"Surplusage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the facile, surplusage: why are these abhorrent to the true literary artist, except because, in literary as in all other arts, structure is all important, felt or painfully missed, everywhere?—that architectural conception of work, which foresees the end in the beginning, and never ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... is a tendency to come together on one or two positive points. It is years since I met anyone, careful of his reputation, so bold as to deny that the literary and anecdotic content of a work of visual art, however charming and lively it might be, was mere surplusage. The significance of a picture, according to the cognoscenti, must be implicit in its forms; its essential quality is something which appeals directly to the sensibility of any sensitive person; and any reference to life, to be of consequence, must be a reference ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... back." So I led him to the bath, O Jinni, and clothing him in new clothes of my own wear, I went with him to my shop and served him with meat and drink. Furthermore I said to him, "O my brother, I am wont to cast up my shop accounts at the head of every year, and whatso I shall find of surplusage is between me and thee."[FN56] So I proceeded, O Ifrit, to strike a balance and, finding two thousand diners of profit, I returned praises to the Creator (be He extolled and exalted!) and made over one half to my brother, keeping the other to my self. Thereupon he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... and I can assure you that I appreciate the spirit in which you have considered the Alien Land bill, presented by myself in the Assembly. I am strictly in accord with the changes you suggest. The words 'who is not a citizen of the United States' are surplusage and could easily have been left out, but they are found in both the Illinois and Oklahoma laws. I am glad the President takes the view of the matter that he does, and you may rest assured that I will work in harmony with yourself. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... were caught in a heavy shower, with nothing but a rose-bush or a willow-tree for shelter; and there were often so many of us that it was like a hen with an unreasonably large brood of chickens,—some must stay out in the wet, and all such surplusage ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... ordained and established by it. To assume that anything more can be designed by the language of the preamble would be to convert all the body of the Constitution, with its carefully weighed enumerations and limitations, into mere surplusage. The same may be said of the phrase in the grant of the power to Congress "to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States;" or, to construe the words more exactly, they are not significant of grant or ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... see that my beast wants water?" Blue Jeans was deeply offended. Such opulence in anyone at such a moment would have seemed a needless taunt; that chance had selected the superintendent to flaunt it was surplusage of insult. Yet he could not even resent the superintendent's gesture, wide-flung and arrogant to all beholders. Again the superintendent looked to have the right of it. He clicked to Girl o' Mine and she came to him, out of the way, like an ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... under cost. During the crisis itself, the method of production is all along improved with the view of meeting future competition; but this only prepares the ground for new and still worse crises. After the crisis has lasted years, after the surplusage of goods has been gradually done away with through sales at ruinous prices, through retrenchment of production, and through the destruction of smaller concerns, society slowly begins to recover again. Demand rises, and production follows ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... the novelist, apropos of useless questions, once told of a man who stood before a mirror in his room, his face lathered and an open razor in his hand. His wife came in. She looked at him and said, "Are you shaving?" The man, a foe to surplusage, replied fiercely, "No; I am blacking the kitchen range. Where are you—out driving ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... corollary to it. The essays in this volume form part of the corollary; they are taken from a collection published towards the close of Schopenhauer's life, and by him entitled Parerga und Paralipomena, as being in the nature of surplusage and illustrative of his main position. They are by far the most popular of his works, and since their first publication in 1851, they have done much to build up his fame. Written so as to be intelligible ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Worcester, associat with diuerse other noble and honorable personages, both men and women, hauing with hir all the iewels, ornaments, [Sidenote: Additions of the chron. of Flanders.] and plate which she brought into England, with a great surplusage besides giuen to hir by the king. She was deliuered betwixt Bullongne and Calis, to Valeran earle of saint Paule, [Sidenote: She is deliuered home.] the French kings lieutenant in Picardie, who being accompanied with the bishop of Chartres, the ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... still in the flesh the worst that it could pronounce against them. Men and women who before the daily companions and witnesses of their lives would stand stoutly, and honestly too, in self-defence against all imputations, and might even boast themselves—as St. Paul did—of a surplusage of merits of some sort, when registering the barometer and the thermometer of their religious experience were the most unrelenting self-accusers. It is safe to say, as a general thing, that those who in that introspection, in the measurement ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... common infirmity into a strange enormity; turning a small "mote in the eye" of our neighbour into a huge "beam," a little dimple in his face into a monstrous wen. This is plainly slander, at least in degree, and according to the surplusage whereby the censure doth exceed the fault. As he that, upon the score of a small debt, doth extort a great sum, is no less a thief, in regard to what amounts beyond his due, than if without any pretence he had violently or fraudulently seized on it: so he is a slanderer ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... skilfully opposes circumspection and experience in the old man, while the fact that Sophocles as well as Aeschylus has left Pylades silent, is a proof how carefully ancient art disdained all unnecessary surplusage. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... wise, Evadne!" said her uncle quizzically. "In this age, when women claim a surplusage of all the brain power bestowed upon the race! What will you do when you ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... cayn't hide behind a girl's skirts this time," continued Healy. "You've got to stand on your own legs and take what's coming. You're a bad outfit. We know you for a rustler, and that's enough. But it ain't all. Yesterday you gave us surplusage when you shot up three men in Noches. Right now I serve notice ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... subject, that the styles of the letters and of the poems, agreeing well enough between themselves, differ most remarkably from that of the Heptameron. The two former are decidedly open to the charges of pedantry, artificiality, heaviness. There is a great surplusage of words and a seeming inability to get to the point. The Heptameron if not equal in narrative vigour and lightness to Boccaccio before and La Fontaine afterwards, is not in the least exposed to the charge of ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... They held court at Panchoy. In the 14th month of the year, after this day of Sanctiago, there came an order from Ramirez. He imposed a tribute on members of the nobility among the people. He also made provision for the surplusage of the tribute. There had never been a surplus under the chiefs; it was known to be stolen, but no one knew by whom. The maize tax was reduced and that of roast fowls, and none of the chiefs could steal anything from the surplus. This order of Ramirez was promulgated on the day ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... overhearing himself characterized as a painter of naked women, betaken himself to his true subject, the French peasant. A literary, and a very powerful literary side, Millet undoubtedly has; and instead of being a weakness in him it is a power. His sentimental appeal is far from being surplusage, but, as is not I think popularly appreciated, it is subordinate, and the fact of its subordination gives it what potency it has. It is idle to deny this potency, for his portrayal of the French peasant in his varied aspects has probably been as efficient a characterization ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell |
