"Conciseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... familiar objects that I had so often buoyantly beheld,—deserted encampments, cross-roads, rills, farm-houses, fields, and at last came to Daker's. I called out to them, and explained my woful circumstances with rueful conciseness. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... two volumes are full of interest for those who care for psychological studies expressed in verse. What the vehicle of verse does for them is to secure conciseness and suggestiveness in the rendering of remote, daring, and unexpected turns of thought and feeling, and especially of conscience. Yet the poems themselves cannot be called concise. Their subjects are not large enough, nor indeed agreeable ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... metropolitan of Kieff (beginning in 1051), and Luka Zhidyata, appointed bishop of Novgorod in 1036. The latter's "Exhortation to the Brethren" has come down to us, and is noteworthy for the simplicity of its language, and its conciseness of form. From Ilarion we have, "a Word Concerning the Law" (meaning, the Law of God), which deals with the opposing character of Judaism and Christianity. It proves not only that he was a cultivated man, capable of expressing himself ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... a man as Pope was when he wrote it, is wonderful: unless we adopt the supposition, that most men of genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching others what they themselves have learned under twenty. The conciseness and felicity of the expression are equally remarkable. Thus in reasoning on the variety of men's opinion, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... of attempting to illustrate it by stories such as those of Clive and Hastings which had been told by writers with whom competition was out of the question. Brevity, therefore, is studied; and what may seem baldness will be found to be a conciseness, on which ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... devoted all his fortune to the encouragement of scientific discovery and the reward of endeavors to diminish standing armies and the chances of war, to promote fraternity among nations, and the settlement of international disputes by peace congresses. His will, in its very conciseness and unsophisticated simplicity, is characteristic of the man. It is dated Nov. 27, 1895, and he died a year afterwards, on Dec. 10, 1896, leaving a fortune of $10,000,000. After instituting several small legacies, ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... that Scott had read the authors of the eighteenth century and acquiesced in the conventional judgments upon them. It is seldom in his brief and casual comments that Scott is particularly interesting as a critic, except when he is speaking of living writers, for he lacked the gift of conciseness. When he has a large canvas he is at his best, and this he has in the principal works described in this chapter:—The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, the Works of Dryden, the Works of Swift, and the Lives ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... merit of compactness and conciseness. He is, on the contrary, diffuse and repetitious. But a thoroughly evangelical spirit pervades the present epistle, and it is, moreover, characterized by a noble fervor and simplicity. "It evinces the calm ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... utterances we have the ensuing:—'A strain of patriotism pure, ardent, and even sublime.... Versification combining conciseness and strength with a considerable degree of harmony.... Both talent and genius.... Some passages of it, and those not a few, are of the first order of the pathetic and descriptive.' (3) A Syrian Tale. Of this book I have failed to find any trace in the Quarterly Review, or in the Catalogue ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... contempt of which this young man had been guilty. He deplored the condition of the law in England, which allowed persons to get married on the strength of false statements. He wound up his lecture, which had a conciseness and pertinence about it not often found in lectures, by the brief announcement that he should forthwith make an order committing Mr. John Hanbury to ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... evening services. Whatever the reason for this custom may have been is immaterial and unimportant; but what is of importance is that, by this excellent practice, a whole body of moral dicta—each one summing up with remarkable conciseness a life's experience and philosophy, each one breathing the spirit of piety, saintliness, justice, and love for humanity—has sunk deeply into the innermost heart and consciousness of the Jewish people, exerting such ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... and I adopted this course the more willingly because there are several other points dwelt upon in that treatise which it seems desirable for me to consider in the present one, although, for the sake of conciseness, I abstained from discussing them in my previous essay. With these two objects in view, therefore, I undertook ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... Americans, who up to this time had usually been the worsted party. But now the fortunes of war were beginning to turn in our favor. Perry had won his brilliant little naval victory over the English fleet on Lake Erie, and had written to the Secretary of the Navy with Caesar-like conciseness: "We have met the enemy, and they are ours!" By land, too, the British had been met and beaten back at every point, till now they were without a foothold on ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... observation of matters of fact; we may add that it is final, it goes as far as it can possibly go, and contains the maximum of truth in the minimum of verbiage. If we take some of the most cynical and savage maxims of La Rochefoucauld we may see that conciseness could proceed no further: for instance, "Virtue is a rouge that women add to their beauty"; or "Pride knows no law and self-love no debt"; or "The pleasure of love is loving." The ingenuity of man has not devised a mode of ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... the social world, natural in expression, fastidious in all things which became part of herself,—in short, like the heath of mingled colors. Her body had the freshness we admire in the unfolding leaf; her spirit the clear conciseness of the aboriginal mind; she was a child by feeling, grave through suffering, the mistress of a household, yet a maiden too. Therefore she charmed artlessly and unconsciously, by her way of sitting down or rising, of throwing in a word or keeping silence. Though habitually collected, watchful ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... nothing to be desired on the score of plainness or conciseness of style. Count Del Ferice had married Maria ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... surprised on finding his name at the foot of the page. He wrote a strong clear handwriting, entirely without adornment of penmanship, close and regular and straight: there was an air of determination about it which was sympathetic, and a conciseness of expression which startled Corona, as though she had heard the man himself speaking ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... Genealogy the utmost conciseness is essential, all details being left for full description elsewhere. All the members of the same family are placed side by side, on the same level, in their order of seniority; and all are connected by lines with one another and with their parents. Successive generations ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... magistrate of the United States of America. All geniuses have weaknesses; Mr. Wading had made a study of the President's, and more than once had lured him into an impasse. The case had been appealed to the Supreme Court, and Mr. Wading, with remarkable conciseness and penetration, reviewed the characteristics of each and every member of that tribunal, all of whom he knew intimately. They were, of course, not subject to "advice," as were some of the gentlemen who sat on our state courts; no sane and self-respecting American ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... letter more than once. She liked it none the less for being disconnected and unbusiness-like. She had seen her Arthur's business letters; models of courteous conciseness. She did not value such compositions. This one she did. She smiled over it, all beaming and blushing; she kissed it, and read it again, and sat with it in ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... cases it would appear as coming from an illiterate person. Pleasure, indeed, has a secret charm; and the things which please seem less tedious. A pleasant and smooth road, tho it be longer, fatigues less than a rugged and disagreeable short cut. I am not so fond of conciseness as not to make room for brightening a narration with proper embellishments. If quite homely and curtailed on all sides, it will be not so much a narration as a poor ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... of foreign travel the object has been to cover a broad field without making a cumbersome volume, to do which, conciseness has necessarily been observed. In previous books the author has described much more in detail some of the countries here briefly spoken of. The volumes referred to are "Due-West; or, Round the World in Ten Months," and "Due-South; or, Cuba Past and Present," which were published by Houghton, Mifflin ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... sketch of 1842 is written; the style of the later Essay (1844) is more finished. It has, however, the air of an uncorrected MS. rather than of a book which has gone through the ordeal of proof sheets. It has not all the force and conciseness of the Origin, but it has a certain freshness which gives it a character of its own. It must be remembered that the Origin was an abstract or condensation of a much bigger book, whereas the Essay of 1844 was an expansion of the sketch of 1842. ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... Anthony's lecture was a decided success, judged either by the number and intelligence of those present or the able manner in which she discussed the salient points pertaining to woman suffrage. She displayed an ability, conciseness and force that must have carried conviction to every impartial listener.... Her visit here has done more to advance the cause of woman suffrage than can now be fully appreciated. She has sown the germ of a movement which can not fail to inoculate our people with a belief in the justice of her ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... defective than might be expected, it will either be assigned to these causes, or to others which may be given in the course of the following remarks: and if these remarks, themselves, be found to be drawn up with more of loose unmethodical freedom than official conciseness, I trust that that feature will rather be regarded in their ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... think on these matters one can scarcely speak too precisely and to the purpose; although I am well aware (for, for my own part, I always wish to act to every one, to you especially, my dearest child, with the greatest consideration) that we must go to work with as much delicacy as conciseness. You know this Captain Clifford,—'t is a brave youth, is it not? Well—nay, never blush so deeply; there is nothing (for in these matters one can't have all one's wishes, one can't have everything) to be ashamed of! Tell ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... most part copied from the American declarations or "bills of rights".[31] All drafts of the French Declaration, from those of the cahiers to the twenty-one proposals before the National Assembly, vary more or less from the original, either in conciseness or in breadth, in cleverness or in awkwardness of expression. But so far as substantial additions are concerned they present only doctrinaire statements of a purely theoretical nature or elaborations, which belong to the realm of political metaphysics. To enter upon them ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... superfluity, the conciseness and simplicity to which the translator is obliged by octosyllabic verse, compensate for the partial loss of that breadth of sweep for which decasyllabic verse gives more room, but of which the translator of Dante does not ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... With equal conciseness and lucidity, in the following pages the eminent British astronomer furnishes important particulars concerning the life of Copernicus; and he gives an account, no less interesting than instructive, of the evolution of the Copernican astronomy in its ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... in the outward demeanour of sporting youth is their amazing gravity, their conciseness of speech, and careworn and moody air. In the smoking-room at the 'Regent,' when Joe Millerson will be setting the whole room in a roar with laughter, you hear young Messrs. Spavin and Cockspur grumbling together ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the addition of a word. Nearly all the collects are also very old, many of them dating back to a period prior to the seventh century. I am acquainted with no prayers that can compare with the collects of the Missal in earnestness and vigor of language, in conciseness of style and unction of piety. It is evident that their authors were men who felt what they said and were filled with the spirit of God, despising "the persuasive words of human wisdom," unlike so many modern prayer-composers whose rounded periods are directed rather to tickle the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... bill was sent up to the house of lords, a long debate arose upon the number of troops voted for the ensuing year. Lord Carteret explained the situation of affairs, in almost every nation of Europe, with great conciseness and precision. He demonstrated the improbability of a rupture between Great Britain and any power against which a land army could be of any service. He examined the domestic circumstances of the nation; and proved ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Dict. quotes W. Hooper's Rational Recreations (1794) as an earlier authority for the use of "concision" in the sense of conciseness.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... this book, on account of the natural and progressive order of the lessons,—of the conciseness and truthfulnes of the descriptive matter,—of the number, correctness, and uniform excellence of the Maps,—from the fact that the book is faithfully revised as often as political changes in our own or other countries require it,—that the pronunciations of the difficult geographical ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... thirteen, he sent her to Paris, to make her way as apprentice in a shop. Two years later he despatched his son, Jerome-Denis, to the same career. When his friends the carriers and those who frequented the inn, asked him what he meant to do with his children, Pere Rogron explained his system with a conciseness which, in view of that of most fathers, had the ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... of announcement is a model of conciseness, and answers the oft-repeated question, "Where shall we go to find ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... PORTRAITS of celebrated men of the fourteenth and two succeeding centuries. The daily view of them animated his mind to compose their eulogiums. These are still curious, both for the facts they preserve, and the happy conciseness with which Jovius delineates a character. He had collected these portraits as others form a collection of natural history; and he pursued in their characters what ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... unspiritual formalism. The end of religious observance is the love of God, but the love of God requires more than feeling; it must impregnate life. Dubnow, in his summary of Jewish history, formulates an epigram, which, like most of its kind, becomes in its conciseness and pointed antithesis a half-truth. "At Jerusalem," he says, "Judaism appeared as a system of practical ceremonies; at Alexandria as a complex of abstract symbols." No doubt it is true that at Jerusalem the practical side of the law was most prominent, but the spiritual exaltation to which ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... gazed intently into his quivering face. "My sister has given birth to a son, and lies at the point of death," she said with her unsparing conciseness, but not harshly. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... of ideas conveyed by monosyllables gives great force and conciseness, but leaves the poet frequently to struggle with the harshness of sound; nevertheless those who are conversant with English poetry will have perceived that this difficulty is not always insuperable. The different accentuation of the old Anglo Saxon words, with those adopted from other ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... we are studying; and, secondly, because it shows that at this period serious reading, such as Cicero, Quintilian, and the Fathers of the Church, formed the mental pabulum of the people. In our days the beauty of a sentence is less sought after than its clearness and conciseness. ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... "every word seems to have been carefully weighed; and it would be hard to omit or change anything without injuring the meaning which Bacon intended to convey." Severe as it is, it is instinct with enthusiasm, sometimes with passion. The Latin in which it is written answers to it; it has the conciseness, the breadth, the lordliness of a great ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... surely the double merit of conciseness and melody; well, for all that, they were disgustingly offensive to one true friend of the captain, viz., to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... like other compositions of this kind, must rest chiefly on their moral Justness, Utility, Simplicity, and Conciseness, rather than on poetic Excellence: though neither in form nor coloring are they deficient of that compos'd and grave Beauty which the Nature of the ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... Doc. New edition of a standard text-book which presents the principles of harmony with conciseness ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... having given his consent, the young man proceeded to Cologne for his course of theology and civil and canon law. No sooner did he appear in the lecture rooms than he attracted universal attention. It was not merely the clearness and conciseness of his reasoning, nor altogether the humility of his bearing, but perhaps the mingled charm of each that roused the interest of professors and students alike. That interest led them to watch him closely, and they not only noticed that he seemed altogether unconscious of the plaudits which ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... Lucien Bonaparte, the "London Times" devoted a full column. I never heard any one who had used it speak of it except with admiration. The modest Friend may be surprised to find himself at full length in my pages, but those who know the little miracle of typography, its conciseness, completeness, arrangement, will not wonder that I was gratified to see the author, who sent it to me, and who has written me most interesting letters on the local antiquities of Gloucester and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of Speeches. By CHARLES HARTLEY. Contents: Introduction, Power of Art, Various Kinds of Oratory, Prepared Speech, Constructing a Speech, Short Speeches, Command of Language, Reading and Thinking, Style, Hasty Composition, Forming a Style, Copiousness and Conciseness, Diction or Language, Purity and Propriety, Misapplied Words, Monosyllables, Specific Terms, Variety of Language, Too Great Care about Words, Epithets, Precision, Synonymes, Perspicuity, Long and Short Sentences, Tropes ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... chief object being to convey his entire meaning, I have unhesitatingly rendered the French very freely sometimes, and again very literally. Style has thus suffered for the sake of clearness and brevity, necessary to secure and retain the attention of readers of this class of books. This same conciseness has also been imposed on our author by the inherent dryness and minuteness of his faithful inquiry into hundreds of figures, tables showing the condition of banks at the time of various panics, etc., etc., essential to his demonstration. ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... on, briefly and with the conciseness of the legal mind, to tell of A. Rodgers Warren, his business and his estate. He had been a broker with a seat ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... period after the time of which the history is required. The historians of this day write of the past; and the historian of our present civil war is not yet born, who shall emulate the completeness and conciseness of Irving's Columbus, or Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, or Motley's Dutch Republic. Nor can we expect an early solution to the 'Fremont question,' which shall be full and satisfactory, though the length ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... many and great; his conciseness, repression of personal feeling, love of accuracy, careful research, unwillingness to praise overmuch and his total absence of preconceived opinion testify to an honesty of outlook rare in classical historians. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... tract has aimed at conciseness, so far as the nature of the argument would allow, not employing "those arts by which a big book is made." But if the smallness of the work does not seem to accord with the magnitude of the subject, it is not to be inferred that the sentiments have been ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... jungles, out upon the endless, sparsely settled pampas, and eventually into the remote village that witnessed the passing every second day of a primitive and far from dependable railway train, was presented with agreeable simplicity and conciseness. He passed briefly over what might have been expanded into grave experiences, and at last came, so to speak, to the gates of the city, unharmed, resolute and full of the ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... long, elegantly slim leg over the other, "I've been dining with the Kennedy family," he said, with a neat and significant conciseness. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... philosophic systems, on the Vedic sacrifices, on domestic ceremonies, on sacred law, on grammar, and on metres. The two Mima/m/sa-sutras occupy, however, an altogether exceptional position in point of style. All Sutras aim at conciseness; that is clearly the reason to which this whole species of literary composition owes its existence. This their aim they reach by the rigid exclusion of all words which can possibly be spared, by the careful avoidance of all unnecessary repetitions, and, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... his visitor renewed expressions of flattery, he added with tearful sighs, imparting to his words a telegraphic conciseness, "Ah, Spain! Beautiful land, excellent country, nation of gentlemen!... My forefathers came from there, from a place ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of an all-embracing unity within and behind the seeming manifoldness of life forms the ground rhythm of all inspired literature, sacred and profane alike. For clarity and conciseness it would be difficult to improve upon the formulation of this idea contained in the ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... an eye witness, as he somewhere telleth you, unto all and every one of the bold and hazardous attempts which he relateth. And these he delivereth with such candour of stile, such ingenuity of mind, such plainness of words, such conciseness of periods, so much divested of Rhetorical Hyperboles, or the least flourishes of Eloquence, so hugely void of Passion or national Reflections, as that he strongly perswadeth all-along to the credit of what he saith; yea, raiseth the mind ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... The writer doubles and trebles his style when silence is imposed on a nation by its master. From this silence there arises a certain mysterious plenitude which filters into thought and there congeals into bronze. The compression of history produces conciseness in the historian. The granite solidity of such and such a celebrated prose is nothing but the accumulation ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the other may seem odd, but is true, I found I could express them more shortly this way than in prose itself; and nothing is more certain, than that much of the force as well as grace of arguments or instructions depends on their conciseness. I was unable to treat this part of my subject more in detail, without becoming dry and tedious; or more poetically, without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, without wandering from the precision, or breaking the ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... tenderness in the "John"; but just as these are subordinated in the "John" to the more striking features I have mentioned, so in the "Matthew" the noise of the people and the expression of keen remorse are subordinated to love and human tenderness and infinite sorrow. The small number and conciseness of the people's choruses have already been alluded to, and it may easily be shown that the penitential music is brief compared with the love music, besides having a great deal of the love, the yearning love, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... praise the conciseness and the clarity of new-fangled oratory in the parliaments of Europe. The speeches of party leaders in Paris or in London took up never more than half a column in a newspaper. Even the old man he was answering had ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... may perhaps have done a kindness to conceited writers who wish to trick them out with meretricious graces; [26] but he has deterred all men of sound taste from touching them. For in history a pure and brilliant conciseness of style is the highest attainable beauty." Condensed as they are, and often almost bald, they have that matchless clearness which marks the mind that is master of its entire subject. We have only to compare them with the excellent but immeasurably inferior commentaries ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... general the style of that volume is such as cannot be improved. The English Liturgy indeed gains by being compared even with those fine ancient Liturgies from which it is to a great extent taken. The essential qualities of devotional eloquence, conciseness, majestic simplicity, pathetic earnestness of supplication, sobered by a profound reverence, are common between the translations and the originals. But in the subordinate graces of diction the originals must be allowed to be far inferior to the translations. And the reason ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the old stories lies in their suggestiveness and in their general applicability. I have ventured to remedy the conciseness of their language, and to clothe the skeleton ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... touch with depth of feeling. The pequeno poema is merely an enlarged dolora. Campoamor disliked Byron and he disliked still more the sonorous emptiness that is characteristic of too much Spanish poetry.[4] In philosophy he revered Thomas a Kempis; in form he aimed at conciseness and directness rather than at artistic perfection. His poetry lacks enthusiasm and coloring, but ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... novels which have come out of England will compare with this story in two points—absolute conciseness of form and analysis of motive.... Here is a theme of vital truthfulness and Mr. Louis Zangwill has dealt with it with the hand of a master ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... have almost ceased to be sold in any but the thin-paper editions. Then there dawns upon him the vision of a library in which all books that have won their way into recognition shall be clothed in this garb of conciseness, and in which all that aspire to that rank shall follow their example. In short he sees what he believes to be the book of the future, which will be as different from the book of the present as that is from the parchment book of the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... deal with only one point, except, perhaps in asking for summaries of what has been covered in the lesson. In the latter case it is frequently desirable to put a question involving several points in order to ensure definiteness, conciseness, and connectedness in the answer; for example, "For what is Alexander Mackenzie noted? State his great aim and describe his two most important undertakings connected therewith." But in dealing with matter taken up for the first time or involving original ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... two had been going along conversing in this fashion, the curate observed to Dorothea that she had shown great cleverness, as well in the story itself as in its conciseness, and the resemblance it bore to those of the books of chivalry. She said that she had many times amused herself reading them; but that she did not know the situation of the provinces or seaports, and so she had said at haphazard that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Conciseness and decision are, above all things, necessary with the sick. Let your thought expressed to them be concisely and decidedly expressed. What doubt and hesitation there may be in your own mind must never be communicated to theirs, not even (I would rather say especially not) in little things. ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... revolutionize thought?" Now Lanier was filled with the spirit of making contributions, however insignificant, to the development of scholarship in some one direction. He restates, for instance, with remarkable insight and conciseness, the investigations of Fleay, Edward Dowden, and other members of the New Shakespeare Society, as to the metrical development seen in Shakespeare's plays. But he adds to their investigations a suggestion as to the greater ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... debtors is left. The loan was partly repaid, a fresh loan contracted, and then partly repaid. It is not clear whether the arrears were remitted or extracted by distraint. Nor is it clear whether Ilukasha was debtor or creditor. As a rule such points are clear. It is only the conciseness of the formula which here causes ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... that the style of our authors of a couple of hundred years ago was more terse and masculine than that of those of the present day, possessing both more of the graphic element, and more vigour, straightforwardness, and conciseness. Most readers will have anticipated me in admitting that a man should be clear of his meaning before he endeavours to give to it any kind of utterance, and that having made up his mind what to say, the less thought he takes how to say it, more than briefly, pointedly, ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... other [considerations]; for at that rate I might even admire the farces of Laberius, as fine poems. Hence it is by no means sufficient to make an auditor grim with laughter: and yet there is some degree of merit even in this. There is need of conciseness that the sentence may run, and not embarrass itself with verbiage, that overloads the sated ear; and sometimes a grave, frequently jocose style is necessary, supporting the character one while of the orator and [at another] of the poet, now and then that of a graceful rallier that curbs the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... singular knowledge of details. Every considerable man in Bivouac soon had his social station assigned him, the whole community being divided into classes of "hundred-thousand-dollar monikins"—"fifty-thousand-dollar monikins"—"twenty-thousand-dollar monikins." Great conciseness in language was a consequence of this state of feeling. The old questions of "is he honest?" "is he capable?" "is he enlightened?" "is he wise?" "is he good?" being all comprehended in the single interrogatory of "is ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was lost sight of generally as a philosopher. The matter is made clearer still if we add that his style in the "Mekor Hayim" is against him. It is devoid of all merit whether of literary beauty or of logical conciseness and brevity. It is diffuse to a degree and frequently very wearisome and tedious. One has to wade through pages upon pages of bare syllogisms, one more flimsy ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... reader should know, and a great deal which it will entertain him to learn. In the Introductions to the several plays, too, we find many obiter dicta of Mr. White which are excellent in their clearness of critical perception and conciseness of phrase. From that to the "Comedy of Errors" we quote ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... epigram in its first intention may be described as a very short poem summing up as though in a memorial inscription what it is desired to make permanently memorable in any action or situation. It must have the compression and conciseness of a real inscription, and in proportion to the smallness of its bulk must be highly finished, evenly balanced, simple, and lucid. In literature it holds something of the same place as is held in art by an engraved gem. But if the definition of the epigram is only fixed thus, it is difficult ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... Woman's Christian Temperance Union for the same length of time. In December, 1890, she was appointed Union Signal reporter for the State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and her reports have called forth warm commendation from editors and constituency alike for their conciseness and delightful presentation ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier
... were to ask, at any point of his school life, what books it were best worth while to read before the end (let me say) of his thirtieth year;' and we venture to regard Mr. Welldon's list as the best of all in point of conciseness and practical value. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... the author's manner, the unaffected elevation of his style, the conciseness, perspicuity and simplicity of his diction, are everywhere suited to his subject, which is solemn, novel, luminous, affecting,—a subject perhaps the most universally interesting to the human race that has ever been presented to their contemplation. It takes the most liberal and comprehensive ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... with two characters, he should not use three. If a single event will suffice for his effect, he should confine himself to that. If his story can pass in one place at one time, he must not disperse it over several times and places. But in striving always for the greatest possible conciseness, he must not neglect the equally important need of producing his effect "with the utmost emphasis." If he can gain markedly in emphasis by violating the strictest possible economy, he should do so; for, as Poe stated, undue brevity is exceptionable, as well as undue length. Thus ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... ensue, however much you might disarrange the language of a passage of true poetry, such as one he quotes from Ennius, the poetic charm of which, by the way, is not very apparent. Schooled, however, as he had been, in the pure literature of Greece, Horace aimed at a conciseness and purity of style which had been hitherto unknown in Roman satire, and studied, not unsuccessfully, to give to his own work, by great and well-disguised elaboration of finish, the concentrated force and picturesque precision which are large elements in all genuine ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... to mince matters, when the occasion demanded brevity and conciseness. Now, he stepped to within a few feet of the Governor's table, and stood rigidly confronting him, with his hands clasped before him on the head of his stick, in the ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... a tolerably near approach to the original, although a distinction might be made between the force of power resides in, and power possessed by. The second line falls short of the conciseness of the original by transposing the object of impregnates into the third. This, however, though a blemish, might also be passed over. But what shall we say to the expansion of aura into a full line, and that line so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... consequences—forms the ground; the new comedy, and our modern comedy in general (Shakespeare excepted as before) lies in prudence or imprudence, enlightened or misled self-love. The whole moral system of the entertainment exactly like that of fable, consists in rules of prudence, with an exquisite conciseness, and at the same time an exhaustive fulness of sense. An old critic said that tragedy was the flight or elevation of life, comedy (that of Menander) its ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... says his biographer, "for the sake of one happy illustration." He submitted to the most tiresome mechanical drudgery in the correction of his proof-sheets. The clearness of his thought amid the profusion of his knowledge was represented in his writing by a remarkable conciseness of expression. His short, vigorous sentences are compact with details of fact, yet rich with color. His terseness has been compared to that of Tacitus. His power of condensation, aptness of phrase and epithet, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... has told in Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards, is told with a directness and conciseness unusual in his dramatic or lyric work. The story, simple, barbarous, and cruel—a story of the year 573—acts itself out before us in large clear outlines, with surprisingly little of modern self-consciousness. The book is a small one, the speeches are short, and the words for the most part short ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... plura, quod fieri fas erat per pauciora"), and other maxims of that sort. This simplicity, however, must be looked for in the order and relation of the thoughts, and in the steps through which they are trained to lead into each other, rather than in any anxious conciseness as to words; which, on the contrary, I have rather sought to avoid in the earlier Dialogues, in order that I might keep those distinctions longer before the reader from which all the rest were to be derived. For he who has fully mastered the doctrine of Value is already a good political economist. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... made a few steps in the room, with downcast eyes and folded arms. Methodical and rational to the end, he collected his thoughts for the last time and reviewed the result of his melancholy reflexions, forcing himself to state the facts with the utmost plainness and conciseness, as though he were summing up the case before the jury of his faculties, upon whom depended the final verdict. Too wise to die in vain, too brave to die for a selfish motive, too noble to be influenced by any fear of death itself, he was ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the Gallican form.... Our official version of the psalms is then in many ways defective. It is frequently incorrect and barbarous in style, obscure in places, and even fails at times to give the exact sense of the original. Although our Vulgate is not perfect, it possesses admirable strength and conciseness, joined to an agreeable savour which gives it the greatest value and causes the words of the sacred singers, under this form of the Latin spoken by the people, to strike the mind and become engraved upon the memory much better than if they were clothed in all the elegance of ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... will seldom comprise more than two or three paragraphs, and often it can be compressed into one. If it cannot get to the story proper in that space there is something radically wrong—probably in the plot; for the conventional brevity of the short story requires particular conciseness ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... thank you enough for this very kind letter about my book; I value it more than I should the praises of all the reviewers in existence. You have understood my aim. Few people will do that, and very few indeed could express it with such clear conciseness.' ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... private circulation, and it is this text which is followed here. A few modifications, of a technical nature, have been made in the stage directions; but even with these slight changes, the directions are staccato, utilitarian in conciseness, rather than literary in ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... been awarded the prize with an impressive, "Keep on that way, my boy"; and he kept on. I still see poems in the papers whose clearness, conciseness and sublimity betray his master hand. I have heard that he died of smallpox—he had not been vaccinated; it will be remembered—but I consider it my duty to protect him from any such slander. A genius does ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... the hope that your acute and ingenious correspondent D.V.S. may be able to throw some light upon "Mooney." Let me add that D.V.S. has perhaps somewhat misconceived my brief comment on Ludlam, which my regard for conciseness has left some deal obscure; and it does not appear worth while to go over the ground again. I repeatedly heard "Dick's hat-band" quoted by Lancashire friends exactly as given by Southey. Does not the variation "cobbler's dog" ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... a swift conciseness that omitted no point and made the story plain, for there was a high spirit in the girl, and a tangible peril that could be grappled with had a bracing effect on her. Grant's face grew intent as he listened, and Hetty, looking down, could ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss |
