"Expatiate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... subject and upon whom he depends. In every age, the voice of conscience has been regarded as the voice of God, so that when it has filled man with guilty apprehensions, he has had recourse to sacrifices, and penances, and prayers to expatiate his wrath. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... knew the worst, as we have perceived; but the worst was really something she could not know, inasmuch as up to this time Verena chose as little to confide to her on that one point as she was careful to expatiate with her on every other. The change that had taken place in the object of Basil Ransom's merciless devotion since the episode in New York was, briefly, just this change—that the words he had spoken to her there about her ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... to perceive a certain coldness in the manner of Mrs. Hazeldean, but began immediately to talk to her about Frank; praise that young gentleman's appearance; expatiate on his health, his popularity, and his good gifts, personal and mental,—and this with so much warmth, that any dim and undeveloped suspicions Mrs. Hazeldean might have ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... natural emotions in purity,—is added an especial interest in Italy, the mother of our language and our laws, our greatest benefactress in the gifts of genius, the garden of the world, in which our best thoughts have delighted to expatiate, but over whose bowers now hangs a perpetual veil of sadness, and whose noblest plants are doomed to removal,—for, if they cannot bear their ripe and perfect fruit in another climate, they are not permitted to lift their heads ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of 1761 Mr Thomas Sheridan was at Edinburgh, and delivered lectures upon the English language and Public Speaking to large and respectable audiences. I was often in his company, and heard him frequently expatiate upon Johnson's extraordinary knowledge, talents, and virtues, repeat his pointed sayings, describe his particularities, and boast of his being his guest sometimes till two or three in the morning. At {96} ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... of Mr. Savage's performances than to display their beauties, or to obviate the criticisms which they have occasioned; and, therefore, I shall not dwell upon the particular passages which deserve applause; I shall neither show the excellence of his descriptions, nor expatiate on the terrifick portrait of suicide, nor point out the artful touches, by which he has distinguished the intellectual features of the rebels, who suffer death in his last canto. It is, however, proper to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... sands; and he cries out in the midst of his happy home,—"This is not your rest!" Our tent-home may include every earthly cup, and all the riches and honors of the world, yet it satisfies not, and the Christian turns from it all to rest and expatiate in a life to come. Every home here is baptized with tears and scarred with graves. Its poverty is a burden, its riches are snares, its friends are taken from us; broken hearts agonized there; restlessness is tossed to and fro there; and disappointment reigns in ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... support of all denominations and no-denominations that are interested in the welfare and progress of backward races. From the political point of view the conversion of so many millions of the population of India to the faith of their rulers would open up prospects of such moment that I need not expatiate upon them. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... came into the workshop he began to expatiate on the same subject. He would stand there turning the hated shoes over between his hands. Then he would criticize them. "We must take ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to Skiddy that he had never been so happy. With glistening eyes he would discourse on "these simple people," "these good hearts," "this lovely and uncontaminated paradise, where evil seems never to have set its hand," and expatiate generally on the beauty, charm, and tranquillity of Samoan life. He dreaded the time, he said, when a ruthless civilization ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... rebellion was never outspoken. She was always quiet in demeanour. Her sister Martha, on the contrary, spoke out vigorously, daring Miss Wooler so much, face to face, that she sometimes received a box on the ear, which hardly any saint could have withheld. Then Martha would expatiate on the danger of boxing ears, quoting a reverend brother of Miss Wooler's. Among her school companions, Martha was called "Miss Boisterous," but was always a favourite, so piquant and fascinating were ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Tenderness, entirely flowed from this Prince's generous and grateful Temper, and from his good and religious Heart. He had such a delicate Sense of conjugal Duty, that he never fail'd shewing his Displeasure to any Courtiers, who presumed to expatiate on the Charms of some Houris in his Capital, and once when Kigenpi, one of the Methers, or Lords of his Bed-Chamber began to talk to him of a Person of incomparable Beauty, he gave him no Answer, only asking him in ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... to Trinidad, though," observed Jack. "I don't know what your fair cousin Maria would say if she heard you expatiate so warmly on ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... about his age; and I have been ordered it myself a great many times. I quite agree with you, Paul, that perhaps topics may be incautiously mentioned upstairs before him, which it would be as well for his little mind not to expatiate upon; but I really don't see how that is to be helped, in the case of a child of his quickness. If he were a common child, there would be nothing in it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a short absence from this house, the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... destroy. No difficulties occur in what has never been tried. Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of what has not existed; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope have all the wide field of imagination, in which they may expatiate with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... house came a little procession that made her smile with a sob clutching at her heart. The singer lady had taken Teether from the arms of his mother, who stood happily exchanging the topics of the times with the Hoover bride, who had not had thus far sufficient opportunity to expatiate on quite all the adventures of the wedding journey and kept on hand still a small store of happenings to recount to her sympathetic neighbors as they found time and opportunity. The rosy rollicking youngster she had perched on her shoulder and held him steadily ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... But I must not expatiate too much on the merits and capabilities of this part of inner Africa, lest I mislead any commercial inquirers; and it is as well to say at present, that the people near the coast are in such a state of helplessness and insecurity, caused by the slave-hunts, that for many years, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... alluding partly to the Old Jewish Church and Temple, partly to Ezekiel's Visionary Representation and Prophetical Paradise. Nor can it, I think, be justly reckoned more criminal, where we have any great instructive Example, which has been real matter of Fact, to expatiate thereon; adding suitable and proper Circumstances and Colours to the whole, especially when the History it self is but succinctly Related, and the Heads of things only left us. And this some great Man have thought was the Method ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... to enter into details of the flora, fauna, and geology of his island-home, and to expatiate in such glowing language on its arboreal and herbal wealth and beauty, that the professor became quite reconciled to ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... greater regularity in continuing the history of swarms, I think it proper to recapitulate in a few words the principal points of the preceding letter, and to expatiate on each, concerning the result of new experiments, respecting which ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... days too late," and the Journalist drew a graphic, and purely imaginary, picture of the pathos of the Belgians straining their eyes in vain to the West for the coming of the men in khaki, and unfortunately he let himself expatiate a bit on ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... Mid[-e] priests, when the conversation is confined chiefly to the candidate's progress. He then gives to each of them presents of tobacco, and after an offering to Kitshi Manid[-o], with the pipe, they expose the articles contained in their Mid[-e] sacks and explain and expatiate upon the merits and properties of each of the magic objects. The candidate for the first time learns of the manner of preparing effigies, etc., with which to present to the incredulous ocular demonstration of the genuineness and divine origin of the Mid[-e]wiwin, ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... might expatiate, did the subject require it, on the many and various objects with which the soul will be entertained in those heavenly regions; when I reflect on which, I am apt to wonder at the boldness of some philosophers, who are so struck ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... hand to have been with him when he beat the French in Quiberon Bay. That was a glorious day for old England, let me tell you." I was able to expatiate on the subject, as the last time I was at home my father read me a full account of the battle which took place in 1759, the year preceding the death of his Majesty George the Second, and about five years before the time of which I am now speaking. It was the most memorable action of ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... weaving all manner of bright visions, she resolves that practice be not sacrificed to theory, and commences by a skilful contrivance to expatiate upon the ability ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... in Mexico. "In this enlightened age," wrote the future general-in-chief of the Confederate army, "there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it a greater evil to the white than to the coloured race, and while my feelings are strongly interested in the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Madrid is more murmured at there than needs, considering the King is absent, and moreover, though I am much straitened in matter of lodgings, yet that I have a very large and pleasant garden thereunto belonging, to expatiate and refresh myself and wearied family in, I received a message from Baron Battevil to this effect, besides general tenders of all manner of service which is in his power; that he is at present (as in ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... to expatiate on Sanguinetti with no little complacency, for he liked the man's spirit of intrigue, his keen, conquering appetite, his excessive, and even somewhat blundering activity. He had become acquainted with him on his return from the nunciature at Vienna, when he had already ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flow'rs Fly to and fro: or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd Swarm'd and were straiten'd; till the signal giv'n, Behold a wonder! They but now who seem'd In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... were given, and heartily shaken, for the boys were charmed with Dan's pleasure, and crowded round him to shake hands and expatiate on the beauties of their gift. In the midst of this pleasant chatter, Dan's eye went to Mrs. Jo, who stood outside the group enjoying the scene ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... not declaim, nor philosophers expatiate, on the disappointments of human life. Are they not legibly written on every page of our existence? Are they not predominantly prevalent over every ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... Our sails we gather'd, cast our cables o'er, And slept secure along the sandy shore. Soon as again the rosy morning shone, Reveal'd the landscape and the scene unknown, With wonder seized, we view the pleasing ground, And walk delighted, and expatiate round. Roused by the woodland nymphs at early dawn, The mountain goats came bounding o'er the lawn: In haste our fellows to the ships repair, For arms and weapons of the sylvan war; Straight in three squadrons all our crew we part, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... and wiped her eyes. Lord Courtland perceived the effect his eloquence had produced upon the childish fancy of his daughter, and continued to expatiate upon the splendid joys that awaited her in a union with a nobleman of the Duke's rank and fortune; till at length, dazzled, if not convinced, she declared herself "satisfied that it was her duty to marry whoever papa pleased; but—" and a sigh escaped her as she contrasted ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... tell Nan Rendell that, after hearing Lilias described as the beauty of the family, he had at once identified her with the charming figure whose presence had brought sunshine into the gloomy house. He murmured some vague excuse, while Nan proceeded to expatiate on the difference between herself and her sister. "Lilias is fair, and I am dark; she has golden hair, and is quite grown up and staid and proper. I am supposed to be grown up too, in the afternoons and in the evenings, but the mornings are my own, and then ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Twelve who offered sacrifice when there was increase in the produce of the soil. Writers and records of antiquity say no more of Caius Piso, not even mentioning the name of his father. On such a little known man a forger of Roman history could safely expatiate; the author of the Annals does so in a portraiture that bears the stamp of the fifteenth century: this is particularly observable when Piso is spoken of as "of brilliant repute among the populace for virtues," ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... long upon this theme. I feel ashamed of my own prolixity. And yet I am sure you will pardon it. Ah, those bright brief days! too quickly were they fled! I could expatiate upon each minute—recall each word—revive each look. It may not be. I must hasten on. Darker themes ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... expatiate on the importance of this achievement, from which the best effects must be derived, not only in the vindication of our national honour, but also in confirming the security of intercourse between Sinde and Afghanistan, ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... should live, you chose the Union. The choice may come between the Union and ignorance; and if it does, I have no fear as to which the people will choose. The doctrine of State Rights is a beautiful thing to expatiate upon, but it has been the root of nearly all the evil the country has suffered. However, I believe that this remedy can at once be applied without serious inconvenience ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... almost between the blows of the executioner's crow-bar on the wheel, in the tightening of the windlasses at the rack—it is not absent, whatever people may say, in Anne of Geierstein, nor even quite lacking in the better parts of Count Robert of Paris. But we must not expatiate on its effects; we must only give a little attention to the means by which they ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... hilarity of the festival had warmed and opened all hearts, he took occasion in an interview with the chief to expatiate upon the parental affection which had led the father and mother of his little sister to give up their friends and home, and come hundreds of miles away, in the single hope of sometimes looking upon and embracing her. The heart of ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... moon, the conclusion has been inferred that there exists no vegetable or animal life on that globe," [449] other writers, holding opposite views of the moon's physical condition, may be allowed to expatiate on the luxuriant life which an atmosphere with water and temperature would undoubtedly produce. Mr. Proctor's tone is temperate, and his language that of one who is conscious with Hippocrates that "art is long and life is short." He says, in one of his contributions to lunar science, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... from Rose Beacon they passed in sight of another beacon, and of a village which they call Newworke, in which is a small castle like unto that at Rose Beacon. Here the sea began to expatiate, and about three leagues from hence was the lowest buoy of the river. And now Whitelocke was got forth into the open German Ocean, a sea wide and large, oft-times highly rough and boisterous and full of danger, especially in these parts of it, and as Whitelocke shortly found ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... alike in theology, morals, and politics, appeared to him to sap the foundations of every higher principle in human nature, he was led by the whole tenour of his mind to dwell upon the existence in the soul of perceptions not derivable from the senses, and to expatiate on the immutable distinctions of right and wrong. Goodness, freed from all debasing associations of interest and expedience, such as Hobbes sought to attach to it, was the same, he was well assured, as it had existed from all eternity in the mind ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... expatiate farther concerning saps; it is by some controverted, whether this exhaustion would not be an extreme detriment to the growth, substance, and other parts of trees: As to the growth and bulk, if what I have observ'd of a birch, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... of such a fiend in human shape? Or was it the blind Goddess of Justice that led Jackson to meet Miss Pearl and sacrifice her life that the demon Jackson might be exposed to the world, his deeds of evil and misdoings brought to light, and he expatiate the many crimes which he had committed on the gallows or by serving a life sentence ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... too narrow bounds for the capacious mind of man to expatiate in, which takes its flight farther than the stars and cannot be confined by the limits of the world, that extends its thoughts often even beyond the utmost expansion of matter and makes excursions into that ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... first, some years ago, to expatiate on the vicious addiction of the lower classes of society to Sunday excursions; and were thus instrumental in calling forth occasional demonstrations of those extreme opinions on the subject, which are very generally received with ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... sir, I have left my home, and seen part of Africa and Asia, and a tolerable portion of Europe. I have been with generals and admirals, princes and pashas, governors and ungovernables,—but I have not time or paper to expatiate. I wish to let you know that I live with a friendly remembrance of you, and a hope to meet you again; and if I do this as shortly as possible, attribute ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... impounder of stray cattle at Eton, is one of the most singular characters I have ever met with. Among the ignorant Barney is looked up to as the fountain of local and legal information; and it is highly ludicrous to hear him expatiate on his favourite theme of "our birthrights and common rights;" tracing the first from the creation, and deducing argument in favor of his opinions on the second from doomsday book, through all the intricate windings of the modern inclosure acts. Barney is a great stickler for reform in College, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... how they had fastened up my mouth—and you must know—if you know any thing—how vast a superfluity of breath I have to dispose of! If you do not know, however, sit down and you shall see. In my situation it is really a great relief to be able to open ones mouth—to be able to expatiate—to be able to communicate with a person like yourself, who do not think yourself called upon at every period to interrupt the thread of a gentleman's discourse. Interruptions are annoying and should undoubtedly be abolished—don't you think so?—no reply, I beg you,—one ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... they were both religious women who loved to impress a new listener with the amount of their faith and resignation; but when they knew him a little better, and had said the same things several times, and found that as soon as they paused he began to expatiate on the advantages and joys of their present mode of life with Miss Estcourt, of which no one had been talking, they were bored, and left off being pleased to see him, and fell back for amusement on their own bickerings, and ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... of mortal crimes, this character alone might serve as an antidote to the word of mental distempers, and awaken the most callous and sarcastic mind to confess the dignity of our Nature, and the beneficence of our God. In stating to you the merits of HOWARD, I might expatiate with delight on the various qualities of this incomparable man; I might trace his progress through the different periods of a life always singular and always instructive. I could not be checked by any fear of overstepping the modesty of Truth in the celebration ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... health. He had no sooner returned to his home, than, to complicate his difficulties completely, he fell in love with Mademoiselle Natalie de Bellefonds, who had just returned from Paris, where she had been completing her education. To expatiate on the perfections of Mademoiselle Natalie, would be a waste of ink and paper: it is sufficient to say that she really was a very charming girl, with a fortune which, though not large, would have been a most desirable acquisition to de Chaulieu, who had nothing. Neither ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... a trial occurred in which an eminent land valuer was put into the witness box to swell the amount of damages, and he proceeded to expatiate on the injury committed by railroads in general, and especially by the one in question, in cutting up the properties they invaded. When he had finished the delivery of this weighty piece of evidence, the counsel for the Company put a newspaper into his hand, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... Rowena, not because she wanted so much to hear Elfie's news but because she loved to hear him talk, and upon no subject could Larry wax so eloquent as upon the foothill country of Alberta. Long after they had secured Larry's new suit and gone on their way through park and boulevard, Larry continued to expatiate upon the glories of Alberta hills and valleys, upon its cool breezes, its flowing rivers and limpid lakes, and always the western rampart ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... my word that I am speaking with absolute sincerity. You think you can live with impunity in this environment without becoming like all the rest of them; while I tell you that that is a natural necessity. Suppose we expatiate on that a bit . . ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... finished his observations, the Prince demanded that the points and articles should be communicated to him in writing. Now this was precisely what the envoys preferred to omit. It was easier, and far more agreeable to expatiate in a general field of controversy,—than to remain tethered to distinct points. It was particularly in these confused conferences, where neither party was entirely sincere, that the volatile word was thought preferable to the permanent letter. Already ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... this, though foolish, was not intended for more than respect, and our Bishops did not desire it; at which he smiled. Then he went on to expatiate upon what he had seen in some of our churches (probably while on duty as Government servant): the display, as it seemed to him, so like this; the pomp, as he thought it, so fine, like this; the bowing and prostrating, and even on ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... sight Mrs. Mumpson betook herself to the rocking chair and began to expatiate on the blindness and obduracy of men in general and of Mr. Holcroft in particular. "They are all much alike," she complained, "and are strangely neglectful of the proprieties of life. My dear, deceased husband, your father, was becoming gradually senserble of my value in guiding him in this ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... readiness to escort the visitors through the city; and at their beck the doors of public buildings and churches, and the gates of palaces and gardens, were thrown open. The party entered the Hotel de Ville, and in one of its large rooms an opportunity was afforded for Mr. Mapps to expatiate a little ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... he had to know his men and to touch the right chord in appealing to their prejudices or their patriotism. The English tenure of Gibraltar was also a perpetual offence to Spanish pride. Irresponsible journalists loved to expatiate on it when they had no more spicy subject to handle. On this, as on all questions affecting prestige only, Morier was tactful and patient. When they should come within the range of practical politics, he could take a different tone. But he knew that more serious dangers ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... not dare to expatiate on these monstrosities. We shall only cite the words of the lawyer Heterus: "Shamelessness is a crime in a free man—a duty in a freedman—and a necessity in a slave." For further details of the abominable and precocious depravity into ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... well expatiate in these two varying forms of speech, both of them intended to express the same thing—'rich in mercy' and 'great in love.' For surely a love which takes account of the sin that cannot repel it, and so shapes itself into mercy, sparing, and departing from the strict line of retribution and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... dedication, and bishops wished they could read the Greek. Far otherwise was it with the impending struggle of the Reformation: there the cleavage of sides followed very different lines. Into that wide field we cannot now expatiate; but it is important to notice an element which the German Renaissance contributed to the Reformation, and which played a considerable part in both movements—the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... possession of his own schools, for it thinks he will have no chance of arresting the opposite teaching or of rivalling the fascination of modern science. Knowing little, and caring less for the depth and largeness of that heavenly Wisdom, on which the Apostle delights to expatiate, or the variety of those sciences, dogmatic or ethical, mystical or hagiological, historical or exegetical, which Revelation has created, these philosophers know perfectly well that, in matter of fact, to beings, constituted as we ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... say, articulate, enunciate, express, talk; discourse, address, declaim, harangue, preach, lecture, rant, descant, expatiate; accost, address; declare, publish, proclaim, announce, bruit. Antonyms: repress, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... desired result being obtained with almost provoking celerity. Thus even success had palled, and Carnaby's sharp and idle wits had begun to work on the problem which seemed to be occupying his elders. Neither Robinette nor Lavendar could expatiate to the boy on his grandmother's peculiarities, but Carnaby had contrived to find out for himself how ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... needful." Then it occurred to me how much finer a spectacle my ebony friend would make; how well his six feet of manly sinew would grace those pulpit stairs; how eloquently the reverend gentleman might expatiate on the burning sin of shrouding the light of such an intellect in the mists of niggerdom, only to see it snuffed out in darkness; how he might enlarge on what the black could do in elevating his race, either as "cullud" assistant to "Brother Pease" at the Five-Points, or as co-laborer ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... temples, cunningly brought above her ears, and twisted in an alluring knot at the back of her head. Her eyes were of that deep peculiar blue which generally is such a menace to the peace of the sterner sex, and over which lovers are wont to expatiate so tryingly to ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... Church. After pointing out to Justin the folly of mere theorising, and recommending him to study the Old Testament Scriptures, as well on account of their great antiquity as their intrinsic worth, he proceeded to expatiate on the nature and excellence of the gospel. [366:1] The impression now made upon the mind of the young student was never afterwards effaced; he became a decided Christian; and, about A.D. 165, finished ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Love. She adapts herself to him as water adapts itself to the shape of the vessel in which it is placed. She dare not assert herself or be herself, lest, in some way, she should lose her tentative grasp upon the counterfeit which largely takes the place of love. If he prefers it, she will expatiate upon her fondness for vaudeville and musical comedy until she herself begins to believe that she likes it. With tears in her eyes and her throat raw, she will choke upon the assertion that she likes the smell of smoke; she will assume passion when ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... conducted by him to a house, wherein were seated, in a circle, eight or ten middle-aged persons. To them I and my pigs being introduced, with great courtesy they desired me to sit down; and then I began to expatiate on the merits of the two pigs, explaining to them how many young ones the female would have at one time, and how soon these would multiply to some hundreds. My only motive was to enhance their value, that they might take the more care of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... But when he heard there was a tract just west of Martin Whitney's, up at Lake Forest, that could be had at a bargain—thirty-five thousand dollars—he let his eye rove over it appreciatively. And Frank Crawford and Howard West knew of advantageous sites, also, on which to expatiate with convincing enthusiasm. The kind of house you'd have to build on that sort of place would cost you an easy thirty ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... The subject of English taxation, indeed, both from the amount levied, and the acquiescence of the people in such unheard-of burdens, seems to have utterly bewildered the khan's comprehension.[4] "All classes, from the noble to the peasant, are alike oppressed; yet it is amusing to hear them expatiate on the institutions of their country, fancying it the freest and themselves the least oppressed of any people on earth! They are constantly talking of the tyranny and despotism of Oriental governments, without having set foot in any of those regions, or knowing any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the death of Schiller, he was seized with a strong desire to travel in foreign countries, as if his spirit had a presentiment of its approaching enlargement, and already longed to expatiate in a wider and more varied ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... that while the faddists were perfectly prepared to take the children out of the hands of any parents who happened to be poor, they had not really the courage of their own convictions. They would expatiate upon methods; they could not define their aims; they would take refuge in such meaningless terms as progress or efficiency or success. They were not prepared to say what they wanted to succeed in producing, towards what goal they were progressing ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the place to expatiate on the merits of the Latin play; but the assertion may be hazarded without much risk, that both the original and Thornton's version are, taken as wholes, considerably superior to any of the imitations. Indeed, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... power. One of his points was, that the faith of the country had been pledged by the ratification of the treaty, and that consequently a refusal of the House to appropriate the money would be a breach of faith. This led him to expatiate upon the ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... off here with the presentation of my documents concerning the alteration of the musical ear. If one tried to expatiate instead of merely suggesting, the sketch would soon grow to be ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of being congregated into villages, as in France and Italy. We might select Devonshire, Somersetshire, Herefordshire, and others of the midland counties, as pre-eminent in this character of beauty, which, however, is too familiar to our daily observation to make it needful to expatiate upon it. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... as to its truth, only remarking that "as all these wonderful circumstances happened only in the country of the white men, the great Spirit expected the white men only to believe them." The missionary then began to expatiate on the torments of hell, at which some of them seemed horrified, but others said "they were quite sure such a place could only be made for the white faces, for they had no men half wicked enough in New Zealand to be sent there;" but when the ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... meaning, and all the varieties of dumb show, of gesticulation, shrugs, and wise shakes of the head, are called into requisition, to effectually and unmistakably express their ideas. The usages of good society are regarded by them as a great restraint upon their besetting propensity to expatiate in phrases of grandiloquence, and to magnify objects of trivial importance. They are always sure to initiate topics which will afford scope for admiration; they delight to enlarge upon the unprecedented growth of cities, villages, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Shakespeare: besides many of the rest, as the "Winter's Tale," "Love's Labour Lost," "Measure for Measure," which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment[2]. If I would expatiate on this subject, I could easily demonstrate, that our admired Fletcher, who wrote after him, neither understood correct plotting, nor that which they call "the decorum of the stage." I would not search in his worst plays for examples: He who ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... had been taken from it, when I think that we are turning our backs on this accursed and detested system. I really don't think I could have borne it any longer. It is all very well to say 'be silent on the subject.' They won't let you be silent. They will ask you what you think of it; and will expatiate on slavery as if it were one of the greatest blessings of mankind. 'It's not,' said a hard, bad-looking fellow to me the other day, 'it's not the interest of a man to use his slaves ill. It's damned nonsense ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... but unable to fetch Hispaniola, stood over to Jamaica, intending to finish its circumnavigation. The inhabitants came off, exhibiting the most friendly disposition whenever the vessels neared the shore, and Diego Colon, the interpreter, never failed to expatiate on the wonders he had seen in Spain, and the prowess of the Spaniards who had defeated the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... for no imagination can conceive, nor can words express the exact nature of that splendid scene which is here so slightly glanced at. The Holy Spirit has employed the most concise mode of description in order to restrain our fancy within proper limits. We are, therefore, altogether incompetent to expatiate on a subject so sublime, for we know nothing, beyond what is written, of the glory which is associated with spiritual bodies. When Paul was led to speak of a state of future enjoyment, he could only express himself in the language of conjecture, and say, ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... would gladly add a few more did his means permit. He was a connoisseur in wines and the pleasures of the table—not that he had any tendencies toward excess, but he delighted to sip the great wines of the world, to expatiate on their age, character, and origin. Sometimes he would laughingly say, "Never dilate on the treasures bequeathed to us by the old poets, sages, and artists, but for inspiration and consolation give me a bottle of old, old ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... we have not yet discovered it, an illustration may naturally be expected to be attainable from mathematical considerations. Thus, we have already adverted to the law of periodical irregularities in the solar system. Any one before it was discovered seemed entitled to expatiate upon the operation of the disturbing forces arising from mutual attraction, and to charge the system arranged upon the principle of universal gravitation with want of skill, nay, with leading to inevitable mischief—mischief ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... allowed myself most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it, from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. I will not reason here—nor will I stop for you to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse than absurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was already bound. The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool, providing with great circumspection for a possible opportunity of making myself ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... farther to expatiate, I could enlarge upon several instances of like nature, but this ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... of catalogues of [of books], and the esteem they are in at present, is so well known, that it were to waste paper to expatiate on it."—Gerard LANGBAINE, 1688. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... its moderate use may not shorten life, or prove perceptibly hurtful to health, yet its excessive employment certainly generates many formidable disorders, particularly of the nerves and stomach, and subjects its votary to innumerable inconveniences and sufferings. Our space will not permit us to expatiate any further; and we shall therefore conclude our article by relating from Rush a very interesting anecdote of Dr. Franklin, which places the common-sense view of this matter in the strongest possible ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... fright and said to them, 'O my brethren, if generosity were lost, it would not be found save with you and had I a secret, which I feared to divulge, your breasts alone should have the keeping of it.' And I went on to expatiate to them in this sense, till I saw that frankness would profit me more than concealment; so I told them the whole story. When they heard it, they said, 'And is this young man Ali ben Bekkar and this ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... all its parts, who go through it always according to their own will, and with the same method, who exercise themselves as they will on any subject which suggests itself to them, who are so well satisfied with themselves and their light, who expatiate upon the preparation and the methods for prayer, will make but little advance in it; and after ten or twenty years of this exercise, will ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a manual of drawing, I ought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing should be learned; but those reasons appear to me so many and so weighty, that I cannot quickly state or enforce them. With the reader's permission, as this volume is too large already, I will waive all discussion respecting the ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... not time to expatiate on several droll mishaps that occurred to Mr Root; how he was once bumped in all the glowing panoply of equine war; how, when one night, with his head well powdered, he crept upon all-fours, as was his wont, into one of the boys' bedrooms, to listen to their ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... will not expatiate any further upon this, as it may be gathered from it that whatever part of whatever history of a knight-errant one reads, it will fill the reader, whoever he be, with delight and wonder; and take my advice, sir, and, as I said ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... innocently, implacably offend. Inform yourself of the characters and situations of the company, before you give way to what your imagination may prompt you to say. There are, in all companies, more wrong beads than right ones, and many more who deserve, than who like censure. Should you therefore expatiate in the praise of some virtue, which some in company notoriously want; or declaim against any vice, which others are notoriously infected with, your reflections, however general and unapplied, will, by being applicable, be thought personal and leveled at those people. This consideration points out ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Hazlitt says that Wordsworth's face, notwithstanding his constitutional gravity, sometimes revealed indications of dry humor. And once, at a morning visit, I heard him give an account of his having breakfasted in company with Coleridge, and allowed him to expatiate to the extent of his lungs. "How could you permit him to go on and weary himself?" said Rogers; "why, you are to meet him at dinner this evening." "Yes," replied Wordsworth; "I know that very well; but we like to take the sting ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... from a day-dream, and the car was stopped on the pretense that this marvelous landscape must be viewed in silence and at rest. She rejoined Mrs. Devar, and began instantly to expatiate on the beauties of Sussex, so Medenham ran slowly down the hill through ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... here, both in the word 'access' and in that other one 'stand.' 'The grace' is supposed as some ample space into which a man is led, and where he can continue, stand, and expatiate. Or, we may say, it is regarded as a palace or treasure-house into which we can enter. Now, if we take that great New Testament word 'grace,' and ponder its meanings, we find that they run something in this fashion. The ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... son Edward and his daughter Julia, and he always refers to them gently as "brother" and "sister." To plant a tree to mark an event was one of his picturesque customs—an unconscious desire, perhaps, to project himself into the future. I am quite sure, as we accompany him, he will expatiate on the improvement in the soil which he has effected; that he will point out eagerly not only the domestic but the wild animals about the place; and that he will stand for a few moments on the high bluff overlooking the sea and the marshes and let the wind blow through his ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... rock temple, carved out of the living rock, are alone worth a long journey to see. Then think of visiting Anajapoora, the city of rubies, the sacred capital of the kingdom of ruins, on whose splendours even the Chinese travellers of the early ages used to expatiate with fervour. From this point it would be easy to reach the peninsula of Jaffna, which has been peopled with Tammils for more than two thousand years. It is the country par excellence of gardens exquisitely kept, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Susan alone, and he warned her of the "piece" T. J. had threatened to publish in the morning, and of the disgrace and sorrow it would bring to Miss Sally. The girl listened eagerly and her indignation grew as he went on, so that he had to veer, and expatiate on the virtues of T. J. and the right of the modern press to meddle in private affairs when ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... completion of my fate; but since he was no more, I felt that it would be a preferable lot to be a beggar in the streets of a Scottish village, than, an abbess in this miserable house of Saint Bride; nor was even that poor object of ambition, on which my father used to expatiate when desirous of persuading me to enter the monastic state by milder means than throwing me off the battlements, long open to me. The old abbess died of a cold caught the evening of the fray; and the place, which might have been kept open until I was capable of filling it, was disposed of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... shalt know, too," answered Alvarado firmly, "that though I break my heart, I, an unknown, can expatiate his guilt with all the pride of most ancient lineage and ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... her beauty; I will not expatiate upon her intelligence, her quickness of perception, her powers of memory, her sweet consideration, from the first moment, for the slow-paced tutor who ministered to her wonderful gifts. I was thirty then; I am over sixty now: she is ever present to me in these hours as ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... no doubt, when they had as good a subject to expatiate upon, as I had, in the pleasure before me, of seeing so many agreeable friends of Mr. B.'s, they would maintain the title they claimed of every ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the legislative assembly. When, for example, he undertook to show the wrongfulness of Mississippi repudiation, he would refer to Wordsworth as "a poet and philosopher, whose good opinion was capable of adding weight even to the character of a nation," and then expatiate, with the enthusiasm of a scholar, upon the noble office of such men in human society. He had corresponded with Mr. Wordsworth and knew that members of his family had suffered heavily from the dishonesty of the State; and perhaps no passages in his great speeches against repudiation were ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... his heart snapped like a fiddle-string, and he was entirely aware of this circumstance. As to her eyes, teeth, coloring, complexion, brows, height and hair, it is needless to expatiate. The most painstaking inventory of these chattels would necessarily be misleading, because the impression which they conveyed to him was that of a bewildering, but not distasteful, transfiguration of the universe, apt as a fanfare at ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... old man should retain all the consequence of being, in his own opinion, the first to communicate the important intelligence. At the same time, he also determined that in the expected conference he would permit David Deans to expatiate at length upon the proposal, in all its bearings, without irritating him either by interruption or contradiction. This last was the most prudent plan he could have adopted; because, although there were many doubts which David Deans could himself clear up to his ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... other pursuits. This seems to be confirmed in considering the great chess exponents who have played blindfold, and those who have not, a comparison has been adduced but which might seem invidious to expatiate on. ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... earnest look; his vivacious eyes were for the most part turned upwards, with a thoughtful and rather a gloomy expression, which I have tried to represent. His lips were closed, but the mouth was not an unkindly one. He was ready enough to expatiate on the arrogant vanity and depraved taste of the Viennese aristocracy, by whom he feels himself neglected, or at ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... in America?" asked Anna-Felicitas, with the intelligent interest of a traveller determined to understand and appreciate everything, while Anna-Rose, still greatly upset by the condition of the best skirt but unwilling to expatiate upon it before the youth, continued to brush her down as best she ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... mode of living as being most compatible with liberty. He delighted to expatiate on the evils of cohabitation. Men, subjected to the same regimen, compelled to eat and sleep and associate at certain hours, were strangers to all rational independence and liberty. Society would never be exempt from servitude and misery, till those artificial ties which ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... Convocation?' He was walking up and down the room while I told him the anecdote; but when he uttered this explosion of high-church zeal, he had come close to my chair, and his eyes flashed with indignation.[1366] I bowed to the storm, and diverted the force of it, by leading him to expatiate on the influence which religion derived from maintaining the church with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... the richest land under the sun, exhaustless in fertility, yielding the most valuable productions, and unfailing in its resources. It was possible it would prove a sterile desert. Imagination could not but expatiate in this unbounded field and unexplored wilderness; and there are few persons entirely secure from the influence of imagination. The real danger attending the first exploration of a country filled with wild animals and savages; and the difficulty ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... the moral mission of woman, glorious despite its acknowledged imperfections, it is not necessary to deny the common assertion, that men have a monopoly of the sentiment of friendship. Neither is it necessary to expatiate on the great happiness this sentiment is capable of yielding in the comparatively narrow and quiet lives of women, or to insist on the larger space which ought to be assigned to the cultivation of it in those lives. The moral of the whole ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... household." Naturally desiring to represent in the most favourable colours the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, though indulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, in order to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously seeks its model and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of the United States that city in which ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... army have reposed in, the justice of their country. And here I humbly conceive it is altogether unnecessary (while I am pleading the cause of an army which have done and suffered more than any other army ever did in the defense of the rights and liberties of human nature) to expatiate on their claims to the most ample compensation for their meritorious services, because they are known perfectly to the whole world, and because (although the topics are inexhaustible) enough has already been said on the subject. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... has!" Mr. Bayweather unexpectedly put in. "And he's not the only person he torments about it. Only yesterday when he came down to the rectory to see some old deeds, didn't he expatiate on that subject and succeed in spoiling the afternoon. I had never been forced to think so much about it in all my life. He made me very uncomfortable, very! What's the use of going miles out of your way, I say, out of the station to which it has pleased God to place us? ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... To expatiate to any extent whatever upon the bereavement is heartless or thoughtless, and as there is no danger of ambiguity, the letter does not need to account for itself ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... with his brothers, and was received with enthusiastic cheering. He said—My lord, ladies, and gentlemen, Of course it cannot be expected, at a meeting such as the present, that the sons of Burns should expatiate on the merits and genius of their deceased father. Around them are an immense number of admirers, who, by their presence here this day, bear a sufficient testimony to the opinion in which they hold his memory, and the high esteem ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... world. Of course, everyone has heard of the "unlucky" mummy, the painted case of which, only, is in the Oriental department of the British Museum, and the story connected with it is so well known that it would be superfluous to expatiate on it here. I will therefore pass on to instances of other mummies "possessed" in a ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... she, for the first time in many a week, listened without irritation while Freddie poured forth his unending praise of "my wife." As Brent knew them intimately, Freddie felt free to expatiate upon all the details of domestic economy that chanced to be his theme, with the exquisite lunch as a text. He told Brent how Susan had made a study of that branch of the art of living; how she had explored the unrivaled Parisian markets and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... in my own lifetime;" and then Miss Burleigh left politics, and began to speak of her brother's personal ambition and personal qualities; to relate anecdotes of his signal success at Eton and at Oxford; to expatiate on her own devotion to him, and the great expectations founded by all his family upon his high character and splendid abilities. She added that he had the finest temper in the world, and that he ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... house has been acquired by trustees, and is open to anyone on the payment of a shilling. It contains various Carlylean relics: letters, scraps of manuscript, furniture, pictures, etc., and attracts visitors from all parts of the world. There is no need to expatiate on the life of the philosopher; it belongs not to Chelsea, but to the English-speaking peoples of all countries. Here came to see him Leigh Hunt, who lived only in the next street, and Emerson from across the Atlantic; such diverse natures as Harriet Martineau ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... slaves.[FOOTNOTE: According to Count Wodzinski she married a country gentleman, and subsequently became blind.] As the circumstances of the case and the motives of the parties are unknown to me, and as a biographer ought not to take the same liberties as a novelist, I shall neither expatiate on the fickleness and mercenariness of woman, nor attempt to describe the feelings of our unfortunate hero robbed of his ideal, but leave the reader to make his own reflections ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... need not expatiate on it, and you will understand the sort of place that Mayes fled to, and how it suited him. He was a man of far greater ability than any of the coarse scoundrels in power, and he was worse than ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... elongating, that the lips have grown harder and more prominent, that the legs and feet are daily altering their shape, and that the hair is beginning to change into stubs of feathers. And till the probability of so wonderful a conversion can be shewn, it is surely lost time and lost eloquence to expatiate on the happiness of man in such a state; to describe his powers, both of running and flying, to paint him in a condition where all narrow luxuries would be contemned, where he would be employed only in collecting the necessaries of life, and where, consequently, ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus |
