"Terse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... short with terse candour. 'Yes,' she said, 'a false report is in circulation. I am not yet engaged to be married to any one, if that is ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Tennessee, where the telegraph service at that time was under military law, although the operators received $125 a month. Here again Edison began to invent and improve on existing apparatus, with the result of having once more to "move on." The story may be told in his own terse language: "I was not the inventor of the auto repeater, but while in Memphis I worked on one. Learning that the chief operator, who was a protege of the superintendent, was trying in some way to put New York and New ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... qualities in the use of English are the simple, plain, exact, lucid, concise, trenchant, vigorous, impressive, lively, figurative, polished, graceful, fluent, rhythmical, copious, elevated, flexible, smooth, dignified, terse, epigrammatic, felicitous, euphonious, elegant, and lofty. Undesirable qualities are the diffuse, verbose, redundant, inflated, prolix, ambiguous, feeble, monotonous, loose, slip-shod, dry, flowery, pedantic, pompous, rhetorical, grandiloquent, artificial, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... following the Red Cross ambulances. All the story of a day's warfare was written in the spectacle of that endless silent flow to the front: and we were to read it again, a few days later, in the terse announcement of "renewed activity" about Suippes, and of the bloody strip of ground gained between Perthes ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... him to read an auction bill?" Suddenly a happy thought struck me: it was to write a novel, in which only the actual spirit of the narration should be retained, rejecting all expletives, flourishes, and ornamental figures of speech; to be terse and abrupt in style—use monosyllables always in preference to polysyllables—and to eschew all heroes and heroines whose names contain more than four letters. Full of this idea, on my returning home in the evening, I sat to my desk, and before I retired to rest, had written ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... was not well lighted, but the pulpit lamps shone upon him. He had a smooth, strong face; his complexion was healthy and weather-beaten; his dark eyes flashed brightly under bushy brows. His manner was calm; his style, even in prayer, was that of keen, terse argument; he spoke and behaved like a man who, having spent the emotional side of his nature in some private gust of passionate prayer, had come forth nerved to cool ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... called. Could they see anything now? Their "No" answers didn't hold for long because seconds later their terse reports began to come into the CIC. A "brilliant light, like a planet" was streaking across the northwest sky about 30 degrees above the horizon. Unfortunately the radar had lost contact for a moment when the visual ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... have not tried to give the General's language, but only the general idea of what he said. The thing that mainly struck me was his terse remark that the enemy originated the idea of the march to the sea. It struck me because it was so suggestive of the General's epigrammatic fashion—saying a great deal in a single crisp sentence. (This is my account, and ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... which is always dark and bare, is, as you will remember, of conical shape, sharp pointed at the top, and stands up about the size of a small hay-stack, in the midst of the waters. Do you remember the account that somebody gives in a ragged but terse kind of verse, of the 'gentleman in black,' who, as ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... favourite mood. You live on sorrow," she said, pelting me with the terse, sharp sentences. Then, for I twitched at her telling me I lived on sorrow, she melted at once, and said, "Oh, Oliver, I'm so sorry. Why did you not send for me and let me nurse it better? Surely that was my right as well ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... Tick-off. Abuse. Denounce. I shall be very terse about Tuppy, giving it as my opinion that in all essentials he is more like a wart hog than an ex-member of a fine old English public school. What will ensue? Hearing him attacked, my Cousin Angela's womanly heart will be ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... far as Cabul. The evacuation of that capital decided on, it would have been in a position to give the hand to the retiring army, and so to avert at least the worst disasters of the retreat. The retirement on Jellalabad, in the terse language of Durand, 'served no conceivable purpose except to betray weakness, and ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the bomb-operating squadron continued. On December 20, 1915, four French aeroplanes designed for bomb-dropping, escorted by seven machines with rapid-fire guns dropped on the fort and station at Muelhausen six shells of 155-millimeter caliber, and twenty shells of ninety-six caliber. In the terse language of the official report, "they reached their objective." The damage must be imagined as ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... was a man named William Calk, who jotted down in his diary the events of each day.[10] It is a short record, but as amusing as it is instructive; for the writer's mind was evidently as vigorous as his language was terse and untrammelled. He was with a small party, who were going out as partners; and his journal is a faithful record of all things, great or small, that at the time impressed him. The opening entry contains the information ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... envoyee au Tigre de la France" betrays a writer well versed in classical oratory. Some of the best of modern French critics accord to it the first rank among works of the kind belonging to the sixteenth century. They contrast its sprightliness, its terse, telling phrases with the heavy, dragging constructions that disfigure the prose of contemporary works. Without copying in a servile fashion the Catilinarian speeches of Cicero, the "Tigre" breathes ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... a terse report of their experience to the task-force commander and in turn was told that none of the naval craft had either sighted or picked up any sign of a ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... permanent types. It is a literature peculiarly adapted to the flexibility and fine perception of the French mind, and one in which it has been preeminent, from the analytic but diffuse Mlle. de Scudery, and the clear, terse, spirited Cardinal de Retz, to the fine, penetrating, and exquisitely finished Sainte-Beuve, the prince of modern critics and literary artists. It was this skill in vivid delineation that gave such point and piquancy to the memoirs of the period, which ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Jefferson, near the close of the War of 1812, stated more clearly than I could do the conflict between local bank paper and United States notes. He, who during his whole life was so mindful of the rights of the states, and so jealous of paper money, in brief and terse language designated the only way in which our country could carry on war. In his letter to Mr. Cooper, dated September 10, 1814, just at the close of the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the business and the delight of his life. He had his agents throughout the country. The churches might be many, but the cause was one. Ever watchful, ever active, he spoke of his measures and his plans in just such terse, homely phrase as any house-carpenter would use. Doubtless the fragile reverence of many a clerical cumberer of the ground was shocked by his familiar use of their sacred edge-tools. One can imagine the thrill of horror with which the Reverend Cream Cheese, of the Church of the Holy (Self-) Assumption, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... a legion of questions unanswered, and, as compared with St. Paul's treatment of this complex problem of moral evil, he moves on the surface. But he is himself; and, in his plain and terse fashion, he forces upon our attention one truth which, on the principle that an inch of fact is worth a yard of theory, is, if well in the mind, more useful than acres of metaphysics which leave us very much where we were. His broad affirmation is, that temptation does ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... to the woods, and, becoming outlaws from society, reverted to their original savage state. Their offspring waxed in size and fierceness beyond their progenitors. They became at last proverbial for their fighting qualities, and to be able to "whip one's weight in wild cats," is a terse ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... tender and terse tribute from the same source to their only son—the request for particulars regarding their last illness, which produced the leaflet entitled "A Short Account of the Last Hours"—that has been already a rich ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... "Elia," [1] written originally for the London Magazine, I feel it difficult to speak. They are the best amongst the good—his best. I see that they are genial, delicate, terse, full of thought and full of humor; that they are delightfully personal; and when he speaks of himself you cannot hear too much; that they are not imitations, but adoptions. We encounter his likings and fears, his fancies (his nature) in all. The words ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... covered by the Artillery barracks. Walking through King Street, Westminster, you will not forget the great poet Edmund Spenser, who, a victim to barbarity, died there, in destitution and grief. Ben Jonson's terse record of that calamity says: "The Irish having robbed Spenser's goods and burnt his house and a little child new-born, he and his wife escaped, and after he died, for lack of bread, in King Street." Ben Jonson is closely associated ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... is of that terse, comprehensive character, which distinguishes his former productions. It is full of entertainment and instruction, clear and judicious in style and arrangement, discriminating in the selection of topics, abundant in details, and conducted ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... Biddy—by an imperious, silencing gesture, and a sudden unfurling of his stockwhip, which made a hissing sound as it writhed along the ground like a snake. The black boy sprang aside. McKeith pointed to the gidia scrub and issued a terse command in the ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... disturbed by the noise made by your neighbors in the conduct of their affairs; pardon me if I leave with you an infallible recipe for peace in the midst of commotion: Hear only what you will to hear.' With this terse counsel he quietly bade the astonished listener adieu. After his visitor had departed, the nervous man felt unaccountably calm, and was constrained to meditate upon his friend's advice, and no sooner did he seek ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... preserved to posterity the profane learnings of Old Greece and Rome; copied it, multiplied it, and spread it. She recorded to after generations in plain, simple language, the ecclesiastical and civil events of the past, for it is from the terse chronicles of the monkish churchmen that we learn now the history of what happened then. Much as we may dislike the monastic system, the cold, heartless, gloomy ascetic atmosphere of the cloister, and much as we may deplore the mental ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... stood watching the approaching crews with powerful glasses, their terse comments enlightening their friends as to what was taking place beyond their unaided range of vision. Peggy and Polly were fairly dancing up and down ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... dramatic purposes. In his plays it modulates and adapts itself to the changing emotions of every speaker, "from merely colloquial dialogue to strains of impassioned soliloquy, from comic repartee to tragic eloquence, from terse epigrams to elaborate descriptions." It is customary to distinguish three 'periods' in Shakespeare's blank verse, corresponding closely to his whole artistic development: first, the more formal, 'single-moulded' line ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... body of those who receive it into themselves it rules and governs. The joke of the inebriate man that when he had taken his potation he was quite another man and that then he felt it his duty to treat that other man, is literally true, a terse and faithful expression of a natural fact. The man or woman born and bred under the influence of alcohol is of the race of alcohol, and as distinct a person as any racial peculiarity can supply. The reason, the judgment, the temper, the senses are attuned by it. It is loved by its ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... 'Et summa felicitate componitur quod ab aliis sub longa deliberatione componitur.' 'Ab aliis' probably refers to Cassiodorus himself. The contrast between his elaborate and diffuse rhetoric, and the few, terse, soon-moulded sentences of his ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... is at the present moment under arrest," was the terse reply. If the news were a shock to Thew, he showed it in none of the ordinary ways. His face seemed to fall for a moment into harder lines. His mouth tightened ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... This terse despatch the hunchback Burleigh read Thrice over, with the broad cliff of his brow Bending among his books. Thrice he assayed To steel himself with caution as of old; And thrice, as a glorious lightning running along And flashing between those simple ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... case, for he was like the rest of the tribe, always ready to fight with words, not acts; but in the midst of his gabble Joan interrupted with the terse order: ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... Prince caught the appreciative twinkle in her eye as she read the Rules of the Camp. These rules had been fathered by the Unquenchable Bettles at a time when his blood ran high, and were remarkable for the terse simplicity of their humor. ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... of the year, and the programme took on a special interest from the fact that it included Mrs. Bryan's debut as a speaker for suffrage. She is a tall and attractive woman with an extremely pleasant voice, and she made an admirable speech—clear, terse, and much to the point, putting herself on record as a strong supporter of the woman-suffrage movement. There was also an amusing aftermath of this occasion, which Secretary Bryan himself confided to me several months later when I met him in Atlantic City. He assured me, with the deep sincerity he ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... after a short scrutiny declared the path practicable. Garey believed he could easily go up; and Rube in his terse way said, that his "jeints wa'nt so stiff yit;" only a month ago he had "clomd a ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... his adventures, and signal defeat by Uncle Sam, have no claim to be copied here, though differing much from my account. With their terse unfeeling strain, they might make people laugh who had not sadder things to think of. And it matters very little how that spy escaped, as such people almost always ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... said Fillmore Flagg, "of course we understand that you were joking in what you said just now: that you really admire the terse, clear, and wonderfully complete description of this strange rock by Miss Fenwick, quite as much as we do." Turning to Fern Fenwick, he continued: "I believe, Miss Fenwick, that I can throw some light on the puzzling questions you ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... shape the "Mahabharata" contains some two hundred thousand verses. The style is forcible, often terse and nervous: the action is well sustained, and the whole effect produced is that of a poem written in commemoration of actual conflict between members of rival clans who lived somewhere southeast of the Punjab. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... make a right. The strong sense of John Adams struck at once to the root of the matter. He declared "he had no notion of cheating anybody. The questions of paying debts and compensating Tories were two." This terse statement carried the day, and it was finally decided that all private debts on either side, whether incurred before or after 1775, remained still binding, and must be discharged at their ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... one of them. A ram, the Manassas, in attempting to butt us just missed our stern, and we soon settled the third fellow's 'hash.' Just then some of our gunboats which had passed the forts came up, and then all sorts of things happened." This last expression is probably as terse and graphic a summary of a melee, which to so many is the ideal of a naval conflict, as ever was penned. "There was the wildest excitement all round. The Varuna fired a broadside into us instead of into ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... which redeem the scurrility of his political pamphlets. The passage in which Milton's visit to Galileo "grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition," is mentioned, is often quoted for its biographical interest; and the terse dictum, "as good almost kill a man as kill a good book," has passed into a current axiom. A paragraph at the close, where he hints that the time may be come to suppress the suppressors, intimates, but so obscurely as to be likely to escape notice, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... minutes Selwyn talked to him with all the terse and colloquial confidence of a comradeship founded upon respect for mutual fallibility. No instruction, no admonition, no blame, no reproach—only an affectionately logical review of matters as they stood—and as they threatened ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... an inadequate equivalent—your miserable substance will be attached to four tractors headed in divergent directions. Don't come back here, but attempt for once to palliate the offense of your birth and go interview that Francis female. Interview her, not yourself. Bring back a story, complete and terse, or commit the first sensible act of your life with any weapon you choose and charge the instrument to ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... and roast turkey go?" Dan called, finding himself confronted with the great slabs of cabbage; and the traveller, thinking it was supposed to be a joke, favoured us with another nervous grin and a terse "Thanks!" Then Dan reappeared, laden, and the man's eyes glistened as he forgot his first surprise in his second. "Real cabbage!" he cried. "Gosh! ain't tasted cabbage for five years"; and the Maluka telling him to "sit right down then and begin, just where you are"—beside our camp fire—with ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... ornamenting the landscape was all they had to do in life; another replied that if a government inspector ever set eyes on their cattle he'd drive them off the range as a disgrace to the State; and a third capped the replies with the terse answer that no ten United States officers and no hundred and ten cattlemen could take ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... did not speak except for a few terse words among themselves and a barked order to march, delivered to the prisoners. Very shortly they were in the entrance hall facing the wreckage of the crawler and doors through which a ragged gap had been burned. Ali viewed the scene ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... wail of grief, And tones of high command, full, solemn, brief; The change of voice, and emphasis that threw Light on obscurity, and brought to view Distinctions nice, when grave or comic mood, Or mingled humors, terse and new, elude Common perception, as earth's smallest things To size and form the vesting hoar-frost brings, That seemed as if some secret voice, to clear The raveled meaning, whispered in thine ear, And thou hadst e'en with him communion ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... that lay upon the polished deal. One of the party, none other than the Commissioner himself, had just finished speaking, and in silence now we stood about the gruesome object which had furnished him with the text of his very terse address. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... reading. And this, in turn, depends much upon the force, clearness and beauty of the author's style or expression. A crude, or feeble, or wordy, redundant statement makes little impression, while a terse, clear, well-balanced sentence fixes the attention, and so fastens itself in the memory. Hence the books which are best remembered will be those which are the best written. Great as is the power of thought, we are often obliged to confess that the power of expression ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... to my boyish advantage. He tells me tales of old Rome, always apposite to the occasion; draws from me, sometimes, my private views as to persons, places, and scenes, and criticises those views in his own terse, arch, pregnant way, the force and pertinency whereof are revealed to me only in my later meditations upon them. It is only after one has begun to deal in this way with Rome that its magic and spell ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... write the report which has lit up the flame; but more and more do the incidental evils seem curable and the difficulties removable.' As the Crimean war went on, the usual cry for administrative reform was raised, and Mr. Gladstone never made a more terse, pithy, and incontrovertible speech than his defence for an open civil service in the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... to the capital as witnesses, or principals, in a law case, or to draw their salaries as small officials of their districts. The conversation on these occasions is always the same, and if heard often, becomes monotonous. The unvarying formula of greeting is quaint and terse, but it loses much of its impressive character by translation. One word in explanation. The Montenegrins cannot utter the simplest remark without invoking the Almighty in some form or another. The use of the word ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... have been ever surpassed. They are not, strictly speaking, eloquent; but there is a force, as well us a novelty of treatment, in many of them, that put them above all comparison. They are familiar without coarseness, and terse without obscurity. Their main charm may be said to consist in the simplicity and strength with which religious and moral truths are handled; the uncompromising and straightforward manner in which human frailties and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... 1659, and Colonel Seymour, now Sir Edward, became a member of Parliament a year or so later. His letters to Lady Seymour from London are amusing from their variety of news and gossip. Sir Edward's style was terse, not to say jerky. One letter he begins by bitter complaints of their 'most undutiful son,' his 'obstinacy' and 'untowardness,' and then passes on to speak of his own imminent return. Then: 'I was this ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... there quietly, savouring the scene. But Mrs. Yaverland said in her terse voice: "I've taken rooms at the Hapsburg for to-night. I thought you'd like it. I do myself, because it's near the river. You know, we're near the river at Roothing." Ellen could not longer turn her attention ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... had done a wrong thing and the district was down on him—"he'll have the longest funeral ever seen in these parts! Leave that to me." Then some of the women took her out to her daughter's. Big Ben Duggan gave terse instructions to some of the young riders about, and then, taking the best and freshest horse, the cross-country scrub swallowed him—west. The young men jumped on their horses and ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... with the pest and the smoke of the torches, yet the Roman called one of the torch-bearers to his side, and wrote the answer nearly word for word. It was terse, and comprehensive, containing at once a history, an accusation, and a prayer. No common person could have made it, and he could not ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... want to get looking at that for?" she asked Anna-Felicitas, when she had edged through the crowd staring at the Vaterland, and got to where Anna-Felicitas stood listening abstractedly to the fireworks of American slang the young man was treating her to,—that terse, surprising, swift hitting-of-the-nail-on-the-head form of speech which she was hearing in such abundance ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... from Ichi and hallooed forward. A man who was sitting on the sunny deck, abaft the galley, arose and came aft in obedience to the hail. Martin saw the fellow carried one of the Cohasset's rifles. He paused while Ichi gave him some terse directions, then he passed Martin and entered the cabin. Ichi and Asoki then proceeded ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... autograph of General Grant is plain and simple in its construction, not an unnecessary movement or mark in it—a signature as bare of superfluity and ostentation as was the silent soldier and hero of Appomattox. In the autograph of R.E. Lee we have the same terse, brief manner of construction as in Grant's. It is more antiquated and formal in its style, more stiff and what might be called aristocratic. Its firm upright strokes, with angular horizontal terminal lines, ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... of government his ideas were terse and decided. He was strongly attached to the present, heedless of the future, and the socialists troubled him little. Without caring whether the sun and capital should be extinguished some day, he enjoyed them. According to him, one should let himself be carried. None but ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Merimee; but he has been sometimes too bold and cynical in the choice and treatment of his subjects. "La Partie de Tric-trac," and "L'Enlevement de la Redoute," are amongst his happiest efforts. Both are especially remarkable for their terse and vigorous style. We have been prodigal of extracts from "Charles IX."—for it is a great favourite of ours—and, although well known and much esteemed by all habitual readers of French novels, it is hitherto, we believe, untranslated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... Ottimo Comento says: "I the writer saw followers of his [Fra Dolcino] burned at Padua to the number of twenty-two together."[233] Clearly, in such a time as this, one must not make "the veil of the mysterious Terse" too thin.[234] ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... are always valuable, for they are terse and reticent. In writing to weavers, like Bamford; to men in trouble, as Cooper; to students, statesmen, or earnest inquirers of whatever degree, a genuine sympathy for them takes the place of the sympathy for himself, often too ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... marriage, and hence declined to volunteer. When his betrothed, a charming girl and a devoted lover, heard of his refusal, she sent him, by the hand of a slave, a package inclosing a note. The package contained a lady's skirt and crinoline, and the note these terse words: "Wear these, or ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... of the Twelve Tables consists not in any approach to symmetrical classification or even to terse clarity of expression, but in the publication of the method of procedure to be adopted, especially in civil cases, in the knowledge furnished to every Roman of high or low degree as to what were both his legal rights and his ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous
... vocabulary of Bradshaw is nervous and terse, but limited. The selection of words would hardly lend itself to the sending of general messages. We will eliminate Bradshaw. The dictionary is, I fear, inadmissible for the same ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... any particular practical use to a boy. But they had involved some contrivance and labour, some skimping of pocket money, and much delightful cloud-building as to the effect on their enraptured recipient. Well, yesterday there had come a terse acknowledgment from Edward, heartily commending the cakes and the jam, stamping the sausages with the seal of Smith major's approval, and finally hinting that, fortified as he now was, nothing more was necessary but a remittance of five shillings in postage stamps to enable ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since expected in text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green fierce snake bars the way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... they have exchanged for plays, poems, and pamphlets, in order to qualify them for tea-tables and coffee-houses. This they usually call "polite conversation; knowing the world; and reading men instead of books." These accomplishments, when applied to the pulpit, appear by a quaint; terse, florid style, rounded into periods and cadences, commonly without either propriety or meaning. I have listen'd with my utmost attention for half an hour to an orator of this species, without being able to understand, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... universal worship. Mr Wentworth did not even throw a little additional warmth into his utterance of the general thanksgiving, as he might have done had he been a more effusive man; but, on the contrary, read it with a more than ordinary calmness, and preached to the excited people one of those terse little unimpassioned sermons of his, from which it was utterly impossible to divine whether he was in the depths of despair or at the summit and crown of happiness. People who had been used to discover a great many of old Mr Bury's personal ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... cent by cent, All his patrimony spent— (I might tell how he went from werse to werse!) Till the cat was sure she could, By advising, do him good So addressed him in a manner that was terse: "We are bound toward the scuppers, And the time has come to act, Or we'll both be on our ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... hearing this speech, congratulated his visitor upon his terse and accurate methods of expression, detailed to him the careers in which such habits of terminology are valuable, and also those in which they are ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Within the canoe lay the blanket of Deerfoot, beside the rifle; powder-horn, and bullet pouch, doubtless owned by the moist fisherman. The latter looked at his property as if he could not believe any one would dare molest that; but Deerfoot settled the question in his terse fashion. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... comes, through the medium of an extraordinarily terse and unspoiled language, a language that has not lost its earthy freshness by mauling and softening at the hands of literary generations, what a lilting crystal-bright vision of things. It is as if the air of the Mediterranean itself, thin, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... one-act play, nonetheless, has an obvious right to existence, as much as the short story, and there are plentiful proofs that it can be as terse, vivid, and significant. Most novelists don't tack on a short story at the end of their books for full measure, but issue their contes either in collections or in the pages of the magazines. What similar chances are there, ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... observes, is 'almost a texture of slang phrases, patched with shreds of French and Latin.' His verses on Margaret Hussey, which we have quoted, are in his happiest vein. The following lines, too, on Cardinal Wolsey, are as true as they are terse:— ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to ask questions, following a routine he had employed with other subjects, but Bassett began to talk on his own initiative—of the town, the county, the district. He expressed himself well, in terse words and phrases. Harwood did not attempt to direct or lead: Bassett had taken the interview into his own hands, and was imparting information that might have been derived from a local history at the town library. Dan ceased, after a time, to follow the narrative in his absorption ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... executing a gesture that matched well her look of blank resignation, her brother addressed himself to a terse summing up of the affair which, while it stressed the gravity of the adventure with the fat burglar, did not seem to extenuate Sally's offence in the least and so had the agreeable upshot of leaving the sister in a much-placated humour and regarding the girl with a far more indulgent countenance ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... in the undergrowth on their right, and presently a crouching form came creeping rapidly towards them under cover of the sheltering bank. In a terse aside Yorke acquainted the doctor with the details of his comrade's mischance, keeping a wary eye meanwhile on the window. The ex-naval surgeon wasted no time in unnecessary question or comment, but with the grim composure of an old campaigner swiftly proceeded ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... of an hour more the two worked steadily and silently, the only sound in the room being the scratching of their pencils and Rosalind's occasional terse ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... the terse vernacular of his calling, he gives voice to the sorrows and impatience, the humour and the resignation of his workmen comrades, and lets his songs find their own natural bent, then at length he attains real lyrical strength and sincerity.... For we need have ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... the sensations of certain speculators in a land office in Harrodsburg when a blue-eyed savage in a war bonnet sprang through the doorway and, with uplifted weapon, declared the office closed; but we get a hint of the power of Clark's personality and of his genius for dominating men from the terse report that he "enrolled" the speculators. He was informed that another party of men, more nervous than these, was now on its way out of Kentucky. In haste he dispatched a dozen frontiersmen to cut the party ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... of Washington's activity as a planter can be had than from his brief and terse journals as an agriculturist. He sets down day by day what he did and what his slaves and the free employees did on all parts of his estate. We see him as a regular and punctual man. He had a moral repugnance to idleness. ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... second volume James Mill is the principal figure, as the apostle of Benthamism, though he also describes briefly, in his terse and incisive style, the lives and opinions of some notable men, foes as well as friends to the party, who represented different expressions of energetic protest against existing institutions. To each of them is ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... troubled glance meeting that of Mr. Sharpe, seemed to ask why proceedings, which could only have one termination, were delayed. He had not long to wait. The jury were sworn, and Mr. Gurney rose to address them for the crown. Clear, terse, logical, powerful without the slightest pretence to what is called eloquence, his speech produced a tremendous impression upon all who heard it; and few persons mentally withheld their assent to his assertion, as he concluded what was evidently a painful task, "that should ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... of the ancient house of Este read this terse despatch he must have smiled; its candor was so undiplomatic that it bordered on irony. The doughty ambassadors, however, apparently did not go to the right sources, for if they had applied to the courtiers ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... the crown, and Mr. Crean, counsel for Mr. Lalor, rose to address the jury on behalf of his client. His speech was argumentative, terse, forcible, and eloquent; and seemed to please and astonish not only the auditors but the judges themselves, who evidently had not looked for so much ability and vigour in the young advocate before them. Although the speeches of professional advocates do not come ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... about the keen-sighted theologian, philosopher, and pulpit orator, whose teachings, as I was to learn later, had exerted the most powerful influence upon my principal instructors at Keilhau. She also knew his best enigmas; and the following one, whose terse ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this he visited a publisher's office most days, where he was supposed to be meditating the acquirement of a partnership. Hal was very apt at terse, concise definitions, and she was quite up to her best form when she described him as "the maddest of a ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... political constitution of the Free State is not the chief cause of the peace and order which the State enjoys, it may claim to be well suited to the community which lives happily under it. It is a simple constitution, and embodied in a very short, terse, and straightforward instrument of sixty-two articles, most of them only ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... not?" "Yes, you know it well enough by this time. What M. Patel could see in it I can't say." As she sat down to the table—not at the head: that was significantly empty—he admired her figure, maidenly still despite her majestic bearing; admired the terse contour of her head and noticed, not without a sigh, her small selfish ear. Madame Patel was nearing forty and her November hair had begun to whiten, but in her long gray eyes was invincible youth, poised, self-centred youth. She was deliberate in her movements and her complexion a clear ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... awe of his father. He was not a man to be bamboozled. On the contrary Mr. Coddington was a keen, direct person who came straight to a point in a few terse sentences; predominant in his character was an unflinching sense of justice which was, however, fortunately tempered with enough kindness to make a misdoer mortified but never afraid in his presence. Peter admired ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... as lightly as possible, but it could not be transformed, by any lightness of touch, into an encouraging episode. He made a picture of Stamps sidling through the barely opened door, and was terse and witty at the expense of his own discomfiture and consciousness of incompetence. He laughed at himself and made them laugh, but when he sat down in his accustomed seat there was a shade ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The terse letter was characteristic of the writer. Doctor Gardiner replaced it in its envelope, put it away in his desk, with the wish that she had mentioned her destination, then dismissed it from ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... we may come to Harvey himself. When you read Harvey's treatise, which is one of the most remarkable scientific monographs with which I am acquainted—it occupies between 50 and 60 pages of a small quarto in Latin, and is as terse and concise as it possibly can be—when you come to look at Harvey's work, you will find that he had long struggled with the difficulties of the accepted doctrine of the circulation. He had received from Fabricius, and ...
— William Harvey And The Discovery Of The Circulation Of The Blood • Thomas H. Huxley
... while it would overthrow the laws which had bound it so long. So, too, it seems to us, despite all the rhythmical innovations of our time. The personality that could beat out exuberantly music as rhythmically various and terse and free must indeed have possessed a primitive naivete and vitality and spontaneity of impulse. What manifestation of unbridled will in that freedom of expression! Berlioz must have been blood-brother to the savage, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... phrase of Stedman's in the Introduction to his "American Anthology." This true poet and master-critic, in pursuit of another idea, alludes to poetry as "being a rhythmical expression of emotion and ideality." Here at last we have form, spirit, and theme combined in one terse utterance. In poetry we look for the musical metre, the recurrent refrain of rhythm; while that which inspires it arises from the universal motives which Coleridge ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... centuries or more after the Conquest, the antiquary Boturini classified all the ancient songs under two general heads, the one treating mainly of historical themes, while the other was devoted to purely fictitious, emotional or imaginative subjects.[10] His terse classification is expanded by the Abbe Clavigero, who states that the themes of the ancient poets were various, some chanting the praises of the gods or petitioning them for favors, others recalled the history of former generations, others ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... Who, in fact, cares?" was the terse answer, "only it was badly done. The next time you break a seal, be sure and have wax of exactly the same tint on hand. I thought of that, and came back. It would ruin all, if General Harrington saw his letters ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... reception was altogether disappointing. For her mother's and grandmother's voices rose up shrill and shriller, demanding what at all hijjis gazabo she'd got on her. Billy, her eldest brother, said: "Musha, she's put a pair of blinkers on her like an ould horse;" and Larry, his junior, remarked with terse candour, "Och, the fright." More mortifying still, Joe Tierney, her sweetheart, who had called to conclude arrangements about the morrow's holiday, said in a disgusted tone: "Tare and ages! I hope to goodness, Nelly, you're not intindin' to make that show of yourself at the circus to-morra. ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... gorge, and the litter of old provision cans, general refuse, and discarded boots could not spoil the beauty of the scene. Prescott asked for a room; and sitting outside after dinner, he gathered from some men, who were not working, the story of Kermode's next exploit. Their accounts of it were terse and somewhat disconnected, but Prescott was afterward able to amplify them from the narrative of ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... were no external signs; in society he was silent and cold, and wore a grave, reserved face. His social success was great, precisely because he stood out in such strong contrast to the conventional faces which line the walls of Paris salons. He was, indeed, something quite new there. Terse of speech, like a hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be haughtiness, and people were greatly taken with it. He was something strange and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten with this original person because he was not ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... patent to every eye—even more striking when first seen. His conclusions he attributed to the inevitable process by which facts are generalised, and demonstrate systems. His style, when deliberate, is terse and explicit: his ideas he expressed with the utmost freedom; or, as it then seemed, audacity. The colonists he treated as an operator, who indeed pities the sufferings of his patient, but disregards a natural outcry, while expounding in the language of science ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... formation of the "Irish Confederation" by the seceders. In the proceedings of the new Society Mr. Mitchel took a more prominent part than he had taken in the business of the Repeal Association. And he continued to write in his own terse and forcible style in the Nation. But his mind travelled too fast in the direction of war for either the journal or the society with which he was connected. The desperate condition of the country, now a prey ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... as if nothing but the ordinary business had occurred, Jasper sat down and went carefully over every detail of the commission he had been sent on, heard Mr. Marlowe's terse, "That's good, Jasper; you've done it all well," and passed out for the last time, from the private office, and joined his father in silence, for the walk ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... events that he is narrating, and is far too deeply absorbed in his story to limit himself to the page that he has before him. Given a dramatic situation, the actors become living personalities to him, and he hears impassioned words falling from their lips in terse phrases such as he never found in the lines of Wace. Uther Pendragon, in a deadly battle against the Irish invaders under Gillomar and Pascent, ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... legendary canoes from the land of gold, deep laden with the precious metal, nor sandy beaches strewn with jewels, to be had for the gathering. He puts on record what he thought of the islanders in the few terse words, that they were "black, naked and corpulent," beyond that, they do not ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... day when war was declared, and when the Chamber of Deputies—all party feeling forgotten—stood on its feet and listened to Paul Deschanel's terse, remarkable speech, even here in this little commune, whose silence is broken only by the rumbling of the trains passing, in view of my garden, on the way to the frontier, and the footsteps of the groups on the way to the train, ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... wide range of subjects, not one of which but will be found to contain some terse, sparkling truth worthy of thought and attention. A spare ten minutes devoted to such ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... apology the colored lad grinned, then explained in his own terse way that only certain places were set aside for bill sticking. even these were rented out to regular bill posters who paid the city for the ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... these institutions must be exceedingly gratifying to Mr. Dangler. He is an active, energetic and impulsive member, though not without considerable tact, and generally successful in putting his measures through. As a speaker he is clear-headed, terse and forcible, and on subjects appealing ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... constructive work to that of their colleagues, and deploy their refutation so as to hammer the principal positions of their opponents. Each debater may or may not begin his speech with refutation, but he should always begin his main argument with a terse, clear summary of what has been said on his side, and in closing he should not only summarize his own arguments, but he should also give again, in very brief form, the gist of what has been proved by his colleagues. ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... Sarge, you've made the biggest discovery of the year in this point of the woods," was Hyman's terse comment. "I reckon, too, the captain will see ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... What will you say? Will you make use of the same excellently terse expression that you applied ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... said, lapsing in his self-forgetfulness into the terse language of his everyday life and thought, "what on earth have you been driving at ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman |
