"Nonsensical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one in their senses could deny such a thing; but we must be on our guard against make- believe duties. It is my duty to help mother by teaching Jack, and I give her two hours every morning; but when Fred comes into the schoolroom with some nonsensical request that would rob me of an hour or so, I am quite right not to give way to him. Do you think," warming into enthusiasm over her subject, "that Fred's violin playing ought to stand in the way of any real work that will benefit souls as well as bodies—that will help to reclaim ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... after a pause, "that what you say merits consideration. I acknowledge that in consequence of Mrs Easy's nonsensical indulgence, the boy is unruly, and will not obey me at present; and if your friend does not apply the rod, I will think seriously of sending my son John to ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dizziness," says the old song. Love is something else—it is the most selfish feeling in existence. Of course, I don't allude to the fraternal or the friendly, or any other such nonsensical old-fashioned trash that artless people still believe in, but to the real genuine article that Adam felt for Eve when he first saw her, and which all who read this—above the innocent and unsusceptible age of twelve—have experienced. And the fancy and the reality are so much alike, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... every dream and some detail of the dreamer's life during the previous waking state. This positively establishes a relation between sleeping states and waking states and disposes of the widely prevalent view that dreams are purely nonsensical phenomena coming from nowhere and ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... gratified the overcharged bosom of Ferdinand. He pursued the subject with enjoyment. Anybody but Glastonbury might have thought that he had lost his senses, he laughed so loud, and talked so fast about a subject which seemed almost nonsensical; but the good Glastonbury ascribed these ebullitions to the wanton spirit of youth, and smiled out of sympathy, though he knew not why, except ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... confess, if Ben is to be entirely believed, Shakspeare wrote Shakspeare. But Ben, if unsupported, is somewhat disqualified from being what the Scotch would call a 'famous witness'—he was under the deepest pecuniary obligations to Shakspeare, and was through life, despite the nonsensical tradition of their quarrel, his hearty friend and boon-companion, with 'blind affection,' as he phrases it, as seen above, literally 'unto death,' and therefore bound by the strongest ties to keep his secret, if secret there were. Besides, Ben can be convicted of at least one unqualified ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... has this comment:— 'I casually took a volume of what is called, "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy." 'Sentimental'! what is that? It is not English: he might as well say, 'Continental' [!]. It is not sense. It conveys no determinate idea; yet one fool makes many. And this nonsensical word (who would believe it?) is become a fashionable one!' ('Journal', February 11, 1772). In 1773, Goldsmith puts it in the 'Dedication' to 'She Stoops':— 'The undertaking a comedy, not merely 'sentimental', was very dangerous;' and Garrick (forgetting Kelly and 'False Delicacy') uses it more ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... twelve years when he was brought to me showed the mental powers of a stupid child of four. In a silly way he repeated every question which he heard without answering it; he talked steadily to himself in a nonsensical manner, mostly repeating nursery rhymes without end, never holding his attention to anything in the room, giving the impression that there was no attention whatever. The boy was a child of rich parents; he had ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... is to take the bits out of the box, look at them, and put them back again. Or, returning to Richard Middleton's excellent example: there is no such thing as London, there are only houses. No man has seen London at any time; the very word (meaning "the fort on the lake") is nonsensical; no human eye has ever beheld aught else but a number of houses; it is clear that this "London" is as mythical and monstrous and irrational a concept as many others of the same class. Well, people who talk like that are doubtless sent into ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... come to take no account of the meaning of the words we hear, but only of their sound. It might be instructive to compare with dreams certain comic scenes in which one of the characters systematically repeats in a nonsensical fashion what another character whispers in his ear. If you fall asleep with people talking round you, you sometimes find that what they say gradually becomes devoid of meaning, that the sounds get distorted, as it were, and recombine in a haphazard fashion ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... persistence of one of the most powerful among the emotions that dominate mankind. Mill's article proclaiming these views appeared in 1835, just at the time when the Oxford Movement was stirring up a wave of enthusiasm for the dogmas and ritual which he treated as obsolete and nonsensical; nor is there anything more remarkable or unexpected in the political changes of the last sixty years, than the discomfiture of those prophets who have foretold the decay of all liturgies and the speedy dissolution of ecclesiastical establishments. This phenomenon ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... combinations of harmony should sound absolutely false and nonsensical to the ear of one generation, which to the ear of another age sounded beautiful and natural—this is a puzzling fact. The shrill and unprepared dissonances which we now often consider very effective were thought to be ear-splitting a hundred years ago. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... most disobedient. It was vaguely like a topless surry, but cumbrous with unwholesome excrescences fore and aft, while underneath were spinning leather belts and something that whirred and howled and seemed to stagger. The ride-stealers made no attempt to fasten their sleds to a contrivance so nonsensical and yet so fearsome. Instead, they gave over their sport and concentrated all their energies in their lungs, so that up and down the street the one cry shrilled increasingly: "Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Mister, why don't you git a hoss?" But the ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... done by not letting her, from this day forward, on any account, listen to the sound of weeping, or see, with the exception of her parents, any relatives outside the family circle. Then alone will she be able to go through this existence in peace and in quiet.' No one heeded the nonsensical talk of this raving priest; but here am I, up to this very day, dosing myself with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... regimental business, I shall listen to you, of course; but if it's some nonsensical love affair, you must go to Colonel Sword. I never trouble ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... it advisable, as Admiral of the Fleet, to lay some facts before you to enable you to see clearly that it is absolutely nonsensical and untrue that the German naval bill is to provide a navy meant as a challenge to British naval supremacy. The German fleet is built against nobody at all; it is solely built for Germany's needs in relation with that country's rapidly growing trade. The German naval bill was sanctioned by the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... have little to do with the present narrative—except, indeed, that I had propounded, for the Veiled Lady's prophetic solution, a query as to the success of our Blithedale enterprise. The response, by the bye, was of the true Sibylline stamp,—nonsensical in its first aspect, yet on closer study unfolding a variety of interpretations, one of which has certainly accorded with the event. I was turning over this riddle in my mind, and trying to catch its slippery purport by the tail, when the old man ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... listener. Perhaps she was not even a listener; one could not tell. She sat so still, with wistful eyes looking out beyond the stars. But Diana, on the other hand, exceeded herself; and in doing so she made van Hert exceed himself also. She was brilliant, mischievous, reckless, serious, satirical, nonsensical, all in a breath. She drove him hither and thither; led him on one moment, and withered him with her satire the next. It was obvious the man very soon left off treating her with any careless levity; if he did he was outwitted in ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... a Senator from New England rises up with tongue so thick, and with utterance so nonsensical, that he is led into the anteroom. He was ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Tancred fancies that his doubts may be solved by an English bishop; and Disraeli revels in the ludicrous picture of a young man of genius taking a bishop seriously. Yet it must be admitted that Tancred's own theory sounds to the vulgar Saxon even more nonsensical than the episcopal doctrine. His notion is that 'inspiration is not only a divine but a local quality,' and that God can only speak to man upon the soil of Palestine—a theory which has afterwards to be ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... are quiet in the sepulchres of the present. In his treatise on "Isis and Osiris," Plutarch writes, "The Egyptians believe that while the bodies of eminent men are buried in the earth their souls are stars shining in heaven." It is equally nonsensical in itself and unwarranted by evidence to imagine that, in the Egyptian faith, embalming either retained the soul in the body or preserved the body for a future return of the soul. Who can believe ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... very kindly, and made a little nonsensical speech. He then unfolded a paper which he handed to Madame Guerard, asking her to read it and then to sign it. This paper was my contract, and mon petit Dame explained that she was not ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... the lady's face as she heard these nonsensical words from one in the garb of a priest. Still, she reflected that while it was his voice that was singing, his mind was no ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... pocket lay, written on a small piece of cheap foreign notepaper, the tidings I had come to Groningen to seek. Yet so trivial, so nonsensical, so baffling was the message that I already felt my trip to Holland to ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... would be well that a gentleman of your character should not give protection to all the rogues, vagabonds, and thieves who desert us and seek refuge with you, and who, to gain your favor, think they cannot do better than tell nonsensical stories about us, which they will continue to do so long as you listen to them." [Footnote: Denonville a Dongan, 20 Juin, 1686.] The rest of the letter was in terms of civility, to which Dongan returned: "Beleive me it is much joy to have soe good a neighbour ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... arithmetical rules and tables with which his master has supplied him, and to have all his measures and weights at his fingers' ends, and yet to be so destitute of the arithmetical sense as to give without a moment's misgiving an entirely nonsensical answer to a simple arithmetical problem,—to say, for example, as I have known half a class of boys say, that a room is five shillings and sixpence wide. Such a boy, though his head may be stuffed with arithmetical information, ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... playfully resisting. "Don't be so nonsensical! Don't you think the bride looked lovely, with that dress of spotless white and with those ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... this to the briefest moment possible. She liked him, and she was convinced that Alice could never do better, if half so well. She would now have preferred to treat him with familiar confidence, to tell him that she had no idea of Alice's writing him that nonsensical letter, and he was not to pay the least attention to it; for of course it meant nothing; but another principle of her complex nature came into play, and she silently folded the note and returned it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... point is that when there is something to be said for one thing, it is now commonly said in support of the opposite thing. Never since the mob called out, "Less bread! More taxes!" in the nonsense story, has there been so truly nonsensical a situation as that in which the strikers demand Government control and the Government denounces its own control as anarchy. The mob howls before the palace gates, "Hateful tyrant, we demand that you assume more despotic powers"; and the tyrant thunders from the balcony, "Vile rebels, do ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... you please," said Mrs. Atkinson; "but I thank Heaven I have married a man who is not jealous of my understanding. I should have been the most miserable woman upon earth with a starched pedant who was possessed of that nonsensical opinion that the difference of sexes causes any difference in the mind. Why don't you honestly avow the Turkish notion that women have no souls? for you say the ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... by Frederick has always seemed to me superfluous as well as stagey. The whole thing is pure melodrama of the kind that used to be popular until a very few years ago; and the music is as melodramatic as the two incidents. The scene is far too long, and is thus rendered doubly nonsensical. Only a few minutes before, the Herald has announced the King's decree: any one harbouring either of the offenders "will share his [it ought to be their] doom with life and limb." Yet the offenders themselves are allowed to break up an orderly procession ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... October. The Vice-Chancellor who matriculated me was the majestic Liddell, who, with his six feet of stately height draped in scarlet, his "argent aureole" of white hair, and his three silver maces borne before him, always helped me to understand what Sydney Smith meant when he said, of some nonsensical proposition, that no power on earth, save and except the Dean of Christ Church, should induce him to believe it. As I write, I see the announcement of Mrs. Liddell's death; and my mind travels back to the drawing-room ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... 'but this visit is to you, though I fear you will look upon what I have to say as very nonsensical and farfetched. To me, though, it is a ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... been hastily assumed to be spurious or even burlesque.[142] But the evidence of a rhyming formula is the opposite to this. It is evidence of their genuineness, and if some of the words appear to be nonsensical it is due to the fact that the sense of the old formula has been misunderstood, and ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... all sophistical and nonsensical; and she knew it, for there was a mischievous little gleam in her eye as she spoke. But none the less, shutting her ears to the unsympathetic Stephanie, did she continue to show herself alone in public with the beautiful youth. She had thrown her crown over the windmills for a few happy ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... in self-defense, before she began the song, "sang anything so stupid. And that is saying much when one thinks of all the nonsensical words that people set to music! It's a marvel how any one can like this stuff. Do tell me what there is in it?" she added, turning to Gerard, who was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Dirge,' by Laura Matilda, is not of the first quality. The verses, to be sure, are very smooth, and very nonsensical—as was intended; but they are not so good as Swift's celebrated Song by a Person of Quality; and are so exactly in the same measure, and on the same plan, that it is impossible to avoid making the ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... some five years previously; and although, on more than one occasion during that time, the money would have been of considerable use to me, I had been restrained from asking it back by my natural indolence and laziness of character, added to the nonsensical notion of generosity and devotion in friendship that I had picked out of waggon-loads of novels. Richards, I must observe, had never hinted at returning the money. I now felt rather vexed, I cannot exactly say why, at Menou's being ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... big words. In the literary application the same sturdy common sense was opposed to the Pope tradition so far as that tradition opposed common sense. Conventional diction, pastorals, and twaddle about Nature belonged to the nonsensical side. He entirely sympathised with Crabbe's substitution of the real living brutish clown for the unreal swain of Arcadia; that is, for developing poetry by making it thoroughly realistic even at the cost ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... "Your nonsensical praises of each other—your boastings of Sticklebacks, and Snooksbys, and Bankses; a set of mere humbugs and blockheads! And even this foolish woman, with her femininities and re-invigorating society, I believe to be a regular quack. By dad! one would think ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... nonsensical about it, Master Pawson," he said, firmly. "As I have told you, the castle will be put ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... 12) is an old-fashioned Round. Many a band of little folks has been divided into groups and has sung the nonsensical rhymes until every boy and girl broke down in laughter. Do you poor modern people know how it was done? The school was divided into a half-dozen sections. The first section began to sing and when ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... the most prodigious contrast that ever was known. The collection of all his speeches, letters, sermons, (for he also wrote sermons,) would make a great curiosity, and, with a few exceptions, might justly pass for one of the most nonsensical ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... security for repayment. Cassiodorus evidently feels this; and very probably the restoration of the vessels and the quittance of the debt had been insisted on by him. But the more he despises his master's shabbiness, the more he struggles through a maze of almost nonsensical sentences, to prove that he has committed some very glorious action in lending the money ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Avoid all nonsensical waste of strength, and gymnastic feats, before and during the march; play no jokes upon your comrades, that will make their day's work more burdensome. Young people are very apt to ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... sense; little, in another. You have heard those queer stories of her husband. Well, they are all nonsensical—probably with one exception. He is generally a harmless old fellow, but peculiar. He has performed some wonderful surgical operations. The people in his neighborhood are ignorant, and they fear him and wish ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... been kept well informed of his sister's recovery, and proved himself the kindest of brothers, sending letters by the dozen, full of such nonsensical jokes, anecdotes, and illustrations, as would have cheered the gloomiest invalid in the world. But the happiest day of all was when the great news arrived that his name was placed first of all in the list of successful candidates. ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... foot is a yard long ef it's a' inch, but I'll find it stuffed to-morrer mornin', even ef the guyaskutus has to be chained to the mantel. An' it'll take me a good hour to empty it, for he always puts a lot o' devilment in it, an' I give him a beatin' over the head every nonsensical thing I find in it. We have a heap o' fun over ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... "I assure you I do; and if you were only half as zealous in the study of religion as you are in contriving and whittling these useless, nonsensical things, it would be infinitely better for you. I want you to be like Paul, who said that he desired to know nothing among men but ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... labyrinth of parentheses, that though one of the most shrewd men in England, he was, perhaps, the most unintelligible speaker that ever perplexed an audience. It has been long since said by the historian, that a collection of the Protector's speeches would make, with a few exceptions, the most nonsensical book in the world; but he ought to have added, that nothing could be more nervous, concise, and intelligible, than what he really intended should ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... this opinion; and the fact is rather surprising, that among the people from whom the circle-squarers, perpetual-motioners, flat-earthed men and the like, are recruited, to say nothing of table-turners and spirit-rappers, somebody has not perceived the easy avenue to nonsensical notoriety open to any one who will take up the good old doctrine, that ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Varandeuil, following out her thought, "among you people, the men are such sweet creatures! They'll spend all you have—to say nothing of the blows. But marriage—I am sure that that nonsensical idea of getting married buzzes around in your head when you see the others. That's what gives you that simper, I'll wager. Bon Dieu de Dieu! Now turn a bit, so that I can see you," said Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, with an abrupt change of tone to one that was almost caressing; ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... said St. Clare, mentally; but aloud he added, "Come, now, Marie, what do you think of the likeness? Don't be nonsensical, now." ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sense and more that is nonsensical has been written about furniture. Observation tends to justify belief that in general effect the nonsense has proved ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... travelled it is quite extraordinary what an appalling mass of nonsensical rubbish can be supplied to the public by politicians, by newspaper penny-a-liners, and by home royal geographo-parasites at large, who base their arguments on such unsteady foundation. It is quite sufficient for some people to open ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... against the rejection of his application. He strove to please. To adopt the metaphor of his nonsensical phrase, he laid brick upon brick on the tall chimney of his devoirs until, at length, the structure was stable and complete. The manners of the best society come around finally to simplicity; and as the girl's way was that naturally, they were on a mutual plane ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... touches give a racy flavour to the letters; and although they may occasionally call forth a smile, they will, no doubt, be appreciated by those who with Sterne "can see the precise and distinguishing marks of national character more in these nonsensical minutiae than in the most important matters ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... he most probably would have never returned. It is difficult to determine whether there were then any inhabitants in the more southern parts of Africa or not; yet, at any rate, this conqueror of the world would have made but a nonsensical adventure; his miserable ships, not contrived for a long voyage, would have become leaky, and foundered, before he could have doubled the Cape, and left his Majesty fairly beyond the limits of the then known world. Yet it would have been an august exit for an Alexander, after having subdued Persia ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... you must blame the clock of Notre Dame; it could not have struck right, I am sure. So be calm, signor: you know that your anger makes no impression on me. Make haste and tell me what you want me to do. We lose precious time in this nonsensical sort of talk. I left some friends to come and receive your orders, and I must add that I intend returning to them as soon as I have fulfilled your commands. You need not shake your fist at me, nor get into a passion; it will ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... is to a correspondent who wrote to ask him whether adhesion to the compromise had not rendered nonsensical the teaching given in a certain lesson upon the finding of the youthful Jesus in the temple, when, after they had read the verse, "How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... out this nonsensical talk and drop your pose of being a sportsman," interposed Standish. "What's the idea, anyhow? It's heads you win and tails I lose, I suppose, if it comes to fighting you. If I beat you, one of your gang of cut-throat ruffians ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... it is all so easy; it is within every man's reach. No education is necessary, no nonsensical argumentation. I offer you a short cut to Glory. You may be the merest clown—cobbler, fishmonger, carpenter, money-changer; yet there is nothing to prevent your becoming famous. Given brass and boldness, you have only to learn to wag ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... of stenographers before, who refused their employers, and who invariably quit their positions immediately afterward. But Dede had not even hinted at such a thing. No matter how baffling she was, there was no nonsensical silliness about her. She was level headed. But, also, he had been level-headed and was partly responsible for this. He hadn't taken advantage of her in the office. True, he had twice overstepped the bounds, but he had ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... school-house made from the old hulk—I, little Jack of the Beach, that used to go berrying with cousin Nat and the rest; I to be murdered here at the ends of the earth, on board a haunted pirate-ship by a horrible Spaniard? Too nonsensical to think of! Who would murder Amasa Delano? His conscience is clean. There is some one above. Fie, fie, Jack of the Beach! you are a child indeed; a child of the second childhood, old boy; you are beginning to dote ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... but to tell you the truth we think she must be a little off her head. (Violent exclamations from Helen). Referring to your letter again I see that you are determined not to Marry James. Now Gladys you must see for yourself how very nonsensical this idea is. James has every means of making you happy and what is more he is very very rich and is by no means stingy with his money, as proof the lodgings you are now in. I am sure he loves you very passionately and he is both truthful and ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... the world about it, as it takes the street for its temple, and yet which may be at its inner point in the directest contact with God. Religion may suffer from aphasia and still be religion; it may utter misleading or nonsensical words and yet intend and convey the truth. The methods of the Salvation Army are older than doctrinal Christianity, and may long survive it. Men and women may still chant of Beulah Land and cry out in the ecstasy of salvation; the ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... come downstairs again," he said. "It is Fosco's fault, Miss Halcombe, not mine. He has started some nonsensical objection to his wife being one of the witnesses, and has obliged me to ask you to join us ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... despatched them back to Theodore. It was, indeed, the proper way to deal with him: firmness alone could save our lives; as we had but too ample proofs that the kind of adoration for so long bestowed upon him resulted in nothing but a nonsensical correspondence, and no real advantage had ever been gained. No answer could possibly be given to the mad production Theodore had sent; a verbal message to the same purport as the first communication from the Commander-in-Chief was ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... gentleness and love and yet be able to preserve intact their initial bloodthirstiness, so that while they will allow their masters to misuse them in any way they will yet fight most willingly with each other, and are never really happy saving in the conduct of some private and nonsensical battle of their own. I do not believe that it is fear which tames these creatures into mildness, but that the most savage animal has a capacity for love which has not been sufficiently noted, and which, if more intelligent attention had been directed upon it, would have raised them to the status ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... somewhat frivolous and nonsensical tone, was a well-meaning fellow. When he was walking with Walter, he had intended to chaff him about his sudden burst of ill-temper, and jest away his spirit of revenge; but he saw that poor Walter ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... solo sung, by way of novelty, behind the Curtain, by TURIDDU,—(what a name! like the commencement of a comic nonsensical chorus! TURIDDU ought to have been in love with Tulla Lieti and have behaved badly to Tralala. "But this is another story.")—the choruses, and most of the concerted pieces are charming; and, above all, the intermezzo, which, were the piece in two Acts, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... Monsieur Jourdain is performed in dance and music, and comprises the Fourth Interlude.) [The ceremony is a burlesque full of comic gibberish in pseudo-Turkish and nonsensical French, in which Monsieur Jourdain is made to appear ludicrous and during which he is outfitted with an extravagant costume, turban, ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... "She has no nonsensical girl's ways about her, Mr. Penfold; but is almost as good as a boy to be with. The girls I have seen before have been quite different from that. Some of them always giggle when you speak to them, others have not got a word to say for themselves; and ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... the power of human imagination when, excited, it creates phantoms and visions, peopling the bottomless and ever silent emptiness with them. It is sad to admit that there are people, however, who believe in ghosts and build upon this belief nonsensical theories about certain relations between the world of the living and the enigmatic land inhabited by the dead. I understand that the human ear and eye can be deceived—but how can the great and lucid human mind fall into ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... unexpected question. What was her Purpose in Life? To get to the heart of the color of the world? That was rather vague. Also nonsensical when so formulated. She ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... omission. In the face of this overwhelming mass of unfaltering evidence to insist that Codd. B and {HEBREW LETTER ALEF} must yet be accounted right, and all the rest of Antiquity wrong, is simply irrational. To uphold the authority, in respect of this nonsensical reading, of two MSS. confessedly untrustworthy in countless other places,—against all the MSS.—all the Versions,—is nothing else but an act of vulgar prejudice. I venture to declare,—(and with this I shall close the discussion and dismiss the subject,)—that there does ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... penalties, in view of its possible use for baptismal purposes: this sea was composed of the blood that had been shed by piety in furthering the kingdom of the Prince of Peace, and was reputed to be the largest ocean in existence. And it explained the nonsensical saying which Jurgen had so often heard, as to Hell's ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... took some trouble to make young Little understand it when he came to me with a nonsensical proposition not long ago. Like the rest of them, he's always wanting something. I asked him where he thought the money ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... incredible that any set of followers could retain faith in "revelations" at once so conflicting and so nonsensical. ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... you are just being nonsensical!" Ruth said, speaking in a half-annoyed tone. "You are not absurd enough to suppose that either of those verses are arguments in favor of dancing, or against dancing, or indeed have anything to do with the subject? What is the use in trying to make ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... man, don't be so silly as to put faith in nonsensical dreams of that kind. Many a one like it I have had, if I would bother my head with them. Why, within the last ten days, while you were dreaming of finding a pot of gold on London Bridge, I was dreaming of finding a ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... the old-fashioned stories in this volume I find only one that seems to me "really funny," and that is "Uncle David's Nonsensical Story about the Giants and Fairies." Think of a giant so tall that "he was obliged to climb up a ladder to comb his own hair." But this bit of humor is not so good as a very modern nonsense-story entitled "The Giant's Shoes," which I read ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... of the present state of affairs, not confined to this continent, but unhappily only too prevalent everywhere? Let the head of the musical department of every church service begin by weeding from his repertory all trash, whether profane or simply stupid and nonsensical. As the number of musical creations remaining will not be very large, let him retain for the present all that are not positively bad or inane; a few old song melodies have, through long usage, lost their original associations, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... which you have awakened in me make it my duty to say a few words to you about your letter.... What? You say, too, that I meant to caricature the youth of Russia in Bazaroff? you repeat this—pardon the frankness of the expression—nonsensical accusation? Bazaroff,—this is my favorite child, for whose sake I quarrelled with Katkoff, upon whom I used all the color at my command. Bazaroff, this fine mind, this hero, a caricature? But it seems that there is nothing to be done in the case. Just as people accuse Louis Blanc to this day, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... impatient toss of her head, as though the buzz of this nonsensical verbiage stung her ears, plunged at once ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... him do at other times, from the productions of the Georgia poet, Chivers, and especially from the "Eonx of Ruby." Chivers, according to Taylor's showing, had become infatuated with Poe, and adorned his verses with every sort of beautiful word which he could coin, the result being as nonsensical a medley as was ever known. Earlier in the evening, Taylor, Fields, and myself had each of us been giving a lecture, and this led Taylor to speak of a recent experience of his while holding forth in one of the smaller ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Aunt Dide had begun to bustle about the room again. She did not say a word. Towards the evening Antoine went out, after putting on a blouse, and pulling over his eyes a big cap which his mother had bought for him. He returned into the town in the same manner as he had quitted it, by relating some nonsensical story to the national guards who were on duty at the Rome Gate. Then he made his way to the old quarter, where he crept from house to house in a mysterious manner. All the Republicans of advanced views, all the members of the brotherhood who had not followed the insurrectionary ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... that I'm going to give him his chance," Caleb cut in. His voice was hushed, but vehement. "Why, man, think what he has this minute, to start with! A brain as clear as a diamond, absolutely fresh, absolutely unspoiled or fagged with the nonsensical fol-de-rol which makes up the bulk of the usual boy's education of his age, and a working knowledge, for instance, of this north country which most men might envy. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... 'Come, Seagrove, don't be nonsensical,' said Hautaine; 'you told me yourself, the other evening, when you were talkative, that you had never had a ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... in buffalo robes you feel no inconvenience from the cold, excepting to your face, which requires to be defended by a warm beaver or fur bonnet; the latter, I am surprised to find, is seldom if ever worn, from the nonsensical reason that it is not the fashion. The red, grey, and black squirrels are abundant in our woods; the musk-rat inhabits little houses that he builds in the rushy parts of the lakes: these dwellings are formed ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... how exhilarated and set-up I feel, as though I'd come into my own again after a period of social ostracism. I must confess that I get lonely for some one who talks my kind of nonsensical talk. Betsy trots off home every week end, and the doctor is conversational enough, but, oh, so horribly logical! Gordon somehow seems to stand for the life I belong to,—of country clubs and motors and dancing and sport and politeness,—a poor, foolish, silly life, if you will, but mine own. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... often nonsensical element in dream-pictures arises from the fact that the astral body cannot, on account of its separation from the sense-organs of the physical body, relate its pictures to the correct objects and events of the outer ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... there was no longer even a shadow between them; they both understood that the weak, nonsensical tie was broken. That they were the dearest of friends, and quite happy, would have been Lord Arleigh's notion of matters. Philippa L'Estrange might ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... feet of him, a book in her lap, her gaze bent briefly on the flitting buildings outside. He studied the reflection furtively until she took up the book and began to read. Up to this time he had wondered why some nonsensical idiot had wasted looking-glasses on the walls of a railway coach; now he was thinking of him as a ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... sufficiently nonsensical. It is simply a jeu de mots, and no more, though funny enough as it stands. One is better satisfied when one comes to the 'Tom Thumb' of Henry Fielding and the 'Chrononhotonthologos' of Henry Carey, though even in ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... purposes of the hoaxers that Mr. Pucker's trepidation prevented him from making a calm perusal of the paper; and he was nervously doing his best to turn the nonsensical English word by word into equally nonsensical Latin, when his limited powers of Latin writing were brought to a full stop by the untranslateable word "Bosh". As he could make nothing of this, he wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and gazed appealingly at the benignant features ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... mean that nonsensical thing last night?" Sir Richard was saying to Margaret French. "Oh no, I didn't go. But Mary, of course, thought she must go. Somebody ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... established, that may serve everywhere as sign-posts to guide investigation, a mass of facts will follow, throwing a wholly new light upon the relations of man in the past and the present. A number of social phenomena—unintelligible to us to-day, and attacked by superficial judges as nonsensical, not infrequently even as "immoral"—will become clear and natural. A material lifting of the veil, formerly spread over the history of the development of our race, has been effected through the investigations made, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... their impassivity, and in whose rigidity they believe they divine the majesty of the gods. Febrer recalled his jests of other times, on nights of feasting, seated before a plate of fresh oysters, in the fashionable Parisian restaurants. His elegant companions thought him mad as they listened to the nonsensical ideas aroused by wine, the sight of the shell fish and the recollection of certain fragmentary reading in his youth. "We're going to eat our grandfathers like the merry cannibals that we are." The oyster is one of the primitive ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... matters that ever I heard of. First, his marriage with that girl. I saw her once at the house he lodged in; and a glaikit lassie I thought her. Next, the education of his nieces, which was absolutely nonsensical; and then putting such a clause into his will, as if he meant that you should take a fancy to each other—for prohibitions of that kind just put mischief ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... wouldn't do as a husband for Una, you are right, but I don't think for a moment that any such nonsensical idea ever crossed their minds. I like Neal. He's a fine, straightforward boy, and ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... sickness very simple remedies are used, and not a few utterly nonsensical. To cure pains in the stomach they tie around them the skin of the comadreka, a small, vile-smelling animal. This they told me was a sovereign remedy. If the sufferer be a babe, a cross made on its stomach is sufficient to perfectly cure it. I have seen seven pieces of the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... own against any smitten swain who had so far entered the lists against him. As a companion, Anne honestly acknowledged nobody could be so satisfactory as Gilbert; she was very glad, so she told herself, that he had evidently dropped all nonsensical ideas—though she spent considerable ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... power of the Pope over the canons much as a modern English statesman looks at the question of the coronation oath, and the extent to which it binds the monarch to the maintenance of the laws existing at the time of its imposition. In the same spirit he banishes from all account the crowd of nonsensical objections to Papal supremacy, drawn from imaginary possibilities. Suppose a Pope, for example, were to abolish all the canons at a single stroke; suppose him to become an unbeliever; suppose him to go mad; and so forth. 'Why,' De Maistre says, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... exasperated Tom that he was about to fling a volley of abuse to the enemy, but Harry checked him. Harry was always the first to look at a thing from more points than one, and now he said in an undertone, "I expect it is only some nonsensical make-believe. Yaspard is a baby in some ways, I am told; and he never exchanges a word with gentlemen's sons—lives horribly alone, you know. Let's humour him a bit, and see what it ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... I am not going to attend to nonsensical gossip. Georgina is what she was then, and the same is right for me now as was right last year. I am not going to ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ask me if I mean to continue D.J. &c. How should I know? What encouragement do you give me, all of you, with your nonsensical prudery? publish the two Cantos, and then you will see. I desired Mr. Kinnaird to speak to you on a little matter of business; either he has not spoken, or you have not answered. You are a pretty pair, but ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... denied, daily, by Fashion's nonsensical decrees, the pleasure which every healthy person feels in the use of his limbs, with their hundreds of muscles and tendons, and kept not only inactive, but almost secluded from air and light—who is not almost ashamed that he belongs to the same species? Yet such things are quite common ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... it is one of those dainty, nonsensical things made of gray chiffon, with pearl handle and bows of pink ribbon. I don't believe it was ever used before, and from the value women usually place on such fol-de-rols, could only have been left behind under the stress of extraordinary emotion or fear. ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... was an innovation for our village, and frowned upon by many of the older and stricter inhabitants. However, most of the captain's boy friends were permitted to attend; young Cy was not. His father considered dancing a waste of time and, if not wicked, certainly frivolous and nonsensical. So the boy remained at home, but, in spite of the parental order, he practiced some of the figures of the quadrilles and the contra dances in his comrades' barns, learning them at ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... all that was going on in Grange Lane. Though she was fluttered by the scolding she had received, Rosa only looked prettier than usual with her flushed cheeks; and so many things had been put into her nonsensical little head during the last two days, especially by her aunt's denunciations, that her sense of self-importance was very much heightened in consequence. She looked at the Miss Wentworths with a throb of mingled ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... at length shaken themselves loose of that connexion, and finally combated with and overcome them. The Independents were distinguished by the wildest license in their religious tenets, mixed with much that was nonsensical and mystical. They disowned even the title of a regular clergy, and allowed the preaching of any one who could draw together a congregation that would support him, or who was willing, without recompense, to minister to the spiritual necessities of his hearers. Although such laxity of ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... nonsensical for you to have a secretary," she answered, "and that it would be much better for you to do your own work, and make a gift of the money to the institution, and then I could go and learn to be a nurse. I only mention these things to show you that it ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... Such a nonsensical and infantile rejoinder deserved no answer, and it received none. Shortly afterwards Maud entered and whispered that Nellie was wanted upstairs. As soon as his wife had gone Edward Henry ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... seldom reject anything nonsensical, for they are always seeking for something new. They gravely rearmed themselves from the gun-room and trooped along at the tail of their guide, Sir Howard only pausing, in a sort of ecstasy, to point out the celebrated gilt summerhouse on which the gilt weathercock still stood ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... That point I was coming to)—Ver. 824. Colman observes here: "Madame Dacier makes an observation on this speech, something like that of Donatus on one of Micio's above; and says that Micio, being hard put to it by the real circumstances of the case, thinks to confound Demea by a nonsensical gallimatia. I can not be of the ingenious lady's opinion on this matter, for I think a more sensible speech could not be made, nor a better plea offered in favor of the young men, than that of ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... the kind," I answered. "She lives with me, and she likes it very much. We are extremely comfortable, and our boat is not a canoe, or any such nonsensical affair. It is ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... a plain country gentleman, sir; and something more, a man of wealth and distinction; but who, unlike my friend Cooke here, do not make myself ridiculous by absurd eccentricities, and the adoption of the nonsensical doctrines of Pythagoras, so utterly at variance with reason and Christian truth. You know, my dear Cooke, I could have cured you of your rheumatism had you possessed common-sense; but who could cure any man who guards his person against the elements by ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... hunting or pursuing, run forward with a frequent eye to the discoveries of the rest of the pack, because they have no confidence in themselves. Another sort is over-confident—not letting the cleverer members of the pack go on ahead, but keeping them back with nonsensical clamour. Others will wilfully hug every false scent, (20) and with a tremendous display of eagerness, whatever they chance upon, will take the lead, conscious all the while they are playing false; (21) whilst another sort again will behave in a precisely similar ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... had an idea, a very foolish one, of course, that she could only work when alone and quiet, say in her bedroom, or in the barn, or lying in the grass in the garden, or in the woods. All of which was inelegant, unladylike, and nonsensical. Kitty must get the better of such ideas at once, and must learn her lessons as Anna did, sitting primly at the square table in ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... on with thy cursed nonsensical reformado rote, of dying, dying, dying! and, having once got the word by the end, canst not help foisting it in at every period! The devil take me, if I don't think thou wouldst rather give her poison with thy own ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... in the midst of asses, and under an ass, I translated Cornelius Nepos, some of Virgil's Eclogues, and such-like; we wrote stupid, nonsensical themes, so that in any well-directed school we should have been a wretched fourth class. I was never at the bottom; emulation spurred me on until I surpassed or equalled the head boy; but as soon as I reached the top, I fell back into a state of torpor. I was perhaps to be excused, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... can conceive a supernatural Being, and what none can conceive none ought to worship, or even assert the existence of. Who worships a something of which he knows nothing is an idolater. To talk of, or bow down to it, is nonsensical; to pretend affection for it, is worse than nonsensical. Such conduct, however pious, involves the rankest hypocrisy; the meanest and most odious species of idolatry; for labouring to destroy which the Universalist ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... Nancy Nuttall was a Nonsensical, Noodlesome, Nincompoopish, Namby-pamby, Numskulled, Needle-woman; Nevertheless, at Ninety-Nine she Neatly and Nimbly Nabbed in the Nuptial Noose a Notable Noble Nabob of Nagpoor. And directly after the marriage Nagged him into sending for books ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... style new to Jim; and it was. He supposed it a nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath. He realized that he wished what she said to be the literal truth, and he was instantly snared ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... frequently see coming events, or what is happening at a distance, than others; some see things dimly, others with great distinctness. The events seen are sometimes of great importance, sometimes highly nonsensical and trivial; sometimes they relate to the person who sees them, sometimes to other people. This is all that can be said with anything like certainty with respect to the nature of the second sight, a faculty for which there is no accounting, which, were it better developed, might be termed ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... that he do think himself very well served by me. Thence to Westminster and to Mrs. Lane's lodgings, to give her joy, and there suffered me to deal with her as I hoped to do, and by and by her husband comes, a sorry, simple fellow, and his letter to her which she proudly showed me a simple, nonsensical thing. A man of no discourse, and I fear married her to make a prize of, which he is mistaken in, and a sad wife I believe she will prove to him, for she urged me to appoint a time as soon as he is gone out of town to give her a meeting next week. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... consciences of two frail and fallible human beings. Well may we say with Michelet, that under such a system the priest ought to be truly a presbyteros, "a man who has seen, learned, and suffered much." A young priest as a father-confessor is not merely "a nonsensical contradiction," but a snare and a source of peril both ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... said shortly. Somehow, I did not like the suggestion. "Betty is a child yet. For pity's sake, Sara, don't go putting nonsensical ideas into her head." ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the form in which Mr. Shelley puts forth his woes. We give a verse at random, premising that there is no story in the elegy, and that it consists of fifty-five stanzas, which are, to our seeming, altogether unconnected, interjectional, and nonsensical. We give one that we think among the more comprehensible. An ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... expatiating upon), naturally paved the way for the remark that now the practice was the exact opposite of this, the vocal score erroneously following the affected and abrupt transitions and rapid scaling of the instrumentalists. "What is more nonsensical," I cried, leaping from my chair, running to the piano, and opening it quickly, "what is more nonsensical than such an execrable style as this, which, far from being music, is much more like the noise of peas rolling across the floor?" At the same time I sang several of the modern fermatas, which ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Father. Nonsensical ideas—probably his stomach is disordered. Remember the last time I ate lobster!—Come along in and have a glass of sherry, and you will forget ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Leno, Hys Booke. A Volume of Frivolities: Autobiographical, Historical, Philosophical, Anecdotal and Nonsensical. Written by DAN LENO. Profusely illustrated by Sidney H. Sime, Frank Chesworth, W. S. Rogers, Gustave Darre, Alfred Bryan and Dan Leno. Fifth Edition, containing a New Chapter, and an Appreciation of Dan Leno, written by Clement ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... "Alice," right before him; sometimes I would address her as Miss "Don't Care," and I exhausted myself in nonsensical chatter without succeeding once in taking her out of her peevish and tragic self. There were moments when I felt I must break out and start swearing at her till all was blue. And I fancied that had I done so Jacobus would not have moved a muscle. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... filthy habit. He may guzzle beer, take snuff, and wear dirty shirts, but if he would avoid reproach as an unclean animal he must abandon his quids. Now, as a general rule, I dislike to violate public sentiment, or inconvenience people with whom I associate. If they are nonsensical and inconsistent in their notions, I agree with them for the sake of harmony, if not for politeness. Nothing pleases me better than to annoy an Englishman by doing every thing that he most dislikes, because he makes it a point to be disagreeable ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... to the discouragement of Modesty and all honest Arts. Shallow Fops, who are govern'd by the Eye, and admire every thing that struts in vogue, took up from the Sharpers the Phrase of Biting, and used it upon all Occasions, either to disown any nonsensical Stuff they should talk themselves, or evade the Force of what was reasonably said by others. Thus, when one of these cunning Creatures was enter'd into a Debate with you, whether it was practicable in the present State of Affairs to accomplish ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... three sheets of paper upon such a nonsensical request as that," observed the turnkey. "Old Jackson wouldn't shell out sixpence to save her or anybody else from ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... table-rapping, and other kinds of divination, charms and amulets and witchcraft, which brought ridicule upon the last struggles of paganism. These aberrations of Nature-Mysticism will be dealt with in their later developments in my seventh Lecture. St. Augustine, after mentioning some nonsensical incantations of the "abracadabra" kind, says, "A Christian old woman is wiser than these philosophers." In truth, the spirit of Plato lived in, and not outside Christianity, even in the time of Porphyry. And on the cultus of angels and spirits, which was closely ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... I had to explain myself to Trampas a right smart while ago, long before ever I laid my eyes on yu'. It was just nothing at all. A little matter of cyards in the days when I was apt to spend my money and my holidays pretty headlong. My gracious, what nonsensical times I have had! But I was apt to win at cyards, 'specially poker. And Trampas, he met me one night, and I expect he must have thought I looked kind o' young. So he hated losin' his money to such a young-lookin' man, and he ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... of the lamp, relieved by the stillness, only broken by now and then a louder note of the music down-stairs. It was very comfortable, after all that buzz of talk, and the jokes that seemed so nonsensical and tiresome. There were but two people who could manage to make a party entertaining, and that was the reason it was so different last year. Then Amy wondered if she was the only person who felt sick at heart and dreary; but she only wondered ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at me," said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand and laughing at himself. "You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington only that people might spy at me from the country roundabout. And truly that would be a noble ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... Angela," said Mr. Fraser, in a voice meant to be gruff, but only succeeding in being husky, for, oddly enough, it is trying even to a clergyman on the wrong side of middle-age to be wept over by a lovely woman; "don't be nonsensical; I am only going for ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... names, hers so nonsensical and his so dignified and strong, was no greater than that between the two people. In truth, their names were symbolic of their natures. It looked ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... past three in the afternoon; and Lady Ilfield had called on her friend because the news which she had heard preyed upon her mind and she felt that she must reveal it. Like all mischief-makers Lady Ilfield persuaded herself that she was acting upon conscientious motives; she herself had no nonsensical ideas about singers and actresses; they were quite out of her sphere, quite beneath her notice, and no good, she was in the habit of saying, ever came from associating with them. She had met Madame Vanira several times at Stoneland House, and ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... the ice unbroken. Pile up the fire here, Britain! Let it shine upon the holly till it winks again. It's a world of nonsense, Puss; true lovers and all the rest of it - all nonsense; but we'll be nonsensical with the rest of 'em, and give our true lover a mad welcome. Upon my word!' said the old Doctor, looking at his daughters proudly, 'I'm not clear to-night, among other absurdities, but that I'm the father of ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... to-night. Now, I can't take two girls very well. That is, I can, but I thought you might like a show. You may have your choice of the two. Miss Rae, by the way, says she's wild to know you; thought you were the most provoking man she ever saw; and that you were—nonsensical idea—engaged to Mae. All because you wouldn't look at her the other day when she passed you two, But you can go with ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... ask him now, no need! I've changed my mind. It was a nonsensical idea of mine. I won't give him anything, not a penny, I want my money myself," cried the old man, waving his hand. "I'll crush him like a beetle without it. Don't say anything to him or else he will begin hoping. There's nothing for you to do here, you needn't stay. Is that betrothed of his, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... yore eye whah you will, you'll see words that need refawmin', words that need our help, words that cry an' clamuh to be relieved of the stigma of their congested and nonsensical appearance; nouns, adjectives, verbs, all stuck in the hopeless mud of antiquity, an' holdin' out their hands for we-all to drag 'em out an' bring 'em up to date." He now gave me a list. "Look, suh, at those pore, sufferin', aged cripples, awaitin' ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... for weeks beforehand—that Cashel was the most terrible fighting man of the day, and that Paradise had not dared to propose a renewal of the interrupted contest. And they listened with admiration and delight while the advocate proved that these things were incredible and nonsensical. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... asked whether he has formed or expressed an opinion upon the subject of the guilt or the innocence of the murderer, or whether he feels any bias against an accused. Such questions, in PUNCHINELLO'S opinion, are nonsensical. Jurors nowadays are influenced more through their stomachs than through their heads or their hearts. Let a juror, when he comes to be challenged, be rather asked, "Had you a good or a bad breakfast?" "Were you out late last ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... moment in a new light: for that second she felt that she had never known him before. He struck her differently, somehow, and it was that which momentarily had frightened her, and caused her to make that light, nonsensical reply. But next moment she saw that it was not he who had altered, it ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... when Uncle Remus went off into these rhapsodies. However nonsensical they might seem to others, to the child they were positively thrilling, and he listened with rapt attention, ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris |
