"Voluble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mon. [with a voluble civility.] Nay, young gentleman, never trouble yourself to inform me of your rank; you have told me your necessity, and that's a sufficient claim to every comfort my little cabin can afford; pray, sir, take a seat: I am much honoured by your presence: we have a little ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... of her style, as well as of her life, proves it. Not only must she receive unheard-of personal favors and spiritual graces from her Saviour, but she must immediately write about them and exploiter them professionally, and use her expertness to give instruction to those less privileged. Her voluble egotism; her sense, not of radical bad being, as the really contrite have it, but of her "faults" and "imperfections" in the plural; her stereotyped humility and return upon herself, as covered with ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... form our opinion of his eminent contemporaries from a general survey of what he has written concerning them, we should say that Pitt was a strutting, ranting, mouthing actor, Charles Townshend an impudent and voluble jack-pudding, Murray a demure, cold-blooded, cowardly hypocrite, Hardwicke an insolent upstart, with the understanding of a pettifogger and the heart of a hangman, Temple an impertinent poltroon, Egmont a solemn coxcomb, Lyttelton a poor creature ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... myrtle band, mindless the while Herself, though fairest unsupported flower, From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh. Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm; Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen, Among thick woven arborets, and flowers Imborder'd on each bank, the ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... home had put on a great appearance of cheerfulness, and had carried himself much as usual; but Mr. Mayne had been glum, decidedly glum, and Mrs. Mayne had found it difficult to adjust the balance of her sympathy between Dick's voluble quicksilver on the one hand, and her husband's dead weight of ill humor on ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... down the bit of brass which he had saved from some old waif, and listened to me as I pointed out to them on my map the course we were making, and, without answering me a word, fell on his knees and broke into most voluble prayer,—only interrupted by sobs of undisguised agony. The boys were almost as much surprised as I was. And as he prayed and sobbed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Henry reproached both mother and son with the atrocity of the crime which had been committed, and demanded immediate permission to retire from Paris, asserting that neither he nor his friends could any longer remain in the capital in safety. The king and his mother vied with each other in noisy, voluble, and even blasphemous declarations of their utter abhorrence of the deed; but all the oaths of Charles and all the vociferations of Catharine did but strengthen the conviction of the Protestants ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... this perfume troubled and disgusted, yet half fascinated Charmian, suggesting to her knowledge that she did not possess, and that perhaps helped on the way of ambition. She felt like an ignorant child, and almost preposterously English, as she talked to Madame Sennier, who became voluble in reply. There was something meridional in her manner and her fluency. Charmian felt sure that Madame Sennier had risen out of depths about which she, Charmian, knew nothing. She wondered if this woman loved her husband, or only loved the genius in him which helped her to rise, which brought her ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... as being a cheerful, loquacious fellow and of ready wits, was so exceedingly kind as to support my weight upon his sparer frame. My arm was heavy, I am sure, upon his neck, as his was certainly tight about my middle; but he uttered no complaints, indeed there was no room for them in the voluble series of his comments, confessions, promises and inquiries. He said, as we made our painful way down the single street of Rovigo, "My dear friend, you and I have both failed in our enterprise, and for much the ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... wrongly, to a feeling of pride. In reality, the habit of self-dependence was gaining, and the man was thrusting the world into the background. For hours Sommers never spoke. Always sparing of words, counting them little, despising voluble people, he was beginning to lose the power of ready speech. Thus, living in one of the most jostling of the world's taverns, they lived as in the heart of the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... here shudders out its passion of repressed resentment and grief, which after this darkly underlines Wotan's misery. "You created the need, as you created the sword," she follows him up with clear-sighted accusation, almost voluble. "For him you drove it into the tree-trunk. You promised him the goodly weapon. Will you deny that it was your own stratagem which guided him to the spot where he should find it?" The effect of her words upon Wotan—to whom this mirror held ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... three were reunited, they overran each other with questions, exclamations and the interchange of experiences since they had separated. It did not require much time for the voluble tongue of Elwood to rattle on his brief stay with the Indians and the remarkable manner in which Shasta had secured his escape. Howard had but little to tell, and that was soon given, and they were left to speculate and conjecture ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... open; beat up yolks of eggs in neat Schiedam, and administered it in small doses; followed this up by meat stewed in red wine and water, shredding into both mild febrifugal herbs, that did no harm. Finally, his patient got about again, looking something between a man and a pillow-case, and being a voluble dignitary, spread Peter's fame in every street; and that artist, who had long merited a reputation in vain, made one rapidly by luck. Things looked bright. The old man's pride was cheered at last, and his purse began to fill. He spent much of his gain, however, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... of the padi fields. The dogs whimpered and scampered off in every direction, while the fowls beneath the house set up a drowsy and discordant screeching. The folk within the house were too terror-stricken to speak, for fear, which gives voices to the animal world, renders voluble human beings dumb. And all this time the cry broke forth again and again, ever louder and louder, as He of the Hairy Face drew nearer and ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... off her homespun leggings (made with stout and ample feet) and pulled out her knitting work, when Mistress Camberly, the parson's wife, a lady of robust habit and voluble tongue, came in. ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... of him as a man of genius who had courted failure and madly fooled away his chances, and seeing him sitting there, so detached, and so unconscious, Maddox was profoundly moved. He had come with cursing and with consolation, with sympathy, with prophecy, with voluble belief. But all he could say was, "It's all right, Rickman. It's great, my son, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... at Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell. The ring was not heard at first, because her aunt and Edith Houghton and Johnny Bennett were celebrating his departure the next day for South America, by making a Welsh rabbit in a chafing dish before the parlor fire. Mrs. Newbolt, entering into the occasion with voluble reminiscences, was having a very good time. She liked Youth, and she liked Welsh rabbits, and she liked an audience; and she had all three! Then the doorbell rang. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... substance of it troublesome: he studieth not the oracles of God but the principles of Satanical guile, which be learneth so well that he may go to the devil to be bishopped; the turn-coat temporiser wags with every wind, and (like Diogenes turning about the mouth of his voluble hogshead, after the course of the sun) wheresoever the bright beams of coruscant authority do shine and cherish, thither followeth and sitteth he; the gnathonic parasite sweareth to all that his benefactor holdeth; the mercenary pensioner will bow ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... bloodless cynicisms of Enid Blunt, who counted insolence as the chief of the virtues, the amorous sentimentalities of the Turkish refugee from Smyrna, whose moral ruin had been brought about by a few lines of praise from Pierre Loti, the touching appreciations of prison life by Penitence Murray, and the voluble intellectuality of Thapoulos, Jennings and Smith the sculptor, Miss Van Tuyn began to feel absent-minded. Her power of attraction was quite evidently being seriously challenged. She was now certain—how could she not be—that Craven had not merely ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... she caught sight of her gown held aloft by Mr. Bills, and heard his voluble "Going, going, ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... people obediently returned to the church, their sudden loosened tongues clattering in voluble excitement. A few women assisted Judith to carry Salome in and lay her on the kitchen lounge, followed by the doctor and the dripping Lionel Hezekiah, whom the minister had lifted out of the hogshead and to whom nobody now paid the ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... made her appearance, apologetic, voluble, and excited, Miss Desborough scarcely listened to her excuses, until a single word suddenly arrested her attention. It ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... the bloom-time of the year in the uplands; the landscapes of the valley were sparkling in the sunlight, the songs of numerous larks rose like incense from every meadow, the vireo filled in every pause with her rapid voluble song, the clear ringing call of the quail resounded through every valley, and the hillsides were so covered with different hued grasses, ferns and flowers that they seemed ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... mingled with much more voluble, mine host had further occasion to remark on the strange actions of "these English." For Paul's sudden departure cut short what the landlord considered a really capable flight of oratory on his ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... Kent was voluble in her thanks. It was evident that she was delighted to get the sick woman off her hands. Mrs. March cut her short with an invitation to stay to tea, but ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... her mother's temperament had, for some reason, suggested that image to me, and I was quite absurdly dumfounded for the moment when I saw this little, roundabout, dark-haired Frenchwoman, as typically exotic as her husband was home-grown, voluble, brisk despite the handicap of her figure, and with nothing English about her unless it were ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... had been dispatched on the previous evening, with a wagon-load of provisions and comforts, and with orders to make the necessary arrangements for a boat and crew with fisherman Piotr. But, for reasons which seemed too voluble and complicated for adequate expression, Piotr had been as slow of movement as my bumptious yamtschik of the posting-station, and nothing was ready. Piotr, like many elderly peasants, might sit for the portrait ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... The Irish woman, voluble, painted, powdered, bewigged, and with the remains of her handsome figure laced into a black satin gown, nodded her false golden locks and smiled an ambiguous smile when she heard the explanation of young Mrs. Fowler's ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... unmelted under the gorse bushes, and among the gorse and sodden bracken twenty ponies snuffed for grass. Three gypsy boys shuffled through the fern near them. What did they do with the ponies? I asked, and the eldest told me they sold them; they were good ponies; he was voluble in suburban English. What did they fetch? That depended. What was that one worth?—it was a small chestnut creature with a child's pink pinafore for a halter. "Ah! That one," he began, and his eyes became inscrutable. He ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... dispenses in summer: she rides in a chariot, because (fancifully) the earth hangs suspended in the air, balanced and poised by its own weight; and that the chariot is supported by wheels, because the earth is a voluble body and turns round. Her being drawn by lions, may imply that nothing is too fierce and intractable for a motherly piety and tenderness to tame and subdue. Her garments are painted with divers colors, but chiefly green, and figured with the images ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... righteous indignation against the district nurse, because she goes home at six o'clock, and doesn't do it herself. Or the kindness which would have prompted the quick purchase of much needed medicine is transformed into a voluble scoring of the dispensary, because it gives prescriptions and not drugs; and "who can get well on a piece ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... negro with an honest face, hoed silently, making no response to his mother-in-law's vituperations, which grew voluble ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Edgecombe seemed fairly crazed by his joy. After so many long years of hopeless grief and wistful longing, to find his loved ones, safe and sound, far more beautiful than of yore! Surely enough to turn the gravest of men into a laughing, jesting, voluble lad! ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... lively lady, in a profusion of little fair curls all over her head and a piece of flannel round her throat. She was very voluble, though her voice was very hoarse. Indeed she left nothing untold that there was time to tell. She gave Eleanor an account of all Brompton's doings; of her own; of Mr. Pinchbeck's; and of the doings of young Master Pinchbeck, who was happily in bed, and ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... communicating spirit and hope to one another, the eighteen were more than twice as strong as the eleven had been. The Ring Tailed Panther poured forth a stream of cheer and encouragement. He grew more voluble at the approach of danger. Never had his teeth and ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a friendly brother, Laughing Pollio; he declares a talent Poor indemnification, he the parlous Child of voluble ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... small that she hardly escaped being a dwarf, humpbacked, and inexpressibly ugly. In times not so long gone by she would assuredly have burned as a witch, and many supposed her to be in league with the evil one. But in actual fact she was a cheery, voluble, and warm-hearted little body, and one on whom I could rely to ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of battle sprang into Mr. Gryce's eyes and he became voluble, not to say violent. He, at any rate, had no doubt that the stories were true; he could testify, to his own knowledge, that they were true. Verner was not only a hard landlord, but a mean landlord, a robber as well as a rackrenter; any gentleman would be ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... head of the stairs, and one of the doors was open, and had a heavy portiere hanging across it. Behind this was young Mr. Noble, "peekin'" most greedily, together with a middle-aged gentleman not described by the voluble parlor maid. They did n't seem to notice me; they were otherwise occupied, or perhaps they thought me one of the nurses or mothers. I had heard the sound of a piano as I crossed the hall, but it was still now. ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... irrespective of age, size, or character. Gentle and simple, Church and Dissent, Whig and Tory, if they did but wear a petticoat our comrade never failed, in spite of his fifty years, to make his way into their good graces by the help of his voluble tongue ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mean the word to blether, or blethering, or blethers. Jamieson defines it to "talk nonsense." But it expresses far more—it expresses powerfully, to Scottish people, a person at once shallow, chattering, conceited, tiresome, voluble. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... pay for the delight of being cornered but his rosiest, steadiest blush and his crookedest and most embarrassed smile. But he retained a certain activity of mind and within himself was positively voluble with what he would ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... whom consciousness of high descent brings burning desire to spread the gift abroad,—the obligation of nobility to the ignoble. Such sense of duty assumes two things: a real possession of the heritage and its frank appreciation by the humble-born. So long, then, as humble black folk, voluble with thanks, receive barrels of old clothes from lordly and generous whites, there is much mental peace and moral satisfaction. But when the black man begins to dispute the white man's title to certain alleged bequests of the Fathers in wage and position, authority and training; ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... hypnotised the House by his personality as Parnell did. There was a mystery in everything connected with the great Irish leader; no mystery hung about Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone in the House was voluble, eloquent, communicative. Mr. Parnell was silent, a poor speaker, and as uncommunicative as the Sphinx. Mr. Gladstone's power lay in his unreservedness; Mr. Parnell's lay in his absolute reserve. His orders were "No ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... shaking young Mr. Barter by the hand, murmured that he was sorry, very sorry, and so went stupidly away. Young Mr. Barter accompanied him to the door, casting a strange backward glance at the papers as he left the room, and was curiously voluble in his dismissal of his visitor. Anything he could do—Mr. Bommaney might rest perfectly assured—the clerks would be back to-morrow in any case—he would advise Mr. Bommaney of his father's condition by that night's ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... read the other woman's face in the gloom. But Marguerite, who was taller than the Frenchwoman, was standing, very stiff and erect, giving the young actress neither discouragement nor confidence. She did not interrupt Candeille's long and voluble explanation: vaguely she wondered what it was all about, and even now when the Frenchwoman paused, Marguerite said nothing, but watched her quietly as she took a folded paper from the capacious pocked of her cloak and then held it out with a look ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... vessels that lay off them awaiting their cargoes; it turned the corner and glided by woods where the larches were green, the sycamores dusted with bronze, the wild cherry-trees white with blossom, and all voluble. Every little bird seemed ready to burst his throat that morning with the deal he had to say. But these two—the man especially—had nothing to ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to get two glasses from the dresser to take to my grandfather and that gentleman." He felt voluble from the mere ease of the answer. But she affected to have heard nothing, and he ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... much out of breath, was silent, but the darkies gave loud and voluble explanations, tending mostly to exculpate themselves. Then they brought up the fallen mule, fixed the saddle and looked as if they would not have ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... had the reputation of being the wittiest of all the dandies, but his one great weakness was a mania for being dans le mouvement, and a certain contempt for any ideas, however valuable, that had been suggested earlier than, say, yesterday afternoon. Extremely good-natured, lively, and voluble, he was immensely popular, being considered, as indeed he was, one of the last of the conversationalists. He might be frivolous, but he was always interesting. He could talk about anything—and ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... into the corner. Mrs. Gaston was not only there but was engaged in conversation with the grey-moustached gentleman in a near-by chair. It required but half a glance to show that Mr. Totten was unmistakably interested in something the voluble lady ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... But the keen edge of her interest was blunted. She wanted one thing only to be alone with Theo; to set his mind at rest: and those 'separated selves,' who drew her like nothing else on earth, became of a sudden mere voluble obstructions between herself and ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... an inferno of shadows and glaring lights, this underground cavern. As modern mining activities go, it was small and primitive. No more than a dozen men were here, beside the sweating pudgy mine commander who was my guide. A voluble fellow; of what original nationality I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... almost entirely deaf and was suffering from a most painful complication of maladies. My relations with the lively and amusing Irish authoress consisted merely in an exchange of morning visits, during one of which, after talking to me with voluble enthusiasm of Cardinal Gonsalvi and Lord Byron, whose portraits hung in her room, and who, she assured me, were her two pre-eminent heroes, she plied me with a breathless series of pressing invitations to breakfasts, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... overcome than can that curious impassive resistance which a Turk can maintain against something he does not wish done. It was nine o'clock before we sat down with the mutessarif, his secretary, and the voluble journalist to a whole roast kid, a rather terrifying but exceedingly palatable dish, stuffed with nuts, rice, and currants, and accompanied by some of the wine of Lapsaki, rice pudding, and a huge bowl of raw eggs, which were eaten by cracking the shell, elevating one's head, and ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... dishonored in the encounter. He looked at it shuddering, with a countenance of intense disgust, and made a motion as if to hurl it into the street. But his eye again fell upon the cooper's squalid little figure, as he stood twisting his hands into his apron, and with voluble eagerness protesting that it was not his dog, but that of the English ship-captain, who had left it with him, and whom he had many a time besought to have the beast killed. Mr. Arbuton, who seemed not to hear what he was saying, or to be so absorbed in something ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... half-frightened.] What's that—Swedish? I don't know it. [Then as if seeking relief from the tension in a voluble chatter.] Gee, I had an awful trip coming here. I'm all in. I had to sit up in the dirty coach all night—couldn't get no sleep, hardly—and then I had a hard job finding this place. I never been in New York ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... attended to, and the battery of questions met with the best armour of tact at command. For myself, I said that I had scorched my hand against a red-hot rock, which was strictly true; for Camille, that it were wisest to take no early advantage of the reason that God had restored to him. She was voluble, tearful, half-hysterical with joy and the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... died quite away, and Martin's scalp stopped crawling. Ichi turned to him with a somewhat shaken smile; Martin saw that the Japanese gentleman's nostrils were twitching nervously, and that his voluble speech was really an effort to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... but what they have clear and distinct ideas of: which is not to be expected by any one who hath not vanity enough to imagine he can prevail with men to be very knowing or very silent. And he must be very little skilled in the world, who thinks that a voluble tongue shall accompany only a good understanding; or that men's talking much or little should hold proportion only ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... see whether the private conference were over. They joined her again, and Mr. Flinders discoursed about the envy and jealousy of critics, and success being only attained by getting into a certain clique, till she began to look rather frightened; but reassured by the voluble list of names and papers to which he assured her of recommendations. Then he began to be complimentary, and she, to put on the silly tituppy kind of face and tone wherewith she had talked to the curates at the festival. Dolores began to find this very dull, and to feel neglected, perhaps ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... power and might! with boundless sway, All human courage gives, or takes away. Long in the field of words we may contend, Reproach is infinite, and knows no end, Arm'd or with truth or falsehood, right or wrong; So voluble a weapon is the tongue; Wounded, we wound; and neither side can fail, For every man has equal strength to rail: Women alone, when in the streets they jar, Perhaps excel us in this wordy war; Like us they stand, encompass'd with the crowd, And ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... with the right hand passed behind, and holding the left fore-arm in its grasp. As the elders moved with gravity on the beach, the girls romped and raced with the seamen—repelling, without resenting, their rudeness. They were sprightly and voluble, and chatted on without intermission. On one occasion they were missed, when, turning to a tree, they were seen perched naked in the branches, about nine feet from the ground: an interesting ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... interruption, Weimar society being thrown into a flutter by the visit of Madame de Stael, now on her famous tour of inspection. It was of course fitting that Schiller, as a local lion, should take his part in entertaining her; but the voluble lady was an Erscheinung new to his experience, and with his imperfect command of colloquial French he was hard put to it to bear up against the torrent of her conversation. He measured her very correctly at their first ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... translucent glass, He settles next upon the sloping mount, Whose sharp declivity shoots off secure From the dashed pane the deluge as it falls. He shuts it close, and the first labour ends. Thrice must the voluble and restless earth Spin round upon her axle, ere the warmth Slow gathering in the midst, through the square mass Diffused, attain the surface. When, behold! A pestilent and most corrosive steam, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... His company must do his minions grace, Whil'st I at home starue for a merrie looke: Hath homelie age th' alluring beauty tooke From my poore cheeke? then he hath wasted it. Are my discourses dull? Barren my wit, If voluble and sharpe discourse be mar'd, Vnkindnesse blunts it more then marble hard. Doe their gay vestments his affections baite? That's not my fault, hee's master of my state. What ruines are in me that can be ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... never heard the Mocking-Bird sing at liberty; and while the caged bird may surpass the Red Thrush in volume of voice and in quaintness of direct imitation, he gives me no such impression of depth and magnificence. I know not how to describe the voluble and fantastic notes which fall like pearls and diamonds from the beak of our Mavis, while his stately attitudes and high-born bearing are in full harmony with the song. I recall the steep, bare hill-side, and the two great ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... took her time about deciding that she liked her but ended by preferring her to all the rest. She never talked much; would smoke and listen, making most of her comments in pantomime, but she had a trick of capping a voluble discussion with a hard-chiseled phrase which, whether you felt it precisely fitted or not, you found it difficult to ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... method of obtaining or seeking divine sanction for the marriage; an offering of cooked food may be made to Bali-Penyalong, by placing it on a stake beneath the image of the crocodile (which seems to serve as an altar) with some dedicatory words — for like the other peoples the Punans are voluble in speech, both in human intercourse and in appealing to the supernatural powers. On such occasions the words uttered usually take in part the form of a prayer ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... parts of employer and employed were reversed—the employer it was who framed the excuses and comforted the employed. He was singularly courteous, and listened to everybody with respect; so that it was a marked thing when he went so far as to say of a voluble and empty chatterer, that "the peas were overgrowing the stick." His presence of mind was great; he had in an eminent degree, as his biographer remarks, what Napoleon called "two o'clock in the morning courage," being always ready, if called up in the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... through the wards of his hospital he stopped for a moment by the bed of a brewer's drayman who was suffering from an access of delirium tremens. The drayman's language was violent and voluble. But he sank into a coma with the usual suddenness common to such cases, and in the pause which followed Lincott heard a gentle voice a few beds away earnestly apologising to a nurse for the trouble she was ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... landscape, listening to the comments of the passers-by, we shall hear numberless expressions relating to the skill of the artist, but very few relating to the perfection of nature. Hundreds will be voluble in admiration, for one who will be silent in delight. Multitudes will laud the composition, and depart with the praise of Claude on their lips,—not one will feel as if it were no composition, and depart with the praise of God ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... in dismay, but she was too well-trained an automaton to put her feelings into words. She rustled starchily from the room, to give the dread message to Mary, who promptly flew upstairs, voluble with distress. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... asking, all this time, did the man himself say nothing? Indeed, he said much, and I hung upon every syllable that fell from his lips, but, to my indescribable chagrin, it was a mere voluble jargon of statements, which simply baffled and puzzled me and caused me pain. Our charge would stare at us stolidly, and then remark, in a vulgar Cockney voice, that he was quite sure we were going the ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... losing, and which he found with his usual penetration; and to supply her with information, in which, however, he exercised an unwonted caution. On the other hand, certain naive recollections and admissions, which in the quality of a voluble child she occasionally imparted to this "madman" in return, were in the proportion of three ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... one. Lavinia did seven eighths of the talking and Ellery the rest. Kyan was silent. When the visit was over, Miss Pepper escorted her guest to the door and bade him a voluble good-by. Over her shoulder the minister saw Kyan making frantic signs to him; he interpreted the signals as a request for secrecy concerning the ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... distance from her Princess Hohenschreien, with M. de Moricourt inevitably in her wake. Lady Chaloner's readiness in the German tongue was not equal at this moment to her sense of injury. It was Princess Hohenschreien, therefore, who was charged with the negotiations, and who was discussing in voluble and amused German with the inn-keeper the heinousness of his crime in having promised two unknown pedestrians a seat at that very select table. The inn-keeper was full of apologies. Not having a nice discrimination of the laws that govern the social ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... make three than want work, and when he hath done, he throws the wallet of his faults behind him. He embraceth naturally ancient custom, conversing in open fields and lowly cottages. If he visit cities or towns, 'tis but to deal upon the imperfections of our weaker vessels. His tongue is very voluble, which with canting proves him a linguist. He is entertained in every place, but enters no further than the door, to avoid suspicion. Some will take him to be a coward, but believe it, he is a lad of metal; his valour is commonly three ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... The three others showed more signs of excitement. Old General Hartington, who could remember being taken to London to see the festivities at the coronation of George V, was leaning back in his chair frowning. (He had been reminiscent this evening in a rather voluble manner, but had not uttered a word now for five minutes.) The chaplain had shifted round in his chair, watching the door, and the sixth man, a cousin of the host, who, Monsignor understood, held some responsible post in the ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... wall and coming out into the pool of light, the swinging serapes and great shadowy hats of the Mexicans. They were crossing Lombard, they were keeping straight on down Powell, probably for some of the North Beach resorts; but, as with voluble talk and laughter they passed the opposite curb, I noticed a singular thing—one man who dropped out of the group silently as if unobserved by his companions. He seemed to make one step from the lighted street into the shadow, and was swallowed up in it as completely ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... found no lack of subjects to descant upon; but voluble, and indeed absurd as he was, Howard could not help liking him; he was a good fellow, he could see, and managed to diffuse a geniality over the scene. "I am interested in most things," he said, at the end of a breathless harangue, "and there is something in the presence of a real live student, from ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... came suddenly down to an easy keel, rocking in that glassy sea as if in a tide rip. The deck was awash with oil. Far out in the bay the ripples widening from the schooner blurred the reflections of the stars. The Chinamen swarmed up the hatch-way, voluble and shrill. Again the "Bertha Millner" lifted and sank, the tubs sliding on the deck, the masts quivering like reeds, the timbers groaning aloud with the strain. In the stern something cracked and smashed. Then the trouble died away, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... savagery, partly persuaded of his own youthfulness of race. He writes, and recites, poems about ranches and canyons; they are designed to betray the recklessness of his nature and to reveal the good that lurks in the lawless ways of a young society. He is there to explain himself, voluble, with a glossary for his own artless slang. But his colonialism is only provincialism very articulate. The new air does but make old decadences seem more stale; the young soil does but set into fresh conditions the ready-made, the uncostly, the refuse feeling of a race ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... so wildly fascinated; his heart throbbed and bounded as if it would have burst his breast; his head swam with a sort of pleasurable dizziness; his eyes were dim and suffused; and he scarce knew that he was talking, though he was indeed the life of the whole company, voluble, witty, versatile, and at times eloquent, so far as the topics of the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... "Of course," continued the voluble Fran Augusta, "you must not think I am criticizing the authorities. It is all very necessary. And for the most part I think they have done very well by me. My ten children have six fathers. All of them but the first were men of most gracious ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... Theron did not appear fair; nay, thou wouldst have it so: and thou wilt not quake even before the flaming thunderbolt of Zeus. Wherefore lo! indignant Nemesis hath set thee forth to see, who wert once so voluble, for an ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... saying, 'Four Bhats make a crowd'; and their insincerity in the proverb quoted by Mr. Crooke, "The bard, the innkeeper and the harlot have no heart; they are polite when customers arrive, but neglect those leaving (after they have paid)" [297] The Bhat women are as bold, voluble and ready in retort as the men. When a Bhat woman passes a male caste-fellow on the road, it is the latter who raises a piece of cloth to his face till the woman is out ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... further. While they drank their cocktails Bobby watched Graham's disapproval grow. The man glanced continually at his watch. In the restaurant, when Paredes left them to produce, as he called it, his surprise, Graham appraised with a frown the voluble people who moved intricately through ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... The shopkeeper was voluble. Also Rosa had bought much from him, and Rosa talked. When the American left the shop he knew everything of Harmony that Rosa knew except her name. Rosa called her "The Beautiful One." Also he was short one krone four beliers in his change, which is readily done when a customer ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Boatfield, Pyot unceremoniously left Master Busy standing, open-mouthed, in the very midst of a voluble sentence, and approached the squire, doffing his cap respectfully as he ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... philosophical and literary pursuits. He was thought young for the office, and he had not yet served in any subordinate place. And there was another man, who was supposed to carry all English law in his head, full of rude force and endless precedents, hard of heart and voluble of tongue, who also wanted it. An Attorney-General was one who would bring all the resources and hidden subtleties of English law to the service of the Crown, and use them with thorough-going and unflinching resolution against those whom the Crown accused ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... been so. I have always found an unaccountable pleasure in dissecting, as it were, my heart; uncovering, one by one, its many folds, and laying it before you, as a country is shown in a map. This voluble tongue and this prompt, pen! what volumes have I talked to you on that ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... with Sabella's pitying aid, cared for him until the end, which came a few days later. During these last days his monkey was the man's inseparable companion. It cuddled beside him in bed, and answered his feeble terms of endearment with voluble chatterings. With his latest breath the dying stranger consigned his helpless pet to the same pitying care that had helped him over the bitterest of all human journeys. He said, "Monka, Don Bolossi, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... a poor simple-hearted married couple, from the country, called on a medical friend of mine, to consult him about a complaint in the eyes of the husband, which seemed to threaten him with total blindness. The wife entered at great length into all the symptoms of the complaint, and was extremely voluble in her expressions of sympathy and of anxiety that something should be done to remove the disease. It was difficult to repress a smile at the scene, and yet it was touching too; and the doctor, looking in the old woman's honest ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... declared afterward, when the matter came up for comment down at camp, that he would "give a heap to have that man McLean's self-possession," for with hardly an instant's delay the latter's voice was heard above the voluble protests of the two young ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... and Valentine left their box in silence. It seemed that this odd play, which dared to be natural, had impressed them. They walked into the vestibule without a word, and, avoiding many voluble friends who were letting off the steam as they gathered their coats and hats from a weary lady in a white cap, they threaded their way through the crowd and emerged into the street. Just as they reached the portico, Julian suddenly ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... from the stuffy atmosphere of the dimly-lit theatre to the sunlit squares and streets, Drexley and Douglas arm in arm, the former voluble, Douglas curiously silent. For it had been an afternoon of events, the final rehearsal of a play of which great things were expected, and which was to take London by storm. Drexley had always had faith in his friend. He believed him to be a clever, even a brilliant, writer—witty, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... to move toward the inn at the same time, and its door closes on them before they know what they are doing. A few minutes afterward Jinny Dundas, who is Pete's wife, runs straight for the Bull in her short gown, which is tucked up very high, and emerges with her husband soon afterward. Jinny is voluble, but Pete says nothing. Tammas follows later, putting his head out at the door first, and looking cautiously about him to see if any one is in sight. Pete is a U.P., and may be left to his fate, but the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... came up to see her guests, who called themselves Mr. and Mrs. Stahl. The landlady talked of Mr. Cheffinsky as her "star boarder," and said that she was used to his "queer ways." Often he stopped away from home a day or two, but she never worried. He always came back. The "Stahls" were voluble over the non-arrival of their luggage, which seemed to vex them more than the appearance of Cheffinsky, their old friend. Whether or not Mrs. MacMahon believed the story, at all events she agreed to supply ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... forward effusively; Mrs. Whalen, plump, dark, voluble; Sally, lean, swarthy, vindictive; Flossie, pudgy, powdered, over-dressed. They eyed me hungrily. I felt that they were searching my features for signs ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was; that is they would be eternally separated from home there. And their interpreters, as we could understand, instantly said, "Ah, non Palmas" and began to propose infinite other expedients in most voluble language. Vaughan was rather disappointed at this result of his liberality, and asked Nolan eagerly what they said. The drops stood on poor Nolan's white forehead, as he hushed the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... he had found the West green and bright with spring colors, and the outlaw printer of the McClure Press excited and voluble over the possibilities of the country. Now the investment broker found a land of desolation and ruin, and the printer in sorry plight, living in a crude, bare shack, clad like some waif of the streets in the ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... was not great, but it was sufficient to enable the voluble Irishman to recount a series of the most wonderful adventures and stories of foreign lands; that set Martin's heart on fire with desire to go to sea; a desire which was by no means new to him, and which recurred violently every time he paid a visit to the small sea-port of Bilton, which ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... a little disapproval in mademoiselle's manner, for the chevalier had certainly been caught spying, if nothing worse; and he had the grace to be embarrassed, and hastened to make his apologies in voluble French, which he seemed to take for granted ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... which Mart's family were reduced. Mrs. Mac had known Mrs. Mart in the days when, as a blooming school-girl, the latter used to trip by the Cranston homestead, and had striven to aid her through the failing fortunes of the months preceding Mart's last strike; it was her voluble account of the state of affairs that prompted this soft-hearted squadron commander to take Mart by the hand and bid him tell his troubles. Mart broke down. He'd been a fool and a dupe, he knew and realized it, but Elmendorf ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... the European's lust for flesh-meat, which is not accessible in a Jain temple. Yet, instead of going out at once with the begging-bowl, he stayed his stomach on slabs of cold rice till the full dawn. It brought the farmer, voluble, stuttering with gratitude. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... consummation and ultimate ascension of dramatic poetry incarnate and transfigured in the master-singer of the world, the quality of his tragedy was as that of Marlowe's, broad, single, and intense; large of hand, voluble of tongue, direct of purpose. With the dawn of its latter epoch a new power comes upon it, to find clothing and expression in new forms of speech and after a new style. The language has put off its foreign decorations of lyric and elegiac ornament; it has found already its ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... must have due regard for circumstances; details needed for one purpose may be superfluous for another. But all of us are familiar with the person who loses her ideas in a rigmarole of prosaic and irrelevant facts. Such a person is Shakespeare's scatter-brained Dame Quickly. On one occasion this voluble woman is shrilly reproaching Sir John Falstaff for his indebtedness to her. "What is the gross sum that I owe thee?" he inquires. She might answer simply: "If thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst promise to marry me. Deny it if thou canst." Instead, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... well-preserved gentleman, with iron-grey hair, and nothing particularly striking about him but a pair of keen dark eyes, he sits in the window, listening with a half-incredulous smile to the voluble speech ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... only be very inadequately repaying you for much valuable assistance rendered, and much very pleasant companionship during the time of your pupilage with me. And do not think that because I have not expressed much voluble regret at this abrupt severance of our connection I do not feel it, for I do very keenly, I assure you; but I see quite clearly that the thing is inevitable, therefore to complain about it would be both ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... 'em for her for fifteen cents apiece. I tell her the children 'round here's awful dirty and she says the cleaner she is the cleaner they'll be.... No, 'tain't goin' to be no Sunday School," said the voluble Corporal. "No, 'tain't goin' to be no Mission; no, 'tain't goin' to be no Lodge! She says it's a new kind of a school, that's all I know, and next Monday'll see ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... thousands of moons Have wax'd and wan'd upon my sufferings. And were it not that I with heedful care Noted where thou exclaim'st as if in ire With human nature, 'Why, thou cursed thirst Of gold! dost not with juster measure guide The appetite of mortals?' I had met The fierce encounter of the voluble rock. Then was I ware that with too ample wing The hands may haste to lavishment, and turn'd, As from my other evil, so from this In penitence. How many from their grave Shall with shorn locks arise, who living, aye ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... exterior, smooth ways, and an unexceptionable flow of talk, whether in French or English) he was excellently well received; and presently, with one of the last eight bottles of beer on a table at his elbow, found himself the rather silent centrepiece of a voluble group on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... position she had taken. This she said in French and in German, and in her own perfidious tongue. She stated this uncompromisingly, but at the same time sent secret orders to withdraw the force that was the bone of contention. This order she soon countermanded. A certain speech delivered by a too voluble Belgian minister was responsible for the stiffening of her back, and His Excellency the Administrator of the territory received official instructions in the middle of the night: "Tell Hamilton to stay where he is and ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... on, I must remark that some cases of apparent mendacity or inaccuracy on the part of a President—especially if he were as voluble and busy as Roosevelt—must be attributed to forgetfulness or misunderstanding and not to wilful lying. A person coming from an interview with him might construe as a promise the kindly remarks with which the President wished to soften a refusal. The promise, which was no promise, not ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Coleridge first came to Bristol, he had evidently adopted, at least to some considerable extent, the sentiments of Socinus. By persons of that persuasion, therefore, he was hailed as a powerful accession to their cause. From Mr. C.'s voluble utterance, it was even believed that he might become a valuable Unitarian minister, (of which class of divines, a great scarcity then existed, with a still more gloomy anticipation, from most of the young ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... of the Mother-Superior's gesture of vexation, into voluble explanations in that native language which M. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the door of his first-class carriage, their destination reached. Peter was holding the girl's sleeve and hurrying her along, his head pushed forward, and on his face that look of eager joyousness which to the eyes that watched and that knew was so full of pathos. The voluble tongue was wagging as the pair trotted past. He heard his own name mentioned. And so Clomayne's clerk passed from the ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... fresh laid coals, And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep Like whispers of the household gods that keep A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls. And while, for rhymes, I search around the poles, Your eyes are fix'd, as in poetic sleep, Upon the lore so voluble and deep, That aye at fall of night our care condoles. This is your birth-day Tom, and I rejoice That thus it passes smoothly, quietly. Many such eves of gently whisp'ring noise May we together pass, and calmly try What are this ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... clear eyes, as she always bestowed the same care on her glossy locks, and as Aubertot and Fajon were still available, she married Aubertot and Fajon. Perhaps it was Aubertot, perhaps it was Fajon, perhaps even both of them. In any case, she was able to resume the life she was fitted for, and the voluble gossip and eternal ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... was at the door of the Howard house—a pretentious abode, with white scroll-work round the eaves and an eruption of bay-windows on all its sides. Mrs. Howard, a plump, voluble dame, met Rilla gushingly and left her in the parlour while she went to call Irene. Rilla threw off her rain-coat and looked at herself critically in the mirror over the mantel. Hair, hat, and dress were satisfactory—nothing there ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... morning; men, for the most part; some meanly attired, some decently; some loud, some cringing; and yet all, in the eyes of Somerset, displeasing. A certain air of fear and secrecy was common to them all; they were all voluble, he thought, and ill at ease; even the military gentleman proved, on a closer inspection, to be no gentleman at all; and as for the doctor who attended the sick man, his manners were not suggestive of a university career. The nurse, again, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... robbing his majesty's mail. It is difficult to conceive the lightness of heart which was communicated to me by these words: I persisted however in the silence I had meditated. From the rest of their conversation, which was sufficiently voluble, I learned that the mail from Edinburgh to London had been robbed about ten days before by two Irishmen, that one of them was already secured, and that I was taken up upon suspicion of being the other. They had a description of his person, which, though, as I afterwards found, it disagreed from ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... voluble in his objections. Again he reined in front of Billy, and by this time his five fellows had spurred ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... at the door. A trim-looking French maid presented herself. She addressed her mistress in voluble French. A coiffeur and a manicurist were waiting in the next apartment; it was time that Madame habited herself. The professor listened to these announcements with an ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sympathetic and tender, not voluble the way some women would have been. She asked me if I had been to the scene of the accident, and when I told her I was just going, she asked me if I wanted her with me. As it was after ten o'clock and the rain had begun again, I told her "No," and added that I'd ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... artillery, and then it was a painful matter of buckets. We munched hard-tack for our noonday meal, and made merry over it, talking of the day when we should go home and feast on beans and beefsteak and countless other things of which the heathen wot not. We were intensely voluble or silent by turns, and invented new nicknames for each other, which were so apt, spite of being touched with bitterness, that they stuck forevermore. And never, so far as I can remember, did any one mention the "Maine" ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... left behind. Several were going with the company. Captain and lieutenants, and more than one sergeant and corporal had their body-servants—these were the proudest of the proud and the envied of their brethren. The latter were voluble. "Des look at Wash,—des look at Washington Mayo! Actin' lak he own er co'te house an' er stage line! O my Lawd! wish I wuz er gwine! An dat dar Tullius from Three Oaks—he gwine march right behin' de captain, an' Marse Hairston Breckinridge's ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... did not follow his conversation; he was trying to think, but could not think connectedly. He could not talk to the professor, he answered him by nods or shakes of his head. The more reticent Alfred became the more voluble the professor grew. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... shaft in war, wont before to frighten beasts of the chase, and struck down a brave Numanian, Remulus by name, but lately allied in bridal to Turnus' younger sister. He advancing before his ranks clamoured things fit and unfit to tell, and strode along lofty and voluble, his heart lifted ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... of the other forces was slower. The Chinese especially had undergone great privations, having lost their way near Llanfairpwlgwnngogogoch, and having been unable to understand the voluble directions given to them by the various shepherds they encountered. It was not for nearly a week that they contrived to reach Chester, where, catching a cheap excursion, they arrived in the metropolis, hungry and footsore, four days after the last of their rivals ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse |
