"Pithy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... English, and I have tried to represent the thing she did speak, which was neither honest Scotch nor anything like English. Alas! the good, pithy, old Anglo-Saxon dialect is fast perishing, and a jargon of corrupt English taking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... which I met with, particularly where any of these occurred to me entirely new), finding myself a little faintish, I had a mind for a sup of ram's-horn juice; so I cut me one, but upon opening it found therein only a pithy pulp, and noways fit to taste. I supposed by this I was too early for the milk, it being three months later the last year when I cut them. Hereon, seeing one upon another shrub, which by its rusty colour I judged might have hung all the winter, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... more even? When the fight at Moodkee was done, there was not, of the surviving victors, a Queen's soldier or a sepoy who had not already settled to his own satisfaction the whole campaign of the Sutlej, in the pithy but comprehensive conviction, that he should drub the Sikhs whenever he met them. The logician smiles at the vulnerable reasoning; the soldier smiles, too, and feels himself clad in better armour than steel or brass. There had been a reciprocal amicable emulation every where prevalent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... such I knew long since, a white-haired man, Pithy of speech, and merry when he would; A genial optimist, who daily drew From what he saw his quaint moralities. Kindly he held communion, though so old, With me a dreaming boy, and taught me much That books tell not, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... to write two long and instructive letters to his old master and good friend, Mr. John Walker of Whitby, which are to be found in Dr. Young's work. They give a rapid glance at the different places visited, with a few pithy remarks as to their peoples and productions; mention the pleasing reception he had from the king, and he alludes to the probability of being despatched on a second voyage with ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... the art, by native genius taught, To clothe in eloquence the naked thought; Yours is the skill its music to prolong Through the sweet effluence of mellifluous song; Yours the quaint trick to cram the pithy line That cracks so crisply over bubbling wine; And since success your various gifts attends, We—that is, I and all your numerous friends— Expect from you—your single self a host— A speech, a song, excuse me, and a toast; Nay, not to haggle on so small a claim, A few of each, or several of the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... familiar. Instead of skimming Shakespeare, he went down into his depths. Few have written so subtly of Shakespeare's mysterious sonnets. Through all Lanier's productions we trace the influence of his early literary loves; but nowhere do the pithy quaintnesses of the old bards and chroniclers display themselves more effectively — not only in the illustrations, but through the innermost warp and woof of the texture of his ideas and his style — than in some ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... may fairly presume, proceeded from the pithy lecture of Ellen Connor; but the truth was, that the undefinable old squire was the greatest parental coward in the world. In the absence of his daughter he would rant and swear and vapor, strike the ground with his staff, and give other indications of the most extraordinary resolution, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... considered long where the life of a man is in question he was snubbed, just as the Roman lady who was expostulated with for taking her bath in the presence of man slaves asked "An servus homo?" The horrible but pithy dialogue reads: ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... procession, but that now he read and thought, and refused to support the party candidate merely because he was the party candidate. He deluged the community with copies of my letter of acceptance, and three days later overwhelmed the postal service with a batch of circulars embodying a short, pithy description of my personal virtues and talents, interwoven with sound doctrine. Although he confided to me that torchlight organizations were moribund factors in political warfare, he advised me to supply uniforms and torches, and a promise of abundant cigars, ice-cream, and ginger-beer ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... the presence of Iris he would have given no second thought to the peril. It was just one of those undertakings which a soldier jumps at. "Here goes for the V.C. or Kingdom Come!" is the pithy philosophy of Thomas Atkins under ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... over-woven, turned, and torn with thicket-wood, but not so rocky as the Lynn, and more inclined to go evenly. There were bars of chafed stakes stretched from the sides half-way across the current, and light outriders of pithy weed, and blades of last year's water-grass trembling in the quiet places, like a spider's threads, on the transparent stillness, with a tint of olive moving it. And here and there the sun came in, as if his light was sifted, making dance upon the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... deliberating anent the rebuilding of the Crosswell, which had been for some time in a sore state of dilapidation; and surely never was any letter more to the point and less to the purpose of an applicant. It was very short and pithy, just acknowledging receipt of ours; and adding thereto, "circumstances do not allow me to pay any attention to such applications." We all with one accord, in sympathy and instinct, threw ourselves back in our chairs at the ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... lateral; when it is wanting, the pileus is said to be sessile. The stem is solid when it is fleshy throughout, or hollow when it has a central cavity, or stuffed when the interior is filled with pithy substance. The stems are either fleshy or cartilaginous. When the former, it is of the same consistency as the pileus. If the latter, its consistency is always different from the pileus, resembling cartilage. The stem of the Tricholoma ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... as may be seen by his Works, which still live in Fame and Reputation, writing in Heroick verse the Life of King Henry the Seventh, with the Battle of Bosworth; and also the Battle of Crescy and Poietiers, in which he is very pithy and sententious: I shall only give you two instances, the first out ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... down Hester street and up Chrystie, and down Delancey to where he lived. And there his women folk, a bibulous mother and three dingy sisters, pounced upon him for his wages. And at his confession they shrieked and objurgated him in the pithy rhetoric of the locality. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... of corn are stripped off when the grain is hard, and carried in carts to the barns, and placed in corn cribs adapted for the purpose. The grains are taken off the pithy cylinder on which they grow, by being rubbed or scraped on a piece of iron: in America a bayonet (a weapon called by the Yankees Uncle George's toasting fork) is invariably used for the purpose: the cylinder, now bared of its grain, is called the cobb. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... the maxims of Franklin, for the purpose of conveying important lessons in regard to the formation of character, and thus stimulating the young in the path of well-doing. Whole volumes of meaning are condensed into many of his wise and pithy sayings. ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... has attempted to formulate the relationships between causes and effects without, however, always possessing the specific knowledge essential to accuracy. Pithy statements have always had great appeal to man, as evidenced by the existence of proverbs, maxims, and adages preserved from times of great antiquity. Frequently, however, such statements are not expressive of the truth. Sometimes, ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... Catalogue of Theophrastus his Works, preserv'd by [T]Diogenes Laertius, there is one Book under the Title peri paroimion concerning Proverbs: But that, probably, was nothing but a Collection of some of those short, remarkable, useful, pithy Sayings, which are of common Use in the World, and which every Nation has peculiar to it self. However, tho' we cannot exactly tell, what the Nature of that Performance was, because the Book is now lost, yet we are certain, on the other Hand, that the ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... look on or join in whatever entertainment might be provided for them. Jim the energetic, in pursuance of his mother's hints overnight, had not only sent over to the Rockcliffe Camp, but had dispatched missives in all directions by a groom on horseback, with the pithy intimation, "Charades and an impromptu dance this evening at nine. If you have nothing better to do, please come." Jim Bloxam was a popular man in his neighbourhood, and the Grange had a reputation for improvising pleasant entertainments in such fashion. Lady ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... furred and feathered life appeared to be going on there between the round-headed cactus, with its cruel fishhook thorns, and the warning, blood-red blossoms that dripped from the ocatilla. Little frisk-tailed things ran up and down the spiney shrubs, and a woodpecker, who had made his nest in its pithy stalk, peered at them from a ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... find a recipe against baldness under the title of "The Age of Love." But then "The Age of Love" is an absurd and answerless question. Experience shows that all ages fall in love—and out again; so that, to quote the pithy Bacon again, "a man may have a quarrel to marry when he will." Octogenarians elope, and Mr. Gilbert's elderly baby died a blase old roue ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... devoted to it misemployed, I shall content myself with opposing the authority of the greatest man of any age, JULIUS CAESAR, of whom Bacon observes, that 'in his book of Apothegms which he collected, we see that he esteemed it more honour to make himself but a pair of tables, to take the wise and pithy words of others, than to have every word of his own to be made ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... could be accomplished. The occasion was extraordinary, and never contemplated—the exigency beyond immediate solution. As James Dows, one of the coolest in judgment and wisest in counsel of the Executive Committee, pertinently described the situation in the pithy remark, "We started in to hunt cayotes, but we've got a grizzly bear on our hands, and we don't know what to do with him." The Executive Committee were not themselves masters of the situation. Behind them, subject to them and ready to obey their commands on ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... declaration regarding species, see the Philosophia Botanica, 99, 157; for Calmet and Linnaeus, see Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 237. As to the enormously increasing numbers of species in zoology and botany, see President D. S. Jordan, Science Sketches, pp. 176, 177; also for pithy statement, Laing's Problems of the Future, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the banker merely bows and points to one. Lawyers, on the contrary, are expected to behave like any other gentlemen; so also physicians. The patient is directed in both cases to relate his grievances in short, pithy sentences; answer all questions clearly; apologise for taking up their time by asking them in turn—in consequence, he must say, of his own ignorance; and then finish by warmly thanking them for the attention they give to his affairs. Authors and artists must affect ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... pithy Angelico you can get, boil it very tender, then drain it, and press out all the Water you possibly can, then beat it in a Mortar to as fine a Paste as may be, then rub it through a Sieve; next Day dry it over ...
— The Art of Confectionary • Edward Lambert
... workshops when all was quiet, and then and there examine the various jobs in hand. On such occasions he carried with him a piece of chalk, with which, in a neat and very legible hand, he would record his remarks in the most pithy and sometimes caustic terms. Any evidence of want of correctness in setting things square, or in 'flat filing,' which he held in high esteem, or untidiness in not sweeping down the bench and laying the tools in order, was sure to have a record in chalk ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... by Mary M. Sisson, is a collection of well written and sensible paragraphs on amateur journalism, which ought to assist in arousing enthusiasm amongst many members hitherto dormant. Editor Dowdell's pithy little epigrams at the foot of each page form an entertaining feature, many of them being of considerable cleverness. Dowdell's Bearcat will soon revert to its original newspaper form, since Mr. Dowdell intends to make newspaper work his ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... obscure and of a moderate degree of merit. Juvenal (about 55-135), on the contrary, is spirited and full of force. Martial (43-101), a Spaniard by birth, was the author of numerous short poems of a pithy and pointed character, called epigrammata. All these poets, if we make proper discount for the exaggeration of satire, are very instructive as to the manners and morals of their time. Lucian (120-200), who wrote ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... of pithy quotations, selected from a great variety of sources, and alphabetically arranged according to the sentiment. In addition to all the popular quotations in current use, it contains many rare bits of prose ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... is that you're thinking too much about yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest and most agreeable to her," said Marilla, hitting for once in her life on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... speaker, Colonel Burr was calm and persuasive. He was most remarkable for the power which he possessed of condensation. His appeals, whether to a court or a jury, were sententious and lucid. His speeches, generally, were argumentative, short, and pithy. No flights of fancy, no metaphors, no parade of impassioned sentences, are to be found in them. When employed on the same side of a cause with General Hamilton, it was his uniform practice to permit that gentleman to select his own place ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... to the memory of an honest man, and still his mound remain without a monument. Not so, however, with the candle-maker. At an early day, Plain Talk had procured a plain stone, and was digesting in his mind what pithy word or two to place upon it, when there was discovered, in China Aster's otherwise empty wallet, an epitaph, written, probably, in one of those disconsolate hours, attended with more or less mental aberration, perhaps, so frequent with him for some months prior to his end. A memorandum ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... that the indulgence so often bestowed upon a first effort is as frequently converted into censure on the older offender. My arguments have, however, totally failed, and he remains obdurate and unmoved. Under these circumstances I have yielded; and as, happily for me, the short and pithy direction to the river Thames, in the Critic, "to keep between its banks," has been imitated by my friend, I find all that is required of me is to write my name upon the title and go in peace. Such, he informs ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... attentive ear. But, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman's ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. The instilment thereof into her mind would probably have caused this aged sister to drop down dead, at once, as by the effect of an intensely poisonous infusion. What he really ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to its adoption. On the 10th of January, 1848, Enoch Price wrote to Mr. Edmund Quincy offering to sell Mr. Brown to himself or friends for 325 dollars. To this communication the fugitive returned the following pithy and noble reply:— ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... exactly what had passed between the oily young man of the Financial Field and himself in that very room. While this recital was going on, Wentworth walked up and down, expressing his opinion now and then, in remarks that were short and pithy, but hardly fit for publication. When the story was told ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... on the exciting points; whatever may be the merits of its subject in other matters, and furnishes of itself the best possible proof that there is room for amendment. The French have a clever and pithy saying, that of—"On peut tout dire a un grand peuple." "One may tell all ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... much about law, but it would seem as if they had a pretty strong case," he answered. He went on to tell me what he knew of the matter in his clean, pithy sentences, often brutally cynical, as though he had not a spark of interest in any of it. Mr. Cooke's claim to the land came from a maternal great-uncle, long since deceased, who had been a settler in these regions. The railroad answered that they had bought the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... several from the sons of neighbors and friends, and therefore, like the crew, Norfolk lads. It is told that to one, whose father he knew to be a strong Whig, of the party which in the past few years had sympathized with the general current of the French Revolution, he gave the following pithy counsels for his guidance in professional life: "First, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety; secondly, you must consider every man as your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... of his wife and mother-in-law, had all been tolerably short and pithy, written in a straight hand, with the lines very close together. Sometimes the whole letter was contained on a mere scrap of paper. The paper was very yellow, and the ink very brown; some of the sheets were (as Miss Matty made me observe) the old original ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... perceive he will do much; and if ever I be able, I will deserve it of him. One only thing, as it comes into my mind, let me remember you of, that you consider wherein the Historian excelleth, and that to note: as DION NICAEUS in the searching the secrets of government; TACITUS, in the pithy opening of the venom of wickedness; and so of ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... of his on the origin of species. He swept the curve of discussion through the really significant points of the subject, enriched his exposition with profound original remarks and reflections, often summing up in a single pithy sentence an argument which a less compact mind would have spread over pages. But there is one impression made by the book itself which no exposition of it, however luminous, can convey; and that is the impression of the vast amount ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... is as apt and as extensive for this purpose as that which suffices for the mental or spiritual needs of the bulk of European people, indeed, the capacity for abstracting the general nature and character from the particular experience or emotion into pithy expressions by way of simile or metaphor that admirably convey the perceived generalisation is as highly evolved in the Native as ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... says: * "The style of Hobbes is the very perfection of didactic language. Short, clear, precise, pithy, his language never has more than one meaning, which never requires a second thought to find. By the help of his exact method, it takes so firm a hold on the mind, that it will not allow attention to slacken. His little tract on human nature ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... are related of the prince's conduct throughout the day. One is remarkable as affording an example of those pithy epigrams of the battlefield with which history abounds, accompanied by an act that speaks a fine knowledge of the soldier's heart. On occasion of one peculiarly desperate charge, the prince, hurried on by his ardor, was actually in the midst of the French, ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... you touch the instrument, To learne the order of my fingering, I must begin with rudiments of Art, To teach you gamoth in a briefer sort, More pleasant, pithy, and effectuall, Then hath beene taught by any of my trade, And there it is in writing ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and incisive, and brilliant with epigram and point. It contains pithy aphoristic sentences which Burke himself would not have disowned. But these are not its best features: its sustained power of reasoning, its wide sweep of observation and reflection, its elevated ethical and social tone, stamp it as a work of high ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... SPRUCH-SPRECHER often condescended to follow up the jester's witticisms with an explanation, to render them more obvious to the capacity of the audience, so that his wisdom became a sort of commentary on the buffoon's folly. And sometimes, in requital, the HOFF-NARR, with a pithy jest, wound up the conclusion ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... once decided to use the word, but he does not reflect, and the effect on him is the same as if a hundred persons had used it independently of each other. The contents-bills, indeed, of the newspapers, which were originally short and pithy merely from considerations of space, have developed in a way which threatens to turn our streets (like the advertisement pages of an American magazine) into a psychological laboratory for the unconscious production of permanent associations. 'Another German Insult,' 'Keir Hardie's Crime,' ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... Gerismond, seeing the pithy vein of those sonnets, began to make further inquiry what he was. Whereupon Rosader discoursed unto him the love of Montanus to Phoebe, his great loyalty and her deep cruelty, and how in revenge the gods had made the curious nymph amorous of ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... fire." Still repeating the awful words, his voice broken to a terrified whisper, "His rebuke with the flames of fire!" And in particular moods, when the prophets, however sonorous, were inadequate to his need, my uncle would have recourse to his own pithy vocabulary for terms with which to anathematize himself; but these, of course, may not be ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... the man who supplies the world with portable wisdom—short, sharp, pithy maxims which it can remember, or, better still, which ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... do you do it? That Georgian's cue, it, Compared with your sceptre, is just a mere withy. You quietly front in with that calm "Voluntas," (Expressed for our guidance in epigrams pithy) You hint you can rule us, and guide us, and school us, "All off your own bat," without Clergy or Minister, Giving swift gruel to stage-prank, or duel, Or any thing else you think stupid ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... of advertisements appear at all? And if it does not, what is the use of repeating either of them day after day and week after week? The man of imagination must take especial delight in the advertising columns. What splendid feasts they afford him to banquet upon! Some of them, in a few pithy lines, contain the plot of a three-volume novel or the materials for a grand sensation melodrama. What tragedies and what comedies he may weave out of one or two mysterious and almost unintelligible sentences! What reveries he may indulge in, what castles in the air—the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... into them here and there at intervals. By so doing he gradually makes his own anthology; but it may be that he will yet find place for another man's, if it has no pretension to completeness or authority, and will go into his pocket. Borrow is not a pithy writer, nor is he best when sententious; the following passages are, therefore, somewhat longer than is usual in this series of Anthologies. Even so, many of the best things in his books, especially from ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... made long speeches on religious topics. He said what he had to say, generally, in one pithy sentence, and then left it ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the time; refusing, however, all payment for his publications. He entered the lists against Tindal, Chubb, and Mandeville, against Hoadly, against Warburton, against Wesley. His answer to Mandeville is called by J. Sterling 'a most remarkable philosophical essay,' full 'of pithy right reason,'[528] and has been republished by Frederick Maurice, with a highly commendatory introduction. The authority last mentioned also speaks of him as 'a singularly able controversialist in his argument ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... upper hand; We therefore intend, good gentle audience, A pretty short interlude to play at this present, Desiring your leave and quiet silence, To show the same, as is meet and expedient, It is called The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom, A matter right pithy and pleasing to hear, Whereof in brief we will show the whole sum; But I must be gone, for Wit ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... This gentleman was esteemed a good scholar, and was very popular among the gentry of the county; attending all the dinners, clubs, races, balls, and other diversions that were given by them, within ten miles of his residence. His sermons were pithy and short; and he always spoke of your half-hour preachers, as illiterate prosers, who did not understand how to condense their thoughts. Twenty minutes were his gauge, though I remember to have ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... There's been borrowing and speculation. The masters don't stick to one business as they used to do. I can tell that much. Half the valley may be 'playing' before two months are out." Parload delivered himself of this unusually long speech in his most pithy ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... others, however, who could not possibly deny, because they either saw or met with witnesses who had seen. These declared roundly that the whole thing was of the devil, drawing from Christ one of those pithy, common-sense arguments in which He excelled. The same two classes of opponents, the scoffers and the diabolists, face us to-day. Verily the old world goes round and so do the events upon ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... presided, formally opening the hospital; Mr. Clennell, H.B.M., Consul for Kiukiang, gave a very good address, to which Dr. Stuart, American Vice-consul of Nanking, made fitting response. Then followed short, pithy speeches by Drs. Beebee and Hart. The two heroines of the occasion kept modestly in the background, refusing to be introduced, much to the disappointment of the audience. The officials insisted that coming forward would be in entire harmony with etiquette and ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... unassisted, a French squadron of very powerful vessels. These striking incidents, peeping out from time to time, show what is called the true blood, and are extremely valuable, proving how essential it is that an officer in command should "Never say die while there is a shot in the locker!" a pithy old phrase, which will apply to many situations in life, civil as well as military. Had the gallant commander alluded to, Sir Nathaniel Dance, yielded when the French Admiral Linois, and his squadron, consisting ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... are admirable specimens of what productions of the kind should be, pithy, pointed, and practical, and abounding ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... "failure" of that arrangement been described in these pithy sentences—"Eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of the Treaty of Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do not yet form an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more wretched (for the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... learned authors, with whom he was greatly conversant, as appears from his satires against the Jesuits, in which there is discovered as much learning as wit. In the second volume of the great historical, geographical, and poetical Dictionary, he is stiled the Darling of the Muses, a pithy, sententious, elegant, and smooth writer: "His translations exceed the original, and his invention seems matchless. His satire against the Jesuits is of special note; he may be justly said to have excelled all the satirists of the age." Tho' this compliment ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... Jugoslavia, and Poland upheld M. Bratiano's contentions in brief, pithy speeches. President Wilson's lengthy rejoinder, delivered with more than ordinary sweetness, deprecated M. Bratiano's comparison of the Allies' proposed intervention with Russia's protection of the Christians ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... No one had tackled the comparison in Rhoda's grandiose fashion, but a few pithy sentences were to be found scribbled on the sides of exercise books. "Jo March was very clever, and my father says Mr Chamberlain is, too!" from one dutiful pupil. "Jo March was a darling, and Chamberlain is not," from another of Radical principles. ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... acquaintance with Newman Hall began during the darkest period of our Civil War, in August, 1862 Up to that time I had only known him as the author of that pithy and pellucid little booklet, "Come to Jesus," which has belted the globe in forty languages, and been published to the number of nearly 4,000,000 of copies. When our Civil War broke out, Dr. Hall (with John Bright and Foster and Goldwin Smith) threw ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... reason," went on Caleb Harper, soberly, "an' save fer statin' hit es I goes along I hain't got nuthin' more ter say erbout hit—albeit hit seems ter me a right pithy matter fer young folks ter study erbout. I don't jedgmatically know nothin' erbout yore affairs," he nodded his head toward Maggard. "So fur's I've got any means ter tell, ye mout be independent rich or ye mout not hev nothin' only ther shirt an' pants ye sots thar ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... inexhaustible supply of firewood. Besides the trees I have mentioned, there is the xanthorea, or grass-tree, a plant which cannot be intelligibly described to those who have never seen it. The stem consists of a tough pithy substance, round which the leaves are formed. These, long and tapering like the rush, are four-sided, and extremely brittle; the base from which they shoot is broad and flat, about the size of a thumb-nail, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... that subject all the afternoon. He cunningly, however, lost a little money to Boodle, for Boodle liked to win, and engaged himself to dine at the same table with his friend. Their dinner they ate almost in silence—unless when they abused the cook, or made to each other some pithy suggestion as to the expediency of this or that delicacy—bearing always steadily in view the cost as well as desirability of the viands. Boodle had no shame in not having this or that because it was dear. To dine with the utmost luxury at the smallest expense was a proficiency ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... a moment was silent. Then with averted face she spoke again. "My uncle commands me, with many astute saws and pithy sayings, to wed Monsieur de Puysange. I have not skill to combat him. Many times he has proven it my duty, but he is quick in argument and proves what he will; and I do not think it is my duty. It appears to me a matter wherein man's wisdom is ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... wit not only threw the whole company into convulsions of laughter, but made such an impression on Rose, the Potter's daughter, that it was thought it would be the jester's own fault if Jack was long without his Jill. Much pithy matter concerning the bringing the bride to bed, the loosing the bridegroom's points, the scramble which ensued for them, and the casting of the stocking, is also omitted, from ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... explaining the inundation of the Nile by a supposed connexion with the ocean—that the man who carries up his story into the invisible world, passes out of the range of criticism."[2] And he adds the following pithy note:—"Niebuhr puts together all the mythical and genealogical traces, many of them in the highest degree vague and equivocal, of the existence of Pelasgi in various localities; and then, summing up their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... North-west Coast, this gouty tree had previously cast its foliage of the preceding year, which is of quinary insertion, but it bore ripe fruit, which is a large elliptical pedicellated unilocalar capsule (a bacca corticosa) containing many seeds enveloped in a dry pithy substance. Its flowers, however, have never been discovered, but from the characters of the fruit, it was (upon discovery) referred to this natural family. M. Du Petit Thouars has formed a new genus of Capparis pauduriformis of Lamarck, a plant of the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... with bitter envy and hatred against Athens. Their passions had been inflamed by the invectives of the Corinthian orator, and without counting the cost they were resolved to try the issues of immediate battle. Their blind rancour found expression in the curt and pithy harangue of Sthenelaidas, one of the five Ephors, a college of magistrates which in recent years had greatly encroached on the authority of the kings. Sthenelaidas spoke with true laconic brevity. "I don't understand," he said, "all the fine talk of these Athenians. They have ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... wood etched and metal polished. Some rusty dog-chains were exposed to it, and, in a few days, they had a definite sheen. A deal box, facing the wind, lost all its painted bands and in a fortnight was handsomely marked; the hard, knotty fibres being only slightly attacked, whilst the softer, pithy laminae were corroded to a depth ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... that the Chinians be altogether destitute of other artes. For, as touching morall philosophy, all those books are fraught with the precepts thereof, which, for their instructions sake, are alwayes conuersant in the hands of the foresayd students, wherein such graue and pithy sentences are set downe, that, in men void of the light of the Gospell, more can not be desired. [Sidenote: Naturall philosophy.] They haue books also that intreat of things and causes naturall, but herein it is ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... directed against Olimpia Maldachini. Her name was cut in two, to make a good Latin pun: 'Olim pia, nunc impia,' 'once pious, now impious,' or 'Olimpia, now impious,' as one chose to join or separate the syllables. Whole books have been filled with the short and pithy imaginary conversations between Marforio, the statue of a river god which used to stand in the Monti, and Pasquino, beneath whom the Roman children used to be told that the book of all wisdom ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... should never have been attempted before." When the change of rulers took place, some of the French inhabitants objected to take the oath of allegiance to the British Crown, and a letter on the subject was sent to Napoleon. His comment was pithy: "I should like to see anybody refuse me the oath of allegiance in any country ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... wrong,' is a high-sounding maxim, but it is scarcely the honest man's maxim. Our country, after all, cannot have nearer claims upon us, than our parents for instance; and who can claim a moral right to sustain even his own father, in error, injustice, or crime? No, no—I hate your pithy sayings; they commonly mean nothing that ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... the chief agent in making the history of 'muck-raking' in the United States a national one, conceded to be useful. He has preached from the White House many doctrines; but among them he has left impressed on the American mind the one great truth of economic justice couched in the pithy and stinging phrase 'the square deal.' The task of making reform respectable in a commercialized world, and of giving the national a slogan in a phrase, is greater than the man who performed it is ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... gingerbread-colored carriage drawn by a pair of black Flanders mares with tails that swept the ground; and to commemorate the origin of his greatness he had for a crest a fullblown cabbage painted on the pannels, with the pithy motto Alles Kopf that is to say, ALL HEAD; meaning thereby that he had ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... mother to her interview with Hilda, and betaken myself to the club. It was too early even to hope for a sight of Lucy. There were a number of men in the reading-room discussing the morning leader in that fair-minded and pithy sheet, the Charleston News and Courier, and one of these, eyeing me with a quizzical expression, said: "You look as if you had won ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... some gainsayers. These especially appeared among the clergy, who, naturally, abhorred the confiscation of Church property. Various ecclesiastics made speeches, some of them full of pithy and weighty arguments, against the proposed issue of paper, and there is preserved a sermon from one priest threatening all persons handling the new money with eternal damnation. But the great majority of the French people, who had suffered ecclesiastical oppression so long, regarded ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... lieutenants; Dilly and Dicky, as became a pair who had only been married a few months, proving but broken reeds. A week's electioneering proved sufficient for their requirements; and, declining flatly to "grin like a dog and run about the city"—Dilly's pithy summary of the art of canvassing—any longer, they left us ten days before polling-day to pay a country-house visit. But Robin was everywhere. He answered my letters and he interviewed reporters. He could ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... been much controversy for years as to the proper definition of the much abused word "gentleman." Finally, by a printer's error in prefixing un to an adverb, an old and rather mushy description of a gentleman has been given a novel twist and a pithy point. A contributor's letter to a metropolitan daily ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... of Norway. The orator on this occasion was a tall, handsome, distinguished-looking young man named Alexander Kielland, from the little coast-town of Stavanger. There was none of the crudity of a provincial dither in his manners or his appearance. He spoke with a quiet self-possession and a pithy incisiveness which were ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... poisonous. The cap of a true mushroom has a frill, the gills are free from the stem, they never grow down against it, but usually there is a small channel all around the top of the stem, the spores are brown-black, or deep purple black and the stem is solid or slightly pithy. It is said if salt is sprinkled on the gills and they become yellow the mushroom is poisonous, if black, they are wholesome. Sweet oil ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... struggle before another." And three weeks later, on September 8, came the proclamation setting aside October 4 "as a day of prayer to Almighty God," informing Him that war existed and asking His intervention. Possibly Russell's more blunt and pithy expression was better suited to the forthrightness of the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... in great words, are only too easy to translate. We shall be well content if our version also gives some inkling of his qualities; not only of what Erasmus called his "wonderful vocabulary, his many pithy sayings, and the excellent variety of his images"; but also of his feeling for grouping, his barbaric sense of colour, and his stateliness. For he moves with resource and strength both in prose and verse, and is often ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the Will, framed on these instructions, to Lord Byron, the solicitor accompanied some of the clauses with marginal queries, calling the attention of his noble client to points which he considered inexpedient or questionable; and as the short pithy answers to these suggestions are strongly characteristic of their writer, I shall here give one or two of the clauses in full, with the respective queries ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sufficiently recognise the truth of Walt Whitman's pithy saying, "I am not all contained between my hat and my boots," and forget the two-fold nature of the "I AM," that it is at once both the manifested and the unmanifested, the universal and the individual. By losing sight of this truth we surround ourselves with limitations; ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... in his heart that there is no God;' but the fool hath not said in his heart that there is no sorrow,—pithy and most profound sentence; intimating the irrefragable claim that binds men to the Father. And when the chain tightens, the children are closer drawn together. But to your wish: I will remember it. And when my cousin returns, she ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sense, good wit and no lack of humor. Thus it hits the need of the average man and woman, and all others that reckon themselves above the average. The whole book is pervaded by strong and pure moral feeling, and the chapters are well dotted with pithy ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... practical and sound. It is not surprising, then, that astronomers generally did not readily accept the views of Copernicus, that Luther (Luther's Tischreden, pp. 22, 60) derided him in his usual pithy manner, that Melancthon (Initia doctrinae physicae) said that Scripture, and also science, are against the earth's motion; and that the men of science whose opinion was asked for by the cardinals (who wished to know whether Galileo was right ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... from allegiance, because they were "out of the king's protection" —protection and allegiance being reciprocal. The Sons of Liberty became a recognized organization. The press printed an admonition to George III., brief but pithy: GREAT SIR, RETREAT, OR YOU ARE RUINED. Otis maintained that the king, by mismanaging colonial affairs, had practically abdicated, so far as they were concerned. Israel Putnam, being of an active turn, rode through Connecticut to count ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... expressions of this sort now and then occur, such as the new-fangled and most uncouth solecism, 'is being done,' for the good old English idiomatic expression, 'is doing,'—an absurd periphrasis, driving out a pointed and pithy turn of the English language."—N. A. Review. See Wells's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... An alert, pithy style and a distinct gift of satirical humour such as Clarke had, and developed by a wide range of reading, were just the qualities which are always in request on the keen, aggressive daily press of Australia. ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... when already part Of the troops were embark'd, the siege to raise, A courier on the spur inspired new heart Into all panters for newspaper praise, As well as dilettanti in war's art, By his despatches couch'd in pithy phrase; Announcing the appointment of that lover of Battles to the command, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... chinkareens preparatory to the rains, some dexterity is required that they may fall clear of the vine, and the business is performed with a sharp prang or bill that generally separates at one stroke the light pithy substance of the bough. For this purpose, as well as that of gathering the fruit, light triangular ladders made ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... conscientious assiduity. His health, however, failed, and he d. in his 40th year. His chief works are The Temple, or Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1634), The Country Parson (1652), and Jacula Prudentium, a collection of pithy proverbial sayings, the two last in prose. Not pub. until the year after his death, The Temple had immediate acceptance, 20,000 copies, according to I. Walton, who was H.'s biographer, having been sold in a few years. Among its admirers were Charles I., Cowper, and Coleridge. H. wrote ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... a simple exposition of the words of the Bible, without any artificial and rhetorical additions or ornament, but with a constant and cheerful regard to practical life, with an unceasing attention to the primary questions of salvation, and in pithy, clear, and thoroughly popular language, he began to lay before his readers the sum total of Christian truth, and impress it on their hearts. The work served as much for the instruction and support of other preachers of the gospel now newly proclaimed, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... indiscriminately postulate for all the illuminating grace of the intellect and the strengthening grace of the will. It follows that to perform salutary acts the justified no less than the unjustified need actual grace. Our Saviour's pithy saying: "Without me you can do nothing,"(348) was not addressed to unbelievers or sinners, but to His Apostles, who were in ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... for walls, I have one for thee from Oxford, pithy and apposite, sound and solid, and trimmed up becomingly, as a collar of brawn with a crown of rosemary, or a boar's head with a lemon ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... Travis's large estate before the war, he proved by his success that even slaves work better for kindness. Of infinite good sense, but little education, he had a mind that went to the heart of things, and years ago the fame of his homely but pithy sayings stuck in the community. In connection with kindness to his negroes one of his sayings was, "Oh, kindness can't be classified—it takes in the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... ivory chariot of antique fashion, richly gilt, was drawn by a pair of milk-white horses, and followed and attended by hundreds of men clad in pure white. It was preceded by two other chariots; in the first sat the high-priest, reading short, pithy aphorisms and precepts from the sacred books; in the other followed the full brothers of the deceased. A strip of silver cloth, six inches wide, attached to the urn, was loosely extended to the seats of the royal mourners in this second chariot, and thence to the chariot of the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... was then a young man, embodied the best opinion of the time in an excellent pithy letter. He wrote to me that the trial simply established, what every one believed, that "Sir William Wilde was a pithecoid person of extraordinary sensuality and cowardice (funking the witness-box left him without a defender!) ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... instead of its string. 2d. They yielded to gravity—kept tending down, down, to the righthand corner more and more. In the use of capitals the writer had taken the copyhead as his model. The style, however, was pithy, and in writing that is the first Christian grace—no, I forgot, it is the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... with; we have often thought that poor Ophelia would have gone mad anyway, even if there had been no Hamlet. Laertes preaches to Ophelia; Polonius preaches to Laertes. Laertes escaped by going abroad, but the girl had to stay at home. Hamlet saw that pithy old Polonius was a preposterous and orotund ass. Polonius's doctrine of friendship—"The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel"—was, we trow, a necessary one in his case. It would need a hoop of ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... compare the London Gazette of 1667 with the Times of 1852. In form, it is slightly larger than one leaf of this Journal; but in type, and in appearance, it is quite equal to the newspapers of a hundred years later. It is published 'by authority,' and contains pithy paragraphs, void of detail and without comment, under the headings of the different places whence the news is brought—the first and the last paragraphs being devoted to 'home news,' the latter dating usually from Whitehall, and supplying the place of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... sheet, he found that Martin's feet were covered with blood! For a few seconds the hermit growled forth a number of apparently very pithy sentences in Portuguese, in a deep guttural voice, which awakened Barney with a start. Springing from his hammock with a bound like a tiger, he exclaimed, "Och! ye blackguard, would ye murther the boy before me very ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... stalk that is straight and long, With an expert eye to its worthy points, And you think of the bubbling strains of song That are bound between its pithy joints— Then you cut out strings, with a bridge in the middle, With a corn-stalk bow for a ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... that period that the children attending the State schools should be instructed in the duties of citizenship, and that they should be taught something of the laws under which they lived, and I was commissioned to write a short and pithy statement of the case. It was to be simple enough for intelligent children in the fourth class; 11 or 12—it was to lead from the known to the unknown—it might include the elements of political economy and sociology—it might make use ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... Mylner, Tom Baker, Jack Straw, Jack Trewman, Jack Carter, and probably of many more. Some of the choicest flowers of the publications charitably written and circulated by them gratis are upon record in Walsingham and Knyghton: and I am inclined to prefer the pithy and sententious brevity of these bulletins of ancient rebellion before the loose and confused prolixity of the modern advertisements of constitutional information. They contain more good morality and less bad politics, they had much more foundation in real oppression, and they have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... mannerism. Incidentally there is no better rough test of the unity of your paragraphs than thus to give them something of the nature of a title in the first sentence. Often, too, at the end of an important paragraph it is worth while to sum up its essence in pithy form. Mankind in general is lazy about thinking, and more than ready to accept an argument which is easy to remember and repeat. The end of a paragraph is the place ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... purposes only from the time of their ripening till they begin to sprout. The process of germination changes their proximate elements, and renders them less fit for food. Select turnips which are plump and free from disease. A turnip that is wilted, or that appears spongy, pithy, or cork-like when cut, is not fit ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... not bare, for a patch of great sunflowers found moisture enough for their roots somewhere far below, and sent up their great pithy stalks close to the house door, spread their rough leaves, and imitated the sun's disk in their broad, round, yellow flowers. There was an ugly euphorbia too, with its thorny, almost leafless branches and brilliant scarlet flowers; while grotesque and hideous-looking, with its great, flat, oblong, ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... popular. This noble and chivalrous element disappears in the novels of the English who imitated Cervantes. "These English novelists since Richardson's reign," says Heine, "are prosaic natures; to the prudish spirit of their time even pithy descriptions of the life of the common people are repugnant, and we see on yonder side of the Channel those bourgeoisie novels arise, wherein the petty humdrum life of the middle classes is depicted." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... stagnating anywhere. He and Mrs. Caxton had many subjects and interests in common of which they talked freely, and Eleanor was only too glad to listen. There were books and reviews read aloud sometimes, with very pithy discussion of the same; in fact, there was conversation, truly deserving the name; such as Eleanor never listened to before she came to Plassy, and which she enjoyed hugely. Then the walks after natural objects ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... that was being prophesied here the other day. Cristoforo Landino said that the excellent Bardo was one of those scholars who lie overthrown in their learning, like cavaliers in heavy armour, and then get angry because they are over-ridden—which pithy remark, it seems to me, was not a herb out of his own garden; for of all men, for feeding one with an empty spoon and gagging one with vain expectation by long discourse, Messer Cristoforo is the pearl. Ecco! you are perfect now." Here Nello ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... leaves. The head contains, like all other palms, a soft spike, about the hardness of the core of the cabbage. This, when boiled, resembles the asparagus, or kale, and, uncooked, it makes an excellent salad. The interior of the tree is full of useless pithy matter. It is therefore split into four or more parts, the softer portion being cut away, and leaving only the outer rind of older wood, which is necessarily hard. These narrow, slightly-curved slabs form the principal flooring of the houses in Borneo, as well as the posts and ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... but leave it every one to dilate and amplify as he shall think fit in his own judgment: let him advise with Siracides cap. 9. 1. "Be not jealous over the wife of thy bosom;" read that comfortable and pithy speech to this purpose of Ximenius, in the author himself, as it is recorded by Gomesius; consult with Chaloner lib. 9. de repub. Anglor. or Caelia in her epistles, &c. Only this I will add, that if it be considered aright, which causeth this jealous passion, be it just or unjust, whether ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... architectural history of the cathedral (as distinguished from the description of it, which will be given in due course), it may be well to say a few words upon the principles which have guided the writer in his treatment of the subject. These cannot be better expressed than in a very pithy sentence uttered by Professor Willis at the meeting of the Archaeological Institute at this very place in 1861. "In all investigations of this nature, I am of opinion that it is requisite to ascertain first whether there exist any contemporary documents which may throw ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... Assemblies, serve instead of our Traditional Notes, by the use of Letters. Some Indians, that I have met withal, have given me a very curious Description of the great Deluge, the Immortality of the Soul, with a pithy Account of the Reward of good and wicked Deeds in the Life to come; having found, amongst some of them, great Observers of Moral Rules, and the Law of Nature; indeed, a worthy Foundation to build Christianity ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... Sancho, do not intermix in thy discourse such a multitude of proverbs as thou wert wont to do; for though proverbs are concise and pithy sentences, thou dost so often drag them in by the head and shoulders that they look more like the ravings of ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to be regretted that London was omitted from the Domesday Survey, for that invaluable record might have furnished us with some information as to the building of the Tower, and perhaps revealed in one of those brief but pithy sentences, pregnant with suggestion, some such ruthless destruction of houses as took place in Oxford and elsewhere[8] in order to clear a site for the King's new castle. Unless the site were then vacant, or perhaps only occupied by a vineyard (for these are mentioned in Domesday Book ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... Rhapsody,' published in 1593, and where 'The Soul's Errand' first appeared,) and to Joshua Sylvester, who prints it in his volume of verses, with vile interpolations of his own. Its outspoken energy and pithy language render it worthy of any ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... more than one hour at meat in his own house, and that he never overslept the sunrise. After dinner he would converse with his friends, using commonly his native dialect of Bergamo, and entertaining the company now with stories of adventure, and now with pithy sayings. In another essential point he resembled his illustrious contemporary, the Duke of Urbino; for he was sincerely pious in an age which, however it preserved the decencies of ceremonial religion, was profoundly corrupt at ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... made by paring down a straight slender stick of aromatic sumac, about three feet long, to the general thickness of less than half an inch, but leaving a head or button at one end. A ring was fashioned from a transverse slice of some hollow or pithy plant, so that it would slide freely up and down the slender wand, but would nob pass over the head. Eagle down was secured to the wooden head and also to the ring. In the dance (paragraph 129) the eagle down on the stick is burned off in the fire while ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... genuine Irishman, strongly resembling the late actor Power in physiognomy, with the very brogue which Power sometimes gave to his personages. He was a man of pithy speech, communicative, and acquainted apparently with everybody of every class, whom we passed on the road. Besides him we had for fellow-passengers three very intelligent Irishmen, on their way ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... most important matters of State. Titus, the successor of that monarch, manifested equal confidence, and regarded him absolutely as an oracle. Apollonius, who really seems to have been a most sensible politician, wrote the following brief but pithy note to Titus, when the latter modestly refused the crown of ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... conciliatory reply to the countess. When the late Duke of York consulted him, he stood whistling with his hands in his pockets; and the duke said, "I suppose you know who I am." The uncourtly reply was, "Suppose I do, what of that?" His pithy advice was, "Cut off the supplies, as the Duke of Wellington did in his campaigns, and the enemy will leave the citadel." When he was consulted for lameness following disease or accidents, he seldom either listened ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... question. As our king, we put our lives and fortunes in your hands. If, therefore, the Eagle, the Vulture, and the Kite, should make a descent upon us, what means would you take for our defense?" This pithy question opened the eyes of the Birds to the weakness of their choice and ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... neither the leisure nor the training to master this very intricate economic problem. W. H. Harvey's Coin's Financial School was the most widely read campaign document, although hundreds of similar pamphlets and books had an enormous circulation. The pithy and plausible arguments of "Coin" and his ready answers to questions supposedly put by prominent editors, bankers, and university professors, as well as by J. R. Sovereign, master workman of the Knights of Labor, ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... was an orator who wielded the apologue with remarkable skill. From a servile condition, he rose, by the force of his genius, to be the counsellor of kings and states. His wisdom was in demand far and wide, and on the most important occasions. The pithy apologues which fell from his lips, which, like the rules of arithmetic, solved the difficult problems of human conduct constantly presented to him, were remembered when the speeches that contained them were forgotten. He ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... indicate, bespeak, bear a sense; tell of, speak of; touch on; point to, allude to; drive at; involve &c. (latency) 526; declare &c. (affirm) 535. understand by &c. (interpret) 522. Adj. meaning &c. v.; expressive, suggestive, allusive; significant, significative[obs3], significatory[obs3]; pithy; full of meaning, pregnant with meaning. declaratory &c. 535; intelligible &c. 518; literal; synonymous; tantamount &c. (equivalent) 27; implied &c. (latent) 526; explicit &c. 525. Adv. to that effect; that is to say &c. (being ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... news and the brightest "stories." The reputation for a newspaper which has been looked upon as pre-eminently desirable is not that it should be regarded by the public as well-informed or as expressing a sound judgment, but as pithy and interesting. The inevitable consequence of this tendency is that the great mass of English daily newspapers have lost their former high place in the estimation of the public as serious and necessary institutions, and have descended ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... us is that of Giordano Bruno, the same philosopher, heretic, and martyr whose statue has recently been erected in Rome, to the great horror of the Pope and his prelates in the Old World and in the New. De Morgan's pithy account of him will interest the company: "Giordano Bruno was all paradox. He was, as has been said, a vorticist before Descartes, an optimist before Leibnitz, a Copernican before Galileo. It would be easy ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that it is enough pleaded before them, and the witnesses have said what they can, one of the judges, with a brief and pithy recapitulation, reciteth to the twelve in sum the arguments of the sergeants of either side, that which the witnesses have declared, and the chief points of the evidence showed in writing, and once again putteth them in mind of the issue, and sometime giveth it them in writing, delivering ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... troops are sent to any new front the approval of the House of Commons should be obtained. I suspect that if, during his active-service days, some Member had proposed a similar restriction on the movements of the Fleet the comments of the gallant Commander himself would have been more pithy than Parliamentary. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... marts, and clear her forests, are workers, not dreamers,—who have already realized Solomon's pithy proverb, "In all labour is profit;" and their industry has imbued them with a spirit of independence which cannot fail to make them a free and ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Pithy paragraphs on a wide range of subjects, not one of which but will be found to contain some terse, sparkling truth worthy of thought and attention. A spare ten minutes devoted to such readings can never ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... remark, thought better not to efface it later in the evening by any other conversation with his hostess. But in the small hours of the night, when he had finished his bundle of proofs, he took up his notebook and, strangling his yawns, made two or three brief, pithy notes of the story Mrs. Selldon had told him, adding a further development which occurred to him, and wondering to himself whether "Like a Green Bay Tree" would be ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... writing. Johnson and Chatham resemble the chemical bodies which acquire entirely new properties when raised beyond a certain degree of temperature. Indeed, we frequently meet touches of the conversational Johnson in his controversial writing. 'Taxation no Tyranny' is at moments almost as pithy as Swift, though the style is never so simple. The celebrated Letter to Chesterfield, and the letter in which he tells MacPherson that he will not be 'deterred from detecting what he thinks a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian,' are as good specimens of the smashing ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the beginner, not knowing the ear marks of good scions, often fails to select the best scions for grafting. The common mistake made by the beginner in the selection of scions of nut trees, is in selecting the smaller growth. The smaller growth is usually more pithy and lacking in vitality and gives poor results in grafting. Poor scions are usually characterized by pithy wood and a light colored, thin bark. The buds are usually farther apart than they are on good scion wood, though this is not always true, as good scions sometimes ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... fortune than himself and his correspondents. But taken as a whole, I know not any poetic epistles to be compared with them. They are just the letters in which one friend might unbosom himself to another without the least artifice or disguise. And the broad Doric is so pithy, so powerful, so aptly fitted to the thought, that not even Horace himself has surpassed it in "curious felicity." Often, when harvests were failing and the world going against him, he found his solace in pouring forth in rhyme ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... that every accident implies a total wreck, with the loss of all hands. If a ship carries away any of her important spars, or, on entering her port, strikes heavily against a pier, whereby serious damage is occasioned, the accident is duly registered in this pithy chronicle of Lloyd's. Nevertheless, as we glance up and down the columns, it is no exaggeration to say, that two-thirds of the accidents recorded are of the most serious description. We are unable to say to what degree this register of Lloyd's can be accepted as a fair index to the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... all remember to have read a pithy string of Maxims by Dr. Franklin; and we are accustomed to admire the pertinence of their wit,—but here their influence too often terminates. Since Franklin's time, the practice of getting into debt has become more and more easy, notwithstanding men have ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... were supposed to advance—and this she held to be good for his drooping spirits; the other, that Mr Pancks confidentially agreed to pay her, for the occupation of her son's time, at the handsome rate of seven and sixpence per day. The proposal originated with himself, and was couched in the pithy terms, 'If your John is weak enough, ma'am, not to take it, that is no reason why you should be, don't you see? So, quite between ourselves, ma'am, business being business, here ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens |
