"Balderdash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... idiotic? Then Cotton Mather was a greater man than Johann Sebastian Bach. Then the average college critic of the arts, with his balderdash about inspiration and moral purpose, is greater than Georg Brandes or Saint-Beuve. Then Eugene Brieux, with his Y. M. C. A. platitudinizing, is greater than Moliere, with his ethical agnosticism, his ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... scrabble. empty sound, dead letter, vox et praeterea nihil [Lat.]; a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for, pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... lecture on it publicly at the next meeting of the Vaterlands-Verein for he attached great importance to my discoursing on the subject personally. Quite uncertain as to whether I could really persuade myself to do this, I attended the meeting, and there, owing to the intolerable balderdash uttered by a certain barrister named Blode and a master-furrier Klette, whom at that time Dresden venerated as a Demosthenes and a Cleon, I passionately decided to appear at this extraordinary tribunal ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... two lines are priggish, and the last three mere poetic balderdash. But it is in the fourth act, when Prince Henry is watching by the bedside of his dying father, that Shakespeare speaks through him ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Ricketts—discussion too, in which every one knows what he is going to say—than to flaccid plays in which the audience always knows what the actors are going to say better often than the actors. The sort of balderdash which Mr. —- serves ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... away with his brethren under any condition whatsoever, and he vouchsafed Reuben no reply when he said, "Slay my two sons, if I bring him not to thee." He considered it beneath his dignity to give an answer to such balderdash.[224] "My first-born son," he said to himself, "is a fool. What will it profit me, if I slay his two sons? Does he not know that his sons are equally mine?"[225] Judah advised his brethren to desist from urging their father then; he would consent, he thought, to whatever expedients were ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... his way. He used to go starring it in the provinces, itinerating as a tuppenny lecturer on Tom Paine. He has occasionally appeared in our Lecture-Hall. He, too, as well as other conjurers, has thrown dust in our eyes and has made the platform reel beneath the superincumbent weight of his balderdash and blasphemy. The house he lives in is a sort of "Voltaire Villa." The man and his "squaw" occupy it, united by a bond unblessed by priest or parson. But that has an advantage: it will enable him to turn his squaw out to grass, like his friend Charles ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... scratchy etchings, or the leaden things in which you fancy you see tender harmonies in gray. Erskine's next drama may be about liberty, but its Patriot Martyrs will have something better to do than spout balderdash against figure-head kings who in all their lives never secretly plotted as much dastardly meanness, greed, cruelty, and tyranny as is openly voted for in London by every half-yearly meeting of dividend-consuming vermin whose miserable wage-slaves drudge sixteen ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... marvellous peacemaker of Europe, the fire-engine who, as Hermann had said, was ready to put out all conflagrations, the fatuous mountebank who pretended to be a friend to England, who conducted his own balderdash which he called music, had changed his role and shown his black heart and was ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the Hegelian philosophy occurred by means of a return to the materialistic standpoint, that is to say, a determination to comprehend the actual world—nature and history—as it presents itself to each one of us, without any preconceived idealistic balderdash interfering; it was resolved to pitilessly sacrifice any idealistic preconceived notion which could not be brought into harmony with facts actually discovered in their mutual relations, and without any visionary notions. ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... fair description—none of your poetical balderdash, but an honest plodding description of a perfectly comfortable bed, and of the process of going to sleep, would, judiciously administered soon after dinner, overpower the vivacity of any tranquil gentleman who loves a nap after ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... "Balderdash! You are thinking of some old trumpery of former days. Till I know to the contrary, everything here belongs to me as heir-at-law, and I do not mean to allow of any interference till I know for certain that my rights have been taken from me. And I won't ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... with balderdash, such as this, Mr. Buckram beguiled the few minutes necessary for removing the bandages, hiding the bottles, and stirring up the cripples about to be examined, and the heavy flap of the coach-house door announcing ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... who has a wife and sisters, or children at home, say 'Go on' to such disgusting ribaldry as this? Do you dare, sir, to call yourself a gentleman, and to say that you hold the King's commission, and to sit down amongst Christians and men of honour, and defile the ears of young boys with this wicked balderdash?" ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... intellectual delirium tremens that probably ever came under the notice of any reader is found in a professed apology for the Scriptures, recently published, under the pompous and bombastic title of "COSMOGONY, OR THE MYSTERIES OF CREATION."—A volume of such puerile trash, such rubbish, twaddle, balderdash, and crazy drivelling[A] as this, was never before vomited from the press of any land, and beside it the "REVELATIONS" of Andrew Jackson Davis, the "Poughkeepsie Seer," rises to the lofty grandeur of the "Novum Organon,"—a sight that makes one who really ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... finished yet. With his record of adventure, with the romantic reek of India (and camphor) in the tiger-skin of the rugs that strewed his hall and surged like a rising tide up the wall, with his haughty and gallant manner, with his loud pshawings and sniffs at "nonsense and balderdash," his thumpings on the table to emphasize an argument, with his wound and his prodigious swipes at golf, his intolerance of any who believed in ghosts, microbes or vegetarianism, there was something ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... was no substitute for Fenris tallow-wax, good, bad or indifferent. In the second place, it isn't sold to the gullible public, it's sold to equipment manufacturers who have their own test engineers and who have to keep their products up to legal safety standards. He didn't know this balderdash of his was going straight to the Times as fast as he spouted it; he thought I was taking it down in shorthand. I knew exactly what Dad would do with it. He'd put it on ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... it? Why, that your poor dear father was off his head, of course," I answered, testily. "I guessed as much that night, twenty years ago, when he came into my room. You see he evidently hurried his own end, poor man. It is absolute balderdash." ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... became by the time he arrived the grave also of his own reputation and the hopes of his partisans. His speeches on the route were a volcanic outbreak of vulgarity, conceit, bombast, scurrility, ignorance, insolence, brutality, and balderdash. Screams of laughter, cries of disgust, flushings of shame, were the various responses of the nation he disgraced to the harangues of this leader of American "conservatism." Never before did the first office in the gift of the people appear so poor an object ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... should be outraged. "What, Sir?" he had roared out when I, in full conceit of new knowledge, had audaciously ventured to pull him up, once in my student days. "What, Sir? Don't talk to me of your book-fangled balderdash! Is language for the use of man, or man for the use of language?" and he quoted from Hamlet's soliloquy in a way that set me packing my pedant lore in the unused lumber-room of brain lobes. And so, I say, Mr. Jack MacKenzie continued to pour ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... I have seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash," added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, "would have ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... his real one. He wanted to show her something, he wanted to show her everything; but she was not sure now—after an hour's talk—that she particularly wanted to see anything more that he could show her. He had shown her a great deal while he sat there, especially what balderdash he thought it—the whole idea of women's being equal to men. He seemed to have come only for that, for he was all the while revolving round it; she couldn't speak of anything but what he brought it back to the question of some new truth like that. He didn't say ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... a Bounderby chapel, for ever go to sleep under a Bounderby chaplain, for ever be supported out of a Bounderby estate, and for ever nauseate all healthy stomachs, with a vast amount of Bounderby balderdash and bluster? Had he any prescience of the day, five years to come, when Josiah Bounderby of Coketown was to die of a fit in the Coketown street, and this same precious will was to begin its long career of quibble, plunder, false pretences, vile example, little service ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... carried on at home. In one of the narrowest parts of the street a small newspaper shop made him stop. It was betwixt a hairdresser's and a tripeseller's, and had an outdoor display of idiotic prints, romantic balderdash mixed with filthy caricatures fit for a barrack-room. In front of these 'pictures,' a lank hobbledehoy stood lost in reverie, while two young girls nudged each other and jeered. He felt inclined to slap their faces, but ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... dozen futile attempts to stem the tide of the girl's anger. "I didn't listen nor peek nor anything, and you scream so loud she'll hear every word you say. You—now be quiet and let me speak—you walked in your sleep last night. You went into her room and said off a whole lot of balderdash to her—enough to set her against you for the rest of her life—if she ever finds out you really ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... pleasure from this medley of balderdash and drivel to the more sober tome of Mr Collier, because we know that whatever he gives us will at least have the merit of being genuine. Out of the thousand black-letter broadsides which constitute the Roxburghe collection, the editor has selected upwards of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... North and ready to pour itself over the South? Of course all this, the staple of their every-day discussions, was strange enough to my ears; and I listened in a sort of silent wonderment that men could talk such balderdash. Any serious project of a great Northern movement on behalf of Southern slaves was then as far from credible and as strange to my ears as it was possible to be. It seemed hardly worth while to answer their suggestions; I therefore spoke of neighbors of theirs who were friends of mine, and of other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... talked so. If we meet idiots in life, as will happen, it is a great mercy that they do not use such absurdly fine words. The Stranger's talk is sham, like the book he reads and the hair he wears, and the bank he sits on, and the diamond ring he makes play with—but, in the midst of the balderdash, there runs that reality of love, children, and forgiveness of wrong, which will be listened to wherever it is preached, and sets all the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... merest balderdash and doggerel that it was ever our bad fortune to lay eyes on. The author is a vulgar buffoon, and the editor a talkative, tedious old fool. We use strong language, but should any of our readers peruse the book, (from which calamity Heaven preserve them,) ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... been able to make a few accurate predictions now and then—enough to keep his reputation going. He's tried to increase the frequency, accuracy, and detail of his 'flashes' by studying up on the techniques used by other seers, and, as a result, he's managed to soak up enough mystic balderdash to fill ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and probably if you put me to the question in the same fashion, I'd give you a very short answer. Remember one thing, however, old fellow—I've seen a precious deal more of life and the world than you have! From sixteen years of age, when you were hammering away at Greek verbs and some such balderdash at Oxford, I was up at Rangoon with the very fastest set of men—ay, of women too—I ever lived with in all my life. Half of our fellows were killed off by it. Of course people will say climate, climate! but if I were to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... signalman kept their glasses fixed on the opposite ship, ready to take in her next signal. "International courtesies are all very well in their way, but I don't like being stopped for a mere exchange of bunting and that sort of balderdash, Nesbitt." ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... sharply, when Dick had hazarded a remark about the Premier's policy; "you are a Radical one day, and a Conservative another. That comes of your debating societies. You take contrary sides, and mix up a balderdash of ideas, until you don't know whether you are standing on your head or your heels;" and it was after this that Dick found his refuge ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... dogs, or the braying of asses. He may depend on it, what he is saying about Ireland is the genuine truth, or the nearest to it that has ever been said by any person whatever; and I hope he knows long ere this (if he likes to consider it) that the truth alone is anything, and all the circumambient balderdash and whirlwinds of nonsense tumbling round it are, and eternally remain, nothing. Tell him I have read his book, and know others that have read it with attention; and that their and my clear opinion ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... are obliged to express our doubts whether a grosser delusion was ever promulgated. Not a play of Shakespeare's can be ventured on the London stage without mutilation—and without the most revolting balderdash foisted into the rents made by managers in his divine dramas; nay, it is only some three or four of his pieces that can be borne at all by our all-intelligent public, unless the burthen be lightened by dancing, singing, or processioning. This for the stage. But is it otherwise ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... only an abuse of power, to put money into the pockets of yourself and a few like ye. And whin meself and Flin put the irons on a big nigger that the captain was endeavoring to skulk by keeping him in the forecastle of the ship, he interfered between me and me duty, and began talking his balderdash about the law. Sure, with his own way, he'd have every nigger in the city an abolitionist in three weeks. And sure, Mr. Sheriff, and ye'd think they were babies, if ye'd see himself talk to them at the jail, and send them up things, as if they were better than the other criminals, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Saint Catherine of Siena, "a study in the religion, literature, and history of the fourteenth century of Italy." That sounded heartless enough. The frontispiece portrait of the wan, meager, despondent saint promised freedom from romantic balderdash. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... batter his ears with diluted and debased filches from De Civitate Dei, and almost every article of his practical ethics may be found clearly stated in the eminent bishop's Ninety-third Epistle. And so in politics. The Bolsheviki of the present not only poll-parrot the balderdash of the French demagogues of 1789; they also mouth what was gospel to every bete blonde in the Teutonic forest of the fifth century. Truth shifts and changes like a cataract of diamonds; its aspect is never precisely the same at two successive ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... carpet-knights; honesty for courtiers; truth for monks, and chastity for nuns: a good saleable stock that costs the vender nothing, defies wear and tear, and when it has served a hundred customers is as plentiful and as marketable as ever. But, sirrahs, I'll none of your balderdash. You pass not hence without clink of brass, or I'll knock your musical noddles together till they ring like a pair of cymbals. That will be a new tune for ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... broke in the detective hastily. "Names, especially modern ones, destroy romance. Even the Georgian method of using initials, or leaving out vowels, lend an air of intrigue to the veriest balderdash." ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... new acquaintance, who, I need hardly say, was neither more nor less than a sergeant in coloured clothes, assumed, I suppose, for the purpose of taking young fellows like myself unawares,—I say it was not his balderdash, which, young and raw as I was, I fully perceived, that reconciled me to the notion of listing. It was because I saw in it a prompt and ready means of escaping the immediate destitution with which I was threatened, my foolish determination not to return home having rather gained strength than weakened, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... very true. When I see the windbags, the carpet-baggers, the charlatans, the—the—the fools and ignoramuses who corrupt the multitude by their wealth, or seduce them by spouting balderdash to them, I cannot help thinking that an honest man with no humbug about him, who will talk straight common sense and take his stand on the solid ground of principle and public duty, must win his way ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... Dhuva held up his hands. "Our priests are liars too. All that balderdash about the Wheel and the River of Fire. It's just as bad as your Hivvel or whatever you called it. And our Grat and your Mud, or Gog: they're the same—" Dhuva's head went ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer |
