"Verbiage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... note here only two characteristics which may or may not be evident to other readers. In the first place, with his marvelous command of meter and melody, Swinburne has a fatal fluency of speech which tends to bury his thought in a mass of jingling verbiage. As we read we seem to hear the question, "What readest thou, Hamlet?" and again the Dane makes answer, "Words, words, words." Again, like the Pre-Raphaelites with whom he was at one time associated, Swinburne lived too much apart from the ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... way that which is being done now by the most rigid of Mr. Verity's friends. It is impossible to comprehend what is meant by such a statement as that every truth is somehow connected with religion. It may be that the notion—if it really is not, as I suspect it to be, mere verbiage and clap-trap, used by certain fools to mislead others—means that there is some such coherency between all truths as there is, for instance, between the elements of the body. I would admit that, ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... illiterate production, stuffed with blunders and contradictions, giving evidence on every page of a striking unfitness either for historical or philosophical inquiry, and taxing to the utmost the patience of those who would extract what is valuable in it from its oceans of pedantic verbiage. ] ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... same time, I think one suffers more than one realises from the system of free imports. I should like, for instance, a really prohibitive duty put upon the partner who declares on a weak red suit and hopes for the best. Even a free outlet for compressed verbiage doesn't balance matters. And I think there should be a sort of bounty- fed export (is that the right expression?) of the people who impress on you that you ought to take life seriously. There are only two classes that really can't help taking life seriously—schoolgirls ...
— Reginald • Saki
... for this exceptional superiority of certain long words. We may ascribe it partly to the fact that a voluminous, mouth-filling epithet is, by its very size, suggestive of largeness or strength; witness the immense pomposity of sesquipedalian verbiage: and when great power or intensity has to be suggested, this association of ideas aids the effect. A further cause may be that a word of several syllables admits of more emphatic articulation; and as ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... to credit the composer's friend, Baron van Swieten, with the "unintelligible jargon." The baron certainly had a considerable hand in the adaptation of the text. But in reality it owes its very uncouth verbiage largely to the circumstance that it was first translated from English into German, and then re-translated back into English; the words, with the exception of the first chorus, being adapted to the music. Considering the ways of translators, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... know of anything the better. Nay, some of them, discarding all theories (in the fashion that Mr. Carlyle's heroes are wont to discard all formulas), proceed to the practical with quite an indecent rapidity; they treat my modest hints for their instruction as so much verbiage, and myself as a mere convenient channel for the publication of their lucubrations. 'You talk of a genuine literary talent being always appreciated by editors,' they write (if not in so many words by implication); 'well, here is an admirable specimen of it (enclosed), and if your ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... and fertility of his creation. For the very first time in English prose fiction every character is alive, every incident is capable of having happened. There are lively touches in the Elizabethan romances; but they are buried in verbiage, swathed in stage costume, choked and fettered by their authors' want of art. The quality of Bunyan's knowledge of men was not much inferior to Shakespeare's, or at least to Fielding's; but the range and the results of it were cramped by his single theological purpose, ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... what had been unknown to science. His earnest and straightforward manner was not that of a mountebank. There had been no attempt to surround his work with mystery, and cloak his demonstration in unmeaning verbiage. It is true I had never heard of him in the world of science, but after all an outsider often makes a great discovery under the nose ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... lightness to Boccaccio before and La Fontaine afterwards, is not in the least exposed to the charge of clumsiness of any kind, employs a simple, natural, and sufficiently picturesque vocabulary, avoids all verbiage and roundabout writing, and both in the narratives and in the connecting conversation displays a very considerable advance upon nearly all the writers of the time, except Rabelais, Marot, and Desperiers, in easy command of the vernacular. It is, therefore, not wonderful that there has, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... a brown study with his eyes fixed upon the stamped-leather devil in the panel at the opposite end of the compartment. When he spoke again, Kent wondered at the legal verbiage, and still more at the clear-cut, ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... country, are the men who are most strongly intrenched behind the highest rates in the schedules of the tariff. They are so timid morally, furthermore, that they dare not stand up before the American people, but conceal these favors in the verbiage of the tariff schedule itself,—in "jokers." Ah! but it is a bitter joke when men who seek favors are so afraid of the best judgment of their fellow-citizens that they dare not avow what ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... verbiage, however, the manifesto of the Emergency Convention of the Socialist Party of America joins with the famous Preamble of the I. W. W. and the manifestoes and programs of the Communist and Communist Labor Parties in advocating the plundering of mankind ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... record, but for the fact that it would occupy more than half of one number of the JOURNAL OF MAN. Nevertheless, I cannot deprive my readers of the pleasure and amusement derived from this correspondence. I have condensed the responses into a readable compass leaving out their useless verbiage, and putting them in a poetic form, as poetry best expresses the essence and spirit of an author's thought. I think the learned gentlemen, if they could peruse these doggerel rhymes, would acknowledge that their meaning has been expressed even more plainly ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... is this land of romantic tragedy and domestic infelicity?" questioned Davy. "How come that the movie people haven't taken it over to fit their verbiage: thrilling, stupendous, smashing, ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... in his day, though now little known, except for his Critical Observations upon the Cid; the other, a still more prolific author of novels, and alternately styled by her contemporaries the Sappho of her age, and "un boutique de verbiage;" but unquestionably a writer of merit, notwithstanding the many unmanly sneers of Boileau, whose bitter pen, like that of our own illustrious satirist, could not even consent to spare a female that had been so unfortunate as to provoke his resentment. She died in 1701, at the advanced age of ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... cleared away from it, all the chaff was fanned out of it, it was a bare absurdity,—no less than that a thing may be lawfully driven away from where it has a lawful right to be. Clear it of all the verbiage, and that is the naked truth of his proposition,—that a thing may be lawfully driven from the place where it has a lawful right to stay. Well, it was because the judge could n't help seeing this that he has had so much trouble with it; and what I want to ask your especial attention to, just ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... from this time forward, and deluged him with interviews, canvasses, meetings, great and little, and perpetual calls on his attention. His conscientiousness made him work almost unremittingly, for he determined his part in the struggle to be far more than a matter of mere verbiage and smiles. Mr. Chrysler, like a sensible fellow-Member, quite comprehended the situation, and was content to note the admirable way in which his friend did everything; to receive a smile or friendly direction here and there, and to fall back on the attentions of l'Honorable, and the ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... style—the Czar issued the famous Manifesto which acknowledged the victory of the people and the death of Absolutism. After the usual amount of pietistic verbiage by way of introduction ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... them: an they would receive it, so; an they would not receive it, so. There was no offence against decorum in all this; nothing to condemn, to damn. Not an irreverent symptom of a sound was to be heard. The procession of verbiage stalked on through four and five acts, no one venturing to predict what would come of it, when towards the winding up of the latter, Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed to stagger Elvira herself—for she had been coolly arguing the point of honour with him—suddenly whips out a poniard, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the same privileges in the country with themselves. The government of Portugal has indeed shown a wise and liberal policy by its permission for the alienation of the crown lands in Angola; but the law giving it effect is so fenced round with limitations, and so deluged with verbiage, that to plain people it seems any thing but a straightforward license to foreigners to become 'bona fide' landholders and cultivators of the soil. At present the tolls paid on the different lines of roads for ferries and bridges are equal to the interest of large sums ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... in the loftiest and most profound conceptions. Now, however, Yourii perceived that it could not have been otherwise for it was these trivial things that constituted life, the real life, full of sensations, emotions, enjoyments; and that all these lofty conceptions were but empty thoughts, vain verbiage, powerless to influence in the slightest the great mystery of life and death. Important, complete though these might be, other words, other thoughts no less weighty and important ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... devoted to the entertainment of adults, to the ministry to the pride of the flesh and the lust of things, that a child is likely to be trained to pious pride and greed, or of another type, in which religion is a matter of verbiage, tradition, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... ereo], "I speak." There is in the Hindostanee an analogous form of expression, Ek bat bolo, "one word speak." This is constantly used to denote, speaking plainly; to speak decidedly; one word only; no display of unnecessary verbiage to conceal thought; no humbug; I tell thee plainly; I speak solemnly—once for all; which is precisely the meaning of [Greek: exereo] in all the passages where it occurs in Homer: e.g. Il. i. 212. (where it is employed by Minerva in her solemn address to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... the laity in their original form, hence the necessity for condensation and presentation of the needful facts in the language of the people in whose interests the book is printed. In a book of fiction there may be need for useless verbiage for the sake of "making pages," but facts of vital importance and usefulness in our daily welfare need to be well boiled down and put into shape for ready reference. This has been done in "Mothers' ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... historian, poet, or philosopher, did not know, and his professor deemed the question improper. I visited the eleventh recitation in Othello in a high school class of nineteen pupils, not one of whom knew how the story ended, so intent had they been kept on its verbiage. Hence, too, has come the twelve feet of text-books on English on my shelves with many standard works, edited for schools, with more notes than text. Fashion that works from above down the grades and college entrance requirements are in large measure responsible for this, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... paraded lumbering predicates and hurled out epithets, foaming and floundering. He had started so many things in a speech that he scarce knew when or how to stop. Commons, both sides, rather liked to hear him struggle with his verbiage. Later he developed the rapier thrust, some snatches of humor, a trifle of contempt. He learned the value of playing with a rhetorical period that he might later leap upon a climax. Frank B. Carvell was ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... compelling spur to action. Meanwhile in the great debate, in Burke's Reflections as in Marx's Capital, in Maine and Mill and Mazzini, as among the hacks who vulgarize their results in text-books and election literature, man as he is has vanished behind a cloud of doctrine or verbiage. We need the simplicity, or cynicism, of the Greeks to ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... one, though expressed with unnecessary verbiage," replied Ning. "To what solution did your ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... heterogeneous ideas." "The Cloud" is "simple nonsense." "Prometheus Unbound" is a "great storehouse of the obscure and unintelligible." In the "Sensitive Plant" there is "no meaning." And for Shelley himself, he is guilty of a great many terrible things, including verbiage, impiety, immorality and absurdity. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... Balzac—of the great artist who was so capable at times of self-deceptive charlatanism. "Louis Lambert," as a whole, is now quite unreadable; it contains some admirable descriptions, but the "scientific" portion is mere fantastic verbiage. There is something extremely characteristic in the way Balzac speaks of its having been optional with him to make it a "purely learned" work. His pretentiousness was simply colossal, and there is nothing surprising in his wearing the mask even en famille ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... completed the study of argumentation and the science of dividing a thesis into heads, I have decided to adopt the following form for letter-writing. It contains all necessary facts, but no unnecessary verbiage. ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... a little more reality and a little less rhetoric. We are most grateful to them that they have not as yet accepted any frigid formula, nor stereotyped themselves into a school, but we wish that they would talk less and think more. They lead us through a barren desert of verbiage to a mirage that they call life; we wander aimlessly through a very wilderness of words in search of one touch of nature. However, one should not be too severe on English novels: they are the only relaxation of ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... really too bad that a man should be Secretary for Foreign Affairs who cannot speak better. The Duke made no case for the Terceira business, and delivered a very poor speech; but I like his speaking—it is so much to the point, no nonsense and verbiage about it, and he says strongly and simply what he has to say. The other night on Greece there was a very brisk skirmish between Palmerston and Peel, and the former spoke, they say, remarkably well; the latter, as ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Sheldon's assistant. The picture was labeled, "Death Ends Wanderlust of Mysterious Heiress," and the article was couched in a like style of curiosity-piquing sensationalism. Stripped of its fulsome verbiage, it told of the girl's recent death in Italy, after traveling about Europe with an invalid sister; during which progress, the article gloated, she was "vainly wooed by the Old World's proudest nobility for her beauty and wealth," the latter having been unexpectedly ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the substance of those fifty-three articles, so painfully elaborated by Viglius, so handsomely drawn up into shape by Councillor d'Assonleville? Simply to substitute the halter for the fagot. After elimination of all verbiage, this fact was the only residuum. It was most distinctly laid down that all forms of religion except the Roman Catholic were forbidden; that no public or secret conventicles were to be allowed; that all heretical writings were to be suppressed; that all curious inquiries into the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of reproducing the illustration cited will emphasise and render clear technical and mechanical features that would require many words to explain, with the attendant risk of confusing the mind by mere verbiage. ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... series of renderings of traditional stories parallel in general nature to 'The Canterbury Tales.' He is generally a smooth and fluent versifier, but his fluency is his undoing; he wraps up his material in too great a mass of verbiage. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... is undoubtedly due the material which the document embodies and the argument it contains, but it was almost certainly not written by him, but by his chaplain, Pierre L'Oyseleur, Seigneur de Villiers, to whom it owes its rather ponderous prolixity and redundant verbiage. Historically it is of very considerable value, though the facts are not always to be relied upon as strictly accurate. The Apology was translated into several languages and distributed to the leading ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... two hundred pounds for the sole right to deal with the thing on your behalf. My solicitors will send you a document full of verbiage which you had better send off to your solicitor to look through before you sign it. It will be all right. I'm going to take the proofs. Of course this stops publishing," he remarked, looking round from the dressing-table where he ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... 'We of the court' said Cyril. 'From the court' She answered, 'then ye know the Prince?' and he: 'The climax of his age! as though there were One rose in all the world, your Highness that, He worships your ideal:' she replied: 'We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear This barren verbiage, current among men, Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment. Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem As arguing love of knowledge and of power; Your language proves you still the child. Indeed, We dream not of him: when we ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson |
