"Nothings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pews, its fashionable preacher, the ladies a little sleepy after the last night's opera, but dressed in the most elegant morning toilet, and casting furtive glances at Lady ——-'s bonnet and feathers, and at Mrs. ——-'s cashmere shawl or lovely ermine pelisse, and exchanging a few fashionable nothings at the door, as the footmen let down the steps of their gay equipages—the other, solemn, stately, and gloomy, and showing no distinction of rank. The floor covered with kneeling figures—some enveloped in the reboso, others in ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... happened," continued Miss Mitford, "that I merely passed through London that season, and, being detained by some of the thousand and one nothings which are so apt to detain women in the great city, I arrived at the exhibition, in company with a still younger friend, so near the period of closing, that more punctual visitors were moving out, and the doorkeeper actually turned us and our money ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... was formed here, known as THE KNOW-NOTHINGS. And its secrecy was about to destroy it, when that secrecy, under the power of ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... might now glide gently from your arms into those of eternal sleep. Oh! Arthur, I am so happy now—so happy that I scarcely dare to speak, for fear lest I should break the spell, and I feel so good—so much nearer heaven. When I think of all my past life, it seems like a stupid dream full of little nothings, of which I cannot recall any memory except that they were empty and without meaning. But the future is worse than the past, because it looks fair, and snakes always hide in flowers. It makes me afraid. How do I know what the future will bring? I wish that the present—the pleasant, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... constitution, then, demanded in the material upon which it was to work, a combination of qualities such as very few subjects could offer. The events and personages must be real and substantial, for he could not occupy himself seriously with airy nothings and creatures of pure fancy. Yet they must not be such events and personages as history had pourtrayed to us with well-known characters, and all their virtues, faults, foibles, and peculiarities. And, lastly, it was requisite that they should be the common property and ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... I'll rescue you or drown with you," he answered gallantly. What silly nothings these two young people uttered as they made the circuit of that long wood-bordered mill-pond need not be recorded. One at least was just tasting the first sweet illusion of love, and the glassy surface of the water that reflected ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... a funny thing, too? Seems like I never get round to it. I just saw her peeping at me one day through the parlor curtains while I was saying sweet nothings to Girlie on the porch. I guess she was kind of in-ter-ested. She's skinny and pale, Girlie says. Your mother hasn't got any use for her. I bet you, it won't be long before she makes tracks back to Noo York, Dickie. Girlie says she won't be lingering on ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... of the exchange of those sweet nothings that lovers love to dwell upon and the impossibility of any hoped for end to their love making intensified their passion. Little or nothing had been spoken between them, but each knew the other loved. For ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... accredited delegates, and could be none. This met in Decatur on Washington's birthday, 1856. It was a motley assembly, from a political standpoint. It included whigs, democrats, free-soilers, abolitionists, and know-nothings. Said Lincoln: "Of strange, discordant, even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds." Politicians were conspicuously absent, for it would imperil their political orthodoxy to be seen there. Lincoln was the ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... school and time. A faint rustle under the dead leaves caught her quick ear and, stooping down, she uncovered a little snake, languid from the cold. Perhaps he had been on his way to winter quarters and the frost had caught him unaware. Anyway, he was numb and Sarah, murmuring affectionate nothings to him, slipped him into her pocket and then spent a valuable ten minutes poking about among the leaves in the hopes of discovering another, believing implicitly that snakes "always go in pairs." However, if the snake had a companion, diligent search failed to uncover it and Sarah was forced to take ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... be enough left. It is the good-for-nothings that will perish, the fools to whom this life is like a shell to a crab. Those who believe will perish, because their faith will be taken away from them. Those who love the old will perish, because everything will ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... those go see who willI like it not For, say he was a slave to rank and pomp, And all the nothings he is now divorced from By the hard doom of stern necessity: Yet it is sad to mark his altered brow, Where Vanity adjusts her flimsy veil O'er the deep wrinkles of repentant anguish. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... across the mind of Bobby that in these plans of hers he may not always have been the principal, and he could not be sure ... But she talked in nothings, ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... her in quite a different fashion. Surely no one could be more deft, light-handed, practical. Was this the same young woman who had sat in the midst of that absurd outfit and had juggled rather affectedly and self-consciously with tea-urn and sugar-tongs and had palavered in empty nothings with a troop of overdressed and overmannered feather-heads? She was still graceful, still fluent, still endowed with that baffling little air of distinction; but she knew where things were—down to the last strainer or nutmeg-grater—and ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... with the combined effects of exercise and wrath, continued the pursuit, but the pause to say sweet nothings to the second in command was fatal to his success. He had often before had occasion to comment ruefully upon the pace of the quarry, and especially at such times when he felt that he had strung his courage almost up to speaking point. To-day he was just in time ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... youth who now cantered up and took off his cap to the rank, beauty, and fashion, assembled at Whirleypool Windmill. He then proceeded to pay his respects in detail. At length, having exhausted his 'nothings,' and said the same thing over again in a dozen different ways to a dozen different ladies, he gave a slight jerk of the head to Tom Towler, who forthwith whistled his hounds together, and attended by the whips, bustled from ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... greater space in my life than all the rest of my days. When I think of the past, it is there where my thoughts travel at once. How relate to you the particulars of our happiness? When destiny protects us, happiness is composed of a thousand charming nothings that the hearts of others cannot understand. During those three months I was entirely happy; I wished to live for ever in this charming retreat for him that I loved a thousand times more than myself. I wished to abandon the opera, that opera that ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... among the "best people of the County"—a renewal of the chatter, high-pitched, pleasant nothings, and ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... gifted with some far-seeing vision, they could see the men who helped them to become criminals, abroad and at ease, riding or driving in the free sunlight, bending over jeweled fingers or whispering pretty nothings into dainty ears, as much approved by all the world as though their records were as pure as snow. Servitude or convent walls for one, even after she has repented; the world and its gaieties for the other, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... He put the self-same query, but the man Not turning round, nor looking at him, said: 'Friend, he that labours for the sparrow-hawk Has little time for idle questioners.' Whereat Geraint flashed into sudden spleen: 'A thousand pips eat up your sparrow-hawk! Tits, wrens, and all winged nothings peck him dead! Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg The murmur of the world! What is it to me? O wretched set of sparrows, one and all, Who pipe of nothing but of sparrow-hawks! Speak, if ye be not like the rest, hawk-mad, Where can I get ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... every way unjust. The nothings, or somethings, which form the staple of the book, are not laboured; and they are presented without the semblance of pomp or pretension. ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... come and look at our tapestry?" said Aldous to his neighbour, after a few nothings had passed between them as to the weather and her walk from Mellor. "I think you would admire it, and I am afraid my grandfather will be a few minutes yet. He hoped to get home earlier than this, but his Board ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... set hath ceased—the bows Of fiddlers taste a brief repose, While light along the painted floor, Arm within arm, the couples stray, Talking their stock of nothings o'er, Till—nothing's left at last to say. When lo!—most opportunely sent— Two Exquisites, a he and she, Just brought from Dandyland, and meant For Fashion's grand Menagerie, Entered the room—and scarce were there When all flocked round them, glad to stare At ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... live, beyond the touch of time and the vicissitudes of fate, those gracious and beautiful spirits in whom the race sees its noblest hopes come true, its instinctive faith in itself justified. These spirits are not airy nothings, woven of the unsubstantial gossamer of which dreams are made; they are born of a deep insight into the possibilities of the soul, and a rational faith in their reality. Prospero is as real as Trinculo, and Rosalind as true as Cressida. These ideal persons are not necessarily fortunate in their ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... but he was not splendid. And he seems really to have thrown himself with his customary vigour into his Armenian studies; but of those I speak elsewhere. They were for the day: in the evening, he tells Moore, "I do one of many nothings—either at the theatres, or some of the conversaziones, which are like our routs, or rather worse, for the women sit in a semi-circle by the lady of the mansion, and the men stand about the room. To be sure, there is one improvement upon ours—instead ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Germany, now. She's got thousands of aristocrats whose only means of existence is the army. They're deadly poor, and life's deadly slow. So they hope for a war. They look for war as a chance of getting on. Till there's a war they are idle good-for-nothings. When there's a war, they are leaders and commanders. There you are, then—they ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... you have good imaginations, many of you would probably at once fall to considering whether you are capable of taking wild flights into impossible realms of thought and evolving unrealities out of airy nothings. You would compare yourself with great imaginative writers, such as Stevenson, Poe, De Quincey, and judge your power of imagination by your ability to produce such tales ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... tendered—from a patch-work quilt to a hem-stitched handkerchief. "You can't have too many of some things," she remarked to Esther. But later she reversed this statement. Match-safes, photograph-frames, and pretty nothings ...
— Different Girls • Various
... his endeavours to say a few polite nothings to Charlotte De Stancy, in the course of which he drew from his pocket his new silk handkerchief. By some chance a card came out with the handkerchief, and fluttered downwards. His momentary instinct was to make a grasp at the card and conceal ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... on your pillow, babbling empty nothings, better would it have been for you, perhaps, if you had dropped the weary burden of your life into the kindly arms of death then and there than to struggle onward into the dark mystery which lay entombed ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... you, Anne," he said. He looked over his shoulder to see if any one was within the sound of his voice, which he took the precaution to lower to what had always been a successful tone in days when he was considered quite an excellent purveyor of sweet nothings in dim hallways, shady nooks and unpopulated stairways. "I want you to marry me right away," he went on, but not with that amazing ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... lets drop hints of knowledge concerning little nothings that are none of hers, just to mystify folks. She does strange, annoying things, simply to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... would have taken this party for stupid, or for know-nothings, would have found themselves very much mistaken. Indeed they were far from being dull or sleepy on the subject of Slavery at any rate. They had considered pretty thoroughly how wrongfully they, with all others in similar circumstances, had been year in and year out ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... and his sorrow in double clouds of smoke. The Italian would worship Diana of Ephesus, or the Great African Snake, if its pageantry, or puppet-show, would enable him to get through the day of closed shops and no opera! Yet, contemptible as this restless hunting after nothings is, it would be fortunate for us if we could qualify the severity and constancy of our national toil by some mixture of the lighter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... signify of or belonging to the air, but airy also describes that which seems as if made of air; we speak of airy shapes, airy nothings, where we could not well say aerial; ethereal describes its object as belonging to the upper air, the pure ether, and so, often, heavenly. Sprightly, spiritlike, refers to light, free, cheerful activity of mind and body. That which is lively or animated may be agreeable ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of silence, all his resolves melted into airy nothings at the sound of that sweet soft voice. Tears, the only tears of pleasure that had for years moistened the cheek of the reckless Buccaneer, burst from his eyes: he could not speak; he felt weak as a new-born infant; his limbs trembled; ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... admirers. For Moses could sulk and storm for effect, and clear off as bright as Harpswell Bay after a thunder-storm—for effect also. Moses could play jealous, and make believe all those thousand-and-one shadowy nothings that coquettes, male and female, get up to carry their points with; and so their quarrels and their makings-up were as manifold as the sea-breezes that ruffled the ocean before ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... tired of being a nothing and a nobody in a family of nothings and nobodies. That's what it comes to. I'm tired of being a bump on a log. I'm tired of sitting on the fence and seeing the procession go by. Why can't we go by? Why can't we know people? Why can't we make ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... length of one wall stood an enormous press in mahogany, with sliding-doors. Two of the doors were slightly open, for Folly knew that clothes, like people and flowers, need a lot of air. Leighton caught a glimpse of filmy nothings hanging on racks; of other nothings, mostly white, stacked on deep shelves; of a cluster of hats clinging like orchids to invisible bumps; and last and least, of tiny ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... skipping-rope—and the moor with the sun on it—and about pale green points sticking up out of the black sod. And it was all so alive that Mary talked more than she had ever talked before—and Colin both talked and listened as he had never done either before. And they both began to laugh over nothings as children will when they are happy together. And they laughed so that in the end they were making as much noise as if they had been two ordinary healthy natural ten-year-old creatures—instead of a hard, little, unloving girl and a sickly ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Honorable Frank P. Blair. Most of my neighbors had known me as an officer of the army with Whig proclivities. They had been on the same side, and, on the death of their party, many had become Know-Nothings, or members of the American party. There was a lodge near my new home, and I was invited to join it. I accepted the invitation; was initiated; attended a meeting just one week later, and never ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... own fault, it is so easy to get it vised again overnight." All these impertinencies were only [Greek: pidakos ex hieres olige libas]. Besides all this, Mr Snapley was a miserable monopolizer of pompously advanced nothings. He would not willingly suffer any other man's goose to feed upon the common—he cared for nobody but himself, and every thing that was or he esteemed to be his—his very joints were worked unlike those of another man—he must have had a set of adductors and abductors, of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... corps of sleepers and burden of garments, and the tables yet resound with the rattle and clash of dice. Yet the greater part of the company are not doing anything. They walk about, or yawn tremendously, or pause as they pass each other to exchange idle nothings. Will the weather be fair to-morrow? Are the preparations for the games complete? Do the laws of the Circus in Antioch differ from the laws of the Circus in Rome? Truth is, the young fellows are suffering from ennui. Their heavy work is done; that is, we would find their tablets, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... or philosophic significance of their activity, helped all over Greece in the promulgation of this new gospel of self-interest. Many Sophists no doubt troubled themselves very little with philosophical questions; they were 'agnostics,' know-nothings; all they professed to do was to teach some practical skill of a verbal or rhetorical character. They had nothing to do with the nature or value of ideals; they did not profess to say whether any ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... in degeneracy appears to me pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it, 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... a chance to find it out. Brought up in the expectation of a fortune, bred to idleness as others are to industry, his highest ambition having been to amuse himself creditably and to take life easily, what was to hinder his being one of the multitude of "good-for-nothings" in our modern life? If there had been war, he had spirit enough to carry him into it, and it would have surprised no one to hear that Jack had joined an exploring expedition to the North Pole or the highlands ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... personages promenade at leisure, or only pretend to be doing something. All action and story, all individuality of persons, objects, and events, is merged in a pervading atmosphere of tranquil, sunny repose,—as of a holiday-afternoon. It may seem to us an idle lubberland, a paradise of do-nothings;—Mr. Ruskin sees in it only a "dim, stupid, serene, leguminous enjoyment." But whoever knows Rome will at least recognize in Claude's pictures some reflex of that enchantment that still hangs over the wondrous city, and draws to it generation after generation of pilgrims. In what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... subjugation, both to him who subdues and to him who yields! The wild, unmannerly, and unmanageable colt, the fear of horsemen the country round, finding in you not an enemy, but a friend, receiving his daily food from you, and all those little 'nothings' which go as far with a horse as a woman, to win and retain affection, grows to look upon you as his protector and friend, and testifies in countless ways his fondness for you. So when I saw this horse, with action so free and motion so graceful, amid that storm ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... instinctively their theeing and thouing of the sisters' school, those two women who for nearly twenty years had not addressed a word to each other. Why they detested each other, they hardly knew; so many times, it begins thus, with nothings, with jealousies, with childish rivalries, and then, at length, by dint of seeing each other every day without talking to each other, by dint of casting at each other evil looks, it ferments till it becomes implacable hatred.—Here they were, facing each other, and ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... Marquis he not so glad to see me for dat risson. 'Mon cher Auguste,' he cry, 'you want to be of officier in gardes de corps? You are not afred?'" (Auguste stiffened.) "'I am a St. Gre, Monsieur le Marquis. I am afred of nothings,' I answered. He tek me to the King, I am made lieutenant, the mob come and the King and Queen are carry off to Paris. The King is prisoner, Monsieur le Marquis goes back to the Chateau de St. Gre. France is a republic. Monsieur—que voulez-vous?" (The Sieur ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... want to take up poetry in its most delightful and playful mood, I take up the verses of that remarkable girl of the sixties and seventies, Emily Dickinson, she who was writing her little worthless poetic nothings, or so she was wont to think of them, at a time when the now classical New England group was flourishing around Concord, when Hawthorne was burrowing into the soul of things, Thoreau was refusing to make more pencils ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... which had vanished with the fever that had so recently left him. The awful shapes, the struggles of demoniac men, the processions of strange and beautiful forms, which had visited him in his delirious visions,—all these were airy nothings; but the cave ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... as myself at our failure, and would hardly listen to my thanks. He said it was "nothings," and invited me on the spot to come on board his ship and drink a glass of beer with him. We poked sceptically for a while amongst the bushes, peered without conviction into a ditch or two. There was not a sound: patches of slime glimmered feebly ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... of their mind supplies them with a thousand devices to put an end to it. By questioning the young man as to the material exercise of his art, and as to his studies, Adelaide and her mother emboldened him to talk. The indefinable nothings of their chat, animated by kind feeling, naturally led Hippolyte to flash forth remarks or reflections which showed the character of his habits and of his mind. Trouble had prematurely faded the old lady's face, formerly handsome, no ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... Clarens still point out the spot where its trees stood, calling it by the name which consecrated and survived them. Rousseau has not been particularly fortunate in the preservation of the "local habitations" he has given to "airy nothings." The Prior of Great St. Bernard has cut down some of his woods for the sake of a few casks of wine, and Buonaparte has levelled part of the rocks of Meillerie in improving the road to the Simplon. The road is an excellent one; but I cannot quite agree with a remark which I heard made, that "La ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... debuerit fieri per angelum"—Quaest. 30, Articilus 2. I protest, till now I had thought Gabriel a fellow of some mark and livelihood, not a simple esquire, as I find him. Well, do not break your lay brains, nor I neither, with these curious nothings. They are nuts to our dear friend, whom hoping to see at your first friendly hint that it will be convenient, I end with begging our very kindest loves to Mrs. Gillman. We have had a sorry house of it here. Our spirits have been reduced till we were at hope's end what to do— obliged to quit ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Plessis in a leading part. "... La Plessis has a quartan fever. It is pretty to see her jealous fury when she comes here and finds the child with me. The fuss there is to have my stick or muff to hold! But enough of these nothings...." ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... term a "digresshion"—I started about going for the mail at Dogtrap. Harold Beecham never once missed taking me home on Thursdays, even when his shearing was in full swing and he must have been very busy. He never once uttered a word of love to me—not so much as one of the soft nothings in which young people of opposite sexes often deal without any particular significance. Whether he went to all the bother and waste of time accruing from escorting me home out of gentlemanliness alone, was a mystery to me. I desired to find out, and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... nothings! and that beings can be found, and those too the flower of the land, who, day after day, can act the same parts in the same dull, dreary farce! The officer had discoursed sufficiently about "his intimate friend, the Soudan," and about the chain ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... astronomical and things spiritual. He supposes an objector admits the size as proved, but demurs as to the importance of these heavenly bodies. "They are, perhaps, only unsubstantial froth, mere puffs of air, vapoury nothings." But the astronomer knows their mass and weight, as well as their size: "Long observation has taught him that planets in the neighbourhood of one given heavenly body have been turned out of their course, how, and by what, he is at first quite at a loss to tell but he ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... comfort upon the royalties from the sale of his picture. Mrs. Carey looked around the table searchingly. Her quick wit was tickled by the curious incongruities of the scene; by Richard Lincoln talking small nothings to the Duchess of Bayswater across the rich American; by the genial and smirking Jawkins, seated between Sir John Dacre and that pink of fashion, Colonel Featherstone; by Lady Carringford, who was between the indifferent Colonel and the Duke; by the three members of the artiste class, Prouty, ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... attained that superior wisdom now! He walks, himself a ghost, among the ghosts of the past; and these "airy nothings" nod and smile, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... better than the rest of them—a shouting, singing, smooth-faced, six-foot set they are, who think they inherit the combined wisdom of all their grandfathers but none of their weaknesses; reckless fear-nothings, fit only for ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... public and private education. The fault was far less with Pierrette than with her cousins. It took her an infinite length of time to learn the rudiments. She was called stupid and dull, clumsy and awkward for mere nothings. Incessantly abused in words, the child suffered still more from the harsh looks of her cousins. She acquired the doltish ways of a sheep; she dared not do anything of her own impulse, for all she did was misinterpreted, ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... would impose upon the fact of our relationship, and on your belief that I had plenty of means without the amount you owed me: and so you would join the great army of good-for-nothings in the world. ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... have Mr. March again begin where he had left off, she conversed with the Fairs longer than ever and created half a dozen delays out of pure nothings. So that when she and John were once more alone together he talked hither and yon for a short while before he asked her where the ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... The woman took the two crowns from the hands of her husband, calling him a drunkard, and put them into a little bag, hidden under a heap of old clothes, deploring the misfortune of fathers and mothers who bleed themselves to death for such good-for-nothings. This was the funeral oration of the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... his beloved, they dwelt apart in an ephemeral world where only the prosaic hours when they were separated were unreal. Their realities were smiles, sighs, glances,—the thousand and one nothings that make up the joys and agonies of a lover's ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... a clash of pity and anger in Ian's breast. Pity for Milly's case, anger on account of her whom his inmost being recognized as another, whatever his rational self might say to the matter. He sat down beside his wife and uttered soothing nothings. But she turned upon him eyes of wild despair, the more tragic because it broke through a nature fitted only for the quietest commonplaces of life. She flung herself upon him, clutching him tight, hiding her face ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep— He hath awakened from the dream of life— 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep 345 With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife Invulnerable nothings.—WE decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, 350 And cold hopes swarm like worms ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... rather a difficult person to make love to. It would be a bold young man who whispered sweet nothings into her ear; they'd sound so ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... hurrying sarcasm, worthy of any pen. Burke used to deny its merit, but he was probably trying it b too lofty and ideal a standard. Hazlitt, on the other hand, has praised it overmuch, and perhaps "monstered" some of its "nothings." That it has power is proved by its effects on literature. It did not, we believe, create many robbers, but it created a large robber school in the drama and the novel; for instance, Schiller's "Robbers," Ainsworth's "Rookwood," and "Jack Shepherd," and Bulwer's "Paul Clifford," ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... tawdry, everything had been rubbed clean by that passionate housewife, Grizel. She was on her knees at present ca'ming the hearth-stone a beautiful blue, and sometimes looking round to address her mother, who was busy among her plants and cut flowers. Surely they were know-nothings who called this woman silly, and blind who said she painted. It was a little face all of one color, dingy pale, not chubby, but retaining the soft contours of a child's face, and the features were singularly delicate. She was clad in a soft gray, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... a darned duke on board, but there are some who think they out-duke the dukes, and it's our business to humour 'em. You just duff all you want to, Lord Ernest, they'll swallow anything you do, like honey. Don't bother about a line of conduct: only be genial. Murmur soft nothings to the women; flirt but don't have favourites. Don't be too political with the men: work in plenty of anecdotes about your ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... cunning, and blood-thirsty cruelty. The greatest Indians, chiefs like Logan and Cornstalk, who were capable of deeds of the loftiest and most sublime heroism, were also at times cruel monsters or drunken good-for-nothings. Their meaner followers had only such virtues as belong to the human wolf—stealth, craft, tireless endurance, and the courage that prefers to prey on the helpless, but will fight to the death without flinching ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... you." And very gently, with a firm hand under one arm, he escorted her to the bench where Larry sat scribbling nothings. He then raised his hat and returned ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... eyes, I suppose: and the good old fellow knows it, and won't betray her, and so shams tyrant. Just like him!" But—that Mary Armsworth should care for him! Vain fellow that he was to fancy it! And yet, when he began to put things together, little silences, little looks, little nothings, which all together might make something. He would not slander her to himself by supposing that her attentions to his father were paid for his sake: but he could not forget that it was she, always, who read his ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... soon as satires, were they equally profitable. I know too, that there is no danger of their producing revolutions in England—we do not suffer our principles to be corrupted by a man because he has the art of rhyming nothings into consequence, nor suffer another to overturn the government because he is an orator. Yet, though these men may not be very mischievous, they are very reprehensible; and, in a moment like the present, contempt and neglect should supply the place of that ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... prepared immunity (necessary to plans which this history will unfold), they ended at last in cutting "their wood," and stealing almost their entire livelihood. Pasturage for the cows and the abuses of gleaning were established as customs little by little. When the Tonsards and the do-nothings of the valley had tasted the sweets of these four rights (thus captured by rural paupers, and amounting to actual robbery) we can easily imagine they would never give them up unless compelled by a power greater ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... contrariness of the human heart, from Eve downwards, that we all, in our old Adam state, fancy things forbidden sweetest. So Mary dwelt upon and enjoyed the idea of some day becoming a lady, and doing all the elegant nothings appertaining to ladyhood. It was a comfort to her, when scolded by Miss Simmonds, to think of the day when she would drive up to the door in her own carriage, to order her gowns from the hasty-tempered yet kind dressmaker. It was a pleasure to her to hear the general ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... again. His movements were deliberate, but not stealthy. He spoke softly to the creature on the floor—his voice lower than the usual pitch, yet sinking often deeper still. The words were mere nothings, but they carried the man's purpose of kindness—carried it steadily, tirelessly. The great beast tried to rise as he stepped closer. Skag waited, still talking. He had uncorked the canteen and held it forward—his ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... she had thrust it carelessly into the bosom of her lilac-sprigged gown. Indeed, a corner of it peeped out at this moment. Had he seen it?—monstrous thought! She knew young men and the interpretations that they put upon nothings! This, in spite of his solemn looks and mantling bashfulness, was ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... of their bachelor life, the family photographs and the various little nothings which link isolated lives to home and love. They even assured me they had had the table-cloth and napkins washed for my coming. Household interests exhausted, they began to talk of boyhood days. Their quiet voices soothed me. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... am babbling these silly nothings when I have some real news up my sleeve. We have a new worker, ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... let go her hand, and was standing at a little distance from her, on the hearth-rug. Never had lady been wooed in a sterner manner; but Caroline almost felt that she liked him the better for it. He had simpered and said his little nothings so like an ordinary gentleman during their ride, that his present brusqueness was ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... murmur of conversation from the farther room, but it was not until I was standing beneath the curtained archway that I saw, to my amazement, Lossing and Monsieur Voisin at the farther side of the room, talking amiable nothings, as men of the world will when they meet. Both were in evening dress, and the Frenchman held in his hand a splendid bunch of American ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... dishonour should grow by her, "I myself will take up arms and be your general, judge and rewarder of all your virtues." That is all very pretty, and sounds pre-Napoleonic, but we cannot all swallow sweet, cantish little nothings in place of food and wages. Better would it have been had Elizabeth shown some practical evidence of "devotion" to her "people" by granting supplies and food to her starving sailors who fought and won in the most ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... courtier gay, Jealous impatience that the Gwendolaine Whom all men flatter, should be thwarted, fights A tender yearning to defy all pride And call him to her for one spoken word. The world seems better when he talks with her, No one has ever lifted her above The empty nothings of a courtly life As Sir Sanpeur, who makes both life and death More grandly solemn, yet more simply clear. In a steep curving of the road, he turns To meet her smile, which deepens as he comes. Sanpeur, bronzed by the ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... a drowning man will clutch at a straw; the truth of the remark applies to the half-informed in Fiddle connoisseurship. It is very amusing to note the pile of nothings that these persons heap up under the name of "guiding points" in relation to Fiddles. I will endeavour to call to mind a few of these. I will begin with those little pegs seen on the backs of Violins near the button, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... along under the wall until he came to a gate, and there someone was waiting for him, and he was gently led into the shadow of a dark cedar tree. In the dim twilight he saw two bright eyes looking at him, and he understood their message. In the twilight a thousand meaningless nothings were whispered in the light of the stars, and the hours fled swiftly. When the East began to grow light, the Princess (for it was she) said it was time ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... moped in worse places," he said. "But I'll go with you to-night and be as giddy as you please. I'll whisper pretty nothings to the female lambkins and exchange commonplace lies with the young gentlemen, and then—why then—we'll come away again and straightway forget what manner of things we said and did, and they won't count when we meet on the street ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... eternal truth was certainly not contained in the inane and empty formula, "that numbers are real existences, the causes of all other existences!" If the fame of Pythagoras had rested on such "airy nothings," it would have melted away before the time ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and if Mathilde could not be comforted in any other way, why he must promise to let her have it back again. He decided all this as he petted the baroness, and tried to comfort her by whispering fond nothings into her ear; but he soon found all his caresses were useless, unless he yielded to her entreaties and told her where the baby was, and as all he knew about it was that it was on board Leon's yacht, on which it was being taken, he believed, to England, though ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... dream I heard her cry of recognition, and knew that she was gliding toward me. Then I was on my knees at her feet, burying my face in the folds of her dress, and moaning incoherent nothings ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the morrows went on, each one sweeter than the last, and all the little incidents went on that were such nothings at the time, but were so sure to be borne in mind for ever! You know all about it, you who read. Like enough you can remember now, old as you are, how you and she (or he, according as your sex is) got lost in the wood, and never found where the picnic had come to an anchor till all the wings ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... not feel and judge at one and the same time? Able for all things through her brain, ought her course to be circumscribed by the limitations of other women? Has that intellectual strength weakened her heart? Has she no charm? Can she descend to those tender nothings by which a woman occupies, and soothes and interests the man she loves? Will she not cast aside a sentiment when it no longer responds to some vision of infinitude which she grasps and contemplates in her soul? Who can scale the heights to which her eyes have risen? Yes, a man fears ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... was here in full-blown variety; sublime, languid peers, needy placemen, hilarious foxhunters, brave tradesmen, aspiring mechanics, poor good-for-nothings; sober housewives, whose thoughts were still of their husbands' shirt-fronts and their hasty-puddings, and who never dreamt that they were impugning their sobriety by attending a play; and above all, fine ladies armed with their fans ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Painters did by no means contain all that even then I knew; and in the third, nominally treating of "Many Things," will be found the full expression of what I knew best; namely, that all "things," many or few, which we ought to paint, must be first distinguished boldly from the nothings which we ought not; and that a faithful realist, before he could question whether his art was representing anything truly, had first to ask whether it meant seriously to represent anything ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... men exchanged amicable nothings in the crisp, brilliant air through which their voices rang with a peculiar timbre. To Isabelle, looking and listening from her window, it was all so fresh, so simple, like a picture on a Japanese print! For the first ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the empress, surprised "Yes, your majesty. Surely there must be something more than a pair of vague sentences, a pair of 'ohs' and 'ahs;' and a sick nun and a silly priest. These insignificant nothings are certainly not enough to overturn the structure which for ten years we have employed all our ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hand, had loved him because he courted her, because he was young, rich, kind, and attentive. She had loved him because it is natural for young girls to love men who whisper sweet nothings to them. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... tradesmen civically proud of this glory? No! They said that 'this football' drew people out of the town on Saturday afternoons, to the complete abolition of shopping. They said also that people thought of nothing but 'this football;' and, nearly in the same breath, that only roughs and good-for-nothings could possibly be interested in such a barbarous game. And they spoke of gate-money, gambling, and professionalism, and the end of all true sport in England. In brief, something new had come to the front and was submitting to the ordeal ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the light, Ben followed him into his room and busied himself in doing little nothings about the stove and wash-stand. "Let me unbutton your straps, sir," said he, stooping down and commencing on the buttons, which he was rather long in unclosing. "I know, sir, dat you Southern gentlemen ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... unending, slow quarrels they had together! How her voice had droned pitilessly on his ears! She in one room, he in another, and through the open door there rolled that unending recitation of woes and reproaches, an interminable catalogue of nothings, while he sat dumb as a fish, with a mind that smouldered or blazed. He had stood unseen with a hammer, a poker, a razor in his hand, on tiptoe to do it. A movement, a rush, one silent rush and it was done! He had revelled in her murder. He had caressed it, rehearsed ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... moved, and I think that for five minutes I could not have trusted myself to speak. At last my silent nearness affected him; he stirred and turned, and then rose and looked at me with a slowly kindling eye. I murmured some kind ineffective nothings about his being ill and needing advice and care, but he seemed absorbed in the effort to recall distinctly what had last passed between us. "You were right," he said, with a pitiful smile, "I am a dawdler! I am a failure! I shall do nothing more in this world. You opened my eyes; and, though ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... now all was over of communication between us, but I was mistaken. He spoke for a minute or two upon the crowd—early hour of coming—hasty breakfasting and such general nothings; and then, as if involuntarily, he returned to the sole subject on his ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... begin to think right well of him. I have no respect for some of those effeminate butterflies down stairs, who say only silly nothings, because, forsooth, they think we can appreciate nothing better, or because they ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... a decent sample or two of passengers on board, you can discuss men and things, and women and nothings, law, physick, and divinity, or that endless, tangled ball of yarn, politicks, or you can swap anecdotes, and make your fortune in the trade. And by the same trail of thought we must give one or two of these Blue-Noses now and then a cast ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... spends his time at night in wasteful or sinful ways so that he gets to bed at one or two o'clock in the morning and sleeps until nine or ten o'clock the next day? Why, bless your soul, the street cleaner and the 'garbage gentleman' are worth a dozen good-for-nothings ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... what we exact of thee, be not surprised to find thyself stretched out a bit, and to be laid up for three weeks, as well as the good-for-nothings who ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... time it smote him speechless, and in the depth of his astoundment he forgot his foolish fear of me and fell to pacing up and down, though always with the table cannily between us. And as he shuffled back and forth the thin lips muttered foolish nothings, with here and there a tremulous oath. When all was done he dropped into a chair and stared across at me with leaden eyes; and truly he had the look of one struck with a ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... fingers in his ears. Nana, flushed and angry, stirred her tea pretending that she didn't hear; Thirza murmured pacific and wholly useless nothings. At her father's sudden and wholly unexpected appearance, accompanied as it was by the swift uprising of both the nurses, the Kitten stopped her clamorous vociferation, and with bunches of tears still hanging on her lashes smiled radiantly ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... never can exist without us." They had touched the galling spot: Augustin knew his weakness only too well. And his burning imagination presented to him with extraordinary lucidity these pleasures which he could not do without. They were not only embracements, but also those trifles, those superfluous nothings, "those light pleasantnesses which make us fond of life." The perfidious old friends continued to whisper: "Wait a bit yet! The things you despise have a charm of their own; they bring even no small ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... benefactors kind: And Britain has her share among the rest, Of men the wisest, boldest and the best: Yet we of knaves and fools have ample share, And eccentricities beyond compare. Full many a life is spent, and many a purse, In mighty nothings, or in something worse." ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Swedenborg in such a state of fossil immutability: many had considerably developed their character, both for good and evil, in the other world; and this gave rise to some singular results. Some who had been heroes and saints on earth had there sunk into scamps and good-for-nothings; and there were examples, too, of a contrary transformation. For instance, the fumes of self-conceit mounted to Saint Anthony's head when he learned what immense veneration and adoration had been paid to him by all Christendom; and he who here below ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... of the various parties that have been opposed to it have often been matter for mirth to the Democratic party, as well they may have been; but neither Federalists, nor National Republicans, nor Whigs, nor Know-Nothings, nor Republicans were ever guilty of a blunder so enormous as that which this party itself perpetrated at Chicago, when it virtually announced its readiness to surrender the country into the hands of the men who have so pertinaciously sought its destruction for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... (a species of chasing not unlike the capricious threads of spun glass), or the whirl of white water which the wind is driving like a luminous dust along the roofs, or the fitful disgorgements of the gutter-pipes, sparkling and foaming; in short, the thousand nothings to be admired and studied with delight by loungers, in spite of the porter's broom which pretends to be sweeping out the gateway. Then there's the talkative refugee, who complains and converses with the porter while he rests on ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... its occupant. Her favorite color peeps out from wall and drapery; her books, well-thumbed and hearing evidences of intimate association, lie cozily about, and her workbasket reveals the source of certain dainty covers and indescribable nothings which so materially refine the whole aspect of the room. Though she receives her formal calls in the drawing-room, it is in her bedroom that those confidential chats, so dear to the feminine heart, take place; therefore its background must be chosen with some idea of its becomingness, and ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... Carman, when he had opened the door in reply to my sprightly knock. "Go away! I am giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. This is my busy night—do you not see?" And fully understanding the conditions, for I am a poet myself, I went away and left ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... by his actions, but by the subtle nothings that, having no name, yet are, and go to make up the dreaded whole, has this thought been forced upon her. The cooling glance, the suppressed restlessness, the sudden lack of conversation, the kind but unloving touch, the total absence of ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... biscuit and cakes, offered by another, is all the further repast. The teacups and cake-basket are a real addition to the scene, because they cause a little lively social bustle, a little chatter and motion,—always of advantage in breaking up stiffness, and giving occasion for those graceful, airy nothings that answer so good a purpose ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with the intention of buying his haul,—an idea which came to us both, and was expressed in a smile, to which I responded by a slight pressure of the arm I held and drew toward my heart. It was one of those nothings of which memory makes poems when we sit by the fire and recall the hour when that nothing moved us, and the place where it did so,—a mirage the effects of which have never been noted down, though it appears ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac
... nominated James Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge and carried the election. The Whigs and the Know-nothings then disappeared from ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Walloon French Reformed Church in Frankfort, and his friend Hiller surprised them with a new bridal chorus. The wedding tour lasted nearly a month, and the honeymooners kept a journal, in which they both sketched and wrote humourous nothings. The home they chose was in Leipzig, where Fanny Hensel visited them, and found Cecile possessed not only of "the beautiful eyes" Felix had raved over so much, "but possessed also of a wonderfully soothing temperament, that calmed her husband's whims and promised to cure ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... you some lines written not long ago, which you may do what you like with, as they are very harmless.[72] Only, if copied, or printed, or set, I could wish it more correctly than in the usual way, in which one's 'nothings are monstered,' as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... temporarily or permanently, nor seeks to deviate. You may look for the same herd of antelope, feeding near the same place, about the same hour each day; the same lion stumping the same beat, as regular as a policeman, most nights; the same hyena uttering horrible nothings within hearing of the same hills, any time after the setting of each sun, just as surely as the same cock-robin asks you for crumbs, the same blackbird awakens you with inimitable fluting, and the same black cat seeks for both in ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... talks. What do they know over takin' care on mine house? They ain't ladies. They is educated only on the front. Me, I was raised private und expensive in Russia; I was ladies. Und you ist ladies. You ist Krisht[79-1]—that is too bad—but that makes me nothings. I wants you ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... present, however, she was passing through a phase, and not a very pleasant one. She thought herself quite good enough to go into any society; and fine dress, loud-voiced friends, and the hollow, empty nothings which she and her acquaintances called conversation seemed the best things possible that could come into life. She was, therefore, not at all in the mood to give up her ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... haue one scratch my Head i'th' Sun, When the Alarum were strucke, then idly sit To heare my Nothings monster'd. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... suddenly and introduced me to a Captain Southgate who came up; and the conversation ran upon West Point things and nothings after that. I was going back over my memory, to find in how far religion had been associated with some other valued things in the instances of my experience, and I heard little of what was said. Mr. Dinwiddie had been ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and how elevated it became from the manner Sir Joshua treated it. In continuation, he says—"In many of Titian's portraits the head and hands are mere staring, lightish spots, unconnected with either the drapery or background, which are sometimes too dark, and mere obscure nothings; and in Lely, and even in Vandyke, we sometimes meet with the other extreme of too little solidity, too much flickering and washiness. Sir Joshua's object appears to have been to obtain the vigour and solidity of the one, with the bustle and spirit of the other, without the excess ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... of her thoughts, softening gradually, gave tone to the general tenor of her life and united all its parts in an indefinable harmony, expressed by the exquisite neatness, the exact symmetry of her room, the few flowers sent by Savinien, the dainty nothings of a young girl's life, the tranquillity which her quiet habits diffused about her, giving peace and composure to the little home. After breakfast and after mass she continued her studies and practiced; then she took her embroidery and sat at the window looking on the street. ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... sir, you're free to follow them! Go forth, And I'll go too: so on your wilfulness Shall fall whate'er of evil may ensue. Is't fit you waste your choler on a burr? The nothings of the town; whose sport it is To break their villain jests on worthy men, The graver still the fitter! Fie for shame! Regard what such would say? So would not I, No more than heed ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... laughed; and there seemed some danger of a break in that kindliness of feeling which their father had vaunted, till Mrs. Landholm spoke. A word and a look of hers, to one and the other, made all smooth; and they went on again talking, of happy nothings, till it was time to separate for the night. It was only then that Mr. Landholm touched on any matter ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... the colonel were of the most delicate and insinuating kind; and Mrs. Wilson several times turned away in displeasure at herself, for listening with too much satisfaction to nothings, uttered in an agreeable manner, or, what was worse, false sentiments supported with the gloss of language and a fascinating deportment. The anxiety of this lady on behalf of Emily kept her ever on the alert, when chance, or any chain of circumstances, threw her in the way of forming new ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... inconveniently crowded, was amply stored with furniture, every article of which bespoke a refined and luxurious taste: easy chairs of all descriptions, most inviting couches, cabinets of choice inlay, and grotesque tables covered with articles of vertu; all those charming infinite nothings, which a person of taste might some time back have easily collected during a long residence on the continent. A large lamp of Dresden china was suspended from the painted and gilded ceiling. The three tall windows opened on the gardens, and admitted a perfume so rich and various, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothings A local ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... this was actually the old Committee of 1851, it meant business. There was but one way to find out and that was to go and see. Number 105-1/2 Sacramento Street was a three-story barn-like structure that had been built by a short-lived political party called the "Know-Nothings." The crowd poured into the hall to its full capacity, jammed the entrance ways, and gathered for blocks in the street. There all waited patiently to see what ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... "students"—"if you had a dear cousin who had married a dear friend, if said dear cousin and dear friend had gone skipping away to Europe, and for one year and a half had flitted gayly from country to country, looking into each other's eyes and murmuring sweet nothings all the while that you had been earning your daily bread by telling daily untruths for a daily paper, if at the end of said period said cousin and friend, forced by a steadily diminishing bank account to return to the stern necessities of life, had written you a ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... not desecrate that wondrous faculty of looking before as well as after which God has given to us, by wasting it upon the nothings of this world, but heave it higher, and anchor it more firmly in the very Throne of God Himself. And for us let one solemn, blessed thought more and more fill with its substance and its light the else dim and questionable and insufficient future, and walk evermore as seeing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... degrees of prosperity and respect as come to members of other avocations. There never was so large a number of theatres or of actors. And their type is vastly improved by public recognition. The old days when good-for-nothings passed into the profession are at an end; and the old Bohemian habits, so far as they were evil and disreputable, have also disappeared. The ranks of the art are being continually recruited by deeply interested and ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving |
