"Terse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Discourse, unlike Morelly's terse exposition, contains no clear account of the kind of inequality with which it deals. Is it inequality of material possession or inequality of political right? Morelly tells you decisively that the latter is only an accident, flowing from the first; that the key to renovation ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... “je le sais.” These answers of mine, as given above, are not meant as specimens of mere French, but of that fine, terse, nervous, Continental English with which I and my compatriots make our way through Europe. This language, by-the-bye, is one possessing great force and energy, and is not without its literature, a literature of the very highest order. Where will you find more sturdy specimens of downright, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... apparent an air of probability about this terse statement of the case, that it has satisfied the insatiable curiosity of infantile minds for long ages. Little girls never doubt it, and little boys never contradict it. If Paterfamilias has any thoughts upon the subject, he probably thinks this expenditure of snaps ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... present moment under arrest," was the terse reply. If the news were a shock to Thew, he showed it in none of the ordinary ways. His face seemed to fall for a moment into harder lines. His mouth tightened ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a man should not go on trusting until his seventieth year that there is still plenty of daylight. He contributed five biographies to the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The articles on Bentley, Erasmus, Grotius, More, and Macaulay are from his pen. They are all terse, luminous, and finished, and the only complaint that one can make against them is that our instructor parts company from us too soon. It is a stroke of literary humour after Pattison's own heart that ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... Humphrey, of Cambridge, Professor Millar, of the Edinburgh University, Sir William Gowers, F.R.S., have all answered the above question in the strongest affirmative. "Chastity does no harm to body or mind; its discipline is excellent; marriage may safely be waited for," are Sir James Paget's terse and emphatic words[4]. Still more emphatic are the words of Sir William Gowers, the great men's specialist, who counts as an authority on the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... necessary to outline in only the most terse and condensed form the political and military events which succeeded the destruction of the "Maine" and led up to the declaration of war. The news of the great disaster was received at home with horror, speedily turning to anger. The Government, rightly desiring to ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... visual word-plays after the manner of Jules Renard. He is fond of "artistic writing," a typically Parisian product, a style which in ordinary times seems to "powder puff" the emotions, but which, amid the convulsions of the war, exhibits a certain heroic elegance. The narrative is terse, gloomy, stifling; but there come episodes of repose, which break its unity, and by these the tension is relieved for a moment. Few readers will fail to appreciate the charm, the discreet emotion, of these episodes, as for instance in the chapter ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... splendid, noble, and magnificent vein of eloquence." And in a letter to Cornelius Nepos, he writes of him in the following terms: "What! Of all the orators, who, during the whole course of their lives, have done nothing else, which can you prefer to him? Which of them is more pointed or terse in his periods, or employs more polished and elegant language?" In his youth, he seems to have chosen Strabo Caesar for his model; from whose oration in behalf of the Sardinians he has transcribed some passages literally into his Divination. In his delivery he is said to have had a shrill voice, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... author of the Letter: but it was found impossible to procure legal evidence against him. Some imagined that they recognised the sentiments and diction of Temple. [245] But in truth that amplitude and acuteness of intellect, that vivacity of fancy, that terse and energetic style, that placid dignity, half courtly half philosophical, which the utmost excitement of conflict could not for a moment derange, belonged to Halifax, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... first meeting of Committee No. 9 can be best reported in the words of the Assembly Journal for the following day. This journal, with its terse and yet detailed accounts of current happenings, its polite yet lucid style, and its red-hot topicality (for it is truly a journal), makes admirable reading for those who like their literature up-to-date. Those who attend the meetings of the ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... instance: does the general management propose to place my work upon the stage with the outlay indispensable to a brilliant effect? On this point W——writes me: 'The general management will leave nothing undone to equip your opera in a suitable manner.' You will understand how terribly terse this seems to me! I am not greatly surprised at receiving no letter from Reissiger since last March: he has worked for me—that is the best and most honourable answer; besides, it would be foolish on my part to expect that Reissiger, now that his own opera must be fairly engrossing ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... Richardson justified his fiction writing upon moral grounds and upon those alone is shown in the descriptive title-page of the tale, too prolix to be often recalled and a good sample in its long-windedness of the past compared with the terse brevity of the present in this matter: "Published in order to cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the mind of youth of both sexes"; the author of "Sanford and Merton" has here his literary progenitor. The sub-title, "or Virtue Rewarded," also ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... thing or the other. Yet it might be neither. There was a disquieting alternative. No doubt the message disposed of the delicate affair for good and all in ten terse words. The maid had made up her mind; she had disclosed it in haste: that was all. It might be, however, that the dispatch conveyed news of a more urgent content. It might be that the maid lay ill—that ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... except for a few terse words among themselves and a barked order to march, delivered to the prisoners. Very shortly they were in the entrance hall facing the wreckage of the crawler and doors through which a ragged gap had been burned. Ali viewed the scene with ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... poor sons of song Oft find 'tis fancied right that leads us wrong. I prove obscure in trying to be terse; Attempts at ease emasculate my verse; Who aims at grandeur into bombast falls; Who fears to stretch his pinions creeps and crawls; Who hopes by strange variety to please Puts dolphins among forests, boars in seas. Thus zeal to 'scape ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... not leave her much to stand upon. She had expected him to go about it in an entirely different way. She had counted upon an impassioned plea for himself, not this terse, cold-blooded, almost unemotional summing up of the situation. For an instant she was at a loss. It was hard to look into his honest eyes. A queer, unformed doubt began to torment her, a doubt that grew into a question later on: was he still in love ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... not well lighted, but the pulpit lamps shone upon him. He had a smooth, strong face; his complexion was healthy and weather-beaten; his dark eyes flashed brightly under bushy brows. His manner was calm; his style, even in prayer, was that of keen, terse argument; he spoke and behaved like a man who, having spent the emotional side of his nature in some private gust of passionate prayer, had come forth nerved to cool and ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... tortuous to the straight path. He published, accordingly, the Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis. But Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great master of invective and sarcasm; he could dissect a character in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithesis; but of dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had written a lampoon on Dennis, such as that on Atticus or that on Sporus, the old grumbler would have been crushed. But Pope writing ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... others that there is an intimate relation between acromegaly and gigantism, but they go further and compare both to the growth of the body. They call attention to the striking resemblance to acromegaly of the disproportionate growth of the boy at adolescence, which corresponds so well to Marie's terse description of this disease: "The disease manifests itself by preference in the bones of the extremities and in the extremities of the bones," and conclude with this rather striking and aphoristic proposition: "Acromegaly is gigantism ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... his wife being each 52 years old; and that they owned 520 acres of land without any mortgage hanging over their heads. He had himself done well, and his views as to why many of his neighbors had done less well are entitled to consideration. These views are expressed in terse and vigorous English; they cannot always be quoted in full. He states that the farm homes in his neighborhood are not as good as they should be because too many of them are encumbered by mortgages; that the schools do not train boys and girls satisfactorily for life on the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... down the "Seraphic Theology" of Saint Bonaventure, "for he condenses the means of self-examination, of meditation for communion, of thoughts on death, then in these 'Selections' is a treatise on the Contempt of the World, whose terse phrases are admirable; it is the true essence of the Holy Spirit, a jelly of unction firm set—we will ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... is both terse and pregnant. The history of this great and flourishing industry, stretching back now over two centuries and a half, is a history of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... strength and beauty. It contains more commonplace verses and ideas than either of the other two. Of the stories of the old masters, "Mona Lisa's Picture," "The Duke's Commission" and "Woman's Art" are perhaps the best, and the last poem especially is very spirited and terse. Mrs. Preston's style has the rare merit in these days of uniting conciseness and directness to grace and beauty of expression. Her greatest failing is a lack of the sense of climax. There are several of these poems, like the two ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... in Song, is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood, which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive the radical and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... terse account of what happened reads as follows: "In the fighting northwest of Chateau-Thierry our troops broke up an attempt of the enemy to advance to the south through Veuilly Woods, and by a counter-attack drove him back to the north of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... formation of the "Irish Confederation" by the seceders. In the proceedings of the new Society Mr. Mitchel took a more prominent part than he had taken in the business of the Repeal Association. And he continued to write in his own terse and forcible style in the Nation. But his mind travelled too fast in the direction of war for either the journal or the society with which he was connected. The desperate condition of the country, now a prey to all the horrors ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... and yet as gentle and kindly as women. Hardships and dangers in common had bound the four together, and the difference in years did not matter. It seemed that he had known them and been associated with them always. He could hear now the joyous whistling of the Little Giant, the terse, intelligent talk of Boyd, and the firm Biblical allusions of the beaver hunter. They could not be dead! It could not be so! And yet in his heart he believed ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... This terse despatch the hunchback Burleigh read Thrice over, with the broad cliff of his brow Bending among his books. Thrice he assayed To steel himself with caution as of old; And thrice, as a glorious lightning running along And flashing between ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... T, Haviland Hicks, Jr. turned as a hand rested grippingly on his shoulder. Head Coach Patrick Henry Corridan, his face grim, had come to him, and in quick, terse ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... went into a terse though rapid review of the origin of the Mexican War, and the connection of the administration and General Taylor with it, from which he deduced a strong appeal to the Whigs present to do their duty in the support of General Taylor, and closed with the warmest ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... press closely backward, as if awed by her mysterious presence, influenced insensibly by her terse sentence of command, each dusky face a reflex of its owner's perplexity. Drunken as most of them were, crazed with savage blood-lust and hours of remorseless torture of their victims, for the moment that sweet vision of womanly purity held ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... Grossbrittanischer und Amerikanischer hier zusammengetroffen in Bruderliche concord, ist zwar a welcome and inspiriting spectacle. And what has moved you to it? Can the terse German tongue rise to the expression of this impulse? Is it Freundschaftsbezeigungenstadtverordneten- versammlungenfamilieneigenthuemlichkeiten? Nein, o nein! This is a crisp and noble word, but it fails to pierce the marrow of the impulse which has gathered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... poetical form. But all that I know of you indicates a predominance of reflective intellect—a habit of mind quite foreign from the lyrical. I think it may be very good practice to compose in verse, as it exercises you in terse and rhythmical expression; but I question whether your vocation lies in ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... gratifying to Mr. Dangler. He is an active, energetic and impulsive member, though not without considerable tact, and generally successful in putting his measures through. As a speaker he is clear-headed, terse and forcible, and on subjects appealing to patriotism, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Tom radioed a terse report of their experience to the task-force commander and in turn was told that none of the naval craft had either sighted or picked up any sign of a ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... as a speaker and a writer, ultimately became plain, terse, and with occasional faults of taste, caused by imperfect education, pure as well as effective. His Gettysburg address and some of his State Papers are admirable in their way. Saving one very flat expression, the address has no superior in literature. But it was ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... of government his ideas were terse and decided. He was strongly attached to the present, heedless of the future, and the socialists troubled him little. Without caring whether the sun and capital should be extinguished some day, he enjoyed them. According to him, one should let himself be carried. None but fools resisted ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... With this terse observation he turned his back on the boy, and after loitering a moment to make sure that he had nothing more to say, the lad slipped away, triumphantly bearing with him the coveted morsel of yellow pasteboard. That its import ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... think these have been sufficiently admired. As an epigrammatist Mr. Watson has no rival in Victorian or in contemporary verse. The epigram is a quite definite form of art, especially cultivated by the poets in the first half of the seventeenth century. Their formula the terse expression of obscene thoughts. Mr. Watson excels the best of them in wit, concision, and grace; it is needless to say he makes no attempt to rival them as a garbage-collector. Of the large number of epigrams that he has contributed to English literature, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... from Ichi and hallooed forward. A man who was sitting on the sunny deck, abaft the galley, arose and came aft in obedience to the hail. Martin saw the fellow carried one of the Cohasset's rifles. He paused while Ichi gave him some terse directions, then he passed Martin and entered the cabin. Ichi and Asoki then proceeded to inspect the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... Sarge, you've made the biggest discovery of the year in this point of the woods," was Hyman's terse comment. "I reckon, too, the captain will see ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... these few terse lines, the long dissertations in the Sixth Book, tenth chapter, of the Praeparatio Evangelica of Eusebius. (See Marcus ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... great delight, Mr. Tresayle took Mr. Mortmain's view of the case. Nothing could be more terse, perspicuous, and conclusive than the great man's opinion. Mr. Quirk was in raptures, and that very day sent to procure an engraving of Mr. Tresayle, which had lately come out, for which he paid 5s., and ordered ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... how it had arisen, and how it had been conducted; and he did so with admirable simplicity and truth. He thought the North were right about the war; and as I thought so also, I was not called upon to disagree with him. He was terse and perspicuous in his sentences, practical in his advice, and, above all things, true in what he said to his audience of themselves. They who know America will understand how hard it is for a public man in the States to practice such truth in his addresses. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... range of subjects, not one of which but will be found to contain some terse, sparkling truth worthy of thought and attention. A spare ten minutes devoted to such reading ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... shown to Gale that daring side of her character which had been so suggestively defined in Belding's terse description and Ladd's encomiums, and in her own audacious speech and merry laugh and flashing eye of that never-to-be-forgotten first meeting. She might have been an entirely different girl. But Gale remembered; and when the ice had been somewhat broken between them, he was always trying to ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... fixed his bright eyes steadily on Lord Montacute's face. He on his side, after a brief silence, began again in clear, terse phrases: ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... whether any traveller, including the honest missionary, disagrees with the terse sentence of the great Wallace in The Malay Archipelago: "We may safely affirm that the better specimens of savages are much superior to the lower examples of civilised peoples." Revolting customs are found, to be sure, among native ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... in tolerable spirits, he was an entertaining, though never a frank nor a communicative companion. His conversation then was lively, yet without wit, and sarcastic, though without bitterness. It abounded also in philosophical reflections and terse maxims, which always brought improvement, or, at the worst, allowed discussion. He was a man of even vast powers—of deep thought—of luxuriant, though dark imagination, and of great miscellaneous, though, perhaps, ill arranged erudition. He was fond of paradoxes in reasoning, and supported ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the quarter, who seeing one of her Majesty's carriages in trouble thought he must interfere. "Hilloa," he said, "what's all this?" And the cabman, who was a good fellow though in too much trouble to aid Sybil, explained in the terse and picturesque language of Cockaigne, doing full justice to his ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... writing. If the characters did not speak in a terse and homely way, their idea and language would be inconsistent with their dress and station, and they would lose, as characters, before the audience. The dialogue seems to be exactly what is wanted. Its simplicity (particularly in Mr. Boucicault's part) is often very ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... an ill-fated society journal. I was a contributor to its little-read pages, and I came one day upon an article entitled 'Pompa Mortis.' This article was written in such astonishingly good English, so clean, so hardbitten and terse, and yet so graceful, that I could not resist the temptation to ask its author's name. My editor modestly acknowledged it for his own, and when I told him what I thought of its style he confessed to a ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... through the medium of an extraordinarily terse and unspoiled language, a language that has not lost its earthy freshness by mauling and softening at the hands of literary generations, what a lilting crystal-bright vision of things. It is as if the air of the Mediterranean itself, thin, brilliant, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... ponderous work, and 'tis written in prose, For some mystical reason that nobody knows; And it tells in a style that is terse and correct Of the rule of the Swanks and its baneful effect On the commerce of Gosh, on its morals and trade; And it quotes a grave ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... partly a historical play, partly a visionary drama, "the biggest and most consistent exhibition of fatalism in literature." While its powerful simplicity and tragic impressiveness overshadow his shorter poems, many of his terse lyrics reveal the same vigor and impact of a strong personality. His collected poems were published by The Macmillan Company in 1919 and reveal another phase of one of the greatest living writers ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... right, and when Motty turned up at three in the morning with a collection of hearty lads, who only stopped singing their college song when they started singing "The Old Oaken Bucket," there was a marked peevishness among the old settlers in the flats. The management was extremely terse over the telephone at breakfast-time, and took a lot ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... secretary, after the appointment of Mr. Gooch as Resident Engineer to the Bolton and Leigh Railway, has informed us that he then remarked—what in after years he could better appreciate—the clear, terse, and vigorous style of Mr. Stephenson's dictation. There was nothing superfluous in it; but it was close, direct, and to the point,—in short, thoroughly businesslike. And if, in passing through the pen of the amanuensis, his meaning happened in any way to be ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... a short while it would overthrow the laws which had bound it so long. So, too, it seems to us, despite all the rhythmical innovations of our time. The personality that could beat out exuberantly music as rhythmically various and terse and free must indeed have possessed a primitive naivete and vitality and spontaneity of impulse. What manifestation of unbridled will in that freedom of expression! Berlioz must have been blood-brother to the savage, the elemental creature who out of the dark ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... accepted to fill the position of teacher in the Kedarville school." Then followed terse directions as to the best way of reaching Kedarville, and, finally: "Mrs. Philander Keeler will board you for two Dollars and ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... remark parenthetically, the habit of dealing in parentheses being one I especially dislike, only necessity compelling me thereto, and before I proceed further, that the word "confugium," which, both on account of its terse expressiveness, as well as its curiosa felicitas in the present application, I have chosen in order to define my den, has not, I hope, escaped the notice of the discriminating scholar. Moreover, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... episcopacy,[135] and which is quite as distinctively Calvinistic as the Westminster Confession, while it ventures incidentally to determine some points the Westminster divines have wisely left undetermined.[136] The old Confession can advance no claim to the terse English style, the logical accuracy, the judicial calmness, and intimate acquaintance with early patristic theology which characterise that mature product of the faith and thought of the more learned Puritans of the south. I am not ashamed to avow that it has long appeared ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... American, then edited by Charles King, signing his articles R. M. T. H.—Regular Member Third House. Dr. Bacon wielded a powerful pen, and when he chose so to do could condense a column of denunciation, satire, and sarcasm in to a single paragraph. He was a fine scholar, fearless censor, and terse writer, giving his many readers a clear idea of what was transpiring at the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... for April is made brilliant by the presence of Henry Clapham McGavack's terse and lucid exposure of hyphenated hypocrisy, entitled "Dr. Burgess, Propagandist". Mr. McGavack's phenomenally virile and convincing style is supported by a remarkable fund of historical and diplomatic knowledge, and the feeble fallacies of the pro-German embargo advocates collapse in speedy ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... newspapers, and is believed to have the largest audience of any living writer. Among his books are "Rhymes of the Range," "Uncle Walt," "Walt Mason's Business Prose Poems," "Rippling Rhymes," "Horse Sense," "Terse Verse," and "Walt Mason, His Book." Lions and Ants; The Has-Beens; The ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... somewhat too sweeping. Interspersed among those respectable and tidy mountain villages, once full of such vigorous life, one sometimes comes upon little isolated groups of wretched hovels whose local reputation is sufficiently indicated by such terse epithets as "Hardscrabble" or "Hell-huddle." Their denizens may in many instances be the degenerate offspring of a sound New England stock, but they sometimes show strong points of resemblance to that "white trash" which has come to be a recognizable strain of the English ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... Monkshaven could lay claim—to take him into his employment as an odd-job man. How she accomplished this feat it is impossible to say, but the fact remains that she did accomplish it, and perhaps Jane Crab delved to the root of the matter in the terse comment which the circumstances elicited from her: "Miss Tennant has a way with her that 'ud make they stone sphinxes gallop round the desert if so be she'd a ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... of one of the proprietors of The Colored American in 1838 and upon the withdrawal of Bell from the enterprise the following year, he became the sole editor and continued in that capacity until 1842 when he suspended publication. He was regarded by his contemporary, William Wells Brown, as a terse and vigorous writer and an able and eloquent speaker well informed upon all subjects of the day. "Blameless in his family relations, guided by the highest moral rectitude, a true friend to everything that tends to better the moral, social, religious and political condition ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... for?" she asked Anna-Felicitas, when she had edged through the crowd staring at the Vaterland, and got to where Anna-Felicitas stood listening abstractedly to the fireworks of American slang the young man was treating her to,—that terse, surprising, swift hitting-of-the-nail-on-the-head form of speech which she was hearing in such abundance ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... as if nothing but the ordinary business had occurred, Jasper sat down and went carefully over every detail of the commission he had been sent on, heard Mr. Marlowe's terse, "That's good, Jasper; you've done it all well," and passed out for the last time, from the private office, and joined his father in silence, for ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... see them, adopt them, and carry them out, we can work together and make things hum. Now here's a bit of advice. Old Tom Sayers likes plain, practical statements that he can weigh and consider. Put all your proposed plans into writing. Put down hard, concrete facts in terse English. Make it as brief as possible. Don't be afraid to criticise if you can suggest improvements. Don't mince words. He loves simplicity and frankness. And if you do as I say in that regard, and make plain to him ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... personalities and gave them the form of permanent types. It is a literature peculiarly adapted to the flexibility and fine perception of the French mind, and one in which it has been preeminent, from the analytic but diffuse Mlle. de Scudery, and the clear, terse, spirited Cardinal de Retz, to the fine, penetrating, and exquisitely finished Sainte-Beuve, the prince of modern critics and literary artists. It was this skill in vivid delineation that gave such point and piquancy to the memoirs of the period, which are little ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... of chroniclers, who might well have been expected in his realism to treat such phantasies as puerile and absurd, seems to justify to his own mind the extreme penalties of the scaffold and the stake as a fitting punishment for sorcerers and magicians: declaring them, as he records in his usual terse and matter-of-fact style, to be dictated by justice, and essential to the repression of an intercourse between ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... state that each of these colleges has morning devotions every day at the breakfast hour. They are very terse, consisting chiefly of the Lord's Prayer or a blessing sung or recited. Seventeen have night devotions closing the study hour except on the night appointed for the weekly prayer meeting. The benefit ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... at the shore, directing the movements of the men; he was once more the drive master, his cant dog in his hand, terse in his commands, obeyed ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... had in the smallest degree inveigled a young man of the highest prospects into a match—there is nothing of the matchmaker about me; but Maud is in a degree well-connected; and, as you know, she will be what the country people here call 'well-left'—a terse phrase, but expressive! I do not see that she would be in any way unworthy of the position—and I feel that her life here is a little secluded—I should like her to have a little richer material, so to speak, to work in. Well, well, we mustn't be too diplomatic about these things. 'Man proposes'—no ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... did their job, and returned to routine duty. They did not receive any extra pay, or promotion, or official recognition. Neither did Bass, beyond Hunter's commendation in a despatch. He wrote up his modest little diary, a terse record of observations and occurrences, and got ready ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... not meant to deliver my information quite so abruptly, but there was no help for it now, and I repeated the statement, giving him a terse account of my two encounters with the rattish ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Further limitations may be specified, as "Tuesdays in February," "Tuesdays until Lent," "Tuesdays after October," etc. Any definite idea of time may be given to meet the facts, the wording being made as terse as possible. If the regular "at home" day is Tuesday (unlimited), and the card is so engraved, any of the special limitations may be penciled in to meet special conditions. Sometimes an informal invitation is thus conveyed; as, by the addition, ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... author of the Ottimo Comento says: "I the writer saw followers of his [Fra Dolcino] burned at Padua to the number of twenty-two together."[233] Clearly, in such a time as this, one must not make "the veil of the mysterious Terse" too thin.[234] ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... the only known incursion of its author into literature, if we except the brief articles he has written for technical papers and for the magazines. It contained what was at once a full, elaborate, and terse explanation of a complete isolated plant, with diagrams of various methods of connection and operation, and a carefully detailed description of every individual part, its functions and its characteristics. The remarkable success of those early years ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... glance meeting that of Mr. Sharpe, seemed to ask why proceedings, which could only have one termination, were delayed. He had not long to wait. The jury were sworn, and Mr. Gurney rose to address them for the crown. Clear, terse, logical, powerful without the slightest pretence to what is called eloquence, his speech produced a tremendous impression upon all who heard it; and few persons mentally withheld their assent to his assertion, as he concluded what ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... at Jane, Marian complied with the terse invitation. Maizie dropped lazily down beside her, her slow smile in evidence. Matters promised ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... Dr. Samuel Warren of England, in his Introduction to Law Studies, "is dry, terse, and exact—not fitted, perhaps, for the historical tyro, but most acceptable to the advanced student who is in ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... cannot determine with precision from its opposite; but the caution based upon it might remind one of our proverb about shutting the barn door after the horse is stolen. The words, acta agimus, so terse that they can be translated only by a paraphrase, are probably the converse of the proverb, which may have been something like non agenda sunt acta.] take counsel after acting, and attempt to do over again what we have done; for after having become closely connected ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... brief and troubled splendour, her monarchs realize, even at the hazard of a temporary eclipse of the nation's independence, the aspirations of the race, which slowly arising, and growing in force and intensity, had become the fixed, tyrannous desire of a people, until, in Camoens' terse phrase of Manuel, "from that one great thought it never swerved." Another policy and other aims than those which her monarchs pursued—tolerance instead of fanaticism, prudence instead of heroism, national patriotism instead of imperial, homely common sense ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... said Allison, letting the car ride out under full power over the smooth country road. But, though Julia Cloud questioned several times, she could get no explanation except Allison's terse "Too provincial," whatever he meant by that. She doubted whether he knew himself. She wondered whether it were that they each felt the same homesick ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... there was no message of congratulations, nor even any acknowledgment of the new contract. Instead, there was only a terse message: ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... with a full broadside. The Drake replied with the same, and the two ships ran along together at close quarters, pouring in broadsides for more than an hour, when the enemy called for quarter. The action had been, as Jones said in his terse official report, "warm, close, and obstinate." There was little manoeuvring, just straight fighting, the victory being due, according to Jones, to the superior gunnery of the Americans. At first Jones's gunners hulled ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... with each other. Authors had already tried to escape from this wide- spread disease, with more or less success. Haller and Ramler were inclined to compression by nature: Lessing and Wieland were led to it by reflection. The former became by degrees quite epigrammatical in his poems, terse in "Minna," laconic in "Emilia Galotti,"—it was not till afterwards that he returned to that serene /naivete/ which becomes him so well in "Nathan." "Wieland, who had been occasionally prolix in "Agathon," "Don Sylvio," and the "Comic Tales," becomes condensed ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... and there built up of according laws and their phenomena, as under the influence of a scientific inspiration, his theory of Nature. I will not attempt the difficult task of condensing his propositions; to be apprehended they must be studied in his own terse and simple language; but in this we have a summary of that which he regards as fundamental: "The law which we call Gravity," he says, "exists on account of matter having been radiated, at its origin, atomically, into a limited sphere of space, from ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... rather, the latter end of October, her first story was published in the Argonaut. It was sufficiently striking, terse, and original to receive immediate attention from more than one good review. She was spoken of as a young writer of great promise, and a well-known critic took the trouble to write a short paper on her story. This mention gave her, as Tom assured her, a complete success. ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... more terse and sententious, besides involving a much higher moral signification, that it may well be an original itself; but in that case, the verbal coincidence is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... learned saws, Through the cracked and crazy wall Came the cradle-rock and squall, And the goodman's voice, at strife With his shrill and tipsy wife, Luring us by stories old, With a comic unction told, More than by the eloquence Of terse birchen arguments (Doubtful gain, I fear), to look With complacence on a book!— Where the genial pedagogue Half forgot his rogues to flog, Citing tale or apologue, Wise and merry in its drift As was Phaedrus' twofold gift, Had the little rebels known ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... engaged for an early marriage, and hence declined to volunteer. When his betrothed, a charming girl and a devoted lover, heard of his refusal, she sent him, by the hand of a slave, a package inclosing a note. The package contained a lady's skirt and crinoline, and the note these terse words: "Wear these, or volunteer." ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... "When, in the terse vernacular of his calling, he gives voice to the sorrows and impatience, the humour and the resignation of his workmen comrades, and lets his songs find their own natural bent, then at length he attains real lyrical strength and sincerity.... For we need ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... the constant factor is usually his style, while subject and treatment vary. Balzac, however, is an exception in this respect as in most others. He attains terse vigour in not a few of his books, but in not a few also he disfigures page after page with loose, sprawling ruggedness, not to say pretentious obscurity. His opinion of himself as a stylist was high, higher no ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... a masterpiece of lucid explanation and terse precision. The book evolved into something much more than a mere manual of drill. For it is also a treatise on cavalry tactics, a guide to modern strategy, and a complete code of regulations for the ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... professional as well as general information which he had amassed during a long, active, and earnest life: the material for this "Digest" outstanding as the last, largest, and most important part of it. Had he survived but a few months more, a preface in his own terse and peculiar style, containing his last ideas, would have rendered these remarks unnecessary; but he was cut off on the 8th of September, 1865, leaving this favourite manuscript to the affectionate care of his family and friends. By ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... movement, and then had been frightened back by clamour. His reply was the single word "infirmus," accompanied by that peculiar sniff which every one who ever conversed with him must remember as adding so much to the piquancy of his terse judgments. When he was asked his opinion of a famous biography in which a son had disclosed, with too absolute frankness, his father's innermost thoughts and feelings, the Cardinal replied, "I think that —— has ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... city in the United States, and the fine, clear handwriting was obviously feminine. He didn't have to rub the paper between his thumb and forefinger to mark its rich, heavy quality and its beauty,—the stationery of an aristocrat. The message was singularly terse: ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... introduced an anecdote nor essayed a witticism; and the first half of it does not contain even an illustrative figure or a poetical fancy. It was the quiet, searching exposition of the historian, and the terse, compact reasoning of the statesman, about an abstract principle of legislation, in language well-nigh as restrained and colorless as he would have employed in arguing a case before a court. Yet such was the apt choice of words, the easy precision of sentences, the simple strength ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... pretty strong letter to his son, in which he set forth in terse language the facts he had heard, and demanded as a right, that restitution be ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... Anthology." This true poet and master-critic, in pursuit of another idea, alludes to poetry as "being a rhythmical expression of emotion and ideality." Here at last we have form, spirit, and theme combined in one terse utterance. In poetry we look for the musical metre, the recurrent refrain of rhythm; while that which inspires it arises from the universal motives which Coleridge names ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... the most interesting of British creatures. The Encyclopaedia Britannica is as terse and simple as ever about him. "Grasshoppers," it says, "are specially remarkable for their saltatory powers, due to the great development of the hind legs; and also for their stridulation, which is not always an attribute of the male only." To translate, grasshoppers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... their material ready to spin into generalization. Then there is a popular education toward prolixity in the telegraphic part of newspapers. The associated press writers from Washington seem to be selected for their inability to be terse and pithy, and dribble out the simplest fact with pitiful iteration. The special news-writers, being often at their wits' end for their dole of day's work, can hardly be asked to be laconic. The special ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... typical villain. This is a terse version, with concrete cases, of Bolingbroke's vaguer generalities. "The laws of gravitation," he says, "must sometimes be suspended (if special Providence be admitted), and sometimes their effect must be precipitated. The tottering edifice must be kept miraculously from falling, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... prospect of help from that quarter as from the mainland. Becoming more accustomed to the swayings of the big globe, he stood up. What a fool he had been to come so far, and he used French words between his teeth that sounded terse and emphatic. Still there was little use thinking of that. Here he was, and here he would stay, as a President of his country had once remarked. The irksomeness and restraint of his position began to wear on his nerves, ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... days before he was allowed to talk to his own satisfaction. Then, one afternoon in her rest hour, Alice Mellen let him have his way and, seated by his cot, she answered tersely to a raking fire of terse questions. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... the case, for he was like the rest of the tribe, always ready to fight with words, not acts; but in the midst of his gabble Joan interrupted with the terse order: ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... describe the preparations of William on his landing with a graphic vigor, which would be wholly lost by transfusing their racy Norman couplets and terse Latin prose into the current style of modern history. It is best to follow them closely, though at the expense of much quaintness and occasional uncouthness of expression. They tell us how Duke William's own ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... miscreant ain't ha'nted about Wolfville more'n four days before he shows how onnecessary he is to our success. Which he works a ha'r copper on Cherokee Hall. What's a ha'r copper? I'll onfold, short and terse, what Silver Phil does, an' then you saveys. Cherokee's dealin' his game—farobank she is; an' if all them national banks conducts themse'fs as squar' as that enterprise of Cherokee's, the fields of finance would be as safely honest as a church. Cherokee's turnin' his game one evenin'; ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... the shipwrecked pair, though Anstruther squirmed inwardly when he thought of the manner in which Iris would picture the scene. As it was, he had the first innings, and he did not fail to use the opportunity. In the few terse words which the militant Briton best understands, he described the girl's fortitude, her unflagging cheerfulness, her uncomplaining ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... find such lines as those in the work of an unknown author. The verses gain strength as they advance, and the diction is terse and keen. This one short extract would suffice to show that the writer was a literary craftsman of ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... Castle, the first of his poems, I think, that has indisputable genius plainly stamped on its terse and fiery lines, was composed in 1802, when he was already thirty-one years of age. It was in the same year that he wrote the first canto of his first great romance in verse, The Lay of the Last ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... It was decreed by the States-General in A. D. . But though no other nation has ever had any written whaling law, yet the American fishermen have been their own legislators and lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's Business. Yes; these laws might be engraven on a Queen Anne's farthing, or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so small are they. I. A Fast-Fish ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... vocabulary of Bradshaw is nervous and terse, but limited. The selection of words would hardly lend itself to the sending of general messages. We will eliminate Bradshaw. The dictionary is, I fear, inadmissible for the same reason. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... literature after the loss of nationality were historical works written by two men, Justus and Josephus, both of whom bore an active part in the most recent of the wars which they recorded. Justus of Tiberias wrote in Greek a terse chronicle entitled, "History of the Jewish Kings," and also a more detailed narrative of the "Jewish War" with Rome. Both these books are known to us only from quotations. The originals are entirely lost. A happier fate has preserved the works of another Jewish historian of the ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... now takes him to read an auction bill?" Suddenly a happy thought struck me: it was to write a novel, in which only the actual spirit of the narration should be retained, rejecting all expletives, flourishes, and ornamental figures of speech; to be terse and abrupt in style—use monosyllables always in preference to polysyllables—and to eschew all heroes and heroines whose names contain more than four letters. Full of this idea, on my returning home in the evening, I sat to my desk, and before I retired ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... book is just pitched right, for it gives interesting detail of some important voyages made from the earliest days up to the end of the nineteenth century. It is not too terse, and not too profuse, just right to capture ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... Phono means a sound, Phonography so terse, Just pictures out or tells about The sounds ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... Tables consists not in any approach to symmetrical classification or even to terse clarity of expression, but in the publication of the method of procedure to be adopted, especially in civil cases, in the knowledge furnished to every Roman of high or low degree as to what were both his legal ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous
... case for the crown, and Mr. Crean, counsel for Mr. Lalor, rose to address the jury on behalf of his client. His speech was argumentative, terse, forcible, and eloquent; and seemed to please and astonish not only the auditors but the judges themselves, who evidently had not looked for so much ability and vigour in the young advocate before ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... But his latest biographer says of it, that "it may, perhaps, be regretted that Burke ever wrote the 'Observations on the Conduct of the Minority.' It is certainly the least pleasing of all his compositions."[A] In style, it is direct, terse, and compact, beyond any other composition of Burke's. Perhaps, as it was not intended for the public, he was less tempted to rhetorical indulgence. But the manuscript now before us exhibits the minute care with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... took long and careful aim, but my hands were shaking pitifully. The ball started on a grotesquely wrong line, turned on a rise in the ground, cannoned off a worm-cast and plopped into the tin. Mabel gave a shriek of joy, and Lucy—well, I regret to say that Lucy made use of a terse expression the French equivalent of which her employer had been at great pains to remember. Haynes and I lay flat on the ground, overcome as much by emotion as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... school studies, each one headed by a flourishing capital; and also told the names of four new colts that appeared on the premises since Tom left; and stated, in the same connection, that father and mother were well. The style of the letter was decidedly concise and terse; but Tom thought it the most wonderful specimen of composition that had appeared in modern times. He was never tired of looking at it, and even held a council with Eva on the expediency of getting it framed, to hang up in his room. Nothing but the difficulty of arranging ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... over, and a terse and business-like agreement (by her urging) drawn up and signed, Sheldon paced up and down for a full hour, meditating upon how many different kinds of a fool he had made of himself. It was an impossible situation, and yet no more impossible than the previous one, and no more ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... went on the speaker, "go up there and get the guns he wanted." The steward, with two bright revolvers in his hands, was met at the companion-hatch by a man with but one; but that one was so big, and the hand which held it was so steady, that it was no matter of surprise that he obeyed the terse command, "Fork over, handles first." The captain's nickel-plated pistols went into the pockets of 'Pache's coat, and the white-faced steward, poked in the back by the muzzle of that big firearm, marched to the main-deck and joined ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... deals with the facts of science he interests and instructs, but when he speculates he only amuses or perplexes, without advancing knowledge. His terse and luminous description of the astral firmament deeply impresses with the might and the magnitude of the vast design; but when he attempts to account for the elimination of suns and worlds, their formation and arrangement, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... feeling so sick and miserable and down-hearted. He opened the yellow paper slowly, and then sprang up with a cry that made the boy stop in the hall and listen. Roderick stood in the middle of the room reading the terse message again ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... doubt but that Secretary Stanton made many critics by his brusque manner. One did not need to waste words with him, but if a communication was couched in terse language it pleased him. He disliked a cringing interviewer. I did not dislike to have business with him, nor have I ever with men ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... curiously as he turned sheet after sheet of the papers the man handed him, seeming to absorb the pages at a glance, while a running fire of quick questions, short answers, terse comments and clear-cut instructions accompanied ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... the Miniature Bulldog scale of points is quite unnecessary, as it is simply that of the big ones writ small. In other words, "the general appearance of the Miniature Bulldog must as nearly as possible resemble that of the Big Bulldog"—a terse sentence which comprises in itself all that can be ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... of Willy Hammond, in whom an interest, not unmingled with concern, had already been awakened in my mind. I found him engaged in a pleasant conversation with a plain-looking farmer, whose homely, terse, common sense was quite as conspicuous as his fine play of words and lively fancy. The farmer was a substantial conservative, and young Hammond a warm admirer of new ideas and the quicker adaptation of means ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... authoress has given us, in her straightforward simple style, a terse, unaffected, and picturesque description of her visit ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... author of Junius. We should have rather said that he was the last man in the kingdom who ought to have been suspected. The styles of Burke and Junius are totally different: the one loose and flowing, the other terse and pungent; the one lofty and imaginative, the other level and stern; the one taking large views on every subject, and evidently delighting in the largeness of those views, the other fixing steadily and fiercely upon the immediate object of attack, and shooting every arrow point-blank. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various |
