"Bosh" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... giving artistic coherence to a story that you have conceived roughly for yourself. A literary gentleman once hoisted a theory that there are only thirty-six possible stories in the world. This—I say it with no deference at all—is bosh. There are as many possible stories in the world as there are microbes in the well-lined shelves of a literary gentleman's "den." On the other hand, it is perfectly true that only a baker's dozen of these have got themselves ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... bother this sanit'ry bosh! Always piping the same dull old strains, One would think there wos nothink in life to be done but go sniffing the Drains! Wich my nose is a dalicot one, and I don't like the job, not by lumps; And I won't ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... this bosh and abracadabra, all right for him. Only I have no more regard for his little crowings on his own little dunghill. Myself, I am not so sure that I am one of the one-and-onlies. I like the wide world ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... some people are in a great state of mind lest some blessed Bill brought in by the Government, should "destroy Voluntary Schools." What howling bosh! Why, there are no Voluntary Schools! No, they're all Compulsory, confound 'em! or who'd ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... about killing? I would kill HIM if he was here; but not her. When you want to get revenge on a woman you don't kill her—bosh! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils—you notch her ears like ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cricket, and, when the men came in afterwards, he crossed over to us, and Jane introduced him to me when he had talked a little. He is quite a sort of gentleman, and is very much at home with every one. He laughed at everything I said. Mrs. Smith (such bosh putting "de Yorburgh" on!) sat on a big sofa with Lord Valmond, and she opened and shut her eyes at him, and Jane Roose says she takes every one's friend away; and Lord George Lane came up, and we talked, and he wasn't such an idiot as at dinner, and he has nice teeth. All the ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... and LINCOLN; and OSCEOLA the Savage; and POCAHONTAS, and all the rest. Leave them alone; and, taking fresh subjects, dip your brushes in brains, as old OPIE or somebody else said, and go to work with a will. No fresh subjects to be had, you say? Bosh! absurd interlocutor that you are. Here's a bundle of 'em ready cut to hand. We charge you no money for them, and you may take ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... him. And the man of the London slum is a very natural beast who expresses himself in a very natural manner. He has never heard of Hero and Leander, and the comparison of the missus' eyes to the stars would to him be arrant bosh. The gentle, tender, considerate male is an artificial product. And so is the romantic lover, who is fashioned by the love traditions which come down to him and by the erotic literature ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... any pupils in Latin and mathematics?' and she said, 'No, it's for girls, you know. Dr. M. hopes we shall have some mathematics next year.' 'And,' I asked, 'some Latin?' 'Yes, Dr. M. hopes we shall have some Latin; but I confess I believe Latin and mathematics all bosh; give them modern languages and accomplishments. I suppose your ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... "Bosh! what do you expect me to find there but the marks of your dirty paws while plucking him, I'm too devilish hungry for such nonsense, Nutcrackers; but show me the Injin that would venture to touch his legs now. If I wouldn't mark him, then my name's ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... "Bosh! If you were not a crazy fool, you would understand what an excellent husband he would make for you! Even though Grzesikiewicz is a peasant he's worth more to you than a prince, for he wants you . . . and he wants you because he's a fool. He could afford to take his pick of the best. . . . You ought ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... she. "French! Bosh! Perhaps you haven't asked her about Auberge-sur-Mer, where she says ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... subjects, disgusted by the revelation's contemptible contents, outraged by the fraud, and prejudiced beforehand against all "spirits," high or low, avert their minds from what they call such "rot" or "bosh" entirely. Thus do two opposite sentimentalisms divide opinion between them! A good expression of the "scientific" state of mind occurs ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... "Bosh!" cried Bob, who did not believe much in sentiment, 'flummery' he termed it. "Much more likely he's an old cart-horse, and is as well accustomed to the row of the railroad as he is to the plough, and that's the reason he took ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... swift upstarting; "Sweating's an accursed system, but if now our toil is o'er, We leave twaddle as sole token of the swelling words we've spoken. Public faith in us is broken! Bah! I quit, I "bust", boil o'er! Take my seat, sign your Report, about such bosh my spirit bore?" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... for he says that women have greater delicacy of touch and facility of manipulation than men, and that their hands are less awkward and their fingers more lissom than those of the sterner sex. In poetry, my minstrel, yes; in reality, bosh. Where are your women conjurors? You say that their brain is not strong enough to second their manual advantage, but that they can "knock off" a pretty water-colour or oil study of flowers, or a graphic caricature! Caricature, indeed! Perhaps no one ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... "Bosh! She's shamming. She's afraid to show her wicked, plotting face. She's lying there to concoct some new villainy. I won't spare her—she didn't spare you. I'll send her packing, bag and ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Progressimus, you may have the theory, while Civilizationica reads the essay. Then change about. Ponder them well, and while we walk to the Museum later, tell me their errors. Then I will show you the preserved ears of the first man found in Boshland by P. T. Barnum, jr.' Oh, bosh," said Mae suddenly, letting fly her streamers, "what a dry set of locusts you nineteenth century leaders are. You are devouring our green land, and some of us butterflies would like to turn our yellow ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... "Bosh!" said Rodney, again. "The niggers know who their friends are, and I'll bet you there are not a hundred in the South today who would go over to the Yankees if they ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... "Oh bosh, you are thinking of what Captain Hazzard said about the Jap secret service. Our friend Oyama is much too thick to be ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Borah's voice brings promise of relief; but no! for what interest can there be in the Borah if you have no Dirzee? In the spirit of fair play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is "rank bosh." She declares that the Dirzee is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... "Bosh!" said Schuyler, "Don't you know me better? That girl puzzles me. There's something very odd about her. I'm conceited enough to think I can generally size people up pretty well at first sight, but she beats me. I can't ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... shabby still. My advice is, that you behave like a man of spirit, and swallow your apprehensions. I trust that you are not going to make a fool of yourself by any apology or retraction in any quarter. As for its having seemed holy and just to do what you did, that is mere bosh. A lie is a lie, and as such is often excusable. As anything else,—as a thing beautiful, holy, or just,—it's quite inexcusable. Yours was a lie to you, and a lie to me. It serves me, and I accept it. I suppose you understand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... gloves, and on her beautifully manicured hands she wore no rings except a magnificent ruby on the left little finger. It was her caprice to refuse an alliance. "Wedding rings!" she had said to Stanislass. "Bosh! they spoil the look. Sometimes it is chic to have a good jewel on one finger, sometimes on another, but to be tied down to that band ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... things 'on principle,' as I have found many idiots prone to be, and what is more, some of them not ashamed to boast of the insane fact. I view all reported 'hauntings' as unproven until I have examined into them, and I am bound to admit that ninety-nine cases in a hundred turn out to be sheer bosh and fancy. But the hundredth! Well, if it were not for the hundredth, I should have few ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... had given him that reason, and yet she refused him as coolly as she would have declined a second plate of soup. There must be some truth, after all, in the rant of the poets about the heartlessness and fickleness of women, although he had always been used to consider it the merest bosh. Suddenly he heard the train moving. He was perhaps fifty yards off, and, grumbling anathemas at the stupidity of the conductor, started to run for the last car. He was not quite desperate enough to fancy being left ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... "Oh, bosh!" Jules Keaveney, the Skilk Resident-Agent, at the head of the table, exclaimed. "You soldiers are all alike—begging your pardon, General von Schlichten," he nodded in the direction of the guest of honor. "If they don't bow and scrape to you and get off the sidewalk to let you pass, ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... translation after translation, and proved—proved beyond doubting—that each translator had failed in this or in that; this or that being alike essential. Then, having worked out his sum, he sat down and translated a bit or two of Homer to encourage us, and the result was mere bosh." ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... only the nose! The person becomes all diseased: his bones, sinews, brains grow diseased... Some doctors say such nonsense as that it's possible to be cured of this disease. Bosh! You'll never cure yourself! A person rots ten, twenty, thirty years. Every second paralysis can strike him down, so that the right side of the face, the right arm, the right leg die—it isn't a human being that's living, but some sort of a little half. Half-man-half-corpse. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... have come to learn that Dornroeschen (thorn-rose) and Schneewittchen (snow-white) were meant originally for the sleep or death of nature in her snow-white shroud, and the return of the sun; but woe to the boy who on first learning these stories should have declared that they were mere bosh, or, as Sir Walter Scott says, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... heart,— This suffers from the patent vice Of being not Art but Artifice. 'Tis deeply with the fault imbued Of Inverisimilitude: He's written out; his skill's forgot: He only writes to Boil the Pot! It is not true; it will not wash; 'Tis mere imaginative Bosh; And if he can't" (they told him flat) "Get nearer to the Life than that, He will ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... "Bosh! That view is as extinct as the post-chaise and the packet-ship—it belongs to the time when people read books. Nobody does that now; the reviewer was the first to set the example, and the public were only too thankful to follow it. At first they read the reviews; now they read ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... "You have no doubt heard, as we all have down here, the stories of fear of an earthquake shock. As I said, I think they're all bosh. But of late there have been persistent rumors that a more serious menace is at hand. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... him, at the absurdity of their conversation; of which, although they had spoken in earnest, they were both somewhat conscious. "But I say, old fellow, without any more humbug about love and such like bosh, just look at the dear old craft! how beautifully she sits on the water— what a graceful sheer she has—and how well her sixteen guns look run out, like dogs from their kennels, all ready to bite. You should see her under weigh though, and how beautiful ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... was out, - and what he'd take for his cap without the tassel; and telling him that he was the joy of your heart, - and that you should never be happy unless he'd smile as he was won't to smile, and would love you then as now, - and saying all sorts of bosh? What, not remember it! 'Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!' as some cove says in Shakespeare. But how screwed you must ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... flush and your eye sparkle, till "heart, brain, and soul are all on fire," over the burning words of some Brontean Pythoness, but when you open the last thrilling work of Maggie Marigold, and are immediately submerged "in a weak, washy, everlasting flood" of insipidity, twaddle, bosh, and heart-rending sorrow, you do not shut the book with a jerk. Why not? Because in the dismal distance you dimly descry two figures swimming, floating, struggling towards each other, and a languid soupcon of curiosity detains you till ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "Pooh! that is high-flown bosh. You need not say what you do or do not believe. All you have to do is to throw the onus of proof ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... "All bosh. At your age men cling to the ideal, and resolutely close their eyes to the true and rational. I was guilty ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... simple; no, I cannot Believe there are such fools. Highwaymen, bosh! He sent her here, and all that contradicts it Is simply lies. I little thought that she would come tonight, But gold draws all this out of nothingness. I'll keep her if she pleases me: her husband Shall never see her face again. With fetters Of linked gold I'll deck her pretty ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... about this matter. We haven't time. If you will just trust things to me, I'll attend to them all, and I'll answer your questions when we get safely on the train. Every instant is precious. Those men might come around that corner ever there any minute. That's all bosh about respect. I respect you more than any woman I ever met. And it's my business to take care ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... "Bosh and tommyrot!" Buckton fairly glowed. "Never, never, when the case is like ours. We are simply doing our duty to ourselves. Love you? Why, I adore you! You have saved my life, darling. I would have killed myself. I've been on the very brink ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... parties—stalked the places for hours and days, tried to convince the natives that it is all bosh. But they insist it's all true, and stay away—and loss of man power means loss of money they both need this year. Both of them think the stories are just the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... "Bosh!" he interrupted. "If Laban is an honest man, no harm has been done. If he stole our steers—and, mind you, I don't say he did—three slices off the breast of a turkey will hardly offset my interest in five tons of beef. As for this packing scheme, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... "Bosh!" cried Hawkins angrily. "Conscientiously? A lot you think of conscience when there is an item to ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... all right. We can stand it if the Revenoo can. On the same principle young men should continer to get drunk on French brandy and to smoke their livers as dry as a corn-cob with Cuby cigars because 4-sooth if they don't, it will hurt the Revenoo! This talk 'bout the Revenoo is of the bosh boshy. One thing is tol'bly certin—if we don't send gold out of the country we shall have the consolation of knowing that it is in the country. So I say great credit is doo the wimin for this patriotic move—and to tell the trooth, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... he told her easily, a smile in his shrewd eyes. "You're a young woman—and I'm an ineligible man. So Lady Farquhar thinks we oughtn't to meet. That's all bosh. I'm not intending to make love to you, even though I think you're a mighty nice girl. But say I was. What then? Your friends can't shut you up in a glass cage if you're going to keep on growing. Life was made ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... "Bosh! I told you all along," said Anderson heavily, "that there's no mineral in the Gavilan. I've been over every foot of it—and I'm a miner. We get no news because no man makes haste to announce his folly. ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... "No. It was to see Noel. Odd how we both put him first, isn't it? The young cub sent me a message that brought me down post-haste, expecting to find him in a state of collapse. Instead of which I found him gaily awaiting me at the station to tell me he had run himself out—or some bosh of the kind—and it was now my innings, and I was to go in and win. On my soul, Olga, he was enjoying himself ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... pickpocket. He says that every time he leaves me in charge of the paper for half an hour I get imposed upon by the first infant or the first idiot that comes along. And he says that that distressing item of Mr. Bloke's is nothing but a lot of distressing bosh, and has no point to it, and no sense in it, and no information in it, and that there was no sort of necessity for stopping the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... for it. I must go on chasing them, until I marry, then I am done with literature and all other bosh—that is, literature wherewith ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... speak gently. To cut bene whiddes; to give good words. To cut queer whiddes; to give foul language. To cut a bosh, or a flash; to make ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... him to Italy in male attire, saves him from the wicked courtesan Oriana and her bravo Fiorenza (sic), is married by him, but made miserable, and dies. He continues his misbehaviour to their children, and finally blows his brains out. "Bah! it is bosh!" as the Master observes of ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... said Captain Rik firmly. "They talk a deal of stuff about it, more than nine-tenths of which is lies—pure fable. I don't believe in electricity; more than that, I don't believe in steam. Batteries and boilers are both bosh!" ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... it masterfully. "For you there is no bigger thing than family. You have a strange idea. Where did you get it? Is this sort of thing being taught in college to-day? I suppose you have some notion of asserting your individuality. Bosh! Men in your position, born as you have been born, have no right to individuality. Your individuality must express the individuality of your family as mine has done, and as my father's and HIS father's ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... dinners, at which one communicates only by wireless, are a good deal done and are quite nice and restful, the general atmosphere (if someone tainted with banalism seems inclined to speak) being, "I know what you're going to say. Please—please—please don't say it!" On a little dinner of this kind at Bosh and Wee-Wee's last week there descended a terrible man, a far-away cousin of Wee-Wee's, who hardly ever leaves his terres in some remote part of the country—the sort of creature, you know, dearest, who always has a colour and a smile and an appetite and who ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... rules—they will have rulers. Preferring personal government, with its tact and flexibility, is called Royalism. Preferring impersonal government, with its dogmas and definitions, is called Republicanism. Objecting broadmindedly both to kings and creeds is called Bosh; at least, I know no more philosophic word for it. You can be guided by the shrewdness or presence of mind of one ruler, or by the equality and ascertained justice of one rule; but you must have one or the other, or you are not a nation, but a nasty mess. Now men in their ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... doing so we can fortify ourselves with another maxim, that "Principle is not limited by Precedent." When we spread the wings of thought and speculate as to future possibilities, our conventionally-minded friends may say we are talking bosh; but if you ask them why they say so, they can only reply that the past experience of the whole human race is against you. They do not speak like this in the matter of flying-machines or carriages that go without horses; they say ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... so I hear," said the other, with a mixture of pique and satisfaction. "Won't look at him, Clar tells me; got her eye on some one else, little fool! She'll never have such a chance again. As for having no designs, that's bosh, you know; all women have designs. I'm a deal easier in my mind when I'm told she's got ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... great embassy cometh, and the princes inquire of the blockade, lo, our messengers shall laugh and say, "Go to!—it is naught, it hath passed away, and is bosh."' ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... you've been thinking things over, I know. I was there. I heard it all, peace on earth, goodwill to men. Bosh. Peace, when there is no peace. Good will! I don't want ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "Bosh!" said Laurence, sturdily. "She ought to be glad and proud to get that tray, and I'll bet you Mary Virginia's delighted with it. She's her father's daughter as well as her mother's, please. As for Appleboro not being good enough for her, ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... "Bosh!" said Coggins. "I tell you we won't see another sub on the whole trip. Do you know the percentage of boats that see ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... "I said 'bosh,'" repeated the judge, bringing the point of his cane against the floor. "You've muddied it, as every sensible man can see. Best thing is to put a bold face on it. Take it for granted that the committee has promised to surrender all right of action, and that they have promised definitely to leave ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... "Bosh. Travellers don't read the names over the doors, when they go into pubs. You're an entire stranger to him. Call him 'Boss'. Say 'Good-day, Boss,' when you go in, and swing down your swag as if you're used to it. Ease it down like this. Then straighten yourself up, stick ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... why. If I saw something that does not exist, or rather exists only for me, logic would interfere. However objective my vision may be, before believing in the materiality of a hallucination, I feel I am bound to doubt my own senses and sanity.... Besides, what bosh all this is! As if I ever will allow myself to believe in the reality of a thing that I alone saw; which belief implies also the admission of somebody else governing and dominating, for the time being, my optical nerves, as ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... over, and there under the inscription, "H. Supposed photo of the missing woman," was written in a bold hand, "Bosh! Read my description of the girl; this is evidently some ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... "Bosh!" She was angry. "And what will be your attitude toward me if you do succeed in preventing the marriage? Will you take me back as I was before this thing came up? Will you make me your wife, just as if nothing had happened? In view of my deliberate ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... live in it!"—There is surely something strange in that, don't you think so? Then when father died last year we had to find a cheap and quiet place to live, and I remembered the Yellow House in Beulah and told mother my idea. She does not say "Bosh!" like some mothers, but if our ideas sound like anything she tries them; so she sent Gilbert to see if the house was still vacant, and when we found it was, we took it. The rent is sixty dollars a year, as I suppose Bill Harmon told you when he sent you mother's check ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Third Drop—"Bosh and nonsense. There is no ocean. It is all superstition. Before we were born here, from the mist, what were we? When we evaporate in a few minutes what becomes of us? You two drops make me feel sorry for you. I know that when I cease reflecting that white ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... may have drowned herself. That is credible enough. But that the girl we read about in the papers and whom she evidently induced to come to this place with her should be the dead girl we called Anitra—why, that is all bosh—a tale to deceive the public, and possibly you, but not one to deceive me. The coincidence is much ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... clever—too clever, altogether, I think. If I could forget for one moment, in the middle of all the nonsense, that I was to die on Thursday three weeks! die on Thursday three weeks! die on Thursday! That's the way the time runs in my ears like a chime of bells. But it's all mere bosh I've been reading these long six months I've been chained up here—after I was committed for trial. When I came out of the hospital after curing me of that wound—for I was hit bad by that black tracker—they gave me some books ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... "Oh, bosh," I replied. "What's the good of talking stuff like that? Of course you will come again, and I am coming to see you, if I may. How long have ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... 'That's all bosh,' said Josephine. 'I like people that are jolly. The German is real jolly. Last week we danced it with candles—it ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... "Early training, bosh," answered the minister, losing his patience as even ministers will sometimes do. "You'd better say his lack of early training. I tell you, Fanny, the true gentleman, whether he be Christian or not, values character more than position, while the sham aristocrat is a sham in ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... a man's life hangs on sometimes—a single word! Here you are, sitting unsuspicious before me, and you may let out something unbeknown to you that would settle your hash. Not that I have any ill-feeling. I have no feelings. If the skipper had said, 'O, bosh!' and had turned his back on me, he would not have gone three steps towards his bed; but he stood there and stared. And now the job was to get him off the deck when he was no ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... us ALL out, for you manage to keep Nanda from showing even more than you do me. Don't you think your children good ENOUGH, mummy dear? At any rate it's as plain as possible that if you don't keep us at home you must keep us in other places. One can't live anywhere for nothing—it's all bosh that a fellow saves by staying with people. I don't know how it is for a lady, but a man's ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... "Bosh! there are plenty of Nastasia Philipovnas. And what an impertinent beast you are!" he added angrily. "I thought some creature like you would hang on to me as soon as I got hold of ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "Rot and bosh! That's what they told us when we were kids. But there is one thing they didn't tell us then. They let us find it out for ourselves afterwards." Olney paused for effect, then added, "And what they didn't tell us was that every gentleman should have studied ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... yours truly, Miss EMMY; but that's only jest by the way, 'ARRY ain't one to brag of bong four tunes; but wot I wos wanting to say Is about this here "spiling the River" which snarlers set down to our sort. Bosh! CHARLIE, extreme Tommy rot! It's these sniffers as want ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... dreadfully; but I tuck my things under me, and pretend I don't mind. They work out again though, particularly when they are starched, and I think frocks get shorter every time they go to the wash; But I don't complain; if it's very uncomfortable, I make an ugly face to myself, and say, "Bosh!" We've all of us had a good deal of practice, so we ought to know how to ride; We've ridden a great deal since we came to live on the Heath, and we rode a good deal when Father was stationed at the sea-side. My Major taught me to ride sideways, ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... at all. I was in the ridiculous position. Be a woman of the world, Val. Don't talk bosh! We shall soon forget ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... word of it. She said he wasn't such a flat as to believe all that bosh. But as she spoke there came a great blast of wind through the arch, and set the barrel rolling. So they made haste to get out of it, for they had no notion of being rolled over and over as if they had been packed tight and wouldn't hurt, like ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... bosh! Miss Bubbles has been pulling your leg, Varick. And yet one would like to know who has been at the bottom of it all—whether, as you say the butler evidently believes, it is the chef himself, or, as the chef told you, one of the under-servants. In any case, I hope no one will ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... "What sort of bosh are you talking now?" demanded Tom, with an effort, while his face was pale, and ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... what it has to do with God, and Christianity, and all which, if it is true, must be more important than anything else. I have tired of art for the same reason. How can I be anything but a wretched dilettante, when I have no principles to ground my criticism on, beyond bosh about 'The Beautiful'? I did pluck up heart and read Mr. Ruskin's books greedily when they came out, because I heard he was a good Christian. But I fell upon a little tract of his, 'Notes on Sheepfolds,' and gave him up again, ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... turned into Latin after the Manner of the Animals of Tacitus: She went into the garden to cut a cabbage to make an apple-pie. Just then a great she-bear, coming down the street, poked its nose into the shop window. 'What! No soap? Bosh!' So he died, and she (very imprudently) married the barber. And there were present at the wedding the Joblillies, and the Piccannies, and the Gobelites, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little button on top. So they all set to playing catch-who-catch-can, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... 'Bosh about Ful,' said Lance unceremoniously. 'It is Cherry; she is crying so upstairs, and Clem and I can't get a word ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Frenchman understood the head-shaking, and showed Jimmie how to move the little catch which released the trigger for firing. With hasty fingers he tore off the sleeve of Jimmie's shirt, and bound up his arm tightly with a bandage from his kit; then he raised up over the rock and cursed the sockray Bosh and began to fire. Jimmie got up the nerve to peer out, and there were the grey figures, much nearer now, and he knew they were Germans because they were like the pictures he had seen. They were running at him, firing as they came, and Jimmie fired his revolver, shutting his eyes because he ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... said, as he went on his way. "They are all talk. I was raised among them, heard them talk before, but it amounted to nothing. I'm against any scheme to do them harm, for there's no harm in them. This Negro domination talk is all bosh." ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... if it's immense bosh. If he has hold of something that can't be got into a letter he hasn't hold of THE thing. Vereker's own statement to me was exactly that the 'figure' ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... a multiplication of characters and incidents and situations; or the original motive will be divined indivisible, and there will be a small group of people immediately interested and controlled by a single, or predominant, fact. The uninspired may contend that this is bosh, and I own that something might be said for their contention, but upon the whole I think ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... by our authors turn out to be chiefly composed of very old-fashioned rays of darkness, and, after a careful perusal, many will come to the conclusion that the way to be a modern philosopher, is to quote the ancients, praise Bacon, and talk 'bosh.'" ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... "But it's such bosh!" he cried scornfully. "It makes me sick to hear a fellow talk such nonsense. Balls and dinners—faugh! If that's your idea of happiness, why not settle down in London and be done with it! That's the place for you! I'd give ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... "Bosh!" interrupted Blondet, "one reason for loving is the fact that one has loved. His motive? Here it is. General Rule: Do not marry as a sergeant when some day you may be Duke of Dantzig and Marshal of France. Now, see what ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... horses on here. The "Grey Mare" had a stentorian voice, smoked a clay pipe which she passed to her children, raged at English people, derided the courtesy of English manners, and considered that "Please," "Thank you," and the like, were "all bosh" when life was so short and busy. And still the snow fell softly, and the air and ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... God's green earth"—it is fitting, that this paper contain a bit of bosh—nowhere is so much insufferable stuff talked in a given period of time as in an American political convention. It is there that all those objectionable elements of the national character which evoke the laughter of Europe and are the despair ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... groaned to Stephen when he had gone. "I, a white man, who, in spite of some coincidences with which I am acquainted, know that all this Kaffir magic is bosh am to beg a savage to tell me something of which he must be ignorant. That is, unless we educated people have got hold of the wrong end of the stick altogether. It is humiliating; it isn't Christian, and I'm hanged if I'll ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... are more fools than one in the world. Here is where he has turned down a leaf. Now just read that bosh and nonsense!" ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... inspiration is one of the reasons why the world is so full of unliterary writers, and why so many of real talent fail of success. It is very easy, in the flush of composition, to consider yourself gifted above your fellows, and to go on writing reams of bosh that even you would despise, if you could view it with an unprejudiced eye; and it is equally easy to persuade yourself that anything that comes from your pen must be incapable of improvement, and that if your writings sell, you have reached the goal. But either delusion is fatal. In short, ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... exclaimed Mrs Masterman impatiently; "I can't stand all that bosh about higher powers, and developing magnetism. Of course there are a set of people who'd believe anything that seemed to give them a superior organisation; it's only another way of pandering to human vanity. Spiritualism is perfect rubbish. I've seen and heard enough ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... says, peremptorily. "You know you've never flirted. Why, you might make yourself more attractive than ten Marcias could possibly be; and, see here, I've never kissed you, though you have been my brother's wife for more than a year, and—bosh!" with the utmost contempt. "Oh, does it trouble you so?" After a moment, "My dear, dear girl, don't worry about it," and his face is full of genuine distress. The common comfort of life will not apply to ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Parliament people make asses of themselves sometimes, Lords as well as Commons. I don't see how a man is to go on talking for ever about laws and landleagues, and those sort of things without doing so. It is all bosh to me. And so I should think it must be to you, as you don't do it. But I do not think that father is worse than anybody else; and I think that his words are sometimes ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... I mean, that the Prince should have said Bosh, for he was so great that there was not a Grand Duke in Europe to whom he might not have said it if he wanted to; but that Priscilla should have been in imminent danger of marriage. Among Fritzing's many preachings there had been one, often repeated in the strongest possible ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... not bosh. You see, we all think that Chessington is the only girls' school in England, and that St. Chad's is the one house at Chessington. One must keep up the traditions of the place, and it wouldn't do to let every fresh comer take the lead. You'll have to knuckle under, Paddy, and eat humble ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... cent., With that Big Drum, Advertisement. Nonsense, with nous discreetly blent, Finds the world cheated—and content. But "make your game" while yet there's room, For novel shapes of quackery. Doom Awaits us in the outer gloom: A day may come when Bosh won't "Boom"! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... youngsters. If I've got to drink an extra glass of port, I'm there; if it's Sir Roger de Coverley, I'm there; I'll do anything to add to the general Schwaermerei. What the modern litterateur thinks it fine to write about Christmas being all sham sentiment is simply insufferable bosh. Christmas isn't in the least bit played out—though the magazinist may be, or may pretend to be. I think it's a grand thing to have a season for sending good wishes, for recollection of absent friends, for letting the young folk kick up their heels. I say, Linn, I hope there's going ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... friend. "It's all bosh about poison. You're the coroner. You take this note and come to my house. Says you: 'Mrs. File, are you the woman that wrote this note? Because in that case I ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... tha malbarry bosh, Tha malbarry bosh, tha malbarry bosh, H-yar way gow rand tha malbarry bosh On a cay-um and ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... have to work, when employed, the bad quality of their food, the badly constructed and insanitary homes their poverty compels them to occupy, and the anxiety, worry, and depression of mind they have to suffer when out of employment. (Cries of 'Rot', 'Bosh', and loud laughter.) Councillor Didlum said, 'Rot'. It was a very good word to describe the disease that was sapping the foundations of society and destroying the health and happiness and the very lives of so many of their fellow countrymen and women. (Renewed merriment ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a sport in which I was always very keen during a past residence of fifteen years in the South Seas. When I showed my gear to Marchmont he criticised it with great cheerfulness and freedom, and somewhat irritated me by frequently ejaculating "Bosh!" when I explained why in fishing at a depth of 100 to 150 fathoms for a certain species of Ruvettus (a nocturnal-feeding fish that attains a weight of over 100 lb.) a heavy wooden hook was always used by the natives in preference to a ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... your kraal, and set up for a wise man of the south," cried Dyke pettishly. "How long did it take you to find out all that?" "Yes, killum dead," said the Kaffir, nodding. "Bosh!" cried Dyke, turning impatiently away. "Well, we must make the best of it," said Emson then. "His feathers will be worth something, for they are in fine condition. Let's get them ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... "Bosh! My dear fellow," said Upton, "it's twice as much my fault as yours; and, after all, it was only a bit of fun. It's rather a bore losing the study, certainly; but never mind, we shall see all the more of each other. Good night; I must ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... Anne loves the Russian! Bosh! How long has he been here—this is the third day!" The room rang with ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... "Oh, bosh!" said Nimble Dick, contempt expressed in the very curve of his nose, "that's too steep; I don't believe a word of it! These fellows can do lots of queer things; I've seen 'em perform, myself; but they never made a live thing yet; I've heard folks ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... "What bosh!" I said. "Besides, even if it were to come true, I am sorry to say I've killed lots of men in the way of business and they ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... apt to be needed by Herbert, who had a good ear and voice, but had always regarded it as 'bosh' to cultivate them, except for the immediately practical purposes that had of late been forced on him. The choral society had improved him; but Jenny was taken aback by being called on to accompany him in Mrs. Brown's Luggage; and his father made his way up to him, saying, "Eh, Herbert! ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it. I must go on chasing them until I marry—then I am done with literature and all other bosh,—that is, literature wherewith to please the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said Charlton. "He is trying to confuse the issue. He says the whole trouble is petty dishonesty in public life. Bosh! The trouble is that the upper and middle classes are milking the lower class—both with and without the aid of the various governments, local, state and national. THAT'S the issue. And the reason it is being forced is ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... Brennan sarcastically. "Others? Bosh! He did it to be a hero, for public acclamation, for glory, for power. Others? Why, don't you see that he risked the lives of all those others you say he saved just ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... lets Sam talk poetry to her," Sam's father broke out. "Stuff! absolute stuff! His mother sometimes tells me of it. Why," he ended piteously, "half the time I can't understand what it's about; it's just bosh!" ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... "All bosh," he asserted as he watched Dallas and Marylyn busy with preparations for breakfast. "A hull regiment of soldiers couldn' put us offen this lan', t' say nothin' of a man thet ain't done a thing on it sence he took it up. Ah might jes' as well ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... "Bosh!" said I; "the poor wicked devil is where he can't get out. For Heaven's sake, Le Bihan, what is this stuff you are talking in the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... The word "bosh" was almost the first word of the discussion which he had comprehended, and the honest familiar sound of it did him good. Nevertheless, keeping his presence of mind, he had forborne to welcome it openly. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... furnaces, Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4, form one complete plant, with stacks seventy-five feet high, sixteen feet diameter of bosh. Steam is generated in forty boilers, fired by furnace gas, for eight vertical direct-acting blowing engines. Nos. 5 and 6 blast furnaces form together a second plant with stacks seventy-five feet high, nineteen feet diameter of ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... French dancing-masters; and the Black Prince, waiting upon his royal prisoner, was acting an inane masquerade: and Chivalry is naught; and honor is humbug; and Gentlemanhood is an extinct folly; and Ambition is madness; and desire of distinction is criminal vanity; and glory is bosh; and fair fame is idleness; and nothing is true but two and two; and the color of all the world is drab; and all men are equal; and one man is as tall as another; and one man is as good as another—and a great dale betther, as the Irish ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is laughable, isn't it? What he says about the soldiers at West Point is all "bosh." Nobody will believe it. I don't. I wish the Herald reporter who wrote the above would visit Fort Sill and ask some of the white soldiers there what they think of me. I am afraid the Herald didn't get ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... performances with bones which he produced from his bag, and ashes mixed with water. I spoke to him and asked what he was about. He replied that he was tracing out the route that we should follow. I felt inclined to answer "bosh!" but remembering the very remarkable instances which he had given of his prowess in occult matters I held my tongue, and taking little Tota into my arms, worn out with toil and danger and emotion, ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... "Bosh!" the girl interrupted. "It won't take one of the boys five minutes to bring you the message if it comes while you're gone." She came closer and placed a hand on his arm. "Please come," she said. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... un grand sacrilege, mon Dieu! ver bad; mais n'importe cela. Eef mon capitaine permit—vill allow pour aller Monsieur Quack'bosh, he go chez moi; nous chercherons; ve bring ze chandelles—pe ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... "Bosh!" interrupted, the graceful Nora. "I tell you what, Maude; you'd better try to think as little as possible. It will suit your style of beauty better. And above all, don't think of my affairs. I myself am taking pains not to ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... ugly—I was not a valuable article in the marriage market, sweet thought! My grandmother is one of the good old school, who believed that a girl's only proper sphere in life was marriage; so, knowing her sentiments, her purpose to get me married neither surprised nor annoyed me. But I was plain. Ah, bosh! Oh! Ah! I cannot express what kind of a feeling that fact gave me. It sank into my heart and cut like a cruel jagged knife—not because it would be a drawback to me in the marriage line, for I had an antipathy to the very thought of marriage. Marriage to me appeared the most horribly tied-down ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... "Bosh! Do you think I have forgotten how you and your boys swindled me out of my rights to that mine in the ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... of English speech—the huggermugger morality of timorous, whining, unintelligent and unimaginative men—envy turned into law, cowardice sanctified, stupidity made noble, Puritanism. And in the theoretical field there is an even more luxuriant crop of bosh. Mountebanks almost innumerable tell us what we should believe and practice, in politics, religion, philosophy and the arts. England and the United States, between them, house more creeds than all the rest of the world together, and they ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken |
