"Topical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of nine years' regular work for Punch. There are, I understand, a few Americans who read Punch, and it was suggested to me that a suitable collection of articles from these three books might have some sort of American sale. So I made such a collection, leaving out the more topical and allusive sketches, and including those with a more general appeal. I called the result "Happy Days"—an attractive title, you will agree—and in 1915 a New York publisher ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... and every stage of knowledge and ignorance, have been playing for all these centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that an endless series of variations of the story has been evolved, each decked out with topical allusions and distinctive embellishments. But throughout the complex tissue of this highly embroidered fabric the essential threads of the web and woof of its foundation can be detected ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... waitresses, girls coquettishly dressed, tripped with bottles and syphons, foaming bocks, and glasses of brandy or liqueurs. The customers of the brasserie were a mixed lot of women and men, the latter comprising' numerous nationalities, and all drawn to Paris by the wiles of the Goddess of Art. Topical songs of the day succeeded one another rapidly. A group of long-haired, polyglot students hung around the piano, while others played on violins or guitars, which they had brought to contribute to ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... any succeeding link of catenation. Hence contagious matter, which has for some weeks stimulated the system into great and permanent sensation, ceases afterwards to produce general sensation, or inflammation, though it may still induce topical irritations. See Sect. XXXIII. 2. 8. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... boxed him smartly. He got fussy, drank a gallon of gooseberry wine, smoked two cigarettes and making out that he was a great bounder, threatened her with sudden death. Great dialogue! He would have gone to war, only there was no war at the time and anyway his "mother wouldn't let him"—the topical number. After smacking Robusto good and plenty before all the villagers, Soprano, who seems to know how to take care of herself, swears that she'll marry no one unless he has the wit "to get—that! And this!"—the garters. Baritono, Soldier of ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... He wrote verses about the adventures of his fellow-prisoners, and presently he was writing verses about the jailers, and about other prisoners in this part of the jail. He would have moods of inspiration, and would make up topical verses as he went along; then again he would sink back into his despair, and say that life was hell, and making rhymes about ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... ice. From an adjacent eminence, the lake was seen to be covered with it in one compact mass, as far as the eye could range. As might be expected, remittent and intermittent fevers are very prevalent in the autumn. The febrile action rises high, and there is usually a topical affection conjoined; to this the stimulating diet and frequent use of spirituous liquors, and exposure to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... proportions; e.g., lectures with "supplementary" (or "collateral") readings, with or without an occasional meeting in a quiz section. Along with these main methods often are used such supplementary methods as topical reports requiring individual library work; laboratory exercises, as in statistics, accounting, etc.; individual field work to study some industrial problem; and visits, as a class, and with guidance, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... observed that there are two sets of these questions, entirely distinct in character and purpose. The first set—"Questions on the Text"—is appended to each section, so as to be as near the text as possible. These questions furnish an excellent topical analysis of the text.[3] In a certain sense they ask "what the book says," but the teacher is advised emphatically to discourage any such thing as committing the text to memory. The tendency to rote-learning is very strong. I had to contend with ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... was the nursery of the topical song. There, by lantern or candle-stump, wit Rabelaisian, Aristophanic or Antarctic was cradled into rhyme. From there, behind the scenes, the comedian in full dress could step before the footlights into salvoes of savage applause. "A Pair of Unconventional ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... when eaten with salmon imparts an agreeable zest, and effectually destroys the disagreeable smell of that fish when smoke-dried. Saint John's wort is very common, and has been successfully applied as a fomentation in topical inflammations. A kind of weed, which the natives convert into a species of flax, is in general demand. An evergreen, similar to that we found at the mouth of the Columbia, with small berries growing in clusters like grapes, also flourishes in ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... were to make a reasonable livelihood from it, he must give up the greater part of his time and thought to it. He could not depend upon certain or immediate acceptance of any article he wrote for the newspapers. Sometimes a topical article was sent to the wrong newspaper and kept there until too late for publication in another newspaper. Regularly- employed journalists, engaged to choose contributions from outside writers, were extraordinarily inconsiderate ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... himself yours obediently, you know that he means the opposite of what he says. Religious forms are, at the worst, fables; they might be true. Secular forms are falsehoods; they are not true. Take a more topical case. The German Emperor has more uniforms than the Pope. But, moreover, the Pope's vestments all imply a claim to be something purely mystical and doubtful. Many of the German Emperor's uniforms imply a claim to be something which ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... cautioning us against the dangers of over-estimating it. Any contact on the side of the lyric and the drama was, he declares, very slight[32], and the peninsular writings actually circulated in our country at this time, in translations, he divides into three classes; occasional literature, that is topical tracts and pamphlets on contemporary Spanish affairs; didactic literature, comprising scientific treatises, accounts of voyages such as inspired Hakluyt, works on military science, and, more important still, the religious writings of mystics like Granada; and lastly artistic prose. The last item, ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... Scene: the breakfast table at Porticobello House, Ladbroke Grove. Myself and other select boarders engaged in masticating fowl eggs with their concomitant bacon, while intelligently discussing topical subjects (for we carry out the poetical recipe of "Plain ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... is true; 260 Yet 'tis not fit that all men knew, Those mysteries and revelations, And therefore topical evasions Of subtle turns and shifts of sense, Serve best with th' wicked for pretence, Such as the learned Jesuits use, 265 And Presbyterians for excuse Against the Protestants, when th' happen To find their Churches taken napping: As thus: A breach of oath is duple, And either ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... liked twenty years ago, because that is their nature. In 1600 they would have done the same for 1579. Without question men were regretting in 1600 the genius of the youthful Shakespeare of the '80's, later quenched by commercialism (see the appeals to the pit and the topical references in "Hamlet"); and good conservatives were certainly regretting the sad course of the drama which, torn from the scholars and flung to the mob, had become mad clowning. What we need in the Tory line is not such ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... thinking and doing. The treatment of the new West, the South, and the West Indies, which follows this portion of the book is merely certain generalizations which may be obtained from an average knowledge of American history and from such topical discussions of the Negro history as may be found in B.A. Johnson's History of the Negro Race or in John W. Cromwell's The Negro in American History. In his discussion of the Indian and the Negro there is an effort which serves to direct attention to a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... could be worked into the piece. The question was a serious one, and until it was time to go to the theatre the art of gagging was warmly argued. Dubois held the most liberal views. He said that after a certain number of nights the author's words should be totally disregarded in favour of topical remarks. Bret, who was slow of wit, maintained that the dignity of a piece could only be maintained by sticking to the text, and cited examples to support his opinion. It was, however, finally agreed that whenever Mortimer came on the stage, he should ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... can never see is beauty. And when, by some rare chance, you catch them in the act of admiring a beautiful object, it will never be for its beauty—it will be in spite of its beauty for some other, some extra-aesthetic interest it possesses—some topical or historical interest. Beauty is necessarily detached from all that is topical or historical, or documentary or actual. It is also necessarily an effect of fine shades, delicate values, vanishing distinctions, of evasiveness, inconsequence, suggestion. It is also absolute, unrelated—it ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... for Defoe's authorship of A Vindication is the extraordinary reference to his own natural parts and to the popularity of The True-Born Englishman some seventeen years after that topical poem had appeared [pp. 29f.]. Defoe was justly proud of this verse satire, one of his most successful works, and referred to it many times in later writings; it is hard to believe, however, that anyone but Defoe would have praised it in such fulsome ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe |
