"Terse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... matters of government his ideas were terse and decided. He was strongly attached to the present, heedless of the future, and the socialists troubled him little. Without caring whether the sun and capital should be extinguished some day, he ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... of the pedestal, a third tablet bears the inscription which was written at the instance of Very Rev. Dr. Charles B. Rex, president of the Brighton Theological Seminary. Mgr. Schroeder, the author, interprets the meaning of the whole, in terse rhythmical Latin sentences, after the Roman ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... radiation of hope and happiness and sympathy and good cheer. Instead, each and all, individually and collectively, were entangled in possessions,—weighted down with things, and quite illustrating the terse little couplet ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... to fill the position of teacher in the Kedarville school." Then followed terse directions as to the best way of reaching Kedarville, and, finally: "Mrs. Philander Keeler will board you for two Dollars ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of the most interesting of British creatures. The Encyclopaedia Britannica is as terse and simple as ever about him. "Grasshoppers," it says, "are specially remarkable for their saltatory powers, due to the great development of the hind legs; and also for their stridulation, which is not always an attribute of the male only." To translate, grasshoppers have a habit of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... by a clever political squib. A terse and spirited paper found its way to Rome, and was soon affixed, to the statutes of Pasquin and Marforio, and in other public places of that city, and even to the gates of the papal palace. Without going beyond his own doors, his Holiness had the opportunity of reading, to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... affectionately and consistently insulted each other on all possible occasions. Now, however, there was a certain purposeful ring in Benton's voice which told the other this was quite different from the time-honored affectation of slander. Consequently his demand for further enlightenment came with terse directness. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... somewhat too sweeping. Interspersed among those respectable and tidy mountain villages, once full of such vigorous life, one sometimes comes upon little isolated groups of wretched hovels whose local reputation is sufficiently indicated by such terse epithets as "Hardscrabble" or "Hell-huddle." Their denizens may in many instances be the degenerate offspring of a sound New England stock, but they sometimes show strong points of resemblance to that "white trash" which has come to be a recognizable strain of the English ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... Told me afterwards he had never looked on matters in that light. Great advantage having a man like HANKEY going round prepared at moment's notice to take common-sense view of situation and depict it in terse language. Sobering effect on ATKINSON only momentary. Whilst SPEAKER was narrating circumstances on which he had based charge against him of frivolous and vexatious conduct, Member for Boston was bouncing about on seat like parched pea, shouting out, "Oh! oh!" "Ah! ah!" "No you don't!" and offering ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... Van's eyes, for terse as was the phrase it bore to him the very recognition he had coveted from Bob's father. Mr. Carlton, however, did not enlarge upon the subject, but casting it swiftly into the ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... speedily opened his negociation by asking in very terse and unequivocal phrase, my intentions regarding his sister-in-law. After professing the most perfect astonishment at the question, and its possible import, I replied, that she was a most charming person, with whom I intended to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... versification, for that faculty of song which is the flower of the lyric genius, Beddoes was pre-eminently distinguished. Nor for these alone. His style is based upon the rich vocabulary of the old dramatists, and is terse, pregnant and quaint, without any trace of affectation. There was a sturdy genuineness about the man that forbade him to assume, and his phraseology was the natural outgrowth of his mind and his early education. He has not gone to work, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds—namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the case to say that the subject "I" ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Tom radioed a terse report of their experience to the task-force commander and in turn was told that none of the naval craft had either sighted or picked up any sign of a ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... physicians. Back in the car, he cast a quick look at Dr. Marks. The scientist was sitting quietly, staring straight ahead. He wasn't talking, and Rick was glad. He didn't know how much of the gibberish he could take. It was weird and horrifying, particularly since Marks had been so crisp and terse—even though ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... scrutiny and appraisal might be he kept them entirely to himself. When he addressed his grandson directly, which was not often, his remarks were trivial commonplaces and, although pleasant enough, were terse and to the point. ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... in his mind's eye a sharply etched picture of the rise and progress of a village magnate cleanly struck out in the two terse sentences, and his respect for his companion in the wide window-seat increased in just proportion. Verily, ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... answer was very terse. "I have had the honour," he wrote on the 23rd of January, "of receiving your lordship's letter, in which you tender your services to take command of the Baltic Fleet. I consider the tender highly honourable to you; but I cannot ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... does no doubt very boldly take this capacity for granted in us. In 'choice and pith of diction,' again, of which Mr. Lowell speaks, he hits the mark with a felicity that is almost his own in this generation. He is terse, concentrated, and free from the important blunder of mistaking intellectual dawdling for meditation. Nor in fine does his abruptness ever impede a true urbanity. The accent is homely and the apparel ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... nature and man in the writings both of Bacon and of Hobbes of Malmesbury; and I have brought with me that famous work which is now so little known, greatly as it deserves to be studied, "The Leviathan," in order that I may put to you in the wonderfully terse and clear language of Thomas Hobbes, what was his view of the matter. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... intact the time-honored parliamentary methods and amenities which unfailingly secure action after deliberation, possesses in our scheme of government a value which can not be measured by words. The Senate is a perpetual body. In the terse words of an eminent Senator now present: 'The men who framed the Constitution had studied thoroughly all former attempts at Republican government. History was strewn with the wrecks of unsuccessful democracies. Sometimes the usurpation of the executive power, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... paper, went up to where the hired horse stood, and coaxed it down through the Slide. Quickly, with the deftness that told of lifelong intimacy with horses and saddles, he set her own saddle on the hired horse, while Mary Hope read the terse bill of sale that set forth the legal "Ten dollars and other valuable considerations," and was signed "Thomas Lorrigan, per L. M. Lorrigan." It all seemed very businesslike, and heartened her so much that she was willing to be nice to Lance Lorrigan. But Lance ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me—a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating. My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative character, nor one on the recesses of whose mind and feelings even those ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... [70] "These terse graphic descriptions of objects will be found very serviceable in sharpening and intensifying the powers of observation, as well as securing clearness, distinctness, accuracy, and life in verbal description. Here the pupil ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... New York Age, edited by Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, and the Richmond Planet, edited by Mr. Mitchell. These two papers and their editors have been, and are yet, valiant warriors for the race and of incalculable benefit to the race. As a terse, caustic and biting editorial writer Mr. Fortune is hardly surpassed by any one, and his paper for years has been uncompromising in fighting all adverse issues in the race question. Almost the same thing can be said of the Richmond Planet, and more than any other, perhaps, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... which alone he can expose that inward sense of things, the purity of this medium, its laws or tricks of refraction: nothing is to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter save that. Style in all its varieties, reserved or opulent, terse, abundant, musical, stimulant, academic, so long as each is really characteristic or expressive, finds thus its justification, the sumptuous good taste of Cicero being as truly the man himself, and not another, justified, yet ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... the Admiral in brief, terse sentences the picture of that daybreak on the Pacific, the line of breakers, white in the vanishing night, the abandoned ship beyond, cracking her canvas to tatters in the freshening breeze. And he told of his boarding her and of what ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... expert theological polemic of the liberal Catholic school. Of a very different tone is Rochefoucauld, whose Maxims, expressed in pithy language, seek to trace all virtuous action to self-seeking. The French fondness for epigram—for terse, paradoxical statement—is exemplified even in the best writers, as, for example, Blaise Pascal. La Bruyere (1645-1696), a genial philosopher, wrote in a most attractive style a work entitled The Characters of Our Age. The metaphysician Malebranche (1638-1715) ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... everything in the shape of exaggeration. He clothed his ideas with a thousand delicate shades of expression, and never pronounced an opinion without all sorts of reservations. These conversational habits, natural to a finely trained mind, used greatly to irritate the dry, terse old aristocrat, who was never in the least disarmed by the moderation of an adversary—quite the contrary! I always foresaw one danger. That danger was Bonaparte. My father had not himself retained an particular affection ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... slang phrases, patched with shreds of French and Latin.' His verses on Margaret Hussey, which we have quoted, are in his happiest vein. The following lines, too, on Cardinal Wolsey, are as true as they are terse:— ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... succession I called various officers and gave terse orders. Double crews on duty in the generator compartment, the ray projectors, the atomic bomb magazines, and release tubes. Observers at all observation posts, operators at the two smaller television instruments to comb the terrain ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... of Lamarck as a scientific observer, "were width of scope, fertility of ideas, and a preeminent faculty of precise description, arising not only from a singularly terse style, but from a clear insight into both the distinctive features and the resemblance of forms" (Encyc. ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... back to the dancing-room, with a perplexed expression on his cheery face, which amused Flora intensely when she remarked it. When the subject came on for discussion afterward in the smoking-room at his club, he thus expressed himself, in language terse and elegantly allegorical. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... Rosebery, Mr. John Morley, Sir George Trevelyan, and Mr. Asquith. It is perhaps a little curious, in view of what happened later on, that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was not mentioned; but, with regard to the foregoing names, I perfectly recollect, though there is no need to repeat, the terse and trenchant judgment passed on each. When we had come to the end of my list, the ex-Premier turned on me with one of those compelling glances which we knew so well, and said with emphasis, "But you haven't mentioned the most important man of all." "Who is that?" "Edward Grey—there is the man with ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... if nothing but the ordinary business had occurred, Jasper sat down and went carefully over every detail of the commission he had been sent on, heard Mr. Marlowe's terse, "That's good, Jasper; you've done it all well," and passed out for the last time, from the private office, and joined his father in silence, for ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... wounded, that at the worst it would say "missing," that perhaps it might even tell of some pleasant surprise, a brief return to home such as the last letter had foreshadowed. He read the final, unqualified statement, the terse regrets. He stood quite still for a moment or so, staring ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... never shown to Gale that daring side of her character which had been so suggestively defined in Belding's terse description and Ladd's encomiums, and in her own audacious speech and merry laugh and flashing eye of that never-to-be-forgotten first meeting. She might have been an entirely different girl. But Gale remembered; and when the ice had been somewhat broken between them, he was ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... book of honest, direct, sympathetic, humorous writing about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales. . . . The result is a real book — a book in a hundred. His language is terse, supple, and richly idiomatic. He can tell a ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... in his letters to the selected number, timed each candidate at an interval of ten or fifteen minutes from those preceding and following. They were shown in as they arrived, and had short conversations with Mr. Nyttleton—terse, and to the point. Miss Aldclyffe neither moved nor spoke during this proceeding; it might have been supposed that she was quite unmindful of it, had it not been for what was revealed by a keen penetration of the veil covering her countenance—the rays from two ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... are always valuable, for they are terse and reticent. In writing to weavers, like Bamford; to men in trouble, as Cooper; to students, statesmen, or earnest inquirers of whatever degree, a genuine sympathy for them takes the place of the sympathy for himself, often too prominent ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... additional warmth into his utterance of the general thanksgiving, as he might have done had he been a more effusive man; but, on the contrary, read it with a more than ordinary calmness, and preached to the excited people one of those terse little unimpassioned sermons of his, from which it was utterly impossible to divine whether he was in the depths of despair or at the summit and crown of happiness. People who had been used to discover a great many of old Mr Bury's personal peculiarities in his sermons, and who, of recent days, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... as rapid and decided as, in the giving of instructions, he is clear and terse. In debate or argument his speech is often loud and accompanied by vigorous and decided gestures; but in conversation his manner is constrained and his voice quiet and clear with a strong power of appeal which is enhanced by a slight French ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... It was hard to leave his brother at a moment when he must be more than himself—become general of an army, with a battle imminent; but he was under dire necessity, and forced himself to listen to and gather the import of the few terse orders and directions that Henry, breathless as he was, rendered clear and ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thought in my mind when I chanced to meet with, a very terse expression of it. I have already quoted an eminent divine who said: "God infallibly accomplishes everything at which He aims." The theologian did not think that his dictum would be given such a wide application. But it commends itself to our judgment nevertheless, ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... it is surprising. 'Mid all the poets, good, and bad, and worse. Who've scribbled (Hock or Chian eulogizing) Post and papyrus with "Immortal verse"— Melodiously similitudinising In Sapphics languid or Alcaics terse No one, my little brown Arabian berry,. Hath sung thy praises—'tis ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... was ornate, his style was terse and beautiful; in conversation he was voluble and transcendently entertaining; knew everybody and everything; never seemed to read, and yet was always prepared in his cases, and seemed to be a lawyer by intuition. He was rarely in his office, but always on the street, and always dressed ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Who, in fact, cares?" was the terse answer, "only it was badly done. The next time you break a seal, be sure and have wax of exactly the same tint on hand. I thought of that, and came back. It would ruin all, if General Harrington ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... Gilson. Such was the terse, cold, but not altogether unsympathetic judgment of the better public opinion at Mammon Hill—the dictum of respectability. The verdict of the opposite, or rather the opposing, element—the element that lurked ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind indeed who does not perceive the radical and chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical modes ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... desirable qualities in the use of English are the simple, plain, exact, lucid, concise, trenchant, vigorous, impressive, lively, figurative, polished, graceful, fluent, rhythmical, copious, elevated, flexible, smooth, dignified, terse, epigrammatic, felicitous, euphonious, elegant, and lofty. Undesirable qualities are the diffuse, verbose, redundant, inflated, prolix, ambiguous, feeble, monotonous, loose, slip-shod, dry, flowery, pedantic, pompous, rhetorical, grandiloquent, artificial, formal, ornate, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... thing or the other. Yet it might be neither. There was a disquieting alternative. No doubt the message disposed of the delicate affair for good and all in ten terse words. The maid had made up her mind; she had disclosed it in haste: that was all. It might be, however, that the dispatch conveyed news of a more urgent content. It might be that the maid lay ill—that she called for help and comfort. In that event, nothing could excuse the reluctance ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... developed in the hands of historians, sages, and philosophers. Thucydides founded true history, scientific, drawn from the sources, supported and strengthened by all the information and corroboration that the skilled historian can gather, examine, and control. As a writer, Thucydides was terse, bare, limpid, and possessed an agreeable sober elegance. He introduced into his history imaginary discourses between great historical personages which allowed him to show the general state of Greece or of particular portions of Greece ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... ever a poem more frequently quoted or so universally plagiarised? In writing or speaking about the country and its inhabitants, if we would express ourselves as concisely as we possibly can, we are bound to quote the "Elegy"; it is invariably the shortest road to a terse expression of our meaning. Who can improve on "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife," or "The short and simple annals of the poor"? If Gray's "Elegy" is but "a mosaic of the felicities" of those who went before, let it be ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... speculation: If a man converses with the most ordinary Lacedaemonian, he will find him seldom good for much in general conversation, but at any point in the discourse he will be darting out some notable saying, terse and full of meaning, with unerring aim; and the person with whom he is talking seems to be like a child in his hands. And many of our own age and of former ages have noted that the true Lacedaemonian type of character ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... and terse. He saw that she made short cuts to the root of the matter. He showed himself keen and shrewd. Once or twice he said "I know, I know," and ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... found it. Only a terse, short telegram, mentioning that reports of a massacre of a surveying party had just reached the African coast, and it was feared that none ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... lookouts were called. Could they see anything now? Their "No" answers didn't hold for long because seconds later their terse reports began to come into the CIC. A "brilliant light, like a planet" was streaking across the northwest sky about 30 degrees above the horizon. Unfortunately the radar had lost contact for a moment when the visual report ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... June 25, 189—," he begins, and then briskly rattles away at the terse official paragraphs: "The following assignment of graduates of the United States Military Academy are hereby announced to take effect from June 14th." It begins with that highly scientific and enviable body, the Corps of Engineers, and Mr. George Graham, up to this moment still officially ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... laconism^; Tacitus; ellipsis; syncope; abridgment &c (shortening) 201; compression &c 195; epitome &c 596; monostich^; brunch word, portmanteau word. V. be concise &c adj.; condense &c 195; abridge &c 201; abstract &c 596; come to the point. Adj. concise, brief, short, terse, close; to the point, exact; neat, compact; compressed, condensed, pointed; laconic, curt, pithy, trenchant, summary; pregnant; compendious &c (compendium) 596; succinct; elliptical, epigrammatic, quaint, crisp; sententious. Adv. concisely ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was terse but adequate: "Well—here's may God help us as we deserve!" I dipped my spoon, lifted it with shaking hand, my heart bursting to tell the little dear girl what I thought about her, my lips refusing to do anything of the sort; refusing, indeed, to do anything at all; for having ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... day he heard the terse and brutal truth. In an instant he believed it, some lower, animal intuition in him reiterating and confirming the fact. But even then he hated to think that people were so low, so vile. One day, however, he was looking through the volumes of the old ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... Ichi and hallooed forward. A man who was sitting on the sunny deck, abaft the galley, arose and came aft in obedience to the hail. Martin saw the fellow carried one of the Cohasset's rifles. He paused while Ichi gave him some terse directions, then he passed Martin and entered the cabin. Ichi and Asoki then proceeded ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... do for him yet?" Kathryn inquired, with an abrupt letting down of her terse dignity. "It does seem a shame I can't do something to help the poor fellow along, especially when it is so many years that I have known him. It's not as if he were a mere acquaintance, of course, and I want him to feel quite at liberty to send for ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... animadvert; he instructs also, and shows the fools the way to the land of wisdom; and so far is he from assuming the arrogant air of the commonplace moralist, that he reckons himself among the number of fools. The style of the poem is lively, bold, and simple, and often remarkably terse, especially in his moral sayings, and renders it apparent that the author was a classical scholar, without however losing anything of ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... and timidity. Now, however, I insist that you, immediately on reading this letter, repay to me all the sums of money you ever received from her. If you hesitate, the sword shall settle our accounts." Harun's reply, written on the back of the Byzantine emperor's letter, was terse and to the point. "In the name of God the merciful and gracious. From Harun, the commander of the faithful, to the Roman dog Nicephorus. I have read thine epistle, thou son of an infidel mother; my answer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... subject, like "The Ring of Polycrates," does not admit of that rich poetry of description with which our author usually adorns some single passage in his narratives. The poetic spirit is rather shown in the terse brevity with which picture after picture is not only sketched but finished—and in the great thought at the close. Still it is not one of Schiller's best ballads. His additions to the original story are not happy. The ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that a country parson like myself had in the smallest degree inveigled a young man of the highest prospects into a match—there is nothing of the matchmaker about me; but Maud is in a degree well-connected; and, as you know, she will be what the country people here call 'well-left'—a terse phrase, but expressive! I do not see that she would be in any way unworthy of the position—and I feel that her life here is a little secluded—I should like her to have a little richer material, so to speak, to work in. Well, well, we mustn't be too ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he, ‘though in perfect health, you are in Sardinia.’ And Pausanias, Cornelius Nepos, Strabo, Tacitus, Silius Italicus, and Claudian, severally bear testimony to the current opinion. In later times the terse Dante sings: ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... wretches as upon the other; and the strange phantasmagoric haze which is thrown around the ship and the lonely voyager leaves their outlines as clear as if we saw them through the sunshine of the streets of Paris. Coleridge triumphs over his difficulties by sheer vividness of imagery and terse vigour of descriptive phrase—two qualities for which his previous poems did not prove him to possess by any means so complete a mastery. For among all the beauties of his earlier landscapes we can hardly reckon that of intense and convincing truth. He seems ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... inspect the body, for there were one or two matters concerning which I was desirous of his opinion. Dr. De Breen was a blunt, abrupt young fellow, not given much to conversation upon topics outside his profession, and even then his remarks were invariably terse and ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... All-Loving One, that He should, as it were, with such extreme affection show us a way by which to travel through darkness unto light. To those who cannot see this perfection of goodness depicted in Christ's own words, I would say in the terse Oriental maxim: ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... was while under the tutelage of Doctor Johnson that Jay began to acquire the ability to turn a terse sentence; and this gained him admittance into the world of New York letters, whose special guardians were ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... occasion. His nominal duty was to explore the Continental newspapers for matter interesting to the American government, and to furnish the Secretary of State, when called upon, with opinions upon diplomatic questions. As he once stated it to me in his terse way, it was "to read the German newspapers, and keep Seward from making a fool of himself." The first part of this duty, he said, was easy enough, but the latter part rather difficult. He kept the office longer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... terse and incisive, and brilliant with epigram and point. It contains pithy aphoristic sentences which Burke himself would not have disowned. But these are not its best features: its sustained power of reasoning, its wide sweep of observation ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... dress me, I was very thin, so thin that it was really a grief to me. Sally would comfort me in my thin days by the terse compliment: ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... 1915, four French aeroplanes designed for bomb-dropping, escorted by seven machines with rapid-fire guns dropped on the fort and station at Muelhausen six shells of 155-millimeter caliber, and twenty shells of ninety-six caliber. In the terse language of the official report, "they reached their objective." The damage must be imagined ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... instantaneously arrested. With such promptitude and finish was he disposed of, that, had Miss Carewe been aware of his name and the condition wrought in him by the single stroke, she could have sought only the terse Richard of England for a like executive ability, "Off with his head! So ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... I believe, occurs in Ovid. Query whether it is not a thought naturally presenting itself to the mind, reflected by memory, confirmed by experience, and which some Mimic author has made proverbial by his terse, gnomic form of expression. ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... I presented myself, and confronted not Miss Steele but Miss Bousfield, who addressed me in terse and forcible language, and gave me to understand that I was a person of extremely second-rate character and attainments. I acknowledged it, but hoped for an opportunity ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... letter with a good deal of interest, moved by the fact that his terse, friendly phrases recalled to me a phase of my own life which, though no more than a couple of years past, seemed to me wonderfully remote. I had been new to London and to Fleet Street then, full of aspirations, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... much more valuable as a true record, because, though rude in style and exceedingly naive in expression, and by no means free from Chinese thoughts and phrases, it is marked by a genuinely Japanese cast of thought and method of composition. Instead of the terse, carefully measured, balanced, and antithetical sentences of correct Chinese, those of the "Kojiki" are long and involved, and without much logical connection. The "Kojiki" contains the real notions, feelings, and beliefs of Japanese who lived before ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Hilbery wished, for sentimental reasons, to introduce the recollections of a very fluent old lady, who had been brought up in the same village, but these Katharine decided must go. It might be advisable to introduce here a sketch of contemporary poetry contributed by Mr. Hilbery, and thus terse and learned and altogether out of keeping with the rest, but Mrs. Hilbery was of opinion that it was too bare, and made one feel altogether like a good little girl in a lecture-room, which was not at all in keeping ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... you are disturbed by the noise made by your neighbors in the conduct of their affairs; pardon me if I leave with you an infallible recipe for peace in the midst of commotion: Hear only what you will to hear.' With this terse counsel he quietly bade the astonished listener adieu. After his visitor had departed, the nervous man felt unaccountably calm, and was constrained to meditate upon his friend's advice, and no sooner did ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... in getting the telegram away was inspired partly by burning need of telling the news to Rockvale that did not reflect on Curt. He flashed after the New York message a terse call up and down the line to "Find the Sheriff," and then bolted out to the platform. His shout was heard not only at the little hotel across the street from the station, but at the city limits of Rockvale a good mile away. Rockvale answered the shout as a clan answering ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... and most perfect specimen of our prose, the stiff and bald, the vapid and turgid manner of the Orientalist who "commences" and "concludes"—never begins and ends, who never uses a short word if he can find a long word, who systematically rejects terse and idiomatic Anglo-Saxon when a Latinism is to be employed and whose pompous stilted periods are the very triumph of the "Deadly-lively"! By arts precisely similar the learned George Sale made the Koran, that pure and unstudied inspiration of Arabian eloquence, dull as a law document, and left ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... typical villain. This is a terse version, with concrete cases, of Bolingbroke's vaguer generalities. "The laws of gravitation," he says, "must sometimes be suspended (if special Providence be admitted), and sometimes their effect must be precipitated. The ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... It is perhaps the highest in eloquence of expression and sublimity of imagination. Throughout the whole range of Sanskrit literature—from the simple lessons of Hitopadesha to the most elaborate polish of Naishadha—from the terse vigour of Sankaracharjya to the studied majesty of Magha—from the harmonious grace of Kalidasa to the ornate picturesqueness of Kadambari, there is probably no writer who can come up to Bhavabhuti in his wonderful command of Sanskrit language and surprising fluency ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... terse and guarded reply was universally considered supreme, and was all the more valuable at a time when the practice had grown up, then comparatively new and since gradually limited, of asking questions on foreign and colonial affairs, with the object of embarrassing ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... letting the car ride out under full power over the smooth country road. But, though Julia Cloud questioned several times, she could get no explanation except Allison's terse "Too provincial," whatever he meant by that. She doubted whether he knew himself. She wondered whether it were that they each felt the same homesick feeling that she ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... later there came jogging wearily into camp, guided for a time only by the call, and finally met and escorted by the picket, a sergeant and trumpeter from old Tintop himself, and the letter they bore put an end even to Chrome's inertness. In brief, terse words it told the story. He and his command had had a sharp, stubborn fight with a big force of hostiles that very day, with considerable loss to both. "If you had been here with your men," Tintop said, "I believe ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... fond of "artistic writing," a typically Parisian product, a style which in ordinary times seems to "powder puff" the emotions, but which, amid the convulsions of the war, exhibits a certain heroic elegance. The narrative is terse, gloomy, stifling; but there come episodes of repose, which break its unity, and by these the tension is relieved for a moment. Few readers will fail to appreciate the charm, the discreet emotion, of these episodes, as for instance in the chapter "On Leave." But three-fourths ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... of the severe majesty of Milton, or of the terse composition of Pope, or the elaborate elegance of Campbell, or the flowing and redundant diction of Southey; but there is a medley of bright images, and a diction tinged successively with the careless richness of Shakespeare, the antique simplicity of the old romances, the homeliness of vulgar ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... indeed, he proved to us that night. Never, before or since, from professional or private virtuoso, have I heard such playing as that. The work was in itself a fine one; original, strong, terse and racy, like him who had composed it. It was sad, very sad, but there was a magnificent elevation running all through it which raised it far above a mere complaint, gave a depth to its tragedy while it pointed ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... task of a philosopher, scanning facts patent to every eye—even more striking when first seen. His conclusions he attributed to the inevitable process by which facts are generalised, and demonstrate systems. His style, when deliberate, is terse and explicit: his ideas he expressed with the utmost freedom; or, as it then seemed, audacity. The colonists he treated as an operator, who indeed pities the sufferings of his patient, but disregards a natural outcry, while expounding in the language of science both the symptoms and the cure. ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... professor of horticulture, University of Vermont. A treatise on the general principles governing outdoor art; with sundry suggestions for their application in the commoner problems of gardening. Every paragraph is short, terse and to the point, giving perfect clearness to the discussions at all points. In spite of the natural difficulty of presenting abstract principles the whole matter is made entirely plain even to the inexperienced reader. Illustrated, ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... it was difficult, until the advent of Puck, to find a medium of publication for writings of this nature. I contributed a good deal to this paper, but it was only partly satisfactory, for articles which make up a comic paper must be terse and short, and I wanted to write humorous tales which should be as long as ordinary magazine stories. I had good reason for my opinion of the gravity of the situation, for the editor of a prominent magazine declined a humorous story (afterward ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... hearing this speech, congratulated his visitor upon his terse and accurate methods of expression, detailed to him the careers in which such habits of terminology are valuable, and also those in which they ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... touched with a live coal from the altar of God, his eloquence was seraphic. In one of his impassionate outbursts he had said, "The Church in all ages has been persecuted by a Pharaoh on the throne, a Haman in the state, and a Judas in the Church." Archbishop Sharp heard of the terse statement. The lightning had struck the mark. Sharp appropriated the caricature, and saw Judas personified in his own character. He ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... Motives obviously differ from each other in regard to the intervals of the tones composing them, i.e., the up and down relationship in pitch, the duration of the tones and their grouping into metric schemes. But a real motive is always terse, concise, characteristic and pregnant with unrevealed meaning. The chief glory of such creative tone-poets as Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms and Franck is that their imaginations could give birth to musical offspring that live for ever and are loved like life ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... and can't express 'em, Gibbon shall teach me how to dress 'em In terms select and terse; Jones teach me modesty and Greek; Smith, how to think; Burke, how to ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... twenty men arrived, the lead herd was within a mile of the dead-line, and we rode out and met them. Fully eighty troopers, half of which rode in column formation in front, halted us as we approached. Terse and to the point were the questions and answers exchanged between the military arm of the government and the quarantine authorities of Montana. When the question arose of indemnity to citizens, in case of death ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... the civilized man as to another's itinerary—"Did you visit Florence? Berlin? St. Petersburg?"—and then the comparing of impressions. Only here again that old familiar magic of unfamiliar names threw its glamour over the terse sentences. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... and lightnings from an existence viewed with a passion of solicitude—then, just at that moment, the doors of my heart would shake, bolt and bar would yield, Reason would leap in vigorous and revengeful, snatch the full sheets, read, sneer, erase, tear up, re-write, fold, seal, direct, and send a terse, curt missive of a page. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... upwards of a hundred and fifty were extant in Cicero's time, and which the virtuosi of the age of Hadrian preferred, or professed to prefer, to Cicero's own, are lost, with the exception of inconsiderable fragments. The fragments show high oratorical gifts; shrewdness, humour, terse vigour and controlled passion; "somewhat confused and harsh," says a late but competent Latin critic, "but strong and vivid as it is possible for oratory to be." We have suffered a heavier loss in his seven books of Origines, the work of his old age. This may broadly be called an historical ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... trusting until his seventieth year that there is still plenty of daylight. He contributed five biographies to the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The articles on Bentley, Erasmus, Grotius, More, and Macaulay are from his pen. They are all terse, luminous, and finished, and the only complaint that one can make against them is that our instructor parts company from us too soon. It is a stroke of literary humour after Pattison's own heart that Bentley, the mightiest of English scholars, should fill no more space in the Encyclopaedic ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... are. It's your favourite mood. You live on sorrow," she said, pelting me with the terse, sharp sentences. Then, for I twitched at her telling me I lived on sorrow, she melted at once, and said, "Oh, Oliver, I'm so sorry. Why did you not send for me and let me nurse it better? Surely that was my right as well as ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of an hour more the two worked steadily and silently, the only sound in the room being the scratching of their pencils and Rosalind's occasional terse ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... into themselves it rules and governs. The joke of the inebriate man that when he had taken his potation he was quite another man and that then he felt it his duty to treat that other man, is literally true, a terse and faithful expression of a natural fact. The man or woman born and bred under the influence of alcohol is of the race of alcohol, and as distinct a person as any racial peculiarity can supply. The reason, the judgment, the temper, the senses are attuned by it. It is loved by its lovers like ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... the long rows of seats looked as if buried beneath an electrified avalanche of newspapers. At the end of five minutes the papers were fluttering on the floor amid the peanut-shells and orange-skins of the earlier travellers. There was an impressive silence, then an animated, terse, and shockingly expressive conversation. Only a dozen or more sat with drawn faces and white lips. They were the dwellers by the lake. Hiram Webster had left every cent of his large fortune ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... lay upon the polished deal. One of the party, none other than the Commissioner himself, had just finished speaking, and in silence now we stood about the gruesome object which had furnished him with the text of his very terse address. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... terse reply, "those that are Mohammedans don't, any way. Trinidad negroes do. They're different from the Barbadian negroes, quite different. Obeah seems to be about the ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... or terse than this description of the catastrophe. This was a sudden volcanic eruption like that which destroyed in one night the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. At the time of the convulsion in Palestine while clouds of ashes were ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Calhoun has been described by Daniel Webster as "plain, strong, terse, condensed, concise; sometimes impassioned, still always severe. Rejecting ornament, not often seeking far for illustrations, his power consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the closeness of his logic, and in the earnestness and ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... That terse, positive, peremptory, dynamic pen-name was first used by an old pilot named Isaiah Sellers—a sort of "oldest inhabitant" of the river, who made the other pilots weary with the scope and antiquity of his reminiscent knowledge. He contributed paragraphs of general ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... peacock." He gave an account of the war from the beginning, showing how it had arisen, and how it had been conducted; and he did so with admirable simplicity and truth. He thought the North were right about the war; and as I thought so also, I was not called upon to disagree with him. He was terse and perspicuous in his sentences, practical in his advice, and, above all things, true in what he said to his audience of themselves. They who know America will understand how hard it is for a public man in ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... had little part. No, mercifully, though in it she was not of it. This was Gregory's relieving thought as his eye ran over them, the women with powdered faces and extravagant clothes and the men with the oddest collars and boots and hair. "Shoddy Bohemians," was his terse definition of them; an inaccurate definition; for though, in the main, Bohemians, they were not, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... pages Wyvis had written in his usual strain. He was not perhaps an ideally good letter-writer, but he had a terse, forcible style of his own, and could describe a scene with some amount of graphic power. In the midst of an account of certain brigands with whom he had met in Sicily, however, he had, in this letter, broken off quite suddenly and ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... suggest! For instance: does the general management propose to place my work upon the stage with the outlay indispensable to a brilliant effect? On this point W——writes me: 'The general management will leave nothing undone to equip your opera in a suitable manner.' You will understand how terribly terse this seems to me! I am not greatly surprised at receiving no letter from Reissiger since last March: he has worked for me—that is the best and most honourable answer; besides, it would be foolish on my part to expect that Reissiger, now that ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... Tresayle took Mr. Mortmain's view of the case. Nothing could be more terse, perspicuous, and conclusive than the great man's opinion. Mr. Quirk was in raptures, and that very day sent to procure an engraving of Mr. Tresayle, which had lately come out, for which he paid 5s., and ordered it to be framed and hung up in his own room, where already grinned a quaint ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... tasted and described by Dampier in the seventeenth century. His description of it has all the terse directness peculiar to the writing of the inquisitive buccaneer, with a touch of quaintness that makes the passage desirable to quote:* (* Dampier's Voyages edition ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Or gems that glitter like his Gems of Paste? Where can you show, among your Names of Note, So much to copy and so much to quote? And where, in Fine, in all our English Verse, A Style more trenchant and a Sense more terse? ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... and his terse pen dealt stinging blows straight in the face of the opponent. Indeed, as an editor he has been rarely equaled. While Greeley would devote a column to an article, he would take the same subject and in a few words put the argument ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... think you are wrong," replied Mercy. "Parson Dorrance is not sentimental, I am sure. His sermons were clear and logical and terse,—not a waste word in them; and his mouth and chin are as strong as an ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... hands—and his life, too, for all he knew to the contrary—and moved on into the blackness, groping his way cautiously down a short corridor, his fingers on either side brushing walls of rotten plaster. He had absolutely nothing to guide him beyond the crimp's terse instructions. Underfoot the flooring seemed to sag ominously; it creaked hideously. Abruptly he stumbled against an obstruction, halted, and lighted ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... and frighten him into a confession," was the terse reply. "I want your authority to threaten him with arrest. In fact, I should prefer that you or Superintendent Galloway undertook to do that. It would come with ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... return till July. This time he did not trouble himself to make excuses as before, and his letters were less frequent, and shorter and less affectionate, especially after the first few weeks: they came slower and slower, and more terse and careless every time. But still, when I omitted writing, he complained of my neglect. When I wrote sternly and coldly, as I confess I frequently did at the last, he blamed my harshness, and said it was enough to scare him from his ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... come to you for my seat," was her terse statement, as she paused squarely before Miss ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... all night on octave flutes, Put peas (not peace) into his boots, Whereof grew corns in season, They scotched his sheets, and, what was worse, Stuck his silk nightcap full of burrs, 430 Till he, in language plain and terse, (But much unlike a Bible verse,) Swore he should ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... or affectation of imagery or fine language she is very graphic in her descriptions of sea and shore. Her account of a visit to the great Hawaian volcano is one of the best we have ever read, being simple, terse and vivid, without the overloading with detail that spoils so many of the pen-pictures ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... published during his lifetime, at Wilna, Prague, and Leipsic, and have been republished since. One of his achievements is that he helped to create a public of Hebrew readers. It must be admitted that the great mass of the people were at first somewhat repelled by his realism and by his terse and accurate way of writing. Their taste was not sufficiently refined to appreciate these qualities, and their primitive sensibilities could not derive pleasure from a description of things as they actually are. This is the difficulty which the second generation of Lithuanian writers ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... before us, and explained why—at least in my belief—it is premature to say, "Now we have settled our Irish troubles and may deal in peace with questions that concern England."'] on the Irish Land Act. It states in the most terse and telling language precisely the views I have entertained for the last two years; and the conclusions it suggests are even more striking than those it expresses. The ministers of England, be they who they may, have a difficult task before ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... where you are; I'll go." Derek spoke with the terse command of subdued excitement, almost pushing Diane back, as she, too, attempted to go to Marion's assistance. She sank obediently into one of the great chairs, too dazed even for curiosity as to what was passing in the hail. Derek closed the door behind him, and, though confused sounds of ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... be perfect, expression must be luminous yet terse, vigorous, yet in taste and keeping. It must be without mannerisms, without inadequacy, without flatness, without obscurity. "Clear, but with distinction," is the brief definition of Aristotle. Davidson has learned his lesson well from Shelley and Wordsworth ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... closer observation of Willy Hammond, in whom an interest, not unmingled with concern, had already been awakened in my mind. I found him engaged in a pleasant conversation with a plain-looking farmer, whose homely, terse, common sense was quite as conspicuous as his fine play of words and lively fancy. The farmer was a substantial conservative, and young Hammond a warm admirer of new ideas and the quicker adaptation of means to ends. I soon saw that his mental powers were developed beyond his years, while ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... Gaines, descending for once from the habitual classicism of his phraseology, described The Patriot of Severance's production in two terse and sufficient words. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that the man was really coming ashore, and, this presently becoming evident, he at once started for the treasure-cave. Knowing the way by this time perfectly well, an hour's easy walking took him to the spot, where he found Nicholls and Simpson on the watch. A few terse sentences sufficed to put the men in possession of the material facts of the situation, and he then hurried down aboard the cutter to see Flora and assure her of his safety, and that everything was going well. Then, returning to the cave, he made his final arrangements ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... letter to one Aristides, reconciling the apparent discrepancy between Matthew and Luke in the genealogy of Christ by a reference to the Jewish law, which compelled a man to marry the widow of his deceased brother, if the latter died without issue. His terse and pertinent letter to Origen, impugning the authority of the apocryphal book of Susanna, and Origen's wordy and uncritical answer, are both extant. The ascription to Africanus of an encyclopaedic work entitled Kestoi (embroidered girdles), treating of agriculture, natural history, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... more terse and sententious, besides involving a much higher moral signification, that it may well be an original itself; but in that case, the verbal coincidence ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... last club was more congenial? M. de Talleyrand insists on conveying this letter for you. He has been on a visit here, and returns again on Wednesday. He is a man of admirable conversation, quick, terse, fin, and yet deep, to the extreme of those four words. They are a marvellous set for excess ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay |
