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More "Nonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nonsense with real disgust, Mrs. Mirvan saw my confusion, but was perplexed what to think of it, and I could not explain to her the cause, lest the Captain should hear me. I therefore proposed to walk; she consented, and we all rose; but, would you believe it? this man had the ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... within the last few years, but I want my son to succeed me in the office. But if this consul of their'n keeps up his objections, appeals, and his protests in this way, and finds such men as his honor the district-attorney to second him with his nonsense and his notions, folks of our business might as well move north ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... progress of polite literature in this island; and it was then found, that the immeasurable licentiousness, indulged or rather applauded at court, was more destructive to the refined arts, than even the cant, nonsense, and enthusiasm of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... Mrs.[66]; to beware also of discoursing homly with anie servants. We sould keip both their for at a prudent distance. The Mr. of Ogilvy and I ware wery great. I know not what for a man he'el prove, but I have heard him speak wery fat nonsense whiles. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... "What nonsense are you talking now? I tell you that it was she! It's only when I'm in the presence of a creature of Lupin's, trained and drilled by him, that I lose my head and behave so foolishly.... She now knows the whole story of the album.... I bet you ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... was Bob White. He was a tall, thin, singular-looking lad, about fifteen years old, with a pale face. When he first went to work in the mine some of the boys called him White Bob, in nonsense, and the name had ...
— Charlie Scott - or, There's Time Enough • Unknown
... kind of exercise to stretch and supple your limbs—besides many other inconveniences which I will not pain you by mentioning—how tall should you have been, my dear sister?—answer, four feet nothing: but enough of nonsense.' ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... preferred Homo to a donkey. He would have felt repugnance to having his hut drawn by an ass; he thought too highly of the ass for that. Moreover he had observed that the ass, a four-legged thinker little understood by men, has a habit of cocking his ears uneasily when philosophers talk nonsense. In life the ass is a third person between our thoughts and ourselves, and acts as a restraint. As a friend, Ursus preferred Homo to a dog, considering that the love of a wolf is ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... angel do cry gert tears when you lets on like that, my Joan. Oh, gal, why won't 'e give ear to me, as have lived fifty an' more winters in the world than what you have? Why caan't 'e taste an' try what the Lard is? Drabbit this nonsense 'bout Nature! As if you was a fitcher, or an 'awk, or an owl! Caan't 'e see what a draggle tail, low-minded pass all this be bringin' 'e to? Yet you'm a thinkin' creature an' abbun done no worse than scores o' folks who be tanklin' 'pon harps afore the throne o' God this ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... hundred; and that the public mind is so harassed with new narrations of conspiracy, and fresh horrors every day, that people have as little real sense of what is just or unjust as men who talk in their sleep of what is sense or nonsense. I have borne, and borne with it—I have seen blood flow on the scaffold, fearing to thwart the nation in its fury—and I pray to God that I or mine be not called on to answer for it. I will no longer swim with the torrent, which honour and conscience call upon me ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... by the fact that they are but recently married, prefer to travel in pairs, and always take the lead. Accordingly Henry and myself, incog. as far as my future subjects go, are free to indulge in occasional caresses and sweet nonsense-talk. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... Burney, or the feeling of Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon a domestic tale. But all that was adventurous and romantic I devoured without much discrimination, and I really believe I have read as much nonsense of this class as any man now living. Everything which touched on knight-errantry was particularly acceptable to me, and I soon attempted to imitate what I so greatly admired. My efforts, however, were in the manner of the tale-teller, not of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... any right to take anything away from here. I remonstrate formally, with all my strength as a man, with all my authority as a father. Do you suppose I am going to let you drive my child into the street. No, indeed! Oh! no, indeed! Enough of such nonsense as that! Nothing more shall ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... ask me!" he cried passionately. "It would be sheerest nonsense in your eyes, I know. You would but laugh at ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... all nations, Eleanor Smith's and most of Mrs. Gaynor's songs, already mentioned, and the songs collected by Reinecke, called "Fifty Children's Songs," are excellent for this purpose. The old-fashioned nonsense songs, such as "Billy Boy," "Mary had a Little Lamb" and "Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle," may also have a pleasant and ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... little things we might do that seem mere trifles and nonsense to us, but mean a lot to her; that wouldn't be any trouble or sacrifice to us, but might help to make her life happy. It's just because we never think about these little things—don't think them worth thinking about, in fact—they never ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... taking his head between his hands, he assumed the grave attitude of a man who is having relations with the Muses. After a few minutes of this sacred intercourse, he had produced one of those strings of nonsense-verses which the libretti-makers call, not without reason, monsters, and which they improvise very readily as a ground-work for the composer's inspiration. Only Schaunard's were no nonsense-verses, but very good sense, expressing with sufficient clearness the inquietude awakened in his ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... telling me, darling," she said gently. "It is just as well that I should know what people say, even though it is nothing but idle gossip—idle gossip." She repeated the words with emphasis. "Run and find Scooter, sweetheart!" she said. "And put all this silly nonsense out of your dear little head for good! I must take baby to ayah now. By and by we will read a fairy-tale ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... eye, and voice, a reference from which he barred himself by the word "despite." As it happens, luckily for him, there is a word to refer to, so that his grammatical salvation is secured; but the result is sad nonsense. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... a particle of coquettishness, or nonsense of any kind, about her, and she made no hesitation whatever about acknowledging, frankly yet modestly, the warmth of ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... signs we never contraried 'em at all, but just let 'em heave out any tale they could think up an' pretend 'at we believed it; an' hanged if I don't begin to suspicion that the' 's a heap o' truth in some o' their nonsense. ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... sat erect and frowned in the direction of his companion. "Well, now, I suppose you are going to sulk. You make me ill! It's the best we can do, ain't it? Hire a cab and go look that fellow up on Park—What's that? You can't afford it? What nonsense! You are getting—Oh! Well, maybe we can beg some clothes of the captain. Eh? Did I see 'im? Certainly, I saw 'im. Yes, it is improbable that a man who wears trousers like that can have clothes to lend. No, I won't wear oilskins and a sou'-wester. To Athens? Of course not! ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... is actually done, as indicated by laboratory experiments. The psychologist experiments a great deal with the memorizing of nonsense material, because the process can be better observed here, from the beginning, than when sensible material is learned. Suppose a list of twenty one-place numbers is to be studied till it can be recited straight through. The learner may go at ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... peasants believed that with Austria's collapse there would arrive the Earthly Paradise, and in order to bring this about they ravaged a good many fine estates and set fire to various castles. They were going to stand no nonsense. At a place called Lubi[vs]ica in Croatia—where the 350 families lived in 260 houses—the landowner, out of the goodness of his heart, bestowed twenty "joch" of meadowland on the village in 1864. A law was passed which obliged ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... plenty about them," I said, "but it was all poetry and nonsense. You know well enough, Peter, that there's no such ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... with Captain Gary afore, did you?" Rucker regarded his junior with a peculiar smile. "I thought not. Well—I have. I'll give you a pointer. He'd rather send this ship to the bottom any time than stand any nonsense. That's him; and I'm sort ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... Helen dear," said Kitty, "that was only my schoolgirl nonsense. When I came back home I found how impossible it all was. But I must run back to the folks now. Won't you ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... any such newfangled nonsense. It ain't none of a parson's business what the community does. You're hired, ain't you, an' paid to run the church? That's the end of it. We ain't goin' to have any mixin' of religion an' farmin' ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... of mind with impulses, thoughts, actions. Of the true liberty we are positively unable to comprehend anything, because we are not in possession of it. Whenever we hear it spoken of, we draw the words down to our own meaning, or briefly dismiss it with a sneer, as nonsense. With the knowledge of liberty, the sense of another world is also lost to us. Everything of this sort floats by like words which are not addressed to us; like an ash-gray shadow without color or meaning, which we cannot by any ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... irritation about the claim to sit in Parliament. Unopposed, the Catholic superstition may sink into dust, with all its absurd ritual and solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. The world is in fact as silly as ever, and a good competence of nonsense will always find believers."[50] That is the view of a strong and rather unscrupulous politician—a moss-trooper in politics—which Scott certainly was. He was thinking evidently very little of justice, almost entirely of the most effective means of ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... himself quite happy and at home in the little drawing-room. The lame child came in and took a stool beside him. He stroked her head and talked nonsense to her in the intervals of holding forth to Julie on the changes necessary in some proofs of his which he had brought back. Lord Lackington, now quite himself again, went back to dreams, smiling over them, and quite unaware that the kitten had been slyly ravished from him. The little woman in black ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as if it were yesterday Nick Long telling me with bubbling ecstasy, shortly after he was engaged, that his lady-love had a clear, analytical mind, almost like a man's. "No nonsense about her," he said. "She sees things just as they are." I rather got the impression at the time that he intended thereby to insinuate gently but plainly that he was a far luckier dog than I who had married ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... folk-lore; it was something nearer and closer to the people themselves. They excited his curiosity, he envied their mode of life, admired their clannishness, delighted in their primitive customs. Their persistence in warring against the gentile appealed strongly to his instinctive hatred of "gentility nonsense"; and perhaps more than anything else, he envied them the stars and the sun and the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... time, my dear. Maitland has gone to Greenfields and we've several hours before us.... Look here, little woman, why don't you take a tumble to yourself, cut out all this nonsense, and look ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... the horse Dahir, until all of the tribe of Fazarah and of the family of Zyad, felt their hearts swell with rage. "Do you hear him, brother?" said Haml to Hadifah; "come, that is enough," he added, turning towards Carwash. "All that you have said about Dahir is absolute nonsense—for at present there are no horses better or finer than mine, and those of ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... the Society for criticising his "Richard III." and in his Short Notes on his Life he wrote—"Foote having brought them on the stage for sitting in council, as they had done on Whittington and his Cat, I was not sorry to find them so ridiculous, or to mark their being so, and upon that nonsense, and the laughter that accompanied it, I struck my ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... catalogues from reaching him,' she said, 'but sometimes the postman slips in without my seeing him, and then he's sure to deliver one. Whenever Theophilus reads about any strange specimen, or any hybridising nonsense that nobody heard of when I was young, he seems to go completely out of his head, and the worst of 'em is,' she added," concluded the General, chuckling under his breath, "'there isn't a single pretty, sweet-smelling flower ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Where the devil have you been? This noise is still going on. Tell me what it is. No-dam-nonsense-now. Let's have it." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... entered, followed by her daughter, and they were duly presented to the Dombeys. There was no light nonsense about Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... dusty from his long trip. The girl, dressed in some cool simple white stuff and seated in her easy wicker chair in the deep shade of the wide porch, made a picture wonderfully attractive to the man who had ridden all day in the scorching heat of the desert sun. Of course he must come in. What nonsense to talk of his appearance. He was not making a fashionable social call. The weary engineer dropped into a chair and gratefully accepted the glass ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... clergy in all ages had delivered up the rights and privileges of the people, preaching up the king's power, in order to govern him the more easily; and therefore they ought not to be suffered to meddle with politics. The earl of Anglesea owned the doctor had preached nonsense; but said, that was no crime. The duke of Leeds distinguished between resistance and revolution; for had not the last succeeded, it would have certainly been rebellion, since he knew of no other but hereditary right. The bishop of Salisbury justified resistance from the book of Maccabees; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... our own property at last. For the next sixty hours we'll be riding across our own front yard—and there aren't any keys and passwords and grips here, either—just a plain Almighty God with no nonsense about Him." ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... drew his prairie hat forward so that the brim shaded his pale eyes. He further shifted his reins into his left hand, and sat with his right on the butt of one of his weapons. Whatever was to come he was ready for it. One thing he had made up his mind to; he would stand no nonsense from anybody—certainly not from James ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... or hysterical nonsense in that room. The mother lay there quite peaceful, pain all gone—and she had had enough of it in her day. She was quite a beautiful woman, too, in a way. Fine eyes, remarkable eyes, splendidly firm mouth, showing great nerve, I should say. All her life, I understand, she lived ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... Uncle Remus, however, had detected the presence of the little boy, and he allowed his song to run into a recitation of nonsense, of which the following, if it be rapidly spoken, will give a ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... (although, perhaps, partial to the subject,) want to talk more nonsense than the occasion warrants, and will pray you to cast your eyes over the following anecdote, that is now going the round of the papers, and respects the commutation of the punishment of that wretched, fool-hardy ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thread of life of her aged father, and her mother requested them to come and take charge of the farm which was now theirs. They went. The old man had made money on the hills. They got the better of the broken china and of my black coat. Fortune broke in upon them. My cousin declared that omens were nonsense, and his wife added that she "really thought there was naething in them. But it was lang an' mony a day," she added, "or I could get your black coat and my mother's cheena ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... I do," Micky declared. He hated the despondency in her face; he felt a strong desire to see her smiling and happy. He rattled on, talking any nonsense that ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... his self-possession by an effort. "It is clear to me," he said calmly, "that your reason is unhinged. What is all this nonsense about death? There is nothing that will harm you except your own evil actions." He turned abruptly and strode out of the room with the firm and decided step of a man who has ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a great many books, and who never forgets anything she hears, had somehow gotten hold of my secret. It was this. There was a man who could repeat whatever he read once. One of his friends undertook to write something that he could not remember. So he wrote nonsense, and the man with the long memory failed to remember it. The nonsense, which I read when I was a boy, is, if I remember ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... his parents, and he should be punished. They meant him to be a priest, and raked and scraped every soldo to educate him. Now, just when he is at the point of being able to repay them, he makes up his mind that he has no vocation for the priesthood, and breaks their hearts by his ingratitude. It is nonsense to set one's will up so and have such scruples. Obedience is vocation enough for anything. There should be a prison where parents could put the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... to the Government for a balance due to the troops, and some other smaller matters for the Germans, and the press, &c. &c. &c.; so what with these, and the expenses of my suite, which, though not extravagant, is expensive, with Gamba's d—d nonsense, I shall have occasion for all the monies I can muster; and I have credits wherewithal to face the undertakings, if realised, and expect ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... piece of "ingenious nonsense," that gem of biographical literature, the unique and veracious "Memoir of Liston," over which the lovers of wit and the lovers of Charles Lamb have had many a good laugh, was so great that Lamb was encouraged to try his hand at another theatrical memoir, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of the book, and, having read them, the worst enemy of lovers' garlands will not accuse Mr. Patmore of "putting stuff and nonsense into people's heads" ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... to retreat. Never does Science stop, step by step she wrests truth from error, and to say that she is bankrupt because she cannot explain the world in one word and at one effort, is pure and simple nonsense. If she leaves, and no doubt will always leave a smaller and smaller domain to mystery, and if supposition may always strive to explain that mystery, it is none the less certain that she ruins, and with each successive ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... with the railway officials. He was taking a quantity of Sphagnum moss in which to wrap the precious things, and they refused to let him carry it by passenger train. The station-master at Waterloo had never felt the atmosphere so warm, they say. In brief, this was a man who stood no nonsense. ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... moved Mr Napper to talk his farrago of philosophical nonsense. It did not take long for Mavis to see that Miss Jennings was much impressed by the flow of many-syllabled words which issued, without ceasing, from the lawyer's clerk's lips. The admiration expressed in the girl's eyes incited Mr ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... "It's sheer nonsense," said Beam, turning away from the window and throwing himself into a chair; "why should an old fellow like Tippengray take up all the spare time of that girl? She doesn't need to learn anything. From what she has said to me I judge that she knows ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... grand piano, with her arms waving as she sang, repeating, by the expression of her eyes, the question she had asked and to which she had received no answer, she was singing the verses she considered nonsense with as much point as if she had understood them, thanks to the hints given her by Madame Strahlberg, who was playing her accompaniment, when the entrance of a servant, who pronounced her name aloud, made a sudden interruption. "Mademoiselle ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "What's the matter with you? Oh, you, is it?—Dawes! Of course, Dawes. I never expected anything better from such a skulking hound. Come, this sort of nonsense won't do with me. It isn't as nice as lolloping about the hatchways, I dare say, but you'll have to go on, my ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... greater torment than being obliged to speak continually without time for recollection. I know not whether it proceeds from my mortal hatred of all constraint; but if I am obliged to speak, I infallibly talk nonsense. What is still worse, instead of learning how to be silent when I have absolutely nothing to say, it is generally at such times that I have a violent inclination; and, endeavoring to pay my debt of conversation ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... or, if you object to the word, I will say love. You have known that I have not loved my cousin, and that I have loved this other man. That is not nonsense; that at any rate is a stern reality, if there be anything real in ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Foreland; so are a great many other words. But I digress. I only put in these words to show you in case you had any dissolving doubts remaining upon the matter, that the kind of stuff you read is very often all nonsense, and that you must not take things for granted merely because they are printed. I have watched you doing it from time to time, and have been torn between pity and anger. But all that is neither here nor there. This ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... if he shared the contempt that some people expressed for bullets. He and Mr. Gleeson both said, "Anyone who talks of contempt for bullets is talking nonsense. Bullets mean death at every corner of the street, and death overhead and flying limbs and unspeakable sights." All these men went back. All of them behaved quietly and like gentlemen, but one man asked a friend of his over and over again if he ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... Inna, give and take; it's that as smooths life's rough places. Master Oscar has nothing to give his uncle for all he's doing for him, but his will—letting go that foolish nonsense about the sea. He ought to give up the sea and take to the farm—that would be his giving and taking; and his uncle would give him the farm, and take his—his obedience to his wishes, as a sort of harvest of love after all the years ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... use electric motors, and other people had that idea long before me. I have used an electric brake, using the motor itself as a brake—that is, as the car runs down a grade by momentum, it generates a current, but this current cannot be used for recharging a battery. It is utter nonsense to talk about that unless we have a steady grade four or five miles long. The advantages are very small indeed, and the complications which would be introduced by employing automatic cut-outs, governors, and so on, would counterbalance anything that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... cried a harsh voice, and a tall, broad-shouldered man elbowed himself through the crowd and walked up to the count. "Count Pueckler," he said, menacingly, "if you continue talking about resistance, and other nonsense of that kind, you are a miserable demagogue, and the assassin of those who believe your high-sounding words.—Listen to me, citizens of Breslau. I am secretary of the commission of provisions, and do you know whither I have been ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... "That's nonsense! But your conscience and your sense of honour always were bugbears, Christopher, and always will be. They bored me as a child, and they bore ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... man who does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, of course that is nonsense, but to those of us who do see in Him the manifested incarnate God, there ought to be no difficulty in accepting this as the simple literal force of the words before us, that in every soul where faith, howsoever ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... duty of your sex, as it is of mine, to establish newspapers, write books, and hold public meetings for the promotion of the cause of temperance. The current idea, that modesty should hold women back from such services, is all resolvable into nonsense and wickedness. Female modesty! female delicacy! I would that I might never again hear such phrases. There is but one standard of modesty and delicacy for both men and women; and so long as different standards are tolerated, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... are subject to decay, And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey. This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young Was call'd to empire and had govern'd long; In prose and verse was own'd, without dispute, Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute. This aged prince, now flourishing in peace And blest with issue of a large increase, Worn out with business, did at length debate To settle the succession of the ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... her. There is something very lovable about her, in spite of all her nonsense. I believe, as she says herself, that she isn't half as silly as she sounds. She's a dear, kissable baby—and I don't know that she'll ever really ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... head or tail of it. It seems plain enough to read, but makes nonsense. Come over here and see ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "'Nonsense! thy heart is dead with fear, thou seest double;' and I bent forward over the edge of the surrounding fence, ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard
... the dominating influence of that spirit, from which certain pernicious tendencies, according to his own convictions, proceeded and had to be combated. Thus it was in this instance. It was all visionary nonsense, nay, sheer devilry, and be attacked it in language of proportionate violence. From Zwingli a different attitude was to be expected, from the amicable titles of his treatises and the personal correspondence with Luther which he himself ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... "That's all nonsense about the Cornishmen being giants, Josh," said Will, as he rapidly passed the long lengths of net through his hands, so that they should lie smooth in the hold, ready for shooting again that night without twist or tangle. "Old writers were very fond ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... blacking the eyes of six gamekeepers, who had been set upon her by some noble lord or another. Then, while the ale sparkles with a richer colour as the evening lights grow deeper, the talk gets naturally upon “lords” in general, gentility nonsense, and “hoity-toityism” as the canker at the heart ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... noon at the lower brook. Fancy a house-reared man a convert to fishing when past threescore! Evan insists that it is because, being above all things consistent, he wishes to appear at home in the company of father's cherished collection of Walton's and other fishing books. Father says, "Nonsense! no man can ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... ejaculated. "Nonsense, man; you must be dreaming. Why, I could no more raise ten thousand pounds than ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... might bring the loom any day, for there was to be no nonsense at her wedding; they would drive to the minister's in the Glen by themselves, and she would be home in time to milk the ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... "she's not well. She fell off a horse last night, and there's something gone wrong inside her head. I s'pect something's cracked there. She's talking a lot of nonsense. We has runned away, and we is desperate hungry. Can you give us a drink ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... a one-act farce going to be acted at the Haymarket; but when? is the question. 'Tis an extravaganza, and like enough to follow "Mr. H." "The London Magazine" has shifted its publishers once more, and I shall shift myself out of it. It is fallen. My ambition is not at present higher than to write nonsense for the playhouses, to eke out a somewhat contracted income. Tempus erat. There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, when the Muse, &c. But I am now ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... how things are going to be, nor whether the Achaeans are to return with good success or evil. How dare you gibe at Agamemnon because the Danaans have awarded him so many prizes? I tell you, therefore—and it shall surely be—that if I again catch you talking such nonsense, I will either forfeit my own head and be no more called father of Telemachus, or I will take you, strip you stark naked, and whip you out of the assembly till you go blubbering back to ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... exclamation equivalent to PSHAW or NONSENSE] says I, making light of it, to see what he would go on to next; 'your honour's joking, to be sure; there's no compare between our poor Judy and Miss Isabella, who has ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... flush deepened to crimson; but Mr. Grew checked his reply with a decisive gesture. "Here he sits, with all your young nonsense still alive in him. Don't you see the likeness? If you don't, I'll tell you the story ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... was liked by all sorts and conditions of important people, had been about, had stayed in houses with Royalties, and had always remained just herself, perfectly natural, quite unpretending, and wholly free from every grain of nonsense. "There's no nonsense about Susan Fleet!" many said approvingly, especially those who themselves were full of it. She possessed one shining advantage, a constitutional inability to be a snob, and ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... turn of the scales would depend mainly upon the mood of his companion. If she had been trifling and inclined to flirt, full of frivolous nonsense, bent upon having a good time in the frequent acceptation of the phrase, little recking the consequences of words or acts, as is often the case with girls in the main good- hearted and well-meaning, Gregory ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... for the next dance, but said that she should be happy if I would bring you up for the following one,—so come along. She's only been here for a short time on her way home from India, so I gathered from what she said; but I daresay she'll tell you if you ask her, for there's evidently no nonsense ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... shoulders impatiently: "Nonsense! When did you grow so chicken-hearted, South? It is I who have to run ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... Picture (WARD, LOCK) is that it would be better worth reading if it contained less of the tale—which, to speak quite candidly, is parlous nonsense—and more of the trimmings. The trimmings are mostly concerned with art bargain-hunting, and are excellent fun. Most of us have the treasure-trove instinct sufficiently developed to like reading about a young man who picks up Gainsboroughs for a tenner, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... woman of her age is more difficult to please than a girl, and is not to be led off her feet by a few impertinently recalled reminiscences, nor to be won by the tardy wag of a finger. She would teach Bill Nairne a lesson undreamt of in his philosophy—that all the nonsense about old maids, their humiliations, their forlorn condition, and their desperate welcoming of late ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... said: "Now, look here, my lady, the best thing you can do is to drop that nonsense at once" (she had dropped the knife in the ferns behind her), "for we're the wrong sort of people to try it on with. Now you get out of this and tell your aunt—she's sneaking there in the flax—what I tell you, and that she'd better clear out of this quick, or I'll have ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... man, and at the sound of his voice Tom and Ned smiled. "Nonsense! Of course I can go in! Why, bless my watch fob, I must go in! I've got the greatest proposition to lay before Tom Swift that he ever heard of! There's at least a million in it! ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... retorted Mr. Badger sharply. "I'm not going to uphold him in attacking Andrew, but I'm rather surprised at his mustering spunk enough to do it. As for his doing us any harm, that's all nonsense." ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... Bengal reading of the first I me of this verse is vicious. The Bombay reading kinchidanapadi (for Kasyanchidpadi) is the correct one. The commentator explains that this has reference to alms, loans, and taxes. Both the Bengal translators have made nonsense of this and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... that they had "come from Weymouth, pleasuring!" Barrett observed that to come from Weymouth (which was several miles to the westward) by the east was a "rum" way. Davis then denied that they had come from the eastward at all, but this was soon stopped by Barrett remarking that if they had any nonsense they would get the worst of it. After this the four men went up the cliff, having loudly abused him before proceeding. On examining the spot where the boat had touched, the Coastguard found twenty-nine ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... making a fuss about old houses, and old furniture, grey walls half tumbling down and mouldy rooms. He liked the new look of The Towers, and he said to me, 'Mind, Aggie, I'm not going to let you grow any nonsense like ivy or creepers up this fine new house. They're all very well for holding together tumbledown old places, but The Towers doesn't need them. And I'm sure he would be pleased to-day if he saw it. The times people have advised me to grow ivy—even Lady ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... you would not stand there talking nonsense. The tide will be over the reef in half an ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... a brief century and a quarter the fallacy of this aspiration had become ridiculously apparent. "Born free and equal!" Nothing on this globe was ever so born. The strong who achieved, the weak who succumbed—both knew the nonsense of it. Free and equal,—so far as men could maintain freedom and equality by their own ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... manners and right feeling forbid her to refuse. She is an exceedingly intelligent girl, and I half fear I have helped you to a wrong impression of her. You will really appreciate her wit; you will indeed; believe me, you will. We pardon nonsense in a girl. Married, she will put on the matron with becoming decency, and I am responsible for her then; I stand surety for her then; when I have her with me I warrant her mine and all mine, head and heels, at a whistle, like the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lady Dulcinea being disenchanted, are you taking this line; now, just as we are on the point of becoming shepherds, to pass our lives singing, like princes, are you thinking of turning hermit? Hush, for heaven's sake, be rational and let's have no more nonsense." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... ran on the geologist excitedly, "we'll see how a lot of our present day theories will be worked out! I'm curious to see what comes of them. Personally, I think most of them are plain nonsense!" ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... sorry that I have nothing better ready.' Item (6): My own adamantine conviction that I stood near by some mystery, which was about to be a big mystery, and which would pay me to pursue. 'A fine bundle of nonsense,' I hear you say; 'as silly a flight of a vaporous brain as ever man conceived'—but stay your words awhile; remember that one who is bred up at the keyhole lets himself, if he be wise, be moved by his impulses, and first opinions. He does not quit them ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... share?—Herman has promised that. DAME. Herman will promise anything; and you know that my poor girl is doatingly fond of young Gustaffe. VEDDER. Well, I can't help that; but I am not going to allow her to make a beggar of herself and us too, for any nonsense about the man of her heart. DAME. Hers will break if she is compelled to— VEDDER. Nonsense—a woman's heart is about the toughest object in creation. DAME. You have given me plenty of proof that you think so. VEDDER. What do you intend to imply by that? DAME. Nothing! ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... reverie. The most feasible solution she could come to, was the one adopted by Judith—that Hamish passed his nights at the books. If so, how sadly he must idle away his time in the day! Did he give his hours up to nonsense and pleasure? And how could he contrive to hide his shortcomings from Mr. Channing? Constance was not sure whether the books went regularly under the actual inspection of Mr. Channing, or whether Hamish went over them aloud. If only the latter, could the faults be concealed? She knew nothing ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... FIRST POLICEMAN Nonsense, nonsense. What greater proof could we have of your guilt? This man here who you gave the letter of introduction is a stranger to the town and the piece of cloth that Mr. Cassily found hangin' on a nail in his back ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... "A lady called yesterday. Wish I might have talked with her. Sang about mother I wish, oh, how I wish—what nonsense I'm writing...." ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... heavy hand at fools, and a great felicity in writing nonsense for them. Fools they will be, in spite of him. His king, his two emperesses, his villain, and his sub-villain, nay, his hero, have all a certain natural cast of the father—their folly was born and bred in them, and something of the Elkanah ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... stiff and somewhat exaggerated military bearing of the sergeant major was at first a source of quiet amusement, later of perplexity, and finally of annoyance. For McFetteridge and his minutiae of military discipline McCuaig held only contempt. To him, the whole business was a piece of silly nonsense unworthy of ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... just put my name down, too," I replied, and the following Monday evening Remey and I started to go to school together, and this time there was no nonsense about it. That winter I studied faithfully, and, though it was hard work, by the time spring came and we returned to Chicago I had acquired at least a fair knowledge of the rudiments of business and was able to keep ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... Both being members of the International, they had unfortunately enough influence to lead our friends astray. The Hotel de Ville was taken, for a moment only, and very ridiculous decrees on the abolition of the State and other nonsense were issued. You understand that the fact alone of a Russian—whom the newspapers of the bourgeoisie represented as an agent of Bismarck—pretending to thrust himself at the head of a Committee of Safety of France was quite sufficient ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... "Enough of this nonsense! I, for one, refuse to act like a puppet for your amusement! If you are so vitally interested in contract bridge, I should advise you to take lessons from an expert, not from three terrified women who are rather poor players at best. I also advise ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... 'They say that you poisoned your uncle and that on one occasion, when you were introduced into a certain house, you sat the whole evening with your back to the hostess and that she was so upset that she cried at the insult! What awful nonsense! What fools could possibly believe such things!' Well, and what do you think? A year after I quarrelled with this same friend, and in his farewell letter to me he wrote, 'You who killed your own uncle! You who ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... a little red paint and a bit of white paper. I painted the ball of the client's thumb, took a print of it on the paper, studied it that night, and revealed his fortune to him next day. What was my idea in this nonsense? It was this: When I was a youth, I knew an old Frenchman who had been a prison-keeper for thirty years, and he told me that there was one thing about a person which never changed, from the cradle to the grave—the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he intended to read it, but in payment for his hour of disillusionment. Then he slung his pack over his shoulders and tramped out into the country. He laughed aloud at the thought of Helen and her idolaters. A poetic hoax. Overripe words. Seductive sounds. Nonsense! ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... characteristic additions equally creditable to human weakness or ingenuity. It is truly lamentable to reflect that while the rational and on the whole truthful descriptions of Aristotle and Theophrastus were extant and accessible, Pliny's nonsense should in preference have gained the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... to you, if my eyes I'm a wiping? A tear is a pleasure, d'ye see, in its way; 'Tis nonsense for trifles, I own, to be piping, But they that ha'n't pity, why I pities they. * * * * * * * * The heart and the eyes, you see feel the same motion, And if both shed their drops, 'tis all the same end; And thus 'tis that every tight lad of the ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... disgusted with the nonsense of the Roman Catholic religion as you can be: and no man who talks such nonsense shall ever tithe the product of the earth, nor meddle with the ecclesiastical establishment in any shape; but what have I to do with the speculative nonsense ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... else out of her particular set. Now I can tell her that there's more beauty among those who don't give themselves half the airs, and who she looks down upon, than there is to be found among her 'fashionables.' But Emma is perfectly ridiculous with her 'exclusive' nonsense," he continued, with much feeling, evidently showing how deeply he resented his sister's reflections upon the style and stamp of his present ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... in some respects weak," I admitted. "But otherwise he is an ordinary English gentleman, with the traditions of an old name and a public school to back him up. I tell you, Gatton, it's nonsense. His army career alone shows him to be a ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... is of the opinion that one may very well understand Haeckel without being bound to consider everything else as nonsense which does not flow directly from Haeckel's own presentments and premises. The author is further of the opinion that Haeckel cannot be understood by attacking him with "fire and sword," but by trying to grasp what he ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... be only a little, too," replied Jeffries grimly. "I don't intend to stand any more nonsense. We'll think over the matter and decide on some kind of a move. Moxley has got to come out of that ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... Nonsense verse in its present development is a fairly modern growth. It began with the limerick which first reached the public under the kindly ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... has been a large factor in deepening the love that has made our married life an ideal one. As I look back at the first year of marriage, I wonder that we got through it so well. My knowledge of sexual hygiene was a strange mixture of fact and nonsense. If the frequency of acts of intercourse advocated by some of the authorities I have lately read is correct, then we must have passed the bounds of moderation. But it is certain that our general health has been very good: better in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the news if it is published in our papers. Now, we again ask, what's the use? The enemy get what information they want. They are with us and pass among us almost daily. They find out from us what they want to know, by passing through our country unimpeded. It is nonsense—it is folly, to deprive our own people of knowledge they are entitled to and ought to know, for fear the enemy will find it out. We ought to have a regular system of passports over all our roads, and refuse to let any man pass who could not ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... hands, and shy, quiet manners! 'She will either end as the matron of an orphan asylum or as head-nurse in a hospital.' So Bell Winship often used to say; but then she was chiefly celebrated for talking nonsense, and nobody ever paid much attention to her. But if you should crave a breath of fresh air, or want to believe that the spring has come, just call Bell Winship in, as she walks with her breezy step down the street. Her very hair seems instinct with life, with ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is nothing so impertinent, so insignificant, so senseless, and foolish as our vulgar way of discourse when mixed with oaths and curses, and I would only recommend a little consideration to our gentlemen, who have sense and wit enough, and would be ashamed to speak nonsense in other things, but value themselves upon their parts, I would but ask them to put into writing the commonplaces of their discourse, and read them over again, and examine the English, the cadence, the grammar of them; then let then turn them into Latin, or translate them into any ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... talking nonsense. There couldn't be a choice, because I've made my choice. Will you marry me ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... motives, what are called the spontaneous acts of the mind must be the necessary result of motives which direct and command its elections. "To say that in our choice we reject the stronger motive, and that we choose a thing merely because we choose it, is sheer nonsense and absurdity. And whoever, with a sound understanding, will fix his mind upon the state of the question, ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... a creature about whom more poetical nonsense has been written. He has been extolled to the skies as patient, long-suffering, the friend of man, and what not. In reality he is a grumbling, discontented, morose brute, working only under compulsion and continual protest, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... story has other features—delightful nonsense not surpassed by anything in 'Wonderland,' childish prattle with all the charm of reality about it, and pictures which may fairly be said to rival those of Sir John Tenniel. Had these been all, the book would have been a great success. As things are, there ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Shakespeare's comedy is of a pastoral and poetical cast. Folly is indigenous to the soil, and shoots out with native, happy, unchecked luxuriance. Absurdity has every encouragement afforded it; and nonsense has room to flourish in. Nothing is stunted by the churlish, icy hand of indifference or severity. The poet runs riot in a conceit, and idolizes a quibble. His whole object is to turn the meanest or rudest objects to a pleasurable account. The relish which he has of a pun, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... 'union' indefinitely; but, on the contrary, they greeted his triumph with enormous enthusiasm. Their feeling was explained by the comment of an innkeeper. 'Venezelos!' he said: 'Why, he is a man who can say "No". He won't stand any nonsense. If you try to get round him, he'll put you in irons.' And clearly he had hit the mark. Venezelos would in any case have done well, because he is a clever man with an excellent power of judgement; but acuteness is a common Greek virtue, and if he has done brilliantly, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... the tribe of Fazarah and of the family of Zyad, felt their hearts swell with rage. "Do you hear him, brother?" said Haml to Hadifah; "come, that is enough," he added, turning towards Carwash. "All that you have said about Dahir is absolute nonsense—for at present there are no horses better or finer than mine, and those ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... is nonsense. You know as well as I do that you should not marry a man when there is a doubt whether he can keep a house over your ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... subject of a furious controversy. One party held that God had wonderfully brought this precious volume to light, for the guidance of His Church at a most critical moment. The other party wondered that any importance could be attached to the nonsense of a nameless scribbler of the thirteenth century. Much was written about the deprivations of Chrysostom and Photius, of Nicolaus Mysticus and Cosmas Atticus. But the case of Abiathar, whom Solomon put out of the sacerdotal ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... come to run away with me, don't you? Well, that is simply nonsense. Look at yourself, my good friend, and tell me if a girl such as I am can be in love with a man like you. As to that small loan, it does not pay me, I assure you, by half, for the sublime little ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... and thin the pair of us, and the wrinkles showed up in Falkenberg's drawn face; neither of us could eat as we used. And by way of trying to hide our troubles from each other, I went about talking all sorts of cheerful nonsense, while Falkenberg bragged loudly at every meal of how he'd got to eating too much of late, and was getting slack and out ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... do stop that nonsense, for the rain will soon be here!" she laughed in spite of herself, as the round freckled face of her boy on hands and knees appeared with a grin from ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... but, lo! a pun trails accidentally off the journalist's pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the writer at once stops his instructive reasoning; he goes off the main line and careers bounding down some devious side-path of entertaining nonsense. Our home papers are almost uniformly staid; they are written conscientiously, laboriously, commendably. But, after all, the French are right in trying to inject as much entertainment as possible into the daily record of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... I repeat there is some use in reiterating a truth, lest it be forgotten; so I will say this much further: we all know what people have said about the curse of labour, and what heavy and grievous nonsense are the more part of their words thereupon; whereas indeed the real curses of craftsmen have been the curse of stupidity, and the curse of injustice from within and from without: no, I cannot suppose there is anybody here who would think it ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... if you like. It's all nonsense. What are you doing? studying? Nonsense! there's time enough for studying when you are at ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... utter this idle nonsense, Henri, when a fresh body is in the house! This lady counted them but now, and there are four; three was the number that I showed the Piedmontese noble whom I led from Aoste, the day ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... will impress the reader most in reading Negro Folk Rhymes is their good-natured drollery and sparkling nonsense. I believe this is very important. Many have recounted in our hearing, the descriptions of "backwoods" Negro picnics. I have witnessed some of them where the good-natured vender of ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... present protestations. What else have you? You have the presence of this Popery also where Protestantism alone ought to be known. You have it dishonestly intruded into the temples of Christian truth; and you have the pernicious nonsense of miserable and disgraceful antics obtruded into what men call divine worship, utterly beneath the dignity of sensible men. You have another thing. You have infidelity, and in the pulpit too—the pulpit in high places—infidelity in its worst form. You have all this, and no power, and very little ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... wit enough to see what is very plainly revealed. When I walked with Hilda to-day I noticed that her eye followed thee unceasingly, and although she talked to me glibly enough, her thoughts were wandering, so that she uttered absolute nonsense at times—insomuch that I would have laughed had I not been jealous of what I deemed the mutual love of Ada and thee. No, Erling, thy suit will prosper, depend on't. It is I who have reason to despond, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... sleep, Lilly, like a good child. Our girl has got too much sense to fill her head up with such nonsense." ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... disgust me with variety, for I cannot form an idea of a greater torment than being obliged to speak continually without time for recollection. I know not whether it proceeds from my mortal hatred of all constraint; but if I am obliged to speak, I infallibly talk nonsense. What is still worse, instead of learning how to be silent when I have absolutely nothing to say, it is generally at such times that I have a violent inclination; and, endeavoring to pay my debt of conversation as speedily ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... and, now I have declared my intention of marrying your daughter, no doubt they will at once withdraw their pretensions. My Ambassador has orders, therefore, to make arrangements for the Princess to come and be married to me without delay—for I attach no importance at all to the farrago of nonsense which you have caused to be published all over the world about this Ice Mountain. If the Princess really has no heart, be assured that I shall not concern myself about it, since, if anybody can help her to discover one, it is ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... despicable and absurd, will not, by any association with splendid titles, become rational or great; that the most important affairs, by an intermixture of an unseasonable levity, may be made contemptible; and that the robes of royalty can give no dignity to nonsense or to folly. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... yer nonsense! Dan didn' mean it." The Snipe slipped an arm under the invalid's head and rearranged the pillow of ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... candidly acknowledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to its intoxicating power, such as staggered my own incredulity; for he was a surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say to him that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him with talking nonsense on politics, and that his friends apologized for him by suggesting that he was constantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now the accusation, said I, is not prima facie and of necessity an absurd one; but the defence is. To my surprise, however, he insisted that ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... fourscore, hurkling over the embers, with the stump of a pipe in her toothless mouth? Is it so sad a thing indeed to be alone? or to have one's motions circumscribed within the narrowest imaginable limits? Nonsense all! ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... flying pony's rein and brought the animal to a halt. "Nonsense," he said, roughly, "you're crazy, Chris. Come on all, let's see what's scared him so." He spurred forward followed by the others and still retaining his hold upon the bridle of Chris' pony, in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... education; 'interest' must be assiduously awakened in everything, difficulties must be smoothed away. Soft pedagogics have taken the place of the old steep and rocky path to learning. But from this lukewarm air the bracing oxygen of effort is left out. It is nonsense to suppose that every step in education can be interesting. The fighting impulse must often be appealed to. Make the pupil feel ashamed of being scared at fractions, of being 'downed' by the law of falling bodies; rouse ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... "Hold your nonsense, child: you are as bad as the boy himself," replied granny. "Boys are never ruined by education; girls ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... foulest pen, Or fairest handled by the sons of men. 'Twill also show what is upon it writ, Be it wisely, or nonsense for want of wit, Each blot and blur it also will expose To thy next readers, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... husband's vanity so well, although he rather reluctantly paid the cost. There, too, is the original manuscript of that entertaining Diary, wherein Pepys daguerrotyped the age in which he lived, and himself with all his sense and nonsense. That Diary would have remained one of the invisible treasures of libraries, for it was written in a cipher of his own invention, but, by a very curious chance, the key to that cipher was unintentionally betrayed through comparison with another ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... darkness a shadowy form approached her. It seemed to her that it was that of a man of superhuman size—one of the giants who, Biddy had told her, lay buried in the long barrows on the edge of the bog. But this was nonsense. She planned what words she would say to him. Abreast of her he stopped, and stared at her white dress. Then suddenly he cried, "Gabrielle!" in a voice that she remembered well. It was Radway's. In a moment ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... if you can. I dare you to prove it. But I must leave this place. Such nonsense shall not detain me longer. I know that you are mad.-Captain, release me. Do not heed the ravings ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... "Oh, say, that's nonsense!" burst out Phil, quickly. "Why, we proved Dave's identity beyond question, when we came back from our trip ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... weel as I can min' tho nonsense o' 't—and ca'd him the gowk he was; and syne I sent him awa wi' a flee in 's lug: hadna he the impidence to fa' oot upo' me for carin mair aboot Steenie nor the likes o' him! As gien ever he cud come 'ithin ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... universe were anticipated and promulgated three millenniums ago by Hindu rishis. This of course is a method of insanity which will soon give way to a newer craze. For the present it helps to evade or confuse the issue in certain minds; but as it is in itself a substitution of nonsense for argument and reason it will not long deceive any one, not ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... be depended on to talk frivolous nonsense," said her elder sister scornfully. "It's the silly sentimental fashion in which both you and father treat work-people that makes them so difficult to deal with. If the working ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... to conceive what delightful nonsense this barbaric elucidation might suggest, if a carouse, or love, woman or drunkenness were defined in this vein; and he would weave in amusing attacks on earlier, less intrepid speakers, who, as Vilsing put it, reminded one of the bashful forget-me-not, inasmuch as you could read in the play ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... the present text of Ammianus, we read Asper, quidem, sed ad lenitatem propensior; which forms a sentence of contradictory nonsense. With the aid of an old manuscript, Valesius has rectified the first of these corruptions, and we perceive a ray of light in the substitution of the word vafer. If we venture to change lenitatem into lexitatem, this alteration of a single ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... water of the region round the town of Cazembe flowed into the Luambadzi, or Luambezi (Zambesi), they remarked with a smile, "He says, that the Loapula flows into the Zambesi—did you ever hear such nonsense?" or words to that effect. We were forced to admit, that according to native accounts, our previous impression of the Zambesi's draining the country about Cazembe's had been a mistake. Their geographical opinions are now only stated, without any ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... incidents and 17, 75 and 84 seem the most tangible from the standpoint of description, of all those reported, and the most difficult to explain away as sheer nonsense." ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... Buddhism or by Chinese philosophy, of the form of the heavens and earth and the manner in which they came into existence, are all inventions of men who exercised all their ingenuity over the problem, and inferred that such things must actually be the case. As for the Indian account, it is nonsense fit only to deceive women and children, and I do not think it worthy of reflection. The Chinese theories, on the other hand, are based upon profound philosophical speculations and sound extremely plausible, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... mere nonsense to dream of any enduring peace, but whether we are making a lasting and friendly peace with Germany or merely a sort of truce of military operations that will be no truce in the economic war against Hohenzollern resources, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... But why nonsense? Is anything more commonly said, than that beauties eclipse the sun? Has not Pope the thought and ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... present is its elated vivacity, which neither fire, nor pain, nor grief can long subdue. Acutely sensitive to all these depressing elements, his animal spirits lift him like an aeroplane, and he is above us in a moment, soaring through clouds of nonsense under a sky of unruffled gaiety. In our old literature, of which he is plainly a student, he has found a neglected author who is wholly to his taste. This is Skelton, Henry VIII's Rabelaisian laureate. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... boy, that attitude is all damned nonsense. Here you are, young, sound, with a heart that will recover in no time, provided you keep liquor out of it. And you talk like that! What the devil have you been up to, to land in this bog?" It was a ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... something you meant to be called by that name? Nonsense, child—folly—moon-beam hallucination! Child! do you know that this is an unpardonable waste of time? Do you remember that opportunities of improvement are given you to enable you hereafter to secure an honorable independence? ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... safeguard against malaria. To be sure, there is nothing of that sort to be apprehended at sea, but still habits are inveterate; second nature, as the moralists and copy-books say, as if there ever could be more than one. What nonsense these wiseacres talk, to be sure! But there is cream, you see, for those who like it—boiled down and bottled for the use of the children before leaving home—one of Dominica's notions;" and here the smiling maid, with her little, respectful courtesy, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... occasion rescued another woman by blacking the eyes of six gamekeepers, who had been set upon her by some noble lord or another. Then, while the ale sparkles with a richer colour as the evening lights grow deeper, the talk gets naturally upon “lords” in general, gentility nonsense, and “hoity-toityism” as the canker at the ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... and pray let me hear no more of this nonsense, for, ridiculous as it may appear, it is to me very painful. Leave me now—I am nervous and low-spirited. Good bye. Come this evening with your sister, I ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... (Jes. in Can., XXXIV.) that the remarkable forbearance observed by some tribes was the result of superstition; and he adds: "To make the Indian a hero of romance is mere nonsense." ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... word to him—not a message of love or of repentance or of hope. His brain was in a turmoil of its own. His white lips were muttering delirious nonsense; his soul was fluttering from scene to scene and year to year, like a restless dragon-fly. He was young; he was old; he was married; he was a bachelor; he was at home; he was in his store; he was pondering campaigns of business, slicing pennies ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the thought of the alternative. He sprang up and thrust the thought aside. "Nonsense! I'll be all right!" he cried. "To please you I'll keep the ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... "Seems nonsense to go to bed now, doesn't it?" said Steve, as they returned on deck to see the island beginning to grow distant as the vessel steamed slowly north-north-east, about a mile away from the solid blue-and-silver wall of ice on ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... wide-open, black-lashed gray eyes flashed a glance like a menace, like a sword, and then suddenly smiled as if the sun had jumped from a bank of storm-clouds. And I looked into those wonderful eyes and we were friends. As fast as that. Most people would think it nonsense, but it happened so. A few people will understand. He took me out to dinner, and it was as if no one else was at the table. I was aware only of the one heroic personality. At first I dared not speak of his history, and then, without planning or intention, ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... indeed maintain that these and every other instance of angelic apparitions (e.g. to Manoah and to Abraham offering up Isaac) occurred during sleep, for that no one with his eyes open ever could see an angel, but this is mere nonsense. (39) The sole object of such commentators seems to be to extort from Scripture confirmations of Aristotelian quibbles and their own inventions, a proceeding which I regard as the acme ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... the question; instead, she blushed furiously. "We are talking nonsense—and I don't know how I can face my father to-morrow," ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... impatient and inconsiderate creature upon the globe as yourself. It would be unpardonably rude in us to send the man away, if he is a charlatan, without letting him see me. Have him up, by all means, and let us hear what priggish nonsense he has to say. He will feel the easier when ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... What nonsense, Charles! Though rather stiff, And foreign from the style of Twenty, There's still enough of cricket stuff Remaining for the pastime. Plenty! Why, such a creed as now you preach Is only fit for scoffs and jeers; Wait till you lose your wind and ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... then,' she continued, 'keep out of danger. If your troop wishes to charge into a safe place, let 'em. You don't want brevet rank, or any of that nonsense, I hope. Make as much bluster and row as you like, but for Heaven's sake keep out of harm's way.... You need not write to me every day, but every third or fourth day, for the postage is serious. If you should happen to kill any Sikhs, search them, and pull down their back hair; that's where ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Populists were hated and feared as if they practiced black magic. What they wanted is on the point of realization. To some of us it looks like a drop in the bucket—a slight part of vastly greater plans. But how stupid was the fear of Populism, what unimaginative nonsense it was to suppose twenty years ago that the program was the road to the end of ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... not call that nonsense; it is but a good-natured way of stating the case in the aspect it presents from the De Sauty point of view; for tightly laced as poor Mother Earth already is, with railroad corsets and steamship stays, growing small by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... that the Echo has now (1888) made a name for decent and sensible writing, having abandoned the "blatant" department to the Star (see, for the nonsense about a non-existent Alderman Waterlow, its issue ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... are with your nonsense again," Pao Ch'ai rejoined laughingly; "is a pill a thing to be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... professional cool ways, "there is a sisterhood, that I am told offer to do things like this. I never sent to them, for I only heard of it a short time ago; but if you have no objection to crosses, and caps, and ritualistic nonsense in its highest flower, I have no doubt, that they will let you have a sister, and that ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... and accents hear![66] So while she varies the impassion'd song, Alternate motions on the bosom throng! 30 As heavenly Milton[67] guides her magic voice, And virtue thus convey'd allures the choice. Discard soft nonsense in a slavish tongue, The strain insipid, and the thought unknown; From truth and nature form the unerring test; 35 Be what is manly, chaste, and good the best! 'Tis not to ape the songsters of the groves, Through all the quiverings of their wanton loves; 'Tis not the enfeebled thrill, or warbled ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... readers exclaim, "Nonsense, to talk of feeding the immortal mind, with flowers! For one, I think people may find some more useful employment than that of persuading their fellow beings to spend the precious hours of this short life upon these ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... a great deal of very vile nonsense talked upon both sides of the matter: tearing divines reducing life to the dimensions of a mere funeral procession, so short as to be hardly decent; and melancholy unbelievers yearning for the tomb as if it were a world too far away. Both sides must feel a little ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... orders to quit the Plymouth Adventure. He was a proper seaman, Ned Rackham by name, who had deserted from the Royal Navy, after being flogged and keel-hauled for some trifling offense. Rumor had it that he was able to enforce respect from Blackbeard and would stand none of his infernal nonsense. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Clay had just entered the room, and had forgotten that her daughter objected strongly to this shortening of her name, which it was one of her father's aggravating habits to do. 'Oh Sarah,' she cried, 'don't talk such nonsense, and before Naomi, too! Some must be poor an' some rich. It's always been so, and always will be so, an' it's flyin' in the face o' Providence not to be thankful that you're not poor; an' with that lovely gown on, too. 'Ow could you earn enough money to buy a gown like ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... say we must read to gain knowledge, and gain knowledge to make us happy and be admired. Mere jargon! Is there any such thing as happiness in this world? No. And as for admiration, I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... Tarpeia are improbable; amongst them that which is told by Antigonus, that she was the daughter of Tatius the Sabine leader, abducted by Romulus, and treated by her father as is related above. Simylus the poet talks utter nonsense when he says that it was not the Sabines but the Gauls to whom Tarpeia betrayed the Capitol, because she was in love with their king. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... the practical jumble of Antoninus Martyr is the systematic nonsense of Cosmas, who invented or worked out a theory and scheme of the world, a "Christian topography," which required nothing more than a complete disuse of human reason. His assurance was equal ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... over his books, he talked to me quite kindly, and never made the least game of me, for all I must look like a fool in his eyes, who has seen the snow all his life. And then Charles, who is so full of fun and nonsense, and who I always thought could not abide me, he spoke to me as if he was sorry for me, and made it out that we were both ignorant alike; and when I remembered how I had looked at them, and behaved to them, I felt as if my heart would break. Ellen is always so good, ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... you talk such nonsense, Corrie!" said Alice, laughing. "Down, Toozle; silence, sir. Go, my dear Poopy, and put on another frock, and make haste, for I've ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... more obviously in the Hebrew. You observe that in the former verse the words 'because of' are a supplement inserted by our translators, because they did not exactly know what to make of the bare words as they stood. 'His strength, I will wait upon Thee,' is, of course, nonsense; but a very slight alteration of a single letter, which has the sanction of several good authorities, both in manuscripts and translations, gives an appropriate and beautiful meaning, and brings the two verses ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Angelo was without money when a creditor of the sort that stands no nonsense, threatened him with arrest unless he paid his debt immediately. This creditor had brought a police officer with him, and Angelo was relieved to see Antipholus of Ephesus coming out of the house where he had been dining because ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... so far, Godfrey Monk's lips. "Not superstitious!" he raved out. "You are worse than that, Emma—a fool. How dare you bring your nonsense here? There's ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... the boy and give him a kiss to show that he has been a good lad. He has done his duty, as a Stukely ought to do, and that should be enough for all of us. But let us have no nonsense talked. What will the country come to if everyone who does his duty as it should be done expects to be called a hero, and I know not what besides? The prince is safe, and the boy likewise. Now off to bed with him, and no more nonsense to be talked ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... reader, he could not himself find a perfect rest therein. Nothing can impart this to the reflective and inquiring mind but truth. Hence, even Spinoza finds himself constrained to speak of the duty of love to God, and so forth; all of which, according to his own conclusion, is irrelative nonsense. ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... perpetually, without the least intermission. They laugh to hear me say that one unkind word would destroy all the satisfaction of my life, and that I should expect our kindness should increase every day, if it were possible, but never lessen. All this is perfect nonsense in their opinion; but I should not doubt the convincing them if I could hope to be so happy ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... actors succeeded full-grown performers, who have since continued to play interludes of almost every description. Indeed, this theatre is the receptacle of all the nonsense imaginable; nothing is too absurd or too low for its stage. Here are collected all the trivial expressions to be met with in this great city, whether made use of in the markets, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... George's book "Progress and Poverty"? It is more damneder nonsense than poor Rousseau's blether. And to think of the popularity of the book! But I ought to be grateful, as I can cut and come again at this ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... her. The girls were singing songs and amusing themselves in the parlor, and Marian took off her hat and made herself at home with them. She sang several songs, and then got to 'cutting up' and did some of those dances she's picked up somewhere—did them well too. But with all her nonsense she has a lot of good common sense, and she will find a place for herself. She will get married one of these ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... and she said: Aye! Chaturika told me of thy error. But trust her not, when she speaks of me, for she is a flatterer. And yet, thy crime was venial, and one easily forgiven: for she is very pretty, as I am not. But we are wandering from the point, and wasting time, and talking nonsense. Forget us both, and listen with attention, and I will begin all over again. And I swept away her beginning with a wave of my hand, and I exclaimed: It is useless, for I can listen at present to absolutely ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... [He considers who are friends to the company, and speaks well where he is sure to hear of it again.] He can listen to a foolish discourse with an applausive attention, and conceal his laughter at nonsense. Silly men much honour and esteem him, because by his fair reasoning with them as with men of understanding, he puts them into an erroneous opinion of themselves, and makes them forwarder hereafter to their own discovery. He is ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... innumerable testimonies that those histrions spoke and told endless nonsense; they have been often enough reproached with it for no doubt to remain as to their talking. Then there is superabundant proof of the relish with which men enjoyed, in the Middle Ages, silly, teazing or puzzling answers; the questioner remaining at the end rolled up in the repartees, gasping ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... for everybody else that they should. That appears to me to be unanswerable. You didn't start in with the idea of making those poor things just like you, I suppose. You can't train a cart-horse to win the Derby. Yet all their nonsense about equality rests on the theory that you can. You can't make a good judge out of a criminal, no matter how the criminal repents of his crimes. He's not been born the intellectual equal of the man who's born to judge him. His mind ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... the first place, 'Oh for pity's sake don't carry off the person in all Northampton who amuses me most!' I would have said in the second place, 'Nonsense! the boy is doing very well. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... to say what she wants or doesn't want!" exclaimed the man savagely. "I shall look to you to bring the girl round to your way of thinking, without any nonsense. Do you ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... might have mentioned that Taylor the Water-Poet cites The Hundred Merry Tales as one of the authorities employed by him in the composition of his Sir Gregory Nonsense His Newes from No Place, 1622 (Taylor's Works, 1630), and see also Epistle Dedicatory ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... cancelling the postage-stamp. "Lulu!" he exclaimed. "I should like to know if that great strapping girl isn't out of her cradle yet! I suppose Miss Louisa will think that belongs to her, but I saw her christened and I heard the name the minister gave her, and it was n't 'Lulu,' or any such baby nonsense." And so saying, he gave it a fling to the box marked P, as if it burned his fingers. Why a grown-up young woman allowed herself to be cheapened in the way so many of them do by the use of names which become them as well as the frock of a ten-year-old schoolgirl would become a graduate of the ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... has the fact of this bottle containing an emetic to do with my swallowing its contents?' inquired the lady. 'Why, everything, answered her involuntary host, quietly; 'you have swallowed my pearl, and this, being a powerful emetic, will compel you to disgorge it. Come now, no nonsense, madam,' (still more quietly and still more firmly,) 'or you will compel me to communicate with the police.' The word police, that magically terrible word to the evil- doer, terminated the dialogue. The woman (who proved to be an adventuress of the most 'fashionable' ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... "Pooh! mere nonsense! I'll not hear of governessing. Don't mention it again. It is rather too feminine a fancy. I have finished breakfast. Ring the bell. Put all crotchets out of your head, and run away ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... one who was afraid of infection and was singularly ignorant on questions of health; she knew little or nothing of medicine and never believed in doctors; she made an exception of Sir James Simpson, who was her friend. She told me that he had said there was a great deal of nonsense talked about health ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... work. He will shake all that nonsense to blazes when he finds himself out under the moon with the swag on one side and the gallows ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... beware! for he is full of guile. But once when he Count Luie did attack I counter-thrust did give with my deft pen; And though I flayed him in my treachant style, He, being slow of wit, did know it not; And as "Old Fogy" he doth often spout His forthy nonsense in the daily press. But now I speak in no uncertain terms Of our great President; for I and he Are intimates as only those can be We meet on terms of mental equity. Hence trust in me! For I will quick advise Him as to matters in these lovely Isles. Sweet friends, there is a bond which holds us fast: ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... this nonsense he wrote; The fighter (an editor) fote; The swimmer, he swam; The skimmer, he skam; And the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... not sufficient motive power of passionate thought, no typographical aids will make anything of this sort of verse but metrical nonsense—which it nearly always is—even in Cowley, whose brilliant wit and ingenuity are strangely out of harmony ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Highness, that he is!' exclaimed the girl. 'And Fritz is as honest as he. And as for all they said, it was just talk and nonsense. When countryfolk get gossiping, they go on, I do assure you, for the fun; they don't as much as think of what they say. If you went to the next farm, it's my belief you would hear ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the man's face astonished. "What nonsense, Gomez!" he exclaimed. "Do you know what you are talking about! Why, I'm tired out, and almost starved. Here I am and here I shall stop, unless your mistress is as inhospitable ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that!" said the Baron, on hearing of his daughter's strong measures, "I will have no nonsense ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to tell you," he said. "Really I am delighted to see you. But you look rather white and pulled down; no wonder after that fever. And there is to be no nonsense about this visit. It is June now, you stop here till you are fit to begin work again. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... it the other way. I'll go down, hand up the kid, and then you shall pull me back. Nonsense! I'm not bothered with nerves. Shan't mind in ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... a worthless thing—only Tom had not thought so. He had loved her. Sam Willard liked her, but if she had not gone out with him on Sunday evening after church, he would have asked somebody else to go, and laughed and talked nonsense and enjoyed himself just the same, scarcely heeding the difference of his companion. Sam was never free on Saturday evening as Tom used to be. She wondered what Tom did with his Saturdays now. She would like, unseen herself, to see Tom for just a moment. She wondered ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... achievements of foreigners in order to make them appear ridiculous. Over twenty years ago a writer in one of our high-class magazines informed an astonished world that "the Wagner-bubble has burst!" and the preposterous nonsense has been repeated again and again in one form or another ever since. Quite recently we read in one of our leading English dailies the following sentences: "... Among many of the best-known critics there is a general consensus of opinion that with the completion of Strauss' important ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... kingdom, inane paper puppets bespangled with impossible sentiment, tinsel and rags which are driven about like chaff by the wind-puffs of romance. The advent of the Amadises is the coming of the Kingdom of Nonsense, the sign that the last days of chivalric romance have come; a little more, and the Licentiate Alonzo Perez will take his seat in Don Quixote's library, and Nicholas the Barber light ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... safe-conduct too, and the fool got drunk. And if we have good, warm blood in us we all get drunk sooner or later. Yes, and please God my time will come, but may the Saints send me far from Valmy! You think I'm talking nonsense, Uncle; but Monsieur de Perche always let me talk. He said it was better to let blow at the bung than burst ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... grumble and fall out with me for not writing, you will certainly be in some degree justified; for I think it must be near upon three weeks since I wrote to you, which is a sin and a shame. To say that I have not had time to write is nonsense, for in three weeks there are too many days, hours, and minutes, for me to fancy that I really had not had sufficient leisure, yet it has almost seemed as if I had not. I have been constantly driving out to the farm, to watch the progress of the painting, whitewashing, etc., ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... what nonsense they teach at your school! When mother bends her face down to kiss us does ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... child," said the wife, "but it is on a par with everything else you do. You have no perception of what is right. I don't pretend to be a good mother, but I don't talk nonsense to Sibyl. She ought not to speak about nurse and governess before servants, and it is disgraceful of her to drag the footman and his concerns into the conversation at dinner. She ought not, also, to boast about ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... to ask him if he really meant to say that nothing ever befell these young women who were working all day side by side with people of the other sex. Did their thoughts never wander from their work? The guide assured Mr. Lennox that there was no time to think of such nonsense in the factory, and, anxious to vindicate the honour of the establishment, he declared that any who took the smallest liberty with any female would be instantly dismissed from the works. The ministers listened approvingly, although they seemed to think the subject might have been avoided. ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... a way to make him sell—some bribe, something. There, there," and his enthusiasm and eagerness vanished in a moment, and the broken look came back upon his face. "It's all nonsense; I am talking impossibilities—a little weak in my mind, I suppose. Forget it, there's a good fellow; say nothing about it. And so you buried them? Ah, me! ah, me! And George did chief mourner. I suppose he blubbered freely; he always could blubber freely when he liked. I remember ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Kean's head being stuffed with such nonsense until it bursts?" she cried, breaking off suddenly as the door opened and Judy herself ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... meet Mr. Trewitt for settlement, he said he would go with me, as he wanted money. Opposite the custom house we met Mr. Trewitt, who said, 'Well, captain, I have bought you.' Mr. Grice said, 'Let us have no nonsense; go and settle with him.' Angry words passed between them, one saying he had bought me, and the other denying that he had or could, as I had bought myself already. We all went to Mr. Grice's dwelling house; there Mr. Trewitt settled with me about ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... Arabella's large black eyes, and a bright red spot on Mildred's cheek, were the only emotions manifested by the young girls, and Mrs. Greenfield proceeded: "Of course, I wouldn't submit to it—my daughter spelling baker, and all that nonsense, so I took her away at once. It was my wish that Mildred should remain, but husband, who is peculiar, wouldn't hear of it, and said she should go where Arabella did, so I've brought ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you — this? Look around you and be sorry you're not living in an attic, With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent. I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters; ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... looked so bright and mocking, as if she were laughing at something all the time.—Poor, dear child! could she not talk as she liked? It was a great blessing she could be bright, poor lamb, with such a parting before her!—She was so grown-up, and patronising, and superior!—Tut! tut! Nonsense! Peggy had come from a boarding-school, and her ways were different from theirs—that was all. They must not take stupid notions, but be kind and friendly, and make the poor girl ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... itself by the eyes half shut, sleepy, stupid, inflamed. An idiot smile, a ridiculous surliness, an affected bravado, disgraces the bloated countenance. The mouth open tumbles out nonsense in heaps, without articulation enough for any ear to take it in, and unworthy of attention, if it could be taken In. The head seems too heavy for the neck. The arms dangle from the shoulders; as if they were almost cut ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... through the air? Supposing you able to talk with him, could you represent the same unto him other than by the conceit of gliding through water with most delightsome swiftness and directness? To talk of an element wherein he had no experience should be simply so much nonsense to him. Now, it may be—take me not, I pray you, as meaning it must be—that all that shall be found in Heaven differs as greatly from what is found on earth as the water differs from the air. Concerning these matters, I take it, God teaches us by likening them ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... of acrobatic nonsense that the high school boys ever had seen. The clowns, entering into the spirit of the moment, grew wonderfully funny. They sang songs and told stories, while the acrobats hurled themselves into a mad whirl of somersaults, cartwheels ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... just as ours does; he hates the same things that we hate, but his nerves are of iron and his body is under his full control. He's a splendid man, I tell you! Why, think of it! here is a man with ideals, and no nonsense about him; educated and from the people, simple, yet all there... What more do ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... well. Miss Crosbie had a great deal to tell about London and her journey down into the country; and soon after dinner the children had leave to go to their play-room. They were not in the humour to do much good there: they began with talking nonsense, and finished off with getting pettish with each other. Henry said that he did not want to hear any more of Miss Crosbie and her finery. Lucy called him cross; and Emily said that he was not to hinder them talking of what they pleased. They were called ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... particular to the general—though it lead to a fine crop of errors, should at least help to counterbalance the psychological superficiality of the deductive method; to counterbalance, for example, the nonsense of those well-meaning persons who go routing about among the poor in search of evil, and suppose that they can chain it up with little laws. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... as the men wanted something to eat, Davy told them to dig up some potatoes, while he went and shot six rabbits. When he returned with his game, the men said they could not find any potatoes. He said, "That's all nonsense," and went himself to the garden; but he could not find one potato. The blackfellows had shipped the whole crop in their canoes, so that there was nothing ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... I'm lookin' at,' returned Mrs. Bounder, with a broad smile at him. 'She ain't scared by no nonsense from duin' what she's got to du. Don't you be scared neither; houses don't make the folks that live in 'em. But what I'm thinkin' of is, they'll want lots o' help to git along with their movin'. Christopher, do you know there's a big box ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... "Forgive you? Nonsense! The feeling does your heart infinite credit, though a little counsel with your head would show you that ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... Such ribald nonsense, however, was unfair to a navy which had done magnificently well until smothered and suppressed by sheer weight of numbers. It was in January, 1815, that Captain Decatur finally sailed out of New York harbor in the hope of taking the President past the blockading division which ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... sich fussy people," says Mrs. Brown; "I wouldn't railly put up with all her dern'd nonsense, ef she wa'n't so poorly, so weak in her mind and body, and so good about paying for her work. No, I declare I wouldn't," said ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... resolute liar cannot lie more than once in every three sentences. Folly is more engrossing; for we could prove from the present Elegy that it is possible to write two sentences of pure nonsense out of three. A more faithful calculation would bring us to ninety-nine out of every hundred; or—as the present consists of only fifty-five stanzas—leaving about five readable lines in the entire.... A Mr. Keats, who had left a decent calling for the melancholy trade ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... as her manner was, interspersing her narrative with baby nonsense and endearments, and Mr Robins forgot his errand, which was, after all, only a pretext, and stood half-listening, and more than half back in the old days of memory, and once he so far forgot himself as to snap his fingers at the child, and touch one of ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... the Long Hall, of course," cut in Rupert, as usual ignoring their nonsense. "And the old summer drawing-room. But we can shut up the dining-room and the ball-room. We'll eat in the kitchen, and that and ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... swallowing great spoonfuls of hot bread-and-milk, against which—faint though I was and famished—my gorge rose. Also the ordeal of gulping it under four pairs of eyes was not a light one. But Miss Belcher insisted, and Miss Belcher stood no nonsense. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... him hard an' then I says to him, I says, 'Well, what did you wake me up for?' 'No one ever felt nothin' like this,' he says; 'I've got two appendixes an' I can feel another comin' in my back.' 'Elijah,' I said, 'don't talk nonsense. You've been an' woke me up an' now I'm woke up what do you want me to do?' I leaned over him as I said it an' let a little hot candle grease drip on his neck an' he give a yowl an' straightened out an' then give ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... affectation. A man's way may be weary if he is tired or weak; but not even then should it be so called, when he has just been spoken of as weary himself, or as walking wearily; and weary as applied descriptively to a village street is almost nonsense. These defects are not important, but they arrest attention as being at the very opening of the story. And it must be confessed that for a chapter or two "A Point of Honor" is rather slight in texture and ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... compromise of marriage was suggested. But how could public justice be pacified for the clerk's unfortunate homicide of Reyes, by a female cousin of the deceased man engaging to love, honor, and obey the clerk for life? Kate could not see her way through this logic. 'Nonsense, my friend,' said Urquiza, 'you don't comprehend. As it stands, the affair is a murder, and hanging the penalty. But, if you marry into the murdered man's house, then it becomes a little family murder, all quiet and comfortable amongst ourselves. What ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... certain great poet of the eighteenth century retorted impromptu upon a certain great lord in a double-rhymed and triple-punned repartee. Champion and Shotwell, in happy alternation, recited two or three incredible nonsense speeches attributed to early local celebrities, and Garnet and Halliday gave the unpublished inside histories of three or four hitherto inexplicable facts, or seeming facts, in the personal or political relations of Marshall, Jackson, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... 'Nonsense,' exclaimed Bessie. 'Why, if all old Pew's school was to march in upon her, without a moment's notice Aunt Betsy would not be put out of the way one little bit. If Queen Victoria were to drop in unexpectedly to luncheon, my aunt would be as cool as one of her own ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... or our bread any the cheaper for it?" The captain was silent, and my apologist continued, "Do you believe, sir, if Mr. Hunt had given away his corn, that the millers or the bakers would have sold it to us any the cheaper? then let us have no more of your nonsense; what would you have said if your old uncle, the tobacconist, had sold his tobacco for one shilling a pound while other people were selling it at three shillings a pound?" As his scheme did not answer, the captain slunk ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... end to this kind of dodge, nor will be apparently till there is an end of the class which tries it on; and a great many of the Democrats will be amused and absorbed by it from time to time. They call this sort of nonsense "practical;" it SEEMS like doing something, while the steady propaganda of a principle which must prevail in the end is, according to them, doing nothing, and is unpractical. For the rest, it is not likely ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... not seem to have any of that nonsense," said Jack, "and she is really very pleasant company. By the way," with a smile, "she did invite me to the house, but I guess you ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... her shapely, well-shod foot petulantly. "Rubbish!" she exclaimed. "You don't suppose I believe that nonsense, do you?" ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... man who did not wince and writhe under the hatred and contempt of the other sex. I am not a profound believer in innate ideas, if they are such ridiculous ones as metaphysicians talk of—namely, that two and two make four, and such sort of nonsense—but I do believe in certain innate principles and feelings, that govern our thoughts and actions as powerfully and irresistibly as instinct impels the brute creation; and that one of those principles is an innate desire to please and secure the good opinion of the opposite sex, born ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... again I'll hit you with my paddle," threatened Randy. "I won't stand any nonsense from ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... as "Titus Andronicus" or "Timon" or "The Taming of the Shrew." Unfortunately for the would-be judges, Coleridge did not guide their opinions of "Henry V."; he hardly mentioned the play, and so they all write the absurdest nonsense about it, praising because praise of Shakespeare has come to be the fashion, and also no doubt because his bad work is more on the level of their intelligence ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... drawing a distinction between a "poison" and a "destructive thing." It explains why nitrogen is not a poison and why carbonic acid is, although neither can support life. This point the lecturer illustrated. A poison must be capable of destroying life. It was nonsense to talk of a "deadly poison." If a body be a poison, it is deadly; if it be not deadly, it is not a poison. Three illustrations of the chemical actions of poisons were selected. The first was sulphuric acid. Here the molecular death of the part to which the acid was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... fiddle-de-dee nonsense about your life being wrecked. Gilbert, we were children together, we were lad and lass together, and perhaps, if we both live, we may be old people together—but we mustn't be man and woman together; ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... old chap, don't talk like that," cried Bob, taking his hand. "Don't talk such wild nonsense and bosh. Lie down and have a good sleep. I say, Mr Johnson, I wish old Bolter ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... weren't for my dictionary I should have given up long ago. When too many tiresome people dine here in the evening—or when they worry me from home—I take a column. But generally half a column's enough—good tough Persian roots, and no nonsense. Oh! of course I can read Hafiz and Omar Khayyam, and all that kind of thing. But that's the whipped cream. That don't count. What one wants is something to set one's teeth in. Latin verse will do. Last ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was only nonsense—silly, romantic nonsense, that I'd got out of books. I used to make up stories about myself joining Sir Knight on some expedition, dressed as a boy, and he not recognizing me." She laughed a little. "I constantly saved his life, of course! ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... she is talking about. These high-flown lectures and discussions have filled all their heads with nonsense. It will have to be rooted out when they come to face the world. No use to oppose her now. Nothing but experience will teach her. She must just be humoured for the present. They have all run a little wild in their notions. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... your looks and catching air, To think of Vaughan! You fool! You know, You might, with ordinary care, Ev'n yet be Lady Clitheroe. You're sure he'll do great things some day! Nonsense, he won't; he's dress'd too well. Dines with the Sterling Club, they say; Not commonly respectable! Half Puritan, half Cavalier! His curly hair I think's a wig; And, for his fortune, why my Dear, 'Tis not enough to keep a gig. ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... I stole up to-day and looked over his shoulder. He was writing the history of our discussion. It was the same old nonsense about the eternity of forms. But as I continued to read, he wrote down the practical test I had made with the poker. Now this is unfair and untrue. I made no test. In falling he struck his ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... Pulitzer, "but it's absolute nonsense, except about the editorial page. Have you got the clipping with you? I would like to hear what that smart young man has got to say about ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... paid to regain the fair Cyrene's favour, but I am convinced that Benjamin Vajdar is at the bottom of it all. The prince bases his suit for a separation on his wife's alleged epileptic attacks and consequent unfitness for the wedded state. Of course that is all nonsense. I am not an epileptic, nor wont to bite or scratch people; but I can't approach this Cagliari without experiencing a sort of foaming at the mouth and a twitching of the muscles, as if I must pitch into the ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... you. I tell ye now, it's all o' the six figures I've sayed. In coorse, it's their interest to make it out small as they possibly can; seein' as our share's to be a percentage. I know better now; an' knowin' it, an't agoin' to stan' none o' theer nonsense. Neyther shud you, Bill. We both o' us are 'bout to risk the same as any ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... death being world-wide on the other—viz. the Son of God—then we shall not stumble at the thought that He died for all, because He died for each. I know that if you only regard Jesus Christ as human I am talking utter nonsense; but I know, too, that if we believe in the divinity of our Lord, there need be nothing to stumble us, but the contrary, in the thought that it was not an abstraction that He died for, that it was not a vague mass of unknown beings, clustered together, but so far ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... I ask a man who he is, I don't want to know what are his titles, and such nonsense; no, Old Scratch, I want to know what he has written, when he had the curtain up, and whether he's a true son of the drama.—Harkye, don't make yourself uneasy on my account—In my next pantomime, perhaps, I'll let you know who I am, Old ...
— The Dramatist; or Stop Him Who Can! - A Comedy, in Five Acts • Frederick Reynolds
... what everbody else is wearing, and who's got the nicest clothes. And they sit back, and they say, 'What she think she look like with that thing on her haid?'. The other two-thirds? Why, they just go for nonsense, I guess. Those who go for religion are scarce as chicken teeth. Yes sir, they go ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Dick. "But you've got thc answer already. Some pilots say interplanetary, some say guided missiles. A few—a very few—still think it's all nonsense, ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... X. asserts that his name has always been spelt in such and such a way, he is talking nonsense. If his great-grandfather's will is accessible, he will probably find two or three variants in that alone. The great Duke of Wellington, as a younger ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... maid. "Are you going to pour out all your nonsense once more about poetry and the arts, and to crack your fingers and stretch your arms while you spout about the ideal, and beauty, and all your northern madness?—Beauty is not to compare with solid pudding—and what am I!—You have ideas in your brain? What is the use of them? I ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... yes! He is one of the characters of the regiment. He is the book of nonsense on two very long legs, but he is full of fun and full of goodness. He is not at all Mr. Ray's kind, however. Jack says that Mr. Ray is the man of all others whom he would most expect to come to the front in a general war, and that nothing ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... "Pho! nonsense! Mr Nourse; we'll carry them a little longer," replied the captain, who had been carrying too much sail another way. "Sit down and take a glass of wine with us. You always cry out ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... "You keep out of my way after this or you'll get hurt. I've stood about all of your nonsense ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... masons are at it as they are everywhere, from the Channel to the Mediterranean; for to pull down and rebuild is the permanent recreation of the French. The rock remains. It is put in order whenever a stone falls out of place—no one of weight has talked nonsense here against restoration, for the sense of the past is too strong—but though it is minutely and continually repaired, Old Carcassonne does not change. There is no other set of walls in Europe of ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... the liberty of so far condensing the Morning or the Evening Office as to bring it within the limits of a quarter of an hour. He seeks relief through the lawful channel of rubrical revision, and is only laughed at for his pains. In this busy nineteenth century it is nonsense, he is assured, to spend a dozen years in besieging so obdurate a fortress as the General Convention. The way to secure "shortened services" is to shorten services. This is easy logic, and applicable in more directions than one. Only see how smoothly it runs: If you want hymns that ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... him from the civilised world. But, do what he would, the image of the dead woman lying so near him invariably came between him and the page, and obtruded itself on his mind obstinately. Once he was so exasperated while reading, that he jumped violently off his chair, exclaiming, "This is childish nonsense!" In doing so he tilted the chair over, so that it balanced for an instant on its hind legs, and then fell with an awful crash, which caused him to leap at least three feet forward, clench his fists, and wheel round with a look of fury that would ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... these actors are so moderate in their pathos; for as there is nothing interesting, either in the piece or its situations, the more noise they made about it, the more ridiculous they would appear: it might still be endurable, were there any thing gay in this nonsense; but it is most stupidly dull and monotonous. There is in Italy no more comedy than tragedy; and here again we stand foremost. The only species of comedy peculiar to Italy is harlequinade. A valet, at once a knave, a glutton, and ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... the devil, ask you, what is a born philosopher, save a man of cold desires? And what is a bred philosopher but a man who has survived his desires? A young philosopher? - a cold-blooded youth! An elderly philosopher? —a leuco-phlegmatic old man! Much nonsense, of a verity, ye hear in praise of nothing from your Rajaship's Nine Gems of Science, and from sundry other such ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... guard against conventional thinking and the mass of "inspirational" nonsense which forms the main contribution to the vocational guidance of youth provided in the average schoolroom. The ideals of success usually held up before school children seem to have been drawn from a mixture of Sunday school literature and the prospectuses of efficiency bureaus. ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... daughter? My lawyer told me to-day the assault and battery case is all settled, so it can't be that. Wonder if the Colonel has converted Klutchem as to the proper way of running a bank? No, that's nonsense! Klutchem would skin a flea and sell the tallow, no matter what the Colonel said to him. Coming to dinner! Well, that ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... which are dubbed political economy" (p. 28) could hardly furnish their critics with a finer specimen of that which a hero of the "Dunciad," by the one flash of genius recorded of him, called "clotted nonsense." ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
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