"Brevity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw, that it is madness for a man to strive with a stronger than himself, peril to strive with one of equal strength, and folly to strive with a weaker. But, considering his own defaults and demerits, — remembering the patience of Christ and the undeserved tribulations of the saints, the brevity of this life with all its trouble and sorrow, the discredit thrown on the wisdom and training of a man who cannot bear wrong with patience — he should refrain wholly from taking vengeance. Meliboeus submits ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... be added on the subject of the piracies committed by this seriff; and it could easily be shown that the evils accruing from them affect, not only the peaceful trader, but extend to the peaceful agriculturist; but, for the sake of brevity, I deem it sufficient to add, that he exercises the same malign influence on the north coast as Seriff Sahib exercised on the northwest; and that, having surrounded himself by a body of pirates, he arrogates the rights of sovereignty, defies European power, contemns every right principle, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... pick up a boulder which has travelled further, and passed through more strange vicissitudes, than he can well have done himself; perhaps, with Shakespeare, to read “Sermons in Stones,” and to moralise on the brevity of human life, with all its ailments, compared with those ages untold, through which the pebble in his hand slowly {91c} travelled on its long, laborious journey, to rest at length as a constituent element of the locality, where he himself is ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... whose stock of ideas were thus limited, must of itself also necessarily have been both limited and destitute of precision. It could only deal with things with which they had some acquaintance, or of which they could form some idea, while, from the character of the language, and the extreme brevity of the record, the treatment of even these few subjects must have been of a vague and indefinite character. Traces of a deeper knowledge there might be, but they would not lie upon the surface. They must be carefully sought ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... on the campus at Hillton Academy. The elder and larger of the two was a rather coarse-looking youth of seventeen. His name was Bartlett Cloud, shortened by his acquaintances to "Bart" for the sake of that brevity beloved of the schoolboy. His companion, Wallace Clausen, was a handsome though rather frail-looking boy, a year his junior. The two were ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... influence of schooling. Our uneducated adults of even "superior adult" intelligence often fail, while about two thirds of high-school pupils succeed. The unschooled adults have a marked tendency either to give a summary which is inadequate because of its extreme brevity, or else to give a criticism of the thought which the ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... "The brevity of our acquaintance would hardly warrant my assuming the office of adviser," replied ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... it is connected with a great many of those acts of magnanimous politeness, of a kind of dramatic delicacy, which lie on the dim borderland between morality and art. "Charles II.," said Thackeray, with unerring brevity, "was a rascal, but not a snob." Unlike George IV. he was a gentleman, and a gentleman is a man who obeys strange statutes, not to be found in any moral text-book, and practises strange virtues nameless from ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... with Charles of Orleans, and the difference between two ages and two literatures is illustrated in a few poems of thirteen lines. Something, certainly, has been retained of the old movement; the refrain falls in time like a well-played bass; and the very brevity of the thing, by hampering and restraining the greater fecundity of the modern mind, assists the imitation. But de Banville's poems are full of form and colour; they smack racily of modern life, and own small kindred with the verse of other days, when it seems as if men walked by twilight, seeing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... far from right as such a distribution of mile-stones would be to the overworked prads. The great fault of modern poetasters arises from their extreme love of spinning out an infinite deal of nothing. Now, as "brevity is the soul of wit," their productions can be looked upon as little else than phantasmagorial skeletons, ridiculous from their extreme extenuation, and in appearance more peculiarly empty, from the circumstance of their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... question whether—on theological grounds—man has a right to kill these creatures, even though they be rats. But he soars into such altitudes of rhetorical theology, that we dare not follow him. He dismisses, in the same paragraph, several remedies for rats, with a brevity almost savoring of contempt; gliding gracefully from theology to arsenic and other poisons, he returns, with a gush of enthusiasm, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... preface, and in literary undress, without a superfluous word, without the joints and bands of structure; they say it in brief, rapid sentences, which come down, sentence after sentence, like the strokes of a great hammer. No wonder that in their disdainful brevity they seem rugged and abrupt, "and do not seem to end, but fall." But with their truth and piercingness and delicacy of observation, their roughness gives a kind of flavour which no elaboration could give. It is none the less that their wisdom is ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... principally in private. But there are friends whom this business intimately concerns, and as they have already undertaken it, we will leave the matter with them and proceed to cite one or two instances disclosing the aspiration after sovereignty. Passing by many cases for the sake of brevity, we have that of one Francis Doughty, an English minister, and of Arnoldus van Herdenberch, a free merchant. But as both these cases appear likely to come before Their High Mightinesses at full length, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... card-table bent their heads over the crumpled piece of note-paper spread out before them. Ross smoothed out its edges with his big hand, and the words became distinct enough; the very brevity of the message was touched with sensationalism. It ran: 'I am your brother. Save me!' and there was not another vestige of ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... the portrait in over-multiplicity of lines and strokes. Here more than anywhere else Miss Martineau shows the true quality of the writer, the true mark of literature, the sense of proportion, the modulated sentence, the compact and suggestive phrase. There is a happy precision, a pithy brevity, a condensed argumentativeness. And this literary skill is made more telling by the writer's own evident interest and sincerity about the real lives and characters of the various conspicuous people with whom she deals. It may be said that she has no subtle insight into the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... flirtable material which had yet come to her hand. It would have been her ideal to have the young men stay till past midnight, and her father come down-stairs in his stocking-feet and tell them it was time to go. But they made a visit of decorous brevity, and Kendricks did not come again. She met him afterward, once, as she was crossing the pavement in Union Square to get into her coupe, and made the most of him; but it was necessarily very little, and so he passed out ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... king's papers they found an envelope addressed to Kathlyn. It was in grandiloquent English. Brevity of speech is unknown to the East Indian. Kathlyn read it with frowning eyes. She gave it to her father to read; and it hurt her to note the way his eyes took fire at the contents of that letter. The filigree basket of gold and gems; the trinkets for which he had risked ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Beneath "What is the first consideration of a guide?" he had written in unmistakable brevity: "HAM." Beneath "What is the second consideration of a guide?" in a clear, legible hand ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... which we are now concerned the first remark was made by the clock, who stated with a clarity only equalled by his brevity that it was one. An hour later he would probably be twice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... king our sovereign. [82] Will your Grace look favorably upon my great desire to serve you, of which I shall give a better proof, if God permit me to return to this port. Will your Grace also pardon my brevity, since the fault lies in the short time at my present disposal. Moreover, since no man knows what time may bring, I beg your Grace to keep the matter secret, for on considering it well, it seems ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... same.— Mowbray's impatience to run from a dying Belton to a too-lively Lovelace. Mowbray abuses Mr. Belton's servant in the language of a rake of the common class. Reflection on the brevity of life. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... despatched by messenger to Pine Street; and if Mr. Screw had felt himself injured before, he was on the verge of desperation when he read Claudius's polemic. He repeated to himself the several sentences, which seemed to breathe war and carnage in their trenchant brevity; and he thought that even if he had been guilty of any breach of trust, he could hardly have felt worse. He ran his fingers through his thick yellow-gray hair, and hooked his legs in and out of each other as he sat, and bullied his clerks within an inch ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... by the saying that 'brevity is the soul of wit,'—the thing that keeps it alive. A good joke prolonged degenerates into teasing; and a merry jest with explanations becomes funereal. When a man repeats the point of his story it is already ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... obsolete and ambiguous, if not unmeaning: we are compelled to say that "Rome maintained friendly relations with the Aetolians," etc., using four words to do the work of one. I have tried to preserve the pithy brevity of the Italian so far as was consistent with an absolute fidelity to the sense. If the result be an occasional asperity I can only hope that the reader, in his eagerness to reach the author's meaning, may overlook the roughness of the ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... as I have above related. In that work he very roundly asserts, That he is not only now alive, but was likewise alive upon that very 29th of March, when I had foretold he should die. This is the subject of the present controversy between us; which I design to handle with all brevity, perspicuity, and calmness: In this dispute, I am sensible the eyes not only of England, but of all Europe, will be upon us; and the learned in every country will, I doubt not, take part on that side, where they find most appearance ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... an abhorrence of redundance and irrelevance; not only an economist of words, but also an economist of syllables, choosing always the fewer, and losing nothing of force or precision by that choice. He had what was not less than a passion for brevity. "What," he was asked, "makes a journalist?" and he replied: "A nose for news." But with him the news had to be sifted, verified, and reduced to an essence, not inflated, distorted and garnished with all the verbal spoils of the reporter's ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... dear bairnie," and all the Queen's consummate art could not repress the smile of gladness and the movement of eager joy with which she held out her hand for it, so that Richard regretted its extreme brevity and unsatisfying nature, and Mary, recollecting herself in a second, added, smiling at Sadler, "Mr. Talbot knows how a poor prisoner must love the pretty playfellows that are lent to ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... replied the countess with contemptuous brevity. "But I should be satisfied if the twins—and this agrees with my first wish should grow up honest men. If you should pay me the honour of a visit during the next few days, Sir Seitz, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... produce any thing so beautiful, and yet there is nothing in it that shocks your sight. True, then, the hand of wit appears in repartee, as it must in all kinds of verse. When, with the quiet and poignant brevity of it, there mingles the cadency and sweetness of verse—"the soul of the hearer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... quotations from SS. Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Chrysostom. These quotations are utterly irrelevant; but, if seen in the context, they will tend to prove, instead of disproving, the Catholic doctrine of Confession. For the sake of brevity I shall cite only a few passages from the Fathers referred to. These citations I take, almost at random, from the copious writings of these Fathers on Confession. From these extracts you can judge of the sentiments of all the Fathers on the subject of Confession. "Ab ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... at the credo of the mercenary spirit. It is characterized by brevity. For the mercenary man, the law and the prophets are contained in this one axiom: With money you can get anything. From a surface view of our social life, nothing seems more evident. "The sinews of ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... leaped and clapped their hands. Once in awhile a plume of spray was blown over the bow, and the delicate stomach recoiled upon itself suggestively; but the deliciousness of the air in the open sea and the brevity of the cruise—we were but five or six hours outside—kept us in a state of intense delight. Presently we ran back into the maze of fiords and land-locked lakes, and resumed the same old round of ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... he commanded, testily. He sat down at his desk and turned toward the door an expression that reminded callers of the value of time and the brevity of life. Mr. Harrington, who had followed the boy through the door with conviction of these two things, dropped into a chair beside the editor's desk and surveyed Maxwell with a smile so young, so trustful, and withal so engaging, ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... 1. Brevity. The text, other than appended national documents and the census of 1880, makes but 303 pages; and is within the most limited period allowable for instruction in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... of his youthful affections on Lieutenant Brandis—henceforward to be called 'Coppy' for the sake of brevity—Wee Willie Winkie was destined to behold strange things and far beyond ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... queries would have admitted further remarks, but I wish to set an example of obedience to the recent editorial injunction on brevity. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... point in the most favourable cases that I could anticipate, I proceeded to examine other bodies amongst solids, liquids, and gases. These results I shall give with all convenient brevity. ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... of its symbolism. To do this, with any expectation of rendering justice to the subject, it is evident that I shall have to take my point of departure at a very remote era. I shall, however, review the early and antecedent history of the institution with as much brevity as a distinct understanding ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... hang a series of dirty cargoes on his newest skipper, for the dual purpose of teaching Matt Peasley his place and discovering whether he was worthy of it, grinned evilly when he received that two-word message; and, not to be out-done in brevity, he dictated ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... Latin languages. Wagner's poetry is eloquent of his affection for the German language, and there is a heartiness and candour in his treatment of it which are scarcely to be met with in any other German writer, save perhaps Goethe. Forcibleness of diction, daring brevity, power and variety in rhythm, a remarkable wealth of strong and striking words, simplicity in construction, an almost unique inventive faculty in regard to fluctuations of feeling and presentiment, and therewithal a perfectly pure and overflowing stream of colloquialisms—these ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... reasoning; sometimes he soars in mystical exaltation; sometimes he writes with a simplicity level to the common mind, and in connection with that which lies at hand; sometimes, with the most comprehensive brevity. Besides these his philosophico-religious works are of great value, De Pace Fidei, De Cribratione Alchorani. Liberal Catholics reverence him as one of the deepest thinkers of the Church; but the fame of Giordano Bruno, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... briefly, and her very brevity and lack of embroidering details made the story stand out with stark realism. It was such a story of courage, and pride, and indomitable will, and sheer pluck as can only be found among ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... now with as much brevity as possible the events which led to the crisis of Douglas' life. With the Compromises of 1850 the Whig party began its rapid decline. The South did not like the Whig tariff. The Whig attitude on the slavery question was too ambiguous ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... of those who have spoken English, has always inclined rather to brevity than to melody; contraction and elision of the ancient terminations of words, constitute no small part of the change which has taken place, or of the difference which perhaps always existed between the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that remains of the senses is that of smelling, the diminution of which in old men, he describes with equal elegance and brevity in this manner: the almond tree shall flower. By which words he seems to mean, that old people, as if they lived in a perpetual winter, no longer perceive the agreeable odors exhaling from plants and flowers in the spring and summer seasons. That this tree flowers ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... In the meantime other guests had preceded them, and among them was a man whose bearing and raiment proclaimed the creature of fashion. Not only were his trousers of the latest narrow design, but they were of sufficient modish brevity half to conceal and half to reveal a pair of gossamer silk socks, which in their turn were incased by patent-leather, low-cut shoes. The latter exhibited the square knobbiness that only fashion artists can impart to the footgear of their models, while the broad laces that held them ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... wonder why they were so rarely put forth. A great deal of what passes in London for humor is mere cynicism, and he hated cynicism so heartily as to dislike even humor when it had a touch of cynical flavor. Wit he enjoyed, but did not produce. The turn of his mind was not to brevity and point and condensation. He sometimes struck off a telling phrase, but never polished an epigram. His conversation was luminous rather than sparkling; you were interested and instructed while you listened, but the words seldom dwelt in ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... be the mistress of mortals, and the mistress of the universe, reflect then on the brevity of life. "I have been, and that is all," said Saladin the Great, who was conqueror of the East. The longest liver had but a handful of days, and life itself is but a circle, always beginning ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... with like brevity, then rode on to Tombstone. Those who had banked on the big issue wherein Breckenbridge would smell the other man's powder-smoke were disappointed. And there were some among them who shook their heads when the young fellow's name was mentioned, ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... first consideration.* It is best, at all events for beginners, not to aim so much at being brief, or forcible, as at being perfectly clear. Horace says, "While I take pains to be brief, I fall into obscurity," and it may easily be seen that several of the rules for brevity interfere with ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... equal brevity, and he led the way straight across the street. There was no danger of being seen. All the life of the town was drawn to a center about the hotel. Lights were flashing behind its windows, men were constantly pounding across the veranda, running in and out. Bull ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... poet, wrote only a few poems, but among them is this short dirge which keeps his name alive in popular memory. It was probably in honor of his countrymen who fell at Fontenoy in 1745, the year before its composition. Its austere brevity, its well-known personifications, its freedom from fulsome expressions, place it very ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... truthful answers. "Well, there's a great deal of it, you know," he remarked. I bowed. I knew, having written it. "Well, call in a week's time." I retired, silently blessing the British Army Officer for his blunt courtesy, his admirable brevity and ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of his career are easy to trace and must be set down here with brevity. A minister's son, and descended from a very old and distinguished family, he was born at Elmwood in Cambridge in 1819. After a somewhat turbulent course, he was graduated from Harvard in 1838, the year of Emerson's "Divinity School ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... accept the situation, Judge Henderson," answered John, with a brevity that did not escape the keen old man. He hesitated a moment, and then said shortly, "Very well,—we'll try ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... these Free churches, and listened to a sermon from Dr. Lindsay, a comfortable-looking professor in some new theological school. It was quite common-place, though not so long as the Scotch ministers are in the habit of giving; for excessive brevity is by no means their besetting infirmity. At the close of the exercises, he announced that a third service would be held in the evening. "The subject," continued he, "will be the thoughts and exercises of Jonah ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... a life spent in the gayest circles, preserve the spirit of a nun. But on this point he was soon undeceived, for when his own language had become warmer than that of friendship, he had been met by an iciness of manner and a brevity of speech which had shown him that there was one woman at least in his dominions who had a higher respect for herself than for him. And perhaps it was better so. The placid pleasures of friendship were very soothing after the storms of passion. To sit in her room every ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... alliance [v.03 p.0023] comprising a joint Austro-Hungarian tariff as a basis for the negotiation of new commercial treaties with Germany, Italy and other states. This arrangement, which for the sake of brevity will henceforth be referred to as the Szell-Koerber Compact, was destined to play an important part in the history of the next few years, though it was never fully ratified by either parliament and was ultimately discarded. Its conclusion ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... others inveigh against all forms as subversive of Christian liberty, are we not justifiable in retaining what we have till you agree in producing something better? And as to the multiplicity of our institutions, even with our fearful example to teach you brevity and simplicity, you have not found the drawing up of the constitution of a church so simple a thing. The Directory which was fashioned by your divines took almost a day to read over; and it is with ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Edwards, provokingly leaves out his method of teaching, "for the sake of brevity," and from his own diary little is to be gathered but accounts of his state of feeling through endless journeyings and terrible prostrations of strength. He was always travelling about—now to the Susquehanna, now back to ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... disquieting—for Mrs. Toplady had no personal attachments which could for a moment disturb her pulse, and her financial security stood on the firmest attainable basis. Such letters as demanded a reply, she answered at once, and with brevity which in her hands had become an art. Appeals for money, public or private, she carefully considered, responding with a cheque only when she saw some distinct advantage—such as prestige or influence—to be gained by the pecuniary sacrifice. Another touch on the button, and there ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... necessary to condense the story of Napoleon's life in some parts, I have chosen to treat with special brevity the years 1809-11, which may be called the constans aetas of his career, in order to have more space for the decisive events that followed; but even in these less eventful years I have striven to show how his Continental System was setting at work mighty economic forces ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... in proportion as they are confined to one thing, in accordance with those words of the Psalmist[228]: One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after. Whence it would seem to follow that our prayers are acceptable to God just in proportion to their brevity. ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... though his actual relations with Morag were of the Platonic kind, he was persuaded to a retractation, entitled the "Disparagement of Morag," which is sometimes recited as a companion piece to the present. The consideration of brevity must plead our apology with the Celtic readers for omitting many stanzas of the best modern ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... drunk with enthusiasm, Mrs. Bagnet returns thanks in a neat address of corresponding brevity. This model composition is limited to the three words "And wishing yours!" which the old girl follows up with a nod at everybody in succession and a well-regulated swig of the mixture. This she again follows up, on the present occasion, by the wholly ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... survey—sincere, but apt to become one-sided, or even fanatical. It is one of those subjective and partial ideals, based on vivid, because limited, apprehension of the truth of one aspect of experience (in this case, of the beauty of the world and the brevity of man's life there) which it may be said to be the special vocation of the young to express. In the school of Cyrene, in that comparatively fresh Greek world, we see this philosophy where it is least blase, as we say; in its most pleasant, its blithest and yet perhaps ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... suppose that the two opposite ends of the galvanic apparatus are joined by a metal wire. This I shall always call the conductor for the sake of brevity. Place a rectilinear piece of this conductor in a horizontal position over an ordinary magnetic needle so that it is parallel to it. The magnetic needle will be set in motion and will deviate towards the west under that part of the conductor which comes from the negative pole of the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... shrugged his shoulders. "Very well," he said with a peculiar smile, "I will write to her. Now, Mr. Harcourt," he continued with a sudden business brevity, "if you please, we'll drop this affair and attend to the matter for which I just summoned you. Since yesterday an important contract for which I have been waiting is concluded, and its performance will take me East at once. I have made arrangements that you ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... point to be noted is the impression of open air given by nearly all the branches of this romance, in spite of the brevity of the descriptions. We are in the fields, by the hedges, following the roads and the footpaths; the moors are covered with heather; the rocks are crowned by oaken copse, the roads are lined with hawthorn, cabbages display in the gardens the heavy mass of their ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... and brevity which suited the minister and the man, Godfrey told his business, and Lord Oldborough, with laconic decision, equally pleasing to the young soldier, replied, "that if it was possible, the thing should be done ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... books on this subject have been published lately, but this is unquestionably the best that we have ever seen Its superiority is in the clearness, and brevity, and the practical directness of the receipts; they are easily understood and followed. The book looks like what it is, the ripe fruit of many years' successful practice. The establishment of Mrs. Widdifield ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... years. A great mass of testimony establishing this position is at hand and might be presented, but narrow space, little time, the patience of readers, and the importance of speedy publication, counsel brevity. Let the following proofs suffice. First, a few dates as ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Korsackoff made a much greater swell than the Ingodah, and those who caught its effects were well moistened. We landed from, the steamer's boat and ascended the bank to the village. Several fat old Manjours eyed us closely and answered with great brevity our various questions. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Among them was a saintly woman, who had been a member for half a century of Pilgrim Church. We had one man of means—Philo Sherman Bennett, the friend of Mr. Bryan. The opening meeting was in the Hyperion Theatre. The creed was simple, and brevity itself: "This church is a self-governing community for the worship of God and the service of man." A Jewish Rabbi read the Scriptures, a Universalist minister made an address, and a judge of the city led in ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... any inspiring angle which would most attract the passing eye. Even before the War, shapely legs, feet and ankles had begun to play an increasingly interesting part in the scheme of the Universe—as a result of the brevity of skirts and the prevalence of cabaret dancing. During the War, as a consequence of the War Work done in such centres of activity as the slice of a house in Mayfair, these attractive members were allowed opportunities such as the world had ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... write out the whole Syllogism, putting the symbol &there4[*] for "therefore", and omitting "Cakes", for the sake of brevity, at the end of ...
— The Game of Logic • Lewis Carroll
... Davidge could do. But the agony of the brevity of existence seized them both by the hearts, and their hearts throbbed and bled like birds crushed in the claws of hawks. Their hearts had such capabilities of joy, such songs in them, such love and longing, such delight in beauty—and ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... engaged in other work, but for forty years he never allowed anything to shorten the time allotted to the Bible work. "You, madam," he wrote in 1797 to a lady as to many a correspondent, "will excuse my brevity when I inform you that all my time for writting letters is stolen from the work of transcribing the Scriptures ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... beginning of the new year the family moved up to London. The next entry, dated from the Admiralty, expressive in its brevity, runs: "A surprising number of visitors, one very alarming, no less than Lord John—and I saw him." Then, a week later, on February 8: "The agitation of last Monday over again.... After all, perhaps he only wished to show that he is friendly still. It is ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... this statement now in order not to be misunderstood when later I may say that God must be this or that. Though I shall do so for the sake of brevity it will always be in the sense that, if God is what we have inferred from His manifestations, He must be this or that. In other words, having to some degree worked my own way out of fear I must tell how I came to feel that I know the Unknowable, ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... Mulligan's door he knew all of the New World that young Stevens had patiently accumulated in four years. It was a stirring story, that account of the rising impatience of the British colonies, and Stevens told it with animation and brevity. Alexander became so interested that he forgot his personal mission, but he would not subscribe to his friend's opinion that the Colonials were ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... pockets for a perpetuity, I was privileged on a recent evening to escort the ALLBUTT-INNETT ladies to the Empire of India Exhibition, upon which I shall now pronounce the opinion of an expert, though space forbids me to describe its multitudinous marvels, save with the brevity of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... ears. In several passages, he defends his use of words taken from the Italian and Spanish languages. He handled Latin as a living, not as a dead language, and his style is vigorous, terse, vitalised. He cultivated brevity and was chary of lengthy excursions into the classics in search of comparisons and sanctions. His letters frequently show signs of the haste in which they were composed: sometimes the messenger who was to carry them to Rome, was waiting, booted and spurred, in the ante-chamber. Juan Vergara, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... your heads, O ye gates! and the King of Glory shall come in.' And once more, to express the lingering reluctance, ignorance not yet dispelled, suspicion and unwilling surrender, the dramatic question is repeated, 'Who is this King of Glory?' The answer is sharp and authoritative in its brevity, and we may fancy it shouted with a full-throated burst—'The Lord of Hosts,' who, as Captain, commands all the embattled energies of earth and heaven conceived as a disciplined army. That great name, like a charge of dynamite, bursts the gates of brass asunder, and with triumphant music the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... down; and yonder, once more, a steep escarpment leads us down into a broad lowland of the Weald. The causes which have led to this arrangement of surface and conformation must now be considered with necessary brevity. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... art, a little anxious lest any sustained production from his pen might contain blunders that would too staringly remind her of his scant learning. He could turn off a business communication about steers or stock cars, or any other of the subjects involved in his profession, with a brevity and a clearness that led the Judge to confide three-quarters of such correspondence to his foreman. "Write to the 76 outfit," the Judge would say, "and tell them that my wagon cannot start for the round-up until," etc.; or "Write to Cheyenne and say ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... baron (the man who had to be kneaded) the last syllable of whose name was vitch, the first five evading me in a perpetual chase up and down the alphabet. For brevity's sake, I'll call him Umovitch. The French valet's master was a Viennese gentleman of twenty-six or eight (I heard), but who looked forty. I found myself wondering how dear, puritanic, little Elsie Hazzard could have fallen in with ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... examen, wherein nothing has been exaggerated; no fact produced which cannot be proved, and none which has been produced in any wise forced or strained, while thousands have, for brevity, been omitted; after so candid a discussion in all respects; what slave so passive, what bigot so blind, what enthusiast so headlong, what politician so hardened, as to stand up in defence of a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... reform behind our beloved guns and noted the ridiculous brevity of our line—as we sank from sheer fatigue, and tried to moderate the terrific thumping of our hearts—as we caught our breath to ask who had seen such-and-such a comrade, and laughed hysterically at the reply—there ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... For the sake of brevity this may be called the "economic boycott," but it is really very much more than simply economic pressure. It is a common habit in political discussions to confuse very different things, to which the same name is given, and the term "economic boycott" is being used to cover three ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... reason of both the shortness of the duration of their earthly course and the disproportion between their immortal part and the material things amongst which they dwell, Peter is thinking of something very different from either the brevity of earthly life or the infinite necessities of an immortal spirit when he calls his Christian brethren strangers. Not because we are men, not because we are to die soon, and the world is to outlast us; not because other people will ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... as you can, pray," cried Dieppe; but the candle burnt steadily still, and brevity was the last thing that ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... subsequent alterations, few will be disposed to question: the system, in its present state, appears to me admirably qualified to attain the object in view; and such seems the general character of the French Constitutional Charter, which unites two excellent qualities, great clearness and great brevity. The whole is comprised in seventy-four short articles; and, that no Frenchman may plead ignorance of his rights or his duties, it is usually found prefixed to the almanacks. Some persons might, indeed, be inclined to deem this station as ominous; for, since the revolution began, the frame of ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... as taciturn as his friend Bache was garrulous. Such remarks as he made were brief, but they were as galling as lashes, as cutting as sabre-strokes. At the same time his ideas and theories remained somewhat obscure, partly by reason of this brevity of his, and partly on account of the difficulty he experienced in expressing himself in French. He was from over yonder, from some far-away land—Russia, Poland, Austria or Germany, nobody exactly knew; and it mattered little, for he certainly acknowledged ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Belmont Factory—for the light of that busy wax-candle making. Turn we now to the Night-Light Factory, though our notice of this must be brief; but brevity befits those ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... told in a sentence. I received a note from her as you are aware. Its earnest brevity forewarned me that the call involved something of serious import; and I was not mistaken in this conclusion. On calling, and asking for Mrs. Dewey, I noticed an air of irresolution about the servant. 'Mrs. Dewey is not well,' she said, 'and I hardly ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... Londres (Amsterdam), 1772. (Thomas Hobbes.) Reprinted in a French Edition of Hobbes' works by Holbach and Sorbire, 1787. Appeared first in English in 1640, omitted in a Latin Edition of Hobbes printed in Amsterdam. In spite of its brevity, Holbach considered this one of Hobbes' most ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... I, and mirth shall ensue in course. What! we have not yet above three half-pints a man to answer for. Brevity is the soul of drinking, as of wit. Despatch, I ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... brevity characteristic of him when hurried. "Would have been here sooner, but that plagued unit had to ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... office,—not when she tramples down the weed, or tears up the bramble,—but when she strips the strangling ivy from the oak, or cuts out the canker from the rose. The faults of the fable we have already noticed at sufficient length. Those of the execution we shall now endeavour to enumerate with greater brevity. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... use could a gentleman of Edward III's or Richard II's day have put the acquirements of a "Clerk of Oxenford" in Aristotelian logic, supplemented perhaps by a knowledge of Priscian, and the rhetorical works of Cicero? Chaucer's scholar, however much his learned modesty of manner and sententious brevity of speech may commend him to our sympathy and taste, is a man wholly out of the world in which he lives, though a dependent on its charity even for the means with which to purchase more of his beloved books. Probably no trustworthier conclusions as to the literary learning and studies ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... a matter of three hours this morning," replied Kit— not coolly, for nobody was cool in his den, but with a brevity which provoked ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... each other consciously, in acknowledgment of a risk which it needed a brave man to run. Angus, the head of the existing branch of the Douglas family, who had already risen into much of the power and importance of his forfeited kinsman, answered with equally grim brevity "I'se bell the cat." But while he spoke, the general enemy, mad with arrogance and self-confidence, and not believing in any power or boldness which could stop him in his career, forestalled the necessity. He came to the kirk, where no doubt he had ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... that the two differ only in this, that I have there omitted simple Existence. Nothing simply exists, unrelated either in Nature or in knowledge. Such a proposition as The bison exists may, no doubt, be used in Logic (subject to interpretation) for the sake of custom or for the sake of brevity; but it means that some specimens are still to be found in N. America, or ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the poor devil who had flavoured his dry bread with the smoke of the roast, and the judgment of Seyny John, truly worthy of Solomon? It comes from the Cento Novelle Antiche, rewritten from tales older than Boccaccio, and moreover of an extreme brevity and dryness. They are only the framework, the notes, the skeleton of tales. The subject is often wonderful, but nothing is made of it: it is left unshaped. Rabelais wrote a version of one, the ninth. The scene takes place, not ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... questionable made instantly and perfectly plain to us, which does the mischief—that, and the imagination which never can forecast any relief or surcease of pain, and pays no heed whatever to the astounding brevity, the unutterable rapidity of ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... continue to supply posterity, with a very vast and various body of authentic history. For even the briefest epistle in the ordinary chirography is dangerous. There is scarce any style so compressed that superfluous words may not be detected in it. A severe critic might curtail that famous brevity of Caesar's by two thirds, drawing his pen through the supererogatory veni and vidi. Perhaps, after all, the surest footing of hope is to be found in the rapidly increasing tendency to demand less and less of qualification in ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... introduction. It is modest, and at the same time replete with the dignity of conscious worth. It is drawn out to considerable length, yet it is all so pertinent and tasteful, that we would not spare a sentence or a word. With all the thoughtful and sententious brevity of the exordiums of Sallust, it has far more of natural ease ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... of lofty contempt passed over the brow and lip of Agesilaus. But with national self-command, he replied gravely, and with equal laconic brevity, "If Pausanias hath committed a trivial error that a fine can expiate, so be it. But talk not of fines till ye acquit him of all ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton |
