"Mealy-mouthed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expressed in a single word, the full meaning of which no circumlocution can convey; and which, though it may hardly be deemed presentable in serious composition, I shall use, as Bunyan himself (no mealy-mouthed writer) would have used it, had it in his days borne the same acceptation in which it is now universally understood;—in that word then, he had been ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... friends and non-plussed his enemies. Of the latter, it must be admitted, he had more than enough—or, at least, men to whom he was intensely antipathetic. One eminent journalist—more eminent than Mark himself—writes him down "a mealy-mouthed sycophant;" and another, hardly less popular, went further still in his denunciation, and, if he were to be believed, Mark Lemon must have been one of the most accomplished humbugs of his time. "There was nothing good about Mark," said a distinguished draughtsman, who worked with the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... doorway Mrs. Wren called to her husband, "Don't let her deceive you with her pretty talk! Remember what I told you! She's mealy-mouthed.... If you had seen her trying to reach her paw through the door you'd know how ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... wonders. We critics are much to blame, and blamed, for not trying to force the entry of good sense. Some of our forebrothers never hesitated to talk bluntly about the physical unsuitability of players for their parts, but we have grown so mealy-mouthed that if Miss Florence Haydon were to play Rosalind or Mr Louis Calvert Romeo, we should merely use some obscure phrases about unsuitability of temperament instead of saying something usefully brutal about the folly of these admirable ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... suitableness of the expression, and the spirit and happiness of the whole." While Dr Warton, sensibly remarking, "that the character of a fond old dotard, betrayed into disgrace by an unsuitable match, is supported in a lively manner," refrains from making himself ridiculous by mealy-mouthed moralities which on such a subject every person of sense and honesty must despise. Mr Horne keeps foolishly carping at Pope, or "Mr Pope," as he sometimes calls him, throughout his interminable—no, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
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