"Hackneyed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... That too truthful man in the restaurant; that too truthful man in Burmah, is Mr. Bernard Shaw. He appears eccentric and grotesque because he will not accept the general belief that white is yellow. He has based all his brilliancy and solidity upon the hackneyed, but yet forgotten, fact that truth is stranger than fiction. Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... sun shone brightly in the cold blue sky, giving a warm appearance to the scene, although no sensible warmth proceeded from it, so cold was the air. Countless millions of icy particles covered every bush and tree, glittering tremulously in its rays like diamonds—psha! that hackneyed simile: diamonds of the purest water never shone like these evanescent little gems of nature. The air was biting cold, obliging us to walk briskly along to keep our blood in circulation; and the breath flew thick and white from ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... article, the writer should eliminate (1) superfluous words, (2) trite phrases, (3) general, colorless words, (4) terms unfamiliar to the average reader, unless they are explained, (5) words with a connotation inappropriate to the context, (6) hackneyed and mixed metaphors. The effectiveness of the expression may often be strengthened by the addition of specific, picture-making, imitative, and connotative words, as well as of figures of speech that clarify the ideas and stimulate ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Santa Croce, is seen under most unfavourable conditions, and would look infinitely better in the low niche of Or San Michele. Its proportions would then appear less stumpy, and we would then be captivated by the beauty of the face. It has real "beauty"; the hackneyed and misused term can only be properly applied to Donatello's work in very rare cases, of which this is one. The face itself is taken from some model, which could be idealised to suit a definite conception, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... praevalebit."—I was asked the other day whence came this hackneyed quotation. It is taken from the uncanonical Scriptures, 3 Esdras ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... To this hackneyed objection, which they repeat everywhere with the most marvellous assurance, they never fail to add the following comment, as a sort of GLORY BE TO THE FATHER: "If all men were equal, nobody would work." This anthem ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... men of letters or Grub Street reviewers, saw both Pope's Iliad and Homer's Iliad through the medium of eighteenth-century taste. Even Dennis's onslaught, which begins with a violent contradiction of the hackneyed tribute quoted above, leaves the impression that its vigor comes rather from personal animus than from distrust of existing literary standards or from any new ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... the scholar of Dr. Faustus, that "Helen of Greece was the admirablest lady that ever lived." When English poetry first found the secret of perfect music, her sweetest numbers were offered by Marlowe at the shrine of Helen. The speech of Faustus is almost too hackneyed to be quoted, and altogether too beautiful ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... She smiled very sweetly, gave her hand, said what the occasion demanded. Among the women present—all well bred—she suffered no obscurement. Her voice was tuned to the appropriate harmony; her talk invited to an avoidance of the hackneyed. ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... Papers, a series of humorous and satirical verses contributed in 1814 to the Evening Post. These were of a merely local and temporary interest; but Halleck's fine ode, Marco Bozzaris—though declaimed until it has become hackneyed—gives him a sure title to remembrance; and his Alnwick Castle, a monody, half serious and half playful on the contrast between feudal associations and modern life, has much of that pensive lightness which characterizes ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... of errors, a further sweeping away of additions, which are not integral to the Christian creeds, but which were left behind, through natural and necessary human frailty, by our great Reformers? Wise they were,—good and great,—as giants on the earth, while we are but as dwarfs; but, as the hackneyed proverb tells us, the dwarf on the giant's shoulders may see further than ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... expected,—was customary in all cases,—there was a pause of dead silence, an interval of solemnity even in this hackneyed part of the proceeding; while the prisoner at the bar stood with compressed lips, looking at the judge with his outward eyes, but with far other and different scenes presented to his mental vision; a sort of rapid ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... nor, indeed, could I recommend any one with full confidence. It would be a very desirable task for a young literary man, or, for that matter, for an old one; for the world can scarcely have in reserve a less hackneyed theme ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... goods smuggled so regularly across the Mexican and Canadian borders. Why were we content to allow the smuggling to continue without interference, simply because we felt it couldn't be stamped out anyhow? The Japanese did not resort to the hackneyed piano-cases and farming machinery; they knew better than to employ such clumsy methods. The goods they sent over the line consisted of neat little boxes full of guns and other weapons which had been taken apart. And when ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... wind that blows, the ship that goes, and the lass that loves a sailor!' And delivering himself of this hackneyed nautical toast, the pretended seaman drank off the contents of his glass, an example which was followed by the female miscreant, who responded to Frank's toast by uttering ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Built by a man of wealth, it bears to this day the impress of the large ideas and quiet elegance of colonial times; but the shadow which speedily fell across it made it a marked place even in those early days. While it has always escaped the hackneyed epithet of "haunted," families that have moved in have as quickly moved out, giving as their excuse that no happiness was to be found there and that sleep was impossible under its roof. That there was some reason for this lack ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... to Philo's philosophical monographs, which are not, as one might expect, the work of his mature thought, but rather the exercises of youth. Dissertations or declamations upon hackneyed subjects were part of the regular course of the university student at Alexandria, and Philo prepared himself for his Jewish philosophy by composing in the approved style essays upon "Providence," "The Liberty ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... straining her eyes in the moonlight, watching for Larry. At last she gives it up with a sob of impatience, and retreats to the hoary foot of the tower, where she sits down discouraged and cries a little. Then she settles herself resignedly to wait, and hums a song—not an Irish melody, but a hackneyed English drawing-room ballad of the season before last—until some slight noise suggests a footstep, when she springs up eagerly and runs to the edge of the slope again. Some moments of silence and suspense follow, broken by unmistakable footsteps. ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... grave ones; and that some words bear the impression of coarseness and vulgarity, as clearly as others do of refinement and affection. We do not mean, of course, to say anything in defence of the hackneyed common-places of ordinary versemen. Whatever might have been the original character of these unlucky phrases, they are now associated with nothing but ideas of schoolboy imbecility and vulgar affectation. But what we do maintain is, that much of the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... been pressed from such wild and bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink deep, penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches. This man's words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing into a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the inspiration of a ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... into their Northern barbarity by multiplying monosyllables and eliding vowels between the rough and frequent consonants of their language. His ignorance of the historical origins of the language and his rather hackneyed remarks on its character do not invalidate the general scheme of his Proposal or his particular criticisms of current linguistic habits, but they did lay him open to the very penetrating and decisive attack ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... issue "Stolen Brains" was fine, up to the Dr. Bird standard. "The Invisible Death" was good enough, but too much like the general run to be noteworthy. "Prisoners on the Electron"—couldn't stomach it. Too hackneyed. "Jetta of the Lowlands," by Ray Cummings; nuff said. "An Extra Man"—original idea and perfectly written. One of the reasons I hang on to Science Fiction. A perfect gem.—Philip Waite, 3400 Wayne Ave., New York, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... scarcely had the moorings been cast than further progress was arrested by a party of over-zealous fishermen on the look out for fugitive Jesuit priests. The story of the rough handling to which the poor king was subjected is a somewhat hackneyed school-book anecdote, but some interesting details have been handed down by one Captain Marsh, by James's natural son the Duke of Berwick, and by the Earl ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... which form her one freehold for all artists, and he had but the instrument of his guild—his pen; the series of his collected contributions to journals and magazines bear a no more distinctive title than the hackneyed one of 'Notes Contemporaines,' but the sub-titles betray at once the trend of originality: 'Great Souls and Little Lives,' 'The Obscure Ones,' 'Companions of the New Life'; and in the treatment of these subjects, and especially ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... him] I know what youre going to say, Count. Youre going to say that the whole thing seems to you to be quite new and unusual and original. The naval lieutenant is a Frenchman who cracks up the English and runs down the French: the hackneyed old Shaw touch. The characters are second-rate middle class, instead of being dukes and millionaires. The heroine gets kicked through the mud: real mud. Theres no plot. All the old stage conventions and puppets without the old ingenuity and the old enjoyment. And a feeble air ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... of our national life. Indeed, they form an ideal and exclusive literary concept of the American Negro to such an extent that it is almost impossible to get the reading public to recognize him in any other setting; so I shall endeavor to avoid giving the reader any already overworked and hackneyed descriptions. This generally accepted literary ideal of the American Negro constitutes what is really an obstacle in the way of the thoughtful and progressive element of the race. His character has been established as a happy-go-lucky, ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... most of the younger poets speak in accents of their own. W. W. Gibson had already reinforced the "return to actuality" by turning from his first preoccupation with shining knights, faultless queens, ladies in distress and all the paraphernalia of hackneyed mediaeval romances, to write about ferrymen, berry-pickers, stone-cutters, farmers, printers, circus-men, carpenters—dramatizing (though sometimes theatricalizing) the primitive emotions of uncultured and ordinary people in Livelihood, Daily Bread and Fires. This intensity had been asking ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... adoring look of her eyes with his own amorous glance, and in another few seconds they were part of the brilliant whirl of dancers now crowding the ball-room and swinging round in a blaze of colour and beauty to the somewhat hackneyed strains of the "Fruhlings Reigen." And as they floated and flew, the delight of their attractiveness to each other drew them closer together till the sense of separateness seemed lost and whelmed in a ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... knowledge that the fire would have to burn its way through four inside passengers before it could reach ourselves. I remarked to the coachman, with a quotation from Virgil's "neid" really too hackneyed— ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... nature to admire her, and human nature is a thing very much to be consulted. Moreover, no one ever yet saw an amiable personage, who was not so far pleasing, or, in other parlance, so far pretty. I cannot help the common course of things; and however hackneyed be the thought, however common-place the phrase, it is true, nevertheless, that beauty, singular beauty, would be the first idea of any rational creature, who caught but a glimpse of Emily Warren; and I should account it little wonder ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... to your proffered mercy, I shall decline the favour; nor do I deserve any indulgence at your hands, for, depend upon it, I shall show no mercy to you in the steps I intend to take for bringing you to justice. I understand that you have been long hackneyed in the ways of oppression, and I have seen some living monuments of your inhumanity—of that hereafter. I myself have been detained in prison, without cause assigned. I have been treated with indignity, and insulted ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... consul of the Republic of Mexico, who had the singular consular virtue of sympathizing warmly with the free North, the General's attentions were something more sincere than the hackneyed "assurances of distinguished consideration" so necessary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... lamb you are, to be sure! How lucky for you that I am always at hand to keep you from being led to the slaughter—not altar!" Eleanor laughed again at her clever play on the hackneyed phrase. ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... ban in the two preceding reigns, to be freely circulated once more.[19] But he by no means abandoned trials for lese-majeste. The rhetorician Carinas Secundus was banished on account of an imprudent phrase in a suasoria on the hackneyed theme of tyrannicide.[20] A writer of an Atellan farce was burned to death in the amphitheatre[21] for a treasonable jest, and Seneca narrowly escaped death for having made a brilliant display of oratory in the senate.[22] He also seriously meditated ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... following words are hackneyed: "wofully," "utterly," "inestimable," "magnificent," "groundwork." Suggest some synonyms. Can any of these words be omitted? Lowell's rule was: "Cut out the adjectives and adverbs. Make the nouns and ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... poet or orator which just fits the present occasion. If it be new to his audience, he adds to it a newer delight still by his matchless skill as a narrator— a skill almost the rarest of all talents among public speakers. If it be commonplace and hackneyed he makes it fresh and pleasant by giving in detail the circumstances when it was first uttered, or describes some occasion when some orator has applied it before; or calls attention to its very triteness as ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... and hackneyed claim of the Prussian megalomaniacs that they are an Imperial people, a super-race predestined by Nature and Providence to the domination of the world. It certainly seems a grotesque claim to assert ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... refused it. Mr. Boyd also told us, Cumming the Quaker first began to distinguish himself by writing against Dr. Leechman on Prayer[309], to prove it unnecessary, as GOD knows best what should be, and will order it without our asking:—the old hackneyed objection. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... economically the peculiar noise of a horse turning on a hard drive and starting away in the night, than "the sound of iron on stone"? The last two lines, surely, are close to perfection. A genuine new poet would probably have hunted long for a less hackneyed word than "plunging," but though it would possibly have sharpened his final image, it would, at the same time, in all probability, have robbed it of that very vagueness sought and captured. No, the passage pictorially and emotionally ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... corners of my apartment, after the usual fashion, there seemed to come sounds of a supernatural order, the effect of which was to send cold chills off on their regular trips up and down the spine of their victim—in this instance myself. I wish that at the time the hackneyed quality of these sensations had appealed to me. That it did not do so was shown by the highly nervous state in which I found myself as my clock struck eleven. If I could only have realized at that hour that these symptoms were the same old threadbare ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... gay laughter, Messire de Puysange, is after all but breath: and breath also"—the bishop's sharp eyes fixed Perion's—"has a hackneyed rhyme." ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... early morning, the merciless cross-light of opposing windows, was gentle with her. Yes, she was young! Moreover, she ate as a person of breeding, and seemed thoroughbred in all ways, if one might use a term so hackneyed. Rank and breeding had been hers; she needed not to claim them, for they told their own story. I wondered what extraordinary history of hers remained untold—what history of hers and mine and of others she ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... slowly across the lawn—a noble stretch of level greensward with dark spreading cedars and fine old beeches scattered about it; he walked slowly towards the gates, lighting his cigar as he went, and thinking. He was thinking of his past life, and of his future. What was it to be? A dull hackneyed course of money-making, chequered only by the dreary vicissitudes of trade, and brightened only by such selfish pleasures as constitute the recreations of a business man—an occasional dinner at Blackwall ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... human mind: the party in a hurry to effect progress because it deems progress desirable, and the party that desires to cling as long as possible to the ancient ways because it knows them and has had experience of them and looks askance at experiments—experiments for which that somewhat hackneyed phrase a "leap in the dark" has long done service. I have no intention, as I said in the Preface, of dealing at all with Japanese politics. There is no doubt a good deal of heat, and the resultant friction, evoked in connection with politics in Japan as elsewhere. ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... with the usual speeches from the chairman and others. Gwen had heard these every year, and they were always pretty much on the same theme. It is hard to be original at prize-givings, and the gentlemen who had been asked to "say a few words" might be forgiven if their remarks were somewhat hackneyed. Miss Roscoe read the examiners' report on the school, and the successes in the Matriculation and the Senior and Junior Oxfords. These the girls knew already, so, though they clapped heartily, it did not cause much excitement. Everyone was waiting in ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... an Anthology made the following remarks in his preface: "In making a selection of this kind one sails between Scylla and Charybdis—the hackneyed and the strange. I have done my best to steer clear of both these rocks.'' A leader-writer in a morning paper a few months ago made the same blunder when he wrote: "As a matter of fact, Mr. Gladstone was bound to bump against either Scylla ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... fact, utterly failed to comprehend the first principles of the doctrine which he assails so rudely. His objections to details are of the old sort, so battered and hackneyed on this side of the Channel, that not even a Quarterly Reviewer could be induced to pick them up for the purpose of pelting Mr. Darwin over again. We have Cuvier and the mummies; M. Roulin and the domesticated animals ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley
... fault is knocked out of him," continues merciless Mr. Black. "When he grows up, and has to make a speech, or write a letter for the papers, he will look out for flowers, full-blown flowers, figures, smart expressions, trite quotations, hackneyed beginnings and endings, pompous circumlocutions, and so on: but the meaning, the sense, the solid sense, the foundation, you may hunt the slipper long enough before you ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... anything, avoid repetitions, or very hackneyed expressions, such as, says he, or says she. Some people will use these so often as to take off the hearer's attention from the story; as, in an organ out of tune, one pipe shall perhaps sound ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... profoundly are we impressed by the intensity and thoroughness of conviction, the fulness and frankness of avowal, and the delicate and fervent earnestness of self-consecration, which make these ancient oracles of a human heart fragrant with the odor of true piety. He uses no hackneyed terms, no second-hand or imitated phrases. His language, as well as his thoughts, his method, and ideal standard, are purely his own. Indeed, we might set up and sustain for him a claim of absolute ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... it depends upon the point of view, to use a hackneyed phrase. You study people with a discerning eye for good qualities. Nature—and circumstances have ordered it otherwise with me. I ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not trace the hackneyed phrase Of shallow words and empty praise, And prate of "peace" till one might think My foolish pen was drunk with ink. Nor will I here the wish express Of "lasting love and happiness," And "cloudless skies"—for after ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... maiden name, and there is a plain headstone in a corner of the ground, inscribed with the name of Susan Meynell, who died July 14th, 1835, much lamented; and then the text about 'the one sinner that repenteth,' and so on," said Mr. Sheldon, as if he did not care to dwell on so hackneyed a truism. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Dane began and then swallowed the rest of his protest, knowing that Tau was not going to explain why he needed to have the hackneyed popular song of the spaceways played in a Khatkan swamp. As a Free Trader he had had quite a few odd jobs handed him during the past couple of years, but this was the first time he had been ordered to serve ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... man must serve his time to every trade Save Censure—Critics all are ready made. Take hackneyed jokes from MILLER, [9] got by rote, With just enough of learning to misquote; A man well skilled to find, or forge a fault; A turn for punning—call it Attic salt; To JEFFREY go, be silent and discreet, His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet: 70 Fear not to lie,'twill seem ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the real fact, as applicable to the degraded and hypocritical mass which leavens the present English generation, and is the only answer they deserve. The hackneyed and lavished title of Blasphemer—which, with Radical, Liberal, Jacobin, Reformer, etc., are the changes which the hirelings are daily ringing in the ears of those who will listen—should be welcome ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... which was to follow. "On the reopening of the court," records John Quincy Adams in his "Memoirs," "he [Randolph] began a speech of about two hours and a half, with as little relation to the subject-matter as possible... without order, connection, or argument; consisting altogether of the most hackneyed commonplaces of popular declamation, mingled up with panegyrics and invectives upon persons, with a few well-expressed ideas, a few striking figures, much distortion of face and contortion of body, tears, groans and ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... the theatre, in accordance with which I shall arrange that of Weymar, so far as our means will allow us. If I had a little more money I should have preferred to pay the balance which is still due on the subscription for the Weber monument in hard cash, instead of playing to the people a few hackneyed pieces. Weber must forgive a poor devil like me that I can do nothing better for him. You wrote to me about this matter many years ago, and now that the model of the monument is ready, it is a point of honour to make an end of the matter and commence casting it in metal. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... say that Mrs. Gustus seemed surprised. She was the sort of person to hide even from herself the fact that this thing had never happened before. She remained perfectly calm as if repeating a hackneyed experience. Kew was astonished. Mr. Russell shared this feeling. Having a certain personal admiration for Mrs. Gustus, he had tried on more than one occasion to find pleasure in her ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... Raved like a fiend, and cursed me for a fool. But I was firm; he could not shake my will; So, through the morning, until afternoon, He stayed at home, and drank and drank again, Watching the clock, and pacing up and down, Until, at length, he came and sat by me, To try his hackneyed tricks of blandishment. He had not meant, he said, to give offense; But women in a crowd were out of place. He wished to see the aeronauts embark, And meet some friends; but there would be a throng Of boys and drunken boors around the car, And I should not enjoy ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... South Wales Government for the Admiralty, were built to "patrol the various recruiting grounds of the Fijian and Queensland planters and place the labour-traffic under the most rigid supervision." The remark quoted above was then, as it is now, quite a hackneyed one, much used by the gallant officers who commanded the one-gun-one-rocket-tube craft aforementioned. Likewise, the "highly irregular proceedings" were a naval synonym for some of the bloodiest slaving ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... veritable apocalypse. There was something unique about the desolate grandeur of the novel surroundings that would cause a man of the Sir Charles Coldstream type to say there "is something in it," and the most hackneyed man of the world would acknowledge a new sensation. It was midnight, and the sun shone with gleaming splendor over all this waste of ice and sea and granite; on one hand Wrangel Island appeared in well-defined outline, on the other an open sea extended ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... green, trembled in pulsations across the ebony surface of the heavens, as if some vast fire beneath the horizon was flashing forth coruscations of its splendour to the dark hemisphere beyond. The floating banners of angels is a hackneyed symbol to express the oppressive magnificence of a ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... of his own, which even the piano-organ had never succeeded in making hackneyed, 'Adieu, Hiver,' and melodious as only Italian music can be. Blue beams flashed from his eyes; he seemed in a dream. Suddenly in the most impassioned part, which he was singing in a composer's voice, that is, hardly any voice, but with perfect art, he caught ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... ENGLISH EXPRESSIONS for all the slang, fine writing, and hackneyed phrases that you meet, and then use the good expressions ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... up anything like amazement in these days," continued the latter; "every other case seems stale and hackneyed alongside the case. But I must confess that when the Gables came on the books of the Yard the second time, I began to wonder. I thought there might be some tangible clue, some link connecting the two ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... understandingly, and who know how to mingle entertainment with profit. No mawkish sentimentality—no diluted commonplaces—no pompous parade of swollen words—no tumid prosiness can find admission into our columns, for we shall avoid alike the hackneyed author whose reputation takes the place of ability, and the unfledged scribbler whose crudities are utter abominations. We care nothing for mere names, though a good deed is none the worse for coming from a good hand; but the small fry of literature—the lackadaisical geniuses—Heaven bless ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... reprisals, and, with cringe and shrug And bow obsequious, hide their hate of her. All catch the frenzy, downward from her Grace, Whose flambeaux flash against the morning skies, And gild our chamber ceilings as they pass, To her who, frugal only that her thrift May feed excesses she can ill afford, Is hackneyed home unlackeyed; who, in haste Alighting, turns the key in her own door, And, at the watchman's lantern borrowing light, Finds a cold bed her only comfort left. Wives beggar husbands, husbands starve their wives, On Fortune's velvet ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... who undertakes to subjugate his wife is an example too dangerous to escape destruction from them, for will not his conduct call up against them the satire of every husband? Moreover, all of them will attack you, either by bitter witticisms, or by serious arguments, or by the hackneyed maxims of gallantry. A swarm of celibates will support all their sallies and you will be assailed and persecuted as an original, a tyrant, a bad bed-fellow, an eccentric man, a man ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... The hackneyed words came suddenly to mind, and haunted him, as his eyes wandered round the room. Amid many coarse or commonplace types, he yet perceived an unusual number of agreeable or handsome faces; as is indeed generally the case in any Austrian hotel. Faces, some of them, ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanical equilibrium. A mind is a system of ideas, each with the excitement it arouses, and with tendencies impulsive and inhibitive, which mutually check or reinforce one another. The collection of ideas alters by subtraction or by addition in the course of experience, and ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... to Tilbury I occupied myself with the hackneyed but engrossing pursuit of pondering over my affairs. Apart from my own private interest in the matter, which after all was a fairly poignant one, the mysterious adventure in which I was involved filled me with a profound curiosity. Latimer's dramatic re-entry on to the scene had thrown an ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... uttered one word of reproach to him, but she would shrink visibly when he tried to discuss his wife, and she could not even pretend to believe in the deep sincerity of a grief that seemed to find such facile solace in expression. The mode of expression, too, in hackneyed, commonplace phrases, set her ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... with eyes fixed upon vacancy, or an idle, if somewhat begrimed and parti-coloured hand, fiercely clutching a dejected head; but nearly all were already busily at work, eagerly painting, or as eagerly obliterating strokes too hastily made. The subject, hackneyed as it certainly is, had pleased and stimulated the girls. There was a mingled vagueness and familiarity in its suggestion which puzzled them and spurred them on ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... Phoebe, herself, the hackneyed, thorough-bred Phoebe, to whom all modes and devices of pleasure were known and familiar, found, it seems, in this exercise her those arbitrary tastes, for which there is no accounting. Not that she hated men, or did not even prefer them to her own ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... I called to mind those truths That are the common-places of the schools— (A theme for boys, too hackneyed for their sires,) Yet, with a revelation's liveliness, In all their comprehensive bearings known 195 And visible to philosophers of old, Men who, to business of the world untrained, Lived in the shade; and to Harmodius known And his compeer Aristogiton, [L] known ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... necessary for an orator; the second with the treatment of the subject matter; the third with the form and delivery of a speech. Cicero says of this work in a letter (Fam. i. 9. 23) that it "does not deal in hackneyed rules and embraces the whole theory of oratory as laid down by Isocrates and Aristotle." (b) Brutus, or de claris oratoribus, a history of Roman eloquence containing much valuable information about his predecessors, drawn ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... by vote, the shops such snares to His tipple-tempted and intemperate throttle He robs himself of access to the bottle,— If robbery it's called—'tis not another, (Who is a swell, with cellars) his poor brother Deprives of that long-hackneyed, much-mouthed "glass." The British Workman is not quite an ass, And where he wants to whet (with beer) his throat, Where are you like to get your two-thirds Vote? Whether there's wisdom in this vaunted Veto, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... old jest that there is not a word in the language that conveys so little endearment as the word "dear." But though the saying itself, like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... of patience to do this work. Some people are able to do lots of things that will prove entertaining. After all, what you are concocting is an entertainment. You should always aim to present something different, something original or novel that will surprise and amuse your audience, not the hackneyed old stunts that everyone has ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... poetry, and at last removed into that limbo of archaisms and affectations to which so many beautiful but dead words of our language have been unhappily banished. It is not that these words lose their lustre, as many words lose it, by hackneyed use and common handling; the process is exactly opposite; by not being used enough, the phosphorescence of decay seems to attack them, and give them a kind of shimmer which makes them seem too fine for ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... flattering ir-restraint; he seemed to be leaving his heart bare to the Frenchman. Count Victor was by these last words transported to his native city, and his own far-off days of galliard. Why, in the name of Heaven! was he here listening to hackneyed tales of domestic tragedy and a stranger's reminiscences? Why did his mind continually linger round the rock of Doom, so noisy on its promontory, so sad, so stern, so like an ancient saga in its spirit? Cecile—he was amazed at it, but Cecile, and the Jacobite cause he had ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... friend of mine informs me, that this has been so often the case, in some workhouses, that Venice treacle has acquired the appellation of 'the Lord have mercy upon me,' in allusion to the nurses' hackneyed expression of pretended grief, when infants ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... man must serve his time to every trade, Save censure.—Critics all are ready made. Take hackneyed jokes from Miller, got by rote, With just enough of learning to misquote; A mind well skill'd to find or forge a fault, A turn for punning—call it Attic salt: Fear not to lie, 'twill seem a lucky hit, Shrink not ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... anything like amazement in these days," continued the latter; "every other case seems stale and hackneyed alongside the case. But I must confess that when The Gables came on the books of the Yard the second time, I began to wonder. I thought there might be some tangible clue, some link connecting the two victims; ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... observation not been so hackneyed, I would have advised Mr. Bull to mend his way; but he seemed so thoroughly astonished ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... prince of burlesques; it stands alone of its kind, and still retains its popularity. Although there is much that belongs to the age, and much that is of only local interest, it is still read to find apt quotations, of which not a few have become hackneyed by constant use. With these, pages might be filled; all readers will ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... beautiful expression; what a beautiful idea too, that the unheeded Peace! comes back and blesses the heart that wished it, as if courteous and kind words never went unrewarded! Think again of "Solomon in all his glory" (Matt. 6:29)—before the phrase was hackneyed by common quotation. Do not such ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... hackneyed case of the Italian who tortured mice, ostensibly to find out about the effects of pain rather less than the nearest dentist could have told him, and who boasted of the ecstatic sensations (he actually used the word love) with which he carried out his experiments. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... to indicate that they ascribe considerable hygienic importance to that feature. All my researches to discover the origin and symbolical meaning of this courtesy have proved in vain; I have never obtained a satisfactory explanation to my questions on this head: all I can say is, that the hackneyed forms of salutation in use among European nations have since seemed to me far less absurd than they ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... at him and smiled with an air of compassionate superiority. "Depopulation an evil!" exclaimed Seguin; "can you, my dear sir, intelligent as you are, still believe in that hackneyed old story? Come, reflect ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... grasp of conception which enabled Keats without, and enables Landor with, the most intimate knowledge of form and detail, to return to and renew the old thoughts and beliefs of Greece; still less the mere superficial acquaintance with names and hackneyed attributes which was once poetry. Of this conventionalism, however, we have detected two instances; the first, an allusion to "shy Dian's horn" in "breathless glades" of the days we live, peculiarly inappropriate in a sonnet addressed "To George Cruikshank on his Picture ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... one of my favourite daily haunts for three whole days, not to hear that one everlasting sound; then I returned and to my great relief the birds were all at their old game of composing, and not one uttered—perhaps he didn't dare—the too hackneyed phrase. I was sharply reminded one day by an incident in the village of this old Patagonian experience, and of the strange human-like weakness or passion for something new and arresting in music or ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... blue, bookish, scholastic, solid, profound, deep-read, book- learned; accomplished &c (skillful) 698; omniscient; self-taught. known &c v.; ascertained, well-known, recognized, received, notorious, noted; proverbial; familiar, familiar as household words, familiar to every schoolboy; hackneyed, trite, trivial, commonplace. cognoscible^, cognizable. Adv. to one's knowledge, to the best of one's knowledge. Phr. one's eyes being opened &c (disclosure) 529; ompredre tout c'est tout pardonner [Fr.], to know all is to pardon all; empta ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... treated historically, dramatically and realistically in seventeen movements. The title has not yet been definitely fixed, but it will probably be known as the Symphonie Bathetique, to differentiate it from TSCHAIKOVSKY'S hackneyed work. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... roving elsewhere: they were not unpleasant ones, apparently, for he smiled twice or thrice to himself, much less icily than usual. At last he spoke abruptly, after a long pause—Miss Tresilyan's name had not once been mentioned—"Hal, you know that old hackneyed phrase, about 'a woman to die for?' I think we have seen one to-day who is worth living for; which is saying a ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Hookwell," and "Dr. Johnson, his Religious Life and his Death." In this last work, the Quarterly Review observes, "Johnson's name is made the peg on which to hang up—or rather the line on which to hang out—much hackneyed sentimentality, and some borrowed learning, with an awful and overpowering quantity of twaddle and rigmarole." The writer concludes his reviewal: "We are sorry to have had to make such an exposure of a man, who, apart from the morbid excess of vanity which has evidently led him into this ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... must have accepted this general view of their function, and many in one way or another have explicitly stated it. "As light to the eye, even such is beauty to the mind," said Coleridge, whose meaning was philosophically definite, but in no way at variance with Shakespeare's too hackneyed ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... and it was decorated with Japanese fans and Chinese lanterns, which gave it a very Old English effect. A young lady with a confidential voice favoured us with a long recitation about a little girl who died or did something equally hackneyed, and then the Major gave us a graphic account of a struggle he had with a wounded bear. I privately wished that the bears would win sometimes on these occasions; at least they wouldn't go vapouring about it afterwards. Before ...
— Reginald • Saki
... those instances where persecution proved successful. It is a hackneyed saying that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church;" and it is true that lofty virtues have been generally developed by self-sacrifice and martyrdom, and that only through great tribulation have permanent blessings ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... large double door of a barn the Huns had gone to the trouble of painting in huge letters the hackneyed phrase "Gott strafe England," and immediately our men saw it one of them, with a piece of chalk, improved ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Independence—or that which does not merge away into something else—so, in Intermediateness, neither free-will nor slave-will—but a different approximation for every so-called person toward one or the other of the extremes. The hackneyed way of expressing this seems to me to be the acceptable way, if in Intermediateness, there is only the paradoxical: that we're free to do what ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... birthday and holiday! While we have amused ourselves with the explosion of crackers and blowing off of our neighbors' arms by premature discharges of rusty cannon, while we have rent the air with squibs, shouts, and exclamations, and listened to the periodical and hackneyed outbursts of oratorical gas, how few of us have remembered the deep significance of the day, and felt our hearts swell with genuine patriotic emotion! How few of us have realized that we were celebrating not merely the establishing of a form of government, the severing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... got just the same sort of feelings inside his bosom which dwells within the silken vest of any young lady or gentleman who can weep over a novel, or better, sometimes, a deed of heroism; and right honest, genuine feelings, they are too—which is more than can be said for those hackneyed sentiments possessed by people who have lived all their lives in what they choose to ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... society which extended all over Europe, with signs and passwords, and that whenever any tyrant became intolerable, the warrant for his death was sent from Mistress Jamieson's. Whenever one fable grew hackneyed Nestie produced another, and it was no longer necessary in Muirtown Seminary to buy Indian tales or detective stories, for the whole library of fiction was now bound up and walking about in ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... so far as written or extemporaneous speech may dictate. The habit of imaging will give you choice of varied figures of speech, for remember that an address without fresh comparisons is like a garden without blooms. Do not be content with the first hackneyed figure that comes flowing to your pen-point, but dream on until the striking, the unusual, yet the vividly real comparison points your thought like steel does ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... wouldn't let me see more than a bit at a time. But I love every bit of you—heart and soul, and body and brain; I love you as I never could love any other woman in the world—the world, Frida," he added, pointing the hackneyed phrase. "You ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... the owner of the black hat with the cherries, but thus urged they were bound to fulfil their social obligations. They offered a selection of ginger-nuts and fancy biscuits, and the best silver cream-jug, and murmured some polite nothings on the hackneyed subject of the weather. The lady helped herself, and regarded them with ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... orchestra: the Hebrides, the Midsummer Night's Dream and the Fair Melusine; his Variations Serieuses for Pianoforte and some of the Songs without Words[205] contain a genuinely poetic message, flawlessly expressed. As for the pianoforte music, when the Songs without Words are called "hackneyed" we must remember that only compositions of truly popular appeal ever have sufficient vogue to warrant the application of this opprobrious term. In the pianoforte Scherzos and in the Rondo Capriccioso in E major there is without doubt ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... breach with the whole past of the world to which there is nothing comparable in human annals. We have developed wholly new powers; and, coincidentally and correspondingly, a wholly new attitude to life. Of the powers I do not intend to speak; the wonders of steam and electricity are the hackneyed theme of every halfpenny paper. But the attitude to life, which is even more important, is something that has hardly yet been formulated. And I shall endeavour to give some ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... was, at that time, what may be called a maiden character in politics. So far from being hackneyed, he appeared not to be initiated into the first mysteries of court intrigue. Everything was in his favour. Resentment against the coalition served as friendship to him, and his ignorance of vice was credited for virtue. With the return of peace, commerce ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... formal picture, with each individual posed as for a photograph, was the result. Rembrandt, apparently, was in nowise restricted when he undertook the work for Banning Cock, and so, instead of the stupid, hackneyed arrangement, he made of the portrait of the company a picture of armed men marching forth to beating of drums and waving of banners, "The Night Watch," as it must ever be known—more accurately, "The Sortie of the Company of Banning Cock"—now in the Ryks Museum of Amsterdam. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... you curiously; but there is never anything disagreeable, much less hostile in the gaze: most commonly it is accompanied by a smile or half smile. And the ultimate consequence of all these kindly curious looks and smiles is that the stranger finds himself thinking of fairy-land. Hackneyed to the degree of provocation this statement no doubt is: everybody describing the sensations of his first Japanese day talks of the land as fairyland, and of its people as fairy-folk. Yet there is a natural reason for this unanimity in choice of ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... position beside hers as if by right. His hand slipped lightly under her arm, and he turned her gently to face the direction in which he himself had set out. "That's like your impertinence. To pay you for it you shall come this way," he insisted. "It's only a step farther, it's not quite so hackneyed, and it will bring us out where we want to be. Look at ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... in his works. But woe to the stylist with character, who seeks as earnestly and perseveringly to avoid the trite phrases of everyday parlance, as the "yester-night monster blooms of modern ink-flingers," as Schopenhauer says! When platitudes, hackneyed, feeble, and vulgar phrases are the rule, and the bad and the corrupt become refreshing exceptions, then all that is strong, distinguished, and beautiful perforce acquires an evil odour. From which it follows that, in Germany, the well-known experience which befell the normally ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the occasional playgoer! Seeing only a tithe of the plays of the day, he neither knows nor cares whether they repeat one another. The most hackneyed device may seem brilliantly original to him, the stalest stage trick as fresh as if just hot from the brain; and jokes that deterred the dove from returning to the ark arride him vastly. Per contra, for his unjaded imagination absolutely new ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... sake of the Union"; "our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country";—these are the mottoes, old, stale, hackneyed, and threadbare as they may have seemed when employed as the watchwords of an electioneering campaign, but clothed with a new power, a new significance, a new gloss, and a new glory, when uttered as the battlecries ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... her especial charm seems to have been that voluptuous grace which is characteristic of Andalusian women. She was simple and pious, with a nature of great sweetness, and she never abused her power; her influence, as runs the hackneyed phrase, was always for good, and untiringly she did her utmost to incline her despot lover to mercy. She alone sheds a ray of light on Pedro's memory, only her love can save him from the execration ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... For which hackneyed quotation I will make the reader amends by a very noble one, which few, I believe, have read. It is taken from a poem called the Deity, published about nine years ago, and long since buried ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... he smiled, and quoted the hackneyed and beautiful lines from The Rape of the Lock about Belinda's diamonds, "which Jews ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... foot of the idol. But what a change had taken place within the last hour. The great square, as well as the streets leading to it was, with the exception of a small space, packed with people, as were the roofs of the buildings abutting on the square, yet the silence was so profound that, to use the hackneyed expression, one might have heard a pin drop. The small space left vacant consisted of an area some thirty feet square, bounded on one side by the sacrificial altar, and on the other by the front row of spectators, squatting on the ground, these evidently being, from the magnificence ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... gracefully and without stiltedness or intimacy. Their aim seems to be the ability to write a business letter which may be easily read, easily understood, and with the important facts in the attention-compelling places. But for the sake of those who still cling to these hackneyed improprieties (which most of them are), let us line them up for inspection. Many of them are inaccurate, and a moment's thought will give a better method ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... not sentimentalize over these. We could not mourn; the thousands that we had seen pass away made that emotion hackneyed and wearisome; with the death of some friend and comrade as regularly an event of each day as roll call and drawing rations, the sentiment of grief had become nearly obsolete. We were not hardened; we had simply come to look upon death as commonplace and ordinary. To have had no one dead ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... prospective public use of the art in the declamation of prepared passages; and the elocution-master's science has been brought into some discredit by wide discrepancies between the performances of his pupils in their well-drilled and often hackneyed selections and their ability to read unfamiliar pieces at sight. It is quite true that voice culture is greatly aided by the close study and frequent rendering of selections suitably chosen for the elocutionary difficulties which they present; but it should never be forgotten that good ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the man, did Michael go with Harry Del Mar. Like a burglar the man came, with infinite caution of silence, to the outhouse in Doctor Emory's back yard where Michael was a prisoner. Del Mar knew the theatre too well to venture any hackneyed melodramatic effect such as an electric torch. He felt his way in the darkness to the door of the outhouse, unlatched it, and entered softly, feeling with his hands for ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... The hackneyed lines sprang unbidden, as though to augment my punishment; then suddenly I reflected that it was not in my own interest I had begun to practise my deceit; and the thought of Catherine braced me up, perhaps partly because I felt that it should. I put myself back ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... author of the poetry ascribed to him, than to account for the fact, that there is nothing in the recorded or traditionary life of Shakspeare which in any way connects the poet with the man? It will not do to use the common hackneyed expression, that Shakspeare had a 'genius so essentially dramatic, that all other writers the world has seen have never approached him in his power of going out of himself.' Even the inspired writers of Scripture have their style and their expressions modified, and adapted to the peculiar idiosyncrasy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... of this disastrous legislature has excited an universal weariness; the guilt of particular members is now less discussed than the insignificance of the whole assemblage; and the epithets corrupt, worn out, hackneyed, and everlasting, [Tare, use, banal, and eternel.] have almost superseded ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... vestiges, of the cloister or the acropolis of the past, of its cathedral or its forum. The processes of our industries, in what is now their daily artisan routine, include, repeat, condense, what were yesterday or longer ago living inventions, each instinct with Promethean fire. The hackneyed ornament of our homes was once glowing with beauty, radiant or dark with symbolism. So it is for our everyday customs and institutions, and so for living languages; our own, perhaps, most of all. These, of course, are facts made familiar by investigators of all orders, from the ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... integral and necessary elements of the one Catholic faith, but have been left behind, in pardonable human weakness, by our great Reformers? Great they were, and good: giants on the earth, while we are but as dwarfs beside them. But, as the hackneyed proverb says, the dwarf on the giant's shoulders may see further than the giant himself: and so ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... whose mind has been corrupted, whose taste has been vitiated, and who has contracted a depravity, both of sentiment and manners, which no degree of repentance can wholly efface? Besides, of true love they are absolutely incapable. Their passions have been much too hackneyed to admit so pure a flame. You cannot anticipate sincere and lasting respect from them. They have been so long accustomed to the company of those of our sex who deserve no esteem, that the greatest dignity and purity of character can never excite it in their breasts. They are naturally ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... Frohman wrote very often, and which came to be somewhat hackneyed, was to his general manager, ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman |
