"Twaddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "heart, brain, and soul are all on fire," over the burning words of some Brontean Pythoness, but when you open the last thrilling work of Maggie Marigold, and are immediately submerged "in a weak, washy, everlasting flood" of insipidity, twaddle, bosh, and heart-rending sorrow, you do not shut the book with a jerk. Why not? Because in the dismal distance you dimly descry two figures swimming, floating, struggling towards each other, and a languid soupon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Chilmark's? If I'm complaisant, that's enough," said Bernard, his features relaxing into a broad grin. "I may be planked down in a country village for the rest of my very unnatural life, but I'll be shot if I'll regulate mine or my wife'& behaviour by the twaddle they talk! I'll have that dagger." Slipping it slowly into its sheath he watched it travel home, the supple female curve gliding and yielding as a woman yields to a man's caress. "Voluptuous, I call it. Under the left breast, eh?" He drew it again and held it poised and ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... a fool. Stimulate your child by all the love and appreciation at your command, but let it be intelligent appreciation, not blind admiration or prejudiced disapproval. Do you recollect how you felt and dreamed and gushed when you were a girl, the pages of sentimental twaddle (as you now call it) which you confided to the diary which you burned in disgust at twenty-one? Do you remember how genuine your distresses then seemed? You can smile at the girl you once were, but still you ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... are the most maudlin twaddle!" said Lancelot, as if he found some consolation in ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... well chosen language, and with due regard to the nice laws of metre and of grammar, which is in itself a great point. Writing verse is an occupation at which only very few even among men of literary education ever really succeed; and nine-tenths of published verse is mere mediocre twaddle, quite unworthy of being put into the dignity of print. Yet Telford did well for all that in trying his hand, with but poor result, at this most difficult and dangerous of all the arts. His rhymes ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... portraiture in general, the public may, without injury to Art or history, employ the painters who make the prettiest pictures of them; it doesn't matter to the future, if Mr. Jenkins, or even the Hon. Mr. Twaddle, has employed the promising Mr. Mahlstock to perpetuate him with a hundred transitory and borrowed graces,—if the talented young litterateur, Mr. Simeah, has been found by his limner to resemble Lord Byron amazingly, and has in consequence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... talk," he said to himself—"it's sentimental jargon, precious twaddle—all this mysterious babble about occult quality and humanity and sympathy. If Jose Querida has the capacity of a chipmunk for mental agony, I've lost my bet that ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... persons still suppose to be the distinctive characteristic of an era in architecture, is not so in fact, as Quicherat has very clearly demonstrated, and, since him, Lecoy de la Marche. The study of archives has, on this point, completely overset the hobbies of architects, and demolished the twaddle of the Bonzes. Besides, there is abundant evidence of the employment of the pointed arch side by side with the round arch in a perfectly systematic design, in the construction of many Romanesque churches; in the Cathedrals of Avignon and Frejus, in Notre Dame at Aries, in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... was a very devout man and went to church regularly, although it was beyond his strength. There was no superstition perceptible in him; he ridiculed signs, the evil eye, and other "twaddle," yet he did not like it when a hare ran across his path, and it was not quite agreeable for him to meet a priest.[34] He was very respectful to ecclesiastical persons, nevertheless, and asked their blessing, and even kissed their hand every time, but he talked with them reluctantly.—"They ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... tersely put! Hammer this into BULL's big noddle, Until he just puts down his foot On temporising timid twaddle, And you will do a vast deal more To keep our drowsy British Lion In health, and strength and wakeful roar Than all the schemes Tryon may try on. Battle's not always to the strong; The race, though, must be to—the Fleet, With us at least. We can't go wrong In making ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... all this interesting enough! But why expect me to wade through pages of twaddle about Scottish peasants and their doings—for it is evident that is what it will ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... wish, dear Ellen, you would tell me what is the "twaddle about my marrying, etc.," which you hear. If I knew the details I should have a better chance of guessing the quarter from which such gossip comes—as it is, I am quite at a loss. Whom am I to marry? I think I have ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... they misuse terribly. We put our man into a pulpit, and we virtually tell him 'Now, you may stand there and talk to us for half-an-hour. We won't interrupt you by so much as a word! You shall have it all your own way!' And what does he give us in return? Shallow twaddle, that, if it were addressed to you over a dinner-table, you would think 'Does the man take me for ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... said his wife, "this Mr. Karr, whose book about the garden—twaddle, I call it—you used to think so very fine and poetic, is just a market-gardener and nothing more. He is positively ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... youth. It was the mighty moment when Clemens was building his engines of war for the destruction of Christian Science, which superstition nobody, and he least of all, expected to destroy. It would not be easy to say whether in his talk of it his disgust for the illiterate twaddle of Mrs. Eddy's book, or his admiration of her genius for organization was the greater. He believed that as a religious machine the Christian Science Church was as perfect as the Roman Church and destined to be, more formidable in its control of the minds of men. He looked for its ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... preached at Hookham-cum-Snivey Church, by the Reverend Peter Twaddle, on the occasions, of building a dusthole for the national schools; of outfitting the missionaries who are exported annually to be eaten by the Catawampous Indians; on the death of Mr. Grubly, the retired cheesemonger, who endowed the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Pennine Alps, stoopid! From their name they would seem a suitable residence for a person who scribbles twaddle in Magazines—ahem! No personal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... fighting like the professors used to do, about whether there's a heaven or a hell! They know there's both. They're living in one and pulling folks out of the other, hard as they can; and they're too blamed busy, following out the Bible and seeing it prove itself, to listen to all the twaddle to prove that it ain't so! I sure am darned glad you gave me the tip and I got a chance to get in on this little old game, for it's the best game I know, and the best part about it is it ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... at Fenchurch Street by half-past nine. He rather expected to see old Grogan on the platform, and was not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed by his absence. On the one hand, he could hardly have borne Grogan's twaddle on the journey to Tilbury, his mind being engrossed as it was. On the other, he looked to him to cover his presence ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... write an American book," said Bart, laughing. "But your question is a good answer to my solemn twaddle on literature." ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... ears; and it needed all my diplomacy to enable me to conceal my sense of triumph. Forty odd letters! There must be an enormous amount of information in forty odd letters; unless the woman wrote the direst twaddle ever penned by ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... pick up such vulgar twaddle?" Kate demanded with her clear face. "How does such stuff, in this ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... the systematised robbery on which it was founded, that real education was impossible for anybody. The whole theory of their so-called education was that it was necessary to shove a little information into a child, even if it were by means of torture, and accompanied by twaddle which it was well known was of no use, or else he would lack information lifelong: the hurry of poverty forbade anything else. All that is past; we are no longer hurried, and the information lies ready to each one's hand when his own inclinations ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... everybody that I would like to please—but I assure you, laugh at my dreams as you may, to me my dream-life is far more attractive and beautiful than what you term Life. Forgive me if I hurt you, cousin. I'm peculiarly constituted, perhaps, but I don't like this twaddle, and I can't help it! Everything in England is so beautiful, and yet its society seems so—so hopelessly unsatisfactory to one ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... man, and so is Pearce, the chap that's defending Australia. But there's Union men and Union men. They're mainly good, but some are bad. That's one of the bad ones there. His name is Neverwork, and he never worked in his life. He's a blowhard, a gasbagger, a balloon full of curses and twaddle. This bloke thinks we're fools. He's kidded his Union on that he's a smart fellow—a sort of High Priest of Salvation. He's talked himself into a job, and he's drawing about five hundred a year out of another fellow's pockets. He's called a Socialist to-day, but he'd call himself a ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... steadily improved in its obedience to my eye. I saw the likeness, and knew it depended on the features, and that, if I could copy the features exactly, the likeness would follow just as surely as the blood follows the knife. I found early that all the talk about catching the expression was mere twaddle; the expression would take care of itself if I copied ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... people to the windows and into the street. And why butcher the victim, since so many strong men could easily have strangled him? Show me the medical report. Monsieur, does it not speak of a gash rather than a stab? And what twaddle, that about the funeral train, what betraying arrangements in a country where every sign-post has eyes! I am accused of having rushed into my uncle's house the following day and stolen some papers. Where are ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... that was a desperate measure. He got what he expected—cynicism. Begin afterwards issued a letter to the press in which he tried to set the clergy above the law of conscription. No doubt the Cardinal came at Hughes with the twaddle invented by the Nationalists and later adopted by Laurier, about enforcing the Militia Act which provided for ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... true character of note-writing—how compressed and unrambling and direct it ought to be, and illustrate by the villainous twaddle ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... to Sidonia, who dashed it away, crying—"Stuff! nonsense! you have learned all this twaddle from the priest, who, I know, is nephew to the shoe-maker in Daber, and therefore hates any one who is above him ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... genuinely honest so very honest. Namby-pamby in these days is not thrown away if it be introduced in the proper quarters. Divine peeresses are no longer interesting, though possessed of every virtue; but a pattern peasant or an immaculate manufacturing hero may talk as much twaddle as one of Mrs Ratcliffe's heroines, and still be listened to. Perhaps, however, Mr Sentiment's great attraction is in his second-rate characters. If his heroes and heroines walk upon stilts, as heroes and heroines, I fear, ever must, their attendant ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... rock-crystal prisms, not the Rochon method of double-image, but by thin wedges cut to given angles. I have told Mr. Alvan Clark my "experiences." and I hope he will apply his excellent mind to the scheme. I am insisting upon this point in some astronomical twaddle which I am now printing, and of which I shall soon have to request your ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... patient, with a short laugh. "Well, I've heard that it would do great things, but I never took any stock in it; it seemed like so much twaddle to me. You are sure you're ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... that even in our day there are editors who employ convict labor in this way. But I am sure that this is not so, for we live in an age of competition, and it is just as cheap to hire the great men to supply twaddle direct as it is to employ foreign paupers to turn it out with the extra expense of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... indulge your fancy, and, in addition to keeping your journal, keep it locked up, for it is quite enough to endure all the children's twaddle, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... musical performances. But here, too, the old leaven of Oxford burst forth sometimes. Of course, we generally performed the music of Handel and other classical authors; Mendelssohn's compositions were still considered as mere twaddle by some of the old school. At one of these evenings, the old organist of New College, with his wooden leg, after sitting through a rehearsal of Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise, which I was conducting at the pianoforte, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... looks like a school-girl she cannot write a clever book if gifted that way, is a condition of non-intelligence I fail to fathom! You speak of this author as a 'he.' Do you think only a male creature can produce a work of genius? Look at the twaddle men turn out every day in the form of novels alone! Many of them are worse than the worst weak fiction by women. I tell you I've lived long enough to know that a woman's brain can beat a man's if she cares to test it, so long as she does not fall in love. When once that disaster ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... that, my reader, as a specimen of embittered eloquence and nervous pith? It is something to read massive and energetic sense, in days wherein mystical twaddle, and subtlety which hopelessly defies all logic, are sometimes thought extremely fine, if they are set out in a style which is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... 1. Tilde (ASCII 1111110, ''). Also called 'squiggle', 'sqiggle' (sic — pronounced /skig'l/), and 'twaddle', but twiddle is the most common term. 2. A small and insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one bug and generates several new ones (see also {shotgun debugging}). 3. /vt./ To change something in a small way. Bits, for example, are often twiddled. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... indecencies stink in the nostrils. Its liberty is the wildest license; its love the essence of the lowest lust! Priapus—worshipping obscenity. Rant and rubbish. Linguistic silliness. Inhumanly insolent. Apotheosis of Sweat. Mouthings of a mountebank. Venomously malignant. Pretentious twaddle. Degraded helot of literature. His work, like a maniac's robe, bedizened with fluttering tags of a thousand colors. Roaming, like a drunken satyr, with inflamed blood, through every field of lascivious thought. ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... rational souls, has contrived to crowd into his definition of person more errors of conception and of language,—more insult to common sense,—than one could have believed it possible to put together in such space. And this ridiculous old twaddle, after six and twenty years, he has deliberately re-written and lately republished as something "adapted to the schools of America." It stands thus: "Person is a distinction which is made in a noun between its representation of its object, either as spoken to, or ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... very honest man, perfectly open and candid, and the last person to use ambiguous phraseology, among his friends; unless, indeed, he saw no other way of putting a stop to the intrusion of unmannerly twaddle amongst the bitter-sweet memories stirred in his affectionate nature by so heavy ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... into chapel to read, not out of any respect for some people's old-womanish twaddle about the sacredness of the place,—but because some of the blues might see you.—Yale Lit. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... saw and heard Sago talking to the Misses Frost—not only talking but in a manner so familiar that it must have been extremely nauseating to the cultured young women. The three were standing under the electric light at the corner, and the young women instead of appearing annoyed at the heathen's twaddle, seemed to be highly amused. Only the greatest exercise of self-restraint kept Mr. Hamshaw from kicking Sago into the ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the infernal, ridiculous twaddle!" he exclaimed. "Now what the devil have you done to yourself? ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... capitalize our own artistic assets, which we often allow to lie idle before we ever utilize them properly. The water front, Telegraph hill, the ocean shore, Sutro Heights, and Lincoln Park are all waiting to be developed in such a way as the Exposition suggests. The talk of cost is idle twaddle. If the Exposition, as an artistic investment, pays - and I see no reason whatever why it should not pay for itself - then we cannot do anything better than to invest our money wisely in other artistic improvements of a ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... like all poets, a regular humbug. Any peg served to hang his stuff on,—from a child of nine to a girl of eighteen. The stupidest thing ever written is what he called his 'New Life' or 'Vita Nuova.' I read it once, and it made me pretty nigh sick. Think of all that twaddle about Beatrice 'denying him her most gracious salutation'! That any creature claiming to be a man could drivel along in such a ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... from good," sighed old gentleman No. 2; "but we will continue to endure our hardships for months, or for years if need be, rather than allow the Prussians to enter Paris." This sort of Lacedemonian twaddle went on during the whole time of my visit, and my cousin evidently was proud of being surrounded by such Spartans. I give a specimen of it, as I think these worthies ought to be gratified by their heroic sacrifices being made public. "I'd rough it in a ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... will forgive your twaddle about sargeant M'Clure, the stroke of the sun, the trooper's helmet, and the night among the wolves. I will listen to your old soldier's stories all night, only go on and play for me. Give me that simple air again. Let me drink it in ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... consequences of our public acts and institutions in moulding the next generation. It will not, I think, be amiss to pass beyond policy for a space, and to insist—even with heaviness—that however convenient an institution may be, however much it may, in the twaddle of the time, be a "natural growth," and however much the "product of a long evolution," yet, if it does not mould men into fine and vigorous forms, it has to be destroyed. We "save the state" for the sake of our children, that, at least, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... talk to the half-wise, twaddle; when you talk to the ignorant, brag; when you talk to the sagacious, look very humble, and ask ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bewildered by all the novelties he has seen, but without the slightest real addition to his previous knowledge of Spanish character and customs. Six months afterwards, the new work on Spain by Ensign Epaulet or Tedious Twaddle, Esquire, issues forth, borne on a mighty blast of puffery, from the laboratory of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... Germans, but who have never lived by sea-power, and peoples who, like the Russians and Chinese, have neither sea-power nor a sea-folk's blood, never use sea terms in their ordinary talk. They may dress up a landsman and put him on the stage to talk the same sort of twaddle that our own stage sailors talk—all about "shiver my timbers," "hitching his breeches," and "belaying the slack of your jaw." But they do not talk the real sea sense we have learnt from the handy man of whose strange life ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... Hong-kong paper describing Sir G. Bonham's investiture as K.C.B., and advises me to imitate him for my own interest, rather than Sir J. Davis, who was recalled. Davis, says Yeh, insisted on getting into the city, and Bonham gave up this demand. Hence his advice to me. All through the letter is sheer twaddle. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... break the hush and remind one of a sentient world. Perhaps the author and his Indian guides occasionally exchanged a word, or the two white companions and himself indulged in a laugh that started the rattling echoes of the hills, but there was no chatter, no twaddle, no dissensions. The narrative reads like a story. Reading it, one longs to start for LAKE GLAZIER to-morrow, and thence descending, halt not in his long course until his faithful canoe slips out into the waters of the Southern Gulf, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... a hovel, Twiddle had a palace; Twaddle said: "I'll grovel Or he'll think I bear him malice"— A sentiment as novel As a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... having written to a cousin excusing herself, she gets a mocking letter telling her that he is married already; when the remorseless turn of Fortune's wheel loses her the real lover whom she at last really does love—then it is not mere sentimental-Romantic twaddle; it is a slice of life, soaked in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... these torsos of the haberdasher, one is not brought to thoughts of sad mortality. Their joy is so exultant. And all the things that they hold dear—canes, gloves, silk hats, and the newer garments on which fashion makes its twaddle—are within reach of their armless sleeves. Had they fingers they would be smoothing themselves before the glass. Their unbodied heads, wherever they may be, are still smiling on the world, despite their divorcement. Their ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... hairy, sly face. "Those blasted nationalists," he growled; "they spend their time shoving the idea of revenge into folks' heads, and patching up hatred with their Leagues of Patriots and their military tattoos and their twaddle and their newspapers, and when their war does come they say 'Go ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... twaddle, farce, travesty and by-play regarding Tommy! You know I warned you, over and over, and you mustn't blame me for the deception. I never thought you'd take it so in earnest!" and here the jovial Major again went ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... and with excitement, raising himself in his chair, "am I to shut myself up within these four walls with nothing to interest me from day to day beyond your inane twaddle? No, I thank you. I will have the house full,—full—do you hear, Marcia?—and that without delay? Do you want me to die of ennui in this bare ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... he laughed, treating the whole affair as a huge joke, "how romantic it sounds! Fancy meeting you again after all this time, and saving your life! I suppose the papers will be full of it if they get to know—gallant rescue, and all that kind of twaddle." ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... "That twaddle I don't understand. . ." Ivan Dmitritch brought out in a hollow voice, and he sat down on ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Thorn," I repeated with emphasis. I knew he had in mind that abominable twaddle about ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Rebecca, angrily, "ef I can hev the pleasure o' bein' rid o' you, Copernicus Droop, it'll be cheap at the price—but the's no sech luck. Ef you think ye can fool us any more with yer twaddle 'bout cuttin' meridians, ye're mistaken—that's ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... of course, goes out in behalf of the old line; and all sorts of stories are told about winter passages, the importance of boats especially built for strength, and the advantages of experience. Now, the history of the American line is a perfect refutation of all this twaddle. The truth is, that all voyaging is connected with exposedness to some danger; and up to this moment the Americans have had, in all their ocean steam voyages, the full measure of success. They have lost no boat, they have sacrificed no lives, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... bore off to the left along the crest into the ridgeway, which they followed till it intersected the high-road at the Brown House aforesaid, the spot of his former fervid desires to behold Christminster. But he forgot them now. He talked the commonest local twaddle to Arabella with greater zest than he would have felt in discussing all the philosophies with all the Dons in the recently adored university, and passed the spot where he had knelt to Diana and Phoebus without remembering that there ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Nothing would stop him, apparently. He even made the most stupid repetitions. Nora finally stamped her foot formidably. "Will you stop? Will you stop ? " she said through her clenched teeth. " Do you think I want to listen to your everlasting twaddle about her? Why, she's-she's no better than other people, you ignorant little mamma's boy. She's no better than other people, ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... that your degree was not in the least a proof of your abilities: he said that you knocked up and got flurried in examinations. Oh!"—her cheek flushed,—"I wish I was a man. The whole world lies before them. They can do anything. They aren't cooped up with servants and tea parties and twaddle. But where's this dell where the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... incessant play, eternal balls, comedies three times a week, a great show of dress, that is the States. I am forgetting three or four hundred pipes of wine which are drunk; but, if I did not reckon this little item, the others do not forget it, and put it first. This is what is called the sort of twaddle to make one go to sleep on one's feet; but it is what comes to the tip of your pen when you are in Brittany and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... stirred, and lifted their heads wearily, and gazed at each other wistfully, dreamily, dazed; then presently began to twaddle to each other in a wandering and childish way. At intervals they lapsed into silences, leaving a sentence unfinished, seemingly either unaware of it or losing their way. Sometimes, when they woke ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... are those for whom all this is unmitigated twaddle and bosh. To mention abnegation, sacrifice, etc., to such people is to speak in a language no more intelligible than Sanskrit. Naturally one of these will expect his children to appreciate the sacrifices he makes for ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... criticising a lady's novel: her English might be faulty, but we said to ourselves her motives are irreproachable; her imagination may be uninventive, but her patience is untiring. Empty writing was excused by an empty stomach, and twaddle was consecrated by tears. But no! This theory of ours, like many other pretty theories, has had to give way before observation. Women's silly novels, we are now convinced, are written under totally different circumstances. The fair writers have evidently never talked to a tradesman except from ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... children, these children and roadside arabs, for the want of education, ambition, animation, and push, are indulging in practices that are fast working their own destruction and those they are brought into contact with, and a great deal of this may lay at the door of flattery, twaddle, petting, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... keen on dinner invitations. And because he was a son of Vondeplosshe the same family friends endured his conceited twaddle and his knock-kneed, wicked little self, and sighed with relief when he went away. It would be so much easier to send these dethroned sons of rich men a supply of groceries and ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... such circles any where in the Country. As to intemperate women, five cases are all of whom the writer has ever heard, in such circles, and two of these many believed to be unwarrantably suspected. After following in Miss Martineau's track, and discovering all the falsehood, twaddle, gossip, old saws, and almanac stories, which have been strung together in her books, no charitable mode of accounting for the medley remains, but to suppose her the pitiable dupe of that love of hoaxing so often ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... they actually exist. I shall not now, however, proceed to show how the universe of Astral Light may be considered under the symbol of an Icosahedron. I shall only state that this conception of the Aryan philosophers is not to be looked upon as mere "theological twaddle" or as the outcome of wild fancy. The real significance of the conception in question can, I believe, be explained by reference to the psychology and the physical science of the ancients. But I must stop here and proceed to consider ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... optimist, but this is not true. He is cheerful, but he does not sing, "Tra la la, all the things that are, are good." He says, "There are bad things, but I must carry on and fight the good fight." His is a philosophy of courage and endurance, but not of optimistic twaddle. He is too wide-brained to speak of life as "all good" when he knows of inherited disease, cruelty, preventable poverty, gross neglect and unmerited misfortune. Yet he lends hope and comfort to the afflicted, and he has an unvarying comfort for his ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Spenser, only a strange, trumpery material, muddled by jongleurs and romance writers, and reduced to mere fairy stuff, taken seriously only by Don Quixote, and by the authors of the volumes of insane twaddle called after Amadis of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... And I'm going to Fomishka's and Fimishka's oasis. And do you know what I should like to say? There's twaddle here and twaddle there, only that twaddle, the twaddle of the eighteenth century, is nearer to the Russian character than the twaddle of the twentieth century. Goodbye, gentlemen. I'm drunk, so don't be offended at what I say, only a better woman ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... musical discussion-societies, away with your chord-factories! Not all the twaddle of the harmonic kitchens would ever help him to find a new harmony that was alive, alive, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... representative of cat-hood in the abstract, which was a most important element in the economy of the universe. It was when Aunt Charlotte stigmatised these philosophical reflections as a pack of impertinent twaddle that Austin had had the audacity to say that she ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... against the weakness which some of her sex exhibit, of growing fond of husbands who, without being Admirable Crichtons, treat them kindly and with forbearance. Next, she must have thrown overboard all the twaddle about domestic duties and responsibilities. If her child sickens of the measles just as she is starting for her bivouac in Norway, or a course of dinners in the Palais Royal, her duty is to call in the doctor and go. Weeks afterwards you will find the little darling picking ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... push altruism too far, and for Margaret, at her age and with her attractions, to go fooling around with medicine, with the mistaken idea that she was benefiting humanity, was nothing more or leas than damned twaddle. If she wanted to do something why not take up her ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... burden of her song, till at last I got very tired of it, and on the third evening I broke away from her, saying, "Law, granny how you do twaddle!" upon which she called me a good-for-nothing young blackguard, and felt positively sure that I should be hanged. The consequence was, that granny and I did not part good friends; and I sincerely hoped that when I had come back ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... consequently of the conversation of lady politicians, made up as it is of these details and personalities. And the more interested I am in the thing itself, the more angry I am with the nonsense they talk about it, and had rather listen to the most humdrum domestic twaddle. Mind, I mean the regular hardened lady politicians who talk of nothing else, of whom I could ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... to the waterhole, it's cool there, and better fun than listening to an old woman's twaddle. The sun's down ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... that of reading aloud with ease and grace. Great are the sufferings inflicted on a sensitive ear by listening to one's favourite passages, touching in pathos, or glorious in sublimity, travestied into twaddle by the false taste or the want of practice of the reader. For it is not always from false taste that the species of reading above complained of proceeds; on the contrary, there may be a very correct perception ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... of his high name for scholarship by the fact that he had written dozens of books which nobody else had even read. So he said, friendlily enough: "Then that would seem to settle your pretensions. To have talked twaddle in Paff's beer-cellar is the one real proof of literary merit, no matter what sort of twaddle you may have written in your book, or in many books, as I am here in this academy to attest. Moreover, I am old enough to remember when cookery-books were sold openly upon the newsstands, and in consequence ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... in it. Perhaps it helped a man into Parliament, Parliament still being a confused retrogressive corner in the world where lawyers and suchlike sheltered themselves from the onslaughts of common-sense behind a fog of Latin and Greek and twaddle and tosh; but I wasn't the sort to go into Parliament, unless I meant to be a lawyer. Did I mean to be a lawyer? It cost no end of money, and was full of uncertainties, and there were no judges nor great solicitors among ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... all, three words before we quit the subject. I have put in this chapter on fighting of malice prepense, partly because I want to give you a true picture of what every-day school life was in my time and partly because of the cant and twaddle that's talked of boxing and fighting with fists now-a-days. Even Thackeray has given in to it; and only a few weeks ago there was some rampant stuff in the Times ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... pages of similar twaddle, meant to show that the mayor of Amiens was a most tolerant prince, in that he had not ordered the destruction of every cross set ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... cant words, of no very definite, and of merely conventional, meaning, for any thing said or done in ignorance of the true propriety of the matter in question. "C'est du rococo," it is mere stuff, or nonsense, or rather twaddle. It was born on the stage, about ten years ago, at one of the minor theatres at Paris, though probably borrowed from a wine-shop, and most likely will have as brief an existence as our own late "flare-up," and such ephemeral colloquialisms, or rather ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... seizes us in even the prose of such a book as Rousseau's Confessions. Macaulay thought the Prelude a poorer and more tiresome Excursion, with the old flimsy philosophy about the effect of scenery on the mind, the old crazy mystical metaphysics, and the endless wilderness of twaddle; still he admits that there are some fine descriptions and energetic declamations. All Macaulay's tastes and habits of mind made him a poor judge of such a poet as Wordsworth. He valued spirit, energy, pomp, stateliness of form and diction, and actually thought Dryden's fine lines ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... imperfection in the world. He notes the weakness and failures of the best intentioned, takes cognizance of the low motives that so often dominate, and bases his conclusions on them. He spurns the idealistic twaddle of those who, he says, are guided by their hopes rather than by ordinary good sense, and fancies himself a practical man. He expects little ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... seldom read the magazines. But Algernon always has a look at them.' There was something to me very droll, and cheery too, in this picture of the illustrious recluse snatching at the current issues of our twaddle. And I was immensely pleased at hearing that my article had 'interested him very much.' I inwardly promised myself that as soon as I reached home I would read the article, to see just how it might have struck Swinburne. When in due course I did this, I regretted the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Review wants me to 'do' a series on famous English bishops," he reported, humbly. "I had meant to refuse, because it would all have to be dull High-Church twaddle. And the English Gentleman wants some rather outrageous lying done in defense of the Corn Laws. You would not despise me too much—would you, Mildred?—if I undertook it now. I really have no choice. And there is plenty of hackwork of that sort available to keep us going ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... great many vulgar suggestions and unpleasant innuendoes. As a dramatic critic said in my hearing a day or two later, when discussing the popular entertainments of London, 'Most of these shows consist of vulgar, brainless twaddle.' Still, the audience laughed and cheered, and when the curtain finally fell, there was a good deal of applause. Certainly the entertainment would be a great contrast to the experiences which the lads who were home on leave had been going through. ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... styles as varied and marked as one could wish. The purport of these messages, which were written rather quickly, and without perceptible thought or hesitation, changing from one handwriting to another without the least apparent difficulty, was in some instances the veriest twaddle, while others contained tolerably good sense, even in language rather above the Medium, unless appearances were misleading, for she looked the embodiment of ignorant simplicity, and spoke ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... the patronage of the Bombay Government. However interesting the Brahmanas may be to students of Indian literature, they are of small interest to the general reader. The greater portion of them is simply twaddle, and what is worse, theological twaddle. No person who is not acquainted beforehand with the place which the Brahmanas fill in the history of the Indian mind, could read more than ten pages without being disgusted. To the historian, however, and to the philosopher ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... twaddle. Don't I know how that child has been a cancer in my very heart—burning and gnawing and making me ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Twaddle of this sort was being bandied about when Trimalchio came in; mopping his forehead and washing his hands in perfume, he said, after a short pause, "Pardon me, gentlemen, but my stomach's been on strike for the past few days and the doctors ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... gathers; and insult good, sound, wholesome common sense with the sickening affectations they are pleased to call 'aesthetics.' Don't waste your time, and dilute your own mind by quoting the silly twaddle of a poor girl who was turned loose too early on society, who falls on her knees in ecstasies before a hideous broken-nose tea-pot from some filthy hovel in Japan; and who would not dare to admire the loveliest bit of Oiron pottery, or precious old Chelsea claret-colored china in Kensington ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... powerful mind never deals in anecdotes, unless it be for the purpose of illustrating some general principle. Women and weak men are all addicted to the vice. If a person of this description begins to annoy a company with his or her twaddle, the only cure for it is to affect deafness—a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... looked hard at us. His eyes were as keen as frost; but they twinkled—just a little, as I have discovered they can and do twinkle if one isn't afraid to say right out what one means, without unnecessary fuss and twaddle. ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... who could not bear the idea of losing Barbican, laughed the whole thing to scorn. Belfast, they said, had seen as much of the Projectile as he had of the "Open Polar Sea," and the rest of the dispatch was mere twaddle, though asserted with all the sternness of a religious dogma and enveloped in the usual ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... the darker powers) I recited to her slowly that familiar verse which the well-known Satyricus Empiricius was for ever using in his now classical attacks on the grammarians; and without any Alexandrian twaddle of accents I intoned to her—and so left her astounded to repentance ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... humbug you are"—he gave the dead man words—"what a colossal humbug. You and your nice Sunday go-to-meeting thoughts. It's so easy, isn't it? to dress up one's rottenness in pretty sentimental twaddle. But you don't deceive anybody. You don't even deceive yourself, not for three minutes at a stretch. You know that underneath all your humbugging pretenses the black sin is unchanged. You are no better and no worse than I was. You are exactly the same ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... the whole scheme of letter-writing; you sit down every day and pour out an equable stream of twaddle. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Well, why not! An Inca can do nothing. He is tied hand and foot. A constitutional monarch is openly called an India-rubber stamp. An emperor is a puppet. The Inca is not allowed to make a speech: he is compelled to take up a screed of flatulent twaddle written by some noodle of a minister and read it aloud. But look at the American President! He is the Allerhochst, if you like. No, madam, believe me, there is nothing like Democracy, American Democracy. Give the people ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... twenty years the papers have never been tired, as to the death of convicted criminals: the impressive scene, the chaplain—who has always converted the victim—the hardened criminal preaching to his fellow convicts, the battery of guns, the convicts on their knees; and then the twaddle and reflections which never lead to any change in the management of the prisons where eighteen hundred ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... that ridiculous twaddle. It was trying to flirt with a silly school-girl. What will do for fifteen is ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... Nell became aware that the dark eyes had turned from the window to her face, and she paused and looked up. There was a faint dash of color on Mr. Vernon's cheeks, and a tightening of the lips. It seemed to Nell, judging by his expression, that he had suddenly become impatient of the twaddle, and she instantly dropped the paper on her lap. But Mrs. Lorton was enjoying herself too much to ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... Socialism I care much about,' he continued, with the air of giving a solid reason. 'It seems to me that Westlake's going off on a road of his own, and one that leads nowhere. All that twaddle to-day about the development of society! I don't think he spoke of me as he might have done. You'll see there won't be half a ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... twaddle to yourselves!" he exclaimed impatiently, "or take my advice, and make for the nearest duck pond. You've both gone over your depth in the Governor's Madeira, and I advise you to keep quiet until you've had your heads in a basin of ice ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in the same category. The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the 'Truth of Spiritualism' is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made to talk twaddle by a 'medium' hired at ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... it then—he's insane. I don't care to read any more such twaddle and I won't pay for the services of such a man out of the funds of the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... vault of ice,—that these two indications, leading to the same conclusion, go far to convince me he was a profoundly immoral and irreligious spirit, with as rare faculties of intelligence as ever belonged to any one. All this may be mere goody weakness and twaddle, on my part: but it is a persuasion that I cannot escape from; though I should feel the doing so to be a deliverance from a most painful load. If you could help me, I heartily wish you would. I never take him up without high admiration, or lay ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... drive that into an Oriental skull. This is what makes the study of precious stones so interesting. There is always some enchantment, some evil spell. To handle the drums is to invite a minor accident. Call it twaddle; probably is; and yet I have reason to believe that there's ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... taught us that drawing-room twaddle? Call on your grandmother! Listen to the wind among the pines! Yours is ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... I know," was the testy interruption; "but the world is not so easily led in matters of religion. The message, as you say, is divine; but it may sound like meaningless twaddle to the world at large. If we are to heal mankind and dispel the heresy of disease and death, why can't Holiest Mother save herself? Mind you, I am looking at this thing with the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... about Nationalism and Freedom and English Misrule, but Mr. Quinn waved his hands before his face and made a wry expression at him. "All your talk about the freedom of Ireland is twaddle, John Marsh ... if you don't mind, I'll begin callin' you John Marsh this minute ... an' I may as well tell you I don't believe in the tyranny of England. The English aren't cruel—they're stupid. That's what they are—Thick! ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... cultivated, points at America as a nation composed of all social excrescences; the friars and their enslaved Spaniards want again to cajole and cheat us with offers of participation in public affairs, recognition of the military grades of ex-rebel chiefs, and other twaddle degrading to those who would listen to it. In fact, they have called into their councils the sons of the country, whilst they exclusively carry out their own ideas, and reserve to themselves the right to set aside all the resolutions at a stroke. They ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Then he asked me all about you heretics, and he told me you were all going to—be burned up, as soon as you died; for the Inquisition couldn't do it for you in these degenerate days. After a great deal more twaddle like this, I asked him why you heretics all had such hard names, that we others never could speak them? Then he looked mysterious, so! [here Miss Rita diabolically winked one eye,] and said he: 'I will tell you, per Bacco! hush, it's because they ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Rosmer interrupts the Rector's tete-a-tete with the fascinating Rebecca, and declines the proffered editorship, because he is a Radical, and an atheist. End of Act I.,—no action to speak of, but a good deal of wordy twaddle. In Act II. we learn that the late Mrs. Rosmer has committed suicide, because she was informed that the apostate Pastor could only save his villainy from exposure by giving immediately the position of wife to her friend Rebecca. She has had this ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... samples, though their coats may not be of the finest broadcloth, nor their fathers 'solid men.' Women lead in society, and when men find that they can not only dress with taste, but talk with sense, the lords of creation will be glad to drop mere twaddle and converse as with their equals. Bless my heart!" cried Christie, walking about the room as if she had mounted her hobby, and was off for a canter, "how people can go on in such an idiotic fashion passes my understanding. Why keep up an ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... bad things, and the good is good and the bad is bad. Bob knows nothing of the cant which makes the robber monopolist only the sad victim of forces outside his control. Bob knows nothing of the sentimental twaddle about that interesting class of people who are more sinned against than sinning. Bob, like Nature, indulges in no fine distinctions. When he meets a bad Sultan he punches his head. When he meets a good Sultan, nothing is too ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... not a doubt that he meant this melodramatic twaddle. It did not seem twaddle or melodramatic to her—or, for that matter, to him. She clasped him more closely. "What's the matter, dear?" she asked, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... hulks on outdoor relief, lifting each an ounce of mould with a shovel, while 5000 lads are pretending to break stones," and exclaims, "Can it be a charity to keep men alive on these terms? In face of all the twaddle of the earth, shoot a man rather than train him (with heavy expense to his neighbours) to be a deceptive human swine." Superficial travellers generally praise the Irish. Carlyle had not been long in their country when he formulated ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... theme, and great by skill, and greater by a writer's soul honestly flung into its pages, "Uncle Tom," to the surprise of many that twaddle traditional phrases in reviews and magazines about the art of fiction, and to the surprise of no man who knows anything about the art of fiction, was all the rage. Not to have read it was like not to have read the Times for ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... never believed any of that twaddle. Only, I've got a sore head to-day. If you knew Nora as well as I ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... from which he had been drinking. "You talk sometimes that white-livered stuff about not hitting a man back if he wants to hit you, and you drag in your conscience, and prate about all men being brothers, and that sort of twaddle. A full-blooded Englishman don't like it, because we are all of us out to protect what we've got, any way and anyhow. But that doesn't alter the fact that there's something wrong in the world when we're driven to do this ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 'meetin's over,'" whispered Sibley, as Miss Burton rose from the piano. "I'm sick of all this pious twaddle, and would a thousand-fold rather listen to the music of your voice out under ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... thou liest around; thou mightest do something—and thou dost nothing; thou liest with thy well-fed belly upward and sayest: 'It is proper to lie thus, because everything that men do is nonsense, and twaddle which ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... your own house, so long as you do not attempt to interfere with my plans. Sit up, girl, if you choose, and talk. I am prepared to listen even though your twaddle bores me." ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... together regardless of meaning, should so bewilder men and deprive them of all wise and sober judgment! By my faith! ... I would as soon listen to the gabble of geese in a farmyard as to the silly glibness of such inflated twaddle, such mawkish sentiment, such turgid garrulity, such ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... like Hegel's such pusillanimous twaddle sounds simply loathsome. Bounds that we can't overpass! Data! facts that say, "Hands off, till we are given"! possibilities we can't control! a banquet of which we merely share! Heavens, this is intolerable; such a world is no world for a philosopher to have to do with. He must have all or ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... which are buried in the publishers' files. This man is an honour to the profession, and I believe there are many such. Certainly there are many who sigh wistfully when they must lay aside some cherished writing of their own to devote an evening to illiterate twaddle. Five book manuscripts a day, thirty a week, close to fifteen hundred a year—that is a fair showing for the head reader of ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... old themes, to try to recognise them whenever they crop up, is not only to lose one's enjoyment of the music, but to run a fair risk of misapprehending it altogether, and the drama as well. This jack-fool twaddle about there being not a single phrase in an opera which has not grown out of another is manifestly absurd—for out of what does the first one grow?—and utterly untrue. In every scene of Tristan an ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... "More twaddle! Anybody might think that the man was going to be robbed!" cried Lousteau. "Why, my dear boy, if the minister buys the newspaper, the druggist may make twenty thousand francs in six months on an investment of thirty thousand. Matifat is not looking at the newspaper, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... me drink. Too much Nature's been my ruin. I'd be sober enough in a big town with lively streets and bustle and riot and row. I wouldn't drink there. I'd show them the pace, I'd go it myself once more and be d——d to all this rot and twaddle about Nature! Nature doesn't care for me. So careful of the type she seems, but so careless of the single life. She doesn't bother her head about me, or you, or Henry ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... contempt and antipathy which such an athletic and boisterous genius as Fielding's must have entertained. He couldn't do otherwise than laugh at the puny Cockney bookseller, pouring out endless volumes of sentimental twaddle, and hold him up to scorn as a moll-coddle and a milksop. His genius had been nursed on sack-posset, and not on dishes of tea. His muse had sung the loudest in tavern choruses, had seen the daylight streaming in over thousands of emptied bowls, and reeled home to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so sure about that. I know many eminent saints in the church who will eat lobster salad for supper, and then send for the doctor and minister before morning. There is a precious twaddle about 'mysterious Providence.' Providence isn't half so mysterious as people make out. The doctor is expected to look serious and sympathetic, and call their law-breaking and its penalty by some outlandish Latin name that no ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... in the admirable beauty and brilliance of the poem. The successive scenes are given with so firm and clear a touch—there is such a sense of form, the language is such a dexterous elevation of the ordinary social twaddle into the mock-heroic, that it is impossible not to recognize a consummate artistic power. The dazzling display of true wit and fancy blinds us for the time to the want of that real tenderness and humour, which would have softened some harsh passages, and given a more enduring charm to the poetry. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... about publishers and editors. It's not for SUCH animals you work—it's for those who know, coloro che sanno; so keep straight for me if you can't keep straight for yourself. There was a certain sort of thing you used to try for—and a very good thing it was. But this twaddle isn't in it." When I talked with Hawley later about "Rutland Ramsay" and its possible successors he declared that I must get back into my boat again or I should go to the bottom. His voice in short was the ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... dance: N is the Nose she turned up at each glance: O is the Olga (just then in its prime): P is the Partner who wouldn't keep time: Q 's a Quadrille, put instead of the Lancers: R the Remonstrances made by the dancers: S is the Supper, where all went in pairs: T is the Twaddle they talked on the stairs: U is the Uncle who 'thought we'd be going': V is the Voice which his niece replied 'No' in: W is the Waiter, who sat up till eight: X is his Exit, not rigidly straight: ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... themselves, or loll about afterward like gorged snakes, they think it is smart to laugh at all the sweet and beautiful things in life, and to sneer at people who believe in ideals, and to talk about mankind being merely a fortuitous product of fermentation, and twaddle of that sort. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... appeal for the marsupial martyr Is based upon an ancient nursery model; But he will find that he has caught a Tartar, Who hints that Punch is talking heartless twaddle. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... screechin' by a woman, Little squawkin' by a man, Then the organ's twiddle-twaddle, Jest the empty space to span,— An' ef you should even think it, 'T is n't proper fur to say That you want to hear the ol' tunes ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... place here. The slavery that Lessing had really taken on him was that of a great library, an Alcina that could always too easily witch him away from the more serious duty of his genius. That a mind like his could be buried in a corner is mere twaddle, and of a kind that has done great wrong to the dignity of letters. Where-ever Lessing sat, was the head of the table. That he suffered at Wolfenbuettel is true; but was it nothing to be in love and in debt at the same time, and to ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... new to Miss Winchelsea to find herself deploring the want of gifts in a friend. That letter was even criticised aloud in the safe solitude of Miss Winchelsea's study, and her criticism, spoken with great bitterness, was "Twaddle!" It was full of just the things Miss Winchelsea's letter had been full of, particulars of the school. And of Mr. Snooks, only this much: "I have had a letter from Mr. Snooks, and he has been over to see me on two Saturday afternoons running. He talked about Rome and you; we ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... before last, or Einar of Brekka caught a brown dog-fox yesterday. Or if a man stepped over to a neighbour's for a moment: Any hunting? Anyone shot a fox? Our Gisli here caught a grayish brown one last evening. Such incessant twaddle! ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various |
