"Prosy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... famous, suitably attired. Something, perhaps, more homely, more immediately attainable. Some of the women dressed, perhaps, a little dowdily; not all of them young and beautiful. The men wise, perhaps, rather than persistently witty; a few of them prosy, maybe a trifle ponderous; but solid and influential. Mrs. Denton's great empty house in Gower Street? A central situation and near to the tube. Lords and ladies had once ruffled there; trod a measure on its spacious floors; filled its echoing stone hall with their greetings ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... poke bonnet, and large bag,—the height of elegance then, but very funny now. Then William Wallace in 'Scottish Chiefs.' Bless me! we cried over him as much as you do over your 'Heir of Clifton,' or whatever the boy's name is. You wouldn't get through it, I fancy; and as for poor, dear, prosy Richardson, his letter-writing heroines would bore you to death. Just imagine a lover saying to a friend, 'I begged my angel to stay and sip one dish of tea. She sipped one ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... remember thinking that I could write quite a book now myself. Already I began to feel quite a hardened pioneer. It doesn't take an adaptable person long to accustom one's self to a new way of life, and the humdrum routine of the farm certainly looked prosy compared to voyaging with Parnassus. When I had got beyond Woodbridge, and had crossed the river, I would begin to sell books in earnest. Also I would buy a notebook and jot down my experiences. I had heard of bookselling as a profession for women, but I thought that my taste of it was probably ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... when that time comes, you will let me have the hundred and thirty for—" And then Mr. Sowerby took his leave, having certainly made himself master of the occasion. If a man of fifty have his wits about him, and be not too prosy, he can generally make himself master of the occasion, when his companions are under thirty. Robarts did not stay at the Albany long after him, but took his leave, having received some assurances of Lord Lufton's regret for what ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... habitual recognition and apprehension of causal sequence, without admixture of animistic belief and without a sense of dependence on any preternatural intervention in the course of events. Not much is to be said for the beauty, moral excellence, or general worthiness and reputability of such a prosy human nature as these traits imply; and there is little ground of enthusiasm for the manner of collective life that would result from the prevalence of these traits in unmitigated dominance. But that is beside the point. The successful working of a modern industrial community ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... enjoy outside. May be I'm responsible for many a sigh you've heaved lately, but it never struck me you see, my pretty darling, that our sentiments and sympathies run so widely apart, it is not very surprising if an old prosy bachelor should forget to ferret out the pleasures of youth, to bestow them on a fair young beautiful ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... rationalistic doctrines was the "prosaism" into which it led many minor versifiers. These poetasters, afraid of overstepping the limits of good sense, tabooed all imagination and described in deliberately prosy lines the most commonplace events. The movement reached its height at the beginning of the reign of Charles IV (1788-1808) and produced such efforts as a poem to the gout, a nature-poem depicting barn-yard sounds, and even Iriarte's La musica (1780), in which one may read in carefully ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... people, not with a silver vase, as our governor had been, but with a silver currycomb, in testimony of their admiration for his skill; but I confess that the poetry of rubbing down had become, as all other poetry becomes, rather prosy by frequent repetition, and with respect to the chance of deriving glory from the employment, I entertained, in the event of my determining to stay, very slight hope of ever attaining skill in the ostler art ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... so to speak, drew up all his facts and figures in the form of a hollow square, Tyson charged with magnificent contempt of danger. No doubt Tyson's method was extremely amusing and effective, and his sparkling periods proved the enemy's dullness up to the hilt; unfortunately, the prosy but responsible representations of Smedley had ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... was passing like so many before it; the sun was low on the horizon, and its yellow beams were throwing a brassy tint over the sea and sky; the sailors were engaged, some fishing with patient assiduity, others, grouped into small knots, listening to prosy yarns; while a few were prostrated round the decks in attitudes of perfect abandonment or sleep. The officers were leaning over the taffrail, trying, with a sportsman-like anxiety worthy of better prey, to hook a shark, which was slowly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... it is. The future seems so far off, when we try to plan about it. But papa used to tell me that, as long as I did the next thing in order and did it hard and carefully, without trying to save myself any work or to sneak, the rest of things would take care of themselves. It sounds pretty prosy; but I rather think after all it may be true. It is a good deal more romantic to plan what great things we'll do when we are grown up; but I never noticed that planning helped on much. When I began on my music, I used to dream ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... night we camped, and I heard stories, from two poor, humble men, that made my head just whirl, for they were really Odysseys, or sagas, or any of the big tales one ever heard of. It would seem, Aunt Jennie, dear, as if the world is not at all the prosy thing some people take it to be. I suppose that the great knights and warriors are altogether out of it now, but I find that it is running over with men one usually never hears of, who accomplish tremendous things without the slightest ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... the womb of a lofty desk, behind which I sat for some hours every day, transcribing (when I imagined eyes were upon me) documents of every description in every possible hand. Blackstone kept company with Ab Gwilym—the polished English lawyer of the last century, who wrote long and prosy chapters on the rights of things—with a certain wild Welshman, who some four hundred years before that time indited immortal cowydds or odes to the wives of Cambrian chieftains—more particularly to one Morfydd, the wife of a certain hunch-backed dignitary ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... Wyndham. Oh, yes, Wyndham is a good fellow; a little prosy sometimes, but means well. We endure the Dons, you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... have been a time when mountain-scenery, instead of being sought, was shunned,—when princes possessing the most beautiful lands among the Rhine hills should, with great trouble and expense, have transported their seats to some flat, uninviting locality,—when, for instance, the dull, flat, prosy, wearisome gardens of Schwetzingen should have been deemed more beautiful than the immediate environs of Heidelberg. Yet such were the sentiments that prevailed in Switzerland until a comparatively late date. It is only since the days of Scheuchzer that Swiss scenery has been appreciated, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... ignorant of the Bible, is that the authorized English version is a great work of literary art, and the continental versions are comparatively artless. To read a dull book; to listen to a tedious play or prosy sermon or lecture; to stare at uninteresting pictures or ugly buildings: nothing, short of disease, is more dreadful than this. The violence done to our souls by it leaves injuries and produces subtle maladies ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... he did not know what else to do, so as to show his intellectual appreciation of the parable; but in his heart, for all his gratitude, he thought Barney bill rather a prosy moralizer. It was one of the disabilities of advanced old age. Alas! what can bridge the gulf ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Van Arden, my old friend, I grow prosy, and you tire; Fill the glasses while I bend To prod up the failing fire. . . . You are restless:—I presume There's a dampness in the room.— Much of warmth our nature begs, With rheumatics in ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... snuffy, tiresome, prosy professor? How can you talk such nonsense? I am sure the author must be young; there is ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... and the subject often morbid and unhealthy; and, further, that his method is tedious to the last degree of boredom; for, as a writer, if I may judge him fairly by his translators, he is didactic and prosy, and never more tedious than when his dialogue is intended to be at its very crispest. As a playwright his construction is faulty. Here and there he gives expression to pretty ideas, reminding me (still judging by the translation) of TOM ROBERTSON, not when the latter was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... All prosy dull society sinners, Who chatter and bleat and bore, Are sent to hear sermons From mystical Germans Who preach from ten to four, The amateur tenor, whose vocal villanies All desire to shirk, Shall, during ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... scarlet fish, and some handsome gold-fish. Two of the gold-fish, called respectively Gay and Gilt, were particularly friendly to Sammy, who soon found them much more entertaining than the worthy, but somewhat prosy Pilot. ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... thinking, some of you, that this is a prosy chapter, but you must not skip it. It is just what Emily Schomberg would have said to you, if you had been pupils of hers. The end of reading is not, or ought not to be, mere amusement; so read a grave page now and then with attention ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... square prose, with sentences solidly built, and no help from bastard rhythms. Moreover, there is a progression—I cannot call it a progress—in his work towards a more and more strictly prosaic level, until at last he sinks into the bathos of the prosy. Emerson mentions having once remarked to Thoreau: "Who would not like to write something which all can read, like 'Robinson Crusoe'? and who does not see with regret that his page is not solid with a right materialistic ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reasons the title should be short. Aptness and specificness do not require an epitome of the story; and a title like "Why Tom Changed His Opinion of Me," or "What the Rabbit Drive Did for Me" is prosy as well as long. It used to be the custom to make the title of a writing a regular synopsis of the matter contained therein; but modern readers object to being told in advance exactly what is to happen. No ruling concerning the proper length of a short story title is possible; but generally ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... If this be so, what an argument it is in favour of reading the best books first and earliest in youth! Do the ladies who now find Scott slow, and Miss Austen dull, and Dickens vulgar, and Thackeray prosy, and Fielding and Richardson impossible, come to this belief because they began early with the volumes of the circulating library? Are their memories happily stored with the words and deeds of modern fictitious romps, and ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... and the experience was so entirely new to him, that he became more deeply interested than the little learner herself. He went to church on Sunday, and was probably the most attentive listener the rather prosy old pastor had. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... must be the very happiest solution of the situation here: I am getting too old and prosy to make life interesting for you; your father will not be retired for several years yet, so there is little hope of your claiming his companionship; Mrs. Harold is a most devoted friend, but friendships in the service ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the post office on week evenings, occasionally they saw each other for a moment after church on Sunday mornings. Mrs. Fletcher Fosdick could not imagine why her only child cared to attend that stuffy little country church and hear that prosy Kendall minister drone on and on. "I hope, my dear, that I am as punctilious in my religious duties as the average woman, but one Kendall sermon was sufficient for me, thank you. What you see in THAT church to please ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... asked them out, or they have toothache and so wouldn't appreciate even the society of jolly seraphims. Christmas, except to the young, is essentially a festival of "let's pretend"—let's pretend that we love everybody, that everybody loves us, that Aunt Maria isn't a prosy old bore, that Uncle John isn't a profiteer; that everybody has his or her good points and that all their bad ones are not sticking out, as they usually appear to us to be, as painfully apparent as those on the back of a porcupine should you happen to sit down ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... nursery! One wondered what she could have talked of before she had children. Good Mrs. Norris, such was she. Good Mr. Norris was, for all purposes of neighbourhood, worse still. He was gapy and fidgetty, and prosy and dosy, kept a tool chest and a medicine chest, weighed out manna and magnesia, constructed fishing-flies, and nets for fruit-trees, turned nutmeg-graters, lined his wife's work-box, and dressed his little daughter's doll; and had a tone of conversation perfectly in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... made between human beings otherwise equal. He had a democratic philosophy which is sometimes that of Mr. Micawber, "Celui-la est riche qui recoit plus qu'il ne consume; celui-la est pauvre dont la depense excede la recette," But he is seldom so prosy as this. Let us think of him as one who wished to turn his talent as a painter of still life to the benefit of his nation, and who succeeded in a degree far beyond his ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Montezumas, for the most vivid imagination failed to convert this rough coating into the "silver sheen" which so dazzled Cortes's little band. The reader will exclaim, "I can fancy no beauty from so prosy a description. Thatched roofs and dirt ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... Holbein; while the heads of the two boys are very like those which we shall find later in a drawing in the Berlin Gallery. From the pronounced way in which his father's hand rests on little Hans' head, while the left points him out,—and even his elder brother "Prosy" shows by his attitude the special notice to be taken of Hans,—it is clear that if this is a portrait-group either it was painted when the boys were actually older, or the younger had already given some astonishing proof of that precocity which his early works display; for in this group ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... for various reasons, the old men drifted from a position of respect to one of ridicule. Undoubtedly they lend themselves to this; they are obstinate, foolish, prosy, boring, crotchety and unpleasant to look upon. Comic writers poked fun at these failings which are only too self-evident and showered ridicule upon them. Then as the majority of audiences is composed of young men, first of all because there are more young men than old, and secondly because old men ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... a horribly prosy, matter-of-fact affair life would be in any other view! I believe poetry ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... I have done enough duty for one day?" asks Molly. "Have I been prosy enough to allow of my leaving off now? Because I don't think I have got anything more to say about the coming harvest, and I wouldn't care to say ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... 'You horrid old prosy thing of four U's,' said Geraldine. 'You are sitting up there, you great fair creature, you, for the poor child to worship and adore, and ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... smooth little fair-skinned Lillie is a cold-hearted monster, because her heart does not beat faster at these letters which she does not understand, and which strike her as unnecessarily prolix and prosy? Why should John insist on telling her his feelings and opinions on a vast variety of subjects that she does not care a button for? She doesn't know any thing about ritualism and anti-ritualism; and, what's more, she doesn't care. She hates to hear so much about religion. She thinks it's ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... it is the longest number on the programme. I would dearly love the next number, also, but I must not make the evening too dull and prosy for you. Will you trust me to select your ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... by, bringing to Guy Landers a new Heaven and a new earth. Already the prosy old university town had begun to assume an atmosphere of home. The well-clipped campus, with its huge oaks and its limestone walks, had taken on the familiar possessive plural "our campus," and the solitary red squirrel which sported fearlessly in its midst had likewise become ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... knows better than any of us what will make an effect; when he chooses he strikes like a thunderbolt; even if he is often prosy, after the manner of his time, there is always ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... gave the crack in the cylinder another dose (but oh, how prosy and unimportant seemed this business now), and at evening they screwed down the cylinder head, and with a gibing audience about them, wrestled with the mixing valve, slammed the timer this way and that, until the dilapidated old engine began ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... brilliant moment in the public career of our bluestocking. Fatal Friendship enjoyed a success which Catharine Trotter was not to taste again, and of all her plays it is the only one which has ever been reprinted. It is very long and extremely sentimental, and written in rather prosy blank verse. Contemporaries said that it placed Miss Trotter in the forefront of British drama, in company with Congreve and Granville "the polite," who had written a She-Gallants, which was everything ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... a very practical letter. I warned you in my last that the lack of money to do the things one wants to makes one quite prosy and domestic, but there is still plenty for everything if we are not too extravagant. Take care of yourself, my dear boy, and do try to write at least once a week, because I imagine all sorts of horrible things if I don't ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... probably be the exclamation of many who glance on my little page. To those who know nothing concerning them, a whole book about Indians will seem a very prosy affair, to whom I can answer nothing, for they will not proceed as far as my Preface to see what reasons I can render ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... strides, came in sight of Raikes, who walked in gloom, and was evidently labouring under one of his mountains of melancholy. He affected to be quite out of the world; but finding that Evan took the hint in his usual prosy manner, was reduced to call after him, and finally to run and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of all this Thomasin was not sorry that she had started. To her there were not, as to Eustacia, demons in the air, and malice in every bush and bough. The drops which lashed her face were not scorpions, but prosy rain; Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever, but impersonal open ground. Her fears of the place were rational, her dislikes of its worst moods reasonable. At this time it was in her view a windy, wet place, in which a person might experience much discomfort, lose the path without ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... he blotted and sealed the letter. "That, I should say, is as prosy and didactic as a discourse of my venerated ancestor. I wonder if the tendency to sermonize runs in the blood. I dare say if I had the good fortune to have any religious convictions, I should dogmatize over them in the pulpit, and pound ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Hamlet is no mean test of a translator's ability—this quick, tense scene, one of the finest in dramatic literature. Foersom did it with conspicuous success. Blom has reduced it to the following prosy stuff: ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... something deliciously refreshing in a sailor's yarn. I have listened to hundreds in the course of my consular career, and have yet to find one that is dull or prosy. They all bear the imprint of truth, perhaps a trifle overdrawn, but nevertheless sparkling with the salt of the sea and redolent of the romance of strange people and distant lands. In listening, one becomes almost dizzy at ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... that desolate Alberta, with no neighbors at all for miles, and then only impossible people. I should think it would drive her mad. I must try to get her on the programme, too. She will at least be interesting, on account of her personality. Most of our speakers are horribly prosy, at least to me, but of course I never listen; I just look to see what they've on and then go straight back to my own thinking. I just thought I'd ask your advice, Teddy dear, before I asked the Committee, and so now I'll go to see Mrs. Trenton, the President. ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... but be so interesting as to command the attention of our audience. It is a question whether any man, who cannot make the people listen, should not be content to take his place in a pew. It is better to be able to heat or light the chapel well, than to wear out the patience of a congregation by prosy preaching, and it will be more to our eternal advantage to have been AN INDUSTRIOUS CHAPEL-KEEPER THAN A ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... nothing so much as of those profound and interesting annotations which are pencilled by sempstresses and apothecaries' boys on the dog-eared margins of novels borrowed from circulating libraries; " How beautiful!" "Cursed prosy!" "I don't like Sir Reginald Malcolm at all." "I think Pelham is a sad dandy." Mr. Croker is perpetually stopping us in our progress through the most delightful narrative in the language, to observe that really Dr. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nobility. But he happened to be thanking Gower Woodseer's whip for the comfortable numbness he felt at Carinthia's behaviour, while detesting her for causing him to desire it and endure it, and exonerate his prosy castigator. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I have been prosy and practical enough and now have used my allotted time and space. It may not be wholly out of place to further tax your time and patience, and ask you to lift your eyes from taking a critical view of defective drains, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... a closer glimpse of his triumph. No other incentive would have taken him so close to that prosy bulletin board. He had vaulted over it but never read it. But now in the moment of supreme victory he limped forward, like an elated artist, to inspect ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... there have even been times, as in the prevalence of the Manichean heresy, when the Evil Spirit has been affected in preference to the good—probably only another way of saying that morals have been held subordinate to intellect. But I am growing at once prosy and digressive. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... beautiful name evocative and symbolic of its ideal aspect, "the breasts of the nymphs in the brake." And the disease is not extinct in these modern days, nor will it ever be so long as men shall yearn for the unattainable; and the prosy bachelors who trail their ill-fated lives from their chambers to their clubs know their malady, and they call it—the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... books there. It is, as yet, early in the afternoon, and the riotous beams, who are no respecter of persons, and who honor the righteous and the ungodly alike, are playing merrily in this sombre chamber, given so entirely up to science and its prosy ways, daring even now to dance lightly on the professor's head, which has begun to grow ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... flattered Miss Caroline into producing, and fallen fast asleep during her sister's cavatina; and if his conversation, however easy and smooth, had not been felt to be upon the whole rather vapid and prosy. "Just exactly," said young Edward Dunbar, who, in the migration transit between Eton, which he had left at Easter, and Oxford, which he was to enter at Michaelmas, was plentifully imbued with the aristocratic prejudices common ...
— The London Visitor • Mary Russell Mitford
... while The arguments prosy and drear,— To lean at full-length in indefinite rest In the lap of the greenery here? Can't you kick over "the Bench," And "husk" yourself out of your gown To dangle your legs where the fishing is good— Can't you arrange ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... daintiest overmantel's ledge She sets enshrined your prosy platter; Your salt-cellars she ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... Mentioned. Miss Carter and Miss Talbot corresponded regularly for thirty years, and shared almost every secret. Not a single misunderstanding occurred to mar the placidity of their solid confidence and good will. It is a pleasure, even at this day, to look through their voluminous, rather stiff and prosy, but entirely ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... is the only word I can think of that exactly describes him—dull and prosy. I don't say that he is not a good man. He may be. I don't say that he is not. I have never seen any sign of it, if he is. But I make it a rule never to say anything to take away a ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... an advantage over the dead. To find the moral of 'Coningsby' may be impracticable and is at any rate irrelevant. The way to enjoy it is to look at the world through the eyes of Sidonia. The world—at least the Gentile world—is a farce. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred are fools. Some are prosy and reasoning fools, and make excellent butts for stinging sarcasms; others are flighty and imaginative fools, and can best be ridiculed by burlesquing their folly. As for the hundredth man—the youthful Coningsby or Tancred—his enthusiasm is refreshing, and his talent undeniable; let us watch ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... journal must treat of subjects in the most popular manner, avoiding, as far as is consistent with the dignity of the object in view, very elaborate and prosy disquisitions. I shall endeavor to get a circular out next week. Meantime accept my thanks for the interest you take in the subject, and be assured that if I succeed in starting the journal, I shall, at all times, be grateful for contributions ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Everywhere on the surface of the glassy stream were visible undulations of heat, and the light steam of evaporation lay along the sluggish water and hung like a veil between the eye and the bank. Seated in an armchair and overcome by the heat and the droning of some prosy passengers near by, I fell asleep. When I awoke the guards were crowded with passengers in a high state of excitement, pointing and craning shoreward. Looking in the same direction I saw, through the haze, the sharp outlines of a city in gray silhouette. Roofs, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... CROWDED, gas-lit, stuffy hall, A prosy speaker, such a duffer, A mob that loves to stamp and bawl, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... the night before; and the next morning is the Sabado de Gloria, the Saturday which ends Lent. We go to the Jesuits' church in the morning to hear the last sermon. Since Thursday at noon, as the organs have been silenced, harps and violins have taken their places. The sermon is long and prosy, and we rejoice that it is the last. Then the service of the day goes on until they come to the "Gloria in excelsis." The organ peals out again, the black curtain—which has hidden the high altar—parts in the middle, and displays a perfect blaze of gold and jewels: all the bells ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... scenes, Paul found the school-room more than ever repulsive; the bare floors and naked walls; the prosy men who never wore frock coats, or violets in their buttonholes; the women with their dull gowns, shrill voices, and pitiful seriousness about prepositions that govern the dative. He could not bear to have the other pupils think, for a moment, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... neighbouring divine at fifty cents an evening to read to the child the best hundred books, with explanations. The May Queen tolerated him, and used to like to play with his silver hair, but protested that he was prosy. ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... example of the familiar belief that other peoples will shut their eyes and swallow whatever opinions the Teuton thinks good to offer them, it may have interest for the psychologist. For the rest it is a very prosy piece of literature, only saved occasionally in its dulness by the unconscious crudity of the hatreds lurking beneath its mask of plausibility. One of these hatreds is clearly directed against Ambassador GERARD, to whose well-known book this volume is in some sort a counter- blast. Neither a historian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... do we mean by discarnate personalities? In most minds, the first answer will probably bear a pretty close resemblance to Fra Angelico's angels, and very nice angels they are! But to some of the more prosy minds that have thought on the subject in the light of the best and fullest information, or misinformation, probably the answer will be more like this: A personality, incarnate or postcarnate, in the last analysis, is a manifestation of the Cosmic Soul. ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... a prosy, weak-minded creature, who, although time was so precious, would have stood talking to me of its great value by the hour, if I had patience to listen. I thanked him for his offer, but assured him I would pay his usual price ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... was now owned by a storekeeper of Tahiti, prosy and disliked, who had fattened by ability to outwit the natives; but the glory had departed, and the place languished, ruins and jungle, the prey of guava and lantana. The neighborhood was known as Ati-Maono, "The Clan ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... sketched is one of which the writer is not aware, that it has been distinctly defined, as a field for thought and investigation. He has little to learn from the successes or the failures of predecessors. Be this his excuse for seeming prosy and dull; possibly for mistakes and crudities. He has the doubly difficulty of attempting to turn thought into trains to which it is not accustomed; and yet of offering no results so profound as to have escaped other observers; or so sublime as to be the due prize of genius, ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... years of his life had old Isaac Mole led a wandering career, that he found it exceedingly difficult, not to say irksome, to settle down to the prosy existence which they ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... know I never can remember poetry, Mrs. Merryweather. I shall have to take to 'Mother Goose.' I know I am terribly prosy—well, prosaic, then, Margaret; what's the difference? But I ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... prosy by far. I think our own feelings tell us what we need. So good-by," exclaimed the self-reliant seed, as she motioned to the wind to bear ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... have helped going to the rescue. I plunged abruptly into a discourse on Beckford, and told her how he used to keep diamonds in a tea-cup, and amused himself by arranging them on a piece of velvet. Sir Richard fled from the sound of my prosy voice, and, needless to say, Derrick followed him. We let them get well in advance and then followed, Freda silent and distraite, but every now and then asking a ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... — N. feebleness &c adj.. Adj. feeble, bald, tame, meager, jejune, vapid, bland, trashy, lukewarm, cold, frigid, poor, dull, dry, languid; colorless, enervated; proposing, prosy, prosaic; unvaried, monotonous, weak, washy, wishy- washy; sketchy, slight. careless, slovenly, loose, lax (negligent) 460; slipshod, slipslop^; inexact; puerile, childish; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... own political aims to which he had already sacrificed fortune, position, home. Of his own brilliant past at the most luxurious court the world had ever known. He fired her enthusiasm, delighted her imagination, enchained her soul to his: she was literally swept off the prosy face of this earth and whirled into a realm of romance, enchanting, intoxicating, ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... were walking with quickening steps down the long sweep of road on the other side of the high crescent, Father Brown leading briskly, though in silence. At last he said with an almost touching vagueness, "Well, I'm afraid you'll think it so prosy. We always begin at the abstract end of things, and you can't ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... into a prosy essay, which I did not intend, and neglecting that which I did intend, namely, to jot down a few theories which have crept into the brain of one not much ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... deluded, but well-meaning gentlemen, who obstinately adhere to the unfashionable notion, that, where great political powers are enjoyed, there are certain serious duties to the public closely connected therewith, a few prosy and pompous peers who believe that their constant presence is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the kingdom,—such, I think, is a correct classification of the ordinary attendance of noblemen at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... beauty. Acting upon the impulse of this passion, he (the savage) began to hit himself severe thumps in the chest, and to exhibit other indications of being desperately in love, which being rather a prosy proceeding, was very likely the cause of the maiden's falling asleep; whether it was or no, asleep she did fall, sound as a church, on a sloping bank, and the savage perceiving it, leant his left ear on his ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... proza. Proscribe ekzili. Prose prozo, prosajxo. Prosecute persekuti. Proselyte prozelito. Prospect vidajxo. Prospective antauxvida, estonta. Prospectus prospekto. Prosper prosperi. Prosperity prospereco. Prosperous prospera. Prostrate (one's self) terenkusxigxi. Prosy teda. Protect protekti. Protection protekto. Protector protektanto, zorganto. Protectorate protektorato. Protg protektato. Protest protesti. Protestation protestado. Protestant protestanto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... chapter to give the full attention that should be given to such a brilliant and original essayist (which is not always an ipso facto of brilliant essayists) as Chesterton. Essayists are of all men extremely elastic. Occasionally they are dull and prosy, very often they are obscure, quite often they are wearisome. The only criticism which applies adversely to Chesterton as an essayist is that he is very often—and I rather fear he likes being so—obscure. He is brilliant in an original manner, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... another claimed their attention. Hildegarde was enjoying herself immensely, and did the honours with ardour, delighted to find that the "college girl" knew all about the things she loved, without being in the least bookish or prosy. ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... in horror to current prices. You have but to walk aside, however, into the Palazzo Pubblico really to feel yourself a thrifty old medievalist. The state affairs of the Republic were formerly transacted here, but it now gives shelter to modern law-courts and other prosy business. I was marched through a number of vaulted halls and chambers, which, in the intervals of the administrative sessions held in them, are peopled only by the great mouldering archaic frescoes—anything ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Roland, to deliberate respecting their measures. Among them there was a young lawyer from the country, with a stupid expression of countenance, sallow complexion, and ungainly gestures, who had made himself excessively unpopular by the prosy speeches with which he was ever wearying the Assembly. He had often been floored by argument and coughed down by contempt, but he seemed alike insensible to sarcasm and to insult. Alone in the Assembly, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Virginian who has written some interesting stories, and who steadily improves upon himself.... This is a thoughtful, semi-philosophical story. There is much discussion in it, but none of it is prosy."—New York Herald. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... being all in white, she was married in the dress she happened to have on when she ran away,—just an old black walking skirt and plaid shirt-waist. No veil, no trail, and no orange-blossoms, and she had counted on having all three. It was so prosy and commonplace after the grand things she ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... any one that is not read or recited; impromptu keeps its original sense, denoting something that springs from the instant; the impromptu utterance is generally brief, direct, and vigorous; the extemporaneous speech may chance to be prosy. Offhand is still more emphatic as to the readiness and freedom of the utterance. Unpremeditated is graver and more formal, denoting absolute want of preparation, but is rather too heavy a word to be applied to such apt, ready utterance as ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... have to sit in this way till the bank closed,—there seemed so little tendency toward a conclusion in the quiet, monotonous procedure of these sleek, prosperous men of business. Would his uncle give him a place in the bank? It would be very dull, prosy work, he thought, writing there forever to the loud ticking of a timepiece. He preferred some other way of getting rich. But at last there was a change; his uncle took a pen and wrote something with ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... who will use them no better than I, and becoming a slave myself; which, if you please, you shall not catch me doing in a hurry. No, my beloved, I must keep my foot on their necks for your sake as well as for my own. But you do not care about all this prosy stuff. I am consumed with remorse for having bored my darling. You want to know why I am living here like a hermit in a vulgar two-roomed hovel instead of tasting the delights of London society with my ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... risk of being dull and prosy, I am going to tell a story that is not especially humorous or pathetic, but merely true. Every Christmas I try to tell a true story. I do not want the day to go by without some sort of recognition by which to distinguish ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... description of the bridal dress, there fell upon her ears these words: "A bill for the relief of the Millard Rangers." She looked eagerly to see who would rise. It was only a prosy old man who opposed the measure, on the ground that the State could not afford to protect such ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... are in no hurry, then,' said Steerforth, 'come home with me to Highgate, and stay a day or two. You will be pleased with my mother—she is a little vain and prosy about me, but that you can forgive her—and she ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... of them," he repeated inwardly. A drawback indeed. Why could an interesting young organism so seldom be detached from its milieu and enjoyed in isolation? Prosy parents; tiresome, detrimental brothers ... He wondered if she had any idea what they were all like. It might be just as ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... than his years warranted. He was bald and clean-shaved but for scraps of side-whiskers that gave him a resemblance to the traditional stage-lawyer of amateur theatricals, a likeness increased by his heavy and prosy manner. It was hard to believe that he had ever been a young subaltern, though such had once been the case, for the Indian Political Department is recruited chiefly from officers of the Indian Army. But he was never the gay and light-hearted individual that most junior subs. are at the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... yard with a ghoul in it. I can't get the story from Mustapha, who is ashamed of such superstitions, but I'll find it out. We had a fantasia at Mustapha's for young Strutt and Co., and a very good dancing-girl. Some dear old prosy English people made me laugh so. The lady wondered how the women here could wear clothes 'so different from English females—poor things!' but they were not malveillants, only pitying and wonderstruck—nothing astonished them so much as my salutations with Seleem Effendi, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... object starred in Baedeker. To his inward rage and chagrin, Giovanni realized his mistake in having attempted to hurry her, and now changed his tactics. Although his every nerve was strained to catch the sound of Nina's approaching footfall, he went into a long, prosy dissertation upon the history of the ceiling, dwelling purposely upon the dullest facts he could think of, until his tormentor was glad ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... remembering his promise, he held his peace, until his master signified that the conference was ended, when he hastened to the barn, where he could give vent to his feeling in French, his adopted language being far too prosy to suit his excited mood. Suddenly Grace Atherton came into his mind, and Edith's request that ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... Dryden, the most English of our poets, would not be so thoroughly English if he had not in him some fibre of la nation boutiquiere. Let us now see how he succeeds in attempting to infuse science (the most obstinately prosy material) with poetry. Speaking of "a more exact knowledge of the longitudes," as he explains in a ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... done with Aubrey? I will challenge him before to-morrow morning, for cutting me out of my schottische with his prosy chat." ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... down to read the little book in an utterly unconcerned state of mind, believing indeed at the time that if there were any salvation it was not for me, and with a distinct intention to put away the tract as soon as it should seem prosy. I may say that it was not uncommon in those days to call conversion "becoming serious"; and judging by the faces of some of its professors, it appeared to be a very serious matter indeed. Would it not be well if the people of GOD ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... and the Diver,' which he translated for us, and his Prize Poem, which didn't get the prize; and, indeed, I thought it very pompous and prosy," Laura ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... paralyzed the man in bed. Had he done this artistic bit of acting for the purpose of spending his Christmas on the flat of his back talking to a prosy old doctor? He lay still, trying to think what answer could be made to this physician who told him seriously that he had appendicitis. He put ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... soon wore away, and I found myself the creature of no romance, but plodding along a prosy road with ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend |
