"Nonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are with your nonsense again," Pao Ch'ai rejoined laughingly; "is a pill a thing to be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... professional cool ways, "there is a sisterhood, that I am told offer to do things like this. I never sent to them, for I only heard of it a short time ago; but if you have no objection to crosses, and caps, and ritualistic nonsense in its highest flower, I have no doubt, that they will let you have a sister, and that ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... and accents hear![66] So while she varies the impassion'd song, Alternate motions on the bosom throng! 30 As heavenly Milton[67] guides her magic voice, And virtue thus convey'd allures the choice. Discard soft nonsense in a slavish tongue, The strain insipid, and the thought unknown; From truth and nature form the unerring test; 35 Be what is manly, chaste, and good the best! 'Tis not to ape the songsters of the groves, Through all the quiverings of their wanton loves; 'Tis not the enfeebled thrill, or warbled ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... readers exclaim, "Nonsense, to talk of feeding the immortal mind, with flowers! For one, I think people may find some more useful employment than that of persuading their fellow beings to spend the precious hours of this short life upon these ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... a great deal of very vile nonsense talked upon both sides of the matter: tearing divines reducing life to the dimensions of a mere funeral procession, so short as to be hardly decent; and melancholy unbelievers yearning for the tomb as if it were a world too far away. Both sides must feel a little ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... orders to quit the Plymouth Adventure. He was a proper seaman, Ned Rackham by name, who had deserted from the Royal Navy, after being flogged and keel-hauled for some trifling offense. Rumor had it that he was able to enforce respect from Blackbeard and would stand none of his infernal nonsense. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Clay had just entered the room, and had forgotten that her daughter objected strongly to this shortening of her name, which it was one of her father's aggravating habits to do. 'Oh Sarah,' she cried, 'don't talk such nonsense, and before Naomi, too! Some must be poor an' some rich. It's always been so, and always will be so, an' it's flyin' in the face o' Providence not to be thankful that you're not poor; an' with that lovely gown on, too. 'Ow could you earn enough money to buy a gown like ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... say we must read to gain knowledge, and gain knowledge to make us happy and be admired. Mere jargon! Is there any such thing as happiness in this world? No. And as for admiration, I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... Tarpeia are improbable; amongst them that which is told by Antigonus, that she was the daughter of Tatius the Sabine leader, abducted by Romulus, and treated by her father as is related above. Simylus the poet talks utter nonsense when he says that it was not the Sabines but the Gauls to whom Tarpeia betrayed the Capitol, because she was in love with their king. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... the practical jumble of Antoninus Martyr is the systematic nonsense of Cosmas, who invented or worked out a theory and scheme of the world, a "Christian topography," which required nothing more than a complete disuse of human reason. His assurance was equal ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... "Nonsense, Mandy! The sky's as blue as blue! There's not a cloud anywhere!" Arethusa dismissed the idea with laughter. "Don't be such ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... over his books, he talked to me quite kindly, and never made the least game of me, for all I must look like a fool in his eyes, who has seen the snow all his life. And then Charles, who is so full of fun and nonsense, and who I always thought could not abide me, he spoke to me as if he was sorry for me, and made it out that we were both ignorant alike; and when I remembered how I had looked at them, and behaved to them, I felt as if my heart would break. Ellen is always so good, ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... you talk such nonsense, Corrie!" said Alice, laughing. "Down, Toozle; silence, sir. Go, my dear Poopy, and put on another frock, and make haste, for I've ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... more obviously in the Hebrew. You observe that in the former verse the words 'because of' are a supplement inserted by our translators, because they did not exactly know what to make of the bare words as they stood. 'His strength, I will wait upon Thee,' is, of course, nonsense; but a very slight alteration of a single letter, which has the sanction of several good authorities, both in manuscripts and translations, gives an appropriate and beautiful meaning, and brings the two verses ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Angelo was without money when a creditor of the sort that stands no nonsense, threatened him with arrest unless he paid his debt immediately. This creditor had brought a police officer with him, and Angelo was relieved to see Antipholus of Ephesus coming out of the house where he had been dining because ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... so far, Godfrey Monk's lips. "Not superstitious!" he raved out. "You are worse than that, Emma—a fool. How dare you bring your nonsense here? There's ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... the boy and give him a kiss to show that he has been a good lad. He has done his duty, as a Stukely ought to do, and that should be enough for all of us. But let us have no nonsense talked. What will the country come to if everyone who does his duty as it should be done expects to be called a hero, and I know not what besides? The prince is safe, and the boy likewise. Now off to bed with him, and no more nonsense to be talked ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... reader, he could not himself find a perfect rest therein. Nothing can impart this to the reflective and inquiring mind but truth. Hence, even Spinoza finds himself constrained to speak of the duty of love to God, and so forth; all of which, according to his own conclusion, is irrelative nonsense. ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... perpetually, without the least intermission. They laugh to hear me say that one unkind word would destroy all the satisfaction of my life, and that I should expect our kindness should increase every day, if it were possible, but never lessen. All this is perfect nonsense in their opinion; but I should not doubt the convincing them if I could hope to be so happy ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... actors succeeded full-grown performers, who have since continued to play interludes of almost every description. Indeed, this theatre is the receptacle of all the nonsense imaginable; nothing is too absurd or too low for its stage. Here are collected all the trivial expressions to be met with in this great city, whether made use of in the markets, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... George's book "Progress and Poverty"? It is more damneder nonsense than poor Rousseau's blether. And to think of the popularity of the book! But I ought to be grateful, as I can cut and come again at this ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... nonsense. She will. She told me herself that she has come to Ballymoy for the express purpose of murdering another husband. She said she wanted quiet and security from interruption in order to ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... her. The girls were singing songs and amusing themselves in the parlor, and Marian took off her hat and made herself at home with them. She sang several songs, and then got to 'cutting up' and did some of those dances she's picked up somewhere—did them well too. But with all her nonsense she has a lot of good common sense, and she will find a place for herself. She will get married one of these ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... and she said: Aye! Chaturika told me of thy error. But trust her not, when she speaks of me, for she is a flatterer. And yet, thy crime was venial, and one easily forgiven: for she is very pretty, as I am not. But we are wandering from the point, and wasting time, and talking nonsense. Forget us both, and listen with attention, and I will begin all over again. And I swept away her beginning with a wave of my hand, and I exclaimed: It is useless, for I can listen at present to absolutely ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... [He considers who are friends to the company, and speaks well where he is sure to hear of it again.] He can listen to a foolish discourse with an applausive attention, and conceal his laughter at nonsense. Silly men much honour and esteem him, because by his fair reasoning with them as with men of understanding, he puts them into an erroneous opinion of themselves, and makes them forwarder hereafter to their own discovery. He is ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... nonsense—I cannot tell whether I am or not—it is because my wits wander with my eyes to gaze at you through the leaves of the wild white rose under which you are asleep. Loveliest of faces, may no gentlest wind of thought ripple thy perfect calm, until I have said what I must, and laid it where ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... innumerable testimonies that those histrions spoke and told endless nonsense; they have been often enough reproached with it for no doubt to remain as to their talking. Then there is superabundant proof of the relish with which men enjoyed, in the Middle Ages, silly, teazing or puzzling answers; the questioner remaining at the end rolled up in the repartees, gasping ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... for everybody else that they should. That appears to me to be unanswerable. You didn't start in with the idea of making those poor things just like you, I suppose. You can't train a cart-horse to win the Derby. Yet all their nonsense about equality rests on the theory that you can. You can't make a good judge out of a criminal, no matter how the criminal repents of his crimes. He's not been born the intellectual equal of the man who's born to judge him. His mind ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... "Nonsense. Blackmail is saying you'll tell unless you are given money. Now, there's nothing I could tell, because I don't ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... the first place, 'Oh for pity's sake don't carry off the person in all Northampton who amuses me most!' I would have said in the second place, 'Nonsense! the boy is doing very well. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... "Nonsense, Elise! She is but a child, and I beg you will not prematurely magnify her into a woman. There are so few unaffected, natural children in this generation, that it is as refreshing to contemplate our little girl's guileless purity and ingenuous ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... to say what she wants or doesn't want!" exclaimed the man savagely. "I shall look to you to bring the girl round to your way of thinking, without any nonsense. Do you ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... might have mentioned that Taylor the Water-Poet cites The Hundred Merry Tales as one of the authorities employed by him in the composition of his Sir Gregory Nonsense His Newes from No Place, 1622 (Taylor's Works, 1630), and see also Epistle Dedicatory ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... cancelling the postage-stamp. "Lulu!" he exclaimed. "I should like to know if that great strapping girl isn't out of her cradle yet! I suppose Miss Louisa will think that belongs to her, but I saw her christened and I heard the name the minister gave her, and it was n't 'Lulu,' or any such baby nonsense." And so saying, he gave it a fling to the box marked P, as if it burned his fingers. Why a grown-up young woman allowed herself to be cheapened in the way so many of them do by the use of names which become them as well as the frock of a ten-year-old schoolgirl would become a graduate of the ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... has the fact of this bottle containing an emetic to do with my swallowing its contents?' inquired the lady. 'Why, everything, answered her involuntary host, quietly; 'you have swallowed my pearl, and this, being a powerful emetic, will compel you to disgorge it. Come now, no nonsense, madam,' (still more quietly and still more firmly,) 'or you will compel me to communicate with the police.' The word police, that magically terrible word to the evil- doer, terminated the dialogue. The woman (who proved to be an adventuress of the most 'fashionable' ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... "Pooh! mere nonsense! I'll not hear of governessing. Don't mention it again. It is rather too feminine a fancy. I have finished breakfast. Ring the bell. Put all crotchets out of your head, and run away ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... one who was afraid of infection and was singularly ignorant on questions of health; she knew little or nothing of medicine and never believed in doctors; she made an exception of Sir James Simpson, who was her friend. She told me that he had said there was a great deal of nonsense talked about health ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... "Nonsense. Chriss and I will think it a bit of fun—oh, you don't know us yet. So little happens in our lives that your coming will be quite an event; so that is settled." And Bessie extended a plump little hand in token of her good will, ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... work. He will shake all that nonsense to blazes when he finds himself out under the moon with the swag on one side and the gallows ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... "What nonsense!" said Bruin, "this is not a royal palace: I never saw such a filthy place in my life; and you are no royal children, you little ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... beware! for he is full of guile. But once when he Count Luie did attack I counter-thrust did give with my deft pen; And though I flayed him in my treachant style, He, being slow of wit, did know it not; And as "Old Fogy" he doth often spout His forthy nonsense in the daily press. But now I speak in no uncertain terms Of our great President; for I and he Are intimates as only those can be We meet on terms of mental equity. Hence trust in me! For I will quick advise Him as to matters in these lovely Isles. Sweet friends, there is a bond which holds us fast: ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... this nonsense he wrote; The fighter (an editor) fote; The swimmer, he swam; The skimmer, he skam; And the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... not sufficient motive power of passionate thought, no typographical aids will make anything of this sort of verse but metrical nonsense—which it nearly always is—even in Cowley, whose brilliant wit and ingenuity are strangely out of harmony ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Highness, that he is!' exclaimed the girl. 'And Fritz is as honest as he. And as for all they said, it was just talk and nonsense. When countryfolk get gossiping, they go on, I do assure you, for the fun; they don't as much as think of what they say. If you went to the next farm, it's my belief you would hear ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the man's face astonished. "What nonsense, Gomez!" he exclaimed. "Do you know what you are talking about! Why, I'm tired out, and almost starved. Here I am and here I shall stop, unless your mistress is as inhospitable ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that!" said the Baron, on hearing of his daughter's strong measures, "I will have no nonsense ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to tell you," he said. "Really I am delighted to see you. But you look rather white and pulled down; no wonder after that fever. And there is to be no nonsense about this visit. It is June now, you stop here till you are fit to begin work again. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... nonsense she was already prepared for a variety of inventional talk from him. As they started down from the pass in single file, she leading, the sun sank behind the hills, leaving the Eternal Painter, unhindered by a furnace glare in the centre of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... it the other way. I'll go down, hand up the kid, and then you shall pull me back. Nonsense! I'm not bothered with nerves. Shan't mind in ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... a worthless thing—only Tom had not thought so. He had loved her. Sam Willard liked her, but if she had not gone out with him on Sunday evening after church, he would have asked somebody else to go, and laughed and talked nonsense and enjoyed himself just the same, scarcely heeding the difference of his companion. Sam was never free on Saturday evening as Tom used to be. She wondered what Tom did with his Saturdays now. She would like, unseen herself, to see Tom for just a moment. She wondered ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... achievements of foreigners in order to make them appear ridiculous. Over twenty years ago a writer in one of our high-class magazines informed an astonished world that "the Wagner-bubble has burst!" and the preposterous nonsense has been repeated again and again in one form or another ever since. Quite recently we read in one of our leading English dailies the following sentences: "... Among many of the best-known critics there is a general consensus of opinion that with the completion of Strauss' important ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... kingdom, inane paper puppets bespangled with impossible sentiment, tinsel and rags which are driven about like chaff by the wind-puffs of romance. The advent of the Amadises is the coming of the Kingdom of Nonsense, the sign that the last days of chivalric romance have come; a little more, and the Licentiate Alonzo Perez will take his seat in Don Quixote's library, and Nicholas the Barber light ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... safe-conduct too, and the fool got drunk. And if we have good, warm blood in us we all get drunk sooner or later. Yes, and please God my time will come, but may the Saints send me far from Valmy! You think I'm talking nonsense, Uncle; but Monsieur de Perche always let me talk. He said it was better to let blow at the bung than burst ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... grumble and fall out with me for not writing, you will certainly be in some degree justified; for I think it must be near upon three weeks since I wrote to you, which is a sin and a shame. To say that I have not had time to write is nonsense, for in three weeks there are too many days, hours, and minutes, for me to fancy that I really had not had sufficient leisure, yet it has almost seemed as if I had not. I have been constantly driving out to the farm, to watch the progress of the painting, whitewashing, etc., ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... "Nonsense ... nonsense.... There are injuries that can only be wiped out in blood. And, when a great country like ours has received a slap in the face like that of 1870, it can wait forty years, fifty years, but a day comes ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... "Nonsense, Nan!" said Hetty, goodnaturedly: "what put such an idea into your head? Haven't I ridden Polly many ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... what nonsense they teach at your school! When mother bends her face down to kiss us does ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... child," said the wife, "but it is on a par with everything else you do. You have no perception of what is right. I don't pretend to be a good mother, but I don't talk nonsense to Sibyl. She ought not to speak about nurse and governess before servants, and it is disgraceful of her to drag the footman and his concerns into the conversation at dinner. She ought not, also, to boast about ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... "Nonsense!" she said. "I didna mean to say anything unkind. Christie mustna be so testy. Don't tell me that you like milk better than tea. Christie will enjoy hers all the better if you take one too." And ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... to ask him if he really meant to say that nothing ever befell these young women who were working all day side by side with people of the other sex. Did their thoughts never wander from their work? The guide assured Mr. Lennox that there was no time to think of such nonsense in the factory, and, anxious to vindicate the honour of the establishment, he declared that any who took the smallest liberty with any female would be instantly dismissed from the works. The ministers listened approvingly, although they seemed to think the subject might have been avoided. ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... a way to make him sell—some bribe, something. There, there," and his enthusiasm and eagerness vanished in a moment, and the broken look came back upon his face. "It's all nonsense; I am talking impossibilities—a little weak in my mind, I suppose. Forget it, there's a good fellow; say nothing about it. And so you buried them? Ah, me! ah, me! And George did chief mourner. I suppose he blubbered freely; he always could blubber freely when he liked. I remember ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Kean's head being stuffed with such nonsense until it bursts?" she cried, breaking off suddenly as the door opened and Judy herself ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... meet Mr. Trewitt for settlement, he said he would go with me, as he wanted money. Opposite the custom house we met Mr. Trewitt, who said, 'Well, captain, I have bought you.' Mr. Grice said, 'Let us have no nonsense; go and settle with him.' Angry words passed between them, one saying he had bought me, and the other denying that he had or could, as I had bought myself already. We all went to Mr. Grice's dwelling house; there Mr. Trewitt settled with me about ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... Arabella's large black eyes, and a bright red spot on Mildred's cheek, were the only emotions manifested by the young girls, and Mrs. Greenfield proceeded: "Of course, I wouldn't submit to it—my daughter spelling baker, and all that nonsense, so I took her away at once. It was my wish that Mildred should remain, but husband, who is peculiar, wouldn't hear of it, and said she should go where Arabella did, so I've brought ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you — this? Look around you and be sorry you're not living in an attic, With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent. I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters; ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... looked so bright and mocking, as if she were laughing at something all the time.—Poor, dear child! could she not talk as she liked? It was a great blessing she could be bright, poor lamb, with such a parting before her!—She was so grown-up, and patronising, and superior!—Tut! tut! Nonsense! Peggy had come from a boarding-school, and her ways were different from theirs—that was all. They must not take stupid notions, but be kind and friendly, and make the poor girl ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... itself by the eyes half shut, sleepy, stupid, inflamed. An idiot smile, a ridiculous surliness, an affected bravado, disgraces the bloated countenance. The mouth open tumbles out nonsense in heaps, without articulation enough for any ear to take it in, and unworthy of attention, if it could be taken In. The head seems too heavy for the neck. The arms dangle from the shoulders; as if they were almost cut ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... through the air? Supposing you able to talk with him, could you represent the same unto him other than by the conceit of gliding through water with most delightsome swiftness and directness? To talk of an element wherein he had no experience should be simply so much nonsense to him. Now, it may be—take me not, I pray you, as meaning it must be—that all that shall be found in Heaven differs as greatly from what is found on earth as the water differs from the air. Concerning these matters, I take it, God teaches us by likening them ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... of acrobatic nonsense that the high school boys ever had seen. The clowns, entering into the spirit of the moment, grew wonderfully funny. They sang songs and told stories, while the acrobats hurled themselves into a mad whirl of somersaults, cartwheels ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... just as ours does; he hates the same things that we hate, but his nerves are of iron and his body is under his full control. He's a splendid man, I tell you! Why, think of it! here is a man with ideals, and no nonsense about him; educated and from the people, simple, yet all there... What more do ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... well. Miss Crosbie had a great deal to tell about London and her journey down into the country; and soon after dinner the children had leave to go to their play-room. They were not in the humour to do much good there: they began with talking nonsense, and finished off with getting pettish with each other. Henry said that he did not want to hear any more of Miss Crosbie and her finery. Lucy called him cross; and Emily said that he was not to hinder them talking of what they pleased. They were called ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... particular to the general—though it lead to a fine crop of errors, should at least help to counterbalance the psychological superficiality of the deductive method; to counterbalance, for example, the nonsense of those well-meaning persons who go routing about among the poor in search of evil, and suppose that they can chain it up with little laws. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... as the men wanted something to eat, Davy told them to dig up some potatoes, while he went and shot six rabbits. When he returned with his game, the men said they could not find any potatoes. He said, "That's all nonsense," and went himself to the garden; but he could not find one potato. The blackfellows had shipped the whole crop in their canoes, so that there was nothing ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... I'm lookin' at,' returned Mrs. Bounder, with a broad smile at him. 'She ain't scared by no nonsense from duin' what she's got to du. Don't you be scared neither; houses don't make the folks that live in 'em. But what I'm thinkin' of is, they'll want lots o' help to git along with their movin'. Christopher, do you know there's a big box ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... "Forgive you? Nonsense! The feeling does your heart infinite credit, though a little counsel with your head would show you that ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... Such ribald nonsense, however, was unfair to a navy which had done magnificently well until smothered and suppressed by sheer weight of numbers. It was in January, 1815, that Captain Decatur finally sailed out of New York harbor in the hope of taking the President past the blockading division which ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... "Nonsense! Why not see the flapper herself? I'm going to bike over there on my Rudge, erb round till I find the street, and then skid like hell right on to her doorstep. I shall lie there in mute agony until ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... "What nonsense!" she said gently. "You are not going to die at home or anywhere yet. Why, Will is going to make a big strike, and take you home to live in style all ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... sich fussy people," says Mrs. Brown; "I wouldn't railly put up with all her dern'd nonsense, ef she wa'n't so poorly, so weak in her mind and body, and so good about paying for her work. No, I declare I wouldn't," said ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... resolute liar cannot lie more than once in every three sentences. Folly is more engrossing; for we could prove from the present Elegy that it is possible to write two sentences of pure nonsense out of three. A more faithful calculation would bring us to ninety-nine out of every hundred; or—as the present consists of only fifty-five stanzas—leaving about five readable lines in the entire.... A Mr. Keats, who had left a decent calling for the melancholy trade ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... as her manner was, interspersing her narrative with baby nonsense and endearments, and Mr Robins forgot his errand, which was, after all, only a pretext, and stood half-listening, and more than half back in the old days of memory, and once he so far forgot himself as to snap his fingers at the child, and touch one of ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... the Long Hall, of course," cut in Rupert, as usual ignoring their nonsense. "And the old summer drawing-room. But we can shut up the dining-room and the ball-room. We'll eat in the kitchen, and that and ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... swallowing great spoonfuls of hot bread-and-milk, against which—faint though I was and famished—my gorge rose. Also the ordeal of gulping it under four pairs of eyes was not a light one. But Miss Belcher insisted, and Miss Belcher stood no nonsense. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... "Nonsense," said Kate, really irritated. "I shall like you if Honora does. Let me help you dress, Honora dear. Are you tired or happy that your ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... him hard an' then I says to him, I says, 'Well, what did you wake me up for?' 'No one ever felt nothin' like this,' he says; 'I've got two appendixes an' I can feel another comin' in my back.' 'Elijah,' I said, 'don't talk nonsense. You've been an' woke me up an' now I'm woke up what do you want me to do?' I leaned over him as I said it an' let a little hot candle grease drip on his neck an' he give a yowl an' straightened out an' then give ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... affectation. A man's way may be weary if he is tired or weak; but not even then should it be so called, when he has just been spoken of as weary himself, or as walking wearily; and weary as applied descriptively to a village street is almost nonsense. These defects are not important, but they arrest attention as being at the very opening of the story. And it must be confessed that for a chapter or two "A Point of Honor" is rather slight in texture and ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... "Nonsense!" cried the Cowherd; "a buffalo for a pipkin! Whoever heard of such a price? And what on earth could you do with a buffalo when you got it? Why, the pipkin was about as ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... compromise of marriage was suggested. But how could public justice be pacified for the clerk's unfortunate homicide of Reyes, by a female cousin of the deceased man engaging to love, honor, and obey the clerk for life? Kate could not see her way through this logic. 'Nonsense, my friend,' said Urquiza, 'you don't comprehend. As it stands, the affair is a murder, and hanging the penalty. But, if you marry into the murdered man's house, then it becomes a little family murder, all quiet and comfortable amongst ourselves. What ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... certain great poet of the eighteenth century retorted impromptu upon a certain great lord in a double-rhymed and triple-punned repartee. Champion and Shotwell, in happy alternation, recited two or three incredible nonsense speeches attributed to early local celebrities, and Garnet and Halliday gave the unpublished inside histories of three or four hitherto inexplicable facts, or seeming facts, in the personal or political relations of Marshall, Jackson, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... 'Nonsense,' exclaimed Bessie. 'Why, if all old Pew's school was to march in upon her, without a moment's notice Aunt Betsy would not be put out of the way one little bit. If Queen Victoria were to drop in unexpectedly to luncheon, my aunt would be as cool as one of her own ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... or our bread any the cheaper for it?" The captain was silent, and my apologist continued, "Do you believe, sir, if Mr. Hunt had given away his corn, that the millers or the bakers would have sold it to us any the cheaper? then let us have no more of your nonsense; what would you have said if your old uncle, the tobacconist, had sold his tobacco for one shilling a pound while other people were selling it at three shillings a pound?" As his scheme did not answer, the captain slunk ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... "Nonsense," replied Fallowfield; "don't be so ungrateful. You don't know what you owe to those anxious parents. It helps you enormously, being the objects of perpetual warnings from husbands and chaperons, the first considering ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... end to this kind of dodge, nor will be apparently till there is an end of the class which tries it on; and a great many of the Democrats will be amused and absorbed by it from time to time. They call this sort of nonsense "practical;" it SEEMS like doing something, while the steady propaganda of a principle which must prevail in the end is, according to them, doing nothing, and is unpractical. For the rest, it is not likely ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... not seem to have any of that nonsense," said Jack, "and she is really very pleasant company. By the way," with a smile, "she did invite me to the house, but I guess you ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... her shapely, well-shod foot petulantly. "Rubbish!" she exclaimed. "You don't suppose I believe that nonsense, do you?" ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... man who did not wince and writhe under the hatred and contempt of the other sex. I am not a profound believer in innate ideas, if they are such ridiculous ones as metaphysicians talk of—namely, that two and two make four, and such sort of nonsense—but I do believe in certain innate principles and feelings, that govern our thoughts and actions as powerfully and irresistibly as instinct impels the brute creation; and that one of those principles is an innate desire to please and secure the good opinion of the opposite sex, born ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... again I'll hit you with my paddle," threatened Randy. "I won't stand any nonsense from ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... as "Titus Andronicus" or "Timon" or "The Taming of the Shrew." Unfortunately for the would-be judges, Coleridge did not guide their opinions of "Henry V."; he hardly mentioned the play, and so they all write the absurdest nonsense about it, praising because praise of Shakespeare has come to be the fashion, and also no doubt because his bad work is more on the level of their intelligence ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... drawing a distinction between a "poison" and a "destructive thing." It explains why nitrogen is not a poison and why carbonic acid is, although neither can support life. This point the lecturer illustrated. A poison must be capable of destroying life. It was nonsense to talk of a "deadly poison." If a body be a poison, it is deadly; if it be not deadly, it is not a poison. Three illustrations of the chemical actions of poisons were selected. The first was sulphuric acid. Here the molecular death of the part to which the acid was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... fiddle-de-dee nonsense about your life being wrecked. Gilbert, we were children together, we were lad and lass together, and perhaps, if we both live, we may be old people together—but we mustn't be man and woman together; ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... old chap, don't talk like that," cried Bob, taking his hand. "Don't talk such wild nonsense and bosh. Lie down and have a good sleep. I say, Mr Johnson, I wish old Bolter ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... weren't for my dictionary I should have given up long ago. When too many tiresome people dine here in the evening—or when they worry me from home—I take a column. But generally half a column's enough—good tough Persian roots, and no nonsense. Oh! of course I can read Hafiz and Omar Khayyam, and all that kind of thing. But that's the whipped cream. That don't count. What one wants is something to set one's teeth in. Latin verse will do. Last ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was only nonsense—silly, romantic nonsense, that I'd got out of books. I used to make up stories about myself joining Sir Knight on some expedition, dressed as a boy, and he not recognizing me." She laughed a little. "I constantly saved his life, of course! ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... she is talking about. These high-flown lectures and discussions have filled all their heads with nonsense. It will have to be rooted out when they come to face the world. No use to oppose her now. Nothing but experience will teach her. She must just be humoured for the present. They have all run a little wild in their notions. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... nonsense," said Thorndyke. "Jellicoe is the trustee for his absent client, and, if he thinks that client is alive, it is his duty to keep the estate intact; and he knows that perfectly well. We may take it that Jellicoe is of the same opinion as I am: ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... your looks and catching air, To think of Vaughan! You fool! You know, You might, with ordinary care, Ev'n yet be Lady Clitheroe. You're sure he'll do great things some day! Nonsense, he won't; he's dress'd too well. Dines with the Sterling Club, they say; Not commonly respectable! Half Puritan, half Cavalier! His curly hair I think's a wig; And, for his fortune, why my Dear, 'Tis not enough to keep a gig. ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... I stole up to-day and looked over his shoulder. He was writing the history of our discussion. It was the same old nonsense about the eternity of forms. But as I continued to read, he wrote down the practical test I had made with the poker. Now this is unfair and untrue. I made no test. In falling he struck his ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... "Nonsense! I was never so well. Your pills have a most amazing effect on me. I feel so lively, so vigorous. When I think how completely foundered I ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... "Nonsense; it's time he was dressed." The master's voice was gruffly good-natured. "Hello, Dextry! Hey! Open up for ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... nonsense!" he exclaimed irascibly. "When you're a young little thing you ought to be wearing pretty clothes. It doesn't do your mother any good, your going ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Pulitzer, "but it's absolute nonsense, except about the editorial page. Have you got the clipping with you? I would like to hear what that smart young man has got to say about ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... paid to regain the fair Cyrene's favour, but I am convinced that Benjamin Vajdar is at the bottom of it all. The prince bases his suit for a separation on his wife's alleged epileptic attacks and consequent unfitness for the wedded state. Of course that is all nonsense. I am not an epileptic, nor wont to bite or scratch people; but I can't approach this Cagliari without experiencing a sort of foaming at the mouth and a twitching of the muscles, as if I must pitch into the ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... you. I tell ye now, it's all o' the six figures I've sayed. In coorse, it's their interest to make it out small as they possibly can; seein' as our share's to be a percentage. I know better now; an' knowin' it, an't agoin' to stan' none o' theer nonsense. Neyther shud you, Bill. We both o' us are 'bout to risk the same as any ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... death being world-wide on the other—viz. the Son of God—then we shall not stumble at the thought that He died for all, because He died for each. I know that if you only regard Jesus Christ as human I am talking utter nonsense; but I know, too, that if we believe in the divinity of our Lord, there need be nothing to stumble us, but the contrary, in the thought that it was not an abstraction that He died for, that it was not a vague mass of unknown beings, clustered together, but so far ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... among the last, Lord Melbourne. Lord Melbourne did not, I thought, appear to advantage; he showed little wish for conversation with anybody, but seemed trying to banish the thoughts of his reverse by talking nonsense ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... I ask a man who he is, I don't want to know what are his titles, and such nonsense; no, Old Scratch, I want to know what he has written, when he had the curtain up, and whether he's a true son of the drama.—Harkye, don't make yourself uneasy on my account—In my next pantomime, perhaps, I'll let you know who I am, Old ...
— The Dramatist; or Stop Him Who Can! - A Comedy, in Five Acts • Frederick Reynolds
... what everbody else is wearing, and who's got the nicest clothes. And they sit back, and they say, 'What she think she look like with that thing on her haid?'. The other two-thirds? Why, they just go for nonsense, I guess. Those who go for religion are scarce as chicken teeth. Yes sir, they go ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Dick. "But you've got thc answer already. Some pilots say interplanetary, some say guided missiles. A few—a very few—still think it's all nonsense, ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... X. asserts that his name has always been spelt in such and such a way, he is talking nonsense. If his great-grandfather's will is accessible, he will probably find two or three variants in that alone. The great Duke of Wellington, as a younger ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... maid. "Are you going to pour out all your nonsense once more about poetry and the arts, and to crack your fingers and stretch your arms while you spout about the ideal, and beauty, and all your northern madness?—Beauty is not to compare with solid pudding—and what am I!—You have ideas in your brain? What is the use of them? I ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... nonsense, and said, "Be assured I do not fear that Mr Powell will desert us, but he said this morning there ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... yes! He is one of the characters of the regiment. He is the book of nonsense on two very long legs, but he is full of fun and full of goodness. He is not at all Mr. Ray's kind, however. Jack says that Mr. Ray is the man of all others whom he would most expect to come to the front in a general war, and that nothing ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... "Pho! nonsense! Mr Nourse; we'll carry them a little longer," replied the captain, who had been carrying too much sail another way. "Sit down and take a glass of wine with us. You always cry out ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... "You keep out of my way after this or you'll get hurt. I've stood about all of your nonsense ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... 'Nonsense! I'm upwards of sixty, and feel no loss of strength, either bodily or mental. Don't let me hear you talking so. Fifty-five! why, you're quite a ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... masons are at it as they are everywhere, from the Channel to the Mediterranean; for to pull down and rebuild is the permanent recreation of the French. The rock remains. It is put in order whenever a stone falls out of place—no one of weight has talked nonsense here against restoration, for the sense of the past is too strong—but though it is minutely and continually repaired, Old Carcassonne does not change. There is no other set of walls in Europe of ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... the liberty of so far condensing the Morning or the Evening Office as to bring it within the limits of a quarter of an hour. He seeks relief through the lawful channel of rubrical revision, and is only laughed at for his pains. In this busy nineteenth century it is nonsense, he is assured, to spend a dozen years in besieging so obdurate a fortress as the General Convention. The way to secure "shortened services" is to shorten services. This is easy logic, and applicable in more directions than one. Only see how smoothly it runs: If you want hymns that ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... him from the civilised world. But, do what he would, the image of the dead woman lying so near him invariably came between him and the page, and obtruded itself on his mind obstinately. Once he was so exasperated while reading, that he jumped violently off his chair, exclaiming, "This is childish nonsense!" In doing so he tilted the chair over, so that it balanced for an instant on its hind legs, and then fell with an awful crash, which caused him to leap at least three feet forward, clench his fists, and wheel round with a look of fury that would ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... these actors are so moderate in their pathos; for as there is nothing interesting, either in the piece or its situations, the more noise they made about it, the more ridiculous they would appear: it might still be endurable, were there any thing gay in this nonsense; but it is most stupidly dull and monotonous. There is in Italy no more comedy than tragedy; and here again we stand foremost. The only species of comedy peculiar to Italy is harlequinade. A valet, at once a knave, a glutton, and ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... the devil, ask you, what is a born philosopher, save a man of cold desires? And what is a bred philosopher but a man who has survived his desires? A young philosopher? - a cold-blooded youth! An elderly philosopher? —a leuco-phlegmatic old man! Much nonsense, of a verity, ye hear in praise of nothing from your Rajaship's Nine Gems of Science, and from sundry other such ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... nonsense, Henri, when a fresh body is in the house! This lady counted them but now, and there are four; three was the number that I showed the Piedmontese noble whom I led from Aoste, the day ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... guard against conventional thinking and the mass of "inspirational" nonsense which forms the main contribution to the vocational guidance of youth provided in the average schoolroom. The ideals of success usually held up before school children seem to have been drawn from a mixture of Sunday school literature and the prospectuses of efficiency bureaus. ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... daughter? My lawyer told me to-day the assault and battery case is all settled, so it can't be that. Wonder if the Colonel has converted Klutchem as to the proper way of running a bank? No, that's nonsense! Klutchem would skin a flea and sell the tallow, no matter what the Colonel said to him. Coming to dinner! Well, that ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... which are dubbed political economy" (p. 28) could hardly furnish their critics with a finer specimen of that which a hero of the "Dunciad," by the one flash of genius recorded of him, called "clotted nonsense." ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley |
