"Prolix" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such material one is apt, even unconsciously, to be egotistical, and to linger too long and too fondly over scenes and incidents of which one might say, in Virgilian phrase, quorum pars, si non magna, at parva fui. Should the reader deem any portions unduly prolix, he will, perhaps, kindly excuse it on this score. But I have known several instances, and especially of late two in this neighbourhood, when a person advanced in years and of wide experience, has passed away, and ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... select, at Crib's the champion's. I drank more than I like, and have brought away some three bottles of very fair claret—for I have no headach. We had Tom * * up after dinner;—very facetious, though somewhat prolix. He don't like his situation—wants to fight again—pray Pollux (or Castor, if he was the miller) he may! Tom has been a sailor—a coal heaver—and some other genteel profession, before he took to the cestus. Tom has ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... father (pp. 247-250). Shortly thereafter, the author introduces an emphatically Christian digression on the horror of Mirrha's "fowle incestious lust" and on the importance of reading "Gods holy Bible" as a salve for sin (p. 253), and invents the Nurse's prolix arguments against such "filthy" love as Mirrha desires (pp. 258-261).[17] The fact that the author follows Ovid's story as closely as he does should be taken as a commentary on his limited powers of invention rather than on his devotion to the ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... first who dared to cross the threshold of the church, which he did, however, not for his own benefit, but to do honor to the memory of Leo I. The inscription in which he describes the event is too prolix to be given here. It tells us that the grave of Leo the Great was in the vestibule below the sacristy. There he lay "like the keeper of the temple, like a shepherd watching his flock." But other graves had crowded the place so that it was almost impossible to single ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... roasting which we started for the interior of the island, and without meeting with anything beyond the ordinary routine of bad bush and mountain travelling; certainly encountering nothing that would justify me in inflicting a prolix description upon the reader—we arrived late on the following evening at the rendezvous, found the 'Daylight' safely at anchor, and thus completed one portion of our search, without having obtained the faintest clue to an elucidation of the mystery ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... proceedings. The "Memoir," written by an old man who had squandered his energies and sunk into deserved obscurity, is tedious and magniloquent, and sometimes inaccurate. Moreover, Dillon has not always chosen the extracts judiciously. Clark's decidedly prolix speeches to the Indians are given with intolerable repetition. They were well suited to the savages, drawing the causes of the quarrel between the British and Americans in phrases that could be understood by the Indian mind; but ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... therefore been afforded towards recommending those establishments where the author feels confident that the stranger will meet with fair dealing and due civility. It may, perhaps, be thought by many that he has been rather too prolix on the subject, but in order to know "How to enjoy Paris" to its full extent, the first object, is to be informed of the best means of dispensing one's modicum of lucre to the greatest advantage, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... first to Notre Dame. On arriving at the Pont Neuf he saw the model of the statue of Henri IV. replaced, on the pedestal of which appeared the following words: 'Ludovico reduce, Henricus redivivus', which were suggested by M. de Lally-Tollendal, and were greatly preferable to the long and prolix inscription composed for the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... If I am too prolix upon this head, I am sorry for it. It is a strong conviction of the great importance of the subject, which carries me away, and makes me, perhaps, tiresome, where I would wish most to avoid it. The care of the Poor, however, I must consider as a matter of very serious importance. It appears ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... drawn into sympathy with the reformatory movement. Unsatisfied with herself and with the influences surrounding her, she sought in Briconnet a spiritual adviser and guide. The prelate, in the abstruse and almost unintelligible language of exaggerated mysticism, endeavored to fulfil the trust. His prolix correspondence still exists in manuscript in the National Library of Paris, together with the replies of his royal penitent. Its incomprehensibility may perhaps forever preclude the publication of the greater ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... were all serious. After listening to a dozen prolix stories from people who merely wished to "talk" but had nothing ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... (whom he resembles in ardency and in freshness), too often wraps you in words, stupefies you with gorgeous repetition, goes about and about and about, trailing phrases after him, while the procession of narrative images halts. He can be as prolix in his brooding descriptions as Meredith with his intellectual vaudeville. Indeed, many give him lip service solely because they like to be intoxicated, to be carried away, by words. A slight change of taste, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... and delicacy of insight at once sympathetic and critical, the soul of a poet, and a patience as untiring as it is rewarding; qualities rare indeed, and still more rarely blended. Prolific but seldom prolix, he writes with grace, ease, and lucidity, albeit in a style often opulent, and touched at times with lights and jewels from old alchemists, antique liturgies, remote and haunting romance, secret orders of initiation, and other ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... Antigone, whereof more hereafter) follows, as this sonnet precedes, The Strayed Reveller itself. There is "the note," again, and I daresay the orientalism has the exactness of colour on which, as we know from the Letters, Mr Arnold prided himself. Yet the handling of the piece seems to me prolix and uncertain, and the drift either very obscure or somewhat unimportant. But about the Shakespeare sonnet which follows there can be no controversy among the competent. "Almost adequate" is in such a case the highest praise; and it ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... upon by Bossuet, the obligation of the canons upon the Pope, was of very little worth in De Maistre's judgment, and he almost speaks with disrespect of the great Catholic defender for being so prolix and pertinacious in elaborating it. Here again he finds in Thomassin the most concise statement of what he held to be the true view, just as he does in the controversy as to the relative superiority ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... others written with a similar object and in the same style, carry us back to about 600 B.C. This period of literature, which is called the Sutra period, was preceded, as we saw, by another class of writings, the Brahmanas, composed in a very prolix and tedious style, and containing lengthy lucubrations on the sacrifices and on the duties of the different classes of priests. Each of the three or four Vedas, or each of the three or four classes of priests, has its own ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... old standing, since, shortly after he was called to the bar in 1792, it was pointed out to him by Robert M'Intosh, Esq., one of the counsel in the case, then and long after remarkable for the interest which he took, and the management which he possessed, in the prolix and complicated affairs of the York ...
— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott
... them by a few typical cases, he would have been more effective in a literary sense. His passion for 'codification,' for tabulating and arranging facts in all their complexity, and for applying his doctrine at full length to every case that he can imagine, makes him terribly prolix. On the other hand, this process no doubt strengthened his own conviction and the conviction of his disciples as to the value of his process. Follow this clue of utility throughout the whole labyrinth, see what a clear answer it offers at every point, and you cannot doubt that you ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... I saw with these Eyes of mine the Spaniards for no other reason, but only to gratifie their bloody mindedness, cut off the Hands, Noses, and Ears, both of Indians and Indianesses, and that in so many places and parts, that it would be too prolix and tedious to relate them. Nay, I have seen the Spaniards let loose their Dogs upon the Indians to bait and tear them in pieces, and such a Number of Villages burnt by them as cannot well be discover'd: Farther ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... oldest man present, was entitled to the position of spokesman; and he made a very prolix statement of all the events which had transpired since he first saw ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... take a great many words to explain why my little suburban retreat, on which I had prided myself for so many years of my bachelor life, was a mass of conglomerated wreckage. I will be as brief as I can. I am not a prolix man; I know the value of time, and of other people's time. I should not have had a flourishing business in Bermondsey, if I didn't know. Golden Birch Villa, Streatham, then, had been burgled. Broken into, despoiled and defaced, was my little country retreat from the turmoil of ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... methodical, though, under general circumstances, uselessly prolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the sheet of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip of cardboard an inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening, and match each colour beside one ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries when he wrote it, and so forth. Indeed the best judges now hold that he has not done full justice to the grain of truth that was to be found in Warburton's clumsy and prolix hypothesis.[8] It should be added that Gibbon very candidly admits and regrets the acrimonious style of the pamphlet, and condemns still more "in a personal attack his cowardly concealment ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... here suggests other reasons for his substituting a table of contents for his introduction in the sixth edition. To print both would have been too prolix, even for Richardson; and it seems that the table of contents, detailing the entire action, together with the change to big quarto volumes, are Richardson's efforts to authenticate Pamela in the face of Chandler's and Kelly's unauthorized ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... might be said that Lamarck's is the philosophic style; often animated, clear, and pure, it at times, however, becomes prolix and tedious, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... may be pardoned for being thus prolix; but surely, we who are actually on the scene of events ought not to be more ignorant of what is going on in our immediate neighbourhood than our friends who are so many thousands of ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... is a manifest straining to secure style, by manipulation and rehandling, which contrasts unfavorably with the unaffected ease, the pregnant spontaneity, of his unpublished writings. His periods are almost interminable, and his rhetoric is prolix and monotonous. We can trace the effort to emulate the authors of antiquity without the ease which is acquired by practice or the taste that comes ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... ear for music. Possibly we are entering on an age in which the people care less for form, for phraseology, than for what seems to them true, real—for what, as they would express it, "takes hold of them." This is no plea or excuse for careless work, but rather a suggestion that the day of prolix, fine, flowery writing is passing. The immense number of well-written books in circulation has made success with careless, slovenly manuscripts impossible. Publishers and editors will not even read, much less publish them. Simplicity, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... monuments of the schism, of the charges of the Greeks against the Latins, are deposited in the epistles of Photius, (Epist Encyclica, ii. p. 47—61,) and of Michael Cerularius, (Canisii Antiq. Lectiones, tom. iii. p. i. p. 281—324, edit. Basnage, with the prolix ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... superior orders; and, in fine, had been guilty of a very overweening act of vanity and presumption. Respect for the memory of my deceased friend, Mr. Richard Tinto, has obliged me to treat this matter at some length; but I spare the reader his prolix though curious observations, as well upon the character of the French school as upon the state of painting in Scotland at the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Fitzosborne to Emma is not much shorter; but the amours of Fitzallen and Eleanor, being of a less romantic cast, are closed in three pages only. The three noble couples were married in Queen-Hoo Hall upon the same day, being the twentieth Sunday after Easter. There is a prolix account of the marriage-feast, of which we can pick out the names of a few dishes, such as peterel, crane, sturgeon, swan, etc., with a profusion of wild-fowl and venison. We also see that a suitable song was produced by Peretto on the occasion, and that the bishop, who blessed the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... works of art. It was more difficult to sustain any interest in Das Wesen des Christenthums ('The Essence of Christianity') by the same author, for it was impossible whilst reading this work not to become conscious, however involuntarily, of the prolix and unskilful manner in which he dilates on the simple and fundamental idea, namely, religion explained from a purely subjective and psychological point of view. Nevertheless, from that day onward I always regarded Feuerbach ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... much interest in this visit of the departed guid-man, and, having touched a chord which was extremely sensitive and not easily put to rest after having been made to vibrate, old Mrs Cameron entertained her with a sweet and prolix account of the last illness, death, and burial of the said guid-man, with the tears swelling up in her bright old eyes and hopping over her wrinkled cheeks, until Flora forbade her to say another word, reminding her of the doctor's ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... of exquisite green vapor dashed with amber and pink and red. Each morning the shade of the maple trees deepened, and on the lawn the dandelions opened, sowing with pieces of gold the velvet of the sward. The songs of the robin, the catbird and the thrush became more confident, more prolix until, at last, the drab and angular little village was transfigured into celestial beauty by the heavenly light and ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... earnest attacks on all that has been gained in the science up to his day, he has done a great service in stimulating inquiry and causing a better statement of results. While undoubtedly the best known of American writers, yet, because of a prolix style and an illogical habit of mind, he has had no extended influence on ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... saw no reason why he should not put that old fool right. He knew nothing of the forms of the House;—was more ignorant of them than an ordinary schoolboy;—but on that very account felt less trepidation than might another parliamentary novice. Mr Brown was tedious and prolix; and Melmotte, though he thought much of his project and had almost told himself that he would do the thing, was still doubting, when, suddenly, Mr Brown sat down. There did not seem to be any particular end to ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... you hid yourself, and whither have you vanished? What is the meaning of all this?" The poet received this note at Vaucluse, and sent an explanation of his flight, sincere indeed as to good feelings, but prolix as usual in the expression of them. Pastrengo sent him a kind reply, and soon afterwards did him the still greater favour of visiting him at Vaucluse, and helping him to ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the collection of his letters appended to Southey's biography forms, with the biographical portions of his poetry, the materials for a sketch of his life. Southey's biography itself is very helpful, though too prolix and too much filled out with dissertations for common readers. Had its author only done for Cowper what he did for Nelson! [Our acknowledgments are also due to Mr. Benham, the writer of the Memoir prefixed to the Globe ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... Arthur Quiller-Couch, in a preface that is as unconventional in manner as it is stimulating in most of its substance, maintains the tradition. As a matter of fact, what Coleridge has to say on poetic diction is prolix and perilously near commonplace. Instead of making to Wordsworth the wholly sufficient answer that much poetry of the highest kind employs a language that by no perversion can be called essentially the same as the language of prose, he allows himself to be led by his German ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... more methodical, though under general circumstances uselessly prolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the sheet of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip of cardboard an inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening, and match each color beside one of the circular openings. You will thus have ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... spin a long yarn, protract; spin out, swell out, draw out; battologize[obs3]. Adj. diffuse, profuse; wordy, verbose, largiloquent|, copious, exuberant, pleonastic, lengthy; longsome[obs3], long-winded, longspun[obs3], long drawn out; spun out, protracted, prolix, prosing, maundering; circumlocutory, periphrastic, ambagious[obs3], roundabout; digressive; discursive, excursive; loose; rambling episodic; flatulent, frothy. Adv. diffusely &c. adj.; at large, in extenso[Lat]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... or four of Scott's novels you are pretty apt to read more. It is an easy matter to skip the prolix passages and the unnecessary introductions. This done, you have a body of romance that is far richer than any present-day fiction. And their great merit is that, though written in a coarse age, the Waverley ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... such a "periless buffetting," was enough to have hurt the health of a strong man. Few constitutions can bear to be long wet through in intense cold. I fear it will tire you to death to read this prolix ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... Maud listening, with rapt interest, to the chronicles of all the village families, robustly and unimaginatively told by the parson's wife; meanwhile I, tortured by intolerable ennui, pumped up questions, tried a hundred subjects with my worthy host. He told me long and prolix stories, he discoursed on rural needs. At last I said that we must be going; he replied with genuine disappointment that the night was still young, and that it was a pity to break up our pleasant confabulation. I saw with a shock of wonder that he had evidently been enjoying himself hugely; ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The prolix pertinacity with which this old aged man adheres to the opinion that he had formed, without any intelligible reason, is characteristic of an English peasant; but however absurd his mode of judging may be, and however confused and incongruous his ideas, his species of absurdity surely bears no resemblance ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... a single word upon kith, kin, and ally; I promise you I will not be prolix. But it is necessary to the authenticity of my legend, that you should know that Sir Philip Forester, with his handsome person, elegant accomplishments, and fashionable manners, married the younger Miss Falconer of King's Copland. The ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... quot linguas gentium esse voluisti, quem enim te ipse dici velin, scire non possumus." (Panegyr. Vet. ix. 26.) In explaining Constantine's progress in the faith, Mosheim (p. 971, &c.) is ingenious, subtle, prolix.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... faith. The tasks which the greatest of our poets set himself when near the age of thirty, and to which he presumably brought all the powers of which he was then conscious, were the uninspired and pitilessly prolix poems of VENUS AND ADONIS and THE RAPE OF LUCRECE, the first consisting of some 1,200 lines and the second of more than 1,800; one a calculated picture of female concupiscence and the other a still more calculated picture of female chastity: the two alike abnormally ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... associate a diminishing idea with the Poems which follow, as having been written for Experiment on the public taste, more than having sprung (as they must have done) from living and daily circumstances.—I am prolix, because I am gratifyed in the opportunity of writing to you, and I don't well know when to leave off. I ought before this to have reply'd to your very kind invitation into Cumberland. With you and your Sister I could gang any where. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... in America had been hitherto mere puffery—puffery for the most part of weak, prolix, commonplace scribblings of little would-be authors and poets. A reformation in criticism, therefore, Edgar Poe conceived to be the only remedy for the prevalent mediocrity in writing that was vitiating the taste of the day, the only hope of placing American ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... their minds whether it be possible that the brute features of the monkey can be changed into the noble countenance of man: "Scinditur vulgus." One might argue at considerable length on this novel subject; and perhaps, after all, produce little more than prolix pedantry: ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... fluent, rhythmical, copious, elevated, flexible, smooth, dignified, terse, epigrammatic, felicitous, euphonious, elegant, and lofty. Undesirable qualities are the diffuse, verbose, redundant, inflated, prolix, ambiguous, feeble, monotonous, loose, slip-shod, dry, flowery, pedantic, pompous, rhetorical, grandiloquent, artificial, formal, ornate, halting, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... the amateur lecturer was beginning to grow somewhat prolix, a cormorant below created a slight diversion for awhile by settling in his flight on the very highest point of Michael's Crag, and proceeding to preen his glittering feathers in the full golden flood ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... sufficient conversation with him to judge of this. He was intimate with d'Invernois, who spoke highly of him. He had certainly none of our Irish vivacity, and fulness of imagery. He was rather querulous and prolix, than piquant, and declaimed rather than said sharp things. I said to him, "Why do you not endeavour, in your writings, to accommodate yourself more to the public taste?" He answered, in despair, "I cannot—I have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... Copenhagen in the middle of the seventeenth century (1644). Stephanius, the first commentator on Saxo, still remains the best upon his language. Immense knowledge of Latin, both good and bad (especially of the authors Saxo imitated), infinite and prolix industry, a sharp eye for the text, and continence in emendation, are not his only virtues. His very bulkiness and leisureliness are charming; he writes like a man who had eternity to write in, and who knew enough to fill it, and who expected readers of an equal ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... assisted him or complimented him with gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine with real light and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. Common men are apologies for men; they bow the head, excuse themselves with prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances because the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... will give me notice of them, that I may endeavor to subjoin at the same time my reply; and in this way readers seeing both at once will more easily determine where the truth lies; for I do not engage in any case to make prolix replies, but only with perfect frankness to avow my errors if I am convinced of them, or if I cannot perceive them, simply to state what I think is required for defense of the matters I have written, adding thereto no explication of any new matte that it may ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... for a hoarseness, lowness of spirits, and in digestion, for he was troubled with all these complaints to a very great degree. Wagtail immediately undertook to explain the nature of his case, and in a very prolix manner harangued upon prognostics, diagnostics, symptomatics, therapeutics, inanition, and repletion; then calculated the force of the stomach and lungs in their respective operations; ascribed the player's malady to a disorder in these organs, proceeding from hard drinkings and vociferations, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... have occurred within your knowledge of which the easiest apparent solution could be one which involved a belief in supernatural agencies?" persisted Latimer, who was rather prolix and pedantic ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... early this morning, and Pennyloaf was all but crazy with grief. To Jane these things sounded so extraordinary that for some time she could scarcely put a question, but sat in dismay, listening to the woman's prolix description of all that had come to pass since Wednesday evening. At length she called for Mrs. Byass, for whose ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... am getting somewhat trivial and prolix; but there was hardly an incident in my two days' tramp which did not give me some small fresh insight into the terra incognita of the country; and there may be those among my readers, to whom it is not uninteresting to look, for once, at even the smallest ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... those arts in which I thought he excelled, I began to despair of his opening and solving the difficulties which perplexed me (of which indeed however ignorant, he might have held the truths of piety, had he not been a Manichee). For their books are fraught with prolix fables, of the heaven, and stars, sun, and moon, and I now no longer thought him able satisfactorily to decide what I much desired, whether, on comparison of these things with the calculations I had elsewhere read, the account given in the books of Manichaeus were preferable, or ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... the Vicar General—"had the wise man in the Old Testament, when he said: 'The fool is easily taken in his speech.' I had firmly declared I would not dispute." This beginning, certainly unexpected by the majority of the audience, was followed by a prolix homily on the origin of heresies; the battles of the Pope and Christendom against them; words of Roman historians on the value of unity; the rareness of the gift of interpreting languages, of which he himself could not boast; in short, every thing but that which was demanded. Yet even here ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... prolix on the subject of knightly honor, but I had good reason for being so, because the Augean stable of moral and intellectual enormity in this world can be cleaned out only with the besom of philosophy. There are two things which more than all else serve to make the social arrangements of modern life ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... concerning which I will inform you presently; for it was by my curiosity to view this relic of their remotest times that the visit among the Indians, alluded to in the beginning of my letter, was prompted. It has been necessary for me to be thus prolix, to make you understand the nature of the society—and a sort of danger too—by which we were surrounded. On one side, white rogues—border cutthroats—contending, through corrupted red men, for the possessions ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to the prolix story. He might have heard it before, he did not remember. There were several Indian waifs ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... as by her recollections of English mountains and lakes. The attempt to blend into a single picture a landscape actually seen and a landscape only known at second-hand may perhaps account for the lack of distinctness in her pictures. Her descriptions of scenery are elaborate, and often prolix, but it is often difficult to form a clear image of the scene. In her novels she cares for landscape only as an effective background, and paints with the broad, careless sweep of the theatrical scene-painter. In the Journeys, where she depicts scenery for its own sake, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Yeats, or Shaw.... The piece, in its realism, earnest purpose, and dramatic force, is worthy of John Galsworthy, and has the additional merit of being almost entirely free from anything like special pleading. Never prolix or oratorical, the compact and homely dialogue is full of shrewd observation and sage comments, pertinent to the contributory causes of a conel private and public tragedy.... The play is as able as it is significant, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... laying great stress on the degree and manner in which this element enters into the composition of the New Testament; that ethical truths are there expressed in every variety of form which can fix them upon the imagination and the heart, with an entire absence of those prolix discussions and metaphysical refinements which form so large a portion of Aristotle and Plato. If we find in these writers a moral truth expressed with something approaching the comprehensive beauty and simplicity of the Gospels, we are filled with ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... that book," replied the priest, "is also a great friend of mine: his verses, when sung by himself, excite much admiration; indeed such is the sweetness of his voice in singing them, that they are perfectly enchanting. He is a little too prolix in his eclogues; but there can never be too much of what is really good: let it be preserved with the select. But what book ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Northern poems, the poems of England and Germany give indication of a progress in style from a more archaic and repressed, to a more developed and more prolix kind of narrative. The difference is considerable between Hildebrand and Waldere, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Thopas," as it is generally called, is introduced by Chaucer as a satire on the dull, pompous, and prolix metrical romances then in vogue. It is full of phrases taken from the popular rhymesters in the vein which he holds up to ridicule; if, indeed — though of that there is no evidence — it be not actually part of an old romance which Chaucer selected ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the Pur[a]nas were probably Hesiodic in a great extent, and doubtless contained much that was afterwards specially developed in more prolix form in the epic itself. But the works that are come down as Pur[a]nas are in general of later sectarian character, and the epic language, phraseology, and descriptions of battles are more likely taken straight from the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... amusement and delight. Abstracts from the most popular publications will be given, accompanied with short critical remarks upon them, and, whatever appears most interesting in the periodical productions of Great Britain will be transferred into this; pruned if they be prolix, and illustrated by explanatory notes, whenever they may be found obscured ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... vice-president, rules, minutes, and committees. Not once, but twice a week does this society meet, and when the full moon is propitious for a clear journey home through the morasses, the debates are often unduly prolonged and the chairman's summing-up luxuriantly prolix. How many politicians of note in London have been raked fore and aft in that little schoolroom! What measures and enactments, plausible to the unthinking metropolitans, have been cut and slashed there, while the conscious ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity.' Now Clarendon is not a great writer, not even a good writer, for he is prolix and involved, yet we see that even Clarendon, when he comes to a matter in which his heart is engaged, becomes sweet and harmonious in his rhythm. If we turn to a prose-writer of the very first place, we are instantly conscious of a still ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... of the Spanish possessions, and fell among a people who knew nothing of the white man. A native in a canoe speedily came out to the ship, as soon as she cast anchor; and, standing at a long distance, made delivery of a very prolix oration, with many gestures and signs, moving his hand, turning and twisting his head and body, and ending with a great show of reverence and submission. He returned to shore. Again, and for a third time, he came ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... the desert, and did speak out with that great thunder-voice of his, not by words which he thought to be great, but by actions, by feelings, by a history which were great! His Koran has become a stupid piece of prolix absurdity; we do not believe, like him, that God wrote that! The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force of Nature: whatsoever is truly great in him springs ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... prolix on this subject, it may be said, shortly, that when the chain and sinker of the next buoy were being hauled in, a three-inch rope snapped and grazed the finger of a man, fortunately taking no more than a little of the skin off, though it probably had force enough to have taken his hand off ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... still on the decay. The Jarcoorts, inhabiting the country to the west of the great lake 'Carangermite,' once a very numerous and powerful people, are now reduced to under sixty. But time would fail, and I fear it would be deemed too prolix, were I to attempt to particularise in ever so small a degree, the previous state, condition, and declension of the original inhabitants of so ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... moment deceive themselves on the confidence that this unbosoming deserved. They were long blase on oaths; they numbered among themselves veterans and virtuosi of perjury. The passage about the army did not, however, escape them. They observed with annoyance that the message, despite its prolix enumeration of the lately enacted laws, passed, with affected silence, over the most important of all, the election law, and, moreover, in case no revision of the Constitution was held, left the choice of the President, ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... skin—Tasso is the Italian for badger—continued to be borne for many centuries upon the harness of all Lombard coach-horses. Torquato's father, Bernardo Tasso, himself a poet of no mean calibre and the composer of a scholarly but somewhat prolix work, the Amadigi, formed for many years a prominent member of that brilliant band of literary courtiers within the castle of Vittoria Colonna, the Lady of Ischia, of whom we shall speak more fully in another place. But for the overwhelming ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... claims of Titucussi and the members of his family to the royal bounty. In the course of the Memorial, the writer takes occasion to recapitulate some of the principal events in the latter years of the empire; and though sufficiently prolix to tax even the patience of Philip II., it is of much value as an historical document, coming from one of the ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... is published in Mexico, written by various authors, under the patronage of the Government. It is a valuable book of reference, but somewhat prolix, and the type is small and the volume unwieldy. After the manner of books issued in Spanish-American countries, too much space is taken up with adulations of public men. There are no less than four full-page portraits ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... me only one way out of this difficulty. The main incidents of the Epic are narrated in the original work in passages which are neither diffuse nor unduly prolix, and which are interspersed in the leading narrative of the Epic, at that narrative itself is interspersed in the midst of more lengthy episodes. The more carefully I examined the arrangement, the more clearly it appeared to me that these ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... writer has ever equalled Thucydides. He was a perfect master of the art of gradual diminution. His history is sometimes as concise as a chronological chart; yet it is always perspicuous. It is sometimes as minute as one of Lovelace's letters; yet it is never prolix. He never fails to contract and to expand it in ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the country. In the islands of Japon they have another factory, from which they procure supplies and military stores, and which is of much importance to them. Of the other islands of this archipelago no mention is made, to avoid being prolix, although there are a ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... had passed, and as she was very prolix, Mr Vanslyperken was a mass of snow on the windward side of him before she had finished, which she did, by pulling down her worsted stockings, and showing the wounds which she had received as her ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and speech, that in every form was disagreeable to him; alike in the gloom of Pascal's reveries, and in the inflation of speech of some of the heroes of Corneille. He failed to relish even Montaigne as he ought to have done, because Montaigne's method was too prolix, his scepticism too universal, his egoism too manifest, and because he did not produce complete and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... his Greek predecessor; he eliminated the legend of the Epigoni altogether, only alluding to it once in vague and general terms; he succeeded in getting the story, down to the burial of the Argive dead, within the compass of twelve books of not inordinate length. But it is possible to be prolix without being an Antimachus, and the prolixity of Statius is quite sufficient. The Argives do not reach Thebes till half-way through the seventh book,[550] the brothers do not meet till half-way through the eleventh book. The ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... gone back to dismal lodgings in town now; he only heard of the plan by letter, and the Captain's letters were very prolix, and not informing. Mr. Gillat's own letters were even worse, for if they lacked the prolixity, they lacked the little information also. On receipt of the Captain's information he merely wrote to ask when Julia was going, and what time she would ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... families had usurped the authority at Freiburg: similar oligarchical government prevailed at St. Gall and Schaffhausen. The Junker, in the latter place, rendered themselves especially ridiculous by the innumerable offices and chambers in which they transacted their useless and prolix affairs. In all these aristocratic cantons, the peasantry were cruelly harassed, oppressed, and, in some parts, kept in servitude, by the provincial governors. The wealthy provincial governments were monopolized by the great aristocratic families.[1] Even in the pure democracies, the ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... progresado. Prohibit malpermesi. Prohibition malpermeso. Project (protrude) elstari. Project projekto. Projectile jxetajxo, pafajxo. Proletarian proletaria, o. Prolific multinfana, fruktoporta. Prolix trolonga. Prologue antauxskribajxo, antauxverko. Prolong plilongigi. Promenade promeni. Promenade (act) promenado. Promenade (place) promenejo. Prominent eminenta, rimarkinda. Promiscuous miksa, konfuza. Promise promesi. Promontory promontoro. Promote (advance) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... to be said on this subject. And, indeed, what is there on which much cannot be said? It might perhaps be Landivisian, for even the most prolix man is obliged to be concise in his remarks, when there is a lack of matter. I have noticed that good places are usually the ugliest ones. They are like virtuous women; one respects them, but one passes on in search of others. Here, surely, is the most productive ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... critics most in the romances of the Middle Ages, and in that very different variety of romance which was cultivated during the seventeenth century—the prolix, sentimental fictions of La Calprenede, Scuderi, Gomberville, and D'Urfe—was the fantastic improbability of their adventures. Hence the common acceptation of the word romantic in such phrases as "a romantic notion," "a romantic elopement," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... sisters were no better than the rest of the human family, but on the whole were, to put the case mildly, as bad as most, in respect of giving short weight in their shops, and not speaking the truth, - I say, before this knowledge became forced upon me, their prolix addresses, their inordinate conceit, their daring ignorance, their investment of the Supreme Ruler of heaven and earth with their own miserable meannesses and littlenesses, greatly shocked me. Still, as their term for the frame ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... attendance at this admirable institution from 1821 to 1826. I am glad to find that it still continues in active operation. In November 1880 the number of students attending the Edinburgh School of Arts amounted to two thousand five hundred! I have been led to this prolix account of the beginning of the institution by the feeling that I owe a deep debt of gratitude to it, and because of the instructive and intellectually enjoyable evenings which I spent there, in fitting myself for entering upon the practical work ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... of it, which M. Achille Jubinal attributes to the eleventh century. Here and there I have taken the liberty of using the French prose version, which he attributes to the latter part of the twelfth. I have often condensed the story, where it was prolix or repeated itself: but I have tried to follow faithfully both matter and style, and to give, word for word, as nearly as I could, any notable passages. Those who wish to know more of St. Brendan should consult the learned brochure of M. Jubinal, "La Legende ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Him." I might say more as to the Gospel of St. John, the saving sign of the cross, and other mysteries of the Christians, whose marvelous efficacy these tribes have experienced; but I would not be prolix. Let it be enough to state that seven or eight sick persons at least have been cured ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... man. Though enslaved by some absurd prejudices, and though liable to strange fits of caprice, he cannot be accused of having deviated from the path of right in search either of unlawful gain or of unlawful pleasure. Like his father he was a distinguished speaker, impressive, but prolix, and too monotonously solemn. The person of the orator was in perfect harmony with his oratory. His attitude was rigidly erect—his complexion so dark that he might have passed for a native of a warmer climate than ours; and his harsh features were composed to an expression resembling ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have been printed. The most important is a general history of the Indies, from the discovery to the year 1520, in three volumes. It exists only in manuscript, but is the fountain from which Herrera, and most of the other historians of the New World, have drawn large supplies. The work, though prolix, is valuable, as the author was an eye-witness of many of the facts, had others from persons who were concerned in the transactions recorded, and possessed copious documents. It displays great erudition, though somewhat crudely and diffusely introduced. His history was commenced ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... in the House before we were made sensible, that it was the Custom, which had made it the business of our Host, to entertain all his Guests at first coming in, with a prolix Account of that remarkable Interview between the two Kings of France and Spain. I speak safely now, as being got on French Ground: For the Spaniard in his own Country would have made me to know, that putting Spain after France had there been look'd upon ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... hitherto commemorated, the following extract from a note, made by me on the spot some years ago, may not be unsuitable for publication in "NOTES AND QUERIES." As I had neither the time nor the patience which the pious, but rather prolix, Scotchman bestowed upon his composition, I found it necessary to content myself with a mere abstract of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... of extraordinary beauty—there was no denying that. Personal descriptions are always disappointing; but, not to be prolix, he had such eyes, with so much passion and fire in them, that they could only be the inheritance of many generations of love and hate and quick emotions; his eyelids drooped languidly, but when he opened his eyes and looked full at you!—I ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson |
