"Rigmarole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rigmarole got to do with Francis, Dicky?" I asked, vainly trying to suppress the bitterness in my voice. "This looks like a list of copybook maxims for your ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... Particular attention should be paid to the transmutation of Antony's funeral oration into French alexandrines. In Voltaire's version, the climax of the speech is reached in the following passage; it is an excellent sample of the fatuity of the whole of his concocted rigmarole:— ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Noah. For days everything was in dire confusion; but for all that our own home was delightful, and we had the most outrageous appetites you ever heard of. George is in ecstasies with his house, his land, his pig, and his horse.... I hope you are not sick and tired of all this rigmarole; it isn't in human nature to move into a house of its own and talk of anything else. I got a warm-hearted letter a few days ago from the city of Milwaukee, from an unknown western sister, beginning, "Whom not having seen I love," and going on to say that Katy describes herself and ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... To say the best, it was extreme ill-breeding; But there were ample reasons for it, none Of which he specified in this his pleading: His speech was a fine sample, on the whole, Of rhetoric, which the learn'd call 'rigmarole.' ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... rigmarole in all my born days." And then, angrily to Rachel, "Go down and look on th' ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... a long rigmarole, which he called a "Declaration": I saw that it was but a heap of lies, and thrust it into the blacksmith's fire, and blew the bellows thrice at it. No one dared attempt to stop me, for my mood had not been sweet of late; and of ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of those people would pull such a trick, Harlan—any more than the ones like you and Arv and Hank who are above suspicion. Most of them could have easily obtained the news without going through such a rigmarole." ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... long?—a dozen, more than fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor, knowing what he was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no reason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had to fit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife's having died in childbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little girl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home from nurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... subject was one that appeared in November, 1836, in which he recommended the subversion of republican institutions and the election of an emperor. If he ever had a political conviction, we believe he expressed it then. After a rigmarole of Roman history and Augustus ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... rigmarole comin' to? Here we are 'most at my house. If you ain't goin' to work for me, what are ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... over to a fresh page he came upon a passage in the life of one of the Elect who was mourning for his mother, excusing him in this solemn rigmarole: "After granting to the feelings of nature such relief as grace ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... listened to the tipsy philosopher without understanding one word of his rigmarole; only Monsieur Tudesco struck him as a strange and alarming personage, and taller by a hundred feet than anybody he had ever ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... hand, with the glass in it, dropped nervelessly at her side. "If he uttered one single syllable of all that rigmarole, then Ollendorf is a myth, that's all ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it at first, and I had to stop and ask him questions. But here is the ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... child—their joint child, he put it, so that Harvey might not be unnecessarily confused—to be reared, educated, and sustained by her, without let or hindrance, from that time forward, so on and so forth; a bewildering rigmarole that meant nothing to the stupefied father, who only knew that they wanted to take his child away ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... bard completely imbued With genius not to be controlled, Be thou not untractable Within the court of thy king; Until thy rigmarole shall be known, Be thou silent Heinin As to the name of thy verse, And the name of thy vaunting; And as to the name of thy grandsire Prior to his being baptized. And the name of the sphere, And the name of the element, And the name of thy language, And the name of thy region. ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... is any thing in this inflated rigmarole that is not adequately expressed in my amended statement, what is it? As to eloquence it will hardly be argued that nonsense, falsehood and metaphors which were old when Rome was young are essential to that. The first man (in early Greece) who spoke of awakening an echo did a felicitous thing. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Goodness knows what rigmarole I've treated her to!" They had parted an hour ago; since when, he believed, ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... there were to be no harps and lutes in our heaven, only drums; and the preservation of all the essentials of poetry, by the simple enumeration of the utensils to be found in a back kitchen, sounded, I could not help thinking (here it becomes necessary to whisper), not unlike rigmarole. I waited for the master to speak. He had declared that the Republic would fall if it did not become instantly naturalistic; he would not, he could not pass over in silence so important a branch of literature as poetry, no matter how contemptible he might think it. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... delightful, certainly: but they won't let one tell a story one's own way; they are fidgety, you know, sir,—fidgety, nothing more; 't is a trifle, but it is unpleasant. Besides, my wife was Master Clinton's foster-mother, and she can't hear a word about him, without running on into a long rigmarole of what he did as a baby, and so forth. I like people to be chatty, sir, but not garrulous; I can't bear garrulity, at least in a female. But, suppose, sir, we defer our story till after supper? A glass of wine or warm punch makes talk glide more easily; besides, sir, I want something to comfort ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... must be going now," chimed in Fidge, jumping up eagerly, for all this rigmarole had been very uninteresting ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... to fear I have written a strange rigmarole, but still I will send it, for though Irish matters cannot interest you as they do me, yet still a letter is always a pleasant thing to receive, even only that one may have the satisfaction of looking at the Queen's head and breaking ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... Scotch snuff on a dry leaf on the ground under it, and the rabbits, while smelling for the apple, would inhale the snuff, and sneeze themselves to death in no tune. Well, I was a child then and simple enough to be gammoned by this rigmarole. I set the apple and the snuff, but I got no rabbit, while I did get laughed at hugely for my credulity. This satisfied me that people should never impose upon the simplicity of childhood. I remember my mortification on the occasion. It was so long ago ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... inflict any more rigmarole on you, because of an obstinate conviction in my inside that dear Mother was right in the idea that it is the learned—not the ignorant—who wonder, and that the ploughman feels no wonder at all in the glory of the rising sun—though YOUR mind might overflow with awe and admiration. ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... and the preservation of all the essentials of poetry, by the simple enumeration of the utensils to be found in a back kitchen, did, I could not help thinking (here it becomes necessary to whisper), sound not unlike rigmarole. I waited for the master to speak. He had declared that the Republic would fall if it did not become instantly naturalistic; he would not, he could not pass over in silence so important a branch of literature as poetry, no matter how contemptible he ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the letter, and that you were ignorant of its contents. But Edward might have known that something like this would happen. Why didn't he put the letter into his pocket, and keep it until he came home? He seems to have lost his common sense. And then he must go off into that rigmarole about Mr. Lyon, and try to make him out a saint, as if to encourage you to give his letter to Fanny. I've no patience with him! Mr. Lyon, indeed! If he doesn't have a heart-scald of him before he's done with him, I'm no prophet. Important business for Mr. Lyon! Why didn't Mr. Lyon ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... "'That's all rigmarole that somebody hands you when you've won the Wooden Cross and a little garden growing over your tummy,' is the way they put it in their argot. 'The Marseillaise, the Chant du Depart are all right for the youngsters, and the reviews—and let ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... true. But what could he have to do with this old family custom of ours, and what does this rigmarole mean?' ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... but rarely does either he or Mrs. Carlyle say a good word for any considerable English writer then living. It is true that he criticises, more or less disparagingly, all his own works, from Sartor, of which he remarks that "only some ten pages are fused and harmonious," to his self-entitled "rigmarole on the Norse Kings": but he would not let his enemy say so; nor his friend. Mill's just strictures on the "Nigger Pamphlet" he treats as the impertinence of a boy, and only to Emerson would he grant the privilege to hold his ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... speaking in riddles, Lisle; and if there is one thing I hate, it is riddles. When a fellow begins to talk in that way, I always change the subject. Why a man should try to puzzle his brain, with such rigmarole things, is more ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... scene he tells his dupe Roderigo that three great men of Venice went to Othello and begged him to make Iago his lieutenant; that Othello, out of pride and obstinacy, refused; that in refusing he talked a deal of military rigmarole, and ended by declaring (falsely, we are to understand) that he had already filled up the vacancy; that Cassio, whom he chose, had absolutely no practical knowledge of war, nothing but bookish theoric, mere prattle, arithmetic, whereas Iago himself had often fought by Othello's ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... I was beginning to be bored. Had the butler fallen prey to one of the graminophile sects like Brother Paul's and gone through all this rigmarole merely to give me notice previous to ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... be pancakes, a lunch . . . you'll get your cab-fare. Come along, dear chap. You spout out some rigmarole like a regular Cicero at the grave and what ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... wrote him the longest rigmarole letters, that I used to read: the sly little devil; and he answered under cover to Mrs. Bonner. He was for carrying her off the first day or two, and nothing would content him but having back his child. But she didn't ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Volnay. 'The trick isn't done yet, old fellow. You've got to be formally enlisted, and to answer a rigmarole of questions, and be examined by the regimental doctor, and to take the oath. The trick isn't done yet, by ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... from such gross insults as are poured upon him in this pamphlet. Of the author's literary talent, we shall say but little: the phrases, "setting down to count the cost"—"the rights of the man the greatest bore in nature"—the appellation of rigmarole ramble, given to a correct sentence of Dr. Priestley—which the author attempts to criticise—may serve as ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... signifying nothing; sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. nonsense, utter nonsense, gibberish; jargon, jabber, mere words, hocus-pocus, fustian, rant, bombast, balderdash, palaver, flummery, verbiage, babble, baverdage, baragouin^, platitude, niaiserie^; inanity; flap-doodle; rigmarole, rodomontade; truism; nugae canorae [Lat.]; twaddle, twattle, fudge, trash, garbage, humbug; poppy-cock [U.S.]; stuff, stuff and nonsense; bosh, rubbish, moonshine, wish-wash, fiddle- faddle; absurdity &c 497; vagueness &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... she knew what she was a-saying of. He questioned her fiercely, but there was nothing to be got out of her rigmarole account, which Fenwick cut short by retreating into the studio ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... insignificant person, you see,' he went on mischievously. 'You are of so little use to your generation. People do not benefit by your example, or defer to your opinion. There is no St. Ursula in the calendar.' Now what did he mean by all this rigmarole? But he only laughed again in a provoking way, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to talk like a woman in a Shaw play. I don't like this rigmarole about "pursuit." Say you're in love, like a civilized human being. And take a cigarette, and tell me ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... "Why, gal alive! what rigmarole 's this? Married—ay, an' so you shall be, in gude time. You 'm light-headed, lass, I do b'lieve. But doan't ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... throw them into the grave, over which they build a hut; and a fire is kept lighted for a certain length of time. It is likewise customary for his wife or nearest relation, if at any future period they should happen to pass near the grave, to repair the hut, rekindle the fire, and utter a long rigmarole to the departed, to induce him to lie still, and not come back and torment them. Nothing will induce a stranger to go near a new grave, or to mention the name of the departed for a long time after his death. They always speak of ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... myself would have acted precisely as your brother did. I know the Goodwins, too, and I know, besides, that they are incapable of reverting to either fraud or undue influence of any kind. All that you have told me, then, is, with great respect to you, nothing but mere rigmarole. I am sorry, however, to hear that the daughter, poor girl, is dying. I hope in ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton |
