"Moralizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... economy or compression, yet he presented something new in making a story of situation, that is, by putting a character in certain circumstances and working out the results, as The Birthmark (1843). His stories also fall into two groups, the imaginative, like Howe's Masquerade (1838), and the moralizing introspective, or, as they have been called, the "moral-philosophic," that is, stories which look within the human mind and soul and deal with great questions of conduct, such as The Ambitious Guest (1837). Hawthorne was the descendant of Puritans, men given ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... the risk that moralizing may also reveal itself here as that which it has always been—namely, resolutely MONTRER SES PLAIES, according to Balzac—I would venture to protest against an improper and injurious alteration of rank, which quite unnoticed, and as if with the best conscience, threatens nowadays ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... brightness of their eyes." The library, "containing, as I was told, 300,000 volumes, among which were 20,000 Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscripts," is briefly noticed; and the sight of the mummies in the Egyptian collection sets the Khan moralizing, not in the most novel strain, on these relics of bygone mortality. The sculptures were less to his taste—the Egyptian colossi are alluded to as "the work in former days, I suppose, of some of the mummies up stairs;" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... more, Fairfax. Or, if curse I do, it shall be at my own fatuity. I will not be the dilatory, languid, ranting, moralizing Hamlet of the drama; that has the vengeance of hell upon his lips and the charity of heaven in his heart. I will use ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... PERSONAL MORALITY... How early in the evolutionary process did personal morality of some sort emerge? What were the main causes that produced personal morality? How far has the moralizing process been blind ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... The truth! Speak out! All you've got to say!" Pascualo hissed the threatening words, to put a stop to that everlasting moralizing of an idiot! Would she never get to the point? Yet, in all his menacing, raging impatience, there was terror in his soul, the wish that minutes might turn, almost, to centuries, to ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Thought will, now and then, take up a passing incident, and extract the moral. But how little the wiser are we for moralizing! we look into the mirror of truth, and see ourselves—then turn away, and forget what manner of men we are. Better for us if it were not so; if we remembered the image that ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... Civilization no less than religion must fight this. For it is as false in experience and as unclear in thinking as could well be imagined. Its defense, so far as it has any, is based upon the confusion in the pagan mind of morality with moralizing, a confusion that no good humanist would ever permit himself. Of course, the end of art is neither preaching nor teaching but delighting. For that very reason, however, art, too, must conform—hateful word!—conform to fixed standards. For the sense of proportion, the instinct for elimination, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... my child," said the moralizing Vane; "and the stream flows through dulness at first, reserving ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... situation at this moment was too critical, too full of peril and uncertainty, to afford opportunity for moralizing over Bungay's chances of escape. Only one possibility lay before me—there remained no choice, no necessity for planning. It is pure luck which pries open most doors of life, and it was upon luck alone I must rely now. I have often wondered ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... example to bear upon children in the very best possible way. Here we can speak to the newly awakened soul and touch it to nobler issues. This can be done with very little of that abstract moralizing which is generally so ineffective. A moral "lugged in" by the heels, so to speak, without any sense of perspective on the part of the Story-Teller, can no more incline a child to nobler living than cold victuals can serve as a fillip to the appetite. The facts themselves should suffice ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... for him; if he suffers, cheer him;—be with him and accompany him always until death is past, and sorrow and sin are no more. Is this mere dreaming or, on the part of an idle storyteller, useless moralizing? May not the man of the world take his moment, too, to be grave and thoughtful? Ask of your own hearts and memories, brother and sister, if we do not live in the dead; and (to speak reverently) ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old cause of traffic true, Buried in clothes, exclaim'd the son of barter, "Got blesh my shoul! you'll shell this pretty garter?" Here let me pause;—the Muse, in sad affright, Turns from the dire disasters of that night; Quite panic-struck she drops her trembling plumes, And thus a moralizing theme assumes:— Know, gentle Ladies, once these shapeless walls, O'er whose grey wreck the shading ivy crawls, Compos'd a graceful mansion, whose fair mould Led from the road the trav'ller, to behold. ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... romantic adventure, and, by sentimental treatment, to create sympathy for the undeserving culprit. Violations of law and of the conventions of society ought to be shown to be wrong, even when the wrong-doer is deserving of some sympathy. This need not be done by moralizing and editorializing. A much better way is to emphasize, as the results of wrong-doing, not only legal punishment and social ostracism, but the pangs of a guilty conscience, and the disgrace to the culprit ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... handsome word; the best man capped it with a compliment to him. They drink of different cups to-day. Both will drink of one cup in the day to come. But the day went too clearly to crown the light and the tight and the right man of the two, for moralizing to wag its tail at the end. Oldsters and youngsters agreed to that. Science had done it: happy the backers of Science! Not one of them alluded to the philosophical 'hundred years hence.' For when England, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... least important. If you happened to have seen the Evening Post recently, you ought to be amused, for it is moralizing with lofty indignation over the cringing servility I have displayed in the matter of the insurance superintendent. I fear it will soon take the view that it cannot possibly support you as long as ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... delineates the events in her life, for which she is now chiefly remembered, with a naive simplicity that becomes piquant from its apparent artlessness. Nor does he indulge, to any disagreeable excess, in the superfluous moralizing which a less shrewd writer would have deemed essential to the effect. He leaves the story to assert its own moral. The reader, who chooses, may find ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... something withheld her from disclaiming such empty employments. Indeed, she was presently much interested in the admirable portraiture of "Silas Marner," and still more by the keen, vivid enjoyment, critical, droll, and moralizing, displayed by a man who heard works of fiction so rarely that they were always fresh to him, and who looked on them as studies of life. His hands were busy all the time carving a boss for the roof of one of the side aisles of his church—the last ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... order that you may understand that I have no need of advice, or of moralizing,—merely of money. Alas! I do not ask any thing of you for myself, my dear friend, but I am about to make a marriage for my daughter, and here we are actually, although secretly, fallen into absolute destitution. We are in a house where poverty reigns under the appearance of luxury. ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... incorporated in his play the teachings of orthodox divines; there is nothing 'revolutionary' in his analytical presentation of human nature. The theological significance of Hill's play has not, to my knowledge, been recognized; thematic passages tend to be dismissed as tiresome and gratuitous moralizing and the plot is often regarded as empty melodrama or the representation of some ambiguous 'fate'. It is in this deliberate theological rationalization of his materials that Hill owes most to Mrs. Trotter's domestic tragedy ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... no excuse for such action. There are few—very few—cases of Seminal Weakness and Impotency that cannot now be cured. Of course, here as elsewhere, there are traps and humbugs, quacks and charlatans, false theories and empty moralizing; but there is also truth and knowledge, hope and certainty for such as are sufficiently in earnest to search for them. Prof. Civiale, by his indomitable perseverance, thorough study and experiment, and final conclusions and discoveries, ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... who stood contemplating the ruins, and moralizing when any one would stop to listen to him, had pointed this out. Mr. Dean was a carpenter, and kept a grocery store as well, so he could pity the lumbermen from the shelter of comparative affluence. When he saw the preacher's wife, he came over ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... days of the 'Leather-stockings' have passed away. He preceded me in life, and I see few remains of his character in a region where speculation is more rife than moralizing, and emigrants are plentier than hunters. Natty probably chose that spot for his hut on account of the vicinity of the spring: is it not ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... this singular forest wreck, I took to moralizing like the melancholy Jaques, though in a strain not quite so well worthy of record; and, losing sight of my company, was for some time thrown out. When I caught the dogs up, it was found Reynard was ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... said Miss Walton, cheerfully; and she looked up as if she would like to say more, but he instantly changed the subject in his instinctive wish to avoid the faintest approach to moralizing. Still, conversation continued brisk till Mr. Walton asked suddenly, "By the way, Mr. Gregory, have you ever met Mr. Hunting ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... Moralizing aside, however. On examining the stump, I found a deep cavity just inside of the decaying bark. Though it was quite dusk within, by slightly pressing the bark aside I could see the little mother sitting on the nest, unwilling to leave it in spite of my proximity. