Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Prose   Listen
verb
Prose  v. i.  
1.
To write prose. "Prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Prose" Quotes from Famous Books



... multitude and teach them how to live? But if on the battle-field woman must prove her right to justice and equality, history abundantly sets forth her claims; the records of her brave deeds mark every page of fact and fiction, of poetry and prose. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... are courageous. They attack other nations in order to rule over them as conquerors. They live for the continuation of their life after death, and build for themselves on this account tombs of granite. They brave the dangers of the sea. The abstract prose of the patriarchal-state, the fantastic chimeras of the caste-state, the ascetic self-renunciation of the cloister-state, yield gradually to the recognition of actuality; and the fundamental principle of Persian education consisted ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... whatever for a fox. And ever after that he was wont to boast that his first and last day of fox-hunting, which was an unusually exciting one, had been got though charmingly without any fox at all. It is even said that Queeker, descending from poetry,—his proper sphere,— to prose, wrote an elaborate and interesting paper on that subject, which was refused by all the sporting papers and journals to which he sent it;—but, this not being certified, we do not ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... "Then I prefer prose. Hello!"—pausing and raising his lantern, as they drew near the officer who had fallen under the observation of the fille a la cassette. "Colonel Saint-Prosper, or set me down for an ass—or Plato, which ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... have often been pictured by writers of poetry and prose, but without reaching the head of Strathearn these beauties can be only partially seen. The drive from Crieff to Lochearnhead in a summer day is universally regarded as one of the finest in all Scotland. ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... sleep till an hour before it rises!" Hippias interjected. "You don't rhyme badly. But stick to prose. Poetry's a Base-metal maid. I'm not sure that any writing's good for the digestion. I'm afraid it has ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... and social habits, contained in the dialogues between the hero and the heroine, will commend themselves to the thoughtful reader by their clearness and beauty of statement, as well as by their freedom from prejudice. "Deutsche Liebe" is a poem in prose, whose setting is all the more beautiful and tender, in that it is freed from the bondage of metre, and has been the unacknowledged source of many a poet's ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... compelled by the market to put their reflections into the form of novels, just as Marlowe and Chapman were forced to write plays. With one exception, the law of supply and demand determines the metrical shape of the poet's frenzy, and the prose mould of the ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... supper table I had to repeat some poetry or prose and on Sunday a hymn, some of which were rather depressing to ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... behind a fortress of reputable authority. But in lowlier and less dangerous matters, such as we are now concerned with, one may dare to speak in plain English. I am all for the little rivers. Let those who will, chant in heroic verse the renown of Amazon and Mississippi and Niagara, but my prose shall flow—or straggle along at such a pace as the prosaic muse may grant me to attain—in praise of Beaverkill and Neversink and Swiftwater, of Saranac and Raquette and Ausable, of Allegash and Aroostook and Moose ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... choose one thing, some another, To grace ther prose or rhyme; Some sneerin say 'at tha'lot my brother, Maks me choose thee for mine; Well, let 'em sneer owd Neddy lad, Or laff at my selection, Who fail to see ther type i' thee Are void o' mich perception.— ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... Morris's "Elementary Lessons in Historical English Grammar," Lounsbury's "English Language," Champney's "History of English," Emerson's "History of the English Language," Kellner's "Historical Outlines of English Syntax," Earle's "English Prose," and Matzner's "Englische Grammatik." Allen's "Subjunctive Mood in English," Battler's articles on "Prepositions" in the "Anglia," and many other valuable papers, have also been helpful ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... has drawn his authority for the last fine scene in King John. But he probably had it from Caxton, who uses nearly the words of the prose chronicle. Hemingford tells the same tale with the metrical historian. It is certain, that John increased the flux, of which he died, by the intemperate use of peaches and of ale, which may have given rise to the story ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... work of high antiquity and extended popularity. The prose is doubtless as old as our own era; but the intercalated verses and proverbs compose a selection from writings of an age extremely remote. The Mahabharata and the textual Veds are of those quoted; to the first of which Professor M. Williams (in his admirable edition of ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... a look of interest or an expression of surprise. He was a young and fascinating guide, wearing a white satin tie, and on the third day he recited some verses of Stecchetti and was about to risk a declaration of worship in ornate prose, when he was suddenly rather badly scared by the lady's yellow eyes, and ran on nervously with a string of deceased popes and ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... suppliants; that was the person in which these articles were written; and experiment has shown that to substitute "I," "my," and "mine" for "we," "our," and "ours," destroys invariably the texture of the prose. Whether this early prose of mine was good is not for me to decide; but that it was closely knit is indisputable, and a sensitive critic who cared to tease himself with trifles could discover, I fancy, from stylistic evidence, just which passages ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... the sweet and musical strains that he has sung about the bells, and he often wished that "somebody would bring together all the best things that have been written upon them, both in prose and verse." ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... say the folk of Broceliande themselves of this? Let us hear their version of a tale which has been so battered by modern criticism, and which has been related in at least half a score of versions, prose and poetic. Let us have the Broceliande account of what happened in Broceliande.[26] Surely its folk, in the very forest in which he wandered with Vivien, must know more of Merlin's enchantment than we of that greater ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... gesture, the attitude, was simplicity and unconsciousness itself. Robert had never heard her say anything so intimate before. Nor had he ever seen her so inspired, so beautiful. She had transmuted the conversation at a touch. It had been barbarous prose; she had turned it into purest poetry. Only the noblest souls have such an alchemy as this at command, thought the watcher on the other side of the room with ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... my knowledge of human nature, which, in regard to children, conformed to comparatively simple laws. I knew that the change would involve plenty of hard work, self-denial and careful managing, which nothing could redeem from prose; but I aimed to add to our exodus, so far as possible, the elements of adventure and mystery so dear to the hearts of children. The question where we should go was the cause of much discussion, the studying of maps, and the learning of not a ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe

... figure of the etcher's art or of the process of the mint that we can fully represent Bergson's resources of style. These suggest staccato effects, hard outlines, and that does not at all represent the prose of this writer. It is a fine, delicately interwoven, tissue-like fabric, pliant and supple. If one were in the secret of M. Bergson's private thoughts, it might be discovered that he does not admire his style so much as others do, for his whole manner of thought must, one suspects, have led ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... Revolution in Germany (CONSTABLE) is not so much a history of the scrambling undignified revolutionary movements culminating in the year 1848, as a collection of contemporary comment thereon, in prose and verse. The prose is generally bad; the verse is generally very bad; and one turns with relief to the author's connecting links, wishing only at times that he would not worry about proving his point ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various

... complex powers. It may be hard physical work to break stones for a road-way, but the task itself is a simple one—the lifting of the arm and dropping it again with sufficient force to split a rock apart. But the writing of a prose masterpiece, such as the Areopagitica, involves the highest human faculties in harmonious action. If we add to the requirements of prose, the rhythm, the exalted imagery, and perhaps the assonance and rhyme of verse, we still further increase the difficulty ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... person “evinced an elevated mind,” while a third exhibited an “attic spirit” in her writings. An evening is described as being “attic”; but even Pope, we may remark, calls a nightingale an “attic warbler.” It is true, however, he was writing poetry, not prose. Though a Bluestocking, her praise was usually generously bestowed; she knew well how to flatter. She, though unacquainted with Latin, paraphrased Horace; and she admitted her ignorance of French. She loved all animals, ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin

... intimations of a keen spirit in a feeble body—and out of the furnace came forth Herbert the priest and saint. All that knowledge can inspire, all that tenderness can endear, centres about that picture of the beauty of holiness, his brief pastoral career—as we read it in his prose writings and his poems, and the pages of Walton—at the little village of Bemerton. He died at the age of thirty-nine—his gentle spirit spared the approaching conflicts of his country, which pressed so heavily upon ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... Cavaliers are foes, stand up now, stand up now, The Cavaliers are foes, stand up now; The Cavaliers are foes, themselves they do disclose By verses, not in prose, to please the singing boys. Stand ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... discriminating expression into a fine art, and a style that, while it lapsed occasionally from the standard of its own excellence, was generally self-corrective and frequently forsook the levels of commonplace excellence for the highest reaches of impassioned prose. Nor is this all. His pages do not lack in humor—humor of the truest and most delicate type; and if De Quincey is at times impelled beyond the bounds of taste, even these excursions demonstrate his power, at least in handling the grotesque. His sympathies, however, are always genuine, ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... OF THE AUTHOR.—What are the main facts of Scott's boyhood? his education? his professional career? his success as a poet? his change from poetry to prose? his success as a novelist? his financial distress? his struggle to meet the demands of the law and of his ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely

... hanged. Sir Edward Carson might make a perfectly good speech, which no one thought wearisome, but might himself be just tired enough to shift from one leg to the other. Snapshot him, and he appears as holding one leg stiffly in the air and yawning enough to swallow the audience. But it is in the prose narratives of the Press that we find most manifestations of this strange ineptitude; this knack of exhibiting your own favourites in an unlucky light. It is not so much that the party journalists do not tell the truth as that they tell just enough of it to ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... whom I have named wrote in prose, but there are those also who have written in verse, as Hesiod of Ascra and Menecrates ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... hoarded store, In virtue affluent, but in metal poor; * * * * * Great is thy prose; great thy poetic strain, Yet to dull coxcombs are they ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... and prose is a monstrous anomaly in French literature, there must be exceptions to the rule. This tale will be one of the two instances in these Studies of violation of the laws of narrative; for to give a just idea of the unconfessed struggle which may excuse, ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... Speak to me for a moment and if you have anything to say in the nature of poetry or prose would you kindly recite a line or two to me. It will give me strength to remain longer than I could otherwise do. [R.H. recites a poem of ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... tenors in garrison, but would be stopped at any outpost in the field for want of the countersign. But when Goethe describes what he saw and felt in the campaign in France, with that lucid and observant prose, he reproduces an actual situation. So does Chamisso, in that powerful letter which describes the scenes in Hameln, when it was delivered to the French. But Chamisso has written a genuine soldier's song, which we intend to give. The songs of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Abbreviations, to make it appear still more like common Discourse, and the usual way of speaking. Perhaps I may be thought to have been too bold in that point, because I have had some that are not usual in Prose; therefore I don't set this way as a Copy for any one to follow me in, nor shall I use it myself in any other Piece. I have all the way divided the Acts and Scenes according to the true Rules of the Stage, which are extreamly false in all the Editions ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard

... to tell you the truth, they are not merely books of reference to me—I like reading encyclopaedia. The 'Dictionary of Dates' is a favourite book of mine. The mind sometimes wants tone, and then I read Milton. He is the only poet I read—he is complete, and is enough. I have got his prose works too. Milton was the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... the different non-Aryan tribes of northern India. The word non means salt, and is a corruption of the Sanskrit lavana, 'the moist,' which first occurs as a name for sea-salt in the Atharva Veda. [352] In the oldest prose writings salt is known as Saindhava or 'that which is brought from the Indus,' this perhaps being Punjab rock-salt. The Nunias are a fairly large caste in Bengal and northern India, numbering 800,000 persons, but the Central Provinces and Berar ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... others, and we are not even frightened by the length of such productions as Evangeline, The Lady of the Lake, or Julius Caesar. A simple, adapted version of Robinson Crusoe is used in some schools as a second reader. From time immemorial choice selections of prose and verse have formed the staple of our readers above the third. But generally these selections are scrappy or fragmentary. Few of the great masterpieces have been used because most of them are supposed to be too long. Broken fragments of our choice literary products have ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... was eventually reduced to L750: both the Marquis of Lansdowne and Lord John Russell pressed Moore with their friendly offers, and the advance which he at last accepted was soon repaid out of the profits of the Loves of the Angels—which poem, chiefly written in Paris, was published in 1823. The prose tale of The Epicurean was composed about the same time, but did not issue from the press till 1827: the Memoirs of Captain Rock in 1824. He had been under an engagement to a bookseller to write a Life of Sheridan. During ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... started checking over his personal items. There was nothing there to help. Hopelessly, he looked at the collection in the chest, then he got out a scroll of prose and went to the central table to read in an effort to clear his mind of ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... Lang. Orange fairy book. Mabie. Fairy tales every child should know. McMurry. Classic myths. Norton. Heart of oak books, v. 3. (Adapted.) Perkins. Twenty best fairy tales. Scudder. Children's book. Tappan. Folk stories and fables. Whittier. Child life in prose. ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various

... office. Return to the Mansion House and stay there all night. I suppose that all the thoughts and emotions which a view of Niagara Falls is capable of exciting in the beholder have been so clearly and graphically expressed in prose and verse, so far as lies in the power of words to express them, that I feel like keeping silent. This, however, I will venture to say, that in the sight of such mighty power I felt very small and weak. How, then, thought I, will I feel ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... with which many of them are teeming will render them a precious legacy to the world, when the time shall have arrived for their publication. Of late, Italy has claimed the lion's share in these unrhymed sketches of Mrs. Browning in the negligee of home. Prose has recorded all that poetry threw aside; and thus much political thought, many an anecdote, many a reflection, and much womanly enthusiasm have been stored up for the benefit of more than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... but wished, nevertheless, to keep at his post until he was killed: "I intend to stay at the front.... Patriotism for me is a passion. Does that mean that I am happy here far from all I love? You do not think that and I have often said I am not, in prose and verse. But from now until peace, no man of heart can be happy. If I came back, I should be still less happy, because instead of being dissatisfied with my lot, I should ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... it is notorious that he was often called the German Voltaire, which argues some tiger-monkey grin that traversed his features at intervals. Wieland's malice, however, was far more playful and genial than Swift's; something of this is shown in his romance of 'Idris,' and oftentimes in his prose. But what the world knows Wieland by is his 'Oberon.' Now in this gay, musical romance of Sir Huon and his enchanted horn, with its gleams of voluptuousness, is there a possibility that any suggestion of a scowling face like Swift's should cross ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... the only kinds within their own reach. Literature is no doubt a fine art—the finest of the arts—but it is also a practical art; and it is deplorable to think how much stout, instructive work might and ought to be done by people who, in dreaming of ideals in prose or verse beyond their attainment, end, like the poor Casaubon of fiction, in a little pamphlet on a particle, or else in mediocre poetry, or else in nothing. By insisting on rearing nothing short of a great monument more durable than brass, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley

... promoted to the Intelligence Department of the service where the personal risk was the greatest, and was killed in action at the battle of the Ourcq, July 30, 1918. He was buried within sound of the river. Since his death two volumes containing his complete work in prose and verse, his letters from abroad, and an excellent memoir written by his friend, Robert Holliday, have been published and will do much to perpetuate the ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him the crusts of his toast to eat; he sends him on little errands about the house; he tells him to come to me for sixpences. In short," said Caddy cheerily, "and not to prose, I am a very fortunate girl and ought to be very grateful. Where are ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... great advantage as a preacher that he has a prose style instinct with life and beauty. Somewhere he speaks of a cathedral as a 'Great, still place, urgent with beauty'; somewhere else he says, 'The necessary elements of religion can be written on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various

... you lived the most glorious creature in the world? It was poetry. I remained there three weeks, and it was more like three thousand years, for I read all that has ever been written in poetry or prose; and I may say, in truth, that ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... between then and now would seem to reside in the fact, that poetry is more easily remembered than prose. From the time of Homer until long after the invention of printing, not only were ballad-singers and harpers in good demand, but the recital of poetry was also a favorite means of livelihood to indigent scholars and others, who wandered about ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... make hers. There was no knowledge, he declared, that he could offer her, which the lassie from Corbyknowe would not take in like her porridge. Best thing of all for her was that, following his own predilections, he paid far more attention, in his class for English, to poetry than to prose. Colin Craig was himself no indifferent poet, and was even a master of the more recondite forms of verse. If, in some measure led astray by the merit of the form, he was capable of admiring verse essentially inferior, he yet certainly admired the better poetry more. He had, besides, the ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... come the children downstairs, so I must drop into plain prose, and tell you what already you have guessed, that the Prince I mean is their father, John Frisbie,—Prince John, if you like,—and the Princess's name was Mary Jones before she was married, but now, of course, it is Mary Frisbie. There were five of the princelings,—Jack and May and Arthur ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... Arnold's prose works, aside from his letters, consist wholly of critical essays, in which he has dealt fearlessly with the greater issues of his day. As will be seen by their titles (see page xxxviii of this volume), the subject-matter of these essays is of very great scope, embracing ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... Dying" (1652), are unique monuments of learning and devotion. His sermons form, however, his most brilliant and most voluminous productions, and fully establish his claims to the first place among the learned, witty, fanciful, ornate and devotional prose writers of his time. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser

... attain and there are some people who never do attain it. I met some one the other day who did not care for poetry at all; it gave her no pleasure, no satisfaction, and only caused her to reflect how much better the thought, so it seemed to her, could be expressed in prose. In the same way there are people who care nothing for music. I knew one Englishman of whom it was said that he knew only two tunes: one was the national anthem, "God Save the King," and the other wasn't. We cannot help these people if they do not care for poetry or music, but I may ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey

... not able to pass any opinion upon this, but I can see that 'reap' and 'deep,' 'prayers' and 'bears,' 'ark' and 'dark,' 'true' and 'grew' do rhyme, and so I suppose it is a splendid effort, but if you had written it in plain prose, I could have understood it a great deal better and read it a great deal more easily. Nevertheless, I am thankful to you for poetizing over me—although the fact is that I am the most prosaic, matter-of-fact creature that ever drew the breath ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... have neither of you ever been in love, or you would prefer poetry to prose. But excuse [pulls out a paper] the haste in which it was written. I heard the news in the fields—always have paper and a pencil about me, and composed the whole forty lines crossing the meadows and the park ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald

... the prizes has been increased, as now five different flowers of gold and five of silver are bestowed each for poetry of a certain kind, and in addition there is a gold jasmine which is awarded to the most excellent prose article, and a silver pink which is a sort of prize at large, and which may be given for ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... rapidly, four editions being exhausted the first year. This popularity surprised the poet. He said sarcastically that it was owing entirely to the subject, and that the public would have received it as well if it had been written in prose. The solemn and affecting nature of the poem, applicable to all ranks and classes, no doubt aided its sale; it required high poetic sensibility and a cultivated taste to appreciate the rapid transitions, the figurative language, and ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... just dismounted from my Pegasus, which has prevented me from descending to plain prose in an epistle of greater length to your fair self. You regretted, in a former letter, that my poems were not more extensive; I now for your satisfaction announce that I have nearly doubled them, partly by the discovery of some I conceived to be lost, and partly by some new productions. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... "Zadig" as he did into a hundred other characters—for a political purpose. Their veiled and bitter satire was to make Europe think—to sting reason into action—to ridicule out of existence a humbugging System of special privileges. It did, via the French Revolution and the resulting upheavals. His prose romances are the most perfect of Voltaire's manifold expressions to this end, which mark him the most powerful literary man of ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... story (which is apparently intended as an example of the flowery style (el bediya) of Arab prose) is terribly corrupt and obscure, and in the absence of a parallel version, with which to collate it, it is impossible to be sure that the exact sense has ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... has noticed that to read Hooker's account of 'Raleigh's adventures with the Irish chieftains, his challenges and single combats, his escapes at fords and woods, is like reading bits of the Faery Queen in prose.' The two men, in many respects the most remarkable Englishmen of imagination then before the notice of their country, did not, however, really come into mutual relation until the time ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... been a great success, and I think Mother has really enjoyed it. As for me, I of course feel a little bored, as I always do on shipboard, but I have brought on a great variety of books, and am at this moment reading Milton's prose works, "Tacitus," and a German novel called "Jorn Uhl." Mother and I walk briskly up and down the deck together, or else sit aft under the awning, or in the after cabin, with the gun ports open, and read; and I also spend a good deal of time on ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt

... for the Close-stool. Consisting of Original Pieces in Prose and Verse by several Modern Authors. Printed on an excellent soft Paper; and absolutely necessary for all those, who read with a View to Convenience, as well as Delight. Revised and corrected by a Gentleman well skilled in the Fundamentals of Literature, ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]

... general, and for the Count de Toumeville in particular, and the freethinkers would be triumphant. The evilly disposed newspapers would sing songs of victory for six months; my mother's name would be dragged through the mire and brought into the prose of Socialistic journals, and my father's would be bespattered. It was impossible that such ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... loathing. That something, I imagine, must be the new matter which was absent from the first version, and crops up in the text of the second, which, according to the Play-bill, appears "in Vol. I. of the authorised edition of IBSEN's Prose Dramas, edited by WILLIAM ARCHER, and published by Mr. WALTER SCOTT." By the way, I must confess that, although the name of the Editor is not familiar to me as a dramatic author, his superintendence ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various

... Kayanerenghkowa,—"now listen, ye who completed the work, the Great League." This section, though written continuously as prose, was probably always sung, like the list of chiefs which follows. It is, in fact, the commencement of a great historical chant, similar in character to the 78th Psalm, or to some passages of the Prophets, which in style it greatly resembles. In singing ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... think I ever have, Hugh; but what a pleasant thing it must be! I have never slept in the open, but even if I should, I fear my waking would be plain prose, like myself." ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards

... had my mind, unknowing how to soar, In humble prose been train'd, nor aim'd at more: Near the fam'd sisters never durst aspire To sound a verse, or touch the tuneful lyre. 'Till Bristol's charms dissolv'd the native cold; Bad me survey her eyes, and thence be bold. Thee, lovely Bristol! thee! with pride I chuse, The first, and only ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... suggestions, and of scientific progress. He was a cool-headed man,—not a light or superficial thinker, but thought on deep subjects. He was a brain worker; it makes my brain tired. I think he published books—poems. I think he was more a poet than a prose writer. He was not like Tom Moore—there was nothing light or superficial—his poetry was grand, solid, deep, stirring. He could write upon warlike scenes, vividly and descriptively, but was not in favor of war. He would deplore ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... the authorship of Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims, "excellently skilled in sacred and profane literature, of a genius equally adapted to prose and verse; the advocate of the poor, beloved of God in his life and conversation, who often hand to hand fought the Saracens by the Emperor's side; and who flourished under Charles and his son Lewis to the year of our ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... volume of poems, consisting mainly of pieces already published. The statement was probably the first intimation received by many that the author of 'Modern Painters' had ever written anything in the shape of verse. That he has always been, like Sidney, a 'warbler of poetic prose,' has lately been emphasized by a magazine-writer; but it is not at all universally known that between the years 1835 and 1845 Mr. Ruskin figured somewhat largely as a poet, in the popular sense of that much abused word. During that time he produced a good ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... most people are a little cracked before they begin to write. I will not assert that it is a proof of madness, but it is a proof that a very little more would make them mad. Shakespeare says 'the lover, the lunatic, and the poet, are of an imagination all compact.' It matters little whether it is prose or poetry; there is often more imagination and more poetry in prose than ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... point of view. So remarkable were his verses felt to be by the critics of the day, that one of them wrote, "When dying, Alfred de Musset left his two pens as a last legacy to our literature—Feuillet has taken that of prose; into Daudet's hand ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... elementary knowledge of Greek; add ciphering to a small extent, Euclid perhaps in a rather imaginary condition; a swift but not very legible or handsome penmanship, and the copious prompt habit of employing it in all manner of unconscious English prose composition, or even occasionally in verse itself: this, or something like this, he had gained from his grammar-schools: this is the most of what they offer to the poor young soul in general, in these indigent times. The express schoolmaster is not equal to much at present,—while ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... pourroit surnommer Eustache Deschamps le Rutebeuf du XIVe siecle.—Ses oeuvres comprennent des epitres, des discours en prose, des jeux dramatiques, des ouvrages latins, des apologues, un grand poeme moral, et un infinite de ballades et rondeaux pieux, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various

... [Footnote: Spectator 122.] and of Tom Touchy; [Footnote: Spectator 122.] but they are surrounded by circumstances peculiar to themselves, and so are much more highly individualized. The Tatler and the Spectator very greatly extended the range of essay-writing, and with it the flexibility of prose style; it is this extension that gives to them their modern quality. Nothing came amiss: fable, description, vision, gossip, literary criticism or moral essays, discussion of large questions such as marriage and education, or of the smaller social amenities—any subject which would be of interest ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... accomplishments Burke had no rival among Parliamentary speakers. His prose is, as we read it now, the most fascinating, the most musical, in the English language. It bears on every page the divine lineaments of genius. Yet an orator requires something more than mere force of words. He must feel, while he speaks, the pulse of his audience, and ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... is a rendering in verse of an Irish prose translation of a fragment of the Cuchullin Cycle, which moves in the Bronze Age period. Cuchullin, with "the light of heroes" on his forehead, is also reminiscent of Achilles. One of the few Cuchullin tales found in Scotland is that which relates his conflict ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... worked another half-hour, perhaps. She was nervous and excited; she had set herself to catch the four o'clock post, and there still were numbers of pages with which she was dissatisfied. She was essaying, indeed, an impossible task—trying to couch Hugh Kinross's eccentricities in dignified English prose. And the shoes, at least, absolutely refused to be so treated; they seemed to stand out from the article just as prominently as they had stood out among ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... of verse. In this novel, the theme of which occasionally touches upon the same problems—problems involving love, freedom of expression, the right to live one's life in one's own way—he is revealed to be no less a master of the prose form than of the poetical. While the book is one for mature minds, the skill with which delicate situations are handled and the reserve everywhere exhibited remove it from possible criticism even by the most exacting. The title, it should be explained, refers to a spirited race horse with ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... points in a Shorthorn cow resemble those in the male of that breed, but in others there is considerable difference. As I have described in prose the excellencies which a bull should possess, I will now give a poetical summary of the good points of a cow of that breed, extracted from the Journal of Agriculture, and composed evidently by an excellent breeder ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... that salable prose Put aside for this profitless strain, I sit the day darning his hose— And he ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... commenced in the earliest ages and was developed independently of foreign influences. From the sovereign down to the lowest subject, everyone composed verses. These were not rhymed; the structure of the Japanese language does not lend itself to rhyme. Their differentiation from prose consisted solely in the numerical regularity of the syllables in consecutive lines; the alternation of phrases of five and seven syllables each. A tanka (short song) consisted of thirty-one syllables arranged thus, 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7; and a naga-uta (long song) consisted of an unlimited ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... least poetic of her books, although it is written in prose, is the delicate interpretation of St. Francis, written for children and called ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... so that's it, is it, Master Osborne? I thought there was some mental cause for this depression of health. I wouldn't trouble my head about it, if I were you, though that's always very easily said, I know. Try your hand at prose, if you can't manage to please the publishers with poetry; but, at any rate, don't go on fretting over spilt milk. But I mustn't lose my time here. Come over to us to-morrow, as I said; and what with the wisdom of two doctors, and the wit and folly of three women, I think we shall ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... with projects which kept him in a fevered and irritable condition. "He had a small writing-table," Mr. Phillips says, "with a shallow drawer; I have often seen it half full of sketches, unfinished poems, soliloquies, a scene or two of a play, prose portraits of some pet character, etc. These he would read to me, though he never volunteered to do so, and every now and then he burnt the whole and began to fill ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Even Beranger could not escape the malady of his generation. Do you remember"—his swift glance embraced us all—"Longfellow's criticism of European poets of that epoch, in his prose masterpiece, Hyperion? He refers to Salis and Matthisson, but Lamartine and people of his kidney come in—'Melancholy gentlemen' pardon, my dear Elodie, if I quote it in English—'Melancholy gentlemen ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... way of the County Council. Plus ca change plus c'est la meme[*] chose—probably the profoundest observation ever made by a Frenchman. Our mythopoetic instinct is as active as of yore, only the mode of its expression is changed. It works on modern lines, has taken to prose instead of poetry, and only occasionally unfurls wings. Why does not the Folklore Society investigate the origin of our modern myths? Why not seize on the instinct as it is seen at play in our midst, moulding movements and fashioning faiths? Why not catch it in the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... pronounce a verse as you do prose, giving each word and syllable its natural accent, with these two restrictions: First, If there is no point at the end of the line, make a short pause before you begin the next. Secondly, If any word in a line has two sounds, give it that which agrees best with ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... be expected of him. Skylarks are primarily created to sing, although a whole choir of them may be baked in pies and brought to table; they were born to make music, although they may incidentally stay the pangs of vulgar hunger. The essayist is a kind of poet in prose, and if questioned harshly as to his uses, he might be unable to render a better apology for his existence than a flower might. The essay should be pure literature as the poem is pure literature. The essayist wears a lance, but he cares more for the sharpness of its point than for the pennon ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... interrogation. We pry into the counsels of the great powers of nature, we keep our ears at the keyhole, and know everything that is going to happen. There is no longer any sacred inaccessibility, no longer any enchanting unexpectedness, and life turns to prose the moment there is nothing unattainable. It needs no more a voice out of the unknown proclaiming "Great Pan is dead!" We have found his tombstone, deciphered the arrow-headed inscription upon it, know his age to a day, and that he ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... Yet I have had frequent occasion to observe the former language written by inland people in the country character; which would indicate that the speech is likely to perish first. The Malayan books are very numerous, both in prose and verse. Many of them are commentaries on the koran, and others romances ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... the following lines from this noble poet, though a prose translation can do but little justice ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... play, and his ever present courtesy to women, form a picture that has no counterpart in the folk-lore of any other people. The simple ballad English has been most successfully preserved in Mr. Pyle's easy prose, and, as regards the text, this edition is in all respects the most complete and in every way the most desirable that has ever ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... letter to Cornelius he mentions the following authors as his poetic models—Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Juvenal, Statius, Martial, Claudian, Persius, Lucan, Tibullus, Propertius. In prose he imitates Cicero, Quintilian, Sallust, and Terence, whose metrical character had not yet been recognized. Among Italian humanists he was especially acquainted with Lorenzo Valla, who on account of his Elegantiae passed with him for the ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... being performed is The Paladins of France; it was written by Manzanares in Italian prose and is in three volumes. It does not always agree with the other versions of the same story; but that is only as it should be, for romances have always been re-written to suit the audience they are intended for. It has been going on about four months, ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... wished to know all there was to know about writing, and so ne enrolled himself for an advanced course, and went for an hour every day and listened to expositions of the elements of sentence-structure by Prof. Osborne, author of "American Prose Writers" and "The Science of Rhetoric". The professor would give him a theme, and bid him bring in a five-hundred word composition. Perhaps it was that Thyrsis was lacking in the play-spirit; at any rate he could not write convincingly on the subject of "The Duty of the College Man to Support ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... religious significance of Virgil's poem. Carried away by his headstrong nature, he yielded to the heart-rending charm of the romantic story: he lived it, literally, with the heroine. When his schoolmasters desired him to elaborate the lament of the dying Queen Dido in Latin prose, what he wrote had a veritable quiver of anguish. Without the least defence against lust and the delusions of the heart, he spent intellectually and in a single outburst all the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... ownership and adopted a respectful attitude towards his property, and that of all other predatory men in uniform he was distrustful and jealous. But Doggie was a simple soul and went through a great many elementary emotions, just as Monsieur Jourdain spoke prose, sans le savoir. Without knowing it, he would have gone to the ends of the earth for Jeanne, have clubbed over the head any fellow-savage who should seek to rob him of Jeanne. It did not occur to him that savage instinct ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke



Words linked to "Prose" :   writing style, prose poem, stream of consciousness, polyphonic prose, prosaic, style, euphuism, interior monologue, nonfiction, expressive style



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com