. Keen and penetrating in intellect, he was master of a relentless logic and of a style which, though simple and homely, was clear and correct to the last point. Slow and deliberate in his movements, and sententious in his utterances, he dealt so powerfully with evidence and so lucidly with principles of law that he rarely failed to carry conviction to his hearers. He was particularly renowned for his success in getting verdicts. Many years afterwards Mr. Webster gave it as his deliberate ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... have been cheerful. The descendants of persecutors, or those whom he supposed guilty of entertaining similar tenets, and the scoffers at religion by whom he was sometimes assailed, he usually termed the generation of vipers. Conversing with others, he was grave and sententious, not without a cast of severity. But he is said never to have been observed to give way to violent passion, excepting upon one occasion, when a mischievous truant-boy defaced with a stone the nose of a cherub's face, which the old man was engaged in retouching. I am in general a sparer ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... am tired of writing it, nor, as continuous testimony indicates, because a generous public is tired of reading. But I am not disposed to linger superfluous on the stage. So I withdraw, carrying with me my little bag of tricks, the sententious Dog, the cynical SARK and the rest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... disqualification upon age by providing that a Representative must be twenty-five years of age, a Senator thirty years of age, and a President thirty-five years of age. When it was suggested that young men could learn by admission to public life, the sententious reply was made that, while they could, they ought not to have their education at the ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... engagement. He had failed to have his work finished by the stipulated time. From week to week and from month to month he had put off the fulfilment of his duty. And because of these laches on his part,—on the part of this sententious French Radical,—I was to be thrown over! Virtue sometimes finds it difficult to console herself even with the double comfort. I would not come out in the Gentleman's Magazine, and as the Grinning Man could not be got out of the way, by novel ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... event which we commemorate is all-important, not merely in our own annals, but in those of the world. The sententious English poet has declared that "the proper study of mankind is man," and of all inquiries of a temporal nature, the history of our fellow-beings is unquestionably among the most interesting. But not all the chapters of human history are alike important. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... I think we spoke quite freely with him, and he seldom said more than "Foolish child" when we ventured on any startling views on things. Once I remember rousing his indignation when I gave out, with sententious priggishness, that the Duke of Wellington laboured under great difficulties in Spain caused by the "factious opposition at home;" that was beyond "Foolish child," but my discomforted distress was soon soothed by a pat on the cheek, and an amused twinkle in ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Julia was longer and less sententious, but it signified her intention of going down to Yoxham a week before the day settled for the marriage, which was now the 10th of July. She was much obliged, she said, to the rector for his goodness in promising to marry them; and as she had no friends of her own she ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... praise God for you sir, your reasons at dinner haue beene sharpe & sententious: pleasant without scurrillity, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresie: I did conuerse this quondam day with a companion of the Kings, who is intituled, nominated, or called, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... eyes widened, a flush rose to her cheek, a naive and pleased smile transformed her dissatisfied young mouth. When he ventured to speak to her presently, she ventured to reply, shyly, but with new friendliness. Once, when Mrs. MacGregor said something sententious, and Glenn laughed, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler |
