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Prate

verb
(past & past part. prated; pres. part. prating)
1.
Speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly.  Synonyms: blab, blabber, chatter, clack, gabble, gibber, maunder, palaver, piffle, prattle, tattle, tittle-tattle, twaddle.



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"Prate" Quotes from Famous Books



... but caught himself. No, he would prate no more of 'going to'. "I'll not ask you to believe it," he said, "until I bring it to you and ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... not. That would have been too simple and honest and direct. You can't be honest and straightforward to save your lives. You live by deception, and boast about your love of truth. Your deepest craving is for violence, while you prate about your gentle influence over men. I haven't the least doubt in the world that Mrs. Huntington, for all her baby face, is back of all Huntington's violence—thinks she's a wonderful inspiration to him, with a special genius for the cattle business! And when she gets ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... with its 18,000 inhabitants;) let us walk you down the main street of either, and if you don't wish yourself at Cheltenham, or some other unclassical place which never had a Latin name, we are much mistaken! The "Relievo dei Cavalli" at Alcamo offers no relief for you! The Magpie may prate on her sign-post about clean beds, for magpies can be made to say any thing; but pray do not construe the "Canova Divina" Divine Canova! He never executed any thing for the Red Lion of Calatafrini, whose "Canova" is a low wine-shop, full of wrangling Sicilian boors. Or will you place yourself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... arms they emulate her sons, And in the horrid phalanx dare to move, 'Tis but the tender fierceness of the dove, Pecking the hand that hovers o'er her mate: In softness as in firmness far above Remoter females, famed for sickening prate; Her mind is nobler sure, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... man clasped his hands, looked upwards, and said, "O God, I thank thee—he will live. Hush, hush, my sweet one, thou must not prate;" and he retired on tiptoe, and I heard him mutter triumphantly, as he walked away, "He called ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... handsome young fellows about my niece. I see too many of them: they have little fortune, and less shame; they give me a deal of trouble; no good can come of their smirking and smiling, their foppery and their forward prate. My niece I believe has much more prudence than is usual with the young minxes of the present day. But no matter for that: I am sure there is no prudence in setting gunpowder too near the fire. I have heard her talk of your taking her ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in Silence; neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of "those secrets known to all." Is not Shame (Schaam) the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals? Like other plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the eye ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... can't chuse but laugh to hear the Fools prate about Preheminence: They would all fain be Masters, and yet they know they are but all my Servants; they make their Boast, of this and that, and talk of their great gains: and forget that I rule the Roast, and that both their gains and their very being here, depends upon my Pleasure: ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous

... don't fully appreciate it myself. John Tullis playing nurse and story-teller to a seven-year-old boy, to the exclusion of everything else, is more than I can grasp. Somehow, I've come to feel that he's mine. That must be the reason. But you've heard me prate on this subject a hundred times. Don't let me start it again. There's something else you want to talk to me about, so please don't encourage me to tell all the wonderful things he has said and ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... They prate and prattle pleasantly While riding on the way, To those their wicked uncle hired, ...
— My First Picture Book - With Thirty-six Pages of Pictures Printed in Colours by Kronheim • Joseph Martin Kronheim

... god or demon? 290 With new kings rise new altars. But, proceed; You are sent to prate your master's will, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... combination and balance are so rare that they are hardly to be found in perfection among the sons of men. The very fact of his greatness made his failings all the more dangerous and unfortunate. To be blinded by the splendor of his fame and the lustre of his achievements and prate about the sin of belittling a great man is the falsest philosophy and the meanest cant. The only thing worth having, in history as in life, is truth; and we do wrong to our past, to ourselves, and to our posterity if we do not strive to render simple justice always. We can forgive ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... of Europe. The camp-fire is extinguished; the tent is furled. We are no longer happy nomads, masquerading in Moslem garb. We shall soon become prosaic Christians, and meekly hold out our wrists for the handcuffs of Civilization. Ah, prate as we will of the progress of the race, we are but forging additional fetters, unless we preserve that healthy physical development, those pure pleasures of mere animal existence, which are now only to be found among ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... Restrain thy tongue, nor singly thus presume The Kings to slander; thou, the meanest far Of all that with the Atridae came to Troy. Ill it beseems, that such an one as thou Should lift thy voice against the Kings, and rail With scurril ribaldry, and prate of home. How these affairs may end, we know not yet; Nor how, or well or ill, we may return. Cease then against Atrides, King of men, To pour thy spite, for that the valiant Greeks To him, despite ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... not of those niggard souls, who deem That poesy is but to jingle words, To string sweet sorrows for apologies To hide the barrenness of unfurnished hearts, To prate about the surfaces of things, And make more thread-bare what was quite worn out: Our common thoughts are deepest, and to give Such beauteous tones to these, as needs must take Men's hearts their captives ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... are you that talk to me of dishonour?—you that come straying here out of the night with your cicisbeo at your heels? You, with the dew on you and your dress bedraggled, arrive straight from companioning in the woods and prate to me of shame—of the blood of the Colonne!" He smote a hand on the table and spat forth a string of vile names upon her, mixed with curses; abominable words before which she drew back cowering, yet less (I think) from the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... Shepherd's Dog, who saw the deed, Detesting the vexatious breed, Bespoke him thus: "When coxcombs prate, They kindle wrath, contempt, or hate; Thy teasing tongue, had judgment tied, Thou hadst ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I have heard men say, And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway." —"Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! Ye have hampered Heaven's Gate; There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate! O none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within; Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for doom has yet to run, And. . .the faith that ye share ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... canons of scientific logic, but that it is the only adequate method. Critics exclusively trained in classics or in mathematics, who have never determined a scientific fact in their lives by induction from experiment or observation, prate learnedly about Mr. Darwin's method, which is not inductive enough, not Baconian enough, forsooth, for them. But even if practical acquaintance with the process of scientific investigation is denied them, they may learn, by the perusal of Mr. Mill's admirable chapter "On the Deductive ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... primacy by the evangelic voice of our Lord and Saviour, saying, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church," etc.(202) To it was given the fellowship of the most blessed Apostle Paul, that chosen vessel who not at a different time, as heretics prate, but at one time and on one and the same day by a glorious death, was crowned together with Peter in agony in the city of Rome under the Emperor Nero. And they equally consecrated the said holy Roman Church to Christ and ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... "Prate not to me, my lord, of truth or honor amongst these savages," he replied. "Did not their chief himself but even now lie to me? Well knew the rascally heathen where the Spaniard hides! The truth indeed! They know not the meaning ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr

... ourselves, not move the crowd. Our gravity prefers the muttering tone, A proper mixture of the squeak and groan; No borrow'd grace of action, must be seen, The slightest motion would displease the dean. Whilst every staring graduate would prate, Against what, ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron

... the government of these quiet old places, there is much to be said that is depressing. While men prate about the decay of trade and the advance of poverty, how few people reflect on the snug fortunes which are amassed in out-of-the-way corners! We hear of jobbery in the metropolis, and jobbery in Government departments, but I take it that the corporations ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... "I know every step of the Caucasus. I have been where your serpents climb not, your tigers cannot mount, your eagles cannot fly. Make way, comrade: thy threshold is not on God's high-road, and I have no time to prate with thee." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... spider swings And snares the people for the kings: "Luther is dead; old quarrels pass; The stake's black scars are healed with grass"; So dreamers prate;—did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive? But Luther's broom is left, and eyes Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... beforenamed prophetess, who while they all sat at the table, began to groan and quake gradually until at length the whole bench shook. Then rising up she began to pray, shrieking so that she could be heard as far as the river. This done, she was quickly in the dish, and her mouth began immediately to prate worldly and common talk in which she was not the least ready. When the meal was finished, Ephraim obtained a horse for himself and his wife, and we followed him on foot, carrying our travelling bags. Our host took us to the path, and Ephraim's servant was to act as our guide. ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... well to such a guest, Immortal, unimpair'd, she rears her head, And damns alike the living and the dead. Oft have I known thee, Hogarth, weak and vain, Thyself the idol of thy awkward strain, Through the dull measure of a summer's day, In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away, 460 Whilst friends with friends, all gaping sit, and gaze, To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth's praise. But if athwart thee Interruption came, And mention'd with respect some ancient's ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... against love?" Helen demanded, almost fiercely. "A sister may prate about them, Philippa. A wife couldn't. I'd sacrifice every principle I ever had, every scrap of self-respect, myself and all that belongs to me, to ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... sick man. "Silence your senseless prate! They will neither eat nor drink here. Tell the coachman that there are excellent accommodations at the Hurdlestone Arms for himself and his horses. But first see to your mistress—she is in a swoon. Carry her into the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... freedom from stain. Charity, as even those of whose religion it makes a formal part have been compelled to acknowledge, creates a multitude of evils. The mere existence of conscience, that faculty of which people prate so much nowadays, and are so ignorantly proud, is a sign of our imperfect development. It must be merged in instinct before we become fine. Self-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress, and self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage, part ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... idler, smiling sneeringly, And why? because, forsooth, so many moons, Here dwelling voiceless by the voiceful sea, Thou hast not set thy thoughts to paltry tunes In song or sonnet. Them these golden noons Oppress not with their beauty; they could prate, Even while a prophet read the solemn runes On which is hanging some imperial fate. How know they, these good gossips, what to thee The ocean and its wanderers may have brought? How know they, in their busy vacancy, With what far aim thy spirit may be fraught? ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... cackle, gabble, murmur, prattle, blurt, chat, gossip, palaver, tattle, blurt out, chatter, jabber, prate, twaddle. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... you going, by your theoretical treatises on philosophy, to make me learn the practical part of it, and prate upon learning while I ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... seems talk of "time's compensation"! Who now may prate, "Evil is good misunderstood"? Surely such cogent blending requires some powerfully focalized far ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... giving up when she said no. If you had followed your heart, you would have choked the name and amount out of her and paid that devilish debt. You walk away in a case like that, and then have the nerve to come here and prate to me about following your heart. I'll wager my last dollar your heart is sore because you were not allowed to help her; but on the proposition that you followed its promptings I wouldn't stake a penny. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... be laid out, with all his marvelous masculine virtues, for a week at least. Now do not waste your arguments on these prigs from Union College. Take each, in turn, the ten-miles' circuit on 'Old Boney' and they'll have no breath left to prate of woman's inferiority. You might argue with them all day, and you could not make them feel so small as I made that popinjay feel in one hour. I knew 'Old Boney' would keep up with me, if he died for it, and that my escort could neither stop ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... an the wealthy may prate, An booast o' ther riches and land, Some o'th' laadest 'ul sink second-rate To that lad with his ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... the Dominion; for the government seem to grasp the purse-strings with one hand while they hold a drawn sword in the other. There is no security to be found in any corner of the State; and no projects, formed for the future of its people. To be sure, certain parties prate and jabber about the Volunteer Service and national defenses; but what have they to defend? If their frontier were bristling to-morrow with forts and bayonets, all they could hope to accomplish would be the shutting out of American liberty and national prosperity from the people. This must ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... our young men go abroad, it is no longer for clothes, nor to seek new laws in wretched printing shops, nor to study eloquence in the cafes of Paris. For now Napoleon, a clever man and a swift, gives us no time to prate or to search for new fashions. Now there is the thunder of arms, and the hearts of us old men exult that the renown of the Poles is spreading so widely throughout the world; glory is ours already, and so we shall soon again have our Republic. From ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... not late in the day, Hogan, for you and me to prate of honour?" asked Crispin bitterly, yet with averted gaze. "God knows my honour is as like honour as a beggar's rags are like unto a cloak of ermine. What signifies another splash, another rent in that which is tattered beyond all semblance of ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... woman with the evil eye, do you suppose that I wish you here to bring all the ills you prate of upon my head? I say that I am afraid of you. Why, for your sake, once, years ago, I made a vow to the Blessed Virgin that, whatever I worked on men, I would never again lift a hand against a woman. To that oath I look ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... "All this parrot-prate, I suppose, is only intended to vex me," cried the warrior king, who always considered himself, and very naturally, a person of such consequence as ever to be uppermost in the thoughts and minds of others. "If thou must tell a tale, then tell one, Vampire! or else be silent, as I ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... true!—it is most horrible. Now who among you will stand forth and prate still of patience and delay? My daughter's fate is linked with that of Genoa. I sacrifice the affections of a father to the duties of a citizen. Who among us is so much a coward as to hesitate in the salvation of his country, when this poor guiltless being must pay for his timidity with endless ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... her to accept such a proposition as mine, especially after all that has happened, and still prate of ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... Pat's being up with the pike and shillelagh on any or no occasion. God forbid Scotland should retrograde towards such a state—much better that the Deil, as in Burns's song, danced away with the whole excisemen in the country. We do not want to hear her prate of her number of millions of men, and her old military exploits. We had better remain in union with England, even at the risk of becoming a subordinate species of Northumberland, as far as national consequence is concerned, than remedy ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... Whigs about the sugar prate! They do not care one dump About the blacks and their sad state— Just ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various

... prate about Bibliolatry, and labor to lower men's estimate of the Bible. They may spare their breath. The people who idolize the Bible too much are creatures of their own imagination only, and not living men and women. People may love the Bible unwisely, but not too well. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... great danger to the fruit of their womb and to themselves, rather than not to fast when the others fast. They make a matter of conscience where there is none, and where there is matter of conscience they make none. This is all the fault of the preachers, because they continually prate of fasting, and never point out its true use, limit, fruit, cause and purpose. So also the sick should be allowed to eat and to drink every day whatever they wish. In brief, where the wantonness of the flesh ceases, there every reason for fasting, watching, ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... prate comfortable blasphemies, scientific or other; natural selection or the inscrutable decrees of God. Whereas this was manifestly a Hobson's selection, most unnatural and forced, to choose want of all that makes life sweet and dear; to ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... Prate not about Fame! I've addressed half the world, In Court and in cottage, in Castle and slum! I've been warbled, and chorussed, and tootled, and skirled, Yet, for kudos, I might just as well have been dumb. Though familiar to all men, I'm wholly unknown; You're inclined to pooh-pooh, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various

... love stale instead of fresh, withered better than blooming, excellence in the abstract rather than the palpable. With their idle prate of feminine intellect, and a grotto nymph, and a mother of Gracchi! Why, he must think me dazed with admiration of him to talk to me! One listens, you know. And he is one of the men who cast a kind ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... prate to me?' said Redgauntlet, bending his brows. 'I, sir, transact my own business; you, I am told, act ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... somber-drest. "Lo, who art thou," they ask, "that thou shouldst fret To find, forsooth, one single heart undone? The page thou turnest there is purple-wet With blood that gushed from Caesar overthrown! Lo, who art thou to prate of sorrow?" Yet, This little woe, it is my own, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... soared sky-high, and saw divinity itself, because he can no longer fly after his wings are broken! Give us but our independence, allow us to take care of ourselves, grant us but a little strip of land like that of the Servians and Rumanians, give us a chance to lead a national existence, and then prate about our lacking manly virtues. What we lack is not genius (Genialitaet) but self-consciousness (Selbstgefuehl) and appreciation of our value as men (Bewusstsein der Menschenwuerde), of which ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... loquacity, loquaciousness; talkativeness &c. adj.; garrulity; multiloquence[obs3], much speaking. jaw; gabble; jabber, chatter; prate, prattle, cackle, clack; twaddle, twattle, rattle; caquet[obs3], caquetterie[Fr]; blabber, bavardage[obs3], bibble-babble[obs3], gibble-gabble[obs3]; small talk &c. (converse) 588. fluency, flippancy, volubility, flowing, tongue; flow of words;.flux de bouche[Fr], flux de mots[Fr]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... aske your patience, and be trew. This play was never liked, unlesse by few That brought their judgements with um, for of late First the infection, then the common prate Of common people, have such customes got Either to silence plaies, or like them not. Under the last of which this interlude, Had falne for ever prest downe by the rude That like a torrent which the moist south feedes, ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... great anger, Rodolph said: "I will go to the mountain-tops; there I shall find no birds, nor trees, nor brooks, nor flowers to prate of a monarch no one has ever seen. There shall there be no sea to vex me with its murmurings, nor any human voice to displease ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field

... here, and desires to be my bedfellow to-night. So I shall not have an opportunity to sit down with that seriousness and attention which the subjects of yours require. For she is all prate, you know, and loves to set me a prating; yet comes upon a very grave occasion—to procure my mother to go with her to her grandmother Larking, who has long been bed-ridden; and at last has taken it into her head that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... and descried, more or less plainly, the secret of it, while yet she never even alluded to the existence of such a trouble. She had a regard for woman's dignity as profound as silent. She was not of those that prate or rave about their rights, forget their duties, and care only for what they count ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... these superfluities signify, but that the venter of them doth little skill the use of speech, or the rule of conversation, but meaneth to sputter and prate anything without judgment or wit; that his invention is very barren, his fancy beggarly, craving the aid of any stuff to relieve it? One would think a man of sense should grudge to lend his ear, or ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... it and thee! I never heard a man yet begin to prate of his conscience, but I knew that he was about to do something more than ordinarily cruel ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... bonds to keep the peace, as Lawyer Donigan cautioned Biddy Gavan when the doctor said she was driving the parish mad with her prate." ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... most confident I am Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes And prate of being "happy as a clam!" What though thy shell protects thy fragile head From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed, And bear thee off—as ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... from her tresses like golden stars; but never have I read an untruth in her pages. There is good intelligence between her and some on board; and, trust me, she knows the paths of the ocean too well, ever to steer a wrong course. But we prate like gossiping river-men.—Wilt see the Skimmer of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... all fare?" Finn cried. "Strong drink, if it be too freely supplied, Or the prate of a fool," the ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... unconcern, as if delivered from all danger, and the devil far fled. By the very reason of their security they are overcome of the devil and their own flesh, and fall unawares from the Gospel. They have just enough connection with it to be able to prate of it, boasting themselves Christians but giving no indication of the fact in ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... who preach the gospel of man's pre-eminence;—you who prate of God and know nothing whatsoever about Him! The horse, dog, cat,—even the wild animals, whose vices, perchance, pale beside your own, may go to Heaven before you. The Supreme Architect is neither a Nero, nor a Stuart, nor a clown. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... Both bodily and ghostly health; Nor too much wealth, nor wit, come to thee, So much of either may undo thee. I wish thee learning, not for show, Enough for to instruct and know; Not such as gentlemen require To prate at table, or at fire. I wish thee all thy mother's graces, Thy father's fortunes, and his places. I wish thee friends, and one at court, Not to build on, but support To keep thee, not in doing many Oppressions, but from suffering ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... Religion!—'tis not blindly prating what the gurus prate, But to love, as God hath loved them, all things, be they small or great; And true bliss is when a sane mind doth a healthy body fill; And true knowledge is the knowing what is good ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... most confident I am Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes, And prate of being "happy as a clam!" What though thy shell protects thy fragile head From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, While rakes are free to desecrate ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... prate!' said the mother, checking her. 'If you do not instantly tie up your tongue, and think more respectfully of the good people, I shall not tell you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... But why prate history, why evoke phantoms of the past, when we can gaze on this exquisitely concrete thing—this glad and simple creature of Hokusai? Let us emulate his calm, enjoy his enjoyment as he sprawls before us—pinguis, iners, placidus—in the pale twilight. Let us not seek ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... no pranks and ceremonies and entertainments; I have not time. I must wed her at once. Canst thou not see, under the circumstances, scandal-mongers will make eyes and prate of wrong for me thus to have a young maid here alone?" Now indeed this thought had not occurred to Constance in just this way; but now it struck her with a mighty force, and she shot at him a piercing glance through ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... "What heart can bear Such slanders false, devised by hate and spite? Or with stayed patience, reproaches hear, And not revenge by battle or by fight? The Norway Prince hath bought his folly dear, But who with words could stay the angry knight? A fool is he that comes to preach or prate When men with swords their ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... communist holds before us a world where all alike are poor. For the activity, the push, the vigor of our modern life, his substitute is a life aimless and unbroken. And so we have to say to communists what George Eliot might have said: Be not blinded by the passions of the moment, but when you prate about your own wrongs and the sufferings of your offspring, take heed lest in the long run you make a worse time of it for your own generation, and leave a bad inheritance for ...
— The Altruist in Politics • Benjamin Cardozo

... BECKET. Prate not of bonds, for never, oh, never again Shall the waste voice of the bond-breaking sea Divide me from the mother church of England, My Canterbury. Loud disturbances! Oh, ay—the bells rang out even to deafening, Organ and pipe, and dulcimer, chants and hymns In all the churches, ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... dearest, don't sob so. It is a case of two affirmatives making a negative; two great nationalities decried, derided, rendered null and void in their offspring through the dictates of those who, in religion, prate that we are all brothers. I have just got to stick it, my mother, and life is not very long. But I shall never marry." And as he spoke, Fate flicked a page of an illustrated paper, which was but the volume of the Book of Life, and perhaps only a mother's eyes would have noticed the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... the sergeant bitterly, "that all them beasts were stuffed down your throttle the way you'd have to hold your prate." ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... will use the names of actors with whom perhaps they have never exchanged a word, in the silly belief they are raising themselves in the estimation of their auditors. It is an odd conceit, yet it prevails with the would-be fast young men of the present day. To hear some of these mollycoddles prate one who was not acquainted with their weaknesses would imagine these chaps were on intimate terms with players—who, as a rule, are slow to cultivate new acquaintances, attend strictly to their own business, and do not particularly relish that particular class ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... to secure His passage at a narrow door, And scarce could reach the rack of hay, His horns so much were in his way. A Calf officious, fain would show How he might twist himself and go. "Hold thou thy prate; all this," says he, "Ere thou wert calved was known to me." He, that a wiser man by half Would teach, may ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... John Adams, speaking of a conversation with Arbuthnot, a Boston physician, says: "He began to prate upon the presumption of philosophy in erecting iron rods to draw the lightning from the clouds. He railed and foamed against the points and the presumption that erected them. He talked of presuming upon God, as Peter attempted to walk ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... He had tried to obtain it for Poland and had failed; he had not tried to obtain it for Italy, because he was afraid of offending Austria. At least he had the courage to tell the truth, and did not prate about the felicity of being subjects of the Austrian Emperor, as many English partisans of Austria prated in ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... shallow as to dream that I feel nothing? What is your love for Tom Faggus? What is your love for your baby (pretty darling as he is) to compare with such a love as for ever dwells with me? Because I do not prate of it; because it is beyond me, not only to express, but even form to my own heart in thoughts; because I do not shape my face, and would scorn to play to it, as a thing of acting, and lay it out before you, are you fools enough to think—" but here I stopped, having ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... power, grandeur, eye, and to prate of thrones! Is a prison the fit place? You wish to make me believe in splendor, and we are lying lost in night; you boast of glory, and we are smothering our words in the curtains of this miserable bed; you give me glimpses of power absolute whilst I hear the footsteps of the every-watchful jailer ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... up to recover his title and his fortune. There, at least; is one who deserves what he will get. For once I shall not be sorry to see a lad get on, who has been brought up in the school of adversity. But, pshaw! he will be like all the rest. Prosperity will turn his brain. Already he begins to prate of his ancestors. . . . Poor humanity he almost made me laugh. . . . But it is mother Gerdy who surprises me most. A woman to whom I would have given absolution without waiting to hear her confess. When I think that ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... then?" he was thinking. "What clergyman could raise his voice against my rule? Ah! Their 'high principles' they prate of so eloquently, their crack-brained economics, their rebellions and their strikes—the dogs!—would soon bow down before that power! Men have starved for stiff-necked opposition's sake, and still may do so—but with my hand at the throat of the world, with the world's very life-breath ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... I fear these happy days when we Can loll in cooling shades while others toil For us, on stipends which like widow's mite Are small: will in the future disappear. These men who prate of slavery in these isles Do know full well that witness false they bear. We buy not souls and on the record place Their names among the chattels which we own, But their life's labor for a certain sum We purchase, when in times of sorry stress They fain prefer ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... elate, His grinning Rival 'gan to prate. Oh, fie! my friends; upon my word, You're too severe: he should be heard; For Mind can ne'er to glory reach, Without the usual aid of speech. If thus howe'er, you seal his doom, What hope have I unknown to Rome? But since the truth be your dominion, I beg to hear your just opinion. This ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston

... fifteen or sixteen years' study, compare one of our college Latinists, who has thrown away so much time in nothing but learning to speak. The world is nothing but babble; and I hardly ever yet saw that man who did not rather prate too much, than speak too little. And yet half of our age is embezzled this way: we are kept four or five years to learn words only, and to tack them together into clauses; as many more to form them into a long discourse, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... friend and patroness. Thus it is that very many of our unmarried women of distinction, are to all intents and purposes married, except the consideration of different sexes. They are directly under the conduct of their whisperer; and think they are in a state of freedom, while they can prate with one of these attendants of all men in general, and still avoid the man they most like. You do not see one heiress in a hundred whose fate does not turn upon this circumstance of chusing a confident. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... gall in it To let truth shape like that!—I also said That when my arms were round him I forgot That I was not his mother. So spoke I, But oh me,—I remembered it too well!— He was a lovely child; in his fond prate His father's voice was eloquent. One might say I am well punished ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... sails by— As that poor bird flies home, nor knows his loss, So Rustum knew not his own loss, but stood Over his dying son, and knew him not. But, with a cold incredulous voice, he said:— "What prate is this of fathers and revenge? The mighty Rustum never had a son." And, with a failing voice, Sohrab replied:— "Ah yes, he had! and that lost son am I. Surely the news will one day reach his ear, Reach Rustum, where ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... him in the council of state, and that the appointment of this or any Spaniard was a violation of the charters of the provinces and of the promises of his Majesty. As if it were for the nobles of the obedient provinces to prate of charters and of oaths! Their brethren under the banner of the republic had been teaching Philip for a whole generation how they could deal with the privileges of freemen and with the perjury of tyrants. It was late in the day for the obedient Netherlanders to remember their rights. Havre ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Why prate of peace? when, warriors all, We clank in harness into hall, And ever bare upon the board Lies the necessary sword. 1319 ROBERT ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... thou to seduce me then with words that have no meaning? Parrots so can learn to prate, our speech by pieces gleaning: Nurses teach their children so about ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... Theology are false, and her record of Time a fable; that the Deluge, for instance, is an old wives' story, and the economy of times and seasons a human fabrication:—when Astronomical and Mechanical Science strut up to the Throne whereon sits the Ancient of Days,—prate to Him, (the first Author of Law,) about the "supremacy of Law,"—and tell Him to His face that His miracles are things impossible:—when Physiology insinuates that Mankind cannot be descended from one primval ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... courteous," replied Aymer, "and therefore scarce angels in disguise, even though you prate of the clouds. So if you wish to measure blades I shall not balk you. Nathless," as he slowly freed his own weapon, "it is a quarrel not of ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... might have been at liberty; but now—you go with me. And, one word more. Walk gently if you value life, or what may be dearer than life. I am not one to have my will disputed. You will learn as much; but now, I say, walk gently. I wish not to disturb this giddy household: they prate, like others of their sort, of people's doings, and 'tis not ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... think not then to say 'Tis others' fault, nor foolishly upbraid The lot thyself for thine own self hast made. Say not the world's askew! with idle prate Of never-ending grief the hour grows late. Strike off my head! with many a tear he cries, And might, in sooth, draw ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... Newspapers might prate about wealth till commonplace print was exhausted, but as matter of habit, few Americans envied the very rich for anything the most of them got out of money. New York might occasionally fear them, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... with the magic of words. When menaced by some exceptionally monstrous form of the tyranny of numbers we have closed our eyes and murmured, "Liberty." When armed Anarchists threaten to quench the fires of civilization in a sea of blood we prate of the protective power of "free ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... Closets, Beds, &c. We are all for Humour, Gallantry, Conversation, and Courtship, and shou'dn't endure the chief Lady in the Play a Mute, or to say very little, as 'twas agreeable to them: Our amorous Sparks love to hear the pretty Rogues prate, snap up their Gallants, and Repartee upon 'em on all sides. We shou'dn't like to have a Lady marry'd without knowing whether she gives her consent or no, (a Custom among the Romans) but wou'd be for hearing ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard

... let's hope those canoes and blankets and grub will follow suit; for it'd sure tickle me to be able to restore the same to the right owners. I keep on hopin' that Ned here won't think of leavin' this neck of the woods without makin' a real des'prate effort to ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... which floated out from the plantation, the clatter of the small stones which his own feet dislodged as he feverishly climbed the rocks. Above him, on the other side of the road, towered the hill where he had sat and dreamed as a boy, where Rochester had come and encouraged him to prate of his ambitions. ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... you pity me, 'tis dangerous, exceeding dangerous, to prate of pity; which are the poorer? you are now puppies; I without you, or you without my knowledge? be Rogues, and so be gone, be Rogues and reply not, for if ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont

... smiled 'And even in this lone wood, Sweet lord, ye do right well to whisper this. Fools prate, and perish traitors. Woods have tongues, As walls have ears: but thou shalt go with me, And we will speak at first exceeding low. Meet is it the good King be not deceived. See now, I set thee high on vantage ground, From ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... religious faith than barbarous tradition and the vote of ecumenical councils. Bigotry has quailed beneath the ringing blows of your iconoclastic hammer, dogmatism become more humble and the priesthood well-nigh forgotten to prate of a hell of fire in which the souls of unbaptized babes forever burn. Without intending it, perhaps, you have done more to promote the cause of true religion, more to intellectualize and humanize ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... children.' But the restless women who do these things have generally no homes or children to mind; what is the use of preaching the sacredness of motherhood when you will not allow them to be mothers? To what end prate of the duties of wifehood when you do not ask ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... person in half a million to whom Art is anything more than a name. Dismissing the countless hordes who have absolutely never heard the word, and confining attention to the few thousands scattered about Europe and America who prate of it, how many of even these do you think it really influences, entering into their lives, refining, broadening them? Watch the faces of the thin but conscientious crowd streaming wearily through our miles of picture galleries and art museums; gaping, with guide-book in hand, ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome

... my company; For if the king of gods can be Full oft in need of recreation,— Who rules the world,—right well may I, Who serve him in that high relation: Amuse me, then, before you fly." Our cackler, pleased, at quickest rate Of this and that began to prate. No fool, or babbler for that matter, Could more incontinently chatter. At last she offer'd to make known— A better spy had never flown— All things, whatever she might see, In travelling from tree to tree. But, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... point to it as the witness of their departed successions. Who on seeing New College does not recall William of Wykeham? and then, what a roll of proud names own this renowned university for their Alma Mater. The very stones "prate of the whereabout" of things connected with the development of great minds, and while we look without fatigue at the gorgeous mass of buildings in this university, we feel we are contemplating what carries an intimate connexion, in object at least, with that all of man which marches ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... faced by this Congress is more menacing than merely a return to the past—bad as that would be. Our resplendent economic autocracy does not want to return to that individualism of which they prate, even though the advantages under that system went to the ruthless and the strong. They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a people's Government this power is wholesome and proper. But ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... to operate upon, and, when professing to experiment upon pure metal, at least to see that it was not mere dross they were casting into the crucible. Plainly, however, they despise any such nice distinctions. The most earnest prayer and the emptiest ceremonial prate are both alike to them. What sort of a process they imagine prayer to be may be at once perceived from the sort of trials to which ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton



Words linked to "Prate" :   blather, talk, utter, babble, piffle, yack, blither, smatter, verbalize, speak, gibber, cackle, mouth, yak, verbalise, yakety-yak



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