"Digression" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kiss to which I was entitled for my services. I consoled myself by the reflection that, "please the pigs," I might be more fortunate the next time that I officiated in my clerical capacity. This is a digression, I grant, but I cannot help it; it is the nature of man to digress. Who can say that he has through life kept in the straight path? This is a world of digression; and I beg that critics will take no notice of mine, as I have an idea that my digressions in this work are as agreeable to my ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... summer, indicated that he would be equal to the work that was to fall to him when in a few weeks he should succeed Wilson. But to go on down the scale of rank, describing the officers who commanded in the Army of the Shenandoah, would carry me beyond all limit, so I refrain from the digression with regret that I cannot pay to each his ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... stern-featured Hibernian, with a superior bearing. I learned later that she had seen better days. In fact, I have yet to find the janitor that hasn't seen better days, or the tenant, either, for that matter, but this is another digression. She regarded me with indifference when I told her there was no gas. When I told her that we wanted gas, she inspected me as if this was something unusual and interesting in a tenant's requirements. Finally ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... rest, by admitting at once that every man does, popularly speaking, believe in the existence of matter, and that he practically walks in the light of that belief during every moment of his life? This observation tempts us into a digression, and we shall yield to the temptation. The problem of perception admits of being treated in three several ways: first, we may ignore it altogether,—we may refuse to entertain it at all; or, secondly, we may discuss it in the manner just proposed—we may lay it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... not far from Marlow. In so doing, it passed over a long range of high hills, and a wide extent of flat, common ground upon the top, which was precisely the point whereat Wilton Brown had arrived, at the very moment we began this digression upon the state of the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... hinted at the analogy," continued the other, calmly disregardful of the digression; "now to apply it. Suppose a boy evince no noble quality. Then generously give him credit for his prospective one. Don't you see? So we say to our patrons when they would fain return a boy upon us as unworthy: 'Madam, or sir, (as the case may ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... your Pardon for this long Digression, upon a Subject which many will think does not deserve it: but if I have herein discover'd some of the greatest Beauties of our English Poets, it will be more excusable, at least for the respect that is intended to so noble an Art as theirs. ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... digression for a moment or two while they waited for their drinks and imbibed them. And then Fred, with the air of one who utters a profound truth, and answers questions both spoken and unspoken, observed as ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... what means this odd digression? May be that I by heaven's decrees Shall abdicate the bard's profession, And shall adopt some new caprice. Thus having braved Apollo's rage With humble prose I'll fill my page And a romance in ancient ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... this is a very long Digression, and for which I am to beg my Reader's Pardon, being an Error I slipt into from my abundant respect to these Gentlemen, and for their particular Instruction, I shall endeavour to make my Reader amends, by keeping more ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... and David; and, upon that occasion, a digression concerning the nature of love. A discourse between Jonathan and David, upon which the latter absents himself from court, and the former goes thither to inform himself of Saul's resolution. The feast of the New-moon; the manner ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Lowell's sentences are usually simple in form and easily understood; they are frequently enlivened by illuminating figures of rhetoric and by humor, or rendered impressive by the striking way in which they express thought, e.g. "The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion." A pun, digression, or out-of-the-way allusion may occasionally provoke readers, but onlookers have frequently noticed that few wrinkle their brows while reading his critical essays, and that a pleased expression, such as photographers like, is almost certain to appear. He has the rare faculty of making his readers ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... surmise of the truth, though he admitted it had seemed almost too good to be true. Because the costumes were really wonderful. He tried to tell them how wonderful they were, but Violet seemed to regard this as a digression. She ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... a digression. To return to my story. The maliks of Logar, greatly to my relief, agreed to bring a certain amount of supplies; while Wali Mahomed Khan and the other Sirdars were full of protestations of loyalty and devotion. Most of them remained ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... means sure that I might not have been tempted to enlarge upon the subject, had not the papers that lay before me on the table been a silent reproach for even this digression. I took them up again when I had got thus far, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... restriction of chamber decorations to portraits and engravings; and a third, the craze of the connoisseur for Hogarth's hated "Black Masters," the productions of defunct foreigners. And this naturally brings about the following digression, quite in Hogarth's own way, against that contemporary charlatan, the picture-dealer:—"English painters have an obstacle to overcome, which equally impedes the progress of their talents and of their fortune. They have to contend with ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... the list is a digression. With regard to the stories reprinted, "The Last Room of All" illustrates old-world influence, surely, in its recountal of events in an age long past, the time of the Second Emperor Frederick of Swabia. In its revival of old forms, old customs, it is a masquerade. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... of the Crusades belongs rather to the history of Europe than of any one country, it is so closely intertwined with the history of Egypt at this period that some digression is necessary. About twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Turks, in 1076, the Holy Sepulchre was visited by a hermit of the name of Peter, a native of Amiens, in the province of Picardy, France. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... to VIRE, twenty-three miles distant, it is tempting to make a digression to the town of Domfront (which the reader will see on the map, a few miles to the south-east); we should do so, to see its picturesque position, with the ancient castle on the heights, and the town, as at Falaise, growing round its feet; also an old church at the ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... lord, I doubt not but that you wonder why I have run off from my bias so long together, and made so tedious a digression from satire to heroic poetry; but if you will not excuse it by the tattling quality of age (which, as Sir William Davenant says, is always narrative), yet I hope the usefulness of what I have to say on this subject will qualify the remoteness of ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... that's the way you pass your time! Indeed your charming, frank confession Betrays no sort of heinous crime, But marks a wonderful digression From puritanic views, less bold, That we were early ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... return, from their digression into the discussion of two special points, to the question as to those whose condition of life involves chastity. The above Stra declares that as persons of that class are referred to by Scripture as specially concerned with meditation ('He who is founded on Brahman reaches ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... was, and I will no' deny it, At the first gliff a hantle tryit To see yoursel' in sic a station— It seemed a doubtfue' dispensation. The feelin' was a mere digression; For shuene I understood the session, An' mindin' Aiken an' M'Neil, I wondered they had duene sae weel. I saw I had mysel' to blame; For had I but remained at hame, Aiblins—though no ava' deservin' 't— They micht hae named your ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... engaged in special religious services—so that the heretic observer, and especially the representative of the Gazette, referred to by name, might couple the salvation of souls with the perdition of hens, to the great discredit of the faith. But this is a digression. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... not under the same limitations of time, nor has he to contend against the same mental impatience on the part of his public. He may therefore linger where the dramatist must hurry; he may digress, and gain fresh impetus from the digression, where the dramatist would seriously endanger the effect of his scene by retarding its evolution. The novelist with a prudent prodigality may employ descriptions, dialogues, and episodes, which would be fatal in a drama. Characters may be introduced and ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... pray you, this inconsequent digression by what was once a woman. You who consult us in this imperfect way—you do not understand. You ask foolish questions about things unknown and things forbidden. Much that we know and could impart in our speech ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... when all was said and done, could the bailiff's hypocritical regard for appearances save Eve and David from the disgrace of a suspension of payment? Let each judge for himself. A tolerably long digression of this kind will seem all too short; and ninety out of every hundred readers shall seize with avidity upon details that possess all the piquancy of novelty, thus establishing yet once again the trust of the well-known ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... blamed them; but, as I now write in my old age, I have learned that there is a rule far above the world's laws, and that says, "Do no wrong, or be guilty of any appearance of wrong, however important may seem the object to be gained." But this is a digression. ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... afternoon train to keep her engagement with Theodore Thomas, and to think over the situation. Blasius was left in the Tenth Street house with only the furnace man's wife to look after him. His explanation of his conduct was that he had been drinking too much. His digression, he swore, was casual. It had never occurred before, and he could only appeal to his wife's magnanimity. But it was, on the whole, easier for Cressida to be firm than to be yielding, and she knew herself too well to attempt a readjustment. She had never made shabby compromises, and it was too ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... three and in the parallel verse four,[188] whereas this sentence speaks of four only. Again, all Agur's proverbs are in the form of strophes of six lines each; but this passage consists of five distichs. Lastly, it is a manifest digression, leads nowhither, and, what is still more important, has no point, as ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... which will be found with "The Mill on the Floss," and probably the only one, is, that the action moves too slowly and tamely in the first three or four books, and that the author shows an undue inclination to reflection and metaphysical digression. This will, indeed, be a great objection to the superficial reader, who will impatiently regret that the tedious growth of a miller's boy and girl should usurp so many pages which might better have been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... digression. I had set out to say something of a day's experience of the French front, though I shall write with a fuller pen when I return from the Argonne. It was for Soissons that we made, passing on the way a part of the scene of our own early operations, including the battlefield ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... [intimate] Wi' social nose whyles snuff'd and snowkit; Whyles mice and moudieworts they howkit; [moles, dug] Whyles scour'd awa in lang excursion, And worried ither in diversion; Until wi' daffin' weary grown, [merriment] Upon a knowe they sat them down, [knoll] And there began a lang digression About ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... is introduc'd with a delineation of forest scenery, and pigs fattening on fallen acorns. Sketches of wild ducks and their haunts, of hogs settling to repose in a wood, and of wheat sowing, succeed. The sound of village bells suggests a most pleasing digression: of which the church and its pastor, the rustic amusements of a Sunday, the Village Maids, and a most pathetic description of a distracted Female, are the prominent features. Returning to rural business, Giles is drawn guarding the rising wheat from birds:—his little hut, with ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... "This digression had only one point, sir: to show you that I do not count you among these unworthy scholars. You are really eager to know the origin of this name, Antinea, and that before knowing what kind of woman it belongs to and her motives for ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... answered, "everybody knows that. I have known it for years. My grandmother who lived in Milan told it to me. Doesn't the water look cool and pleasant?" was her abrupt digression, as she returned her gaze to the Rampio. "When it is hot like this, I should like to lie down in the water, and go ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... however erroneous in reality, has too grave an appearance, and its consequences would be too lamentable, to permit us to disregard it. It becomes, therefore, indispensable, before entering the sanctuary of Revelation, to remove the obstruction of such an error, even at the cost of a digression from our path, in order to consider the matter in ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... proved, or perhaps they state half the argument, and forget the rest. Their appearance corresponds to the state of their mind, which is occupied in hunting after some way of finishing the sentence they have begun. They repeat themselves; they wander off in digression. They stand stiff without moving; or if they are of a lively temperament, they are full of the most turbulent action; their eyes and hands are flying about in every direction, and their words choke in their throats. They are like men swimming, who have got frightened, ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... which the outside world, even when it was at its height, knew little, but which, so recently as a couple of months prior to the date of writing, threatened to spell extermination to the foreigners in North-East Yuen-nan. And the reader, too, may welcome a digression from travel. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Avec un trait sur la nature de l'glogue, & une digression sur les anciens & les modernes. AParis, ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... memorable attack, but, as the Judge-Advocate of a Court of Inquiry into that affair, which was held at Springfield immediately after our arrival there, I became familiar with the field and the incidents of the battle. I trust it will not be regarded as an inexcusable digression, if I recite the facts connected with the engagement, which, as respects the odds encountered, the heroism displayed, and the importance of its results, is still the most remarkable encounter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... digression to inform my young readers that, though I was a poor child, a mere pauper among a number of others who were not any poorer than myself, yet I was always treated with a great deal of respect both by the nurse and the other children. I was always called Lady Anne, and in all our little plays my ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... am at the INLAND VOYAGE again: have finished another section, and have only two more to execute. But one at least of these will be very long - the longest in the book - being a great digression on French artistic tramps. I only hope Paul may take the thing; I want coin so badly, and besides it would be something done - something put outside of me and off my conscience; and I should not feel such a muff as I do, if once I saw the thing in boards with a ticket on its back. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be thought a digression (it may spare some unwelcome comparisons), if I endeavour to account for the dissatisfaction which I have heard so many persons confess to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on this occasion), at the sight of the sea for the first ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... botanical digression, let me tell you that the position considered by some as the southern side of the fortification, but which I have described as the sinuous part of the western, has its ramparts of less height. Not so the eastern: ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... sustains by God's order a position of dignity as head of a family, head of the woman. Any breaking down of this order indicates a mistake in the union, or a digression from duty. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... After this digression I must continue my narrative. We shot only two or three birds, and then had to hurry back to prepare for our departure. Our new canoe floated well, but was smaller than we could have wished. Over the centre was an awning of palm-leaves, under which was seated Ellen, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... digression you will at once discover our object. We must not endeavor to change the principles of language, but to understand and explain them; to ascertain, as far as possible, the actions of the mind in obtaining ideas, and the use of language in expressing them. We may not ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... England, where Ruthven died—seeing a vision of angels! Knox makes no drawback to the entirely and absolutely laudable character of the deed. He goes out of his way to tell us "in plain terms what we mean," in a digression from his account of affairs sixteen years earlier. Thus one fails to understand the remark, that "of the manner in which the deed was done we may be certain that Knox would disapprove as vehemently as any of his contemporaries." ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... digression has arisen from a laugh of the Curate's, to whom it is time to turn; or you will think we have been but bad company to each other. I will, however, end this passage with the remark, that a man may do a worse thing than laugh, and happy is he that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... you once asked me to do?' she continued, not accepting the digression, and turning her eyes ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... fortalices of Niagara and of Mississagua have led to a digression quite unintentional and unforeseen, which must terminate for the present with a different view from that of the author of the Letters above-mentioned: and let us hope fervently that the New World has not yet arrived at such a consummation as that of surpassing the vices and crimes of the Old, ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... the motions of Harmon, who, from the part he took in the conversation alluded to above, appeared to be the ring-leader. Here, in order that the reader may fully understand the narrative, it becomes necessary for us to make a very short digression. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... honest industry will thus accumulate. The letters I shall publish will be accompanied with explanatory notes. The persons concerned will recognise their own productions, and I hope to see such a change in their future life as shall deserve a charitable silence. But I return from my digression. ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... Begging pardon for this digression, we return to our tale. While our sportsmen were advancing in company with the bullock-wagons one evening, at the close of a long and trying day, in which they had suffered a good deal from want of good water, they ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... This digression from mathematics to classics did not surprise the hearers, though it somewhat confused them, no one being precisely aware what the line in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... digression. I am now concerned with the origin of the scientific doctrine of matter in Greek thought. In the Timaeus Plato asserts that nature is made of fire and earth with air and water as intermediate between them, so that 'as fire is to air so is air to water, and as air ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... may be allowed a brief digression, to notice a recent opinion of the late Secretary of the Interior, Hon. Carl Schurz, shared in to some extent by the National Government, in relation to the division of our Indian reservations into lots or tracts, and their conveyance in severalty to the Indians themselves, with power of alienation ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... this digression. Lord A—, the defendant in that cause, was so conscious of the strength and merits of his injured nephew's case, and that a verdict would go against him, that he ordered a writ of error to be made out before the trial was ended; and the verdict was no sooner ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and—Well! what is the use of dwelling on matters so long buried in oblivion! A maiden-woman, as independent as myself, need not envy any girl the doubtful blessing of a husband. I chose to be independent, and I am, and what more is there to be said about it? Pardon the digression. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... long digression, with which the reader may not be very well pleased, it is time for me to return to my sweetheart. The tenth day of my visit to Lausanne, I went to sup and sleep with my mistress, and that night was the happiest I remember. In the morning, while we were taking ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... hearing whatever is most lovely? Is it the exiled spirit, yearning for its own? Is it the captive, to whom the ray of heaven's own glory comes through the crevice of his dungeon walls? But this is a digression. Returning, we examined the mansion, a fine specimen of the old French chateau; square-built, with high Norman roof, and a round, conical-topped tower at each corner. In front was a garden, curiously laid out in beds, and knots of flowers, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... I indicated at the close of our opening chapter; and this at the cost of what in logic is a mere digression, it will be desirable, for practical purposes, to state it with ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... the attorney, "I am not so miserly of my time, but at night every minute is precious. So be brief and concise. Go to the facts without digression. I will ask for any explanations ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... at law fictions: Legal suppositions endless: The professional jargon of an attorney: An enquiry into the integrity of barristers and the equity of decisions at law: A. and B. or a case stated: A digression from ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... forgiven for a short digression on the subject of the dramatic Materia Medica, and poison-ology. The sleeping draughts of the stage are, for example, generally speaking, uncommon specimens of chemical perfection. When taken—even if the patient be ever so well shaken—nothing on earth, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... be too great a digression from the subject, to say a few words concerning Egypt. The natives allege that they have in their country certain animals, of which one half of their bodies seem earth, and the other like rats, one ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... Alice opening the front door came as a pleasant digression. A second later it became clear from the sound of voices that she had brought some one back with her, and Theron hastily stretched himself out again in the armchair, with his head back in the pillow, and his feet on the other chair. He had come mighty near forgetting that he was an invalid, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... under their wings, and warned the North of the consequences, but they laughed at them. We only fought for our State rights, they for Union and power. The South fell battling under the banner of State rights, but yet grand and glorious even in death. Now, reader, please pardon the digression. It is every word that we will say in behalf of the rights of secession in the following pages. The question has been long ago settled and is buried forever, never in this age or ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... this philosophic digression in respect to the peculiar feelings of a man who has just been "up in a balloon." Our air-ship had been anchored in the Champ de Mars two days, waiting for a fair wind. An hour before we started, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... before I reach Richmond, where the doctors desire me to spend a few days that they may again examine me. Write me there whether Fitzhugh is too full to receive us. It will depend upon my feelings, weather, etc., whether I make the digression by Norfolk. Poor little Agnes has had, I fear, but little enjoyment so far, and I wish her to have all the pleasure she can gather on the route. She is still weak and seems to suffer constantly from the neuralgia. I hope I ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... engaged by the latter to remain with his mother during his absence. Having thus glanced over the events which had occurred previously to the opening of this new scene of our story, we will now return to the point we left to make the digression. ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... regard all this as so much unnecessary digression. But let him not deceive himself. It would be the most humiliating and painful thought, indeed, could we believe that the genius which informs and delights us—which guides the bark of state through a thousand storms and dangers to its port of safety—which conquers and ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... This digression may, perhaps, appear long, but we could not dispense with it for the honor of the religious and of the preceding ages; and, besides, it is connected with the life of St. Francis, who certainly approved of the Crusades, although, by a supernatural inspiration, he blamed a particular ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... profound belief that his failure in another line is owing to the malignity of the world at large. In one of his most characteristic Essays he asks whether genius is conscious of its powers. He writes what he declares to be a digression about his own experience, and we may believe as much as we please of his assertion that he does not quote himself as an example of genius. He has spoken, he declares, with freedom and power, and will not cease because he is abused for not being a Government tool. He wrote ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... But this is digression, and our narrative demands that we proceed to tell how a twopenny fare in a little steamboat from Uleborg brought us to the tar stores. On a Finnish steamboat one often requires change, so much ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... feet at once, and accompanied his daughter along the road. I suppose it was a very pretty example of the triumph of spirit over matter, and so my digression has at least ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... Clare, I must return to you; [ii] And, sure, apologies are due: Accept, then, my concession. In truth, dear Clare, in Fancy's flight [iii] I soar along from left to right; My Muse admires digression. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... written on this subject will not be thought a digression by the reader, if he please to remember what I said in the beginning of this essay, that I have modelled my heroic plays by the rules of an heroic poem. And if that be the most noble, the most pleasant, and the most instructive way of writing in verse, and withal the highest pattern of human ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... his army through Scythia and Paeonia, into Italy. Pompey, on the other side, judging it easier to destroy his forces in battle, than to seize his person in flight, resolved not to tire himself out in a vain pursuit, but rather to spend his leisure upon another enemy, as a sort of digression in the meanwhile. But fortune resolved the doubt; for when he was now not far from Petra, and had pitched his tents and encamped for that day, as he was talking exercise with his horse outside the camp, couriers came riding up ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... may exclaim. Surely! we reply; and though it will necessitate a digression, we touch upon the question en passant. Cicero informs us that "Xenophanes says that the moon is inhabited, and a country having several towns and mountains in it." [49] This single dictum will be sufficient for those who bow to the influence of authority in matters ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... After this digression let us return to the megapodes of Borneo, whose appearance had strongly excited the curiosity of Captain Redwood and ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... (1) Saxo now goes back to the history of Denmark. All the events hitherto related in Bk. III, after the first paragraph, are a digression in retrospect. (2) M. conjectures that this was a certain Harald, the bastard son of Erik the Good, and a wild and dissolute man, who died in 1135, not long before the probable date of Saxo's birth. (3) Shakespere's tragedy, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the world by the wickedness of men. The author imagines a monologue of the wicked, led by despair of aught beyond the grave to a life of luxury and oppression. Another imaginary monologue expresses the feelings of the same wicked men as they awaken from death to the life beyond. But as a digression between these two monologues the author places his reflections on the 'hopes of the ungodly,' that is, the substitutes in earlier thought for the grand conception of a life beyond death. These substitutes are (1) the living over ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... the ingenuity with which he explained how he had come to make the mistake. And if there was loss in intellectual prestige, there was an increased sense of intellectual comradeship. But this is a trifling and not wholly serious digression. ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... through the ages. It is inexorable and insidious; it is concrete. Out of the unknown comes terror. Through the love for the great professor I have pitted myself against it. From the beginning it has been almost hopeless. I remember that last digression in ethics. "The mystery of the occult may be solved. We are five-sensed. When we bring the thing down to the concrete ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... complicated mechanism much more advantageously than can be done by mere habit, or by a servile copying of what others may have, perhaps erroneously, practised in similar emergencies. But it is time to finish this digression, and to leave the reader to the perusal of the ensuing work, which, with how little art soever it may be executed, will yet, from the importance of the subject, and the utility and excellence of the materials, merit some share ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... After this brief digression, I shall now proceed to deal briefly with the continuation of our journey. Soon we had complied with the trifling regularities incident to our passage through the Plymouth Customs Office; soon, ensconced aboard a well-appointed railway carriage, we were traversing the peaceful ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... "Pardon this digression, my lords, I could not avoid it. Returning to the question, why sentence should not be pronounced upon me, I would ask your lordships' attention to the fact showing, even in the estimate of the crown, the case ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... Now a digression in narrative is ofttimes a dangerous parting of ways. But on this particular day Bobbie Burke had come to a parting of the ways unwittingly. He had left the plodding life of routine excitement of the ordinary policeman to embark upon a journey ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... This digression upon his difficulties is already too long, or I might mention the Laird's inexperience in the art of making the worse appear the better garnishment, of hiding a darned carpet with a new floor-cloth, and flinging an Indian shawl over a faded and threadbare sofa. But I ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... digression, to the portly German middle-aged business men who met weekly in Brunswick to improve their working knowledge of French and English, I must candidly say that I never detected the faintest shadow of animosity to Great Britain in ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... digression, let me repeat the question I have repeated to myself ten thousand times. WHY DID I DRINK? What need was there for it? I was happy. Was it because I was too happy? I was strong. Was it because I was too strong? Did I possess too much vitality? I don't know why I drank. I cannot answer, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... this digression. At many of the streams on my route I spent hours in endeavoring to catch trout, with a hook fashioned from the rim of my broken spectacles, but in no instance with success. The tackle was defective. The country was full of game in great variety. I saw large ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... All this long digression may perhaps bring the reader to where it brought me,—the very palpable conviction, that, though not in love with my cousin Baby, I could not tell when I might eventually ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... digression, which introduces the visit of the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather to Elsie Venner. It was mentioned to her that he would like to call and see how she was, and she consented,—not with much apparent interest, for she had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... from our subject. If I have allowed myself to make this digression, however, it is because I am not sorry to accustom your mind early to the idea of those wonderful transformations which nature accomplishes, and of which I could ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... a cancer, and it is removed only with grave danger to the afflicted. Everything, therefore, which may lighten our burdens and tend to relieve the situation should be the aim and study of our constituents. But this may be digression. ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... Well, this long digression ought to bring me on as far as Winchester, where we came yesterday afternoon, late. We should have been earlier (though our start was delayed by our guests' preparations), but Ellaline was fascinated by the pretty village of Twyford. You remember it? She'd been reading it up in a guide-book, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... digression. Let us return to the "Victoria." She is now in eighty fathoms of water with her hundreds of dead. Poor fellows! theirs was a sad fate; though not more so than the fate of miners blasted or suffocated in explosive pits. We pity their dear ones—mothers, sisters, wives, and children. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... too Burgundian to be printed here. That inexhaustible subject carried them so far that before they knew it they saw the capital of the arrondissement over which Gaubertin reigned, and which we hope excites enough curiosity in the reader's mind to justify a short digression. ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... certain incident connected with the Wilderness campaign of which it may not be out of place to speak; and to avoid a digression further on ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... impulses which are evolved out of the original exciting cause; they are passed on from one idea to another and go steadily forward, plodding along one line of thought in spite of the amplest concessions of the hearer, or wandering from it in endless digression in spite of his remonstrances. Now, if, as is very certain, no one would envy the madman the glow and originality of his conceptions, why must we extol the cultivation of that intellect, which is the prey, not indeed ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... return to the point of digression. 'And this Pierre, or William, what is it but a sound when all is done? Or three or four dashes with a pen, so easy to be varied, that I would fain know to whom is to be attributed the glory of so many victories, to Guesquin, to Glesquin, or to Gueaguin. And yet there would ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... road, And I could trace each step they trode; Hill, brook, nor dell, nor rock, nor stone, Lies on the path to me unknown. Much might it boast of storied lore; But, passing such digression o'er, Suffice it that their route was laid Across the furzy hills of Braid, They passed the glen and scanty rill, And climbed the opposing bank, until They gained the ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... syntactical digression! Oh, Boy, the wound at my heart is so deep and so sore that I dread the dressings, even by your delicate touch. Where was I? Ah, the porridge gave me my loophole of escape. Well, as I was saying, Jane grows worn and thin, old Margery's porridge notwithstanding; but ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... conspicuous part, and though, as might be expected, they did not all take the same views, yet they rendered good service to the glorious cause. But this tempting subject has carried us away into a rather lengthy digression from our immediate topic. To ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... as a futile, questionable digression from the straight path of woman suffrage. To Clara Colby, who praised it in her Woman's Tribune, she wrote, "Of all her great speeches, I am always proud—but of her Bible commentaries, I am not proud—either ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... introductory to the eighteenth, or as a digression in the narrative, to explain more fully the integral parts of that complex, mystical moral person so often called "great Babylon," whose destruction was so awfully presented in the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... is of nuts. The grave and kindly priests, with their strong convictions and good desires reminded me of my early teachers in Lower Brittany. Saint-Nicholas du Chardonnet and its superficial rhetoric I came to look upon as a mere digression of very doubtful utility. I came to realities from words, and I set seriously to study and analyse in its smallest details the Christian Faith which I more than ever regarded as the centre ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... The Notebooks of Samuel Butler, and Leaves of Grass. He took down The Anatomy of Melancholy, that most delightful of all books for midnight browsing. Turning to one of his favourite passages—"A Consolatory Digression, Containing the Remedies of All Manner of Discontents"—he was happily lost to all ticking of the clock, retaining only such bodily consciousness as was needful to dump, fill, and relight his pipe from time ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... that there hardly appeareth anye semblaunce of comparison: no more in a manner (specially for poets) than doth betweene the incomprehensible wisedome of God and the sensible wit of man. But what needeth this digression betweene you and me? I dare saye you wyll holde your selfe reasonably wel satisfied, if youre Dreames be but as well esteemed of in Englande as Petrarches Visions be in Italy; whiche, I assure you, is the very worst I wish you. But see how I haue the arte memoratiue at commaundement. In ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser |
