"Verbosity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... loser thereby, was the unpardonable sin itself in the eyes of Thorold, as he hoped it might be in the eyes of St. Peter. Joyfully therefore he joined his friend Ivo Taillebois; when, "with his usual pompous verbosity," saith Peter of Blois, writing on this very matter, he asked him to join ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... not hold any very intimate relations. The sentiments entertained by Baldwin for Mackenzie seem to have been closely akin to those entertained by Sir John Falstaff for the troops with whom he declared that he would not march through Coventry. Mackenzie's noisy verbosity and self-assertion offended the patrician instincts of Mr. Baldwin, to whom, indeed, the little proletarian was altogether distasteful and repulsive. This feeling, however, seems to have been due to the antipathetic natures of the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... provided for starting supplies to Knoxville by all practicable routes as soon as the siege should be raised. He cut trenchantly through pretences where he thought a lack of vigorous performance was covered up by verbosity of reports. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 233.] He was quietly but easily master, and showed no symptom of being overweighted by his task or flurried by the excitements of a critical juncture in affairs. He does not impress one as brilliant in genius, but as eminently sound and sensible. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... some flattering masters, and a distaste for games. Season with the idea that he is born for a great career. Let him be, if possible, verbose and argumentative, and inclined to contradict his elders. Eliminate more youth and transfer hot to a University. Add more verbosity, and a strong extract of priggishness. Throw in a degree, and two speeches at the Union. Set him to simmer for two years in a popular constituency, and serve him up, a chattering ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... 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 cinabro. Vermin insektoj. Vermouth ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... break away from the Bar Dr. ADDISON is one of the pleasantest examples. We Englishmen surely owe as much to our great physicians as to our great lawyers, and in some cases indeed the fees are even higher. After the Demosthenic periods and Ciceronian verbosity of some of our previous rulers Dr. ADDISON'S bright bedside manner with an ailing or moribund Bill is a refreshing spectacle. The shrewd face under the shock of white hair is too well known to need description. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... works of those who abound with the most luxuriant language, void of ideas. He calls their unmeaning verbosity "anemone-words;" for anemonies are flowers, which, however brilliant, only please the eye, leaving no fragrance. Pratt, who was a writer of flowing but nugatory verses, was compared to the daisy; a flower indeed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... complaint against Mr. Trollope's North-America, is its extreme verbosity. Had it been condensed to one half, or at least one third of its present size, the spirit of the book had been less weakened, and the taste of the public better satisfied. The question naturally arises in an inquiring mind, if the author could make ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... observes cheerfully of his at last united hero and heroine, "Since we have so long enjoyed them, let us have so much justice as to think it fitting now that they should likewise enjoy each other." Yet the unresting and unerring spirit of criticism may observe that even here the verbosity which is the fault of the whole division makes its appearance. For why not suppress most of the words after "them," and merely add, "let them now ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... oppressive were now easy to bear. It would almost appear that even Gladstone's transcendent eloquence had lost in a measure its charm when Disraeli, in one of his popular addresses, was applauded for saying that he was "a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign his opponents and to glorify himself,"—one of the most exaggerated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... so common is an outraged husband's vengeance—not often dare he take the law into his own hands—for in England, at least, such boldness on his part would doubtless be deemed a worse crime than that by which he personally is doomed to suffer. But in Italy things are on a different footing—the verbosity and red-tape of the law, and the hesitating verdict of special juries, are not there considered sufficiently efficacious to sooths a man's damaged honor and ruined name. And thus—whether right or wrong—it often happens that strange and awful deeds ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... coward even than he who has always held his tongue. The very shadow of his deeds—his morality—shows us that he is a word-hero, and that he avoids everything which might induce him to transfer his energies from mere verbosity to really serious things. With admirable frankness, he announces that he is no longer a Christian, but disclaims all idea of wishing to disturb the contentment of any one: he seems to recognise a contradiction in the notion of abolishing one society by instituting ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... whose lack of success has left unimpaired his fluency of speech need despair. So long as new foreign companies continue to establish American branches and appoint managers, any amiable detrimental with sufficient verbosity may secure for himself a comfortable berth. Mr. Gunterson had now for almost two years been in charge of the United States business of the Elsass-Lothringen on a loss ratio so surprisingly satisfactory that he himself was absolutely at a loss to explain it. For the first time in a considerable ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... "Verbosity is cured by a large vocabulary"; that is, he who commands a large vocabulary is able to select words that will ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... lines, as always without exception in those of more than eight, there is either some repetition of idea not necessary to the full expression of the thought, or some redundance of epithet or detail too florid for the best taste, or, as in most of the Byzantine epigrams, a natural verbosity which affects the style throughout and weakens the force and ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... equator, divide by the number of pages in the given Constitution; the result will be the length of the outbreak, in days. This formula includes, as you will see, an allowance for the heat of the climate, the zeal of the leader, and the verbosity of the theorists. The Constitution of 1823 was reproclaimed on the 25th of October last. If you will give the above formula into the hands of any of your clerks, the calculation from it will show that that government will go out of power on the 1st of February, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... that, for the satisfaction of the public, the original MS. was left with him. The fair authoress having thus fired the first shot, a fusilade of pamphlets began—the spent bullets are collected in the Bibliography—which, for volume and verbosity, is entitled to honourable mention in the annals of tractarian strife. An Answer to Miss Blandy's Narrative quickly followed upon the other side, in which, it is claimed, "all the Arguments she ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... of Hawarden was as dumb to this as to my effusion to a similar purport already mentioned. Not even the proverbial postcard was sent to Tralee, so the verbosity of Mr. Gladstone was strangely checked when he found himself pinned down to facts ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... indication of neither zeal nor obedience," said Swartz, suddenly cutting short the tedious verbosity of Sir Thomas's intended harangue. "Open enemies ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... his style nor his occasional merciless verbosity nor his too frequent interposition of crude argument can destroy the effect which he produces at his best—that of an eminent spirit brooding over a world which in spite of many condemnations he deeply, somberly loves. Something peasant-like in his genius may blind him a little ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... of the morning papers and their tendency to gather in small knots and engage in earnest conversation. In a corner behind the paddle-box, securely screened from wind and sun, sat Mr. Jodderel and Mr. Primm, the latter adoring with much solemn verbosity the sacred word, and the former piling text upon text to demonstrate the final removal of all the righteous to a new state of material existence in a better-ordered planet. In the one rocking-chair of the cabin sat Insurance President Lottson, praising to Mr. Hooper, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... crops. Some of it seemed to be nonsense. Cartoner read it slowly and carefully. It was an order, in brief and almost brutal language, to stay where he was and do the work intrusted to him. For a man who writes in a code must perforce avoid verbosity. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Verbosity is, in truth, the besetting linguistic sin. Most people are lavish with words, as most people are lavish with money. This is not to say that in the currency of language they are rich. But even if they lack the means—and the desire—to be extravagant, they yet make their purchases heedlessly ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... two of his words, nor is there a single expression either ill-chosen or out of its place. He speaks without stopping to take breath, with ease, with point, with elegance, and without "spinning the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." He may be said to weave words into any shapes he pleases for use or ornament, as the glass-blower moulds the vitreous fluid with his breath; and his sentences shine like glass from their polished smoothness, and ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... far as their composition was concerned, have been Belzoni's Travels, and Salame's Account of the Attack upon Algiers. Unable, from their insufficient mastery of our tongue, to rival the native manufacture of stiff and laborious verbosity, these foreigners have contented themselves with the plainest and most colloquial language that was consistent with a clear exposition of their meaning;—a practice to which Swift was indebted for the lucid and perspicuous character of his writings, and which alone has enabled a great living ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... think, in spite of my verbosity, I have made any particular or direct allusion to our friend, the mule, so here I will make slight amends. Alas, he lost the little reputation he possessed at Nicholson's Nek, but to give the mule his due he ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... an author likely to win the long-distance dialogue race of the British Isles I should, after reading Uncle Lionel (GRANT RICHARDS), unhesitatingly vote for Mr. S.P.B. MAIS. It is not however so much the verbosity as the gloom of Mr. MAIS'S characters that leaves me fretful. Nowadays, when a novel begins with a married hero and heroine, we should be sadly archaic if we expected the course of their conjugal love to run smoothly; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... been accused of verbosity. Of all the accusations, this is one of the most stupid. Bolvar's style is the style of his epoch. The Spanish and French writers of that period wrote exactly in the same form, and if his words do not appear as modern and ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... verbosity rather—for it has none of the logic or continuity of mortal utterances—does not continue uninterruptedly during the day, but observes special hours, when the guards are paying even less than their usual attention to the vagaries of their charges. Of these periods, the hours ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... subject, the everlasting trying to prove what is already said to be proved—the looking for the square in space after laying it down as a law that only the circle exists—is a curious way of showing us how to control the 'exuberance of our own verbosity.' They say we shall not be content when we get what we want, and there they are right, for as soon as our own 'higher education' is secure we shall begin to clamour for the higher education of men. For the prayer of every woman worth the name is not 'Make me superior ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... much learning and no little verbosity casts his net. He has the weakness of his age, you observe, and must begin at the beginning; but this is not our custom. Something of Time is behind us; we are conscious of a world replete, and may assume ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... peremptory; his tongue filed; his eye ambitious; his gait majestical; and his general behavior vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were; too peregrinate, as I may call it; he draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... fortunate in Fate's selection of the Latin letters that have come down to us, the Romans, though they were eager students of Rhetoric, and almost outwent their teachers in composing the empty things called Declamations, seem to have allowed this very practice to drain off mere verbosity, and to have written letters about matters which were worth pen, ink, paper and (as we should say) postage. We have in Greek absolutely no such letters from the flourishing time of the literature as those of Cicero, of Pliny[3] and even of Seneca—while as ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... such an organization, which would render possible frequent consultations and free control on a big scale, would completely meet my views. But I imagined the lunches, the dinners, the suppers and the noise, the waste of time, the verbosity and the bad taste which that mixed provincial company would inevitably bring into my house, and I made haste to ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov |
