"Chit-chat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... open in the drawing-room, and this suggested music. Haldane had at his tongue's end the names of half a dozen musicians whose professional titles had been prominent in the newspapers for a few months previous, and whose merits had formed a part of the current chit-chat of the day. Some he had heard, and others he had not, but he could talk volubly of all, and he asked Miss Romeyn for her opinion of one and another in a manner which implied that of course she knew about them, and that ignorance in regard ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... brandy each, and the women with a kiss, and the whole of them with as many cakes as they choose to take and some raisins. One of our gentlemen who had a bottle of shrub treated them to a glass, and after some chit-chat conversation they retired, firing a salute on going out. In the evening they played at Blind-man's-buff, concluding the fete by a supper in the Hall. I also gave each of the men a fathom of twist tobacco ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... their commendations of him, and with the greatest justice; while our Thomas Warton, of ever-to-be-respected memory, has shewn us how pleasingly he could descend from the graver tone of a historical antiquary, by indulging himself in a chit-chat style of book-anecdote ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... conduct of the Pall Mall Gazette. In a masterly manner he had pointed out what should be the sub-editorial arrangements of the paper: what should be the type for the various articles: who should report the markets; who the turf and ring; who the Church intelligence; and who the fashionable chit-chat. He was acquainted with gentlemen engaged in cultivating these various departments of knowledge, and in communicating them afterwards to the public—in fine, Jack Finucane was, as Shandon had said of him, and as he proudly owned himself to be, one of the best ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... more accurate, this is how one puts it to one's neighbour after dinner, when—the ladies having removed themselves, and the necessity for mere social chit-chat being over—we men are at last able to devote ourselves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... was not at home, And we two sat and talked, as strangers might, Of distant countries which we both had seen. But once I thought I saw his large eyes light With sudden passion, when there came a pause In our chit-chat, and then he spoke: "Maurine, I saw a number of your friends in Rome. We talked of you. They seemed surprised, because You were not 'mong the seekers for a name. They thought your whole ambition was ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... having slipped away in this kind of chit-chat, Marian told Miss Bella that she must be going, in order to gather some greens for her cow, who would want her breakfast by eight o'clock. This little girl did not eat up all her roll and jelly, but saved some part of it to carry home to her youngest sister, who, she said, she was sure would ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... day saw him at the farm-house. Every day revealed some new charm in the Daisy he had found. She was as industrious and sensible as she was petite and pretty. Rollin and Plutarch were discarded for modern authors, or for simple chit-chat about mamma, papa, and little ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... probably have done. Would Ernest supply a fortnightly letter, to go by the Australian mail, to the Paramatta 'Chronicle and News,' containing London political and social gossip of a commonplace kind—just the petty chit-chat he could pick up easily out of 'Truth' and the 'World'—for the small sum of thirty ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... yesterday—how uninteresting today is and how little is to be done—our burden we shift to the strong, young shoulders of tomorrow; tomorrow of the big heart, who in kindness hides our sorrows and whispers only of hope. I ended by writing,—this—which I have called "Chit-Chat," thus classifying the book, knowing that such a book if true to name will picture the age ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... are times of dissolution and reconstruction in which only the generic forms are preserved. A new force had been introduced, and it was disintegrating that mass of social fibre which is modern man, and the decomposition teemed with ideas of duty, virtue, and love. He interrupted Lizzie's chit-chat constantly with reflections concerning the necessity ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... working on embroidery. The conversation at first languished, but soon became interesting,—for, though Monsieur Ballanche had no chit-chat, he talked extremely well on subjects which interested him, such as philosophy, morals, politics, and literature. Unfortunately, his shoes had an odor about them which was very disagreeable to Madame Recamier. It ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... trade, with a jerk of both wrists slid two glasses and a bottle down the bar so that a glass stopped in front of each man and the bottle came to a standstill between them. Racey spun a dollar on the bar. The bartender nonchalantly swept the dollar into the cash drawer and resumed his chit-chat with the tall man. At which Racey's eyes narrowed slightly. But he ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... been returned to him after a friend had borrowed for twenty years or so. Now, it is comparatively easy to write good letters with a library around you; it is marvellous that Cowper could have done this with so little material, and his letters are, from this point of view, the best of all—"divine chit-chat" Coleridge called them. His simple style captivates us. And here let me say—keeping to my text—that it is the sanest of styles, a style with no redundancies, no rhetoric, no straining after effect. The outlook ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... been brief—too brief—to Lucetta whom an intoxicating Weltlust had fairly mastered; but they had brought her a great triumph nevertheless. The shake of the Royal hand still lingered in her fingers; and the chit-chat she had overheard, that her husband might possibly receive the honour of knighthood, though idle to a degree, seemed not the wildest vision; stranger things had occurred to men so good and ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... with a piece of intelligence, of much more energy than all she had taken, and so soon as he concluded she was capable to bear the news without any dangerous emotion, he, among other articles of chit-chat culled for her amusement, took the opportunity of telling the company, that Squire Stub (the cause of Miss Biddy's disorder) had, in his way to matrimony, been robbed of his bride, by a gentleman to whom she had ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... in mystery repelled me, despite my best intentions and desires. I have never taken to those deep natures that talk in discreet monosyllables and cling to the sheltering refuge of such safe subjects as are the substance of everybody's and anybody's chit-chat. Maybe I judge them harshly when I persuade myself that the records of their past could not stand the open daylight of a free-and-easy discussion. This verdict is, however, the suggestion of my instinct, and need not carry weight ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... had heard a great deal of her beauty; and it had exceeded all I heard; so I talked my sublimest and brightest chit-chat, in my most musical tones, and was rather engaging and amusing, I ventured to hope. But the best man cannot manage a dialogue alone. Miss Brandon was plainly not a person to make any sort of exertion towards what is termed keeping up a conversation; at all events she did not, and after a ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... anything but his pretence of being the real editor of the magazine. In this disguise he feigned that he had "a way of throwing" himself back in the Easy Chair, "and indulging in an easy and careless overlook of the gossiping papers of the day, and in such chit-chat with chance visitors as kept him informed of the drift of the town talk, while it relieved greatly the monotony of his office hours." Not "bent on choosing mere gossip," he promised to be "on the watch for such topics or incidents as" seemed really important and suggestive, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... village, he had to learn to endure its conversation; for this purpose he was compelled to invent an expedient to get rid of his uneasy sensations. "Alone, I have never known ennui, even when perfectly unoccupied: my imagination, filling the void, was sufficient to busy me. It is only the inactive chit-chat of the room, when every one is seated face to face, and only moving their tongues, which I never could support. There to be a fixture, nailed with one hand on the other, to settle the state of the weather, or watch the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... I have ventured to express a doubt about whether nations can be drawn together by an ancient rumour about races; by a sort of prehistoric chit-chat or the gossip of the Stone Age. I have ventured farther; and even expressed a doubt about whether they ought to be drawn together, or rather dragged together, by the brute violence of the engines of science and speed. But there is ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Task' with fresh delight," he says on December 5, 1796. "I am glad you love Cowper. I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that man my friend, who should be offended with the 'divine chit-chat of Cowper.'" And again a little later, "I do so ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... chair, and was soon as busily occupied as I was with a cigar, which was occasionally removed from our lips, as we asked and replied to questions as to what had been our pursuits subsequently to our last rencontre. After about half an hour's chit-chat, he observed, as he lighted ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... you are in a court, and are falling into dialogue. Courts don't allow of chit-chat. Look ye, the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus is before the court, recorded by Matthew, Mark, and others. You must take it as it is; you can neither make it better, or worse. These witnesses are accused of giving false evidence. ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... worthy of the sacred name of "friend." Consequently, our circle of associations was far more limited than that of many families holding an equal position with us—on which circumstance our neighbours commented a good deal. But little we cared; no more than we had cared for the chit-chat of Norton Bury. Our whole hearts were bound up within our own ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik |
