"Prosy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... extemporaneous speech is understood to be any one that is not read or recited; impromptu keeps its original sense, denoting something that springs from the instant; the impromptu utterance is generally brief, direct, and vigorous; the extemporaneous speech may chance to be prosy. Offhand is still more emphatic as to the readiness and freedom of the utterance. Unpremeditated is graver and more formal, denoting absolute want of preparation, but is rather too heavy a word to be ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of them," he repeated inwardly. A drawback indeed. Why could an interesting young organism so seldom be detached from its milieu and enjoyed in isolation? Prosy parents; tiresome, detrimental brothers ... He wondered if she had any idea what they were all like. It might be just as well, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... content with looking pretty before marriage, and with good housekeeping after, they were uninteresting certainly, but they were respectable. Now they dabble in all things; are weakly aesthetic, weakly scientific, weakly controversial, and wholly prosy, and contemptible." Dabbling is pitiful, certainly, and weakness has few allies, but let us do justice even to the weak dabblers. AEsthetic, or scientific, or controversial training has but recently ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... rival fabrics is exquisite; and Dryden, the most English of our poets, would not be so thoroughly English if he had not in him some fibre of la nation boutiquiere. Let us now see how he succeeds in attempting to infuse science (the most obstinately prosy material) with poetry. Speaking of "a more exact knowledge of the longitudes," as he explains in a note, he ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... noticeable that the less attention the minister pays to creeds, the less dogmatism he indulges in, the more popular he becomes with the people, the more eagerly they flock to hear him. The world does not care to listen to prosy lectures on foreordination and the terrors of Tartarus, because its reason rejects such cruel creeds; it takes little interest in the question whether Christ was dipped or sprinkled by the gentleman in the camel's-hair cutaway, because it cannot, for the life of it, see that it ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... have only tried to mould my action, gestures, and intonation after the pattern set by him. Now, as it happened, that owing to his constitution and temperament his speech was always slow and deliberate, not to say prosy, and my own quite the opposite, I became so strangely changed that my dear people at Belley (where the above incident occurred) almost failed to recognise me. They thought a changeling had been foisted upon them in the place of their own Bishop, whose vehement action and passionate ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... closer glimpse of his triumph. No other incentive would have taken him so close to that prosy bulletin board. He had vaulted over it but never read it. But now in the moment of supreme victory he limped forward, like an elated artist, to inspect ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... lengthy that I did not wait until the end of his speech; I am, therefore, unable to say whether his proposal was carried. The Club de la Delivrance is by far the most reputable public assembly in Paris. Those who take part in its proceedings are intensely respectable, and as intensely dull and prosy. The suppression of gas has been a heavy blow to the clubs. The Parisians like gas as much as lazzaroni like sunshine. The grandest bursts of patriotic eloquence find no response from an audience who listen to them beneath ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... reasons the title should be short. Aptness and specificness do not require an epitome of the story; and a title like "Why Tom Changed His Opinion of Me," or "What the Rabbit Drive Did for Me" is prosy as well as long. It used to be the custom to make the title of a writing a regular synopsis of the matter contained therein; but modern readers object to being told in advance exactly what is to happen. No ruling concerning the proper length of a short story title is possible; but ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... secluded, when there is so much for your youth and beauty to enjoy outside. May be I'm responsible for many a sigh you've heaved lately, but it never struck me you see, my pretty darling, that our sentiments and sympathies run so widely apart, it is not very surprising if an old prosy bachelor should forget to ferret out the pleasures of youth, to bestow them on a fair young beautiful ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... symbolic of its ideal aspect, "the breasts of the nymphs in the brake." And the disease is not extinct in these modern days, nor will it ever be so long as men shall yearn for the unattainable; and the prosy bachelors who trail their ill-fated lives from their chambers to their clubs know their malady, and they call ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... is the only word I can think of that exactly describes him—dull and prosy. I don't say that he is not a good man. He may be. I don't say that he is not. I have never seen any sign of it, if he is. But I make it a rule never to say anything to take away a ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... fired guns; but those good old days have gone. People have hardly time nowadays to speak even on the broad ocean, where news is news, and as for a salute of guns, they cannot afford the powder. There are no poetry-enshrined freighters on the sea now; it is a prosy life when we have no time to bid ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... I've done, thank'God, with the long yarns Of the most prosy of ApostlesPaul,1 And now advance, sweet heathen of Monkbarns, Step out, old quizz, as fast as ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... so to speak, drew up all his facts and figures in the form of a hollow square, Tyson charged with magnificent contempt of danger. No doubt Tyson's method was extremely amusing and effective, and his sparkling periods proved the enemy's dullness up to the hilt; unfortunately, the prosy but responsible representations of Smedley had ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... of contents in front of this little foreword, I am quite sure that few will pause to consider my prosy effort. Nor can I blame any readers who jump over my head, when they may sit beside kind old Baucis, and drink out of her miraculous milk-pitcher, and hear noble Philemon talk; or join hands with Pandora ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... was a prosy, weak-minded creature, who, although time was so precious, would have stood talking to me of its great value by the hour, if I had patience to listen. I thanked him for his offer, but assured him I would pay his usual price for the work. Mrs. Blake, however, stipulated ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... down to read the little book in an utterly unconcerned state of mind, believing indeed at the time that if there were any salvation it was not for me, and with a distinct intention to put away the tract as soon as it should seem prosy. I may say that it was not uncommon in those days to call conversion "becoming serious"; and judging by the faces of some of its professors, it appeared to be a very serious matter indeed. Would it not be well ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... persons make concordant consecutive noises for ten minutes, the effect upon their relativities is one that without them might not have come about in ten weeks. We are not prepared to condemn the Philosopher, for once. He is prosy, as usual; but what he says refers to an indisputable truth. Nothing turns diversity ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... dells where there were ferns and flowers too shy to fringe the dusty plodding thoroughfare. Dick liked that figure. It revealed to him a certain lightness of heart and poetry in himself that distinguished him from the prosy grubbers. This sprinkling of life with episodes was like a little tonic. It kept ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... the luck," he said. "You drop into all the spirited adventures, while I am packed off with prosy old Munday." ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... was one of those "prosy, ridiculous girls"—so I had been compelled to classify her, although I was secretly troubled by a sincere admiration of her virtues,—who had made it an absorbing pursuit of her school-days to probe her text-books for useful information, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... down and enveloped us on Slide Mountain, the grandeur, the solemnity, were gone in a twinkling; the portentous-looking clouds proved to be nothing but base fog that wet us and extinguished the world for us. How tame, and prosy, and humdrum the scene instantly became! But when the fog lifted, and we looked from under it as from under a just-raised lid, and the eye plunged again like an escaped bird into those vast gulfs of space that opened at ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... all this Thomasin was not sorry that she had started. To her there were not, as to Eustacia, demons in the air, and malice in every bush and bough. The drops which lashed her face were not scorpions, but prosy rain; Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever, but impersonal open ground. Her fears of the place were rational, her dislikes of its worst moods reasonable. At this time it was in her view a windy, wet place, in which a person might ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Prose prozo, prosajxo. Prosecute persekuti. Proselyte prozelito. Prospect vidajxo. Prospective antauxvida, estonta. Prospectus prospekto. Prosper prosperi. Prosperity prospereco. Prosperous prospera. Prostrate (one's self) terenkusxigxi. Prosy teda. Protect protekti. Protection protekto. Protector protektanto, zorganto. Protectorate protektorato. Protg protektato. Protest protesti. Protestation protestado. Protestant protestanto. Protocol protokolo. Protrude ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... this smooth little fair-skinned Lillie is a cold-hearted monster, because her heart does not beat faster at these letters which she does not understand, and which strike her as unnecessarily prolix and prosy? Why should John insist on telling her his feelings and opinions on a vast variety of subjects that she does not care a button for? She doesn't know any thing about ritualism and anti-ritualism; and, what's more, she doesn't care. She ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... bringing some quaint, old-fashioned little body, before a gathering of your more fastidious friends, at once to reconcile them to his or her strange, ungainly mien, and to justify yourself for acknowledging an intimacy with so eccentric a creature, by following up the prosy and unsuggestive: "Mr. B——, ladies and gentlemen," or "Miss M——, ladies and gentlemen," with such a refreshing paraphrase as, "brother-in-law of the celebrated Lord Marmaduke Pulsifer," or, "confidential companion, to the wife of the late distinguished Christopher Quill the American Poet"—why ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... said, coldly; "your knees must ache, and I, for my part, do not like such theatrical scenes at all, and such fine phrases make but little impression on my cold and prosy heart. I am accustomed to follow always my convictions, and when I advance a step, I must be sure not to fall to an abyss which some poetical hero may perhaps have merely covered for me with his flowery phrases. That I am aware ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... evolution of Shakespeare criticism which cannot be otherwise obtained; one begins to understand that Pope had his merits as an editor, as indeed a man of genius could hardly fail to have, to appreciate the prosy and pedestrian pains of Theobald, to admire the amazing erudition of Steevens. One sees the phases of the curious process by which Shakespeare was elevated at the beginning of the nineteenth century to ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... the next morning is the Sabado de Gloria, the Saturday which ends Lent. We go to the Jesuits' church in the morning to hear the last sermon. Since Thursday at noon, as the organs have been silenced, harps and violins have taken their places. The sermon is long and prosy, and we rejoice that it is the last. Then the service of the day goes on until they come to the "Gloria in excelsis." The organ peals out again, the black curtain—which has hidden the high altar—parts in ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... preacher, preacher," or "teacher, teacher, teacher," uttered louder and louder, and repeated six or seven times, is also familiar to most ears; but its wild, ringing, rapturous burst of song in the air high above the tree-tops is not so well known. From a very prosy, tiresome, unmelodious singer, it is suddenly transformed for a brief moment into a lyric poet of great power. It is a great surprise. The bird undergoes a complete transformation. Ordinarily it is a very quiet, demure sort of bird. It walks about over the leaves, moving its head like a little hen; ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... There were also a great many letters either to be answered, or to be prepared for publication in the People's Forum column, and these letters were commonly written by dull asses who had no idea what they were talking about. Prosy people were always coming in with requests or complaints, usually the latter. First and last there was a quantity of grinding detail which, like the embittered old fogeyism of the Blaines College trustees, had not appeared on his rosy prospect ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... he—"Hunger is the primal civilizer,—the very keystone and foundation of all progress. From the plain, prosy, earthy fact that man is a hungry animal, and must eat, has sprung all the civilization of the world! I shall demonstrate this in my book, beginning with the scriptural legend of Adam's greed for an apple. Adam was evidently hungry at the moment Eve tempted him. As soon as he had satisfied ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... prosy thing of four U's,' said Geraldine. 'You are sitting up there, you great fair creature, you, for the poor child to worship and adore, and not reciprocating ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time when anything was good enough for young people—cast-off clothing, second place at table and the poorest sleeping-room, with snubbing at every hand. As for literature, it made no difference how dull or prosy were the books, young people had to read them ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... lined with wrinkles like a book,— Wrote the great history of the ancient Huns,— Holds back to fire among the heavy guns. Oh, there's our poet seated at his side, Beloved of ladies, soft, cerulean-eyed. Poets are prosy in their common talk, As the fast trotters, for the most part, walk. And there's our well-dressed gentleman, who sits, By right divine, no doubt, among the wits, Who airs his tailor's patterns when he walks, The man that often speaks, but never talks. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... on Mr. Milton's knowledge of Law; and a fourth, who had travelled much abroad, had followed with an equally severe criticism on Mr. Milton's knowledge of European history. This last speaker was beginning to be prosy, when fortunately some one came into the Club with news that Sir Arthur Hasilrig, "the Brutus of our Republic," had been nearly torn in pieces by a rabble of boys in Westminster Hall, just outside the Club, and had saved himself ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... college, with all sorts of fine theories, just bubbling over with enthusiasm, much the same as you are now, fresh from Normal, but somehow they have mostly flattened out, and now I find myself settling down to the prosy life of a country doctor, who feeds his own horses and blackens his own boots, and discusses politics with the retired farmers who gather in the hardware store. I catch myself at it quite often. Old Bob Johnson and I are quite decided there ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... apprehension of causal sequence, without admixture of animistic belief and without a sense of dependence on any preternatural intervention in the course of events. Not much is to be said for the beauty, moral excellence, or general worthiness and reputability of such a prosy human nature as these traits imply; and there is little ground of enthusiasm for the manner of collective life that would result from the prevalence of these traits in unmitigated dominance. But that ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... to one clear point. From these justly famous works a selection should be made. Their length should be avoided, their prosy passages eliminated; the one picture, or perhaps the many pictures, which each master has painted better than any rival before or since, that and that alone ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... for introduction at a more favourable time. It will mean that the teacher will respect the continuity of thought and interest as completely as she would wish an audience to respect her occasional prosy periods if she were reading a report. She will remember, of course, that she is not training actors for amateur theatricals, however tempting her show-material may be; she is simply letting the children play with expression, ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... laugh on," said Hugh; "these are the last strawberries of the season, and I have no inclination to discuss anything at present but their sweetness. But I will venture to assert that at six o'clock this evening I shall have imbibed more knowledge in that very hammock then any of you in your prosy chairs." ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... edge of the roadway between the stone-strewn centre and the ditch, I run into the latter, and am rewarded with my first Cis-atlantic header, but fortunately both myself and the bicycle come up uninjured. Unlike the Swabish peasantry, the natives east of Munich appear as prosy and unpicturesque in dress ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... noble little army, (standing army we call it!) on which the State prides itself not a little, and spends no end of money. For ourselves, (if the reader but permit us,) we have long admired this little Spartan force, saying all the good things of it our prosy brain could invent, and in the kindest manner recommending its uniform good character as a model for our very respectable society to fashion after. Indeed, we have, in the very best nature of a modern ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... seemed such a little girl," answers Eugene, "and you were always so shy, except with the professor. Did you really like him so much? I should have been bored to death with all that prosy writing. Briggs," turning to the rower, as Violet covers Cecil more closely, "we will steer our barque homeward. It is a shame not to stay out ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... European is, to the Englishman or American, so surprisingly ignorant of the Bible, is that the authorized English version is a great work of literary art, and the continental versions are comparatively artless. To read a dull book; to listen to a tedious play or prosy sermon or lecture; to stare at uninteresting pictures or ugly buildings: nothing, short of disease, is more dreadful than this. The violence done to our souls by it leaves injuries and produces subtle maladies which have never been properly studied by psycho-pathologists. ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... the "Glen Morris Stories" is to sow the seed of pure, noble, manly character in the mind of our great nation's childhood. They exhibit the virtues and vices of childhood, not in prosy, unreadable precepts, but in a series of characters which move before the imagination, as living beings do before ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... middle of a description of the bridal dress, there fell upon her ears these words: "A bill for the relief of the Millard Rangers." She looked eagerly to see who would rise. It was only a prosy old man who opposed the measure, on the ground that the State could not afford to protect ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... were ready to face stern dangers, and determined to hold their own—picture it all more vividly than perhaps I have done for you; but as far as in me lay, I have tried to place before you who read the incidents of a boy's life in those distant days; and if I have been somewhat prosy at times, and made much of trifles, which were serious matters to us, forgive my shortcomings as I lay ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... The Excursion (1814), which is in nine books. It contains fine passages of verse and some of his sanest and maturest philosophy; but the work is not the masterpiece that he hoped to make. It is tedious, prosy, and without action of any kind. The style, which is for the most part heavy, becomes pure and easy only in some description of a mountain peak or in the recital of a ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... motors, and expressed a doubt as to whether any of her friends would forsake the horse in favour of mechanical locomotion. That time, however, came about, and now the Duchess is claimed as a patroness of the car, which if prosy, compared with the delights of horsemanship, is, nevertheless, useful for accomplishing distances which horses ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... personal interest in New France even to the neglect at times of things which his courtiers deemed to be far more important. The governor and the intendant plied him with their requests, with their grievances, and too often with their prosy tales of petty squabbling. With every ship they sent to Versailles their memoires, often of intolerable length; and the patient monarch read them all. Marginal notes, made with his own hand, are still upon many of them, and the student who plods his way through the musty bundles of ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... mine reminds me of a prosy preacher who chose one Sunday as the text of his sermon, "It is good to be here," and began his discourse with the announcement, "I shall employ all the time this morning in telling of the places in which it is not good to be. If you come to hear ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Well, I cannot kill such a father, So I tie his hands and I leave him there. Do I finish my little job? Well, rather; And I get home safe with some light to spare. Heigh-ho! by day it's just prosy duty, Doing the same old song and dance; But oh! with the night—joy, glory, beauty: Over the ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... glassy stream were visible undulations of heat, and the light steam of evaporation lay along the sluggish water and hung like a veil between the eye and the bank. Seated in an armchair and overcome by the heat and the droning of some prosy passengers near by, I fell asleep. When I awoke the guards were crowded with passengers in a high state of excitement, pointing and craning shoreward. Looking in the same direction I saw, through the haze, the sharp outlines of a city in gray silhouette. Roofs, spires, pinnacles, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... life. I believe this to be the case almost throughout the country, but each has a special attraction, and none can be richer than the one I am speaking of and going to introduce you to very particularly, for on this subject I must be prosy; so those that don't care for England in detail may ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... they talked volubly. This being the stern and prosy record of applied science, it becomes us not to report the chatterings of these two till they reached the base of the vast brick chimney, towering nearly eighty feet into the air above them. Its long shadow lay like a stiffened ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... moonshine Bessie lost sight of the phantom poplars that fringe the Orne. The excitement of novelty and uncertainty routed dull thoughts, and her fancy pruned its wings for a flight into the future. In the twilight came Mrs. Betts, and cut short the flight of fancy with prosy suggestions of early retirement to rest. It was easy to retire, but not so easy to sleep. Bessie's mind was astir. It became retrospective. She went over the terrors of her first coming to Caen, the dinner at Thunby's, and the weird talk of Janey Fricker in ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... with Aubrey? I will challenge him before to-morrow morning, for cutting me out of my schottische with his prosy chat." ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... snuffy, tiresome, prosy professor? How can you talk such nonsense? I am sure the author must be young; there is so ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... prosy, preachy professor!" she exclaimed affectionately, "I have been thinking of it. I've half a mind to try, really. Wouldn't Grace Noir just die?...O ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... various reasons, the old men drifted from a position of respect to one of ridicule. Undoubtedly they lend themselves to this; they are obstinate, foolish, prosy, boring, crotchety and unpleasant to look upon. Comic writers poked fun at these failings which are only too self-evident and showered ridicule upon them. Then as the majority of audiences is composed of young men, first of all because ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... marble, with the little urn concealing the feet. This was placed in St. Paul's Cathedral, of which King was chief residentiary, and may still be seen in the present Cathedral King's elegy is very prosy in starting, but improves as it goes along, and is most ingenious throughout. These are the words in which he refers to the appearance of the dying ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... eleven, coaches and cabs arrive, you take formal leave, expressing with a melancholy countenance your sense of the delightfulness of the evening, get to your chambers, and forget, over a broiled bone and a bottle of Dublin stout, in what an infernal, prosy, thankless, stone-faced, yellow-waistcoated, unsympathizing, unintellectual, selfish, stupid set you have been condemned to pass an afternoon, assisting, at the ostentatious exhibition of vulgar wealth, where gulosity has been unrelieved by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... may call up not one but many latent images; or half reveal to us by a sudden flash the thoughts of many hearts. Often the rapid transition from one image to another is pleasing to us: on the other hand, any single figure of speech if too often repeated, or worked out too much at length, becomes prosy and monotonous. In theology and philosophy we necessarily include both 'the moral law within and the starry heaven above,' and pass from one to the other (compare for examples Psalms xviii. and xix.). Whether such a use of language is puerile or noble depends upon the genius of the writer or ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... friend, I grow prosy, and you tire; Fill the glasses while I bend To prod up the failing fire. . . . You are restless:—I presume There's a dampness in the room.— Much of warmth our nature begs, With rheumatics in ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Mrs. Baxendale continued, 'and I shall have to go to the politicians. But I think I have given you a grain of comfort. Think of a prosy old woman inciting you to endure for the sake of the greatest prize you can aim at? Keep saying to yourself that Emily cannot do wrong; if she did say a word or two she didn't mean—well, well, we poor women! Go to bed early, and we'll ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... flatter you with their eyes and tongues, and you come to have the same interest in the world that other men have—and why shouldn't you?—then your imagination will not be running away with you, or making angels out of common little persons like myself—how dreadfully prosy and commonplace you have no idea! And I forbid you to allow Willie to stick your hat full of flowers, when you go fishing together; and order you to make that young impudence respectful to you on all occasions—asserting your authority, if ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... before, and would see on the morrow—the young men faultlessly appointed, handsomely cravatted, with the neatest glossy boots and white gloves—the elders portly, brass-buttoned, noble-looking, polite, and prosy—the young ladies blonde, timid, and in pink—the mothers grand, beautiful, sumptuous, solemn, and in diamonds. They talked in English, not in bad French, as they do in the novels. They talked about each others' houses, and characters, and families—just as the Joneses do about ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... silver vase, as our governor had been, but with a silver currycomb, in testimony of their admiration for his skill; but I confess that the poetry of rubbing down had become, as all other poetry becomes, rather prosy by frequent repetition, and with respect to the chance of deriving glory from the employment, I entertained, in the event of my determining to stay, very slight hope of ever attaining skill in the ostler art sufficient to induce sporting people to ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... readily admits, he is no orator; but then orators are not always the men who get on in France. Thiers was a ready and fluent speaker, but MacMahon could scarcely say (or learn by heart) twenty consecutive words. Grevy, it is true, could be long-winded, prosy, and didactic; but the powers of elocution which Carnot and Felix Faure possessed were infinitesimal. And so the idea of Emile Zola, President of the Republic, may not be so far-fetched after all, particularly when one remembers Zola's great powers of observation, ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... he blotted and sealed the letter. "That, I should say, is as prosy and didactic as a discourse of my venerated ancestor. I wonder if the tendency to sermonize runs in the blood. I dare say if I had the good fortune to have any religious convictions, I should dogmatize over them in the pulpit, and pound the cushions as vigorously as any itinerant evangelist. Well, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... man pulled himself together and stood up. "We shall just do it if we go at once," said he. "Good-bye," he added, shaking Thorndyke's hand and mine. "You have been very patient, and I have been rather prosy, I am afraid. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... between human beings otherwise equal. He had a democratic philosophy which is sometimes that of Mr. Micawber, "Celui-la est riche qui recoit plus qu'il ne consume; celui-la est pauvre dont la depense excede la recette," But he is seldom so prosy as this. Let us think of him as one who wished to turn his talent as a painter of still life to the benefit of his nation, and who succeeded in a degree far beyond his ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... schools do not give education; they give instruction. And it is so very easy to instruct, and so very easy to go on talking, and so very easy to whack Tommy when he does not listen. Our prosy lectures are wasted time. The children would be better employed ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... inspiration—not at his expense, of course—and the man who is not a fool will see that it is not the psychological moment. Above all she must avoid being alone with him. Let her keep a child at her side, pay attention to the greatest bore, listen with grateful patience to the most prosy person she knows, rather than leave the ground clear for him. She should not go for moonlight strolls, nor to look for the Southern Cross on board ship, if she really wants to stave off his proposal. There is no need to be rude, and even if she has to appear unsympathetic, that is better than ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... then, but very funny now. Then William Wallace in 'Scottish Chiefs.' Bless me! we cried over him as much as you do over your 'Heir of Clifton,' or whatever the boy's name is. You wouldn't get through it, I fancy; and as for poor, dear, prosy Richardson, his letter-writing heroines would bore you to death. Just imagine a lover saying to a friend, 'I begged my angel to stay and sip one dish of tea. She sipped ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... moral of 'Coningsby' may be impracticable and is at any rate irrelevant. The way to enjoy it is to look at the world through the eyes of Sidonia. The world—at least the Gentile world—is a farce. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred are fools. Some are prosy and reasoning fools, and make excellent butts for stinging sarcasms; others are flighty and imaginative fools, and can best be ridiculed by burlesquing their folly. As for the hundredth man—the youthful Coningsby or Tancred—his ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... prices. You have but to walk aside, however, into the Palazzo Pubblico really to feel yourself a thrifty old medievalist. The state affairs of the Republic were formerly transacted here, but it now gives shelter to modern law-courts and other prosy business. I was marched through a number of vaulted halls and chambers, which, in the intervals of the administrative sessions held in them, are peopled only by the great mouldering archaic frescoes—anything but inanimate these even in their present ruin—that cover ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... it is the longest number on the programme. I would dearly love the next number, also, but I must not make the evening too dull and prosy for you. Will you trust me to select your ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... good de Marmont," he said, still laughing, "you happen to be a Frenchman, a visionary and weaver of dreams. Believe me," he added more seriously, "if you had the misfortune to be a prosy, shop-keeping Englishman, you would certainly not commit suicide just because you could not enthuse over your favourite hero, but you would realise soberly and calmly that while Napoleon Bonaparte is allowed to rule over France—or over ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... we should need one ten times the size, but we don't. Nature has seen to that. Yet tonight, when I was particularly anxious to get on with some important domestic legislation, we had to sit and listen to hours of prosy military talk, the possibilities of this and that. They don't realise, these brain-fogged ex-military men, that we are living in days of common sense. Before many years have passed, war will belong ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... years warranted. He was bald and clean-shaved but for scraps of side-whiskers that gave him a resemblance to the traditional stage-lawyer of amateur theatricals, a likeness increased by his heavy and prosy manner. It was hard to believe that he had ever been a young subaltern, though such had once been the case, for the Indian Political Department is recruited chiefly from officers of the Indian Army. But he was never the gay ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... fickle Muse! As ladies will, She sometimes wearies of her wooer; A goddess, yet a woman still, She flies the more that we pursue her; In short, with worst as well as best, Five months in six, your hapless poet Is just as prosy as the rest, But cannot comfortably ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... battle stories and battle books that are not stories that will live far into the piping times of peace because they are human documents or have the stamp of genius. These attractions are not present in Battle Days, which in truth is rather a prosy affair, though ambitious withal. It is not fiction in the ordinary sense. Mr. FETTERLESS essays to conduct the reader through every phase of a big "Push." Pushes were complicated affairs, and the author does not spare ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... and though it is possible that a good many Englishmen would have regarded Garside Scar as a very second-rate country house, and seen in Major Radcliffe and his wife nothing more than a somewhat prosy old soldier and a withered lady, old-fashioned in her dress and views, this Westerner had what was, perhaps, a clearer vision. He could imagine the Major standing fast at any cost upon some minute point of honour, and it seemed to him that his lady might have stepped down from ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... his letters with increasing ardor and slept with them under her pillow. It was all so secret and romantic, this glorious adventure rushing to fulfilment, under the prosy surface of everyday life. Of course she did not want to be married—not for ages and ages; but to be engaged, to be indefinitely adored by a consummate lover like Harold Phipps, who so beautifully shared her ambition, was an exciting and tempting proposition. Like most girls of her type, when her ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... never capricious, and never surly; neither are they, like some clever folks, pertinaciously silent when we most wish them to shine. Did Shakespeare ever refuse his best thoughts to us, or Montaigne decline to be companionable? Did you ever find Moliere dull? or Lamb prosy? or ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... I had behind me I was naturally interested during my lecture in England in the chairmen who were to introduce me. I cannot help but feel that I have acquired a fine taste in chair men. I know them just as other experts know old furniture and Pekinese dogs. The witty chairman, the prosy chairman, the solemn chairman,—I know them all. As soon as I shake hands with the chairman in the Committee room I can tell exactly ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... pillar," he adds (though again he may be blindly copying), "and it remains to this day." It is not the place here to enter into the details of his version of the story of the patriarchs. He gives the facts, and loses much of the spirit, often spoiling the beauty of the Biblical narrative by a prosy paraphrase. Thus God assures Abraham after the offering of Isaac,[1] that it was not out of desire for human blood that he was commanded to slay his son; and Isaac says to Jacob, who comes to receive the blessing: "Thy ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... but I speedily declared that I was not when I saw that his daughter was bent upon hearing the story. So he started upon a prosy description as to how the fresh air had sent him to sleep, not saying a word about the port, and I ceased to listen to him, preferring to devote the whole of my attention to his daughter, who had seated herself upon a footstool at his feet, and was looking up into his face with a pretty affectionate ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... friend. Miss Margaret admires you as much as you adore her. She is never tired of listening to my prosy stories of your childhood in Alexandria, and I'm quite sure that she will make you the most admirable ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... thinking, some of you, that this is a prosy chapter, but you must not skip it. It is just what Emily Schomberg would have said to you, if you had been pupils of hers. The end of reading is not, or ought not to be, mere amusement; so read a grave page now and then with ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... that Wordsworth is not always melodious; that he is seldom graceful, and only occasionally inspired. When he is inspired, few poets can be compared with him; at other times the bulk of his verse is so wooden and prosy that we wonder how a poet could have written it. Moreover he is absolutely without humor, and so he often fails to see the small step that separates the sublime from the ridiculous. In no other way can we explain "The Idiot Boy," or pardon the serious absurdity of "Peter Bell" ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... he held his peace, until his master signified that the conference was ended, when he hastened to the barn, where he could give vent to his feeling in French, his adopted language being far too prosy to suit his excited mood. Suddenly Grace Atherton came into his mind, and Edith's request ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... patronized Cibber, employed him to act the character. He was an exception to the rule that a good playwriter is not a good performer. In Cibber, we especially mark the Spanish element, which then tinged the drama, and although somewhat prosy and sententious, he is fertile and entertaining in his love intrigues. Of real humour, he seems to have no gift—some of his best attempts referring to such common failures as sometimes occur at hotels. We have in "She ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... made up as the mathematical professor. In a nasal tone he made a rambling speech, in which he introduced mathematical allusions, and used some of the favorite phrases of the rather dull and prosy instructor, with whom all the students were familiar, some to their sorrow. It seemed to be very amusing to the boys present, as shown by their hearty laughter, but of course Doctor ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... do. Above all things, Master Frank, avoid being prosy; it is the worst fault an author can ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... I have been prosy and practical enough and now have used my allotted time and space. It may not be wholly out of place to further tax your time and patience, and ask you to lift your eyes from taking a critical view of defective drains, muddy ditches, and unattractive detail ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... musical laugh rang through the fairy group. Euphrosyne resumed her seat. "There isn't a mortal damsel in the world who would not go into raptures to resemble me," pursued she, "and yet—but, oh dear, I am getting quite prosy, and it is quite useless, for Ianthe has decided. I, on the contrary, am thinking of something far less romantic and interesting, but I suspect far more necessary to the happiness of mortals than ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... inflicted wearisome conversations upon her; and when he called, intending to put the momentous question, Jane, who was sitting at her writing-table in the Overdene drawing-room, did not see any occasion to move from it. If the rector became too prosy, she could surreptitiously finish a few notes. He sank into a deep arm-chair close to the writing-table, crossed his somewhat bandy legs one over the other, made the tips of his fingers meet with unctuous accuracy, and intoned the opening sentences of ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... he began to talk once more of the wearisome Council of Trent, and I found that his writing in the paper, the offer of the cigar, and the long and prosy harangue were—what shall I call it?—mere ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... have felt that his presence at her wedding jarred and grated on all the finer sensibilities of her nature, as out of accord with the solemn and tender associations of that supreme moment. To have been married by prosy old Mr. Walters, to have taken the final benediction on the greatest act of her life from those big white fat fingers, would have spoilt the reminiscence of the wedding day for her as long as she lived. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... think I have done enough duty for one day?" asks Molly. "Have I been prosy enough to allow of my leaving off now? Because I don't think I have got anything more to say about the coming harvest, and I wouldn't care to ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... he resigned himself to a long, tedious hour. The room was hot and airless, the lawyer very prosy and unnecessarily fluent; but he seemed a straightforward, honest man, and gave them good counsel. Malcolm was soon put into possession of all the Strickland bequest, and after this it was ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... could feel interested in the prosy books he read, and often fell half asleep; then he always stopped suddenly, sometimes looked cross, sometimes sad; and in a few minutes he invariably lighted her candle, with the gentle hint that it was time to retire. But often ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... toothache and so wouldn't appreciate even the society of jolly seraphims. Christmas, except to the young, is essentially a festival of "let's pretend"—let's pretend that we love everybody, that everybody loves us, that Aunt Maria isn't a prosy old bore, that Uncle John isn't a profiteer; that everybody has his or her good points and that all their bad ones are not sticking out, as they usually appear to us to be, as painfully apparent as those on the back of a porcupine should you happen ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... distance, . . to keep the clear reflection of her loveliness in his mind, ... and to live, so that he might deserve to follow and find her when his work on earth was done. Moreover, Heaven to him was no longer a vague, mythical realm, ill-defined by the prosy descriptions of church-preachers,—it was an actual WORLD to which HE was linked,—in which HE had possessions, of which HE was a native, and for the perpetuation and enlargement of whose splendor ALL ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... as I have done on imaginary topics can judge of the comfort afforded by walking on all-fours, and being grave and dull. I dare say, when the clown of the pantomime escapes from his nightly task of vivacity, it is his special comfort to smoke a pipe and be prosy with some good-natured fellow, the dullest of his acquaintance. I have seen such a tendency in Sir Adam Ferguson, the gayest man I ever knew; and poor Tom Sheridan has complained to me of the fatigue of supporting the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... have changed parts since our separation. When I left you a few years ago, I was like the wild ass in the desert, who scents a far-off fountain. I hoped to emerge out my prosy life with you into green pastures, and all I found was a nasty swamp. And now I come back to you wearied out, and find you playing a bold game with fate. You have more life about you than you had. I can't say that of myself. Perhaps the reason may be that you have had a home; I never ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... nodded over certain verses which he had flattered Miss Caroline into producing, and fallen fast asleep during her sister's cavatina; and if his conversation, however easy and smooth, had not been felt to be upon the whole rather vapid and prosy. "Just exactly," said young Edward Dunbar, who, in the migration transit between Eton, which he had left at Easter, and Oxford, which he was to enter at Michaelmas, was plentifully imbued with the aristocratic prejudices common to each of those venerable seats of learning "just exactly ...
— The London Visitor • Mary Russell Mitford
... treat of subjects in the most popular manner, avoiding, as far as is consistent with the dignity of the object in view, very elaborate and prosy disquisitions. I shall endeavor to get a circular out next week. Meantime accept my thanks for the interest you take in the subject, and be assured that if I succeed in starting the journal, I shall, at all times, be grateful ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... me prosy, I hope that they will pardon an old fellow, who looks back to his Water Cure course as one of the most delightful portions of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... A VERY prosy gentleman, who was in the habit of waylaying Jerrold, met his victim, and, planting himself in the way, said, "Well, Jerrold, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... plan about it. But papa used to tell me that, as long as I did the next thing in order and did it hard and carefully, without trying to save myself any work or to sneak, the rest of things would take care of themselves. It sounds pretty prosy; but I rather think after all it may be true. It is a good deal more romantic to plan what great things we'll do when we are grown up; but I never noticed that planning helped on much. When I began on my music, I used to dream lots of dreams about ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... gas-lit, stuffy hall, A prosy speaker, such a duffer, A mob that loves to stamp and bawl, Noise, suffocation—how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... have been to Prospero's advantage to have the King killed, since Ferdinand would then succeed to the throne of Naples? Did Ariel's intervention kill the plot? What light is thrown on the characters by scene i. of this act? Do you think it is intended to be shown that Gonzalo is prosy and tiresome, although good, or only that the lower and more frivolous characters find him so? Which is the likelier, that Shakespeare intended the dialogue about Gonzalo's ideal commonwealth to be a satire upon it, or favorable to Utopian schemes? Which comes ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... opponent Ahriman; and there have even been times, as in the prevalence of the Manichean heresy, when the Evil Spirit has been affected in preference to the good—probably only another way of saying that morals have been held subordinate to intellect. But I am growing at once prosy ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... subjects, and bored her incessantly with a translation of the orations of Demosthenes, which he intended dedicating to her in an elaborate preface. This was more than Ninon could bear with equanimity—a lover with so much erudition, and his prosy essays, appealed more to her sense of humor than to her sentiments of love, and he was laughed out of her social circle. This angered the Academician and he thought to revenge himself by means of an epigram in which he charged Ninon with admiring figures of rhetoric more than ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... here was come a day in which he did not have to put up a regular stint of eight vinegar-barrels, with the privilege of doing one or two more, if he could, for pay. He ate some breakfast with Lurton. For freedom is a great tonic, and satisfied hopes help digestion. It is a little prosy to say so, but Lurton's buttered toast and coffee was more palatable than the prison fare. And Lurton's face was more cheerful than the dark visage of Ball, the burglar, which always ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... the latter penned her last minor poetry—Mrs. Greyne had been a minor poet for three years soon after she put her hair up—Mrs. Forbes had acquired a certain literary expression of countenance and a manner that was decidedly prosy. She read a good deal after her supper of an evening, and was wont to be the arbiter when any literary matter was discussed ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... (in my way) but, as heretofore do not take greatly to him. He is always prosy, whereas (except in the matter of funeral Lamentations, Condolence, etc., which I suppose the Greek Audience expected—as I suppose they also expected the little sententious truism at the end of every Speech), except in these respects, Sophocles always goes ahead, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... possessing the most beautiful lands among the Rhine hills should, with great trouble and expense, have transported their seats to some flat, uninviting locality,—when, for instance, the dull, flat, prosy, wearisome gardens of Schwetzingen should have been deemed more beautiful than the immediate environs of Heidelberg. Yet such were the sentiments that prevailed in Switzerland until a comparatively late date. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... sacrificed fortune, position, home. Of his own brilliant past at the most luxurious court the world had ever known. He fired her enthusiasm, delighted her imagination, enchained her soul to his: she was literally swept off the prosy face of this earth and whirled into a realm of romance, enchanting, intoxicating, ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... and cry for the water of Helicon to turn the wheels of his little private mill at the Bankside. He appears to have gone more quietly about his business than any other playwright in London, to have drawn off what water-power he needed from the great prosy current of affairs that flows alike for all and in spite of all, to have ground for the public what grist they wanted, coarse or fine, and it seems a mere piece of luck that the smooth stream of his activity ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... remorse in the breast of Mr. Whitelaw, some vague consciousness that in that one act of his life, and in the whole tenor of his life, he had not exactly shaped his conduct according to that model which the parson had held up for his imitation in certain rather prosy sermons, indifferently heard, on the rare occasions of his attendance at the parish church. But whatever terrors the world to come might hold for him seemed very faint and shapeless, compared with the things from which he was to be taken. He thought of his untimely death as a hardship, an ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... combination of qualities. His father was simply what is called a handsome man, with stately figure and curly black hair, not without a certain dignity of manner, but with a face so shallow that it did not even seem to ripple, and with a voice so prosy that, when he spoke of the sky, you wished there were no such thing. His mother was a fair, little, pallid creature,—wash-blond, as they say of lace,—patient, meek, and always fatigued and fatiguing. But Severance, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... sentences solidly built, and no help from bastard rhythms. Moreover, there is a progression—I cannot call it a progress—in his work towards a more and more strictly prosaic level, until at last he sinks into the bathos of the prosy. Emerson mentions having once remarked to Thoreau: "Who would not like to write something which all can read, like 'Robinson Crusoe'? and who does not see with regret that his page is not solid with a right materialistic ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the evening, however, that the Peacock presented attractions which enabled the two friends to resist even the invitations of the gifted, though prosy, Pott. It was in the evening that the 'commercial room' was filled with a social circle, whose characters and manners it was the delight of Mr. Tupman to observe; whose sayings and doings it was the habit of Mr. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... went rambling on in a quaint, prosy, but interesting style; and Ned sat long in his room in old Mr Thompson's cottage poring over its contents, and gradually maturing his ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... to them of '93, and recollections that were almost personal gave life to the prosy descriptions of the author. At that time the high-roads were covered with soldiers singing the "Marseillaise." At the thresholds of doors women sat sewing canvas to make tents. Sometimes came a wave of men in red caps, bending forward a pike, at the end ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... have no engagement for the evening, and, being alone, was glad of even the companionship of a prosy attorney. ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... refreshing in a sailor's yarn. I have listened to hundreds in the course of my consular career, and have yet to find one that is dull or prosy. They all bear the imprint of truth, perhaps a trifle overdrawn, but nevertheless sparkling with the salt of the sea and redolent of the romance of strange people and distant lands. In listening, one becomes almost dizzy at the ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... philologists, as the true sense of holy Scripture from our scholastic theologians. What with their grammar twistings, their various readings, their dubious punctuations, their mythical, and who knows what other meanings, their hair-splittings, and prosy vocable tiltings, we find at last that they are willing to teach us everything but that which really concerns us, and, like the Danaides, they let the water of life run through the sieve of their learning. We may apply to them ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... meeting. Worse and worse! A few members conscientiously studied up the passage in "Barnes's Notes" and the "Comprehensive Commentary," and brought us the result of their investigations in discourse powerfully prosy, and recondite with second hand learning. The Minister at last gave up the matter in despair. I think the condition of our prayer-meetings was one consideration which greatly influenced him in deciding ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... burning very low, and bade fair to be extinguished altogether. What were theological conundrums to her now? It would be positively wicked to fear that anything dreadful could happen to Austin because he had forgotten his catechism and was not impressed by the vicar's prosy discourses in church. Face to face with the possibility of losing him, all her conventionality collapsed. The boy had been everything in the world to her, and now ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... am afraid, doctor, our age is too prosy for that sort of thing. We have neither wit enough, nor poetry enough, to furnish the disputants. I can conceive a state of society in which such tensons would form a pleasant winter evening amusement: but that state of ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... "It's your duty. What a dear old chap he must be!—so thoroughly prosy and honest. I'm sure I should love him. I know just the sort of man he is. A downright Nonconformist minister of the midland counties, who was consecrated ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... so bothersome that Gard contemplated leaving the neighborhood. Even the Buchers, truest of prosy Germans, could grasp the ridiculousness of this situation, and it was the one item of noisy fun they could fall back upon when they wished to be ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... years of his life had old Isaac Mole led a wandering career, that he found it exceedingly difficult, not to say irksome, to settle down to the prosy existence which ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... bassette with Lieutenant Scrope of Trelawney's Regiment and young Captain Tessin of the King's Battalion. There were three other officers in the room, and to them Surgeon Wyley began to talk in a prosy, medical strain. Two of his audience listened in an uninterested stolidity for just so long as the remnant of manners, which still survived in Tangier, commanded, and then strolling through the open window on to ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... with pathetic softness; and you forgive the occasional affectation which you can never quite forget, or even the occasional grossness or harshness of sentiment which contrasts so strongly with the superficial polish. A genuine report of even the best conversation would be intolerably prosy and unimaginative. But imagine the very pith and essence of such talk brought to a focus, concentrated into the smallest possible space with the infinite dexterity of a thoroughly trained hand, and you have the kind of writing ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... since Hervey was an ill man to tackle; but probably Date, who was too dense to consider consequences, was unarmed. Neither did Don Pedro think it necessary to tell the officer that he and his two companions were prepared to shoot if necessary. Inspector Date, being a prosy Englishman, would not have understood such lawless doings in ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... All prosy dull society sinners, Who chatter and bleat and bore, Are sent to hear sermons From mystical Germans Who preach from ten to four: The amateur tenor, whose vocal villainies All desire to shirk, Shall, during off-hours, Exhibit his powers ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... here, a hidden heap of books there. It is, as yet, early in the afternoon, and the riotous beams, who are no respecter of persons, and who honor the righteous and the ungodly alike, are playing merrily in this sombre chamber, given so entirely up to science and its prosy ways, daring even now to dance lightly on the professor's head, which has begun to ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... ready to hand, but it was hard for a Roman to treat it with high enthusiasm, and still harder to handle it with freshness and individuality. The purely historical epic is from its very nature doomed to failure. Treated with accuracy it becomes prosy, treated with fancy it becomes ridiculous. Vergil saw the one possible avenue to epic greatness. He went back into the legendary past where imagination could have free play, linked together the great heroic sagas ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... said, with our old-fashioned politeness. "Anything which concerns the welfare, the progress, if one may so phrase it—" "Stop," said the visitor. "You talk too much. You're prosy. Don't talk. Listen to me. Try and fix your mind on what ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... to-morrow they would be wan. There! I have thrown them out wide into that gulf of a street twelve stories below. They will flutter down in the smoky darkness, and fall, like a message from the land of the lotus-eaters, upon a prosy wayfarer. And safe in my heart there lives that gracious picture of my lady as she stands above me and gives them to me. That is eternal: you and the pinks are ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... Wyndham. Oh, yes, Wyndham is a good fellow; a little prosy sometimes, but means well. We endure the Dons, you know, if they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... world is not so prosy, The woods with mirth o'erflow, To me life seems all rosy, My trumpet ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... a man set apart. He is not really in touch with the nation. He cannot be, because he has so little personal contact with it. For that reason West Pointers should never aspire to public office. It does not suit them, and they seldom succeed in it. But here, I'm becoming a prosy old bore. Come into the house, lad. The boys are growing sentimental. Listen to their song. It's the same, isn't it, that some of our bands played ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Snow is absolutely unknown. The exhibition of zodiacal light is not uncommon, and mirage in its many singular and interesting aspects is frequent; while the effulgence of the moon and stars of this latitude,—a constantly recurring hymn written in light,—will render the most prosy individual enthusiastic, keeping the heart constantly ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... many were sorry his novels were no longer. The novelty of productions of this type also added to their interest. His many faults are largely those of his age. He wearies his readers with his didactic aims. He is narrow and prosy. He poses as a great moralist, but he teaches ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... woman who plainly deplored her environment, longed for larger fields of conquest: George, she said, must remain where he was, for the present at least,—Uncle Ezra depended on him; but Elkington was a prosy place, and Mrs. George gave the impression that she did not belong here. They went to the city on occasions; both cities. And when she told me we had a common acquaintance in Mrs. Hambleton Durrett—whom she thought so lovely!—I knew that she had taken Nancy ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a very prosy conversation with Sir Joseph and Miss Mallowcoid, Mrs. Delarayne found opportunities enough to watch the younger people, and she was not a little relieved to see the cloud gradually lifting from Leonetta's brow. She knew that in the ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... the experience was so entirely new to him, that he became more deeply interested than the little learner herself. He went to church on Sunday, and was probably the most attentive listener the rather prosy old pastor had. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... voted prosy, and that my want of vivacity tended to prevent the interruptions which had been organized, and that it would have been impossible to make an oration more mild and inoffensive. This was exactly what I had ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn |
