"Wordy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... height; But tell me now, dear Jenny, we're our lane, What gars ye plague your wooer with disdain? The neighbours a' tent this as well as I; That Roger lo'es ye, yet ye carena by. What ails ye at him? Troth, between us twa, He's wordy you the best day ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... filled with dialogues ethical and theological; and, with the exception of some brilliant and forcible expressions here and there, consists of an exposition of truisms, more cloudy, wordy, and inconceivably prolix, than any thing we ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... A wordy war followed, during which the boys became almost as angry as the old farmer. They insisted upon it that they had not been near his farm during the afternoon of the day before, but he did not believe a ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... with no wisdom fraught, Must end in wordy words, and come to nought; Just like St. James's, where they bluster, scold, They nothing know—yet ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... effect of this remark was to turn the wordy torrent in his direction. The captain bore it for a while; then he rose to his feet and ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with fewer statistics and more popular description. His books appeared in German, French, and English. In 1812 he published his Handbuch fUer Reisende am Rhein von Schaffhausen bis Holland, to give only a small part of the wordy title, and in 1818 he brought out a second, enlarged edition of the same work with an appendix containing 17 Volkssagen aus den Gegenden am Rhein und am Taunus, the sixteenth of which is entitled "Die ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... trick of talking, and was apt to bother one about the national debt, and such nonsense;" from which I suspected that Master Simon had been rendered wary of him by some accidental encounter on the field of argument: for these radicals are continually roving about in quest of wordy warfare, and never so happy as when they can tilt a gentleman ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... are already sleeping three or four in a room, sleeping in outhouses and bath-rooms, refugee Bulgars from the lost Bulgar territories, refugee Turks, refugee Russians. You return to the station and it is closed for the night, and you have a wordy discussion with the eternal cabman as to whether you shall pay a hundred or two hundred francs—Bulgarian francs or levas which are, however, worth a bare three-farthings each to-day. You find shelter in a wayside ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... my remark with such unruffled serenity that I was angry with myself for engaging in a wordy warfare with him, when he was sure to be victorious. He sat with us for a short time after dinner, chatting so graciously that I came to the conclusion he was not, after all, so out of sympathy ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... while several persons, having vegetables or grain to sell, were seated upon the ground. The hum of human voices, the grunting of the camels, and the braying of donkeys, kept up an incessant din, and therefore some minutes elapsed before my attention was attracted by a wordy war which took place beneath my window. Hastily arraying myself in my dressing-gown, and looking out, I saw a man and woman engaged in some vehement discussion, but whether caused by a dispute or not, I could not at first decide. They both belonged to the lower class, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... wished to make an end of the other; they are not agreed about the motives which make them unanimous, hence, alas! a regular German squabble about the Emperor's beard; querelle d'Allemand. You Anglo-Saxon Yankees have something of the same kind also.... Your battles are bloody; ours wordy; these chatterers really cannot govern Prussia. I must bring some opposition to bear against them; they have too little wit and too much self-complacency—stupid and audacious. Stupid, in all its meanings, is ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... windy, wordy controversy on "compelling" and "acquiring." Seeing no prospect of a conclusion we withdrew. The good auntie who had invited us followed us out in deep humiliation. I said, we are sorry to go without contributing something to the interest of the meeting, but this is such a waste ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... marquis and would not listen to a groom? To suppose such a thing was to wrong her grievously. To herald his suit with his rank would be to insult her, declaring that he regarded her theories of humanity as wordy froth. And what a chance of proving her truth would he not deprive her of if, as he approached her, he called on the marquis to supplement the man!—But what, then, was the man, fisherman or marquis, to dare even ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... never-failing good sound sense of his remarks. None of the works I read had such a charm for me as those of Baxter, and no other religious writer exerted so powerful and lasting an influence either on my head or heart. Taylor was too flowery, and Barrow too wordy, and Tillotson was rather cold and formal; yet I read them all with profit, and with a great amount of pleasure. Hooker I found a wonder, both for excellency of style and richness of sentiment; and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... assert such would be to argue that there is no progression beyond a certain stage of attainment, and that advancement is a characteristic of low organization and inferior purpose alone. We believe that there was more than the sounding of brass or the tinkling of wordy cymbals in the fervent admonition of the Christ to his followers—"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... how lonely it would be in Heaven with nobody there but God and the angels and the Starr family. Even the family, it seemed, was not to be admitted as an entity, but separately, according to individual merit. Grandmother and Aunt Matilda had many a wordy battle as to who would be there and who wouldn't, but both were sadly agreed that ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... of queries and replies was exchanged so rapidly, and with such appalling shrillness, that we onlookers ran a great risk of being either deafened, or driven out of our senses. At the first slackening of the wordy warfare, Dunmore put his ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... had ee com, Sir, bot for dese wordy Gentlemen, whos Affairs wode not permit dem to come at ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... out what he thought. Charmian loved him almost for expressing her secret belief. She now said what she thought. Claude, the reserved and silent recluse of a few months ago, was induced by these two to come out into the open and take part in the wordy battles which rage about art. The instant success of his song took away from him an excuse which he might otherwise have made, when Charmian and Alston Lake urged him to compose with a view to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... quality in the narration more intimate and particular than is general with Hugo; but it must be owned, on the other hand, that the book is wordy, and even, now and then, a little wearisome. Ursus and his wolf are pleasant enough companions; but the former is nearly as much an abstract type as the latter. There is a beginning, also, of an abuse of conventional conversation, such as may be quite pardonable ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... West they journeyed then, And in a quarrel got; One said 't was his, he knew it was, The other said 't was not. One drew a knife, a pistol t' other, And dreadfully they swore; From Northern lake to Southern gulf Wild rang the wordy roar. ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... greatly to be ascribed the infirmities of Overbeck and his school. It is forgotten that the most holy of motives cannot save a picture which is not good as a picture. Schlegel discusses the question, What is needed by the Christian painter? The following phrenzy, though wordy, ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... Following this wordy battle with her dressmaker, Madame had an equally stubborn one with her son, the immediate consequence of which was that very interview whose close was witnessed by Andrew Binnie. In this conference Braelands acknowledged his devotion to Sophy, and ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... to his position by the harsh voice of the clerk of arraigns. His obedience was mechanical, and the clerk droned out the wordy indictment which pronounced Peter Blood a false traitor against the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Prince, James the Second, by the grace of God, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland King, his ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... followers of John were Norman and French knights, accustomed to fight in full armour upon the plains of France; and to add to a rich pay the richer profits of plunder and of ransom. The seaport towns and the castles fell into the hands of new masters, untrained to the work required of them. "Wordy chatterers, swearers of enormous oaths, despisers of others," as they seemed to the race of Nesta's descendants, the new rulers of the country proved mere plunderers, who went about burning, slaying, and devastating, ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... into a certain barren zeal of industry and fury of interference. She carried her thwarted ardours into housework, she washed floors with her empty heart. If she could not win the love of one with love, she must dominate all by her temper. Hasty, wordy, and wrathful, she had a drawn quarrel with most of her neighbours, and with the others not much more than armed neutrality. The grieve's wife had been "sneisty"; the sister of the gardener who kept house for him had shown herself ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the porch one day, and found her sitting on the steps, with her hat tilted over her eyes, and a generally woe-begone look in her whole attitude; and they had just had a wordy ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... with its futilities, but to be hung up with its immortal beacon-light, to shew the track of a new learning, to shew to the contrivers of the chart of new ages, the breakers of that old ignorance, that old arrogant wordy barren speculation. For these men were men who would not fish up the chart of a drowned world for the purpose of seeing how nearly they could conduct another under different conditions of time and races to the same conclusion. And they were men of a different turn of mind entirely from those ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... out; rant. maunder, prose; harp upon &c. (repeat) 104; dwell on, insist upon. digress, ramble, battre la campagne[Fr][obs3], beat about the bush, perorate, spin a long yarn, protract; spin out, swell out, draw out; battologize[obs3]. Adj. diffuse, profuse; wordy, verbose, largiloquent|, copious, exuberant, pleonastic, lengthy; longsome[obs3], long-winded, longspun[obs3], long drawn out; spun out, protracted, prolix, prosing, maundering; circumlocutory, periphrastic, ambagious[obs3], roundabout; digressive; discursive, excursive; loose; rambling ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... responsibility, attached the city seal.(283) When Hervy's year of office expired—these so-called "charters" were called in question as having been unauthorised by the aldermen of the city and as tending to favour the richer members of the guilds to the prejudice of the poorer. After a "wordy and most abusive dispute" carried on in the Guildhall between the ex-mayor and Gregory de Rokesley who acted as spokesman for the body of aldermen, Hervy left the hall and summoned the craft-guilds to meet him in Cheapside. There he told them that it was the wish of Henry ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... I supposed so. It's usual for a man to go there, I believe, to get ready for dinner," added young Carteret, always ripe for a wordy war, in his ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... a bitter sectional enmity, amounting to contempt, for the people of the north, growing partly out of the subserviency of large portions of the north to the dictation of the south, but chiefly out of the wordy violence and disregard of constitutional obligation by the Abolitionists of the north. They believed in the doctrine of an irrepressible conflict long before it ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Great Britain has been singularly unfortunate in the literature of aphorism. One too famous volume of proverbial philosophy had immense vogue, but it is so vapid, so wordy, so futile, as to have a place among the books that dispense with parody. Then, rather earlier in the century, a clergyman, who ruined himself by gambling, ran away from his debts to America, and at last blew ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... I laughed at a wag amid the circle! He, when Calvus in high denunciation Of Vatinius had declaim'd divinely, Hands uplifted as in supreme amazement, Cried 'God bless us! a wordy cockalorum!' 5 ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... extinguished, even while it has repeatedly refused to take steps preparatory to war; and the two countries should be persuaded to understand that neither can perish without the life of the other being placed in great danger. The best answer to be made to the wordy attacks of Englishmen is to be found in success. That answer would be complete; and if it cannot be made, what will it signify to us what shall be said of us by foreigners? The bitterest attacks can never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... his head on the square table by the fireplace, was Pedro, the old proprietor. Two villagers sat at another table in the side of the big room playing cards, with wordy arguments about ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... couch made up of several quilts, one of the transients thoughtfully cautioning me to put my moccasins under my pillow, as these articles were the object of almost universal covetousness during the evening. No sooner am I comfortably settled down, than a wordy warfare breaks out in my immediate vicinity, and an ancient female makes a determined dash at my coverlet, with the object of taking forcible possession; but she is seized and unceremoniously hustled away by the men who assigned ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... than a lustre, as the Dedication reminds us, since David Balfour, at the end of the last chapter of Kidnapped, was left to kick his heels in the British Linen Company's office. Five years have a knack of making people five years older; and the wordy, politic intrigue of Catriona is at least five years older than the rough-and-tumble intrigue of Kidnapped; of the fashion of the Vicomte de Bragelonne rather than of the Three Musketeers. But this is as it should be; for older and astuter heads are ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... darkness. And could his spirit have listened to the jargon which I had just heard proclaimed as Platonism, consisting of common-place thoughts, laboriously tortured and involved, till their true semblance was lost, and instead of them a wordy mist—glowing indeed oftentimes with rainbow colors—was presented to the mind of the hearer for him to feed upon, he would at the moment have as heartily despised, as he had formerly gloried in, the name and ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... surmises, and a thousand speculations in regard to our pretty hostess and her singular companion. I fear that we even hustled that imbecile paralytic, who sat like a voiceless Memnon in our midst, gazing with the serene indifference of the Past in his passionate eyes upon our wordy counsels. In the midst of an exciting discussion the door opened again, and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... thou not tell me thy story and acquaint me with thy case? Haply it may bring thee relief, for Allah's aid is ever nearhand." "O fisherman," said Nur al-Din, "Wilt thou hear our history in verse or in prose?" "Prose is a wordy thing, but verses," rejoined the Caliph, "are pearls on string." Then Nur al-Din bowed his ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... It flies—it creeps, It creeps, perchance it stings! Then comes the rub, When we have shuffled off our clothing. Soft, 'Twas but a bluebottle! How sweet it is To lie like this i' the sun, and think of nought Save how sweet 'tis to lie, and think of nought; And that meseems to many wordy sages Were small refreshment in this windy time. How many are there who do cheat themselves, And with themselves the many, that they are The very vaward leaders of the fray, The lictors of the pomp of intellect. Whereas they are the merest driven ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... nothing of the sort. Dialectically the great Doctor was a great brute. The fact is, he had so accustomed himself to wordy warfare that he lost all sense of moral responsibility, and cared as little for men's feelings as a Napoleon did for their lives. When the battle was over, the Doctor frequently did what no soldier ever did that I have heard tell of,—apologized to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Watson family collectively, but it was upon John Watson, the man of few words, that she lavished the whole wealth of her South of Ireland hatred, for John Watson had on more than one occasion got the better of her in a wordy encounter. ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... aunt presently got to wordy wars with Frank; in which, as you may suppose, she had little chance of victory. But she called in Clifton, to be her auxiliary; and he fell into the same pettish, half-haughty, half-contemning kind of manner, in which he had so improperly indulged, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... expert with the tool and the foreman's most pointed remarks were generally addressed to him, but he had a humorous manner which gained him friends. Once or twice, to his comrades' admiration, he engaged his persecutor in a wordy contest and badly routed him, which did not improve matters. Indeed, his last victory proved a costly one, because afterward when there was anything particularly unpleasant or dangerous to be done, Kermode was selected. As it happened, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... He was not wordy, and he tarried but a moment, yet he explained his paralysis. In the dreary monotone of a chronic sour temper he related that some Confederates, about a year before, had come here impressing horses, and their officer, on being called ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... The really great poet challenges it, like Homer, with some tremendous, irresistible opening; and in this respect the magnificent prelude to Beowulf may almost be put beside Homer. But lesser poets have another way. That prolixity at the beginning of many primitive epics, their wordy deliberation in getting under way, is probably intentional. The Song of Roland, for instance, begins with a long series of exceedingly dull stanzas; to a reader, the preliminaries of the story seem insufferably drawn ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... Christian religion, which is plain and simple, with old women's superstitions; in investigating which he preferred perplexing himself to settling its questions with dignity, so that he excited much dissension; which he further encouraged by diffuse wordy explanations: he ruined the establishment of public conveyances by devoting them to the service of crowds of priests, who went to and fro to different synods, as they call the meetings at which they endeavour to settle everything according ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... school is more ambitious; but its poetic flights are more disappointing even than the honest prose of Opitz. The "Shepherds of the Pegnitz" had tried to imitate the brilliant diction of the Italian poets; but the modern Meistersaenger of the old town of Nuernberg had produced nothing but wordy jingle. Hoffmannswaldau and Lohenstein, the chief heroes of the second Silesian school, followed in their track, and did not succeed better. Their compositions are bombastic and full of metaphors. It is a poetry of adjectives, without substance, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... was corroborated, in the very minutest points, by the men who had accompanied him, even though cross-questioned with unusual particularity by Father Francis. Old Pedro's statement, though less circumstantial, was, to the soldiers and citizens especially, quite as convincing. He gave a wordy narrative of Senor Stanley's unnatural state of excitement from the very evening he had become his lodger—that he had frequently heard him muttering to himself such words as "blood" and "vengeance." He constantly appeared longing for something; never eat half the meals provided ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... meretricious ornament. They are chastened by good taste and regulated by gentlemanly cultivation. They are written by a scholar, and not by a scribbler; and while reading their magnificent pages we need have no misgiving that we are admiring the flashy ornaments of wordy or half-educated mediocrity. Far the best of them is also the first, 'Guy Livingstone.' The poorest is 'Sword and Gown;' this has the feeblest plot, in fact a mere apology for a story, and contains more passages which seem unfinished, and what on a second reading would scarce ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... enough, Eurybiades, of Themistocles's wordy folly. Because the Athenian admiral is resolved to lead all Hellas to destruction, is no reason that we should follow. As for his threat that he will desert us with his ships if we refuse to fight, I fling it in his face that he dare not ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the day previous, one newspaper, the Times, published an account which differed from that in every other paper, and which undoubtedly came from the inside. In details it was far more generous than the official report; it gave names, speeches, arguments; it described the wordy battles of the diplomats, the concessions, ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... emulate Homer's wordy braggadocios in boasting ourselves far better than our fathers, still, great was the wisdom of our ancestors: and that time-tried wisdom has given us three things that make a man; he must build a house, have a child, write ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... cover all the ground, are as futile as the ordinary blundering attempts at comfort, which only charm ache with sound and patch grief with proverbs. The sorrow of our hearts is not appreciably lessened by argument. Any kind of philosophy—any wordy explanation of the problem—is at the best poor comfort. It is not the problem which brings the pain in the first instance: it is the pain which brings the problem. The heart's bitterness is not allayed by an exposition of the ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... verses.[2114] Calderon (1600-1681) continued on the same lines. The servant-buffoon was the time form of the buffoon. All these productions furnished models and material for the poets and dramatists of other countries. The comedies are always long and wordy and generally tedious. They run in fixed molds, and have unyielding conventions to obey. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... that, though love draws in one way, duty draws in the other, we may admire his prudence, but we are glad when so delicate a business comes to an end. In The Natural Son the latter scene, though very long, is the less disagreeable of the two. And just as in Diderot's most wordy and tiresome pages we generally find some one phrase, some epithet, some turn of a sentence whose freshness or strength or daring reveals a genius, so in this scene we find a few lines whose energy reminds ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... newspaper man against attempting to report all a man says. "Condense as often as possible" is the interviewer's watchword,—"cut to the bone," as the reporters express it. Much of what a man says in conversation is prolix. In that part of the interview that is dull or wordy, give the pith of what is said in one or two brief sentences, then fall into direct quotation again when his words become interesting. As a rule, however, it is well as far as possible to quote his exact language all through the interview, ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... except for rare occasions when they went out to lunch together, there was a "strictly business" attitude that was deceiving. Brennan's loyalty to P. Q. was only rivaled by the city editor's covert admiration for him as a reporter. Several times John overheard wordy altercations between P. Q. and Brennan in which the city editor would threaten to discharge him and Brennan would reply with a threat to resign, but nothing ever came of these quarrels and they were forgotten within an ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... which had occurred to his neighbors, was disposed and prepared to receive the Castilians with a warlike aspect. A swarm of ferocious Indians, armed in their usual manner, rushed into the road and began a wordy attack upon the strangers, asking them what brought them there, what they sought for, and threatening him with perdition if they advanced. The Spaniards, reckless of their bravadoes, proceeded, nevertheless, and then the chief placed himself in front of his tribe, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... shovelling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee, calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball—better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right, and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... my bill, sir?" said Leah faintly, oblivious of the wordy Michael's harangue, and thinking only of the prison-the dim, dark prison, where her husband was languishing. "I have no money but gold," she continued; "how much do I owe you ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... drawing, now stood out in vigorous contrast of color and relief; physiological observations, due no doubt to Horace Bianchon, supplied links of interpretations between human character and the curious phenomena of human life—subtle touches which made his men and women live. His wordy passages of description were condensed and vivid. The misshapen, ill-clad child of his brain had returned to him as a lovely maiden, with white robes and rosy-hued girdle and scarf—an entrancing ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... big living room, with its huge fireplace, divans, shelves and tables of books and magazines, was the center of things. Here, Billy and Saxon were expected to be, and in truth found themselves to be, as much at home as anybody. Here, when wordy discussions on all subjects under the sun were not being waged, Billy played at cut-throat Pedro, horrible fives, bridge, and pinochle. Saxon, a favorite of the young women, sewed with them, teaching them pretties and being taught in ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... who served him—a very pretty girl, with plaits of straw-coloured hair, wound Madonna-like round her head—named a sum that seemed exorbitant to his inexperience, and told a wordy story of how they had been ordered, and then countermanded ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Civil War, slavery was proving a cause of much trouble and ill-will. The "abolitionists," as the people were called who wished the slaves to be free, and the "pro-slavery" men, who approved of keeping them in bondage, had already come to wordy war. Illinois was a free State, but many of its people preferred slavery, and took every opportunity of making their wishes known. In 1837 the legislature passed a set of resolutions "highly disapproving abolition societies." Lincoln and five others voted against it; but, not content ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... made other Mens Light, his ne plus ultra, and resolved to go no farther into it, than the Road had been beaten before him. No doubt there were Men of as good natural Abilities in the Ages before the Revival of Learning, as there have been since. But they were cramped with the Jargon of a wordy and unintelligible Philosophy, and durst not give themselves the Liberty to think in Religion, without the Boundaries fixed by the Church, for fear of Anathemas, and an Inquisition. Till those Fetters were broken, little Advance ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... would have fared badly with Pompey Hollidew, he thought grimly; it was unconvincing, wordy; he was conscious that his assumed emotion rang thinly. But its calculated effect was instantaneous, beyond all his hopes, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... assist at the farce which followed. Our shipping laws in the United States (thanks to the inimitable Dana) are conceived in a spirit of paternal stringency, and proceed throughout on the hypothesis that poor Jack is an imbecile, and the other parties to the contract, rogues and ruffians. A long and wordy paper of precautions, a fo'c's'le bill of rights, must be read separately to each man. I had now the benefit of hearing it five times in brisk succession; and you would suppose I was acquainted with its contents. But the commissioner (worthy man) spends his ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... to twenty shillings the next day, and it was not due to any wordy flow of his gratitude that the name of Martha Tilden was not mentioned between them. "Better leave it," thought Joanna to herself, "after all, I'm not sure—and she's a slut. I'd sooner he married a ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... responsible for the facts. It is an easy, but not a satisfactory method of criticism to declare what is not to one's liking to be invention and romance, and it has until late years been difficult to combat such an argument. The battle has raged round wordy disputes, the merits of which are governed by the abilities of the respective disputants; that this is no longer possible is due to the fact that there have entered into the fray the methods and results of folklore which prevent ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... altogether too wordy to be genuine. It told nothing, but it darkly hinted at dark events to come. The Commandant bethought him that the Democratic Convention would assemble on the fourth of July; that a vast multitude of people would congregate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... returned to my claim, I found my pegs thrown away and fresh ones surrounding the shaft in place of them. I strongly demurred to this, but without avail, until a party of men who were our camp neighbours came over and took my part. Through them I recovered my claim without more than wordy warfare. After doing well out of the claim I found I could not continue it without a mate. Having to throw the wash-dirt eleven feet, a lot of the pebbles in it would come back on ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... easier said than done, on this corner of the estate. I tell you, Abiram, there is need of moving, for more reasons than one. You know I'm a man that very seldom enters into a bargain, but who always fulfils his agreements better than your dealers in wordy contracts written on rags of paper. If there's one mile, there ar' a hundred still needed to make up the distance for which you ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... preferred personally. He and his stood to lose all that they owned—their honor—and the honor of their wives and families, should they fight on the wrong side. Even as a soldier who had passed his word, he might have been excused for a lot of wordy questioning of orders, for he had enough at ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... talking at that moment, it is true, but he was expecting to talk very soon, to talk a great deal. He had just come into possession of an item of news which would furnish his vocal machine gun with ammunition sufficient for wordy volley after volley. Gabriel was joyfully contemplating peppering all Orham with that bit of gossip. No wonder he was happy; no wonder he hurried along the main road like a battery ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... fellow blustered; "by blood and by nails! you will sing more sweetly with a broken viol than with a broken head. I would have you understand, you hedge thief, that we gentlemen of the sword are not partial to wordy argument." Messire Heleigh fluttered inefficient hands as the men-at-arms gathered about them, scenting some genial piece of cruelty. "Oh, you rabbit!" the trooper jeered, and caught at Osmund's throat, shaking him. In the act this rascal tore open Messire Heleigh's tunic, disclosing ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... was obliged to acknowledge that the Major's counsel was wise, and to refrain from either argument or sarcasm; but the effort required to check his natural tendency to wordy conflict was almost too great for him, and when not engaged in his own special duties he spent hours in one of the angles of the terrace keenly watching every tree and bush within range, and firing vengefully whenever he caught sight of a lurking native. So accurate was his aim that the ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... the enterprise under a formal contract with the crown, and had received a regular commission, constituting him Adelantado. This must be matter of record, and he insisted loudly, that the books of the department should be consulted. The wordy strife at length attracted the attention of an old, gray-headed clerk, who sat perched on a high stool, at a high desk, with iron-rimmed spectacles on the top of a thin, pinched nose, copying records into an enormous folio. He had wintered ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... plainly known, in his anger, that the article called him a giver of graft. The crowd stood silent, as crowds stand about some drunken man, for the Colonel was drunk with wrath, and wordy with it, talking to himself as drunken men do. He finished, and the crowd opened a passage through itself to let him pass, and Skinner, who, in apron and bare arms, had viewed his rival's wrath from ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... pronounced aristocratic by comparison. To all such vapourings Mr. Mackenzie responded in the Advocate in kind. He had a large vocabulary of Billingsgate at his command, and as his temper became thoroughly aroused he proved that he could fully hold his own in this sort of wordy warfare. He followed the example of his antagonists, invaded the sanctities of private life, and descended to outrageous personalities. The persons thus placed in the journalistic pillory were merely paid back in their own coin, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Rosmer menage with hearty acquiescence, not to say enthusiasm. Rosmer interrupts the Rector's tete-a-tete with the fascinating Rebecca, and declines the proffered editorship, because he is a Radical, and an atheist. End of Act I.,—no action to speak of, but a good deal of wordy twaddle. In Act II. we learn that the late Mrs. Rosmer has committed suicide, because she was informed that the apostate Pastor could only save his villainy from exposure by giving immediately the position of wife to her friend Rebecca. She has had this tip on the most reliable ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... in those emotions and professions which could get themselves translated into character and action. Words have always been the bane of religion as well as its vehicle. Religious emotion has enormous motive force, but it is the easiest thing in the world for it to sizzle away in high professions and wordy prayers. In that case it is a substitute and counterfeit, and a damage to the Reign of ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... this latter basis that he secured a prize, in the person of the Reverend George Bland, ex-revivalist, ex-author of pious stories for the young, skilled dealer in truisms, in wordy platitudes couched largely in plagiarized language from the poets and essayists, in all the pseudo-religious slickeries wherewith men's souls are so easily lulled into self-satisfaction. The Good, the True, the Beautiful; these were ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... exclaimed the Reeve; "here sit ye here a-sermonising, venting words a-many what time our vanished Duchess fleeth. Knew I not the contrary I should say thou didst countenance her flight and spent thyself in wordy-wind ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... next morning he walked over early to Great Beeding. His aunt would have received the pamphlet by the first post and he wished to seize the first fine careless rapture of her comments. But he found her in a mood of distress rather than of wordy impatience. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... rather vague, and Pignaver, who read the classics and prided himself on his memory, was reminded of those Lacedaemonians who answered the wordy fugitives from Samos by saying that they had already forgotten the first half of their speech and did not understand the second. When Trombin had finished speaking, he waited for an answer and looked steadily at the Senator, opening his eyes wider and wider ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... sounded, for the instant, so ludicrous to Richard that, in spite of the distressing situation, he had to choke back a laugh. Years afterwards, if he wished for any momentary revenge upon Marion (and he had a keen sense of wordy retaliation), he simply said: "Wo-won't you let me ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... distinctly as he leisurely strolled toward the incoming wagon-train without looking backward. Flashing after him a glance that boded wordy trouble in the future, she ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... talked, held a city of two millions of inhabitants in their hands, and were free to put into practice any or all of the amazing theories that might come into their heads. Their speeches, however, were brief; they were not wordy, as they might have been if reporters had been present. Most of them wore uniforms profusely decorated with gold lace," and, says an Englishman who saw them in their seats, "one had only to look in their faces to judge the whole truth ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... amazing the way in which good men lose themselves on Sunday mornings in the lapse of their own language; and most rarely are we confronted from the pulpit with an opinion which would not bear stripping of wordy shifts, and be all the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... has saved for us another of these sorrow-laden sentences which Mr. Swinburne has amplified in some beautiful but too wordy lines. Sappho only says ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... display of wordy pyrotechnics, the dazed and bewildered stranger asked, "What will be the upshot of this ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... we so often are in the big moments of life, of what lies immediately ahead. Between the spreading branches I caught sight of Charmion looking at me with raised, inquiring brows. She had noted my eagerness, and was wondering what point of interest had been discovered between the wordy American and myself. I raised ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... constituted republic ought not to fulfill any magistracy whatever, the merchants and artisans of all sorts, are in Florence alone capable of taking office, to the exclusion of all others.' Machiavelli, less wordy but far more emphatic than Varchi, says of the same revolution: 'This caused the abandonment by Florence not only of arms, but of all nobility of soul.'[3] The most notable consequence of the mercantile temper of the republics was the ruinous system of mercenary warfare, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... successful in putting a stop to this injurious treatment; for not long after he declared, with a sarcasm directed against the prominent qualities of his fellow-citizens, "There is no better man at Rome than I. I seek nothing from any one. I am not wordy. I sit here ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... face flaming with fury. Hargus stopped beside her, his arm crooked to bring his hand up to his belt, sawing back and forth as if in indecision between drawing his gun and waiting for the wordy preliminaries to pass. Kerr stood embracing the pole in a pose of ridiculous supplication, the bright chain of the new handcuffs glistening in ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... no developments worth while. Judah, much inflated with the importance of his commission as a member of the Kendrick secret service, made voluminous and wordy reports, but they amounted to nothing. Mr. Phillips had borrowed five dollars of Caleb Snow. Had he paid the debt? Oh, yes, he had paid it. He smoked "consider'ble many" cigars, "real good cigars, too; cost over ten cents a piece by the box," so he told Thoph Black. But, so far as Black or Judah ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... came to where she lay, Hume first, they found Wanda Leland very still and white, motionless save for the little sobs shaking her. Hume's anger broke out into a wordy fury. He shook his fist at her prostrate body and cursed. But he did not sneer. There was too deep a wonder in his heart. He knew, they all knew, what it meant to have done what she had done. And MacKelvey, a hard man robbed ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... the second act and the balcony scene in the third, there is much that is fanciful and graceful, much of elegiac pathos and fervid if fantastic passion; much also of superfluous rhetoric and (as it were) of wordy melody, which flows and foams hither and thither into something of extravagance and excess; but in these two there is no flaw, no outbreak, no superflux, and no failure. Throughout certain scenes of the third and fourth acts I think it may be reasonably and reverently ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... phrenological observations, the worthy German had lined his nose with a good pinch of snuff and was now beginning his tale. It would be difficult to reproduce it in his own language, with his frequent interruptions and wordy digressions. Therefore, I now write it down in my own way; leaving out the faults of the Nuremburger, and taking only what his tale may have had of interest and poesy with the coolness of writers who forget to put on the title ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... So the wordy war went on between his good sense and his yearning heart, banishing every dear, cherished memory and postponing sleep ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... upon the intellectual treasures which books contain depends largely upon the strength of the impression made upon the mind when reading. And this, in turn, depends much upon the force, clearness and beauty of the author's style or expression. A crude, or feeble, or wordy, redundant statement makes little impression, while a terse, clear, well-balanced sentence fixes the attention, and so fastens itself in the memory. Hence the books which are best remembered will be those which are the best written. Great as ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... apparently buried in a reverie of thought—myself speculating on the chances of an unpleasant encounter: which, from the hints I had just had, was now rather certain than probable. Instead of a welcome from the squatter, and a bed in the corner of his cabin, I had before my mind the prospect of a wordy war; and, perhaps afterwards, of spending my night in the woods. Once or twice, I was on the point of proclaiming my errand, and asking the young hunter for advice as how I should act; but as I had not yet ascertained whether he was ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... some wordy precautions most menacing for your purse," said Saint Remy, laughing; "expect now, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... his slumber mars, Nor quails he at the howl of angry seas; He shuns the forum, with its wordy jars, Nor at a great man's door ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... from the mud hut beyond the thorn-thicket. Men were calling. There was the patter and scrape of mules' hoofs, the whistle of those that urged them on. Lewis and the old hag hurried down. The guide, the muleteers, and the stranger were having a wordy struggle. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... bitter tongue, and it was probably for this very reason that Mrs. McBain could not help liking her. Most sharp-spoken people appreciate someone who is not afraid to stand up to them, and Nan and Mrs. McBain had crossed swords in many a wordy battle. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... upon the Honesty of his Mind who is guilty of it, as common Swearing is a kind of habitual Perjury: It makes the Soul unattentive to what an Oath is, even while it utters it at the Lips. Phocion beholding a wordy Orator while he was making a magnificent Speech to the People full of vain Promises, Methinks, said he, I am now fixing my Eyes upon a Cypress Tree, it has all the Pomp and Beauty imaginable in its Branches, Leaves, and Height, but alas it ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... dignity of demeanour, never condescending to accuse his relatives, never seeking to retaliate, but acting always for the honour of his illustrious house. In the same spirit of generosity he refused to enter into wordy warfare with detractors and calumniators, sparing the reputation even of his worst enemy when chance had placed him in his power. This moderation both of speech and conduct was especially distinguished in an age which tolerated the fierce invectives of Filelfo, and applauded the vindictive courage ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... is by violent language of this kind, in all ages, that fanatical preachers have deceived silly men and women to their shame and ruin; and mob-leaders have stirred up riots and horrible confusions. Remember this: and distrust violent and wordy persons wheresoever you shall meet them: but after listening to them, if you must, go home, and take out your Bibles, and read the Gospel of St. John, and see how he spoke, the true Son of Thunder, whose words are gone out into all lands, and their ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... a scanty crowd. Then, for a week, judges, jurors, suitors, and witnesses flock together; and sometimes, in the winter season, when farm work is not pressing, the neighbors throng by scores into the court-house, to hear the wordy harangues of the lawyers in some notable cause. Likewise on town-meeting days, the stores and tavern bar-rooms about the square are filled with a concourse of the sovereign people from the more rural districts; and at the annual cattle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... cases the personage is so wordy and impetuous that it is impossible to stop him, or set him right, or interrupt him; he cannot make up his mind to launch into his narrative; he must needs remain himself on the stage and talk about his own person and belongings; he alone is ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... of St. George's Ward—he entered into some fierce debates on the Annuity-tax with Duncan M'Laren. That obnoxious impost was even then, as it has subsequently been, a great bone of contention, and proved the casus belli of many a wordy war. The embryo M.P. was generally, as we are well informed, more than a match for the young advocate, whom he overcame with those simple but effectual ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... contained a large element of truth, Cleon overreached himself, and was caught in his own snare. It was he, and not his opponents, who was diverting attention from facts, and involving a plain issue in a cloud of wordy rhetoric. He has no arguments, worthy of the name, but tries to carry his case by playing on the passions of the people, and blowing up the flames of their anger, which was beginning to cool. But though the more discerning among his audience must have seen ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... am dat, massa! He'm wordy ob anyting, an' he'm gwine to hab a wife ter day, massa. Boss Joe am gwine ter marry 'em, an' ter gib 'em him own cabin ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... be executed owing to the opposition of the Spanish Government. The seminary priests did not, however, allow themselves to be drawn away from their work either by the terrors of treason or by the echoes of the wordy war, that was being carried on between Lord Burghley and his friends on one side, and Dr. Allen and his friends on the other. A catechism introduced by them was bought up so rapidly that in a few months it was out of print. A great body of the English noblemen still ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... a far more solid basis than merely that of having written the most readable and tender of humorous romances. He reformed literature. He tilted at windmills as truly as ever his hero did, and overthrew the false taste for wordy pomp and emptiness which was characteristic of his times. It was not only Spanish literature that felt the impulse of his warm, frank honesty and insight into life. All Europe ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... for a prominent feature the pleas and counterpleas of contending parties, together with a few independent orations, so this Roman History is filled with public utterances of famous men, either singly or in pairs. Dio evinces considerable fondness for these wordy combats ([Greek: hamillai logon]). About one speech to the book is the average in the earlier portion of the work. The author probably adapted them from rhetorical [Greek: meletai], or essays, then ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... begins 'and'—'and'—'and,' like a schoolboy's narrative. It's as if a number of impressions had seized the writer's mind, which he jotted down hurriedly, lest they should escape him. But, just because it's so little wordy, it gets the effect of the thing—faith, sirs, it's right on to the end of it every time! The writing of some folk is nothing but a froth of words—lucky if it glistens without, like a blobber of iridescent foam. But in this sketch there's a perception at the back of every sentence. It ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... fact stands out that the only result with them is a wordy strife about the relative success of these two, Jesus and John. The most that their minds, steeped in jealousies and rivalries, ever watching with badger eyes to undercut some one else, could see, was a rivalry between these two men. John's instant open-hearted disclaimer ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... weakness appears to seek refuge in his despair, and his exhaustion counterfeits repose, the old habit of kingliness, the effect of flatterers from his infancy, is ever and anon producing in him a sort of wordy courage which only serves to betray more clearly his internal impotence. The second and third scenes of the third act combine and ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... attitude was eternally beyond her; she repudiated it with a revolt stringing every nerve indignantly tense. She had had, on the whole, singularly little from life but her fine body; it had always been the temple and altar of her service, and no mere wordy reassurance could now repay her for its swift or gradual destruction. The latter, except for accident, would be her fate; she was remarkably sound. In her social adventures, the balls to which, without Arnaud, she occasionally went, she was morbid in her sensitive dread of discovering, through ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was no great adept at wordy warfare, he was at all events strong in his reception of punishment. He stood upright and quiescent, betraying by neither sign nor movement that her words could ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... put Sagastao and Minnehaha on the defensive, for in those days their own pride of birth was that they were Cree Indians. Faithful old Mary, herself a Cree, would of course take their part, and it was very amusing—laughable at times—to listen to the wordy strife. In these discussions Mary was always the one to first lose her temper. When this happened the penalty was to have the children throw a shawl over her head and thus silence her. From their loving hands she quietly took her punishment ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... Donald, Luke, And lordly Roderick Waged wordy war with Marmaduke And Bernard and Theodoric, While grandpa hinted Zachariah And grandma ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... opposed the passage of these resolutions, as calculated to do infinite harm, but they were carried by a very large French Canadian majority at the dictation of Mr. Papineau. Whatever may have been its effect for the moment, this wordy effusion has long since been assigned to the limbo where are buried other examples of the demagogism ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot |
