"Nonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is nonsense. Why don't you tell me something about her? Is she fat and fifty and rich, or bread-and-buttery and white-skinned and promising, or twenty and just generally fair to look upon, or twenty-five and piquant and knowing, or some ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... is said to be between 'two nymphs, each answering other line for line'; but the simple alternation adopted by Spenser makes nonsense of the present poem. The above arrangement seems to distribute the lines best; viz. the first quatrain to Phillis, with interposition of lines 2 and 4 by Amaryllis, the second quatrain to Amaryllis, with interposition of line 2 only ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... which miracle, as they term it the king of England sent to the pope, to have some cardinals and learned men brought to England, as intending that all the people of England should become Roman catholics. I pray you pardon me for writing of such nonsense, which I do that you may laugh; yet I assure you there are many Spaniards and Portuguese here who firmly believe it. I know not what more to write you at this time: But I hope to come to England in the next shipping that comes here; and I ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... the following sentences, and adapt the interjections to the emotions expressed by the other words: Aha! aha! I am undone. Hey! io! I am tired. Ho! be still. Avaunt! this way. Ah! what nonsense. Heigh-ho! I am delighted. Hist! it is contemptible. Oh! for that sympathetic glow! ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Nonsense. Margaret took them. They are a bulky package and not easily hidden. If they aren't in the room, then ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... talking nonsense. There couldn't be a choice, because I've made my choice. Will you ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... me butting in. Nonsense! What's the use of having a grandson if a fellow doesn't hustle up something for the boy to sharpen his teeth on when he grows up? Here I've been living from day to day, just marking time on the road to eternity and figuring life wasn't worth while because the stock ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... once nor look around, so I went on singing. Nonsense words now, with no coherence or meaning, and all in French that a cowherd would have been ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... that he do think the Parliament will hardly ever meet again; which is a great many men's thoughts and I shall not be sorry for it. Read a ridiculous nonsensical book set out by Will. Pen for the Quakers; but so full of nothing but nonsense, that I was ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... see how, in a Welsh slate-quarry, before a blast, a horn is blown, and at its sound all along the face of the quarry the miners run to their shelters, where they stay until the explosion is over? What do you suppose would become of one of them who stood there after the horn had blown, and said: 'Nonsense! There is nothing coming! I will take my chance where I am!' Very likely a bit of slate would end him before he had finished his speech. At any rate, do not you, dear friend, trifle with the warning that says: 'Flee for refuge to Christ and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... habit of mind of course reiterated the shallow and threadbare nonsense about "virtual," or as it would be called nowadays constructive, representation of the colonies, likening them to Birmingham, Manchester, and other towns which sent no members to Parliament—as if problems in politics followed the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... country! What nonsense is this? How can anybody see a country which is ravaged by brigands and convulsed with civil war? And where is ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... on everything; she seems to have the whole wisdom of the world in her, which was just the important matter I wished to acquire. She said a great deal which was no doubt very clever; yet to me it sounded like nonsense. She said the ant-hill was the loftiest thing in the world, and yet close to the mound stood a tall tree, which no one could deny was loftier, much loftier, but no mention was made of the tree. One evening an ant lost herself on this tree; she had crept up the stem, not nearly to ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... among the people of this country, people of different churches, of many different religious factions, and tell them that they must become atheists before they can become Socialists? That would be nonsense. We must first get these men convinced of the rationality of our economic and political program, and then after we have made Socialists of them and members of the Socialist Party, we can talk to them inside of our ranks, talk ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... worst. They are endless—and sometimes when I cannot sleep I feel like surrendering to my fate—" Here again he broke off sharply. "That's nonsense, of course. I mean, it seems as if a life were too much to pay for a crazy act—I mean a mine. You'll ask why I don't sell it, but it's all I have and, besides, no one has any faith in it but myself. I cannot sell, and I can't live ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... "Nonsense! It's something away back of that! Didn't you hear the old man say that the orders for him to report himself came from Washington LAST NIGHT? No!"—the speaker lowered his voice—"Strangeways says that he had regularly sold himself out to one of them d——d ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... also; were it in my power to relieve your sorrows you would soon recover your spirits; as it is, I sympathize better than you yourself expect. But really, after all (pardon me my dear Sister), I feel a little inclined to laugh at you, for love, in my humble opinion, is utter nonsense, a mere jargon of compliments, romance, and deceit; now, for my part, had I fifty mistresses, I should in the course of a fortnight, forget them all, and, if by any chance I ever recollected one, should laugh at it as a dream, and bless my stars, for delivering ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... independent of the Deity; and the only conclusion to which the inquiry leads us is that the Creator has made a world with as little of evil in it as the nature of things,—that is, as the laws of nature and matter—allowed him; which is nonsense, if those laws were made by him, and leaves the question where it was, or rather solves it by giving up the omnipotence of the Creator, if these laws ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... nonsense they teach at your school! When mother bends her face down to kiss us does her face ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... spend a whole day alone there with him? Was it just proper? Was it really safe? Nonsense! The vile thoughts which Jane had uttered had poisoned her, after all. She hated her self that she could remember them. And yet they filled her heart with dread in spite of every ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... remarks for some time. Jim was the first to speak, an' he seemed a trifle put out. "What do you mean by such nonsense, Happy?" sez he. Then they all looked at him on account of him usin' the tone he had. I turned to Barbie an' sez easily: "I was tellin' Bill down at Frisco about a month ago that I rather doubted if Jim here would take the job; but if so be that he wants it, it's open for him. If not, that ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense. ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... who seemed to have been made rather restless and uneasy by his remarks about ghosts, evidently regarded this talk as something more of the same sort, and said to her granddaughter, "I wish, Laura, you wouldn't let him read such a quantity of fairy tales and heathenish nonsense—'field o' the cloth o' gold, indeed!' Who ever heard ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... corporation, Abe, is that it ain't a copartnership where one partner could get every day a headache from listening to the other partner talking a lot of nonsense, Abe," Morris declared, "which you must got to remember that, beginning the first of May, if you would go to a soda-fountain and say, 'Give me something for a headache,' they would give you a United States Internal Revenue stamp for which you would got to pay two cents ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... nonsense!" echoed the doctor. "How you women can work yourselves into a riot over nothing. Now you know he didn't say any more than he has a dozen times before. In fact, he was rather mild on that point, I thought; ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... o' nonsense,' said Mr. Hackit, sticking one thumb between the buttons of his capacious waistcoat, and retaining a pinch of snuff with the other—for he was but moderately given to 'the cups that cheer but not inebriate', and had ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... were at college then, and your father was managing it, so we could not take the yacht out as expected, and I run down to Hatton to hev a talk with Stephen Hatton. There was a big strike meeting that afternoon, and I went and listened to the men stating 'their grievances.' They talked a lot of nonsense, and I told them so. 'Get all you can rightly,' I said, 'but don't expect Stephen Hatton or any other cotton lord to run factories for fun. They won't do it, and ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... all the Galimatias he ever met with, none comes up to some verses of this poet, which have as much of the ridiculum and the fustian in them, as can well be jumbled together, and are of that sort of nonsense, which so perfectly confounds all ideas, that there is no distinct one left in the mind. Further he says of him, that he hath prophesy'd his own poetry shall be sweeter than Catullus, Ovid and Tibullus; but we have little hope of the accomplishment of it from ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... that, in the examples above, or others to be found in sacred history, those persons did, notwithstanding their own practice in rejecting the authority of wicked rulers, still view it as the duty of the rest of the nation, to acknowledge them? This is pure jargon and nonsense, contrary both to reason and religion. By what law could the opposite practices of those that disowned, and those that still continued to own the authority of unlawful rulers, be justified? It could not by the divine law, which never condemns that as sin in one, which it approves as duty in ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... reverie. The most feasible solution she could come to, was the one adopted by Judith—that Hamish passed his nights at the books. If so, how sadly he must idle away his time in the day! Did he give his hours up to nonsense and pleasure? And how could he contrive to hide his shortcomings from Mr. Channing? Constance was not sure whether the books went regularly under the actual inspection of Mr. Channing, or whether Hamish went over them aloud. If only the latter, could ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "Nonsense! wherever did you learn such stuff?" exclaimed the page in surprise. "Why, we think nothing of that sort of thing; what harm can come ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... Augustan age, retarded the progress of polite literature in this island; and it was then found, that the immeasurable licentiousness, indulged or rather applauded at court, was more destructive to the refined arts, than even the cant, nonsense, and enthusiasm of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... Bird could not control them nor force them to show mercy to their captives. [Footnote: Collins, Butler, etc. Marshall thinks that if the force could have been held together it would have depopulated Kentucky; but this is nonsense, for within a week Clark had gathered a very much larger and more efficient body of troops.] He did not even get his cannon back to Detroit, leaving them at the British store in one of the upper Miami ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... themes could be broached except those of business and the events and politics of the day in their relation to trade. His sister-in-law was absorbed in household and family cares, but Madge's great black eyes responded with quick appreciation to all that he said, and their merry nonsense often provoked a smile upon even the face of Mr. Muir. The good-natured sympathy of the young man therefore passed gradually into a genuine fraternal regard, and he rarely came home of an evening without bringing flowers, bonbons, or some other evidence that he had remembered ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... men and officers have learnt to know and to respect one another upon the battlefield is acknowledged, but those who imagine that herein is contained a solution of social and labour problems are likely to prove grievously disappointed. A great deal of nonsense is being talked about the effects of "discipline" upon the men. Military discipline has its admirers: but men of mature years and civilian traditions who in the present conflict have served in the ranks of His Majesty's Army are not included among their number. They have submitted to ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... music, the orchestra would play what of the part had to be played. At that moment lounged in Monsieur VAN DYCK, just to see how things were going on without him. "I'm a little hoarse to-night," quoth VAN DYCK, pleasantly. "Nonsense!" cries Sir DRURIOLANUS, cheerily, "a 'Van' can never be a little hoarse." Much merriment. "DYCK, my boy," continues Sir D., "you've come in the very nick of time—quite a Devil's Dyke, you are,"—the accomplished vocalist was in ecstasies at his Manager's joke,—"and you shall distinguish ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... us of the first century of medical practice, in the hands of Winthrop and Oliver, is comparatively simple and reasonable. I suspect that the conditions of rude, stern life, in which the colonists found themselves in the wilderness, took the nonsense out of them, as the exigencies of a campaign did out of our physicians and surgeons in the late war. Good food and enough of it, pure air and water, cleanliness, good attendance, an anaesthetic, an opiate, a stimulant, quinine, and two or three common drugs, proved to be the marrow of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "Nonsense! it isn't anything to lose an arm; it's not half so bad as having your head blown off or both legs carried away. After going nearly through the war without a scratch, I caught it just before Appomattox, but thousands were less ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... "What nonsense, Maggie! You don't care for all this delay yourself; and you take up my father's bad reasons as ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... friend says that he had a habit of attributing all his doubtful pictures to Corregoio. "He cannot," Browning continues, "in the least understand that he is at all wrong, or injudicious, or unfortunate in anything.... Whatever he may profess, the thing he really loves is a pretty girl to talk nonsense with." ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... not who, imagined he was making a charming play upon words when he described those beautiful creations, the whole world of which deserved to live, as "the childish nonsense with which those brutes of Bretons amuse themselves." The Bollandists [Footnote: A group of Jesuits who issued a collection of "Lives of the Saints". The first five volumes were edited by John Bolland.] found it incumbent to exclude ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... grievously, before he would have sought to defend himself. Then the king says to his son: "So help me God, now thou must make peace and surrender the Queen. Thou must cease this quarrel once for all and withdraw thy claim." "That is great nonsense you have uttered! I hear you speak foolishly. Stand aside! Let us fight, and do not mix in our affairs!" But the king says he will take a hand, for he knows well that, were the fight to continue, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... "Really, that's nonsense, Sonia! If these assassins meant to set a trap for me, they have a thousand other means of doing so ... besides, it would be remarkably daring of them to advise me to show you these pearls, and draw my attention to the question of their being stolen ones!... No, Sonia, this ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... me downstairs," observed the lady. "But this provoking nonsense of yours, this crying about going a journey, has made you not fit to be seen. If any friend of my lord's saw your red eyes, he would go and say that my own maid was on my lord's side. I ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... greatly excited when the news of Bagot's concessions arrived. Arbuthnot describes his chief's mood as one of anger and indignation. "What a fool the man must have been," he kept exclaiming, "to act as he has done! and what stuff and nonsense he has written! and what a bother he makes about his policy and his measures, when there are no measures but rolling himself and his country in ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... surprise at her action the scholar had recoiled a step: he was fiercely angry. "Come, girl, no nonsense," he said roughly and brutally. "Make way! Or we shall have a little to say to you of what you did in my room last night! Do you mark me?" he continued. "I might have you punished for it, wench! I might have you whipped and branded for it! Do you mind me? You robbed me, and that ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... I am a fairly strong man, and I have the poker handy—besides being invisible. There's not the slightest doubt that I could kill you both and get away quite easily if I wanted to—do you understand? Very well. If I let you go will you promise not to try any nonsense and do what I ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... that I have any foolish superstitions about the matter,—I, the Professor, who have seen enough to take all that nonsense out of any man's head! It is not our beliefs that frighten us half so much as our fancies. A man not only believes, but knows he runs a risk, whenever he steps into a railroad car; but it does n't worry ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Jones, this is sheer nonsense. We get wind at Wakefield and water at Turner's Tank; now, what excuse is there for putting in a siding ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... "Nonsense aside, sweet little woman, God has been very good to you and me. Yet, Flossy, do you remember how, during those last months in which we were together, I fell into the habit of telling you a great deal about the thorns, ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... "Nonsense," said Mrs. Guthrie Brimston, her native rudeness getting the better of her habitual caution at this provocation. "Major Lopside would not be fool enough to report a man to his own chief. Why, he might get the worst of it himself if there were ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... "Nonsense, Tim," returned the captain, giving the mate a slap on the back which must have taken his breath away for the moment, as it made him reel again, and then holding out his hand, which the other grasped with ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... explanations. The steps came nearer. Out of the darkness a shadowy form approached her. It seemed to her that it was that of a man of superhuman size—one of the giants who, Biddy had told her, lay buried in the long barrows on the edge of the bog. But this was nonsense. She planned what words she would say to him. Abreast of her he stopped, and stared at her white dress. Then suddenly he cried, "Gabrielle!" in a voice that she remembered well. It was Radway's. In a moment she found herself crying, beyond control, in his arms. She clove to him, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you — this? Look around you and be sorry you're not living in an attic, With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent. I say words that ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... freedom of human actions is totally of another class. To say that in our choice we reject the stronger motive, and that we choose a thing merely because we choose it, is sheer nonsense and absurdity; and whoever with a sound understanding will fix his mind upon the state of the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... flower from the bunch and putting it into his coat.] Yes, and how to brew tea as'll curl up anyone's tongue within the mouth for a year—and fancy drinks for sheep with foot rot, and powders against the murrain and any other nonsense that you do please. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... nature. Nevertheless, I suffered this martyrdom with exemplary outward patience, though the spirit flagged, and the thoughts wandered, and the head often grew confused, with sitting and talking trifling nonsense, through a poor interpreter. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... "ass—no. Fact is, dear old fellow, I've a temperament. You aren't going to make me go about in that beastly forest diggin' rifle pits an' pitchin' tents an' all that sort of dam' nonsense; it's ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... wish to say one thing plainly, before I write another line. As for falling into the narrow, self-adulatory, provincial feeling of the American who has never left his mother's apron-string, and which causes him to swallow, open-mouthed, all the nonsense that is uttered to the world in the columns of newspapers, or in the pages of your yearling travellers, who go on "excursions" before they are half instructed in the social usages and the distinctive features of their own country, I hope I shall be just as far removed from such a weakness, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... impatient Griffith; "enough of this nonsense, Captain Manual: we have other matters to discuss now. What course have you determined to ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... should be chary of calling up her young men acquaintances by telephone. If forced to do so, she should make her communication as brief as possible. It is annoying to a young man to be called from his business to answer social or "nonsense" calls—the latter when some idle, ennuied or "smitten" girl takes a notion she would like to chatter to somebody awhile. It exasperates an employer to have his men called from their duties to answer ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... translated for him, in a somewhat milder form, Byron's words, which happened to be fresh in my memory: 'They have been crucifying Othello into an opera; the music good but lugubrious, but, as for the words, all the real scenes with Iago cut out, and the greatest nonsense instead, the handkerchief turned into a billet-doux, and the first singer would not black his face—singing, dresses, and music very good.' The maestro regretted his ignorance of the English language, and said, 'In my day I gave much ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... "Oh, nonsense! After we've travelled all these millions of miles together do you really expect me to believe stuff ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... something deeper than popularity. His judgment of persons was penetrating, but its process was internal; no one felt on good behavior with a man who seemed always to be enjoying himself. Whether he was in a mood for floods of nonsense or applying himself vigorously to a task, his face seldom lost its expression of contained vivacity. Apart from a sound knowledge of his art and its history, his culture was large and loose, dominated by a love of poetry. At thirty-two he had not yet passed ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... hurry! Nonsense, Phil, why do you alarm a body? See how the sun shines. It is going past. Now—down at ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... addition to his sincere approbation of some of its contents, had also the motive of gratitude for standing by its author, as one of the poems was a warm and, I need not add, well-deserved panegyric on himself. We were, however, too far gone in nonsense for even this eulogy, in which we both so heartily agreed, to stop us. The opening line of the poem was, as well as I can recollect, "When Rogers o'er this labour bent;" and Lord Byron undertook to read it aloud;—but ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... "Nonsense!" said David in sudden wrath. "Does he wriggle? Yes. Why? Because he suffers out of water. I've caught him to eat, and I owe it to him not to make him suffer any more than is necessary. What did that boy say ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... intellectual sounding to which he had ever been exposed. He was in fact quite to cherish his vision of it, to play with it in idle hours; only speaking of it to no one and quite aware he couldn't have spoken without appearing to talk nonsense. Was what it had told him or what it had asked him the greater of the mysteries? Was it the most special flare, unequalled, supreme, of the aesthetic torch, lighting that wondrous world for ever, or was it above all the long straight shaft sunk by a personal acuteness that life had seasoned to steel? ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... "Nonsense! I did whatever I pleased. I was parlor-boarder, as they say in the schools. But I did learn something, sir, from that dear old ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... well as our own, that they would pay in solid pudding instead of empty praise; and adhere, at least in this instance, to the good old system of rewarding their champions with places and pensions, instead of puffing their bad poetry, and endeavouring to cram their nonsense down the throats of all the loyal and ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... farce when the fancy seized him. At the time when a certain kind of nonsense verse was popular, he, with Sir Noel Paton and others, added not a few facetious sonnets to Edward Lear's book, which lay on Madame Novikoff's table. His authorship is betrayed by the introduction of familiar Somersetshire names, Taunton, ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... "You're talking nonsense, Bruce," Jim said emphatically. "Sheer rot. She's just Betty Gordon and in a peck of trouble. It's up to you and me, being countrymen of hers, to see her through instead ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... you anything that is in an English Blue-book, Harry, although those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. When I was in the Diplomatic, things were much better. But I hear they let them in now by examination. What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... sitting down on the piano stool, her hands on the leathern seat, her neatly shod feet stretched out in front of her, just as she had sat on her wedding eve talking nonsense to Willie Connor. "I wasn't mistaken. I was never addicted to silly school-girl fancies. I know my own mind. I cared a lot for ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... perhaps only one truth for which he was quite unprepared: he would have been quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched; hard, bandy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that she made a goddess and an only child of the effete and tearful lady; and even as she waited at table her hands would sometimes itch for ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nonsense, Norton Laval. Of course I should drive where I could drive, and would like to drive. Over Mont Blanc ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... disco, m., disk. discontento,-a, dissatisfied. disculpar, to palliate, excuse. discurrir, to discuss, converse; think out. discusion, f., discussion. disgusto, m., annoyance, trouble, vexation. disimular, to dissemble, disguise; hide. disparate, m., nonsense. dispensar, to excuse, pardon; spare, get along without. disponer, (see poner), to dispose. distancia, f., distance. distinguido,-a, distinguished. distinguir, to distinguish; —se, to distinguish one's self, be famous. distintamente, distinctly, plainly. distraer, (see ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... "What nonsense!" cried Gissing. "The smell of wet, healthy puppies? Nothing is more agreeable. You are cold-blooded: I don't believe you are fond of puppies. Think of their wobbly black noses. Consider how pink is the little cleft between their toes and the main cushion of their feet. Their ears ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... as it is of mine, to establish newspapers, write books, and hold public meetings for the promotion of the cause of temperance. The current idea, that modesty should hold women back from such services, is all resolvable into nonsense and wickedness. Female modesty! female delicacy! I would that I might never again hear such phrases. There is but one standard of modesty and delicacy for both men and women; and so long as different standards are tolerated, both sexes will be perverse and corrupt. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... always answered him either by a brief but appropriate remark—showing that it did not interest her—or by a silent look and smile which more palpably than anything else showed Pierre her superiority. She was right in regarding all arguments as nonsense in ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... edification: but, lo! a pun trails accidentally off the journalist's pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the writer at once stops his instructive reasoning; he goes off the main line and careers bounding down some devious side-path of entertaining nonsense. Our home papers are almost uniformly staid; they are written conscientiously, laboriously, commendably. But, after all, the French are right in trying to inject as much entertainment as possible into the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... boys, but we love them, For under their nonsense we know They've hearts that are honest and loving, And souls that are whiter than snow. So out with that bottle of Roederer! Large glasses, boys! Up goes the cork! All charged? To the belles of creation, The glorious girls of ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... "Oh, nonsense, Violet! come. If you do not like to come, you can walk by the road; you will meet us round by the gate, it is only five minutes' walk." Ere he had finished speaking, the rest were in the wood, and some had advanced. Vivian strongly recommended Violet not to join them; he was sure that ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... not in a hurry." "Yes I am." "You said you would give me an hour and a half." "Yes, but you have done me, and what is the good of keeping me?" "I mean to do it again." "Double journey double pay." "Nonsense,—you so excited me, that I've never had a proper poke yet." "Well that is no fault of mine." She laughed, and turned questioner. "Do you often have the women from Regent Street?" "Yes." "Do you know many?" "Yes, I vary so." "Ah! you are fond of change,—I ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... that's right. Now that you've left off 'speaking your mind,' as you used to call it, you're becoming quite docile and useful. Perhaps, I'll give Ripon another fifty dollars a year. I'm not a hard man, you know, when people understand that I stand no nonsense. But I always have my own way. No one can get over me. You and I understand each other, Mrs. Ripon, eh? Yet, I doubt if you'd have remained so long, if Ripon hadn't married you. He's made a sensible woman of you. Tell ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... the book very much, especially as it was so completely free from my own influence, being evidently founded on a very hazy recollection of a five-year-old perusal of Man and Superman; but a lot of it was fearful nonsense. There was one good thing about the scientific superstition which you came a little too late for. It taught a man to respect facts. You have no conscience in this respect; and your punishment is that you ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... loves to have a hand in all kinds of nonsense," thundered the brewer Santerre, in another group. "She wanted to see whether a pretty girl from the street could play the part of the Queen of France, and at the same time she wanted to avenge herself upon the cardinal because she knew that he once ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... and surprise, those white women found the tables turned, and that their enemy could be as chivalrous to them as German soldiers—their own brothers—had been vile to the wretched people of Belgium. There was no nonsense about the Belgian General; stern and just, but very strict, he brought the German population to heel and kept them there. Cap in hand, the German men came to him, and begged to be allowed to work for the conqueror; ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... but that is tame sport. I go to 'functions' once in a while, and if I dance twice with a pretty girl who has no dot, mother glares at me, and says I've no family pride. Most of the girls talk silly nonsense that wearies a fellow, and the more passe they are the worse they gush. The only thing I really enjoy that is respectable is yachting, and then I have trouble to find good fellows who have time to go with me. Once in a while I get disgusted with myself, and ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... confession. He peered in vain in the direction of his companion. Even his cigarette revealed no sign of him. 'I know, I know,' he went gropingly on; 'I felt it would sound to you like nothing but frantic incredible nonsense. YOU can't see it. YOU can't feel it. YOU can't hear these hooting voices. It's no use at all blinking the fact; I am simply on the verge, if ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... began to lose patience. "Now, look here, Mrs. Lorrigan! You're dealing with the law, you know. We can't have any nonsense." ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... "Nonsense!" replied David. "If a cayote frightens one in a drove the panic Spreads to all. Any night would do for ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to suspect that it might be one of his chums trying to find his place of concealment, and that something dreadful might have happened in camp that required his immediate presence. This thought, however, he immediately put aside as nonsense. It must be the inmate of the strange cabin who, having stolen the provisions, just as Max had expected he would, was now making a bee line for his retreat with the intention of ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... put up with all this nonsense!" cried Mrs. Dennistoun, with a flush on her cheek. "You are just as bad as they are, Elinor, to suggest such a thing! I have held my own place in society wherever I have been, and I don't choose to be condescended to or laughed at, in fact, by any ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... terrible at all in this, mother. It's only a shame for people to occupy themselves with such nonsense. Grown-up men in gray come in with sabers at their sides, with spurs on their feet, and rummage around, and dig up and search everything. They look under the bed, and climb up to the garret; if there is a cellar ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... BEST PAIR OF SKATES to be had in York City, made for work, and no nonsense about 'em. We Dunderbunk boys give 'em to you, one for all, and hope you'll like 'em and beat the world skating, as you do in all the things ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... regard to the Shays rebellion. While Washington was looking solemnly at this manifestation of weakness and disorder, and was urging strong measures with passionate vehemence, Jefferson was writing from Paris in the flippant vein of the fashionable French theorists, and uttering such ineffable nonsense as the famous sentence about "once in twenty years watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants." There could be no better illustration of what Washington was than this contrast between the man of words and the man of action, between the astute leader ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... undisputed dignity of his station, or the authority of books. This course is easily accounted for. Rather than expose his own ignorance, the teacher quotes the printed ignorance of others, thinking, no doubt, that folly and nonsense will appear better second-handed, than fresh from his own responsibility. Or else on the more common score, that ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... Athol; "but is it customary for princes to allow that subject to sit on their throne? It is nonsense to talk of Wallace having refused a coronation. He laughs at the name; but see you not that he openly affects supreme power; that he rules the nobles of the land like a despot? His word, his nod is sufficient!—Go here! go there!—as if he were ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... conceive what delightful nonsense this barbaric elucidation might suggest, if a carouse, or love, woman or drunkenness were defined in this vein; and he would weave in amusing attacks on earlier, less intrepid speakers, who, as Vilsing put it, reminded one of the bashful forget-me-not, inasmuch as you could ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... reading some of the stories, and they all seem silly. Everybody appears to be in love with somebody else's wife. Then the people are all divided so strictly into two classes, the good and the bad! As for the other man's wife, prairie-life would soon knock that nonsense out of people. There isn't much room for the Triangle in a two-by-four shack. Life's so normal and natural and big out here that a Pierre Loti would be kicked into a sheep-dip before he could use up his first box of face-rouge! You want your own wife, and want her so bad you're satisfied. ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... have not been too precipitate,' he said, in a serious tone. 'You must have known that it was not my way to flatter and talk soft nonsense, or even to speak the admiration that I felt; and that a single word or glance of mine meant more than the honied phrases and fervent protestations of most ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... marriage, "No, no, my clear aunt," said the king; "I honor you more than I do the pope, and I love my sister more than I fear him. I am not a Huguenot, but no more am I an ass. If the pope has too much of his nonsense, I will myself take Margot by the hand and carry her off to be married in open conventicle." Toligny, for his part, was so pleased with the measures that Charles IX. had taken in favor of the Low Countries in their quarrels with Philip II., and so confident himself ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... make it all right," he said, and he handed me the letter to read. It was a strictly business letter. No nonsense about the folks at home. He said that was the kind of business letter his father liked. It ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... midmost of them could not be killed even that way, but had to be buried alive. Only in proportion as I mean more, I shall certainly appear more absurd in my statement; and at last when I get unendurably significant, all practical persons will agree that I was talking mere nonsense from the beginning, and never meant anything ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... "Nonsense!" cried Miss Chisholm. "My cousin taught little Polly Waller and she says she was the most tractable child she has ever had in her class. The boy was too young for school, but I happened to hear his kindergarten teacher discussing the family with my cousin ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... sensation which was disturbing and unknown. The magnetic personality of the man was so strong. He bent and whispered something to the Princess, and then as though sharing a secret, he leaned the other way, and whispered to Tamara, too. The words were nothing, only some ordinary nonsense, of which she took no heed. But as he spoke his lips touched her ear. A wild thrill ran through her, she almost trembled, so violent was the emotion the little seemingly accidental caress caused. A feeling she had never realized in the whole of her life ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... yes. That's been runnin' in my head. It's nonsense, anyhow, because Hilton was in the house. I wouldn't believe a word he said, but Sylvia, and Tomlinson, and Brodie, and Harris all tell the same yarn. No; Hilton couldn't have done it. He's ripe for any mischief, is Hilton, but he can't be in this ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... much in stability of character. Frivolity and silly nonsense are not the rule. Our boys and girls who go out to teach, carry a load of responsibility with them. Some of the parishes have been almost entirely transformed by their work. Three of our boys last ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... The nonsense about a magneto-ionic effect he discarded without hesitation. Obviously it was sabotage, possibly by someone with a plan of his own, more probably by someone in the pay of one of the big power ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... best story-teller among his companions; and even the slight training gained from his studies greatly broadened and strengthened the strong reasoning faculty with which he had been gifted by nature. His wit might be mischievous, but it was never malicious, and his nonsense was never intended to wound or to hurt the feelings. It is told of him that he added to his fund of jokes and stories humorous imitations of ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... not," cried Burney. "The rules say that the fellows are not to go up to their rooms between hours, and you have been here long enough to know that. Now then, no nonsense. Here, you, Singh, you've got to come and field while old Slegge practises batting, and Tompkins has got ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... woman, that made her look at me in sich a way a while agone? I could not mistake her eye. She surely knows more than I thought, or she would not fix her eye into mine as she did. Could there be anything in that dhrame about Dalton an' my coffin? Hut! that's nonsense. Many a dhrame I had that went for nothin'. The only thing she could stumble on is the Box, an' I don't think she would be likely to find that out, unless she went to throw down the house; but, anyhow, it's no harm to thry." He immediately mounted the old table, and, stretching up, searched ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... education raised their still familiar outcry about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a scheme, if properly carried out, ought rather to expel nonsense. Above ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... my butler comes out, waits for you at the entrance, and puts you through a cross-examination like a criminal. That has happened to me, a mere postman. He took me for an eavesdropper in disguise, he said, laughing at his nonsense. As for the servants, don't hope to get aught out of them; I think they are mutes, no one in the neighborhood knows the color of their speech; I don't know what wages they can pay them to keep them from talk and drink; the fact is, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... or illustrator, this book is a jewel rarely to be found nowadays. Not a whit inferior to its predecessor In grand extravagance of imagination, and delicious allegorical nonsense."—Quarterly Review. ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... and smiles, on seeing me order the things out for the march, begged I would have patience, and wait till the messenger returned from the king; it would not take more than ten days at the most. Much annoyed at this nonsense, I ordered my tent to be pitched. I refused all Maula's plantains, and gave my men beads to buy grain with; and, finding it necessary to get up some indignation, said I would not stand being chained like a dog; if he would ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... "Nonsense!" His voice scaled up across the field. "There is no plague aboard. I am willing to certify that before the Council. And if you refuse these men medical attention—which they need—I shall cite the case all the way ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... been a national rebellion against ship-money, and a national rebellion against a trumpery duty on tea, but English writers and English public men seem quite unable to explain the national outcry against Wood's patent, except on the theory that a clever writer, pouring forth captivating nonsense, bewitched the Irish Parliament and the Irish people, and sent them out of their ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Persons, without body, form, or face, and, consequently, without difference of sex, are nevertheless Father and Son, and that they produced by their mutual love a third person, whom they called the Holy Ghost, who has, like the other two, no body, no form, and no face. What abominable nonsense! ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... 1778. "I wonder," said Mrs. Thrale, "you bear with my nonsense." "No, madam, you never talk nonsense; you have as much sense and more wit than any woman I know." "Oh," cried Mrs. Thrale, blushing, "it is my turn to go under the table this morning, Miss Burney." "And yet," continued the doctor, with the most comical look, "I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... address women as you started to address me, as if there existed no common ground of serious thought between them. They condescend, they flatter, they indulge in fulsome compliment, they whisper soft nonsense which they would be sincerely ashamed to utter in the presence of their own sex, they act as if they were amusing babies, rather than conversing with intelligent human beings. Their own notion seems to be to shake the rattle-box, and awaken a laugh. I am not ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... the first place space does not extend beyond nature in the sense that time seems to do. Our thoughts do not seem to occupy space in quite the same intimate way in which they occupy time. For example, I have been thinking in a room, and to that extent my thoughts are in space. But it seems nonsense to ask how much volume of the room they occupied, whether it was a cubic foot or a cubic inch; whereas the same thoughts occupy a determinate duration of time, say, from eleven to twelve on a ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... go out and dig a little sassafras root to please him," thought Uncle Wiggily to himself, "and then I'll come back and stay in bed as long as I please. It's all nonsense thinking I have to have fresh root—the ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... not very complimentary to the speaker, signifying that he was talking nonsense. He then ordered some of his attendants to carry the three prisoners to a hut close by, and to place a guard over them until he had determined how ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... skewbald seem with his new friends that he refused to stir from the melee into which an unforeseen chance had plunged him. Laying his muzzle lovingly upon the neck of one of his recently-acquired acquaintances, he seemed to be whispering something in that acquaintance's ear—and whispering pretty nonsense, too, to judge from the way in which that confidant kept shaking ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... having inveigled Joan of Arc into signing this farrago of blasphemous nonsense, her judges, it seems, added fraud to their crime by reading to the prisoner a different recantation from that to which they had forced her to sign her mark. The one she marked contained only six lines, and it did not take longer to read ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower |
