"Prolixity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... [excuse the fanciful prolixity,] was I employed, and such were my thoughts and imaginations, when I found a very different result from the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... subtleties, and often charmingly told. Flyveposten ("The Flying Mail") was translated into English (Boston and Cambridge, 1870) but attracted no particular attention. For all that, Goldschmidt, in spite of occasional prolixity, stands the test of time remarkably well. His Jewish stories, notably Maser, Aron og Esther, and En Joede, contain a higher order of work, though less dramatically effective, than that of Sacher-Masoch, and Emil Franzos, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... according to any of the mesmeric hypotheses, any mesmeric reason why it should not have succeeded: it was, however, declined. We are obliged to omit many other points in this evening's proceedings to avoid prolixity. Though many facts were curious, and certainly not easy of explanation by ordinary means, there was nothing which defied it; every experimentum crucis failed, and we, of course, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... omitting some circumstances which he might have been expected to have retained, and adding others with good judgment and in general with good effect, but which by some fatality usually tend in his hands to excessive prolixity. This is certainly not the case with his dignified and spirited exordium, but in the fourth stanza he begins to copy history, and his muse's wing immediately flags. No more striking example of the superiority of dramatic ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... passages of narrative and description show that he had a poet's feeling for beauty; he handles the language with the strength and skill of a master. On the other hand, he lacks all sense of proportion, and cannot shape an imaginative plan; his prolixity wearies the reader, and it cannot be denied that as a moral reformer he sometimes topples into immorality. The success of the poem was extraordinary, and extended far beyond France. It was attacked and defended, and ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... him, bearing a despatch* in which, to China's simple "greeting," Japan returned a "respectful address;" to China's expression of ineffable superiority Japan replied that the coming of the embassy had "dissolved her long-harboured cares;" and to China's grandiloquent prolixity Japan made answer with half a dozen brief lines. Imoko was now accompanied by eight students four of literature and four of religion. Thus was established, and for long afterwards maintained, a bridge over which the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... acquaint you (without prolixity if possible) with the few things I have been able to comprehend of all these sublime ideas. With regard to the system of our world, disputes were a long time maintained, on the cause that turns the planets, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... them and they are at the best most imperfect mediums of communication. No one who has been on the Coast can fail to recognise how inferior the native language is to the native's mind behind it—and the prolixity and repetition he has therefore to employ to make ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... more than thirty volumes, he was giving to the world those masterly works which have invigorated the theology and sustained the devotion of unnumbered readers in either hemisphere. Amongst others, folio by folio, came forth that Exposition of the Hebrews, which, amidst all its digressive prolixity, and with its frequent excess of erudition, is an enduring monument of its author's robust understanding and spiritual insight, as well as his astonishing industry. At last the pen dropped from his band, and on the 23d of August, 1683, he dedicated a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... be of great and formidable prolixity, because it has not to do with objects of reason, the variety of which is inexhaustible, but merely with Reason herself and her problems; problems which arise out of her own bosom, and are not proposed to her by the nature of outward things, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... boldest, if not the ablest work of the Parisian Atheists," and it has undoubtedly obtained great popularity. Voltaire, who has written against the "System of Nature" in a tone of bitter sarcasm, and who complains of its general dullness and prolixity, yet admits that it is "often humorous, sometimes eloquent." It certainly is not written in that lively, but rather superficial style, which has characterized many of the French writers, but it speaks in plain yet powerful language, evincing ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... glory in which he shone during the seventeenth century, when the Jansenists, in their inveterate obstinacy, identified him with the defence of their cause? The reputation of sour austerity and of argumentative and tiresome prolixity which attaches to the remembrance of all the writers of Port-Royal, save Pascal—has that affected too the work of Augustin, enlisted in spite of himself in the ranks of these pious schismatics? And yet, if there have ever been any beings ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... find it such a keen personal joy to evoke and follow out, and realize to myself by means of pen and pencil, all these personal reminiscences; and with such a capital excuse for prolixity! ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... word for wealth in one of its most disgusting forms, and makes 666 in the most straightforward way. This explanation has as good a chance as any other. The work contains a general {353} attempt at explanation of the Apocalypse, and some history of opinion on the subject. It has not the prolixity which is so common a fault ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... must submit to it; but we may surely expect to be heard with patience, or rather with favour and indulgence, while we proceed to shew that there is no need to have recourse to so desperate an enemy. The discussion will necessarily draw us into length. But our prolixity will not be greater than may well be claimed by the importance of the subject, especially as it scarcely seems to have hitherto sufficiently engaged the attention of writers on ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... the ladies of the nineteenth century, but of the Middle Age monks, who, having in general no poetry on which to form their taste, except the effeminate and bombastic productions of the dying Roman empire, fell into a certain washy prolixity, which has made monk Latin a byword, and puts one sadly in mind of what is too truly ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... intent only on conveying to others the result of his own inquiries and reflections on the most important topics, in as perspicuous a manner as possible; and the embellishments of diction come to him unbidden and unsought. His prolixity does not weary, nor his learning embarrass, the reader. If he had been more elaborate, he might have induced a suspicion of artifice; if he had been less so, the weightiness of his matter would seem to have been scarcely enough considered. But he has higher claims to the gratitude ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Christopher Columbus, where we remained two months and two days repairing our vessels and procuring necessaries for the voyage home. During our stay there we suffered many insults from the Christian inhabitants, the particulars of which are here omitted to avoid prolixity. Leaving that island on the 22d of July, we arrived at the port of Cadiz on the eighth of September[7], after a voyage of six weeks, where we were honourably received; having thus, by the blessing of God, finished our ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... they absolutely condemn, because we do not require the invocation of saints. Nor on any topic do they speak more eloquently and with more prolixity. Nevertheless they do not effect anything else than that the saints should be honored; likewise, that the saints who live pray for others; as though, indeed, the invocation of dead saints were on that account necessary. They cite Cyprian, because he asked Cornelius while ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... which we are engaged has brought forth whole hosts of correspondents. They come not single spies, but in battalions. None of these letters, so far as we have read, can boast of any striking or peculiar excellence. Their great fault is their immense prolixity. Their words far outnumber their facts. An editor having once complained to a writer of the inordinate length of his composition, the writer replied that he had not had time to make it shorter. This is doubtless the trouble with our army ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... satirical and sublime poetry. But the grossest improprieties of this poem discover an originality of invention, and its absurdities often border on sublimity. We are surprised that a poet should write one hundred cantos on hell, paradise, and purgatory. But this prolixity is partly owing to the want of art and method, and is common to all early compositions, in which everything is related circumstantially and without rejection, and not in those general terms which are used by modern writers." Warton is shocked at Dante's "disgusting fooleries" and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Tuesday Eve.—Forgive my prolixity, which is yet too brief for all I could wish to say. God give you comfort, and all that are of your household! Our loves and ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... public and bloody flagellations took place; and on Holy Thursday and Friday there were two admirably arranged processions, in which many people accompanied the flagellants with torches. I will conclude this letter with two incidents, omitting many others, to avoid prolixity. The first concerns a pagan, who was grievously wounded by a wild boar while hunting. Thinking that the hour of death was at hand, and remembering to have heard in the church that in our necessities we should invoke the most ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... if a presentment err by defect, by excess, or by obscurity apparent to myself. I must get the whole in; and for due emphasis am very probably redundant. I am not willing to attempt seriously modifying my natural style, the reflection of myself, lest, while digging up the tares of prolixity I root up also the wheat of precision. The difference emphasized by Dr. Johnson, "between notions borrowed from without and notions generated within," seems to me to apply to the mode of expression as ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... country quite new, and full of most interesting objects in this science, and that he had no means of measuring heights, or ascertaining the temperature or pressure of the air; and notwithstanding a want of method, and a heaviness and prolixity in the style, this book possesses great interest, from the scenes of nature and pictures of manners ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... good man, in the old Scottish presbyterian phrase, God-ward and man-ward. No divine was more attentive in visiting the sick and afflicted, in catechising the youth, in instructing the ignorant, and in reproving the erring. And hence, notwithstanding impatience of his prolixity and prejudices, personal or professional, and notwithstanding, moreover, a certain habitual contempt for his understanding, especially on affairs of genius and taste, on which Blattergowl was apt to be diffuse, from his hope of one day fighting his way to a chair of rhetoric or belles lettres, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... prolixity is the reason why I wave the examination of the will and direct passions, as they appear in animals; since nothing is more evident, than that they are of the same nature, and excited by the same causes as in human creatures. I leave this ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... said that I had plenty to think about besides Randall, I meant to string off a list. My prolixity over the Volunteer Training Corps came upon me unawares. I wanted to show you that my time was fairly well occupied. I was Chairman of our town Belgian Relief Committee. I was a member of our County Territorial Association ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... exploration. The Jesuits were missionaries and preoccupied with the conversion of the savages. Lescarbot had a literary education, which Champlain lacked, and, unlike the Jesuits, he approached life in America from the standpoint of a layman. His prolixity often serves as a foil to the terseness of Champlain, and suggests that he must have been a merciless talker. Yet, though inclined to be garrulous, he was a good observer and had many correct ideas—notably the belief that ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... sees in his subject, and there is hardly a limit to what he may omit. What is required is that he shall say what he elects to say discreetly; that he shall be quick to see the gist of a matter, and give it pithily without either prolixity or ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... with this small Difference,— and in which consists the whole Strength of the Panegyric, That the Author of the Romance has convey'd and re-convey'd, in about ten Lines, —what you, with the glorious Prolixity of the Law, could not have crowded into as many ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... certainty, and the other beginning with shew of plainness and certainty, and ending in difficulty and incertainty. Of the great and manifest error and untrue conceit or estimation of the infiniteness of particulars, whereas indeed all prolixity is in discourse and derivations; and of the infinite and most laborious expense of wit that hath been employed upon toys and matters of no fruit or value. That although the period of one age cannot advance men to the furthest ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... depths. More especially it may now be declared that Professor Teufelsdroeckh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigour, are here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in England we cannot promise ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... temples and palaces, it was assigned to two or even three of the Conquerors, who each took his share of it. Garcilasso, who describes the city as it was soon after the Conquest, commemorates with sufficient prolixity the names of the cavaliers among whom ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... Is brevity or prolixity a quality of these early narrators? What English prose written before 1640 is superior to the work of these three men? Why is it especially important for Americans to know something of their writings? What advance in prose narrative do you ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... the period. Some of the subjects with which it dealt have ceased to be disputed questions, or no longer attract much interest. Above all, its course was clouded and confused by verbal misunderstandings, arising in part, perhaps, from the occasional prolixity of Hoadly's style, but chiefly from the distorting influence of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... upon me through the haze of memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden houses and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my life; I am a citizen of somewhere else. My good townspeople will not much regret me, for—though it has been as dear an object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some importance in their eyes, and to win myself ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Manurga and the inspector Matias Beltran de Manurga. Either of them is, in my opinion, a person as capable as is necessary for the said offices, as well as for things of more importance. I entreat your Majesty to pardon my prolixity in matters in which you have not asked my advice; for my zeal and desire for your royal service, and also for some one who may aid me therein, obliges me ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... liveliness. The lovers of proverbial wit, for many of these characters are strings of judicious adages, are therefore greatly obliged to Mr. Bliss for his pleasing republication of so pregnant a volume. The notes are instructive without prolixity: the index is extremely useful, for it is really astonishing[ES] how large a quantity of good matter is scattered up and down the present duodecimo (the advt. calls it octavo), and the appendix ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... favorite author, "Shikspur," is asked, "Who wrote Shikspur?" she replies, with that promptness which shows complete mastery of a subject, "Ben Jonson." In later days, another lady has, with greater prolixity, it is true, but hardly less confidence, and, it must be confessed, equal reason, answered to the same query, "Francis Bacon." This question must, then, be regarded as still open to discussion; but, assuming, for the nonce, that the Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... however, quite in the mood to enjoy his sprightliness; but whatever I wanted in gaiety was amply made up in the triumphant and gracious good humour of my mother, whose smiles of benevolence and exultation were showered around as bountifully as the summer sunshine. I will not weary you with unnecessary prolixity. Let it suffice to say, that I was married to Lord Glenfallen with all the attendant pomp and circumstance of wealth, rank, and grandeur. According to the usage of the times, now humanely reformed, the ceremony ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... a few words, without ceremony, without indulging in a long speech: cut it short with an apophthegm;[6] quick, quick, Mr. Gorgibus, make haste, avoid prolixity. ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... entitled to almost unqualified praise: in regard to what happened to other countries, he necessarily depended on the information which he received from them, and cannot therefore be equally relied upon. The prolixity, with which he is now reproached, was not felt at the time in which he wrote; every event, however small, was then thought to be important, and multitudes were personally interested in it. But the charm of his work is, that every page of it shews a true lover of his country, an impartial ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... after much thought, he produced a close and telling composition. He also weeded it of every trait and every term he had observed in mad people's talk, or the letters they had shown him. So there was no incoherency, no heat, no prolixity, no "spies," no "conspiracy," no italics. A simple, honest, earnest story, with bitter truth stamped on every line; a sober, strong appeal from a sore heart but hard head to the arbiters of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... which it was dedicated. It was a Sicilian schooner from Trapani, built for fishing. An artistic calker had sculptured a wooden cray-fish climbing over the rudder. From the two sides of the prow dangled a double row of cray-fish carved with the innocent prolixity of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... entitled to a chapter to himself, but, to avoid prolixity, I will only give one extract from the "Asia" of Barros.[285] Allusion has been made above to an attack on the mainlands of Goa by three Hindu chiefs, when Ponda was besieged. The inhabitants appealed ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... &c.; you have both the same redundant eloquence. But why should you think any body would personate you? Nobody would dream of such a prank who ever read your compositions, and perhaps not many who have heard your conversation. But I have been inoculated with a little of your prolixity. The fact is, my dear R——ts, that somebody has tried to make a fool of you, and what he did not succeed in doing, you have done for him and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... waited for the point of the story, but my friend, after exhausting his powers of speech and metaphor, was fain to wind up his tale with a most lame and impotent conclusion. I now give it to the reader, not from a wish to punish him as I was punished, but because from the prolixity of the narrator he necessarily most minutely described scenes and customs, which, though they had nothing on earth to do with the "Dragon's Mouth," may prove interesting to the reader, as illustrating the peculiarities of the ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... say that he possesses the defects of his qualities. There is altogether too much of the "Go to: let me be Titanic" about the book. AEschylus has grown a trifle too well aware of his reputation, has taken to underscoring his points, and tends to prolixity in consequence. Mr. Hall Caine has not a little of Hugo's audacity, but, with it, not a little of Hugo's diffuseness. Standing, like Destiny, with scourge lifted over the naked backs of his two poor sinners, he spares them no single stroke—not so much as a little one. Every detail ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... themes which relate to the social, moral and religious well-being of mankind. Touching the style of the writer, as evinced in these selections, we should say that it was formed mainly upon a due avoidance of prolixity, (an observance not always characteristic of BENTHAM'S writings,) concerning which he himself very justly remarks: 'Prolixity may be where redundancy is not. Prolixity may arise not only from the multifarious insertion of unnecessary articles, but from the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... to this prolixity, the visit to Jerusalem, and the two battles of Arbela and Issus mixed into one, are very rapidly passed over, though the murder of Darius and Alexander's vengeance for it are duly mentioned. Something like a new beginning (thought by some to coincide with a change ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... impossible to affix a date—with the exception of a "dramatic journal," kept by fits and starts during the Christmas holidays when he was sixteen. G.K. solemnly tells the reader of this diary to take warning by it, to beware of prolixity, and it does in fact contain many more words to many fewer ideas than any of his later writings. But it is useful in giving the atmosphere of those years. Great part is in dialogue, the author appearing throughout as Your Humble Servant, his ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... volumes behind him, which have been printed at various times, the greater number of them after his death. It would be possible to reduce them to a tenth part if we could rid them of all useless and foreign matter, and of a prolixity which I find almost overwhelming; were this only done, his books should be regarded as among the best we have on the subject of natural history in its entirety. The plan of his work is good, his classification ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... long compelled him to lay aside, and which belonged to those days of awful authority in which he predominated over Widow Butler, and dictated the mode of cultivating the crofts of Beersheba. He made known to Reuben, with great prolixity, the prospect of his changing his present residence for the charge of the Duke of Argyle's stock-farm in Dumbartonshire, and enumerated the various advantages of the situation with obvious self-congratulation; but assured the patient hearer, that nothing had so much moved him to acceptance, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fell into a deep thinking fit, as he does sometimes. He had had his own say, it is true, but he had established his character as a listener to my own perfect satisfaction, for I, too, was conscious of having preached with a certain prolixity. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... generally divided into Students, Professors, Philistines, and Cattle, the points of difference between these castes being by no means strictly defined. The "Cattle" class is the most important. I might be accused of prolixity should I here enumerate the names of all the students and of all the regular and irregular professors; besides, I do not just at present distinctly remember the appellations of all the former gentlemen; while among the professors are many ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... constructed a factitious body in linden wood. The reader would find the detail too long and too minute if we were to describe the ingenious methods invented by Lassaigne, either to cut the wood or to preserve the form he had given to this great mass. But to avoid all prolixity, it will be sufficient to observe that he composed this wooden elephant in such a manner that all the parts could be separated. He opened a panel (it is immaterial on which side of the body) and introduced himself into the interior by means of this opening, either to diminish ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... the court room. It was fairly well filled, and he remained standing for a few minutes near the entrance. The civil docket was evidently on trial, for there was a jury in the box, and a witness was being examined with some prolixity with reference to the use of a few inches of land which lay on one side or on the other of a disputed boundary. From what the colonel could gather, that particular line fence dispute had been in litigation for twenty years, had cost several ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... upon many minds an impression of needless preparation and a kind of bustling prolixity. But the truth is that the very rapidity of such a man's mind makes him seem slow in getting to the point. It is positively because he is quick-witted that he is long-winded. A quick eye for ideas may actually make a writer slow in reaching ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... times and at various places, but chiefly in bar-rooms, did this Ulysses of Monte Flat recount the story of his wanderings. There were several discrepancies in his statement; there was sometimes considerable prolixity of detail; there was occasional change of character and scenery; there was once or twice an absolute change in the denoument: but always the fact of his having visited his wife and children remained. Of course, in a sceptical community like that ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... make some Difference which would only help to confound the Practitioner, and thereby swell this Treatise in many Places; but, as I have promised, so I will endeavour to lay down the easiest Method I can to avoid Prolixity, and proceed ...
— The Art of Confectionary • Edward Lambert
... security as before, and elected to stand his trial at once, which was precisely what the Attorney-General desired. The indictment, which may still be seen among the records at Osgoode Hall, was a truly formidable instrument, and set out the offence with great prolixity. The trial took place on Saturday, the 25th, before Mr. Justice Sherwood, who, in charging the jury, inveighed against the defendant with nearly as great vehemence as did the Crown prosecutor, stigmatizing him as "a wholesale retailer of calumny." He ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... than the confidence and trust with which his reputation for fairness and truthfulness, and his evident abhorrence of exaggeration, have inspired his hearers. Another explanation is, that he has avoided that rock on which so many advocates wreck their cases,—prolixity. Knowing that, as Sir James Scarlett once said, when a lawyer exceeds a certain length of time, he is always doing mischief to his client,—that, if he drives into the heads of the jury unimportant matter, he drives out matter more important ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... be admitted that this is not unpromising, and I really think Ludovica (with a caution as to the excessive prolixity of its kind and time) might be recommended to lovers of the detective novel, of which it is a rather early sample. I have confessed, in a later chapter, that this particular "wanity" is not my favourite; but I found myself ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the year 1708, I cannot but hope he may be able to produce some notices of what Mr. P. Cunningham calls, "the Puritanical fervour" of this little parish. "St. Antling's bell," and "St. Antling's preachers," were proverbial for shrillness and prolixity, and the name is a familiar one to the students of our old dramatists. Let "W.C." bear in mind, that the chaplains of the Commissioners of the Church of Scotland, with Alexander Henderson at their head, preached here in 1640, commanding crowded ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... nomenclature for the familiar uses of himself and his mates, until a Villon arrives to prove that this language, too, was awaiting the advent of its bully and master. In the meantime, what directness and modest sufficiency of utterance distinguishes the dock compared with the fumbling prolixity of the old gentleman on the bench! It is the trite story,—romanticism forced to plead at the bar of classicism fallen into its dotage, Keats judged by Blackwood, Wordsworth exciting the pained astonishment of Miss Anna Seward. Accuser and accused ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... it was desired to restore Plain Song to its primitive purity, one met with insurmountable obstacles due to its prodigious prolixity of long series of notes, repeating indefinitely the same musical forms; but in considering this in the light of explanations given by St. Isidore, and in view of the Oriental origin of the Christian religion, we are led to infer that these long series of notes were chants or vocalizations ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... the great reforms effected by Linnaeus was in the matter of scientific terminology. Technical terms are absolutely necessary to scientific progress, and particularly so in botany, where obscurity, ambiguity, or prolixity in descriptions are fatally misleading. Linnaeus's work contains something like a thousand terms, whose meanings and uses are carefully explained. Such an array seems at first glance arbitrary and unnecessary, but the fact that it has remained in use for something like two ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... prolixity; but, as I talked, I became more interested in the fate of my countrymen, even than in that of my fellow-exiles and myself. You understand me, my old friend? I know that you will ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... prolixity of Gabriel's "period of a mile," are described with a facetious extravagance, which may be given as a specimen of the eloquence of ridicule. Harvey ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... be required to take very little trouble in digging for it. And the writer is enabled,—at any rate for a time, and till his neck has become, as it were, warm to the collar,—to throw off from him the difficulties and dangers, the tedium and prolixity, of description. This rushing "in medias res" has doubtless the charm of ease. "Certainly, when I threw her from the garret window to the stony pavement below, I did not anticipate that she would fall so far without injury to ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... my prolixity, Fillmore. I will now give you the reason for my present visit to Solaris. After my mother became very ill, some weeks before her death, she received a letter from Caroline Houghton, a life long friend, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... have a formidable reputation for prolixity, confusion, and excessive tediousness; yet we have not, for our own part, found these volumes to be of the dry and scarce readable description which their title foreboded; and we would caution others not to be deterred by any fears of this nature from their perusal. They will find an interest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... expanse of heaven, as in spring-time flowers in the green pastures, so, honourable damsels, in the hour of rare and excellent converse is wit with its bright sallies. Which, being brief, are much more proper for ladies than for men, seeing that prolixity of speech, when brevity is possible, is much less allowable to them; albeit (shame be to us all and all our generation) few ladies or none are left to-day who understand aught that is wittily said, or understanding are able to answer it. For the place of those graces ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... results his admirable, simple clarity, the excellent division and presentation of his argument. But it also causes his lack of depth and the prolixity by which he is characterized. His machine runs too smoothly. In the endless apologiae of his later years, ever new arguments occur to him; new passages to point, or quotations to support, his idea. He praises laconism, but never practises ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... To right your wrong, Aspasia of the ardent South, Your poet means to sing a song With some prolixity of mouth. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... not think, however, that we may infer that we have a much greater mass of materials, and thereby excuse our modern prolixity. In written documents, of course, we exceed the ancients, for we have been flooded with these by the art of printing. Yet any one who has investigated any period knows how the same facts are told over and over again, in different ways, by various ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... pleasure"; but their reign over him was over, and long before Savonarola's famous "bonfire of vanities," he had destroyed those love-songs in the vulgar tongue, which would have been such a relief to us, after the scholastic prolixity of his Latin writings. It was in another spirit that he composed a Platonic commentary, the only work of his in Italian which has come down to us, on the "Song of Divine Love"—secondo la mente ed opinione dei Platonici—"according to the mind and opinion of the Platonists," by his friend ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... you fully to discover those great events in the Chronicles of St. Denis, as you sent me word: neither could you for certain know whether the author had given a true relation of those matters, either by reason of his prolixity, or that he was not himself present when they happened. Nevertheless this book will agree with his history. Health ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... new Spanish and Portuguese world, as in the old, of men and women who are at once journalists, novelists, dramatists, politicians, soldiers, poets and what not else. Such a versatility, often joined to a literary prolixity, no doubt serves to lower the artistic worth of ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... you abuse the expectation of your dear mistress, and her fair sister: fie! while you live avoid this prolixity. ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... outlines. Since that fatal carouse, Raphael had stifled every least whim, and had lived so as not to cause the slightest movement in the terrible talisman. The Magic Skin was like a tiger with which he must live without exciting its ferocity. He bore patiently, therefore, with the old schoolmaster's prolixity. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... forgot their nets; and the limber tongues of the town gossips steadily increased their clatter. Don Mario's store and patio assumed the functions of a departmental office. Daily he might be seen laboriously drafting letters of incredible length and wearisome prolixity to acting-Bishop Wenceslas; and nightly he was engaged in long colloquies and whispered conferences with Don Luis and others of his followers and hangers-on. The government arms had been brought up from Bodega Central and stored in an empty warehouse belonging to Don Felipe Alcozer ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... that time President of the Directory, replied to Bonaparte with so much prolixity as to weary everyone; and as soon as he had finished speaking he threw himself into the arms of the General, who was not much pleased with such affected displays, and gave him what was then called the fraternal embrace. The other members of the Directory, following the example of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... subject for the rest of the century; it is composed of the accounts given by Murillo Velarde, Diaz, and other historians, arranged in chronological order—sometimes synopsized, sometimes translated in full, according to the prolixity or the relative importance of each. From the beginning were evident various elements of hostility—racial, religious, and commercial—between the Spaniards and the Moros, which were soon aggravated by the Spanish desire for conquest and the Moro greed for plunder and bloodshed. The unfortunate natives ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... of a distinguished Swedish statesman—the present Prime Minister, if I am not mistaken—who, when he was called upon to consider a scheme of the English Government for the administration of Schleswig, which entered into minute details with a power and prolixity which could have been acquired only by a constitutional Minister who had long served an apprenticeship in the House ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... of fiction has, in fact, become a finer art in our day than it was with Dickens and Thackeray. We could not suffer the confidential attitude of the latter now, nor the mannerism of the former, any more than we could endure the prolixity of Richardson or the coarseness of Fielding. These great men are of the past—they and their methods and interests; even Trollope and Reade are not of the present. The new school derives from Hawthorne ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in his "History," with that quaint prolixity which was his peculiar proclivity gives numerous instances of the rise and fall of families connected with Birmingham. In addition to the original family of De Birmingham, now utterly extinct he traced back many ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... at length would lead to prolixity, yet I must enumerate some of its circumstances, as it was remarkably intricate and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... That was a humorous idea, certainly; but when Howells came home and read it in the usual way he declared that, while the opening was killingly funny, when he got into the story itself it seemed to him that he was "made a fellow-sufferer with the Sultan from Scheherazade's prolixity." ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... ago a selection from the leading documents, accompanied by his palinode as to their accuracy. His materials have been since used for the basis of more than one narrative, not inaccurate, in French, German and Spanish journals of high authority. It is seldom the case that French writers err by prolixity. They have done so in this case. The present narrative, which contains no sentence derived from any foreign one, has the great advantage of close compression; my own pages, after equating the size, being as 1 to 3 of the shortest ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... this a-way," replied the trapper, almost irritating me with the prolixity of his style. "'Ee see them Injuns on t'other side ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... father's counsels and example in the future administration of the provinces. This long address of the prelate was responded to at equal length by Jacob Maas, member of the Council of Brabant, a man of great learning, eloquence and prolixity, who had been selected to reply on behalf of the states-general, and who now, in the name of these; bodies, accepted the abdication in an elegant and complimentary harangue. Queen Mary of Hungary, the "Christian widow" of Erasmus, and Regent of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that appears, I offer this little book, which attempts to cover lightly but accurately the whole ground, including the history of cacao, its cultivation and manufacture. This is a small book in which to treat of so large a subject, and to avoid prolixity I have had to generalise. This is a dangerous practice, for what is gained in brevity is too often lost in accuracy: brevity may be always the soul of wit, it is rarely the body of truth. The expert will find that I have considered him ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... with fees supplied, Hence eloquence takes either side. Your hand would have but paltry gleaning Could every man express his meaning. Who dares presume to pen a deed. Unless you previously are fee'd? 'Tis drawn; and, to augment the cost, In dull prolixity engrossed. And now we're well secured by law, Till the next brother find a flaw. 20 Read o'er a will. Was't ever known, But you could make the will your own; For when you read,'tis with intent To find out meanings never meant. Since things are thus, se defendendo, I bar fallacious ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... it, and I have felt it the more necessary because of the scanty notice given to it in the only two works published on the subject, both of them highly technical, and written for scientific purposes by medical men. Therefore I hope to be forgiven if I have tried the patience of my readers by any prolixity. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... repeated again and again in every-varying alternation, until the song died away like the soft breath of the wind as it were. Old Falieri appeared not to pay the slightest heed to the song; on the contrary, he was relating to the Dogess with much prolixity the meaning and history of the solemnity which takes place on Ascension Day when the Doge throws his ring from the Bucentaur and ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Athos!' cried D'Artagnan, losing all patience at the innkeeper's prolixity,—'Athos, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... are as curious as some of us were, you will sit down under the amber shade, and examine at leisure the construction and germination of these famous and royal nuts. Let me explain it, even at the risk of prolixity. The coat of white pith outside, with its green skin, will gradually develop and harden into that brown fibre of which matting is made. The clear water inside will gradually harden into that sweetmeat which little boys eat off stalls and barrows ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... surprising. Each line in the original is faithfully rendered by a correspondent line in the translation. Harrington's translation of Ariosto is not likewise without its merit. It is to be regretted, that these poets should have imitated the Italians in their stanza, which has a prolixity and uniformity in it that displeases in long performances. They had, otherwise, as well as Spenser, who went before them, contributed much to the polishing and refining of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... particular attention. His catalogue of 500 new nebulae, though extremely valuable to the practical astronomer, leads to no general conclusions of importance, and abounds with the defects which are peculiar to the Doctor's writings—a great prolixity and tediousness of narration—loose and often unphilosophical reflections, which give no very favorable idea of his scientific powers, however great his merit may be as an observer—above all, that idle fondness for inventing names ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... embarrassment passed away as he warmed with his subject, dwelling at length on M'liss's better qualities, and did not return until in a breathless pause he became aware that this woman's bright eyes were bent upon him. The color rose in his cheek, and with a half-muttered apology for his prolixity he ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... policy which the Minister may have heard before from its author's mouth. It differs from Ralegh's letter in being absolutely in harmony with Howard's conduct at the time and after. In it the writer, with the 'Asiatic endless' prolixity which James himself ridiculed, propounded a plan for arranging that 'Cobham, the block all mighty that gives oracles, and Ralegh, the cogging spirit that prompteth it,' should be set in responsible positions in which they would be sure to fail. There is no reason to suppose that ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... His description of Charles Lamb as "a pitiful rickety, gasping, staggering, stammering tom-fool" is not an amiable one! Or take his account of Wordsworth- -how instead of a hand-shake, the poet intrusted him with "a handful of numb unresponsive fingers," and how his speech "for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution" excelled all the other speech that Carlyle had ever heard from mortals. He admitted that Wordsworth was "a genuine man, but intrinsically and extrinsically a small one, let them sing or say what they will." In fact, Carlyle ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... been desirous to explain and justify the state of feeling in which we enter on the consideration of a new poem by Robert Browning. Those who already feel with us will scarcely be disposed to forgive the prolixity which, for the present, has put it out of our power to come at the work itself: but, if earnestness of intention will plead our excuse, we need ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... many ups and downs of carnage,[1: Nicolas de Caen gives here a minute account of the military and naval evolutions, with a fullness that verges upon prolixity. It appears expedient to omit all this.] Perion surprised the galley of Demetrios while the proconsul slept at anchor in his own harbour of Quesiton. Demetrios fought nakedly against accoutred soldiers and had killed two of them with ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... times he raises the same situation to the light—the Garibaldean and Nostromo, Mrs. Travers marveling at her knowledge of Lingard's heart—turns it, opens it a little further, and puts it back while he broods on. Here is the explanation of Conrad's prolixity; here the reason why among all living novelists he is least a slave to incident, best able to let his story grow as slowly as life, and still hold the reader's interest. As we read Conrad we also brood; we read slowly where elsewhere we read fast. Turns of style, felicities of description, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... pestilence, and the chymicall oyle thereof is very availeable (as himselfe affirmeth to have sufficiently proved) against the stone and stopping of urine, and many other outward maladies and diseases, (Andernaeus and Gesner adde to these the Apoplexy) all which, for avoyding of prolixity, I doe here ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... him, when he is at the Hall. He inquired into the state of the horses; examined their feet; prescribed a drench for one, and bleeding for another; and then took me to look at his own horse, on the merits of which he dwelt with great prolixity, and which, I noticed, had the best ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... I will close this letter, in order to send it to you in the morning early. Nevertheless, I will begin another, upon supposition that my doleful prolixity will be disagreeable to you. Indeed I am altogether indisposed for rest, as I have mentioned before. So can do nothing but write. I have also more melancholy scenes to paint. My pen, if I may say so, is untired. These scenes are fresh ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... matter, he was unable to ascertain who the person was, or why he was going, because the matter had been managed by a priest. And although a long relation can be made here of his objectionable acts, we shall, in order to excuse prolixity, touch on ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... each other in bloodshed and cruelty. In the midst of this hard time Fortunatus stood out alone among the poets by virtue of his talent and purity of character. His poems are often disfigured by bombast, prolixity, and misplaced learning; but his keen eye for men and things is undeniable, and his feeling for Nature shews not only in dealing with scenery, but in linking ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... namely, of twice raising the royal standard, and in testimony [of the friendship] the Governor embraced them to the sound of trumpets, observing other solemnities which I do not write in order to avoid prolixity. This done, the cacique stood up and, in a vase of gold, gave drink to the Governor and the Spaniards with his own hands, and then all went off to eat, it being ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... moderns, who, in various forms, have exhibited their own portraits. Such portraits are often the most interesting, and sometimes the only interesting parts of their writings; and if they be sincere, we seldom complain of the minuteness or prolixity of these personal memorials. The lives of the younger Pliny, of Petrarch, and of Erasmus, are expressed in the epistles, which they themselves have given to the world. The essays of Montaigne and Sir William Temple bring us home to the houses and bosoms of the authors: we smile without ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... a peculiarity in the productions of this author, that, on whatever he employs his pen, he exhausts the subject; not with any prolixity that fatigues the attention, but by a quick succession of new ideas, equally brilliant and apposite, often expressed in antitheses. Void of obscenity in expression, but lascivious in sentiment, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... this palace, in which Giulio executed many other works worthy to be praised, of which, in order to avoid prolixity, I shall say nothing, he reconstructed with masonry many rooms in the castle where the Duke lives at Mantua, and made two very large spiral staircases, with very rich apartments adorned all over with stucco. In one hall he ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... easily be overdone; and here is one of the dangers of the written sermon as compared with one in which the preacher, having gathered together his knowledge and his thought upon a matter, leaves the choice of words to the hour of delivery. A little wise prolixity may be necessary to the speaker. A little repetition; the putting of a truth, first in this way, then in that, and again perhaps in quite a different fashion, so that different minds may have in turn their chance—even ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... addressed his future constituents. Two or three men, who afterwards became well known, nibbled at the constituency, and went away again. Among them were the late Samuel Waddy, Q.C., and Mr Commissioner Kerr, who issued an electioneering address of astonishing prolixity, prefacing it with the statement that he had no time to be brief. But Brogden's only real opponent was poor old Kenealy. There was, of course, a Conservative candidate in the field; and, rightly or wrongly, it was said that Kenealy had been brought down in ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... view, are very labored and lack any real poetic growth. They are, moreover, often prolonged to an interminable length—one example, as late as Handel, consisting of an Air with sixty-two Variations; prolixity or "damnable iteration" being as bad a blemish in music as in any of the other arts. In the early days of instrumental composition, about all that composers could do was "to put the theme through its paces." That is, there was no unfolding of ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... was capable of exciting my surprise, what I now beheld transported me into perfect ecstacy. I entered a large court surrounded with buildings of an admirable structure, the description of which I will omit, to avoid prolixity. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste without a tree. Thanks to Benevolus [A]—he spares me yet These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines, And though himself so polished still reprieves The obsolete prolixity of shade.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... much earnestness and prolixity to prove that the Pope's confirmation of the church lands to those who held them by King Henry's donation, was null and fraudulent: Which is a point that I believe no Protestant in England would give threepence to have his choice whether it should be true or false: It might ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... for speech.] Prolix to the point of somnolence. It might be affirmed without inexactitude that the prolixity of counsel is the somnolence of the judiciary. I am fatigued, ah! [A little suddenly, awaking to the fact that his orders have not been carried out to the letter.] Thomas! My Post is not ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell |
