"Palaver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... house. Which she observing, occupied herself for a few days in inflaming his passion, and then affecting to be dying of love for him, sent privily to him a woman that she had in her service, and who was an adept in the arts of the procuress. She, after not a little palaver, told him, while the tears all but stood in her eyes, that for his handsome person and winsome air her mistress was so enamoured of him, that she found no peace by day or by night; and therefore, if 'twere agreeable to him, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... shuffling on the companion, and Bartholomew crawled out with his face all blackened by the powder, and the blood trickling from his cheek, where the ball had grazed it. We all went for'ard, mates, and had a long palaver, and resolved to go ashore at daybreak, and leave a doomed captain and a doomed ship. But we didn't know our man. In the gray of the morning, we heard the handspike rattle on the hatch, and we tumbled up one after the other. The captain was there, looking ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... "But it is perfect rot, all this high palaver. The girl gains by it as well as I. I am not taking the least advantage of her. I shall have to get her guardian's consent, and I suppose he'll know what he is up to. I have never taken any one's advice, and I am not going to begin now, old boy—so we had better say ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... The usual "palaver" at once took place; during which everything was "sweet as honey." After this pleasant prelude came the normal difficulties and disagreeables—it had been reported that I was the happy possessor of 22,000 mostly to be spent ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... blocking the place below. One of these two bits of work is bound to keep those who have dismounted to climb after me from climbing any farther, and when I begin to fire at them pretty sharply they'll turn back at once, get to their horses, and join their mates, to have a palaver and come to the conclusion that it isn't safe to stop in the valley, because they'll be expecting every moment for fire to be opened by us. Then they'll ride back without another shot being fired at them, for the simple reason that I'm hurrying round to join your ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... that if you aren't a friend of his, he is a friend of yours. I was playin' a tune the other day in the hall, and while I was in the very middle of it I heard him say—'We must have Counsellor Crackenfudge on the bench;' and so they had a long palaver about you, and the whole thing ended by Sir Thomas getting the tough old Captain to promise you his support, with some great man that they called ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... "O, palaver and stuff. Somebody's dreadfully ill—dying, I believe, and that somebody is wife, or mother, or son to this brute you challenged. He's got to go, the coward. If you are ever in his vicinity again, and send him your card, he will understand it and meet ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... swung round and throwing himself into the armchair enquired politely after the health of Barbara and Susan. As far as the Persian journey was concerned the palaver was ended. He did not intend to give me his reasons for staying in England and I could not demand them more insistently. At any rate I had discovered the cause of his grumpiness. What creature of Jaffery's temperament could be ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... never do. They will steal an article and then give it away. You've heard the expression 'robbing Peter to pay Paul.' Well, my brother played the role of Paul once himself. It was out in Arizona at a place called Las Palomas. He was a stripling of a boy, but could palaver Spanish in a manner that would make a Mexican ashamed of his ancestry. He was about eighteen at this time and was working in a store. One morning as he stepped outside the store, where he slept, he noticed quite a commotion over around the custom-house. He noticed ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... sermons o' yours, p'r'aps they'd do down in some city place; but they're like your wife's bunnit here, they're too flowery to suit us. What we want to hear is the plain, old-fashioned Word of God, without any palaver or 'hems and ha's. They tell me there's some parts where hell's treated as played-out—where our ministers don't like to talk much about it because people don't want to hear about it. Such preachers ought to be ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... it over. One day about three weeks later, blest if the same car didn't stop at the same fountain, and the same nurse got out with the boys and she set them on the same bench and told them the same thing, and then she went into another palaver with the same p'liceman. I looked on pretty much interested, and before long the boys got to running again and one tripped the other, and she saw and come running, and fetched him a crack like ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to parley with the categorical native; but his attempts at palaver were eminently unsuccessful. The naked black man was ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... the road to-day with a line of shoes made out of soft blotting paper, if they had good things said about them in the magazines and if flaming posters went with them than to try to dish out oak-tanned soles with prime calf uppers at half price and with a good line of palaver. It's the lad who sticks type that, when you get right down to it, does ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... the company cried out, "Who goes there? stand!" I accosted them; "Gentlemen," said I, "I am a poor traveller, almost"—While I spoke, they came round me; and he that had first hailed me, said, "Damn me, tip us none of your palaver; we have heard that story of a poor traveller any time these five years. Come, down with your dust! let us see what you have got!"—"Sir," I replied, "I have not a shilling in the world, and am more than half starved beside."—"Not ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... this for tongue-tied churl To shorten all palaver; "Have Patience!" cried he, "dearest girl! And may I ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... what would happen; but anything of the nature of a public palaver was meat and drink to the man's soul. He saw the trolleys hurrying west, in the hot, hazy morning, full of women in light summer dresses, and white-faced straw-hatted men fresh from Boston desks; the stack of bicycles outside ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... answered wearily. "Said he'd dropped Mrs. Dunlap and the Selim woman at about 2:30 and had been ordered to return around 6:30.... Knows nothing, of course." The chief of the Homicide Squad drew a deep breath. "Well, Bonnie, he has nothing on me. In spite of all the palaver I ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... permitted to continue" in West Africa.[899] In that region "a slave man could hold property of his own. If he were a worthy, sensible person, he could inherit." He could take part in discussions and the palaver, and could defend himself against abuse. There are now no slaves bought or sold, but there are "pawns" for debt, who are not free.[900] On the one hand, the slave trade in Africa has required for its successful prosecution that the slaves should first ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... not waste any time in needless palaver. The hours were precious to him, and even an Indian can cut time when ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... excuse, extenuate, deny and palaver as he may, it remains true that the Socialist Party of America teaches the same treasonable doctrines of violence and insurrection as the Russian Bolshevists, but in a more covert way. We have a sample in the pamphlet, "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat," ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... diminished his love of pomp and show and his passion for the costly and genuine. On a corner they saw a group of the Stovepipe Gang loafing, immaculate. They raised their hats to the Kid's girl and went on with their calm, unaccented palaver. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... sonnets. There are, however, far more perfect sonnets than perfect epics. A perfect sonnet may be a heavenly accident. But such accidents can never happen to writers of epics. Some years ago we had an enormous palaver about the "art of the short story," which numerous persons who had omitted to write novels pronounced to be more difficult than the novel. But the fact remains that there are scores of perfect short stories, ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... "Come, give over yer palaver, for I'm not wantin' it," said Moll roughly, yet not ill pleased at her husband's judicious tribute to her smartness and her charms. "It's all very fine—you have everythin' nicely fixed up accordin' to yer own notion," she continued mockingly; "but I'd like to know where ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... I speak in a figure. But all these are as dust in the balance to the wearisome man of ponderous acquirements, the solemn blockhead who usurps the pas, and if he happen to be rich, fancies himself entitled to prose and palaver away, as if he were Sir Oracle, or as if the pence in his purse could ever fructify the cauld parritch in his pate into pregnant brain. There is a plateful of P's for you at any rate, Tom. Beautiful exemplification of the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Lawrence, "better drop in an' hear the sky-pilot's palaver before you go. It'll do you a whole lot of good, an' it can't do you no ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... very exclusive—old families and all that. It belonged to an estate, and I got an option on it just for fun. I began taking Singerly up there to look at it. We'd measure it, and step it off, and stop and palaver on the sidewalk. In a day or two those people up there began to take notice and to do me the honor to call on me. You see, my boy, an undertaking shop—even a fashionable one—for a neighbor, isn't pleasant; it wouldn't add, as one might say, to the sauce piquante of life; and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched, through slides and dumb-waiters, as it were; in other words, the parlor is so far from the kitchen and workshop. The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly. ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... If charity-bazaars, pious palaver, and orphaned babies' diapers had not been the sole topic of conversation at court; if there had been intellectual enjoyment of any kind, Louise might never have taken up her pen. As it was: "This Diary is intended to contain my innermost ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... turn out in full strength and enjoy the campaign, for they knew that their women would never be touched, that their wounded would be nursed, not mutilated, and that as soon as each man's bag of corn was spent they could surrender and palaver with the English General as though they had been a real enemy. Afterwards, years afterwards, they would pay the blood-money, driblet by driblet, to the Government, and tell their children how they had slain the redcoats by thousands. The only drawback to this kind of picnic-war ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... sure, old Humphrey, you are as honest as a—pshaw! the parson means to palaver us; but, to return to my position, I tell you I do ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... different tongue from those used by the chief interpreter, and both utterly without perceptible resemblance to the rolling consonants and gutturals of the savages. Marcoy imbibed a strong impression that the only terms understood in common were the words of Spanish with which the palaver was thickly interlarded. This was the first time the interpreters were put on their mettle in a strictly professional sense, and the test was not altogether triumphant. However, by a careful raising of the voice in all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... procedure and just to all thy subjects; but respecting this youth whom thou hast favoured and who nevertheless hath reverted to his base origin and done this foul deed, what is thy purpose in his continuance? Indeed, thou hast prisoned him in thy palace, and every day thou hearest his palaver and thou knowest not what the folk say.'" And they answered, "Hearing is obeying." Accordingly, when they entered with the folk and had prostrated themselves before the king and congratulated his majesty, he raised their several degrees. Now it was the custom of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... hold a palaver. While this was going on, Keona carried Alice in his unwounded arm to the other end of the cave, and, making his exit through a small opening at its inner extremity, bore his trembling captive to a rocky eminence, shaped ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... (always toward the eyes) and taking in the slack with tincture of benzoin and electrolyzing moles—to what end? Looking handsome. Oh, what a mistake! It's the larynx that the beauty doctors ought to work on. It's words more than warts, talk more than talcum, palaver more than powder, blarney more than bloom that counts—the phonograph instead of the photograph. But I was going to ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... "Before they have finished their palaver as to how the accident happened and have repaired the damage, we shall have been here a full half-hour.... Jules ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Several received this palaver with a contemptuous but very appropriate curl of the nose; and Mealy Whitecotton offered to bet a half pint "that I couldn't do the like again with no sort o' wabbles, he didn't care what." But I had already fortified myself on this quarter of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... in a heavy voice from the room she had left. "What do you mean by running off to palaver with that old rascal every time he opens his ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... speaking of garments, we referred to native cloth and mats. Large quantities of cinnet are plaited by the old men principally. They sit at their ease in their houses, and twist away very rapidly. At political meetings also, where there are hours of formal palaver and speechifying, the old men take their work with them, and improve the time at the cleanly, useful occupation of twisting cinnet. It is a substitute for twine, and useful for many a purpose, and is now sold to the merchants at about a shilling per pound. Baskets and fans are made as ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... confidently, as one who could not be deceived. "Pooh!" she said. "That was only a try-on. That was only so that he could begin his palaver! Don't tell me! I may be a simpleton, but I'm not such a simpleton as he thinks for, nor as some other folks think for, either!" (At this point Hilda had to admit that in truth her mother was not completely ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... to brute bastes, which, without any sickening palaver of sentiment, I practise. Also, it's against an act of parliament, which I regard sometimes—that is, when I understand them; which, the way you parliament gentlemen draw them up, is not always particularly intelligible to plain ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... rattle. A little later, off Torpoint, they fell in with the water-police, who took them for a party rowing home to Plymouth from the Regatta, and threatened 'em with the lock-up if they didn't proceed quiet. Next they fell foul of the guard-ship, and their palaver fetched the Admiral himself out upon the little balcony in his nightshirt. When he'd done talking they were a hundred yards ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... East to West to make some determined effort against the French and ourselves. The change of Government which introduced Mr. Asquith's Coalition Cabinet, moreover, came about at this time, and political palaver seriously delayed decisions. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... clubs and other weapons, only neither side dared to begin. I asked them to do the fighting out in the open, so that I could take a picture of it, and this cooled them down considerably. They sat down and began a long palaver, which ended in nothing at all, and, indeed, no one really knew what ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... converse, confer, confabulate, consult; babble, prattle, prate, chatter, gabble, gibber, blather; expatiate, descant, comment, harp, rant; palaver. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the agent was afraid to adopt the only course an Indian respects,—prompt and forceful measures. "Talk" means to him delay, compromise, confession of weakness. "Well, if you must palaver," said Boynton, finally, "take me along. I've had more to do with those beggars than Davies, and," he added to himself, "I'll make it possible to nab ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Indeed, I should like to write a chapter about the Snobbish Dons very much, and another about the Snobbish Dandies. Of my dear Theatrical Snobs I think with a pang; and I can hardly break away from some Snobbish artists, with whom I have long, long intended to have a palaver. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reckon we'll go now. It's cert'nly a fine day for ridin'." He stood silent for a moment, looking about him. Then he flushed. "Why, I'm gettin' right box-headed, ma'am," he declared. "Here I am standin' an' makin' you sick with my palaver, an' your horse ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... calm himself," said Courtenay, coolly, when Christobal had translated this flow of guttural Spanish. "He has no cause to fear them now; let him nerve himself, and show a bold front. A palaver is the best thing that can happen. We must display all the arms we possess. Bid any of your invalids who can stand upright show themselves, Christobal. We must lift you outside, Boyle. Bring your camera, Miss Maxwell. If we could give these fellows a good picture of themselves it ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... learn to bear arms, and that both man and woman must be prepared to make any sacrifice for their Fatherland. (2.) They have always held that national interests must be considered before international palaver. ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... everything. If the furnishings of his home became the least dingy he was for having them torn out and sold and the house done over. If he traveled, money must go ahead of him and smooth the way. He did not want argument, useless talk, or silly palaver as he called it. Every one must discuss interesting topics with him or not talk at all. Letty understood him thoroughly. She would chuck him under the chin mornings, or shake his solid head between her hands, telling him he was a brute, but a nice kind of a brute. "Yes, yes," he would growl. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... for holding a grand palaver at Wolf's Hope on the subject of Caleb's requisitions, and he was invited to attend at ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... succinctly. It was like a bomb, and a bomb is the very last thing in succinctness. It comes to the point without palaver or conjecture, and it reduces havoc to ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... character—that was all. There is much in Philip that is Clough himself, and there is a dialectic force in him that certainly was never in me. A great yearning for possessing one's soul in freedom—for trampling on ceremony and palaver, for trying experiments in equality, being common to me and Philip, sent me out to New Zealand; and in the two years before I sailed (December, 1847) Clough and I ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the man. "We're going to hang you for peaching against your pals; and that's an end of the palaver." ...
— My Friend The Murderer • A. Conan Doyle
... chatter, prate, prattle, babble, gabble, jabber, tattle, twaddle, blab, gossip, palaver, parley, converse, mumble, mutter, stammer, stutter.> (With this group compare the Say and ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... we stand here, talking about the risk and danger, like so many old grey-beards. Put on your hat, dear, that's a darling, without any more palaver. Anne Hunter and Mr. St. Leger are waiting for us at the door; you know we are going to Bloomingdale, to lunch, at Mrs. Hunter's. We shall have a charming time; and Mr. Hazlehurst is going with us too. Of course you got my note," she ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the Virgin-queen, the royal heroine, is the theme of admiration. Not the petty virtues, the pretty sensibilities, the cheap charity, the prim decorum, which modern flatterers dwell upon, degrading royalty, while they palaver its possessor, but Britannia's sacred majesty, enshrined in chaste and lofty womanhood. Our ancestors paid their compliments to sex or rank—ours are addressed to the person. There is no flattery ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... palaver was only to get an opportunity to cut his throat, Smith got the savages to break the ice in order to bring up the barge and load it with corn, and gave orders for his soldiers to land and surprise Powhatan; meantime, to allay his suspicions, telling him ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was a man of action, not of words. There was no palaver about him, nothing superfluous in the way of orations, but he spoke strongly and to the point. Long harangues, as Mr Grattan justly observes, are not necessary to British soldiers. Metaphor and flowers of rhetoric are thrown away upon them. Something plain, pithy, and appropriate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the purser; "I believe he is a worse rogue than the girl. Have you had enough of his palaver?" "Almost too much," answered I. "Let us pull foot." We returned to the boat, and after an hour's row got on board. The following day I dined with Commissary Hamilton, who showed me a letter from the interesting Mr. Mungo Park, who was surgeon of the regiment he belonged to. Mr. ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... The palaver came to me out of the darkness, like voices from a phonograph-horn, thin and far away. One told the tale of Tahiapepae, the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... come over, and palaver, Rowley, Keith, &c. and Coffin to abuse the Earl! Now, I can tell you, that he ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... was natural, heard much of her stage life. At first he took all this palaver with a grain of salt, the babbling of an ardent nature interested in the flighty romance of the studio world. By degrees, however, he became curious as to the freedom of her actions, the ease with ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser |