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... Dick, in a moralizing vein, "isn't this rayther undootiful conduct on your part? Ain't it a piece of ingratitude, when we go to the trouble of earning the money to pay for gingerbread for you to eat, that you ain't willing to go in and ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... qualities, in spite of strength and charm; they were read rather secretly, and tabooed for women. On the other hand, the followers of Richardson were too didactic to be readable. Fanny Burney proved that entertaining tales, unweighted by heavy moralizing, may be written, adapted to young and old. Her sketches of life were witty, sincere, and vigorous, yet always moral in tone. 'Evelina,' the work of an innocent, frank girl, could ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the result of his experience and reflection, which wraps him in a most humorous sadness. Jaques, in fact, is a rake turned cynical philosopher. He regards man and nature as only so much material for observation and for moralizing. ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... moralizing the social life in India which otherwise would have the bias of an increasingly disproportionate educated ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... under the infliction of this household moralizing, which might tend to damage the airy-fairy nature that Dick, as maiden shrewdness told her, had accredited her with. Her dead silence impressed Geoffrey with the notion that something in his words did not agree with her educated ideas, and ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... young manhood of our country in this lecture and this book. I have never heard a presentation of the subject which takes hold so deeply upon thoughtful men, and your book is by all odds the best thing in print on this subject. Your scientific, yet popular method and the absence of vague moralizing are convincing and inspiring in their effects. I trust we may ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... utterances of John Bull moralizing, which might have been spoken of the Thugs in India, or some provincial Chinese enterprise, are extracted from the cotton circular of Messrs. Neill, Brothers, addressed to their correspondents, and dated, Manchester, Aug. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... they would not give up the use of tobacco. The result was, that they continued month after month and year after year to pay rent on hired tenements. "The money they have expended for whiskey and tobacco," remarked Mr. Barnum, moralizing upon this topic, "would have given them homes of their own if it had been devoted to that object, and their positions, socially and morally, would have been far better. How many infatuated men there are in all parts of the country who could now be independent, and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... said that he never preaches, never seeks to give a moral twist to his observations of nature, but I recall a few instances where he does do a bit of moralizing; for example, when he speaks of the calmness and dignity of the hawk when attacked by crows or kingbirds: "He seldom deigns to notice his noisy and furious antagonist, but deliberately wheels about in that aerial spiral, and mounts and ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... brought to a sudden end this little touch of moralizing, and a wrinkled old porter thrust out a very withered ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... Scottish peasantry to whom he belonged, as they had never been interpreted before, and never can be again. Take the poem which stands first in the Kilmarnock edition. The Cotter's Dog, and the Laird's Dog, are, as has been often said, for all their moralizing, true dogs in all their ways. Yet through these, while not ceasing to be dogs, the poet represents the whole contrast between the Cotters' lives, and their Lairds'. This old controversy, which is ever new, between rich and poor, has never ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... being relieved from a burden of gratitude." The saying is a little too much like Rochefoucauld, and too true to be pleasant; but it was one of those keen remarks which Johnson appreciated because they prick a bubble of commonplace moralizing without demanding too literal an acceptation. He went home to sup with Reynolds and became his intimate friend. On another occasion, Johnson was offended by two ladies of rank at the same house, and by way of taking down their pride, asked ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... keep it though,' I said, moralizing; for, in carrying on the threads of my stories, I had come to see that no climax ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... to moralizing, particularly over a grave," observed Macloud, "but it's queer to think that the old pirate, who had so much blood and death on his hands, who buried the treasure, and who wrote the letter, lies at our feet; and we—or rather Croyden is the heir of that treasure, ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... the monotony of a descriptive poem, the author introduced moralizing digressions: advice to the husbandman and the shepherd after the manner of the "Georgics"; compliments to his patrons, like Lyttelton, Bubb Dodington, and the Countess of Hertford; and sentimental narrative episodes, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... she cried. "How serious we all are getting! It was your moths, Pierre, that set me moralizing this way. Our work with them is not yet done, either, for we must spread out the sheets of paper on which they are to lay their eggs. Then we can move the ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... wharves; that his imported broadcloths were long ago worn to tatters, and his cargoes of wine quaffed to the lees; and that the most precious leaves of his ledger have become waste-paper. Yet, his avocations were not so vain as our philosophic moralizing. In this world we are the things of a moment, and are made to pursue momentary things, with here and there a thought that stretches mistily towards eternity, and perhaps may endure as long. All philosophy that would abstract mankind from the present ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... some time together, in friendly conversation, Wyeth returned to his party, and Captain Bonneville continued to press forward, and to gain ground. At night he sent off the sadly sober and moralizing chief of the Hudson's Bay Company, under a proper escort, to rejoin his people; his route branching off in a different direction. The latter took a cordial leave of his host, hoping, on some future occasion, to repay his hospitality ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... aloof from such moralizing moved like a separate consciousness through the day, as it had for the sixteen years of his service. His rise in his profession had been comparatively rapid. Thirty had found him enshrined as an editor. At thirty-four he had acquired the successful ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... one of the most curious passages in the chapter of antiquarian research, is the pious author's moralizing reflections upon an interesting fact he records: to wit, that in a.d. 1571, the inhabitants sent a memorial to Queen Elizabeth, praying relief under a subsidy, wherein they style themselves "her majesty's poor decayed town ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Janin? the glorious confusion is gaining on me I think) has magnificently confounded places and persons in Robert Southey's urn by the Adriatic and devoted friendship for Lord Byron? And immediately the English observer of the phenomenon, after moralizing a little on the crass ignorance of Frenchmen in respect to our literature, goes on to write like an ignoramus himself, on Mme. Charles Reybaud, encouraging that pure budding novelist, who is in fact a hack writer of romances third and fourth rate, of questionable purity enough, too. ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the story, I must stop moralizing and say that when Sam made up his mind to volunteer, a number of boys in the neighborhood determined to follow his example, and, as Sam has already explained, the little company was organized, under Sam's command as captain. Of course Sam had ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... a gentle king; unwise, but never at heart tyrannical; but alas! he answered not merely for his own misdeeds, but for the misdeeds, the tyrannical conduct of centuries of kingcraft. It was an inevitable consequence—and it will ever be so. But I am moralizing. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... of philosophy, too, in a pipe, if one will but take the trouble to study it; great subjects for moralizing, much food for reflection; and all this outside of the physical enjoyment, the soothing influences of a quiet pipe, when the day is drawing to a close, and its cares require some gentle force to banish them away. It does not weaken ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... infinitely outweighed by the salvation of souls. This cheerful spirit of solace was destined long to prevail among white peoples when contemplating the hardships of the colored races. But Azurara was more than a moralizing annalist. He acutely observed of the first cargo of captives brought from southward of the Sahara, less than a decade before his writing, that after coming to Portugal "they never more tried to fly, but rather in time forgot all about their own country," that "they were very loyal and obedient ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... she took her mask off. Such audacity as that surpasses all imagination; she must really be mad about you. But take care, chevalier; you have jealous rivals to fear; it is an envied post to be favorite of the queen, when the queen is the real king. Pardon my moralizing, but I do not wish that the breath of chance should blow down what you ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... done with you. [Rising and holding up the sketch block] There! While youve been talking, Ive been doing. What is there left of your moralizing? Only a little carbonic acid gas which makes the room unhealthy. What is there left of my work? That. Look at it [Ridgeon rises ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... answered Devine, and instead of moralizing they presently went to sleep. They were up at sunrise the next day, and started soon afterward on a march that led them through tangled pine bush, the tall grass of natural swamp prairies, rotting muskegs, and over stony hill-slopes. ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... While we have been moralizing, Eric has eaten his supper, neatly packed up the few things left about, and, with Froll and his travelling-bag, starts from the ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... towards my Reader. For I well know how desperately given is John Dangerous to a wordy Garrulity—how prone he is to make much of little things, and to elevate to the dignity of Important and Commanding Events that which is perchance only of the very slightest moment. By Prosing and Amplifying, by Moralizing and Digressing, by spinning of yarns and wearing of reflections threadbare, I might make a Great Book out of the pettiest and most uneventful career; but even in honestly transcribing my actual adventures, one by one,—the things I have done, and the Men and Women I have known,—I should ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... had no time for moralizing if he would secure bread for the coming day of rest, he turned and said to the factotum of the bar-room, "How much will you give to have the snow cleared off the sidewalk in ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... moralizing or muddizing, if I may be for once admitted to coin a new word to give these men their due, of Christianity now introduced and coming in fashion, many of the late pieces in request do evince. Now that Christianity should moralize men above all things, I both give and ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... that his moral sense was not delicate; but his companions, who were occupied in sowing their own oats, perhaps took it as a matter of course that he should be a rake, and were only struck with the exceptional circumstance that he was a pious and moralizing rake. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... interest in his whereabouts which had cheered and inspired him mightily. Then, as merely incidental, and by way of contrast, he referred in mild tones to the obnoxious print of the night before,—"no moralizing but a salutary and effective talk, which was greeted ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... failed in his larger poems, he had a genius little short of perfect in his handling of shorter forms. The Arthurian story which produced only middling moralizing in the Idylls, gave us as well the supremely written Homeric episode of the Morte d'Arthur, and the sharp and defined beauty of Sir Galahad and the Lady of Shallott. Tennyson had a touch of the pre-Raphaelite ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Vandykes went for a song! I am mortified now at having printed the catalogue. Gideon the Jew, and Blakiston(259) the independent grocer, have been the chief purchasers of the pictures sold already—there, if you love moralizing! Adieu! I have no more articles ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... aesthetic theory, the conception tragische Schuld—"tragic guilt"—plays a large part. It descends, no doubt, from the Aristotelian maxim that a tragic hero must neither be too good nor too bad; but it also belongs to a moralizing conception, which tacitly or explicitly assumes that the dramatist's aim ought to be "to justify the ways of God to man." In these days we look at drama more objectively, and do not insist on deciding in what degree a man has deserved death, if only we feel that ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... are advertised every day in the last page of the Times newspaper, and over which the late Mr. George Robins used to preside with so much dignity. There are very few London people, as I fancy, who have not attended at these meetings, and all with a taste for moralizing must have thought, with a sensation and interest not a little startling and queer, of the day when their turn shall come too, and Mr. Hammerdown will sell by the orders of Diogenes' assignees, or will be instructed by the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I should catch you about this time! They've been giving you unconscionable good measure to-day, though, haven't they? I thought Bollinet's lecture was always over by three; and here I've been moralizing on the flight of Time for ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying [Footnote: Buoying: enlivening, cheering.] word, or trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... he could get, though he cudgelled his memory to continue. Moralizing thus, he became drowsy, and was almost asleep when the train drew up at the station ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the only one of his pieces where anything like a ballad is attempted, and the only one in all three books which seems to be an undeviating failure. It is as flat as a pancake, and ends with flat moralizing. Mr. Frost is ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... for common war on despair." With even greater error, William Lyon Phelps argues that his books "are based on the axiom of the moral law."[2] The one notion is as unsound as the other. Conrad makes war on nothing; he is pre-eminently not a moralist. He swings, indeed, as far from revolt and moralizing as is possible, for he does not even criticize God. His undoubted comradeship, his plain kindliness toward the soul he vivisects, is not the fruit of moral certainty, but of moral agnosticism. He neither protests nor punishes; he merely smiles and pities. Like Mark Twain ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... familiar epistle. It describes the child as aged two years and two months (so long had he watched over it); gives sundry pieces of advice concerning its circulation, and the importance thereto of light and pleasant articles of food; and concludes, after some general moralizing on the shiftings and changes of this world having taken so wonderful a turn that mail-coach guards were become no longer judges of horse-flesh, "I reap no gain or profit by parting from you, nor will any conveyance of your property be required, for in this ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... order of things. And is it not so? Is not the idea of the creation an eternal spring ever trembling on the verge of summer? It seemed so to the curate, who was not given to sad, still less to sentimental moralizing over the graves. From such moods his heart recoiled. To him they were weak and mawkish, and in him they would have been treacherous. No grave was to him the place where a friend was lying; it was but a cenotaph—the place ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... adds he, among much similar moralizing, and embroiled discoursing, "I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... with signs of impatience. "There are times when your moralizing gets on one's nerves. Anyhow, I straightened out one difficulty—I found the rent man, who'd been round worrying her, and got ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... acquit or condemn as often as facts, and sometimes even in spite of facts?—Yet, [impolitic that I have been and am!] to be so careless of mine!—And now, I doubt, it is irretrievable.—But to leave moralizing. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... got into a wilderness of conceits, with moralizing too intricately upon La Fosseuse's text—She mounted her palfrey, her page followed her—the host passed ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... words were aught but wind, or wind but air,) who always professes to believe that the object he has for sale is of sacrosanct antiquity, and the best of its kind, (if an onyx, for instance, not Oriental only, but Orientalissimo,) though he observes, in a sort of moralizing parenthesis, that he will not vouch for what the ignorant or the malicious may say. Here you must, we fear, range yourself on the side of malice and ignorance; non vale niente, the object is good for nothing; and if you swallow such a bait, you are a bete ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... as the wind that blows, said Benjamin, with a moralizing air; and nothing is more varible than the wind, Mistress Remarkable, unless you hap pen to fall in with the trades, dye see, and then you may run for the matter of a month at a time, with studding-sails on both sides, alow and aloft, and with ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... arose with quieter feelings, and felt leisure to attend to indifferent objects.—Still I continued in the church-yard, reading the various inscriptions, and moralizing on them with that kind of levity, which will not unfrequently spring up in the mind, in ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... on him. His notion of constructing a novel was to take equal parts of wooden melodrama and low comedy and stick them boldly together in a paste of impertinent drollery and serious but entirely irrelevant moralizing. And yet each time I read Ravenshoe—and I must be close upon "double figures"—I like it better. Henry did my green unknowing youth engage, and I find it next to impossible to give him up, and quite impossible to choose the venerated ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... one of the elder girls, who promised fair to reach before long the summit of uncompromising womanhood. She made me feel very small with my moralizing; so I dropt it. On the whole I was rather disappointed with the effect of my story. Perhaps the disappointment was no more than I deserved; but I did not like to think I had ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... you are going to begin moralizing, we might just as well go back again. I prefer to give you just one more kiss and run on ahead ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... domestic affection. In Germany public sentiment had already been prepared for a certain idealization of the bourgeoisie. Enlightened rulers and publicists, here and there, were coming to feel that a virtuous yeomanry was the sure foundation of a state's welfare. Countless idyls and pastorals and moralizing romances had thrown a nimbus of poetry about the simple virtues and humble employments of the poor, and taught people to contrast these things with the corruption and artificiality of courts and cities. It was, however, the passionate eloquence of Rousseau which ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... the engineer standing underneath, so as to be crushed by the great stone if it disgraced him by falling in the process. As for the dynasties which have overlaid each other like Dr. Schliemann's Trojan cities, there is no need of moralizing over a history which instead of Finis is constantly ending ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... pondered with a little surprise on the strength of the currents that flow sometimes where the water looks calm; but he had no time, and in truth was in no mood for moralizing just then. His answer was somewhat abrupt, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... comical figure cut by his two friends capering like crazy students at the Closerie des Lilas, he went on moralizing on the incident: ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... start moralizing, Martin," said Mr. Jones warningly. "As far as I can make out the story that German hotel-keeper told you, it seems to show a certain amount of character;—and independence from common feelings which is not usual. It's very ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... moralizing vein— (We know we have a happy knack that way. We have observed, moreover, that young men Are fond of good advice, and so are girls; Especially of that meandering kind, Which winding on so sweetly, treats of all They ought to be ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... moralizing vein. How vague already in the village which his genius has made known over the civilized world is the fame of Cooper! To our tourists the place was saturated with his presence, but the new generation cares ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that I am moralizing in the most interesting part of my tale, and your looks remind me to proceed. My father made no reproach in his letters and only took notice of my silence by inquiring into my occupations more particularly than before. Winter, ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... in the group listening to the aged monk recount his adventures; with knitted eyebrows he hears him moralizing on the awful destiny of the future. He is a silent listener; the conversation is carried on by the garrulous and interested youths and the happy, virtuous old monk. A forced sobriety, or the atmosphere of virtue which he dreads, has cast a gloom ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... listless countenances all about me, while a mild Daniel was moralizing in a den of utterly uninteresting lions; while Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego were leisurely passing through the fiery furnace, where, I sadly feared, some of us sincerely wished they had remained as permanencies; while the Temple of Solomon was laboriously erected, with minute descriptions ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... recollections of those among whom his latter life was passed—this, as it seems to us, should have sufficed. Mr. Derwent Coleridge brings too many church-bred and town-bred notions to the grave design of moralizing and philosophizing his brother's simple life and wayward self-indulgences. His motives will be respected, and his real kindness not misunderstood; but it will be felt that a quiet and unaffected little memoir of that strange and sorry career, and of those noble nor wholly wasted powers, remains ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... were fast becoming synonymous terms, and there were even moments when one almost fancied one heard the laughter of the gods. Let the dull brute civilized herd sweep by, all its moralizing and sophistries could not arouse so much as a single ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... sunk." This sad duty made him feel solemn and reflective, but more than likely as not he was called upon immediately on arrival on board, as "master's mate of the spirit-room," to attend the serving out of grog to the ship's company! Extremes meet on board a man-of-war, and the times for moralizing are short ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... of these has been taken by some intelligent critics to be a moralizing allegory; the second, a moralizing fairy-tale. They are, therefore, a useful type both of Mr. Browning's poetic genius, and of the misunderstanding, to which its constantly intellectual ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... do—that isn't the point. An animal conquers his prey, he is in competition, in constant combat with others of his own kind, and perhaps he brings to bear a certain amount of intelligence in the process. Intelligence isn't the point, either. I know what I'm saying is trite, it's banal, it sounds like moralizing, and perhaps it is, but there is so much confusion to-day that I think we are in danger of losing sight of the simpler verities, and that we must suffer for it. Your super-animal, your supreme-stag ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... often moralize on paper, but there are moments when one derives one's best consolation from so moralizing; and this easy and simple justification of Providence, which refers all that appears inconsistent here to the retribution of a future state, is pointed out less as the duty than the happiness of mankind. This single argument of religion solves every difficulty, and leaves the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... cavil at this moralizing and didactic temper, which animates a large part of the nation and is responsible for much of the British achievement. But its place is in the world of action not in that of letters, and it does not produce the greatest literature or the truest thought. The Greeks might have gained by a greater ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... in April, 1782. While the same poems are but slightly esteemed to-day, it must be recognized that the attitude of the reviewer was severe for his time. The age had grown accustomed to large draughts of moralizing and didacticism in verse, and the quality of Cowper's contribution was assuredly above the average. The Monthly Rev., LXVII, p. 262, gave the Poems a much more ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... return and reconciliation ("And he arose and came to his Father"),—a very dramatic duet for tenor and bass, followed by the vigorous and exultant bass aria ("For this my Son was dead") of the father. The parable ends here; but the music goes on moralizing upon and illustrating the theme in four effective numbers,—the chorus, "O that Men would praise the Lord," which is the longest and best constructed in the work; the recitative and aria for tenor, "Come, ye Children;" ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... its sequel The Kingdom (and to the further sequels which had been sketched out twelve years ago, though none has as yet seen the light) resemble those of the older type of oratorio in so far as they include narrative and dramatic incident and religious moralizing; but there is not a trace of the old lethargic taking things for granted, it is all a ringing sacramental challenge to the individual soul. Elgar's work is indeed the typical musical expression of recent Roman Catholic developments; but there are others also. ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... secrets of the grave were revealed; and that, to convince us of the perishable coil of which mortals are formed, it is given us to behold how much more durable are the commonest utensils of daily use than the frames of those who boast themselves lords of the creation. But here am I moralizing, when I ought to be taking advantage of this glorious day by a promenade in the Bois de Boulogne, where I promised to conduct Madame d'O——; so allons ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... little for Voltaire and Rousseau, and was unmoved even by Diderot, whose so greatly praised Salons he found strangely saturated with moralizing twaddle and futility; in his hatred toward all this balderdash, he limited himself almost exclusively to the reading of Christian eloquence, to the books of Bourdaloue and Bossuet whose sonorously embellished periods were imposing; ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... merely a conventional if astonished onlooker before the theoretically abnormal but manifestly natural emotional activity which swept over California. After what must have been a most usual intellectual cycle of, first, helplessness, then conventional cataloguing, some rationalizing, some moralizing, and an extensive feeling of shallowness and inferiority, I ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... this letter was dispatched, and Rachael had time to wonder with a little chill if she had been too cordial to Billy, and if Billy were laughing her cool little laugh at her one-time step-mother's hospitality and moralizing. ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... it successfully. Much more goes into the making of a novel, they sarcastically pointed out, than pens, ink, and quires of paper. D'Argens, like Fielding, relished reflective passages and could approve, more readily than Mrs. Manley, of "an Historian that amuses himself by Moralizing or Describing." D'Argens's list of the features to be found in good history and good fiction shows him to be a thoroughgoing rationalist and separates his ideal from that of young readers, who, according to the preface to The Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclia (1717), wish ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... numerous duplicates of contemporary stories of our own in the collection over which generations of Turks have laughed, the tales of Nasir Eddin. In reference to these, it may be noted that Turkish wit and humor are usually distinguished by a moralizing quality. When a man came to Nasir Eddin for the loan of a rope, the request was refused with the excuse that Nasir's only piece had been used to tie up flour. "But it is impossible to tie up flour with a rope," was the protest. Nasir Eddin answered: "I can tie up anything ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... blink and spell at a strange language, taking the frosty sentences piecemeal. He begged her to be firm in her resolution, give up Alvan and obey her parents! This man of high intelligence and cultivation wrote like a provincial schoolmistress moralizing. Though he knew the depth of her passion for Alvan, and had within the month received her lark-song of her betrothal, he, this man—if living man he could be thought—counselled her to endeavour to deserve the love and respect of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and the protection from cold combined to establish the home circle. The ties of mated animals expanded through these influences to the bonds of family. Thus light was woven early into family life and has been throughout the ages a moralizing and civilizing influence. To-day the residence functions as a home mainly under artificial light, for owing to the conditions of living and working, the family group gathers chiefly after ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... at a man of peace like me," said the white-haired Sir Wilfrid, with his quiet smile. "It takes all sorts, my dear Corry, to play the game of a generation—old and young. However, the situation is too acute for moralizing. Arthur, are you open to any sort of advice ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... flunkeys in their state liveries—their hues varying chameleon-wise from year to year—without feelings of almost reverential wonderment. What a study for the great clothes-philosopher of Sartor Resartus! But it will never do to stand moralizing in the gangway here. Besides, a superb majordomo has caught up our names and announced them electrifyingly; so hurry we forward to where, between two pillars, the lord mayor, distinguished by his chain of office, and the lady mayoress, stand to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... This moralizing on funerals by the sexton's wife was a new phase of life to Mr. Penrose. He had never before met with anyone who took an interest in the matter. It was true that in the city from which he had lately ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather |
