"Terseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conversation, and did use it largely as an instrument for the diffusion of his opinions. I have never known any man who could do such ample justice to his best thoughts in colloquial discussion. His perfect command over his great mental resources, the terseness and expressiveness of his language and the moral earnestness as well as intellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the most striking of all argumentative conversers: and he was full of anecdote, a hearty laugher, and, when ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... described, before the curtain was withdrawn, with a sort of savage terseness, the subject of the impending scene. The groups did not continue long; a pause of half a minute, and the circular stage revolved, and the curtain again closed. This rapidity of representation was necessary, lest delay should compromise the indispensable ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... make them his own, to set his stamp upon them, by imparting to them a more meretricious gloss, a higher relief, a greater loftiness of tone, and a characteristic inveteracy of purpose. Even in those collateral ornaments of modern style, slovenliness, abruptness, and eccentricity (as well as in terseness and significance), Lord Byron, when he pleases, defies competition and surpasses all his contemporaries. Whatever he does, he must do in a more decided and daring manner than any one else—he lounges ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... mediation of no less a modern translator than Robert Graves. In 1963 Graves edited a translation of three of Terence's plays. His Foreword points to the extreme difficulty of translating Terence, and admits his own failure— "It is regrettable that the very terseness of his Latin makes an accurate English rendering read drily and flatly; as I have found to my disappointment." Graves's answer was typically idiosyncratic. "A revival of Terence in English, must, I believe, be based on the translation ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... are, indeed, some writers of the present day who seem returning to the statement of facts rather than their adornment, but these are not the most generally admired. This simplicity, however, to be truly effective must be unstudied; it will not do to write with affected terseness, a charge which, I think, may be fairly preferred against Tacitus; such a style if ever effective must be so from excess of artifice and not from that artlessness of simplicity which I should wish to see ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... was Johnson's favourite study, and is still the main object of pursuit in the place whose system and institutions he so warmly praised, and to which he ever professed himself so deeply indebted. If the terseness of attic simplicity has been desiderated by some in the pages of Johnson, they undeniably display the depth of thought, the weight of argument, the insight into mind and morals, which are to be found in their native dignity only in the compositions of those older ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... thought almost perfect) unworthy of this age of progress, then let us have his moral without his style, his matter without his form; or—that we may be sure of never falling for a moment into his besetting sins of terseness, grace, and completeness—without any form at all. If poetry, in order to be worthy of the nineteenth century, ought to be as unlike as possible to Homer or Sophocles, Virgil or Horace, Shakespeare or Spenser, Dante or Tasso, let those ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... single record of the Admiral who met and destroyed it was to be seen in Reigate Church, except the inscription on the coffin in the Howards' vault. Then, at last, the inscription was copied and placed on a brass in the chancel. Its terseness ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... stale and obsolete;—and thus, by degrees, the whole literature of a country becomes changed and deteriorated. It appears to us, that we are now labouring in a crisis of this nature. In our last Number, we noticed the revolution in our poetry; the transition from the lucid terseness and exquisite polish of Pope and Goldsmith, to the rambling, diffuse, irregular, and imaginative style of composition by which the present era is characterized; and we might have added, that a change equally complete, though diametrically ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... in any language who can be compared with Mrs. Carlyle. Inferior to her husband in humourous description, as in depth of thought, she surpassed him in liveliness of wit, in pungency of satire, and in terseness of expression. Her narrative is inimitable, and sometimes, as in the account of her solitary visit to her old home at Haddington twenty-three years after her marriage, her dramatic power is overwhelming. Carlyle himself had been familiar to the public for half a ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... with the penetrative terseness that made him a master of the apophthegm, pronounced it "not to be enough to have great qualities: a man must have the economy of them." Or, as another writer says: "Empire in this world belongs not so much to wits, to talents, and to industry, as to a certain ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... that for terseness and vigor the practitioner at the bar of the Ohio had the better of the learned counsel who appeared at the bar of justice, albeit his client was in a Cockney mystification ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... in which Aristotle's works have come down to us makes it difficult to judge of his style. Many of them seem mere collections of notes and jottings for lectures, without any attempt at style. The rest are distinguished by brevity, terseness, and scientific precision. No other man ever enriched philosophic language with so many original expressions. We know, from the testimony of most competent judges, such as Cicero, that his popular writings, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... someone who was sceptical of the very existence of the addressee and had sent them merely to humour some third person. And where the expressions were strong she felt that they were qualified by their own terseness. Old people, she felt, ought to write fluently kind things in a running Italian hand. She was annoyed too by the way Richard always spoke of her as Marion. Even the anecdotes he recounted to show how brave and wise his mother was left Ellen ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... he came by his reasons, nor their conclusion, 'le plus fou souvent est le plus satisfait.' Consequently, if less tedious than the English, your reasoners are more dangerous, and ought rather to be considered as models of terseness than of reflection. A man might learn to think sooner from your writers, but he will learn to think justly sooner from ours. Many observations of La Bruyere and Rochefoucault—the latter especially—have obtained credit for truth solely from their point. They possess ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... composer naturally took up a new theme without troubling to design it for contrapuntal combination with the opening; and the form resulting from this treatment of words was faithfully reproduced in the instrumental ricercari of the time. Occasionally, however, breadth of treatment and terseness of design combined to produce a short movement on one idea indistinguishable in form from a fughetta of Bach; as in the Kyrie ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... the so-called chromatin elements of the two pronuclei takes place. For the purpose of explaining what this means, and still more for the purpose of giving a general idea of the karyokinetic processes as a whole, I will quote the following description of them, because, for terseness combined with ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... influence succeeded in curbing the lush impromptu manner of romantic Spanish verse. In Antonio Machado's work—and he is beginning to be generally considered the central figure—there is a restraint and terseness of phrase rare ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... correspondent, as Greatheart's most troublesome pilgrim was to him. In two well-chosen words John Livingstone tells us the deep impression that the laird of Knockbrex made on the men of his day. With a quite Scriptural insight and terseness of expression, Livingstone simply says that Robert Gordon was the most 'single-hearted and painful' of all the Christian men known to his widely- acquainted ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... which Brenton, all that summer, was holding firmly, had come out of his association with Reed Opdyke. Opdyke, in all terseness, had summed up man's whole duty: to play out the game uprightly, and, out of loyalty to an all-wise Creator, not to lose touch with the present chance in trying to see too many moves ahead. The remoter parts ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... a few words, and with admirable terseness and lucidity; and she nodded comprehensively ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... worth a good deal more money than all the modern 'delineation of character', and 'folk' nonsense ever written. What verve! What terseness! ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... in Teneriffe the news of war, he summed up all his doctrines with the terseness of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... man of extraordinary genius would have thought of rearing in the desert such a structure as this, or creating such an oasis? The colouring of the building reminded me of Malta or Sicily, a rich mellow hue prevails; the ornaments of the Tower are so clean, so distinct, such terseness. The windows, small and few compared with modern buildings, give it the appearance of those early Florentine edifices reared when security and defence were as much an object as beauty. From every part of the ground the pile looks ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... still with an indignant gravity that impresses the young Bagnets, and even causes Mr. Bagnet to defer the ceremony of drinking Mrs. Bagnet's health, always given by himself on these occasions in a speech of exemplary terseness. But the young ladies having composed what Mr. Bagnet is in the habit of calling "the mixtur," and George's pipe being now in a glow, Mr. Bagnet considers it his duty to proceed to the toast of the evening. He addresses the assembled ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... rate he resorts to quite another kind of composition in order to be on a level with his prototype by making his book hard reading, for he gives his reader as much difficulty in following him by leaving gaps in thought, as Tacitus gives his reader by uncommon terseness. The difference of exertion to which the mind is subjected in understanding the two is pretty much like the difference of exerting the legs which a traveller experiences when moving about a most mountainous region, between toiling painfully up steep but smooth acclivities and taking violent ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... part added substantially to the remains which we have of the poetry of ancient Greece. The terseness, simplicity, and humor of the poems belong to the popular classic all the world over, in whatever tongue it appears; and the purity of the Greek shows that Babrius lived at a time when the influence of the classical age was still vital. He is ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... is chiefly in the "Requiem" that Berlioz revealed himself in all the grandeur and might of his being. For in it all the aristocratic coolness and terseness of "La Damnation de Faust" and of "Harold en Italie," all the fresco-like calm of "Les Troyens a Carthage," find their freest, richest expression. "Were I to be threatened with the destruction of all that I have ever composed," ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... is inimitable. The majesty and splendour of his introductions, which generally address themselves to the passions or the imagination, the eloquence with which both sides of a question are successively displayed, the clearness and terseness of his statements on abstract points, the grace of his illustrations, his exquisite allusions to the scene or time of the supposed conversation, his digressions in praise of philosophy or great men, his quotations ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... of her dear cousin, and an intimation of the period when it might be deemed possible for a relative to call and offer her sincere congratulations: a letter deserving a personal reply, one would suppose. She received the following, in a succinct female hand corresponding to its terseness; every 't' righteously crossed, every 'i' punctiliously dotted, as she remarked to Constance Asper, to whom the communication ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... simple meal proceeded, Quickened by the savory food, Uncle Tom, from cynic terseness, Fell into a happier mood. "I was overseer in slave time, And a mean un, so dey say, Strapped Ma' Ann so much, ha! ha! She married me ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various
... church there, tells, he bravely held the manor house against Princes Rupert and Maurice during the civil war. As a layman, and nevertheless a theologian and scholar of rare ripeness and critical ability, he holds an almost unique place in the literature of the period. The terseness of his Whole Booke of Job Paraphrased, or made easy for any to understand (1640, 4to), contrasts favourably with the usual prolixity of the Puritan expositors and commentators. His Vindiciae Sabbathi (1641, 8vo) had a profound and lasting influence in the long Sabbatarian controversy. His ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... flowers of the field: each age hath its own, which fade and perish and make way for another crop, and every age claims its own. For melody, terseness, and beauty of words, the song excels more than any other form of poetry; and they are wise who have a private collection of the songs which, like swallows, come ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... acquaintance. He put up in Philadelphia, at a well-known and fashionable boarding-house then kept by an aunt of mine, at the corner of Second and Thirteenth streets. He never said anything while there, until he came to pay his board bill, when bidding my aunt farewell, he observed: "Mrs. SAGOE, for terseness and brevity, your steaks surpass any I have ever met with." Aunt Sarah had these words neatly framed, and they have hung in her ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... carried the baby away to bed, the girl composed a letter to Theodore, pathetic in its terseness. She also wrote to Molly, telling her she had decided to go ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... truly said, "has the character of youth in its defects and its beauties. The redundance of its descriptive passages is in marked contrast to the terseness of description which Horace studies in his Odes; and there is something declamatory in its general tone which is at variance with the simpler utterance of lyrical art. On the other hand, it has all the warmth of genuine passion, and in sheer vigour ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... character, the same in the convent as in the world; above all in its sympathetic and tender instinct for the needs and difficulties of her daughters. The Perfection represents the finished and magnificent fabric of the spiritual life. Her words ring with a strange terseness and earnestness as she here pens her spiritual testament. She points out the mischievous foibles, the little meannesses, the spirit of cantankerousness and strife, which long experience of the cloister ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... terseness. Yet somehow the boy felt that Bob, in spite of what he said, would not run, and he realized for a moment the apprehension of one but newly arrived on the frontier, and still subject to tremors for his scalp. The scout ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... that were Rome's—a formula exquisite in the civility with which it exacted the renunciation of every inherent right. A king wrote to the senate: "I have obeyed your deputy as I would have obeyed a god." "And you have done wisely," the senate answered, a reply which, in its terseness, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus |
