"Verbose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upheld by their highest courts, and struck them down, at a time when the country was unfamiliar with the conception of the United States as a national force. Many of those of judges of inferior ability do not rise above their source. They are verbose, repetitious, slovenly, inaccurate in statement, loose in form; perhaps sinking into a humor or sarcasm always out of place in the reports;[Footnote: See, for instance, Mincey v. Bradburn, 103 Tennessee Reports, 407; Terry v. McDaniel, ibid., 415; Hall-Moody Institute v. ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... was the ultra-respectable Abram S. Hewitt, a millionaire capitalist. The Republican party nominated a verbose, pushful, self-glorifying young man, who, by a combination of fortuitous circumstances, later attained the position of President of the United States. This was Theodore Roosevelt, the scion of a moderately rich New York ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the affair had not, perhaps, been laboriously collected as yet, but luckily Mrs. Heth was not the sort that requires a mass of verbose testimony and dull statistics. The right note awaited her touch six floors below, and time was pressing. Already her mind had flown well ahead, perceived with precision just what was required. Willie must be seen, and at least two ladies, of different sets, great gossips, for preference; ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a verbose and affected poet, has told this story with unusual simplicity: it is rather given here for being much esteemed by the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... but from the victor's privilege of verbose taunting he had no redress. After all, it would be a transient victory. Parish might "rub it in" now, but in a few hours he would be dangling at ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... a biographical dictionary little lives of celebrities he had never heard of. To be printed, anywhere and anyhow, was a form of glory for a man so unable to be acted, and to be paid, even at encyclopaedic rates, had the consequence of making one resigned and verbose. He couldn't smuggle style into a dictionary, but he could at least reflect that he had done his best to learn from the drama that it is a gross impertinence almost anywhere. He had knocked at the door of every theatre in London, and, at ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... papers, which General Johnston said were from Mr. Reagan, Postmaster-General. He and Breckenridge looked over them, and, after some side conversation, he handed one of the papers to me. It was in Reagan's handwriting, and began with a long preamble and terms, so general and verbose, that I said they were inadmissible. Then recalling the conversation of Mr. Lincoln, at City Point, I sat down at the table, and wrote off the terms, which I thought concisely expressed his views and wishes, and explained that I was willing to submit these terms to the new President, Mr. Johnson, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... a man very well educated for his time, whether self taught or not one cannot say; but that he was an excellent draughtsman, and had a complete knowledge of geometry, is evident from the wonderful drawings in his book, and the careful though rather verbose directions he gives for perspective drawing. Many of his numerous designs for furniture and ornamental items, are drawn to a scale with the geometrical nicety of an engineer's or architect's plan: ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... that there was any particular gift in Mr. Chadband's piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of their determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody's experience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... generalizations, they are neither so clearly apprehended, nor so much respected, as they would be were they deduced from some simple first principle. We are told that "brevity is the soul of wit." We hear styles condemned as verbose or involved. Blair says that every needless part of a sentence "interrupts the description and clogs the image;" and again, that "long sentences fatigue the reader's attention." It is remarked by Lord Kaimes, that "to give the utmost force to a period, it ought, ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... breath with the length and vehemence of the tirade, which her feelings had prompted her to utter with crescendo violence. She was verbose; but the lawyer had listened with the most perfect patience and unflagging attention to every word ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... correspondents in whom he had confidence, and permit them to copy his opinions in advance of their delivery upon their pledges that they should not be printed before they were officially made public. He wrote a great many editorials, somewhat ponderous and verbose, for the Washington Union, and the elaborate statements on executive matters made by the correspondents who enjoyed his favor were ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... sounds that first struck on his ear and fired his manly soul—the beat of the rolling drum. Then comes a description of the terrible conflict that occurred in his native village, between the three most prominent men of the day. This, not to be too verbose, he simply likens to being ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... book last mentioned, and adding a long reply. The proceeding was honest, but rather suicidal. One may not wholly admire the famous editor of the Univers.[441] But nothing could better throw up his clear, vigorous, classical French and trenchant logic, than the verbose and ambaginous preciousness, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... people as lived in Paris in the eighteenth century! ineffective, sardonic, verbose, sociable, intellectual, elegant, immoral—grand gentlemen and ladies, with tears for mimic woes and none for actual ones, praise for wit, rewards for cleverness, and absolute ignorance of the destinies they were preparing for ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... accomplishing yet for a long time, for Mazzini has a mind far in advance of his times in general, and his nation in particular,—a mind that will be best revered and understood when the "illustrious Gioberti" shall be remembered as a pompous verbose charlatan, with just talent enough to catch the echo from the advancing wave of his day, but without any true sight of the wants of man at this epoch. And yet Mazzini sees not all: he aims at political emancipation; ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... human, but, like so many very natural and human things, very silly. Tillotson and the rest need not, after all, be pitied for our neglect of them. They either know nothing about it, or are above such terrene trifles. Let us keep our pity for the seething mass of divines who were not elegantly verbose, and had no fun or glory while they lasted. And let us keep a specially large portion for one whose lot was so much worse than merely undistinguished. If that nameless curate had not been at the Thrales' that day, or, being there, had kept the silence that so well became him, his ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... expressed about Wagner in his capacity of philosopher. To some he appears as a verbose dilettante totally unable to put two ideas logically together, while others look up to him as a teacher of the profoundest truths. I cannot say that either view is wrong. On the one hand he possessed ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... Vaccinated a Vapouring, Verbose Varmit of a Vulgar Villainous Vagabond, who Very Verdantly Ventured on a Versatile, Veteran, Valueless Velocipede to Visit the Viceroy of Venice, instead of Visiting Cole's ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... of Rome, and became autocephalic. Even bishops in Tuscany abandoned communion with the see of Rome because the council and Vigilius had condemned Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas (v. supra, 93). Justin II attempted to heal the schism, and his verbose edict may be found in Evagrius, Hist. Ec., V, 4. A serious problem was presented to the Roman see. In dealing with them, however, it was possible to treat each group separately. On account of the Lombard invasion ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... canzons, and other attempts after Italian masters. The style, both verbal and poetical, needs chastising in places, and Barnes's expression in particular is sometimes obscure. He is sometimes comic when he wishes to be passionate, and frequently verbose when he wishes to be expressive. But the fire, the full-bloodedness, the poetical virility, of the poems is extraordinary. A kind of intoxication of the eternal-feminine seems to have seized the poet to ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... his way in speech, as best he could, past conventionalities. There had dawned on him, duskily and half-seen, the unfitness of little proprieties and verbose frills while he went to war across the roofs with ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... side, and expressed a wish that he were conversing with a writer able to sustain the opposite part. With his experience and skill in rhetoric, his long habitude of composition, his knowledge of life, of morals, and of character, he should be less verbose than Cicero, less gorgeous than Plato, and less ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... writers of his own and the following generation, even men so great as Gibbon and the young Ruskin, and women so brilliant as Fanny Burney. Then a reaction came and it was generally denounced as pompous, empty and verbose. After the Revolution people gave up wearing wigs, and with the passing of wigs and buckle-shoes there came a dislike of the dignified deportment of the eighteenth century in weightier matters than costume. Now Johnson, whatever he did at ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... is she, an authoress? "Yes, she is." But, like other authoresses, she isn't appreciated, and has returned to her legitimate occupation, the Wash-Tub; but still doth she itch for fame, and so, between times, she writes verbose essays on Female Suffrage, composed during the process known as "wringing." And when there's a Woman's Rights Convention in that locality, she sits on the platform, and applauds all the Red-Hot Resolutions with that trenchant female weapon, ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... the House of Lords on Friday night. He attacked Pechell and Codrington for having attacked him[14] because he had abused the Navy in his Slavery speech, and was very violent, tedious, and verbose. He informed the House that he had written a remonstrance to the Speaker for not having called the two sailors to order, and he treated them with great contumely and abuse in his speech. Lyndhurst[15] made him very wroth by asking him 'if he had any right to write ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... and verbose was the sermon that day, for not only was the preacher aware that bright eyes looked upon his deeds, but he saw his enemies in the front of the battle. Surely all extemporaneous speakers, in court, pulpit, or senate, must be accessible to such external influences. It ought not to be so, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... altar of grand opera—simple, kindly souls, with little or no taste for classical music, who have sat in the dark (mentally and physically), applauding what they didn’t understand, and listening to vague German mythology set to sounds that appear to us outsiders like music sunk into a verbose dotage. I am convinced the greater number would have preferred a jolly performance of Mme. Angot or the Cloches de Corneville, cut in two by a ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... series of articles and stipulations, long papers of rules and restrictions which were considered a necessary part of fine tapestry weaving. These papers are tiresome to read—the constitution of many a nation or a state is far less verbose. They give the impression that the craft of tapestry weaving is beset with every sort of small deceit, so protection must be the arrangement between master and worker, and between the factory and the great outside world, lying in wait to tear with avaricious claws any ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... the Irish people will not disgrace their country by allowing such a work to be published abroad. We are too often and too justly accused of deficiency in cultivated taste, which unfortunately makes trashy poems, and verbose and weakly-written prose, more acceptable to the majority than works produced by highly-educated minds. Irishmen are by no means inferior to Englishmen in natural gifts, yet, in many instances, unquestionably they have not or do not cultivate the same taste for reading, and have not the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... betray you. "Thy speech bewrayeth thee"—Matt. xxvi 73. There is much justice in the observation that Burke is often verbose, yet such paragraphs as this prove how well he knew to condense and prune his expression. It is an excellent plan to select from day to day passages of this sort and commit them to memory for recitation when the ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... Traditions of that kind of people. In Tragedy, nothing was so sure to Surprize and cause Admiration, as the most strange, unexpected, and consequently most unnatural, Events and Incidents; the most exaggerated Thoughts; the most verbose and bombast Expression; the most pompous Rhymes, and thundering Versification. In Comedy, nothing was so sure to please, as mean buffoonry, vile ribaldry, and unmannerly jests of fools and clowns. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... their own words was the cause why many people were so silent. It was common to hear that a man was afraid to hear himself talk. By reducing therefore the signs of speech, a stimulus would be given to the reserved and a curb imposed upon the verbose. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... the original historians. In one of the Ramblers, Dr. Johnson praises Knolles (a General History of the Turks to the present Year. London, 1603) as the first of historians, unhappy only in the choice of his subject. Yet I much doubt whether a partial and verbose compilation from Latin writers, thirteen hundred folio pages of speeches and battles, can either instruct or amuse an enlightened age, which requires from the historian some tincture of philosophy and criticism. Note: * We could have wished that M. von Hammer had ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... had listened in deepening distaste. Surely the young man very much magnified his office, was in manner exaggerated, in matter aggressive and verbose? Notwithstanding its attempted solemnity and heat, his sermon seemed to be conventional, just a "way of talking," and a conceited one at that. But, as he proceeded to set forth his promised examples of local ill-living, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... he knew a thing, he knew it; then he either acted or did not act, as the circumstances might dictate. And when the deed was done or left undone, and was quite beyond the reach of criticism, he would send in a verbose, voluminous report, written out in several colored inks, on all the special forms he could get hold of. The heads of departments would be too busy for the next twelvemonth trying to get the form of the report straightened out to be able to give any attention ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... ever-shifting kaleidoscopic grouping. And then the audience suddenly were aware that the medley had divided into two harmonious sub-medleys, whilst, in the chasm left towards the front, Cleo stood majestically and addressed a verbose harangue to the Basha, her relation to whom was known from the title of the play. In full view and hearing of so heterogeneous a crowd did the Basha in return reproach her with coldness and indifference to him, which she vehemently denied, playing the ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... bloodless face of the horrified murderer? But Griffin deserves mention other than as a dramatist and novelist. It is saddening to know that in an age where so much weak sentiment, scarcely discernible in its wealth of verbose ornamentation, is so easily imposed upon the public under the name of poetry, that so much really good poetry should be forgotten and unread. One is often provoked to regret that the scalping knife has become ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... naturally anxious, as we thought that in steering straight ahead, as we had done, we ought to have reached the ships with which we had the rendezvous. So far as we could, with the roar of the wind and the propeller, we held a consultation—nothing verbose—in mid-air to determine what would be the best move. We decided to alter our course so as to be sure of getting in sight of land. Half an hour later we saw the first sign of life since we had been out—an old tramp steamship. Ten minutes after we sighted land. When you are ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... the Vicar of Wakefield. The tale spins along, and the incidents rattle on with the volubility of a good story-teller who warms up as he goes, but who never stops to think of his sentences and phrases. He often gets verbose, rings the changes on a point which he sees to have caught his hearers; he plays with a fancy out of measure, and turns his jest inside out and over and over, like a fine comic actor when the house is in a roar. His language is free, perfectly clear, often redundant, sometimes grandiloquent, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... immediately expended on Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum and Mattheson's Volkommener Capellmeister—heavy, dry treatises both, which have long since gone to the musical antiquary's top shelf among the dust and the cobwebs. These "dull and verbose dampers to enthusiasm" Haydn made his constant companions, in default of a living instructor, and, like Longfellow's "great men," toiled upwards in the night, while less industrious ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... soaked in cold water, thus imitating to a certain extent our William Ptynne, who would from time to time momentarily suspend his interminable scribble to recruit exhausted nature with a moistened crust; only the verbose author of "Histriomastix" used to dip his crusts in Strong ale. And the bitter old pamphleteer, for all that his ears had been cropped and his cheeks branded by the Star Chamber, lived to be nearly seventy. Jules Noriac was never to be seen abroad until noon. His breakfast, ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... listening all the time with apparent indifference to the discussions of her friends. Frequently tempted to take a share in the conversation, she bit her lips in order to check her desire. Her soul of energy and action was inspired with secret contempt for the tedious and verbose debates which led to nothing. Action was expended in words, and the hour passed away taking with it the opportunity ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... on the fatal night in question." After these preliminary reflections comes a narration of the facts much in the words in which I have given them. This is followed by a statement of the arguments for the prosecution and for the defence, consisting of a number of verbose paragraphs, each beginning, "considering that," &c. The case of the prosecution was clear enough. The medical evidence proved that the father died of the wounds received on the above-named night. The fact that the wounds were inflicted by the prisoner, was established ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... commonly called MONK Lewis, from his once popular romance of that name, was a good-hearted man, and, like too many of that fraternity, a disagreeable one—verbose, disputatious and paradoxical. His Monk and Castle Spectre elevated him into fame; and he continued to write ghost-stories till, following as he did in the wake of Mrs. Radcliffe, he quite overstocked the market. Lewis visited his estates in Jamaica, and came back perfectly negro-bitten. He promulgated ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... rescue those who had survived the slaughter of the first day: nothing of this. On the 3rd of September, (that is, the day after the commencement of the massacre,[3]) he writes a long, elaborate, verbose epistle to the Assembly, in which, after magnifying, according to the bon-ton of the Revolution, his own integrity, humanity, courage, and patriotism, he first directly justifies all the bloody proceedings of the 10th of August. He considers the slaughter of that day as a necessary ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... only with great difficulty, owing to her criticism of Mr. Stobell's signature. It took the united and verbose efforts of Messrs. Chalk and Tredgold to assure her that it was in his usual style, and rather a good signature for him than otherwise. Miss Vickers, viewing it with her head on one side, asked whether he couldn't make his mark instead; ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... and vernacular, from (Professor Antoine) Galland's delightful abbreviation and adaptation (A.D. 1704), in no wise represent the eastern original. The best and latest, the Rev. Mr. Foster's, which is diffuse and verbose, and Mr. G. Moir Bussey's, which is a re- correction, abound in gallicisms of style and idiom; and one and all degrade a chef d'oeuvre of the highest anthropological and ethnographical interest and importance to a mere fairy book, a nice present ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... 104; dwell on, insist upon. digress, ramble, battre la campagne[Fr][obs3], beat about the bush, perorate, spin a long yarn, protract; spin out, swell out, draw out; battologize[obs3]. Adj. diffuse, profuse; wordy, verbose, largiloquent|, copious, exuberant, pleonastic, lengthy; longsome[obs3], long-winded, longspun[obs3], long drawn out; spun out, protracted, prolix, prosing, maundering; circumlocutory, periphrastic, ambagious[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... verbose and ostensibly so sincere as to be received without the slightest cavil. Naturally our task-masters studiously declined to extend any enlightenment upon the matter, preferring to lull the visitors into a false haven of credibility. Unfortunately we discovered that we had to pay indirectly ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... those tacit agreements, those veiled complaisances in which every one who wears ecclesiastical habit excels, or perhaps simply from a happy want of intelligence, a helpful stupidity, the old nun brought formidable support to the conspiracy. They had imagined her timid; she proved herself bold, verbose, violent. She was not troubled by any of the shilly-shallyings of casuistry, her doctrine was like a bar of iron, her faith never wavered, her conscience knew no scruples. She considered Abraham's sacrifice a very simple affair, for she herself would have ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... phrase which has been much discussed, dismissed the poetry of Joseph Warton by saying that he had "no choice at all." It is evident to me that Gray meant by this to stigmatise the diction of Joseph Warton, which is jejune, verbose, and poor. He had little magic in writing; he fails to express himself with creative charm. But this is not what constitutes his interest for us, which is moreover obscured by the tameness of his Miltonic-Thomsonian versification. What should arrest ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... application of sea terms to land objects, Captain Samuel Crowe has a good deal of the rough charm of his prototypes. Still more distinct, and among Smollett's personages a more novel figure, is the Captain's nephew, the dapper, verbose, tender-hearted lawyer, Tom Clarke. Apart from the inevitable Smollett exaggeration, a better portrait of a softish young attorney could hardly be painted. Nor, in enumerating the characters of Sir Launcelot Greaves ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... ventolilo. Ventriloquist ventroparolisto. Venture riski. Venture risko. Venturous riska. Veracious verema. Veracity vereco. Verandah balkono. Verb verbo. Verbal parola. Verbena verbeno. Verbatim (adv.) lauxvorte. Verbiage babilajxo. Verbose parolegema. Verbosity parolegeco. Verdant verdanta. Verdict jugxo. Verdigris verdigro. Verdure verdajxo. Verger pedelo. Verify verigi, ekzameni. Verily vere. Veritable vera. Verity vereco. Vermicelli vermicxelo. Vermifuge kontrauxvermajxo. Vermilion ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... couched in the most impressive words, that the traitor shall be punished; which will make all the more noticeable the utter defeat which verbose royalty soon afterward suffers. Renard worsts the king's messengers; Bruin the bear has his nose torn off; Tybert the cat loses half his tail; Renard jeers at them, at the king, and at the Court. And all through the story ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... they made the most of what they had to do, which was not much, and of what they had to say, which was a great deal too much; for the piece would be far more tolerable if considerably shorn of its unfair proportions. The translator seems to have followed the verbose text of his original with minute fidelity, except where the idioms bothered him; and although the bills declare it is adapted by Mr. Charles Selby to the English stage, the thing is as essentially French as it is when performed at the Palais Royal, except where the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various |
