"Topical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... four naturally brings everything to a practical focus and seems to me admirable. Chapter five, too, impressed me as very useful. The topical questions and their answers in the appendix was a very happy thought and adds materially to the value of the book."—Dr. G. ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... took Titterby away to the large red-brick establishment which he now adorns, certain papers which were left lying in his study passed into my hands, for I was almost his only friend. It had long been Titterby's belief that a great future lay before the librettist who should produce topical light operas on the GILBERT and SULLIVAN model, dealing with our present-day economic crises. The thing became an idee fixe, as the French say, or, as we lamely put it in English, a fixed idea. There can be no doubt that he was engaged in the terrible task of fitting the current coal dispute ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... and in the study just as eleven struck. Tony and Welch, arriving half-an-hour later, found him hard at work copying out an article of topical interest in a fair, round hand, quite unrecognizable as ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... subject of each paragraph is printed in bold-faced type, thus specially adapting the book to the topical method of recitation. This feature also serves as a guide to the pupil in ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... account of certain matters relating to them being premised, such as excrementitious discharges, critical days, and other appearances, and concluding with certain symptoms which are the concomitants of fevers. The third book relates to topical affections, beginning from the crown of the head and descending down to the nails of the feet, and so on. Briefly, the fourth book treats of external diseases; the fifth, of wounds and bites from venomous animals; the sixth book is the most ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... illustrate this book, as set forth above, were taken at the Grahame-White Flying School, the London Aerodrome, Hendon, by operators of the Topical Press Agency, 10 and 11, Red Lion ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... the first. It is assumed that recreation means amusement, idle and purposeless, if not skittles with beer and tobacco, then the music-hall with beer and tobacco, the comic man bawling a topical song and executing the famous clog-dance. If one points out that it is not amusement that is meant, but recreation, which is explained to mean a very different thing, while a truer conception of what recreation really means ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... and Scripture reading which had excited the discontent of the Pike County children and their parents was not discontinued, but half an hour before recess was given up to some secular choruses, patriotic or topical, in which the little ones under Twing's really wonderful practical tuition exhibited such quick and pleasing proficiency, that a certain negro minstrel camp-meeting song attained sufficient popularity to be lifted by general accord to promotion to the devotional ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... clicking noise made by one of the stage hands on two sticks, which gradually rises to a shattering crescendo as the curtain is drawn aside. It must be understood that the theatre that I am describing was set apart for national drama. In others there are topical farces and laughter is continuous; but I did not visit any. On board ship, however, we had a series of performances of such pieces by the Japanese cabin attendants and waiters, many of whom were professional actors. The Japanese passengers enjoyed ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... she had perceived a snake in her path. She was thinking hard. That story which Billie had told her on the boat about the man to whom she had been engaged, whose mother had stolen his trousers on the wedding morning ... it all came back to her with a topical significance which it had never had before. It had lingered in her memory, as stories will, but it had been a detached episode, having no personal meaning for her. But now.... "She did that just to stop you going out to lunch with a ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... 'All Boche'—because it is," he remarked. And then he sang a string of purely topical verses, brilliantly clever in their allusions to the everyday events in which they all bore their part, and he did not spare the failings of various officers and N.C.O.'s, who were supposed to be imaginary, but whom everybody recognised; and ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... had undertaken to boom the "Valley House Heirloom Theft" had almost limitless circulations. One of them possessed a Continental edition, and the other was immensely popular because of its topical illustrations. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... books, but all that gives them a title to rank as literature in the highest sense is perennial. Their vitality is the vitality not of one or another blood or tongue, but of human nature; their truth is not topical and transitory, but of universal acceptation; and thus all great authors seem the coevals not only of each other, but of whoever reads them, growing wiser with him as he grows wise, and unlocking to him one secret after another as ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... other pains and tenderness of the bones and muscles of the thighs and legs. The citric acid was given to him freely from the beginning, until it interfered with his appetite and bowels, when it was omitted. Topical applications were at the same time used, and afterwards continued. Signs of amendment appeared before it became necessary to withhold the vegetable acid, and it was not recurred to while he remained on board. Urged by impatience of control, he left us to join his countrymen before he had well regained ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... unfortunately been necessary to abandon [Page ix] the chronological order in favor of the topical, for during the early years at Hull-House, time seemed to afford a mere framework for certain lines of activity and I have found in writing this book, that after these activities have been recorded, I can scarcely ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... thought of taking it down to the office now. It's topical, so there's just a chance they'll use it ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... soubrette trilling snatches of her topical song as she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe's dressing room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the chopping. Overhead, moving scenery created ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... hyssop that I had smelled. The emanation was the odour of bad whiskey—and, worse still, of low comedy—the sort that small humorists manufacture by clothing the grave and reverend things of legend and history in the vulgar, topical frippery that passes for a certain kind of wit. Michob Ader as an impostor, claiming nineteen hundred years, and playing his part with the decency of respectable lunacy, I could endure; but as a tedious wag, cheapening his egregious story with song-book levity, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... all the time while the others slept, it seemed to Peter. He wrote verses about the adventures of his fellow-prisoners, and presently he was writing verses about the jailers, and about other prisoners in this part of the jail. He would have moods of inspiration, and would make up topical verses as he went along; then again he would sink back into his despair, and say that life was hell, and making rhymes ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... affected with chronic catarrh is usually much benefited, probably locally, as indicated by Dr. Weber, by the readier separation of the mucus. I have also had cases of tuberculous ulceration of the larynx, in which the ulcers have healed under topical and general treatment, though Dr. Weber states ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... have now an opportunity," said the Syrian; "the north of Palestine, though it has no topical splendor, has much variety and a peculiar natural charm. The burst and brightness of spring have not yet quite vanished: you would find our plains radiant with wild-flowers, and our hills green with young crops; and, though we cannot rival Lebanon, we have forest ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... and ribbed with ripe and sober research. This catalogue (nearly 600 pages) is a marvellous precis of the works of the human spirit. And here and there, buried in a scholarly paragraph, one meets a topical echo: "THE OXFORD SHAKESPEARE GLOSSARY: by C.T. ONIONS: Mr. Onions' glossary, offered at an insignificant price, relieves English scholarship of the necessity of recourse to the lexicon of Schmidt." Lo, how do even professors and privat-docents belabour ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... stick to it. Better a fairly good plan faithfully followed, than the best plan if used brokenly or only occasionally. Probably all the numerous methods of study may be grouped under three general heads, wide reading, topical study, and textual. We all do some textual study in a more or less small way. Digging into a sentence or verse to get at its true and deep meaning. We all do some topical study probably. Gathering up statements on some one subject, ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... catenation. Hence contagious matter, which has for some weeks stimulated the system into great and permanent sensation, ceases afterwards to produce general sensation, or inflammation, though it may still induce topical irritations. See Sect. XXXIII. 2. 8. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... glance at one or two further instances of the diffusion of "Blandy's fatal fame." None of the varied forms of the Newgate Calendar—that criminous Who's Who?—fails to accord her suitable if inaccurate notice. With other letter-writers of the time than the genial Horace the case forms a topical subject. James Granger reports to a reverend correspondent that "the principal subject of conversation in these parts is the tragical affair transacted at Henley.... It is supposed, as there is no direct and absolute proof that she was guilty, and ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... o'Clock Club assembled in the foyer. How far what later followed was due to their presence and to the efforts of the press agent only that gentleman can tell. It was in the second act that Miss Blanche Winter sang her topical song. In it she advised the audience when anxious to settle any question of personal or national interest to "Put it up to the Man in the Moon.'" This night she introduced a verse in which she told of her desire to know which horse on the morrow would win the Suburban, ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... "Death of Poor Mailie," though Browne is wholly lacking in that delicate humour which Burns possesses, and which overtakes the tenderness of the poem as the lights and shadows overtake one another among the hills. The other eclogue, " The Invasion," has something of a topical interest at a time like the present, when England is once more engaged in war with a continental power; for it was written when the fear of a French invasion of our shores weighed heavily upon the people's ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... tasks, are not so clearly present, if present at all, in special aids given to all the population in matters of public sanitation, personal hygiene and the care of the sick. If we make our public aid topical rather than by classes, and to all citizens alike in definite aid, we avoid much of the taint of charity. Few, if any, propose, for example, to give maternity aid to the rich. Fewer still advocate old-age pensions for those of independent incomes of moderate size. Many see, however, that ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... animal food, and from spirituous or fermented liquors; and by the exhibition of purgatives, or at least of laxatives. Then leeches or blisters applied to the part affected will produce a good effect; and even stimulant applications to the inflamed part may be advantageous; for a topical inflammation, as we shall afterwards have occasion to see, depends on a debilitated state of the minute vessels of the part, while at the same time the action of the whole system ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... but even the authors agreed that it wanted bringing up-to-date in parts. They explained that it was, in a manner of speaking, their life-work, that they had actually started it about ten years ago when they were careless lads. Inevitably, it was spotted here and there with smart topical hits of the early years of the century; but that, they said, would be all right. They could freshen it up in a couple of evenings; it was simply a matter of deleting allusions to pro-Boers and substituting lines about Marconi shares and mangel-wurzels. "It'll be ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... beginning of each paragraph; thus impressing the leading idea on the mind of the pupil, enabling him to see at a glance the prominent points of the lesson, and especially adapting the book to that large and constantly increasing class of teachers, who require topical recitations. ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... same time the total length of Hamlet's speeches far exceeds that of those allotted by Shakespeare to any other of his characters. Humorous relief is, it is true, effectively supplied to the tragic theme by Polonius and the grave-diggers, and if the topical references to contemporary theatrical history (II. ii. 350-89) could only count on an appreciative reception from an Elizabethan audience, the pungent censure of actors' perennial defects is calculated to catch the ear of the average playgoer of all ages. But it is not to ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee |
