"Verbiage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which they are understood by mathematicians; and that the geometrician, if he employs his method in philosophy, will succeed only in building card-castles, while the employment of the philosophical method in mathematics can result in nothing but mere verbiage. The essential business of philosophy, indeed, is to mark out the limits of the science; and even the mathematician, unless his talent is naturally circumscribed and limited to this particular department of knowledge, cannot turn a deaf ear to the warnings of philosophy, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... want a railroad to the Pacific Ocean; they want to carry slavery to the Pacific and have a base line from which they can operate for the conquest of the continent south." [Footnote: The Congressional Globe. Thirty-fifth Congress, Second Session, 1858-59, Part II, Appendix: 291.] In fiery verbiage the Southern Senators slashed back, taunting the Northerners with seeking to wipe out the system of chattel slavery, only to extend and enforce all the more effectually their own system of white slavery. The honorable Senators unleashed ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... propitious for him. It was the period of reaction after the French Revolution, when what was called religion was again in fashion, and when even atheists supported it as a good thing for common people: of such an epoch Chateaubriand, with his superficial information, thin sentiment, and showy verbiage, was the foreordained prophet. His enemies were wont to deny that he ever saw the Holy Land; whether he did or not, he added nothing to real knowledge, but simply threw a momentary glamour over the regions he described, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... could lawfully drive slavery out again. When all the trash, the words, the collateral matter, was cleared away from it, all the chaff was fanned out of it, it was a bare absurdity,—no less than that a thing may be lawfully driven away from where it has a lawful right to be. Clear it of all the verbiage, and that is the naked truth of his proposition,—that a thing may be lawfully driven from the place where it has a lawful right to stay. Well, it was because the judge could n't help seeing this that he has had so much trouble with it; and what I want to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... enticed as if he followed the windings of a stream under the shadows of the trees. Past waterfall and banks of flowers and choiring of the birds, he goes on forever, except he force himself to pause. Shakespeare is always an enticement, whose turns of poetic thought and verbiage are a pure delight. Note this quality in the quotations—a word naturally expresses a thought. Shakespeare's figures express a series of thoughts as varied landscapes seen in pictures; in consequence, to read him is to see resemblances in things, because ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... outset, we may throw aside a mass of useless verbiage, with which our inquiry is usually encumbered. We are eternally told that Kentucky has fallen behind Ohio, and Virginia behind Pennsylvania, because their energies have been crippled, and their prosperity over-clouded, by the institution of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... nonsense." "Prometheus Unbound" is a "great storehouse of the obscure and unintelligible." In the "Sensitive Plant" there is "no meaning." And for Shelley himself, he is guilty of a great many terrible things, including verbiage, impiety, immorality and absurdity. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... pulpit in a like state of preparedness, with his thoughts already gathered, moulded, polished and clothed in the words that fit them best; with every argument as definite and well knitted as a proposition in Euclid; the page swept clear of superfluous verbiage; each idea standing out bright as a jewel in its setting, and the whole so thoroughly committed to memory that he can defy the most critical to discover a trace of effort. He should come, holding his elocutionary forces in reserve, and ready, when the moment ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... "same's" without end, but ordinary business letters do not. It is perfectly possible to express oneself clearly in the language of conversation (which is also the language of business) without burying the meaning in tiresome verbiage. And yet reputable business houses every day send out letters which are almost ridiculous because of the stiff and pompous way ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... expressions. Yet with all his soberness and steadiness he possessed imagination. In its strength and depth his enthusiasm for colonization proves this, even if we omit his picture of the fancied Ludovica. But {139} as a man of action rather than of letters he instinctively omits verbiage. In some respects we suffer from Champlain's directness of mind, for on much that he saw he could have lingered with profit. But very special inducements are needed to draw him from his plain tale into a digression. ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... the classics imbedded in the text. At times, after some coarse but graphic touch, his style became suddenly refined, almost to sickliness. When he was not pointing his moral with a hatchet, he was adorning his tale with verbiage gathered from the worst authors. But if Hardy the literary artist made her laugh till she cried again, Hardy the unconscious child of Nature won her heart. If only she could make him ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... happened, moreover, that cook was somewhat busy that morning and began at length to indicate distinctly that unless her friend had some matter of importance to communicate she would regard further verbiage with disfavour. At this juncture Mary decided that twenty minutes was practically as good as half an ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... tucked his napkin over his ample paunch and went in with a will. He was in a most hilarious mood, and taxed his memory for reminiscences of his visit to England. These were not expressed with useless expenditure of verbiage, nor did they flow in unbroken sequence. It was as if he dug in his memory with a spade, and found every now and then a gem in the shape of a name, which he brandished aloft in triumph. He kept up an intermittent and disconnected fire all through dinner, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... of verbiage, however, the manifesto of the Emergency Convention of the Socialist Party of America joins with the famous Preamble of the I. W. W. and the manifestoes and programs of the Communist and Communist Labor Parties in advocating the plundering of mankind by proletarians, ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... hypotheses, and archaiological lore that assailed me, and wish them, should they ever visit Nismes, that which was denied me—a tranquil and uninterrupted contemplation of its interesting antiquities, free from the verbiage of a conscientious cicerone, who thinks himself in duty bound to relate all that he has ever heard or read relative to the ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... more in the marvellous vivacity and fertility of his creation. For the very first time in English prose fiction every character is alive, every incident is capable of having happened. There are lively touches in the Elizabethan romances; but they are buried in verbiage, swathed in stage costume, choked and fettered by their authors' want of art. The quality of Bunyan's knowledge of men was not much inferior to Shakespeare's, or at least to Fielding's; but the range and the results of it were cramped by his single theological ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... or more filled with wonder that Revelation was so like Nature. Nature, it is true, is a part of Revelation—a much greater part doubtless than is yet believed—and one could have anticipated nothing but harmony here. But that a derived Theology, in spite of the venerable verbiage which has gathered round it, should be at bottom and in all cardinal respects so faithful a transcript of "the truth as it is in Nature" came as a surprise and to me at least as a rebuke. How, under the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... two hundred pounds for the sole right to deal with the thing on your behalf. My solicitors will send you a document full of verbiage which you had better send off to your solicitor to look through before you sign it. It will be all right. I'm going to take the proofs. Of course this stops publishing," he remarked, looking round from the dressing-table where ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... as Lavretsky was sitting in the drawing-room, listening to the insinuating tones of Gedeonovsky's wearisome verbiage, he suddenly turned round, he knew not why, and caught the deep, attentive, inquiring look of Liza's eyes. That enigmatical look was directed towards him. The whole night long Lavretsky thought of it. His love was not like that of a boy, nor was ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... superfluous verbiage lopped away—which had been signed "I the King" at Madrid on the 18th September, and the two copies of which were presented to the States-General on the 25th October, the commissioners retaining ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the battle of impulses which rages in the breast of man. Metaphysicians, as a rule, are sadly deficient in the sense of humour; or they would surely abstain from advancing propositions which, when stripped of the verbiage in which they are disguised, appear to the profane eye to be bare shams, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... carefully omitting to state the compulsion as used upon McGuire. Hawk Kennedy lied. If Peter had ever needed any further proof of the honesty of his employer he read it in the shifting eye and uncertain verbiage of his guest, whose tongue now wagged loosely while he talked of the two papers, one of which was in McGuire's possession, the other in his own. Hawk was no pleasant companion for an evening's entertainment. From the interesting adventurer ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Wilson. His speeches had been carefully distributed through the Central Empires; they had done much to arouse the subject peoples of Austria-Hungary to revolt for their freedom, and also to weaken the morale of the German people. The value of Wilson's "verbiage drives" was questioned in this country. Abroad, his insistence upon a peace of justice was generally reckoned a vital moral force in the political movements that supplemented the victories of Marshal Foch. Jugoslavs consented ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... of legal verbiage, alleges that, having suspended Mr. Stanton and reported the same to the Senate, which refused to concur in the suspension, and Stanton having rightfully resumed the duties of his office, the respondent, with knowledge ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... to Slang by superficial minds is undeserved. In other days, before the language was crystallized into the idiom and verbiage of the doctrinaire, prose, too, was untrammeled. Indeed, a cursory glance at the Elizabethan poets discloses a kinship with the rebellious fancies of our modern colloquial talk. Mr. Irwin's sonnets may be taken as an indication of this revolt, and how nearly they ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... sulphurous smoke and scattering fire might it prevent. He has been called a public benefactor who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before. He is as great a benefactor, who in an age of verbiage makes one word perform the function of two. Wonderful is the precision with which this mental mechanism may be made to work. Some men can even think their best on their feet in the presence of a great assembly. There are others whose spontaneous ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... advantage to be gained. The act of reproducing the illustration cited will emphasise and render clear technical and mechanical features that would require many words to explain, with the attendant risk of confusing the mind by mere verbiage. ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... the business of the day. Once, twice, and thrice I tried to slide the subject in, but was discouraged by the stoic apathy of Rufe, and beaten down before the pouring verbiage of his wife. There is nothing of the Indian brave about me, and I began to grill with impatience. At last, like a highway robber, I cornered Hanson, and bade him stand and deliver his business. Thereupon he gravely rose, as though to hint that this was not a ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Ottawa speakers with a relaxation of the tension that had held me, for I had been upon the rack. Mind and ear had been taxed to miss no word or intonation, for a slighted syllable might lose our cause. The speeches had droned like flies at midday, but all the verbiage had been heavy with significance. I spoke French, Huron, and Ottawa in turn, and through it all I listened, listened for the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... certain changes in the language of the protocol. With the polished suavity for which they are noted the Spaniards urged that there be made slight changes in the words: no real change in the meaning, they said, simply in the verbiage. And our Judge Day at the head of the American Commissioners, listened politely and patiently until the plea was presented. And then he quietly said, "The article will be signed as it reads." And the Spaniards protested, with ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... all three have concurred to warn and force us into a new course of conduct. What are these warnings? We have had at least three. The first is from England, and is a friendly warning. England has warned us by several matters of fact, according to her custom, rather than verbiage, that the Colonies had entered upon a new era of existence, a new phase in their career. She has given us this warning in several different shapes—when she gave us 'Responsible Government'—when she adopted Free Trade—when she repealed the Navigation Laws—and when, three or four years ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... was a dramatist, historian, poet, or philosopher, did not know, and his professor deemed the question improper. I visited the eleventh recitation in Othello in a high school class of nineteen pupils, not one of whom knew how the story ended, so intent had they been kept on its verbiage. Hence, too, has come the twelve feet of text-books on English on my shelves with many standard works, edited for schools, with more notes than text. Fashion that works from above down the grades and college entrance requirements are in large measure responsible for this, perhaps ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... periods. It arises, perhaps, from the fact that public speaking is the almost universal object of ambition, and consequently, both at school and at college, nothing is thought of but oratory. Vain attempts at oratory, result in nine cases out of ten, in grandiloquence and empty verbiage;—common thoughts expressed ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... which he had taken refuge for the past few days had left him in ignorance of the public exasperation in his regard, the sermons, the dithyrambs with which the newspapers were filled on the subject of his corrupting wealth, articles written for effect, hypocritical verbiage to which public opinion resorts from time to time to revenge itself on the innocent for all its concessions to the guilty. It was a terrible disappointment, which caused him at first more pain than anger. Deeply moved, he concealed ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... substantially the same account as has been given on a former page, the verbiage differing slightly, and the remark regarding truthfulness will apply to it as well as ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... and Balder had so far forgotten himself as to throw Hiero into the sea; but it was the part of good-breeding, as well as of Christianity, to forget such errors, and heal the bruise with an extra application of balsamic verbiage. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... retrograde party was to misunderstand everything. The plainest things were found to need a world of debate; the simplest things became entangled; the noble assemblies played solemnly a ludicrous game of cross-purposes. Straightway came a notice from the Emperor which, stripped of official verbiage, said that they must understand. This set all in motion again. Imperial notices were sent to province after province, explanatory documents were issued, good men and strong were set ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... subtle, form of begging the question is what is known as "arguing in a circle." Usually the fallacy is so wrapped up in verbiage that it is hard to pick out. Here is a clear and well-put detection of a ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... it hurts my liver to offer the old boy incomprehensible reasons or verbiage like 'compulsion neurosis' when all he wants is to protect me from my own impulses as he protected me from the army. Florence and I delight in him—he comes again next week if possible—but we cannot convey to him the unthinkableness ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... penetrate beneath the mere verbal husk with which linguistic usage and convenience have clothed them, and which, in the course of ages, has become nothing but the dross of decomposed verbiage, and see if we can excavate the living germ, that has become buried within. If we can do so, we shall, at the commencement of our study, have attained unto a realization of the ancient meaning and real ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... yet to be determined. We note here only two characteristics which may or may not be evident to other readers. In the first place, with his marvelous command of meter and melody, Swinburne has a fatal fluency of speech which tends to bury his thought in a mass of jingling verbiage. As we read we seem to hear the question, "What readest thou, Hamlet?" and again the Dane makes answer, "Words, words, words." Again, like the Pre-Raphaelites with whom he was at one time associated, Swinburne lived too much apart ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... to describe the mountains with their many charms. I listened to a lecture lately where a man was struggling to do this, and it was positively painful. The flowery verbiage, the accumulated adjectives, the poetical quotations were overpowering. I seemed actually sinking into luscious mellifluousness. I shook it off my fingers, as if it were maple syrup. Then, as he climbed higher and higher, on and up, never getting away from the richest verdure ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... the principal objections to be urged against the Indian languages, considered as media of communication, is their cumbrousness. There is certainly a great deal of verbiage and tautology about them. The paucity of terms leads not only to the use of figures and metaphors, but is the cause of circumlocution. This day ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... at Mr. Sherburne's, and proceed at once to business. On behalf of Messrs. Haviland and Murray the offer is made for all right and title possessed by Violet St. Vincent Grandon, and by Floyd Grandon, her husband, in all interests, inventions, etc., with much legal verbiage that alike confuses and interests Violet. But the sum offered seems enormous to her! She gazes blankly from one to another, as she hears again that all income thereof is to be hers, that no one can touch the principal ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... history, geography, and among other stuff of the same kind, the inconceivable merits and the superhuman perfections of his eternal Panselinos. The dissertations of this spiritual schoolmaster diverted me very little, as you may well suppose, and I was furious that in spite of myself his tiresome verbiage rooted itself in my memory, which is the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... these men—I am sure they were good men—prattling like bib-and-tucker babies about Irish affairs, and speaking of Gladstone as possessing a quality which we Catholics only ascribe to the Pope. Ha! ha! They think that vain old cataract of verbiage to be infallible. He knows nothing of the matter, does not understand the tools he is working with, any one of whom could buy and sell him and simple, clever Morley twenty times over. Both Gladstone and Morley are clever in books, in words, in theories, adepts ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... scientific speculation, he had the misfortune about this time to read in paper or magazine something on the subject of heredity, the idle verbiage of some half-informed scribbler. It set him anxiously thinking whether his son would develop the vices of the mother's mind, and from that day he read all the printed chatter regarding natural inheritance that he could lay ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... usually heavy, lumbering, and monotonous. Half of the words seem in the way of the idea, and the latter appears not to have strength enough to clear the passage. Occasionally, a short, sharp sentence comes like a flash of lightning from the cloud of his verbiage, and relieves the twilight of his diction. There are but few felicitous phrases in his manifold volumes. He has hardly any of those happy combinations of words which stick fast to the memory, and do more than pages to express ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... glanced over at the pair, and then some sharp pain contracted her brows, but there was no other appearance of emotion; she would control even that instantly, and bending her head once more, listen patiently to her persecutor's verbiage. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... parliament were voted to Amherst and Boscawen. Boscawen received them in person, being a member of the House of Commons. The speaker read the address, which was couched in the usual verbiage worked up by one of the select committees employed on such occasions. But Boscawen replied, as men of action should, with fewer words and much more force and point: 'Mr Speaker, Sir, I am happy to have been able to do my duty. I have no words to express my sense of the distinguished ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... Seraphita-Seraphitus talks with assurance of the essence of phenomena and the invisible world, but, forsooth, only to initiate the shades that visit spiritualistic seances, and to say what is either obscure verbiage, or a hash-up of philosophies often digested without much sustenance derived from them. In the end, this dual personage vanishes from our mundane atmosphere, translated bodily to heaven; and leaves his or her lovers to repair their loss—just like a forlorn ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... denial of all faith. There are churches of one type so devoted to the entertainment of adults, to the ministry to the pride of the flesh and the lust of things, that a child is likely to be trained to pious pride and greed, or of another type, in which religion is a matter of verbiage, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... legislation; but they declare the right, and then say that this right shall be enforced in the Federal judiciary according to the course of remedies and forms of the common law. I do not see how there can be a doubt; and yet, as I have said, it seems to me that a great deal of it is unnecessary verbiage. I do not mean to debate that; I am not one of the peace commissioners; I am not to select my words to express the idea; but I am here; and my State with other States, having appointed commissioners in view ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... demonstrate platitudes, the pedantic tone of the author, and the monotony of his forms of expression—"We are prepared to acknowledge it," "Far from us be the thought," "Let us interrogate our consciousness"—the sempiternal eulogy on Dugald Stewart; in short, all this verbiage, disgusted them so much that, jumping over the faculty of ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... astronomy, exercised a legitimate poetical ingenuity by versifying such knowledge as he had. These various causes make Manilius one of the most difficult of authors. Few can wade through the mingled solecisms in language and mistakes in science, the empty verbiage that dilates on a platitude in one place, and the jejune abstract that hurries over a knotty argument in another, without regretting that so unreadable a poet should have ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... it was. It is usual to credit the composer's friend, Baron van Swieten, with the "unintelligible jargon." The baron certainly had a considerable hand in the adaptation of the text. But in reality it owes its very uncouth verbiage largely to the circumstance that it was first translated from English into German, and then re-translated back into English; the words, with the exception of the first chorus, being adapted to the music. Considering the ways of translators, the best libretto in the world could not ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... of his contemporaries. They are interesting in their exhibit of a bitter and eccentric individuality, witty, incisive, and expressed in a pungent and familiar style which contrasts refreshingly with the diplomatic language and glittering generalities of most congressional oratory, whose verbiage seems to keep its subject always at ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... ear as it could have done at any period of her life. She spoke also herself clearly, distinctly, and slowly, as if anxious that the intelligence she communicated should be fully understood; concisely at the same time, and with none of the verbiage or circumlocutory additions natural to those of her sex and condition. In short, her language bespoke a better education, as well as an uncommonly firm and resolved mind, and a character of that sort from which great virtues ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... scientists and three Navy officers were arguing heatedly; employing deep-space verbiage not to be found in any dictionary. "Jarve!" Karns called out, and Hilton joined the group. "Does anything about this planet make ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... the fact that Yakov Boev, a man who possessed both a stammer and a squint, became similarly filled with a desire to tell us something about a fish. Yet from the moment that he began his narrative everyone declined to believe it, and laughed at his broken verbiage as, frequently invoking the Deity, and cursing, and brandishing his awl, and viciously swallowing spittle, he shouted amid ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... For in style the folk-tale changes greatly as it travels. A story which we find narrated in one country with terseness and precision may be rendered almost unintelligible in another by vagueness or verbiage; by one race it may be elevated into poetic life, by another it may be degraded ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... of Bernard Shaw would, I think, certainly have seen through this fallacy and verbiage had it not been that another important event about this time came to the help of Nietzsche and established the Superman on his pedestal. It is the third of the things which I have called stepping-stones to Man and Superman, and it is very ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... on. Slowly Bob came to an understanding of the man's position. His argument, stripped of its verbiage and self-illusion, was simplicity itself. The public domain was for the people. Men selected therefrom what they needed. All about him, for fifty years, homesteads had been taken up quite frankly for the sake of timber. Nobody ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... a farce to give them the courtesy title of sovereignty. I don't think you realize, never having been in this country, what a farce it really is. I am not able to write you a learned book. All I can do is to write you these letters, which are surely devoid of all legal verbiage, because I don't know any. If I were a scholar, a student of international politics, I would wrap all my statements in fine, well-chosen language, quoting treaties and acts and agreements and all the rest of it, and you wouldn't know what it all meant. I can only give you the ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... the service of the country, to improve his powers of service by a few hours' recreation in her society. 'What humbugs we are!' he thought: 'To read the newspapers and the speeches you'd believe everybody thought of nothing but how to get killed for the sake of the future. Drunk on verbiage! What heads and mouths we shall all have when we wake up some fine morning with Peace shining in at the window! Ah! If only we could; and enjoy ourselves again!' And he gazed at the moon. She was dipping already, reeling away into the dawn. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it and dived in the verbiage. He came up again with a discovery. In spite of its feebleness, verbosity, obscurity, and idiotic way of expressing itself, the Deed managed to convey to David and Mrs. Dodd a life interest in nine thousand five hundred pounds, with reversion to Julia and the children of the projected marriage. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the quasi-historical chapters in this section (which I have followed M. Pauthier in making into a Fourth Book) are the merest verbiage and repetition of narrative formulae without the slightest value. I have therefore thought it undesirable to print all at length, and have given merely the gist (marked thus ), or an extract, of such chapters. They will be found ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... wondered at her power and breadth of thought. As he progressed he found in them a complete system of ethics and religious faith. Their writer seemed to have drawn from all sources intrinsically vital truths, and separated them from their encumbering theologic verbiage and dogma, and had traced them simply through to the great "Sermon on the Mount." In a few pages this great man had comprised the deepest logic, and the sweetest and widest theology, enough for all the world to live by, and ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... seen. Either I was hypnotised, and imposed upon, or else this man had discovered what had been unknown to science. His earnest and straightforward manner was not that of a mountebank. There had been no attempt to surround his work with mystery, and cloak his demonstration in unmeaning verbiage. It is true I had never heard of him in the world of science, but after all an outsider often makes a great discovery under the nose ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... Stripped of verbiage and technicalities, the case is within the humblest comprehension. The chief justice and a majority of his associates held that Dred Scott, who sued his master for his freedom in the Federal court, had been already legally declared ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... speaking. One bad effect arises from this, which is, that if the counsel is not a man of ability, this amazing volubility, which is found equally in all, serves more to weaken than to convince; for the little sense there may be, is spread over so wide a surface, or is diluted with such a dose of verbiage, that the whole becomes tasteless and insipid to the last degree. But this fluency, on the other hand, in the hands of a man of talents and genius, is a most powerful weapon. It hurries you along with a velocity which, from its very rapidity, is delightful; and ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... those unspeculative days. The actual whirl of Paris caught me and left me little time for conjecture. I wrote once or twice to Joanna; but my letters were egotistical outpourings; the mythological picture at Menilmontant inspired sheets of excited verbiage. She replied in her pretty sympathetic way, but gave me little news of Paragot. It was hardly to be expected that she should write romantically, like a young girl foolishly in love, gushing to a bosom friend. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... unattended, and the certainty she felt that any intelligent woman would be proud and happy to share my existence—she concealed nothing, but, on the contrary, added many fresh follies to the recital. Maitre Mouche kept nodding his head in approval while cracking nuts. Then, after all this verbiage, he demanded, with an agreeable smile, what my ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... there are fine passages; and, after all, what is a work—any or every work—but a desert with fountains, and, perhaps, a grove or two every day's journey? To be sure, in mademoiselle, what we often mistake and 'pant for' as the 'cooling stream,' turns out to be the 'mirage' (critice, verbiage); but we do, at last, get to something like the temple of Jupiter Ammon, and then the waste we have passed is only remembered to gladden ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... declared. "It is more agreeable, without a doubt, to take lunch with Monsieur Carl Freudenberg, and to speak openly, than to exchange long-winded interviews, the true meaning of which is too much concealed by diplomatic verbiage, with the excellent gentleman to whose good offices are intrusted the destinies ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... brokenly, "it cannot hurt him now. He has found his 'cure.' As a candle-flame in this broad sunlight, so all those earthly longings"—The old gentleman could not finish his sentence, though a sentence was dear to him almost as the truth from which, even in his love of verbiage, his speech never deviated. "So we leave it here," he said at last. "It is between us and our blessed dead. No one else need know what you have had the courage to tell me. Your confession concerns no other living soul, unless it ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... until the memory of the first occurrence has faded, lies on a once used word. The causes of this anxiety for a varied expression are manifold. Where there is merely a column to fill, poverty of thought drives the hackney author into an illicit fulness, until the trick of verbiage passes from his practice into his creed, and makes him the dupe of his own puppets. A commonplace book, a dictionary of synonyms, and another of phrase and fable equip him for his task; if he be called upon to marshal ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... ventroparolisto. Venture riski. Venture risko. Venturous riska. Veracious verema. Veracity vereco. Verandah balkono. Verb verbo. Verbal parola. Verbena verbeno. Verbatim (adv.) lauxvorte. Verbiage babilajxo. Verbose parolegema. Verbosity parolegeco. Verdant verdanta. Verdict jugxo. Verdigris verdigro. Verdure verdajxo. Verger pedelo. Verify verigi, ekzameni. Verily vere. Veritable vera. Verity ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... to "notices to quit," and was able to extract their import from any verbiage whatever, so he drank by and to himself, and immediately sauntered out of town, with an air of bravado in his carriage, and a very lonesome look ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... to keep up the popular prejudice against one who, in spite of all his faults was a true pioneer of science. {15} I believe (with those moderns who have tried to do him justice) that under all his verbiage and confusion there was a vein of ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... name than verbiage for wordiness would be emptiness. Witness: "Clearness may be developed and cultivated in three ways, (a) By constantly practicing in heart and life the thoughts and ways of honesty and frankness." ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... be the height of folly to present these discussions to the laity in their original form, hence the necessity for condensation and presentation of the needful facts in the language of the people in whose interests the book is printed. In a book of fiction there may be need for useless verbiage for the sake of "making pages," but facts of vital importance and usefulness in our daily welfare need to be well boiled down and put into shape for ready reference. This has been done in "Mothers' Remedies" and I think it quite fulfills the ideal I ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... "the Government of the United States recognizes that Japan has special interests in China, particularly for the parts to which her possessions are contiguous." The rest of the agreement (which is long) consists of empty verbiage.[68] ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell |
