"Long-winded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a letter to his brother; it was one of these wearisome business letters, enclosing some papers he had had to sign. He never could make out where the proper place was for him to put his name on these tiresome, long-winded documents. But, wonderful to relate, his brother always told him that it was perfectly correct, and Christian Frederick was most particular in such matters. The old gentleman had just sent off the letter, and was ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... in the matter of wines and strong drinks, or the more constitutional difficulty touching loans, debts, and the like. For myself, I rather incline to the view of the old Pacha, who, after listening with his habitual patience to the long-winded arguments of a Protestant missionary, completely dumb-foundered that excellent divine by remarking that he (the Pacha) felt quite convinced of the similarity of their creeds, since the only apparent difference was, that the Christian has three Gods and one wife, while the ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... failure. It is impossible, in an article which is already too long, to inquire how it may be replaced by a better; and it is the less necessary to do so, as a second edition of Mr. Spencer's remarkable essay on this subject has just been published. After wading through pages of the long-winded confusion and second-hand information of the "Philosophic Positive," at the risk of a crise cerebrale—it is as good as a shower-bath to turn to the "Classification of the Sciences," and refresh oneself with Mr. Spencer's profound thought, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... was a long-winded Counsel who had detested the late Mr. Justice Fewbanks because of the latter's habit of interrupting the addresses of Counsel with the object of inducing them to curtail their remarks. This practice was ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... brazen din; The cymbals' rattling sounds dispel The cloud, and drive the hag to hell. The moon, deliver'd from her pain, Displays her silver face again. Note here, that in the chemic style, The moon is silver all this while. So (if my simile you minded, Which I confess is too long-winded) When late a feminine magician,[1] Join'd with a brazen politician,[2] Exposed, to blind the nation's eyes, A parchment[3] of prodigious size; Conceal'd behind that ample screen, There was no silver to be seen. But to this parchment let the Drapier Oppose his counter-charm ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... dialogue and naive sentiment the lusty burgesses of the fifteenth century were thoroughly at home, and the comedy and pathos of these scenes must have been as welcome a relief to the spectators, from the |133| long-winded solemnity of many of the plays, as they are to modern readers. In the York mysteries the shepherds make uncouth exclamations at the song of the angels and ludicrously try to imitate it. The Chester shepherds talk in a very natural way of such things as the diseases ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... did it happen? Who got you the sitivation? Look alive! Don't be long-winded, I see they're gittin' ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... discovery of the pearl of great price which lies hidden beneath this heap of rubbish." We have often met with women much more novel and profound in their observations than Laura Gay, but rarely with any so inopportunely long-winded. A clerical lord, who is half in love with her, is alarmed by the daring remarks just quoted, and begins to suspect that she is inclined to free-thinking. But he is mistaken; when in a moment of sorrow he delicately ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... in a note to Kinmont Willie, I wrote: "There is a prose account very like the ballad in Scott of Satchells' History of the Name of Scott" (1688). Satchells' long-winded story is partly in unrhymed and unmetrical lines, partly in rhymes of various metres. The man, born in 1613, was old, had passed his life as a soldier; certainly could not write, possibly could ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... book, though it is ill calculated for the hasty readers of to-day. Indeed, the defects are serious enough. The class of writing to which it belongs demands a certain dramatic picturesqueness to point the moral effectively. Not only the long-winded sentences, but the slow evolution of thought and the deliberation with which he works out his pictures of misery, make the general effect dull beside such books as 'Candide' or 'Gulliver's Travels.' A touch of epigrammatic exaggeration is very much needed; and yet anybody who has the courage ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... defence of this indefensible book. These articles have another disadvantage arising from the scurry in which they were written; they are too long-winded and elaborate. One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time. If I have to start for High-gate this day week, I may perhaps go the shortest way. If I have to start this minute, I shall almost certainly go the longest. ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... cannot make pretty compliments to fate and gravitation, whose minister he is.—This hard work will always be done by one kind of man; not by scheming speculators, nor by soldiers, nor professors, nor readers of Tennyson; but by men of endurance, deep-chested, long-winded, tough, slow ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... worked on a system; on finding a band, one man would do the running for six or eight miles, then another would relieve him, and so on, the idea being to get outside of them and so gradually round them in to the grazing herd. We had special horses kept and used for this purpose, fast and long-winded, as the pace had to be great and one must be utterly regardless of dog and badger holes, etc. This kind of work we kept up for a couple of weeks, some days being successful, some days getting a run but securing nothing. We made a satisfactory ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... prospect of a compromise with Jeffords about the tract in Dallas, and he is to meet Wharton and myself at your law-shop to-morrow. It is important to make an arrangement with Jeffords—his example will be felt by Brownsell and Gibbon. We may escape a long-winded lawsuit, after all, to your great discomfiture and my gain. But you do not ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... communities, to have someone with a strong voice who knows just what hymn to sing and when to sing it, who can pitch it in the right key, and who has all the leading lines committed to memory. Sometimes it devolves upon the leader to "sing down" a long-winded or uninteresting speaker. Committing to memory the leading lines of all the Negro spiritual songs is no easy task, for they run up into the hundreds. But the accomplished leader must know them all, ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... it matter if George Francis Train wanted space in the paper to publish his views and for a financial column, edited by David M. Melliss of the New York World? Brought up on the antislavery platform where free speech was the watchword and where all, even long-winded cranks, were allowed to express their opinions, Susan willingly opened the pages of The Revolution to Train and to Melliss in return for ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... and more uncomfortable. Mark's generosity began to shrink. It dwindled to less and less as the speech lengthened until when the plate did finally reach him, he stole ten cents from it. He adds that this simply proves how a little thing like a long-winded speech ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... to have been a contemporary of Tu Mu. Ch'ao Kung-wu says that he was impelled to write a new commentary on Sun Tzu because Ts'ao Kung's on the one hand was too obscure and subtle, and that of Tu Mu on the other too long-winded and diffuse. Ou-yang Hsiu, writing in the middle of the 11th century, calls Ts'ao Kung, Tu Mu and Ch'en Hao the three chief commentators on Sun Tzu, and observes that Ch'en Hao is continually attacking Tu Mu's shortcomings. His commentary, though not lacking in merit, ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... better time ye can please the lad with your long-winded yarns,—of marching on Panama with Henry Morgan when the mother's milk was scarce dry ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... asked me, with the sort of official kindness common to all her family, why I was not dancing. I can remember blushing hotly at the question, but at the same time feeling—for all my efforts to prevent it—a self-satisfied smile steal over my face as I began talking, in the most inflated and long-winded French, such rubbish as even now, after dozens of years, it shames me to recall. It must have been the effect of the music, which, while exciting my nervous sensibility, drowned (as I supposed) the less intelligible ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... Grace Abounding, The Saint's Rest, The Religious Affections, Jeremy Taylor, Law, a Kempis, Fenelon, or such like, and they will smile to one another and remark after you are gone on your strange taste for old-fashioned and long-winded and introspective books. "Julia has buried her husband and married her daughters, and since that she spends her time in reading. She is always reading foolish and unedifying books. She tells you every time she sees you that she is almost at the end of the silliest book that ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... Confutators employed their commission for the purpose of casting suspicion on the Lutherans and inciting the Emperor against them. They disregarded the imperial admonition for moderation, and instead of an objective answer to the Augustana, they produced a long-winded pasquinade against Luther and the Evangelical preachers, a fit companion piece to the 404 theses of Eck—a general accusation against the Protestants, a slanderous anthology of garbled quotations from Luther, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... see my bird," cried Oliver, who was amused by the sailor's long-winded narrative. "If it takes so much time to shoot one bird, how long would it ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... you find when you got there?" asked Elmer, who knew Landy to be long-winded, and that often the quickest way to learn facts from him was to ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... had been printed in small Quartos, possibly surreptitiously, in Shakespeare's lifetime, but the Folio does not reprint from these Quartos, but from enlarged, amended, and enormously improved copies. Messrs. Heminge and Condell, the editor of this priceless treasure, the First Folio, wrote a long-winded dedication to Lords Pembroke and Montgomery, which contains but one pertinent passage, in which they ask their readers to believe that it had been the office of the editors to collect and publish the author's 'mere writings,' he being dead, and to offer them, not 'maimed and ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... better training, rhetorical as well as logical, than the task of construing Thucydides into genuine English; but the flat, vague, long-winded Greek-English and Latin-English imposture that is often tolerated in our examinations and is allowed to pass current for genuine English, diminishes instead of increasing the power that our pupils ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... The Sanskrit word is madandha. Literally rendered, it would be "juice-blind". This can scarcely be intelligible to the general European reader. Hence the long-winded ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... best part of twenty minutes. For the attendant proceeded to tell her in a very roundabout way that her son had been run over and had come to the hospital with a broken leg. He dribbled the information; and was agonizingly long-winded and vague in answering ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... is characterised by dignity and sobriety, but it rarely rises to passion. He represents to a certain extent a reaction towards the pre-Rossinian school of opera, but, to be frank, most of 'La Juive' is exceedingly long-winded and dull. Besides his serious operas, Halevy wrote works of a lighter cast, which enjoyed popularity in their time. But the prince of opera comique at this time was Auber (1782-1871). Auber began his ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... though certainly long-winded, may be the manner in which a contemporary pastoralist would address a Goddess "in a coming on humour." But the situation does not occur in the prose of our existence, and I must prefer to translate the poet in a manner ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... ever I heard a madman,—let's away! Why, you long-winded—Sir, you go beyond me. I pride myself on being moderate. Good night! Go home. Besides, you curse so loud, The watch will hear you. ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... his Polish Massacre more highly flavoured. This is purely a personal matter. How can you suit the capricious likings of the million, and of the million—for that's the worst of it—the million that don't want you? What a practical rebuke, besides, to prosy talkers and the whole long-winded race, the sharp, short tap of the telegraph! Who would listen to a narrative of Federal finance when he has read 'Gold at 204—Chase rigged the market'? Who asks for strategical reasons in presence of 'Almighty whipping—lost eighty ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... in his most impatient tone, 'old people should not be so long-winded! Tell me what country I have got ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... playing in the garden. It was a rainy afternoon. A gray cloud of fog and soot hung from the whole sky. About a score of yellow leaves yet quivered on the trees, and the statue of Queen Anne stood bleak and disconsolate among the bare branches. I am afraid I am getting long-winded, but somehow that afternoon seems burned into me in enamel. I gazed drearily without interest. I brooded over the past; I never, at this time, so far as I remember, dreamed of looking forward. I had no hope. It never occurred to me that things might grow better. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... towards the old lawyer rather the same sort of patronizing attitude that he had had towards the old man. It would be a rotten dinner probably followed by a deadly dull evening with a snuffy old fossil who would tell him long-winded, rambling anecdotes of what New York had been like when there were wild ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... I can take steps which will effectually nullify the exertions you have been put to. Remember you said I was wealthy. I am tired of your stupid long-winded talk." ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... worth reading by those who have the time and the physical and mental strength, if only because they reveal a man thinking on wrong lines while he is doing on right ones; but they are terribly long-winded, and many weary pages are devoted to demonstrations of the obvious or the actually fallacious. Mr. W. Ashton Ellis has given many years of a valuable life to translating them into something which is not English and not German. For the ordinary music-lover I believe the above summary will be ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... admitted me to the privileges of his office upon working terms. So I am working now, for him and for myself, as diligently as I ever worked in my life — in a fair way to be a lawyer, Winnie. By day engrossing deeds and copying long-winded papers, about the quarrels and wrongs of Mr. A. and Mr. B. — and at night digging into parchment-covered books, a dryer and barrener soil than any near Wut-a-qut-o or on the old mountain itself, and which must nevertheless be digged into for certain dry and musty fruits of knowledge to be fetched ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Thus in long-winded meed of praise writes Master Samuel Purchas. Of those bold mariners of whom he speaks our worthy knight, Sir Martin, is one of the first and far from ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... had mistaken his powers. His argument was formal and long-winded. His uncouth style roused the ridicule of his hearers. His voice was weak, his breath short, his manner disconnected, his utterance confused. His pronunciation was stammering and ineffective, and in the end he withdrew from the court, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the briskest talkers, who had given tongue so bravely at the first burst, fell fast asleep; and none kept on their way but certain of those long-winded prosers, who, like short-legged hounds, worry on unnoticed at the bottom of conversation, but are sure to be in at the death. Even these at length subsided into silence; and scarcely any thing was ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... bright black eyes, running, panting, shouting, "Un sou! un sou! un sou!" I do not think I am quite in love with this as an institution, but it is very lively as a spectacle; and the little fleet-footed, long-winded beggars show a touching confidence in human nature. There is no servility in their beggary; and when it is glossed over with a thin mercantile veneering, by the brown little paws holding out to you a gorgeous bouquet ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... O'Donahue," said McShane, "if you are not yet tired of my company, I should like to hear what you have been doing since we parted: be quite as explicit, but not quite so long-winded, as myself; for I fear that ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... part of the hacker culture; it illustrates the hackish tendency to turn any situation, even one of extreme frustration, into an intellectual game (the point being, in this case, to creatively produce a long-winded description of the most anatomically absurd mental image possible — the short forms implicitly allude to all the ridiculous long forms ever spoken). Scatological language is actually relatively uncommon among hackers, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... long-winded, yet really beautiful old obituary notices; the simple news of battles and high deeds; the fiery, yet pedantic, political editorials. Oh, no one knows anything about Father Knickerbocker until he has read the same ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... drawing-room. Mrs Clay still had her eyes shut, and by her breathing Horatia guessed what was indeed the case—that she had fallen asleep; so Horatia gave a sigh, and resigned herself to listen to Nancy's long-winded tale in the hope of getting at the truth in time. 'Come and sit on this seat outside the front-door, it is so hot in the house; and, besides, I am afraid of some one coming and hearing you,' she said, leading her nurse to a bench outside ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... desultory and long-winded narrative of the Laird was interrupted by the voice of some one ascending the stairs from the kitchen story, and singing at full pitch of voice. The high notes were too shrill for a man, the low seemed too deep for a woman. The words, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... white, reads to Sir Leicester in the long evenings and is driven to various artifices to conceal her yawns, of which the chief and most efficacious is the insertion of the pearl necklace between her rosy lips. Long-winded treatises on the Buffy and Boodle question, showing how Buffy is immaculate and Boodle villainous, and how the country is lost by being all Boodle and no Buffy, or saved by being all Buffy and no Boodle (it must be one of the two, and cannot be anything else), ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... this first string, till the Child-bed woman begins to enter upon the relating what great pain in travell she had to fetch this Child out of the Parsly-bed, what a difference there was between her, and others of her acquaintance, &c. Thereout every one hath so much matter, as would make a long-winded sermon; and the conclusion generally is the relating how and when the good man crept to bed to her again; and how such a one had been a fortnight with Child, before she went to receive her churching. Where upon another comes with a full-mouth'd confession, that her husband ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... you are full of what is going on in your own minds, and you fail to see the effect you produce on theirs. In the continual flow of words with which you overwhelm them, do you think there is none which they get hold of in a wrong sense? Do you suppose they do not make their own comments on your long-winded explanations, that they do not find material for the construction of a system they can understand—one which they will use against you ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... much of a child's lightness of heart throughout his later years, alternating with attacks of morbid despondency. He is usually very susceptible to feminine charm, an ardent but unstable lover, whose passions are apt to be as shortlived as they are violent. Story-telling and long-winded discussions give him keen enjoyment, for he is garrulous, metaphysical, and argumentative. In money matters careless and extravagant, dilatory and venal in affairs; fond, especially in the peasant class, of singing, dancing, and ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... soft, kindergarten clay, and all a wife has to do is to sit down and mould him as she pleases. Well, some men may be like that, but Peter isn't. The family never really have forgiven me for calling their darling "Charles Edward" Peter. I perfectly loathe that long-winded Walter-Scotty name, and I don't care how many grandfathers it's descended from. I'm sorry, of course, if it hurts their feelings, but as long as I don't object to their calling him what THEY like, I don't see why they mind. And as for my managing Peter, they know perfectly well that, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... needn't let on to no one about it. That are row next the fence, I grafted it myself: I took great pains to get the right kind. I sent clean up to Roxberry and away down to Squawneck Creek.' I was afeard he was a-goin' to give me day and date for every graft, bein' a terrible long-winded man in his stories; so says I, 'I know that, minister, but how do you preserve them?' 'Why, I was a-goin' to tell you,' said he, 'when you stopped me. That are outward row I grafted myself with the choicest kind I could find, and I succeeded. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... up one of the papers, he read slowly several sentences from a description of a great fire, with some tolerably long-winded newspaper words in them. When he paused, and asked for the slate, there it all stood, perfectly spelt, well written, and with all the stops and capitals ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of his mental cow And made her give down her flow. The grief of that bard was long-winded, somehow— There was reams and reamses ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... my long-winded sacrifices to the god of reason distasteful? I believe I am involuntarily making them so because I am jealous of the fellow after all. Nevertheless I am serious; I want you to get married; though I shall always have a secret grudge against the man who marries ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... glided naturally into ease and pleasantness. Mrs. Gwynne had the gift of talking well—a rare quality among women, whose conversation mostly consists of disjointed chatter, long-winded repetitions, or a commonplace remark, and—silence. But Alison Gwynne had none of these feminine peculiarities. To listen to her was like reading a pleasant book. Her terse, well-chosen sentences had all the grace of easy chat, and ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... only use of old people like me is to see that the young 'uns don't get the proportions all wrong, too much love an' not enough work, or the other way round. Henry's very likely to get them all wrong, an' I want to see that he doesn't. Now, you understand me, don't you? I'm a long-winded man, an' it's hard to make out what I'm drivin' at, but that can't be helped. Everybody has a nature, an' I have mine, an' ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... youth's greatest fault was his lack of filial respect. Yet the father was certainly rather a difficult person to deal with, for, in the first place, he was extremely inquisitive, while, in the second place, his long-winded conversation and questions— questions of the most vapid and senseless order conceivable— always prevented the son from working. Likewise, the old man occasionally arrived there drunk. Gradually, however, the son was weaning his parent from his vicious ways and everlasting ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... gentleman a chance, I dipped into translations. Some of these old fellows were not as bad as I had imagined them. A party named Homer had written some really interesting stuff. Here and there, maybe, he was a bit long-winded, but, taking him as a whole, there was "go" in him. There was another of them—Ovid was his name. He could tell a story, Ovid could. He had imagination. He was almost as good as "Robinson Crusoe." I thought it would please my professor, telling ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... if Mrs. Arnold had divined her friend's thoughts. "Hubert," said she, rather excitedly, "I firmly believe, and will always believe, that if we had not taken matters in time that Phil Lawson, with his long-winded speeches, would have wrought a spell upon papa and so completely influenced him that he would have had Madge body and soul, for I am certain that she was fool enough ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... of Morfed was black as thunder, while that of the Norseman was shining with delight in some long-winded story he was telling. The white-robed servants were clearing the tables at this moment, and the prince's bard, a fine old harper with golden collar and chain, was tuning his little gilded harp as if the time for song ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... therefore in a mere fraction of whatever represented the extremely small edition of the work), may be sought the "Prefatory Explication, made for the Benefit of My Friends, Male and Female." In recounting the origin of the manual, its author is candid, but at the same time too long-winded for quoting entire. Enough to say, as the substitute for a lengthy tale of facts, that prior to the year 1731 the author of "The Square of Sevens," Mr. Robert Antrobus, "a Gentleman of Bath," was called in the month of November to ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... presentments, it is impossible to resist Sir Roger (young, slim, and handsome), carving the perverse widow's name upon a tree-trunk; or Sir Roger at bowls, or riding to hounds, or listening—with grave courtesy—to Will Wimble's long-winded and circumstantial account of the taking of the historic jack. Nor is the conception less happy of that amorous fine-gentleman ancestor of the Coverleys who first made love by squeezing the hand; or of that other Knight of the Shire who so ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... singularly finished, and (if I may so express it) clean cut; never long-winded or prosy; enlivened by vivid illustrations. He was an excellent raconteur, and his stories had a stamp of their own which would have made them always and everywhere acceptable. His sense of humour and economy of words would have made it impossible, had he lived ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... similar to that of their sisters of Virginia, says, "All complimental courtships drest up in critical rarities are meer strangers to them. Plain wit comes nearest to their genius; so that he that intends to court a Maryland girle, must have something more than the tautologies of a long-winded speech to carry on his design, or else he may fall under the contempt of her frown and ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... am not going to enter into a long-winded discussion of these points at this time, since the testimony is going to show very rapidly what the facts are. We have a number of witnesses here, and we are all anxious to have them heard. What I am going to ask you to remember is that there ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... down," the old fellow replied. "Nobody hurt, it seems, but the banks on both sides is so steep that they cayn't cleer the road. We'll have to take our time. I'd jest about as soon set heer in my wagon as to listen to them long-winded preachers, anyway." ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... I won't be long-winded about what happened next. I can go into details when we meet. It turned out that I had a leg, an arm, and some ribs smashed. The Bosch surgeon wasn't half bad, as Bosches go, but he was a bit brusque. I heard him say right out to the anaesthetist, it seemed a pity to waste good ether on me, as ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "You're very long-winded, Thomas," pronounced Roger, patting his friend on the shoulder, "but we get your idea. I second the motion, Madam President. We'll give ten cent presents to our relatives and friends and put all the rest of our stupendous fortunes ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... example of the direct influence of Casimire upon English poetry is presented by Edward Benlowes's Theophila (1652). This long-winded epic of the soul exhibits not only a general indebtedness in imagery and ideas, but also direct borrowings of whole lines from Hils's Odes of Casimire. One example ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... fate to be sealed by the outcome of deadly combat between the contending factions. Armed to the teeth, the cavaliers of the respective parties march to and fro, haranguing each other in monotonous tones. After a long-winded, wearisome challenge, they brandish their weapons and meet in a series of single combats which merge in a general melee as the princes are vanquished and the hand of the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... this place that he replied to the archbishop of Paris by an apology, a long-winded work in which he repels, one after another, the imputations of his accuser, and sets forth anew with greater urgency his philosophical and religious principles. This work, written on a rather confused plan but with impassioned eloquence, manifests a lofty and sincere spirit. It ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... recapitulations peculiar to the simple, but by no means short annals of the poor, and especially of the English poor. Yet, Christian, the impatient, the ardent, stood and listened with respectful and absorbed interest. Cottingham might be elderly, egotistic, long-winded, but at this period of her career, Christian's hot heart beat throb for throb with his, and the thought, as he said, of "that pore little bitch stoppin' out, and maybe spoilt, so that there'd be nothin' for us but to shoot her, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... no difficulty in discovering the centre of interest in the basement. Sir Benjamin was expansive and reserved, bewildered and decisive, long-winded and short-tempered, each in turn and more or less all at once. He had already demanded the attention of the manager, Professor Bulge, Draycott and two underlings to his case and they were now involved in a babel of inutile reiteration. ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... theatre, and the performance, and the recollection of it afterwards; but you have not told us how you will enjoy the thoughts of it on your death-bed." Of course the "fine lady" was converted on the spot, as they always are in tracts; and the good old fellow brought his long-winded narrative of experiences to an end by-and-by, the pastor having omitted to pull his coat-tails, as he promised to do if any speaker exceeded the allotted time. "The people were certainly very attentive to hear him," and ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... that it is ably done," continued his majesty, still attentively observing him. "You will acknowledge that it is exceedingly difficult to render the concise style of Tacitus into the prolix, long-winded German?" ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... of the Bithynians, replied to me at great length, but he made very few points. Like most of the Greeks, he mistakes volubility for fulness of treatment, and they pour forth in a single breath a perfect torrent of long-winded and frigid periods. Julius Candidus rather wittily says apropos of this that eloquence is one thing and loquacity another. For there have been only one or two people who can be described as eloquent—not one ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... remember all the oral explanations. Only a few weeks after each of these audiences the suitors are individually notified of the result. The emperor's sense of etiquette does not allow him to give any sign of impatience during the interview, though some of the visitors are as long-winded and importunate as Mark Twain pretends to have been at one of President Grant's receptions. The emperor answers the German, Hungarian, Tzech, Croat or Italian each in the suitor's own tongue. It is quite possible that in the preliminary registry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... a waste of energy to criticize disembodied spirits who do no worse than "revisit the pale glimpses of the moon." I have never heard of a ghost robbing other than its own grave. They are not addicted to despoiling widows and orphans, then putting up long-winded prayers. They do not sing "Jesus lover of my soul" on Sunday, then sell that same soul to the devil for six-bits on Monday. No ghost, so far as I know, was ever accused of lying about his neighbor, fracturing the Seventh Commandment or beating his butcher-bills. They appear to be quite ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... outside, and in comes the golden Papa, the mighty merchant with the naked head and the two chins.—Ha! my good dears, I am closer than you think for to the business, now. Have you been patient so far? or have you said to yourselves, 'Deuce-what-the-deuce! Pesca is long-winded to-night?'" ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... work in hand even after a private admonition, it will be far better to drop them from the organization, for they are bound to do more harm than good if they are retained. On the other hand, you will recognize the temptation to whisper which the performer feels while you are giving a long-winded explanation of some pet theory of yours, and you will accordingly cut down the amount of talking you do to the minimum. A good rule to follow is this: "Talk little at the rehearsal, but when you do talk, be sure that every one listens." Keep ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... England holds stronger reminders of the past, or has a more intensely New England atmosphere than Andover, wherein the same decorous and long-winded discussions of fate, fore-knowledge and all things past and to come, still goes on, as steadily as if the Puritan debaters had merely transmigrated, not passed over, to a land which even the most resigned and submissive soul would never have wished to think of as a "Silent Land." All that Cambridge ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... House.' The assembly ordered it to be printed, and three days after proceeded to discuss it. As the proposed fundamental law and detailed regulations were extremely simple, the debate was not very long-winded; and, on the 2nd of October, the laws and regulations were declared to be unanimously approved, and the new ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... revenge out on Hawthorn. She would lean forward an' hold his eye, an' say, in the sweetest voice you ever heard, "Oh. Mr. Hawthorn, I want to tell you somethin' that happened at school;" an' then she would start in an' tell some long-winded tale 'at didn't have no more point than a mush room, an' as she told along she would call his attention to certain details as though they was goin' to figger in at the wind-up. When she would reach the end she would break out in a peal o' spontunious laughter; while he would ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... above translation of Varchi's peroration I have endeavoured to sustain those long-winded periods of which he was so perfect and professed a master. We must remember that he actually read this dissertation before the Florentine Academy on the second Sunday in Lent, in the year 1546, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... rubbed his forehead in the gentle stimulating way which he always employed when he wished to convince himself that he had heard aright and to assure some sophomorical young lawyer that he had not been asleep at all, but had caught every word of his long-winded statement of the case. The judge's ideas came back to him with their usual easy flow, and before the next sentence was enunciated he had made a mental summing-up of the case and given ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... on the Duke of Doncaster! Come, come, Mr. Deuceace, don't you be running your rigs upon me; I ain't the man to be bamboozl'd by long-winded stories about dukes and duchesses. You think I don't know you; every man knows you and your line of country. Yes, you're after young Dawkins there, and think to pluck him; but you shan't,—no, by —— you shan't." (The reader must recklect that the oaths which interspussed Mr. B.'s convysation I ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... collective dismissals, the pell-mell of improvised appointments, and the sudden renewal of an entire set of officials, threw into the administration, willingly or not, a lot of pretended Jacobins who, at heart, are Girondists or Feuillantists, but who, having been excessively long-winded, are assigned offices on account of their stump-speeches, and who thenceforth sit alongside of the worst Jacobins, in the worst employment. "Members of the Feurs Revolutionary Committee—those who make that objection to me," wrote a lawyer in Clermont,[3366] "are persuaded that those only ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... generals; you hear statesmen and orators speaking in their familiar tones. You are mixed up with office-seekers, wire-pullers, inventors, artists, poets, prosers, (including editors, army-correspondents, attaches of foreign journals, and long-winded talkers,) clerks, diplomatists, mail-contractors, railway-directors, until your own identity is lost among them. Occasionally you talk with a man whom you have never before heard of, and are struck ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... always in mind when we turn, say, from the purblind worshippers of Scott to Scott himself, and recognize that he often wrote a style cumbrous and diffuse; that he was tediously analytical where the modern novelist is dramatic, and evolved his characters by means of long-winded explanation and commentary; that, except in the case of his lower-class personages, he made them talk as seldom man and never woman talked; that he was tiresomely descriptive; that on the simplest occasions he went ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... too long-winded Letter, full of compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we know well already: that however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science originating in the Head (Verstand) alone, no ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Thopas" was a playful jest on the long-winded story-telling of the old romances, and had specially in mind Thomas Chestre's version of Launfal from Marie of France, and the same rhymer's romance of "Ly Beaus Disconus," who was Gingelein, a son of Gawain, called by his mother, for his beauty, only Beaufis (handsome son); ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... churches, (by the way, why do Puseyites object to pews?) and by the erection of a hydrant near the conductor's seat, so that when the audience can endure STOEPEL'S music no longer, they can turn on the water and drown him and his long-winded orchestra. This latter improvement meets with our hearty approval, and we earnestly hope to see it put to the excellent use for which it is designed without further delay. Manager DALY is now offering to his patrons ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... monotony of the proceedings, the sameness of the speeches, sometimes marked with great ability, and generally delivered with much eloquence and fervour, at the short annual sessions. The proceedings were usually controlled by a small caucus who drew up long-winded resolutions, often embodying half a score of resolutions carried in previous sessions. Some one delivered a soul-stirring oration, and then the "omnibus" resolution, which was not even always read out, was put to the vote and passed ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... no humour to listen to the long-winded reminiscences of the "star," so he cut him short at once. He ascertained that the "ingrates" were in New York, on their "uppers," and that they could not accomplish the trip to Crowndale unless railroad tickets were provided. The difficulty ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... when 'his reverence' would be tired with delivering a long-winded mid-day discourse, Mrs. Condiment, sir, would take him into her own tent—make him lie down on her own sacred cot, and set my niece to bathing his head with cologne and her maid to fanning him, while she herself prepared an iced sherry cobbler ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... mock sermon or parody of the chapter read. When, however, the reader, having finished the chapter, placidly commenced another, and having finished that rippled on into another one, the revellers came to the conclusion that the joke was somewhat too long-winded. The commencement of yet another chapter confirmed this opinion, and an angry chorus of shouts and cries, with suggestions as to gagging the reader or knocking him off the barrel, rose from every side. In spite of roars and hoots, however, Elias ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fugere" is "to scower off in a mighty bustle;" "confundor" is "to be jumbled;" and "squalidus" is "in a sorry pickle." "Importuna" is "a plaguy baggage;" "adulterium" is rendered "her pranks;" "ambages" becomes either "a long rabble of words," "a long-winded detail," or "a tale of a tub;" "miserabile carmen" is "a dismal ditty;" "increpare hos" is "to rattle these blades;" "penetralia" means "the parlour;" while "accingere," more literally than elegantly, is translated ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... with our own souls. And now that our card-house of high finance has gone to smash, I realize more than ever that I've got to be at peace with my own soul and on speaking terms with my own husband. And if this strikes you as an exceptionally long-winded sermon, my beloved, it's merely to make plain to you that I haven't surrendered to any sudden wave of emotionalism when I talk about migrating over to that Harris Ranch. It's nothing more than good old hard-headed, practical ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... sometimes sparkling with wit and imagination, but often dirty and ridiculous. Saint-Amant possessed plenty of imagination and capacity for exquisite poetical feeling, but he lacked taste and too often was puerile. Wiser than they, yet themselves verbose, long-winded, slow, and spun out, Desportes translated into French verse Italian poetry of the sixteenth century, often with very happy turns of expression, and Bertaut, melancholy and graceful, lacked brilliance even if ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... Candles—a Myth." Would to heaven his invention of juries was a myth, too. Scotland Yard would get on much better without them. "A Lamp-clock was another Simple and Ingenious Design." How intolerably long-winded the writer was. What had he to say about hood clocks? "Very few of the Early Clocks had Dials. The Device was generally a Mechanical Figure which struck the Hour on a Bell." Evidently the forerunner ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... solemn consultations with the nurse every morning before he betook himself to the office, and to watch the lively, almost child-like interest with which, on returning in the evening, he listened to her long-winded report of the baby's wonderful doings during the day. On Sundays, when he always spent the whole afternoon at home, I often surprised him in the most undignified attitudes, creeping about on the floor with the little ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... gets killed—and not any too soon. If it only were practicable to kill him in real life! A story—to be called The Passing of Polonius—in which a king issues a decree condemning to death every long-winded, didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of rank, and is himself instantly arrested and decapitated. The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... me as a crude and pushing person, disposed to meddle in the affairs of others, here is where that reader will have his satisfaction and revenge. For if ever a troublesome puppet was jerked suddenly off the stage—if ever a long-winded orator was effectively snuffed out—I was that puppet and that orator. I stop and think—shall I describe how I paced up and down the pier, respectfully but emphatically watched by the secretary? And all the melodramatic plots I conceived, the muffled oars and the midnight visits to my Sylvia? ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... a personal character. He was delighted to be there, notwithstanding the strange silence to which he was condemned, when Dickinson, the bailiff, came in to make his report and to receive his orders. Geoff took the greatest interest in Dickinson's long-winded stories about what was wanted in the village, the cottages that were tumbling to pieces, the things that must be done for the farmers. Lady Markland was at first greatly amused and delighted to see how her boy entered into everything, and even ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the reason for all these long-winded preliminaries. Sancho wanted his master to make definite arrangements with him for compensation. But here was the drawback. Don Quixote could recall no incident in any of the many books he had read, when a knight errant had given his squire fixed wages. How could he possibly establish a precedent ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... dignity which no amount of regal state could abash. There was very little time. The Queen heard what Columbus had to say, cutting him short, it is likely, with kindly tact, and suppressing his tendency to launch out into long-winded speeches. What she saw she liked; and, being too busy to give to this proposal the attention that it obviously merited, she told Columbus that the matter would be fully gone into and that in the meantime he must regard himself as the guest of the Court. And so, in the ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young |
