"Digress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... butler would pay him his exact fare. This done, he sought the telegraph office and sent three more cablegrams, the concise wording of which he had carefully evolved on the way up from Southampton. These do not come into the story,—which may digress, however, so far as to tell that on receipt of one of them, the Vice-President of the Hands Across Central New York Office remarked to his secretary 'that the old warrior was losing no time. Leisure and ozone would appear to have bucked him up.' To which the ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of keeping out strangers is a law of pusillanimity and fear. But this restraint of ours hath one only exception, which is admirable; preserving the good which cometh by communicating with strangers, and avoiding the hurt; and I will now open it to you. And here I shall seem a little to digress, but you will by and by find ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... be pardoned if I digress at this time to state that the party of one hundred and sixty-nine, both stern and opposite, besieged my castle on the next day but one, with the punctuality of locusts, and despite all of my precautions, all of my devices, all of my objections, effected an entrance and over-ran the ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... will be pardoned, he is willing to hope, by the kind reader, if he digress in one or two paragraphs in this part of his work, purposely to expose the great wickedness of prognostication and fortune-telling; as the whole is not only unsound, foolish, absurd and false, but is most ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... Let me apparently digress for the moment and bring all clear and straight. The emotions have no basis in reason. We smile or are sad at the manifestation of jealousy in another. We smile or are sad because of the unreasonableness of it. Likewise we smile at the antics of the lover. The absurdities he is ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... further, and assume that these two lines of division intersect, so that a work may be akin to great art though it be not good art, while, however perfect a work of art may be, it may remain little art for some wholly non-aesthetic reason? But we digress. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... I digress here in order to give an account of the intimate processes, which, according to my view, take place within the germ-plasm, and which I have called "germinal selection." These processes are of importance since they form the roots of variation, which in its turn is the ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... and, indeed, no symptom of depression is discernible until the early part of September when he was again left alone. And now, indeed, there is evidence that he was incommoded again, and that more pressingly. To this matter I will return in a moment, but I digress to put in a document which, rightly or wrongly, I believe to have a bearing on the thread of ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... are classic in their method, in their simplicity. They have scarcely changed since the days when Solomon built his Temple and draped it with such gorgeous hangings that even the inspired writers digress to emphasise their richness with long descriptions that could not possibly have assisted ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... have to digress a little to give you the history of the name. Every effect has a cause you know, and after I got old enough to reason things out, I wondered too why my name was Gullins, so I did some investigating and the story goes ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... adamant. Ah cruel sex, and foe to all mankind, Either you love or else you hate too much! A glist'ring show of gold in you we find, And yet you prove but copper in the touch. But why, O why, do I so far digress? Nature you made of pure and fairest mould, The pomp and glory of man to depress, And as your slaves in thraldom them to hold; Which by experience now too well I prove, There is no pain unto the ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... beans? Will she in any way—selfish or otherwise—be the gainer for her annoyance? Furthermore, if it were the custom to eat sugar on baked beans, as it is the custom to put sugar in coffee, this woman would not have been annoyed at all. It was simply the fact of seeing Mrs. Smith digress from the ordinary course ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... period the trench discipline attained a high standard as the men had been together for some months and free from heavy casualties, and it is well here to digress for a while and record what trench duty really meant. "Stand to" would be at say 3-30 a.m., shortly before dawn. At this time all would man the parapet and wait until it became daylight. The rifles, ammunition, gas helmets, and feet of the men would ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... But I digress among these after-thoughts. I had no time to reflect upon "compressions of the tongue" or "spasms of the glottis." My antagonist soon finished his reconnaissance of me, and, dropping upon all-fours and uttering a loud scream, rushed ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... "I will digress for a moment longer from the relation of those occurrences which developed out of Pym's love affair, to say a word concerning some of the physical effects of this artificial light, and to explain certain facts related by Poe in his narrative of the earlier adventures of our younger hero—I say of ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... no perjury, But a mere ceremony, and a breach Of nothing, but a form of speech; And goes for no more when 'tis took, Than mere saluting of the book. 210 Suppose the Scriptures are of force, They're but commissions of course, And Saints have freedom to digress, And vary from 'em, as they please; Or mis-interpret them, by private 215 Instructions, to all aims they drive at. Then why should we ourselves abridge And curtail our own privilege? Quakers (that, like to lanthorns, bear Their light within ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Regional Research Laboratory feels that it has played an important role in what is now becoming a new industry of increasing magnitude. For the benefit of those who are not already acquainted with the Laboratory, permit me to digress momentarily to explain briefly its organization ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... little digress from the chronological course of my explanatory narrative to inform the reader that when Lady Ellinor had her interview with Roland, she had been repelled by the sternness of his manner from divulging Vivian's secret. But on ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gradual, graduate, degrade, digress, Congress, aggressive, progressive, degree; (2) gradation, Centigrade, ingress, egress, transgression, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... will digress a bit and explain how these stone-quarries were discovered. Pixodorus was a shepherd who lived in that vicinity. When the people of Ephesus were planning to build the temple of Diana in marble, and debating whether to get the marble from Paros, Proconnesus, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... can by no means be otherwise; and the knight-errant who should act in any other manner would digress much from his duty; for it is a received maxim and custom in chivalry, that the knight-errant, who, on the point of engaging in some great feat of arms, has his lady before him, must turn his eyes fondly and amorously ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... I want to digress here just a little bit by quoting one thing that Mr. Best said. I wish, by the way, that we could incorporate some of his homey philosophy into some of our minutes so as to really benefit by some of his remarks. I was impressed this morning by his statement in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... treatises, and to the Scriptures themselves, I rejourn all such atheistical spirits, as Tully did Atticus, doubting of this point, to Plato's Phaedon. Or if they desire philosophical proofs and demonstrations, I refer them to Niphus, Nic. Faventinus' tracts of this subject. To Fran. and John Picus in digress: sup. 3. de Anima, Tholosanus, Eugubinus, To. Soto, Canas, Thomas, Peresius, Dandinus, Colerus, to that elaborate tract in Zanchius, to Tolet's Sixty Reasons, and Lessius' Twenty-two Arguments, to prove the immortality of the soul. Campanella, lib. de sensu rerum, is large in the same discourse, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... be out of place to digress a moment to illustrate the moral effect of such a convulsion. Several weeks after this great mine explosion, the 18th Army Corps, to which I then belonged, was holding a line of works recently captured from the rebels, about six miles from Richmond, when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... may digress, there is one badge of honour in our country, which I never contemplate without serious reflection rising in my mind. It is the bloody hand in the dexter chief of a baronet,—now often worn, I grant, by those who, perhaps, during their whole lives have never raised their hands ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... not digress—the particular thing I wish to explain is that one day at recess the best scholar was in tears, and I went to her and asked what was the matter, and she told me that some of the big girls had openly declared that she—my fine, freckled girl, the check-aproned, the invincible—held ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... man in the boat who comes to moor you along the west gully in the Ramsgate Harbour; so is Longnose, the name of a buoy, and of a reef of rocks just north of the North Foreland; so are a great many other words. But I digress. I only put in these words to show you in case you had any dissolving doubts remaining upon the matter, that the kind of stuff you read is very often all nonsense, and that you must not take things for granted ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... not digress from our author. Here are a few lines of the deepest feeling and truth, and most appropriate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... But I digress. I was speaking of the bank check cipher. At the First National Bank I was shown another of these remarkable indorsements. It ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... I will digress a little to give an account of the Duke's character, whom I knew for some years so particularly, that I can say much upon my own knowledge. He was very brave in his youth, and so much magnified by Monsieur Turenne, that, till his marriage ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... artistic value of his introduction of it. Perhaps his enthusiasm does a little run away with him; perhaps he gives us a little too much of it, and avails himself too freely of the license, at least of the temptation, to digress which the introduction of such persons as Elie Magus affords. And it is also open to any one to say that the climax, or what is in effect the climax, is introduced somewhat too soon; that the struggle, first over the body and then over ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the vicar, completing his period, as if rounding a sentence in one of his sermons, wherein he was frequently prone to digress, "and I'm glad to learn from your acquiescent reply that you agree with me on ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... intermodification can ever be apparent. Each sentence, stuffed with innumerable clauses of restriction, and other parenthetical circumstances, becomes a separate section—an independent whole. But, without insisting on Lord Brougham's oversights, or errors of defect, I will digress a moment to one positive caution of his, which will measure the value of his philosophy on this subject. He lays it down for a rule of indefinite application, that the Saxon part of our English idiom is to be favored at the expense of that part ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... CHAMBERLAIN, returning to the Exchequer after an interval of thirteen years, made a much better Budget speech than one would have expected. It was longer, perhaps, than was absolutely necessary. Like the late Mr. GLADSTONE, he has a tendency to digress into financial backwaters instead of sticking to the main Pactolian stream. His excursus upon the impracticability of a levy on capital was really redundant, though it pleased the millionaires and reconciled them to the screwing-up of the death-duties. Still, on the whole, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... the nature of his married life, I thought the dash and loyalty he showed delightful. "Do not be afraid," says he; "if I am killed, there is nobody to miss me." It appears you subsequently thought of that yourself. But I digress. I explained to him it was impossible that I could fight! "Not if I strike you?" says he. Very droll; I wish I could have put it in my book. However, I was conquered, took the young gentleman to my high favour, and tore up my bits of scandal on the spot. That is one ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "with regard to moral worth the Boers do not fall short of any European nation." I have not wished to digress from my argument by entering upon known cases of corruption concerning the Volksraad in general, and Mr. Krueger in particular, but we have seen their methods of legislation, of administering justice, and of keeping their pledged word; ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... a Catholic spontaneously will speak, on the Classics, or Fine Arts, or Poetry, or whatever he has taken in hand. Men think that he cannot give a lecture on Comparative Anatomy without being bound to digress into the Argument from Final Causes; that he cannot recount the present geological theories without forcing them into an interpretation seriatim of the first two chapters of Genesis. Many, indeed, seem to go further still, and actually pronounce that, since our own University ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... as we are now regarding that fortune seems readiest to favour the daring, and if I may digress briefly to adduce experiences coming within my own knowledge, I would say that it is to his very impulsiveness that the enthusiast often owes the safety of his neck. It is the timid, not the bold rider, that ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... first water and magnitude, now makes his entre—the ghost of the late king! and here I must digress awhile, and like a raw notary's clerk, enter my feeble protest against the tame and unimpressive manner in which that supernatural personage is permitted to make his appearance. It should seem that our managers reserve all their decorations for the inexplicable dumb show of the Wood Daemon (that ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... Bay Roosevelt had instituted "hiking." He and the young people and such of the neighbors as chose would start from Sagamore Hill and walk in a bee-line to a point four or five miles off. The rule was that no natural impediment should cause them to digress or to stop. So they went through the fields and over the fences, across ditches and pools, and even clambered up and down a haystack, if one happened to be in the way, or through a barnyard. Of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... lord, your lordship seeth I have made a long digression from my answer, but I trust your lordship can consider what moveth me thus to digress: Surely it behoveth me not only to live uprightly, but to avoid all probable arguments that may be gathered to render me suspected to her majesty, whom I serve with all dutifulness and sincerity; and therefore I gather this, that if it were understood ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... here digress for a moment to deal with the argument advanced in the latter part of this sentence. It is very plausible, and, at first sight, appears convincing. It is also very commonly used. Over and over again, I have heard ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... case a very short time before he began to make ardent love to her. She was an extremely pretty girl, two years his senior, and, I am convinced, a most worthy and exemplary young woman. She became infatuated with the young man. He asked her to marry him. (Permit me to digress for a moment in order to state that while Courtney Thane was in his freshman year at college his father was obliged to pay out quite a large sum of money to a chorus-girl with whom, it appears, ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... difficulties. I admit that the fault lies entirely with the harassed and long-suffering gentleman who boasts the proud title of "spoil's officer." I admit—— But I grow warm, in addition to digressing unpardonably. The trouble is that I always do grow warm, and digress ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... this letter. For as to what actually occurred on the day of your start, it supplied me with absolutely no subject for writing. But as when we are together we are never at a loss for something to say, so ought our letters at times to digress into loose chat. Well then, to begin, the liberty of the Tenedians has received short shrift,[570] no one speaking for them except myself, Bibulus, Calidius, and Favonius. A complimentary reference to you was made by the legates ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of fossil animals is no less fertile in results. I should digress from my subject if I were to examine here how the organization of animals is developed upon the earth; what modifications, or more strictly speaking, what complications it has undergone after each ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... reflect upon it, and it may even be that, in spite of all, I culled some grain of comfort from the reflection. But let that be. My narrative would drag wearily were I to digress that I might tell you at length the ugly course of my thoughts whilst the sands of my last hour were running swiftly out. For, after all, my concern and yours is with the story of Lazzaro Biancomonte, sometime known as Boccadoro the Fool, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... column, that of the centre, found nothing on a road where its advanced guard itself had to subsist entirely on the leavings of the Russians; it could not digress from its direction, for want of time, in so rapid a march. Besides, the columns on the right and left consumed every thing on either side of it. In order to live better, it ought to have set out later every day, halted earlier, and then extended itself more on its flanks during the night; which ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... I will here digress for a moment, in the hope that I may be permitted to make mention of my own works, without incurring the charge of undue egotism. Let me, however, by way of apology for calling public attention to the series of forty small ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... digress no further from the consideration of the Phaenomena, more immediately explicable by this Experiment, we shall proceed to shew, That, as to the rising of Water in a Filtre, the reason of it will be manifest to him, that does take notice, that a Filtre is constituted of a great number ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... hope you will permit me to digress long enough to express something that is much on ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... fairly manifested. The obvious quality of its realism has been pointed out already; the masterly use of the principles of suspense and stimulated interest will hardly pass unnoticed. A negative excellence is the absence of that discursiveness in composition, that tendency to digress into superfluous comment, which is this author's one prevailing fault. De Quincey was gifted with a fine appreciation of harmonious sound, and in those passages where his spirit soars highest not the least of their beauties ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... I shall allow myself to digress. "Silk possesses the property of dismissing the evil spirits who inhabit the magnetic fluids of the atmosphere," says the Mantram, book v., verse 23. And I cannot help wondering whether this apparent superstition may not contain a deeper meaning. It is difficult, I own, to part with ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... hurtful to us, or displeasing to God. If it could be so embowelled unto you, as that you might truly discern the many monstrous conceptions of atheism and irreligion that are in it, it were worth the while, but I shall not digress upon the general head, I had rather keep within the limits of the text. Self boasting, you see, is that which is here condemned, and the very name is almost enough to condemn the nature of it. But there is another particular added ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... this about? how tell what things you have been used to keep and what to give up? how keen a desire it is well to quell, and which ones? To reach this point, it is necessary to digress again in order to find the element of the magic touchstone which will tell us whether the thing we are looking at is made of gold ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... the time wasted at school was harmless, and what the boy lost through the folly of his mother was redeemed by the wisdom of his father. Truly are our mothers our best friends and worst enemies. Why, when I was but a child my mother gave me money and bade me go prove—but I digress. Well, thus my brother grew up not ignorant of the things a man should know if he is to be a man and not a babu, but the woman, his mother, wept sore whenever he was taken from her, and gave my father trouble and annoyance as women ever do. And when, at last, she begged that the boy might ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... if even you know what it means to a man like me—a man fairly critical, a man of the world—to meet one who represents the essential, and who is so free from the formal, from the grimace.' But I digress. As Stevenson says, Mr. Chalmers is away up the Fly River, a desperate venture! But he is boisterously happy about it, and at sunset on this Easter Sunday evening they anchor off a populous settlement just round a bend of the river. The ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... down any green lane or dark alley that may excite my admiration or my curiosity—hurry through glittering saloons or crowded streets—pause at the cottage door or shop window, as it best suits my humour, so, in my intercourse with you, I shall digress, speculate, compress, and dilate, as my fancy or my convenience wills it. This is a blunt acknowledgment of my intentions; but as travellers are never sociable till they have cast aside the formalities of compliment, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... digress for a moment, especially as there are more of them in this state than there are Mormons, though you never can tell what will happen with this vain generation of young girls, that think more about wearing silk stockings than about minding their mothers and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Fu-Manchu's activities in England, I find that one of the worst hours of my life was associated with the singular and seemingly inconsequent adventure of the fiery hand. I shall deal with it in this place, begging you to bear with me if I seem to digress. ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... fared in my love-affair with Brigitta, the girl that gave me the cuff and had such strange eyes. But I fear now that I am too deeply embarked upon the love-affairs of another to have the leisure to digress into my own adventures. The world is more interested in love's tragedies than in the comedies of love, wherein I have ever played my part, and so I will go back to my Dante and his sad affairs, and leave my little love-tale ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I digress again, I see, but my drift I hope is clear. Differ as we may, Belloc and Chesterton are with all Socialists in being on the same side of the great political and social cleavage that opens at the present time. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... either to feign a quite new matter, or to frame the history to the most tragical convenience? Again, many things may be told, which cannot be showed: if they know the difference betwixt reporting and representing. As for example, I may speak, though I am here, of Peru, and in speech digress from that to the description of Calicut; but in action I cannot represent it without Pacolet's horse. And so was the manner the ancients took by some "Nuntius," {85} to recount things done in former ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... but One, from whose eye no dark dells or earth-emboweled caves can hide the transgressor; and the tears, the sighs, the blood—aye, the blood—of that solitary cavern are all known to Him, are all put down by the recording angel in the archives of heaven. But we digress. ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... dialect of their own which transcends the comparatively harmless efforts of the Black Country potter. Foul is not the word for this ultra-filthy mode of talk—it passes into depths below foulness. I may digress for a little to emphasize this point. The latter-day hanger-on of the Turf has introduced a new horror to existence. Go into the Silver Ring at a suburban meeting, and listen while two or three of the fellows work themselves into an ecstasy of vile excitement, then you will hear something which ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Drama let me not digress, Nor spare my precepts, though they please you less. [xlii] Though Woman weep, and hardest hearts are stirred, [xliii] When what is done is rather seen than heard, Yet many deeds preserved in History's page Are better ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the camp. But now I must digress a moment to tell you something that the public—at least the public that has derived its knowledge of northern wilderness life from fiction—may find it hard to believe. And this is what I want to say: that every one in that whole brigade of wild ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... the Dyak way of obtaining it. It differs slightly from the usual manner, and is best explained by a sketch. Captain Keppell, who was always the life and soul of every thing, whether it was a fight or a pic nic, was unanimously elected caterer, and in that capacity he was most brilliant. I must digress a little to bestow upon that officer the meed of universal opinion; for his kindness, mirth, and goodness of heart, have rendered him a favourite wherever he has been known, not only a favourite with the officers, but even more so, if possible, with the men. In the expeditions in which Keppell ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... And here I will digress a moment to make a single remark on a subject of which popular feeling, in America, under the influence of popular habits, is apt to take an exparte view. Accomplishments are derided as useless, in comparison with what is considered household virtues. The ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... little flowery by-paths of your own, quite foreign to the grand paved-ways along which your friend supposes he is so kind as to be leading you. But however digressive your mind may be, do not suffer your eyes to digress. Whatever may be the intensity of your ennui, endeavor to preserve an animated expression, and your success is complete. This is all that is necessary. You will never be called upon for notes or comments. Your little escapades ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... I must digress here a bit from my own personal adventures to explain briefly how the fall of Nu-Yok came about, as I learned ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... digress for a little chat on the indispensable hatchet; for it is the most difficult piece of camp kit to obtain in perfection of which I have any knowledge. Before I was a dozen years old I came to realize that a light hatchet was a sine qua non ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... not admit that good faith in taking a negro to Kansas to be held in slavery is a probability with any man. Any man who has sense enough to be the controller of his own property has too much sense to misunderstand the outrageous character of the whole Nebraska business. But I digress. In my opposition to the admission of Kansas I shall have some company, but we may be beaten. If we are, I shall not on that account attempt to dissolve the Union. I think it probable, however, we shall ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... poor "crazy" mother had held him up still acted upon his imagination. Brooding on these things he may have come to us perhaps only to see whether here he could sacrifice all or only "two roubles," and in the monastery he met this elder. I must digress to explain what an "elder" is in Russian monasteries, and I am sorry that I do not feel very competent to do so. I will try, however, to give a superficial account of it in a few words. Authorities on the subject assert that the institution ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... digress. Tempus fugit,—which reminds me of a story "Billy" Hallowell once told at a meeting of the American Bar Association in Minneapolis, in 1906. Hallowell was perhaps the most brilliant after-dinner speaker I have ever heard—with the possible ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... was indifferently written, would formerly have claimed our attention. In the Liturgy it is prayed that "magistrates may indifferently minister justice." Indifferently originally meant impartially. The word extravagant, in its primitive signification, only signified to digress from the subject. The Decretals, or those letters from the popes deciding on points of ecclesiastical discipline, were at length incorporated with the canon law, and were called extravagant by wandering out of the body of the canon law, being confusedly dispersed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... been the subject of the first of the aforementioned books, and in the desire to get at the full meaning of problems which arose during its progress, he was led to digress into a general anatomical survey of the Rodentia, and in testimony to this there remain five or six books of rough notes bearing dates 1880 to 1884, and a series of finished pencil-drawings, which, as works of art and accurate delineations of fact, are among the most finished productions ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... But I digress: of all appeals,—although I grant the power of pathos, and of gold, Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no Method 's more sure at moments to take hold Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow More tender, as we every day behold, Than that all-softening, overpowering knell, The tocsin ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... I shall digress from the subject assigned me. The following matter may be left off ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... village hints that it has gained the greater number of victories; each is inclined in its heart to believe that the other one has actually done so—because, as I suppose, the agony of defeat leaves a more lasting impression than the joy of victory. But I digress. We have not even got to Rankin's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... of lions, from which I am tending to digress, the old G.B.R. convention has just been weighed in the balance and found wanting. It came about in this wise. Joan's and Porgie's Uncle Barney (his nose is retrousse, if anything, only he had the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... to digress from his proper theme: e.g. xxxix. 48, 6, 'cuius belli et causas et ordinem si expromere velim, immemor sim propositi, quo statui non ultra attingere externa, ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... notions of convenience and arrangement. The furniture is made up of odd pieces from all parts of the house, chosen on account of their suiting his notions, or fitting some corner of his apartment; and he is very eloquent in praise of an ancient elbow-chair, from which he takes occasion to digress into a censure on modern chairs, as having degenerated from the dignity and comfort of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... destroyed—that my heart is no longer in the right place—and that I no more walk erect before my fellow man. The canker is in the flower. The cup is bitter to the brim. The worm is at his work, and will soon dispose of his victim. The sooner the better. But I will not digress. 'Placed in a mental position of peculiar painfulness, beyond the assuaging reach even of Mrs. Micawber's influence, though exercised in the tripartite character of woman, wife, and mother, it is my intention to fly from myself for a short period, and devote a respite of eight-and-forty hours ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... with Poetry and Painting. A great Pleader is truly a great Artist, and more imaginative than any other. The number of summonses at Chambers is only limited by his capacity to invent them. Ask any respectable solicitor how many honest claims are stifled by proceedings at Chambers. And if I may digress in all sincerity for the purpose of usefulness, I may state that while recording my dream for the Press, Solicitors have begged of me to bring this matter forward, so that the Public may know how their interests are played with, and their ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... To digress a moment: When it comes to the arts, that is quite another matter. If a woman finds herself with a talent (I refrain from such a big word as genius, as only posterity should presume to apply that term to any one's differentiation from his fellows), by all means let her work like a man, ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of terms, when he attempts to write. And in making such choice, let him remember, that as affectation of hard words makes composition ridiculous, so the affectation of easy and common ones may make it unmanly. But not to digress. With respect to grammar, we must sometimes content ourselves with such explications of its customary terms, as cannot claim to be perfect definitions; for the most common and familiar things are not always those which it is the most easy ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... digress a moment to draw attention to the three simple diagrams of Fig. 109. The object, O, in each case is assumed to be to the right of the lens. In the topmost diagram the object is so far away from the lens that all rays coming ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... Supply and Joint Demand. Here, however, we are beginning to digress. Let us sum up in a general form our conclusions as to the way in which changes in the supply or demand of a commodity react upon the demand or supply of the other things with which it is jointly demanded ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... the first word which I ever heard Thee speak to me, and it made me greatly afraid. But as I shall speak hereafter [5] of this way of hearing, and of other matters, I say nothing here; for to do so would be to digress from my subject, and I have already made digressions enough. I scarcely know what I have said, nor can it be otherwise; but you, my father, must bear with these interruptions; for when I consider what God must have borne with ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... "That's human nature, my friend," he contended, determined not to be forced to digress from the main subject. "Have you got everything you want? Isn't there anything besides what you already have that appeals to you? Have ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... back-breaking and tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe? And did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in Jerico long before you got them half cut? To me it seems as if these things happened yesterday. And they did, to some children. But I digress. I was lying there trying the India-rubber rings. I remember looking at the clock and noticing that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be two weeks old, and thinking how little I had done to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... trust me, Belinda, they do sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not ALL Wolf and Red Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it." However, I digress. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... I suppose to be upon Thorns at this and the like impertinent Digressions, but let him alone and he'll come to himself; at which time I think fit to acquaint him, that when I digress, I am at that time writing to please my self, when I continue the Thread of the Story, I write to please him; supposing him a reasonable Man, I conclude him satisfied to allow me this liberty, ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... to myself (from whence my zeal for the Public good is perpetually causing me to digress), I will let thee, Reader, into certain more of my peculiarities. I was born (as you have heard), bred, and have passed most of my time, in a crowd. This has begot in me an entire affection for that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... proper, before we proceed any farther together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion, of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic whatever; and here I must desire all those critics to mind their own business, and not to intermeddle with affairs or works which no ways concern them; for till they ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... "are almost certain to be fatal, for his wrist has a magnificent twist which reminds one of a top. I do not know where he learned this wrist movement, but almost invariably it leads him to kill his man. Last year I saw him—I digress. I must look to it that O'Ruddy has quiet, rest, and peace ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... see I know your writing from having read Burnett all those "Burn this at once" epistles. And I know it still better from having to catalogue them for his ready reference. You know how impatient he is. (But I have run into an open switch and must digress backwards.) ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... that perilous voyage hath caused me to digress from the proper subject of this paper, which is the great prize fight between Governors Low and Stanford. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... earnest at that time, 960 To jog, according to the mode, In one dull pace, in one dull road, What but that curse of heart and head To this digression could have led? Where plunged, in vain I look about, And can't stay in, nor well get out. Could I, whilst Humour held the quill, Could I digress with half that skill; Could I with half that skill return, Which we so much admire in Sterne, 970 Where each digression, seeming vain, And only fit to entertain, Is found, on better recollection, To have a just and nice connexion, To help the whole with ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... student of the schools would digress here, to the great confusion of the reader, into a discussion of the controversy in the economic cloister between the rival schools of economists as to whether cost governs value or value governs cost. The point needs no discussion ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... strangers is a law of pusillanimity and fear. But this restraint of ours hath one only exception, which is admirable; preserving the good which cometh by communicating with strangers, and avoiding the hurt: and I will now open it to you. And here I shall seem a little to digress, but you will by-and-by find it pertinent. Ye shall understand, my dear friends, that amongst the excellent acts of that king, one above all hath the pre-eminence. It was the erection and institution of an order, or society, which we ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the inquisition of truth are to be governed and directed—is both of that extensive and fundamental character, that it would be treated with success only by one who knew how to resist the temptations to digress, as well as how to apply himself with vigour to the solution of the various questions that must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... that has been said thus far and remains to be said concerning the submarine, it might be well to digress for a moment and devote the remainder of this chapter to a consideration of the undersea fighter, its genesis, what it now is, and what it has accomplished. We all know that the submarine was given to the world by an American ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... corner of my house; if anything comes into my head that I have a mind to search or to write, lest I should forget it in but going across the court, I am fain to commit it to the memory of some other. If I venture in speaking to digress never so little from my subject, I am infallibly lost, which is the reason that I keep myself, in discourse, strictly close. I am forced to call the men who serve me either by the names of their offices or ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... once outside Limerick county, border at the Limerick Junction, a distance of 20 miles from the Treaty Stone. Splendid views of the Galtee ranges can be had, and on towards Clonmel the wooded slopes of the minor ranges and hills are a delightful picture. If time affords, the tourist can digress from the main road and visit the famous Glen of Aherlow. Back to Tipperary for lunch, good hotels, and splendid roads. Visit the Kickham monument, and then on to Clonmel. Excellent accommodation to be had at Clonmel. Next day Waterford and ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... I digress, and I must hasten to return to my narrative. Well, as I have said, I thought a constable had come to arrest me, and I could see myself in one of the archbishop's dungeons, when I opened my eyes and recognised the features and voice of M. d'Anquetil. 'Abbe,' said that young ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... thence, obtain a pretty good view of the interminable procession of the carriages before mentioned: one current of them, as it were, moving forward, and another rolling backward. But, hark!—the notes of a harp are heard to the left ... in a meadow, where the foot passengers often digress from the more formal tree-lined promenade. A press of ladies and gentlemen is quickly seen. You mingle involuntarily with them: and, looking forward, you observe a small stage erected, upon which a harper sits and two singers stand. The company now lie down upon the grass, or ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... digress here for the purpose of considering how the generators of an acetylene apparatus themselves should be protected from frost; but it may be said at the outset that it is impossible to lay down any fixed rules applicable to all cases, since local conditions, such ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... be found farther from my intention, since the commencement of this history, than to digress, more than necessity required, from the course of narration; and, by embellishing my work with variety, to seek pleasing resting-places, as it were, for my readers, and relaxation for my own mind: nevertheless, the mention of so great a ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... digress. It is a reprehensible habit. It is much better, as a rule, to die game than it is to digress, though on the present occasion there is no reason why I should do either. By the way, if a man has to choose between having either his leg or his arm amputated, which ought he to choose? Obviously ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... contempt. There the Highlander, elsewhere "the bold Gael with sword and buckler," is the type of poverty and wretchedness; and his language, elsewhere "the fine old Gaelic, the speech of Adam and Eve in Paradise," is the designation of every unintelligible jargon. But not to digress. On my expressing to the Gypsy queen my regret that she was unable to hold with me a regular conversation in Romany, she said that no one regretted it more than herself, but that there was no help for it; and ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... I digress a little. But is not the knowledge of rare, curious, and beautiful Prints—so necessary, it would seem, towards the perfecting of illustrated copies—is not this knowledge of long and ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... you. He knows what will sell, and we don't. Make a good, popular book, and get as much money as you can. By-and-by, when you've got a name, you can afford to digress, and have philosophical and metaphysical people in your novels," said Amy, who took a strictly ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... stage the annals digress to relate an episode which has only collateral interest Hosuseri and Hohodemi made fishing and hunting, respectively, their avocations. But Hohodemi conceived a fancy to exchange pursuits, and importuned Hosuseri to agree. When, however, the former tried his luck ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... under the same limitations of time, nor has he to contend against the same mental impatience on the part of his public. He may therefore linger where the dramatist must hurry; he may digress, and gain fresh impetus from the digression, where the dramatist would seriously endanger the effect of his scene by retarding its evolution. The novelist with a prudent prodigality may employ descriptions, dialogues, and episodes, which would be fatal in a drama. Characters may ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... intermediate condition. So that here we have two bodies of sterile workers in the same nest, differing not only in size, but in their organs of vision, yet connected by some few members in an intermediate condition. I may digress by adding, that if the smaller workers had been the most useful to the community, and those males and females had been continually selected, which produced more and more of the smaller workers, until all the workers were in this condition; we should then ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... historic. The public marks and magnifies a great man's foibles, but forgets both the little fellow and his faults. Jeanjean may hide from the battle in a hollow log, and none hear of it; but let a Demosthenes lose his shield and the world cackles over it for two-and-twenty centuries. To digress for a moment, I believe the story of Demosthenes' cowardice as damnable a lie as that relating to Col. Ingersoll's surrender. Even in his day human vermin sought to wreck with falsehood those they feared. The world—unwisely I think—interests ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... digress for the moment to relate an incident of the Federal march, to show the brutal cowardice and baseness of the Federals in making war upon the non-combatants—women and children—and also the unyielding spirit and inflexible ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... verses 12-14 that is not given by the Greek we get these eight lines in approximately Jeremiah's favourite Qinah-measure. The Greek also lacks verses 16-20, which irrelevantly digress from the exiles to the guilt and doom of the Jews in Jerusalem, and which it is difficult to think that Jeremiah would have put into a letter to be carried by two of these same Jews.(503) Verse 15 goes with 21-23,(504) a separate message to the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... gratitude, which I cherish toward these men, has caused me to digress further than I had foreseen or proposed; but to have passed them over in an historical sketch of my literary life and opinions, would have seemed to me like the denial of a debt, the concealment of a boon. For the writings of these Mystics acted in no slight degree to prevent ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... digress from the main point of this chapter long enough to explain that equality is not synonymous with identity, as seems to be the impression among the many; a misconception which we regret to say is shared by the judge ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... about athletics, about sport, and about scenery. Nor is it questionable that on these subjects he is seen, on the whole, at his best. True, his faults pursue him even here, and are aggravated by a sort of fashion of the time which made him elaborately digress into politics, into literature, even (God rest his soul!) into a kind of quasi-professional and professorial sermonising on morals and theology, in the midst of his sporting articles. But the metal more attractive ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... to be tedious, and this endeavour may succeed the better perhaps by declining any over-strict observation of method. There are certain points of that which I esteem the first philosophy whereof I shall never lose sight, but this will be very consistent with a sort of epistolary licence. To digress and to ramble are different things, and he who knows the country through which he travels may venture out of the highroad, because he is sure of finding his way back to it again. Thus the several matters that may arise even accidentally before me will ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... were occasionally given; the number for March 15, 1766, containing a well-written criticism of 'The Clandestine Marriage; a New Comedy,' performed there. As the Chronicle thus had to leave politics for literature, we may perhaps, in our turn, digress from a consideration of its pages, to note briefly that this period was set in the very midst of the celebrated Georgian era, in which this country could boast of more distinguished men—especially in literature—than at any other period. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... no longer. Upon which I have been at a great expense to fit up all the bones with exact contexture and in due symmetry, so that I am ready to show a very complete anatomy thereof to all curious gentlemen and others. But not to digress further in the midst of a digression, as I have known some authors enclose digressions in one another like a nest of boxes, I do affirm that, having carefully cut up human nature, I have found a very strange, new, and important discovery: that the ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... our readers a greater favor than to digress from the study of the detached lever escapement long enough to say a few words about drawing instruments and tablets or surfaces on which to delineate, with due precision, mechanical designs or drawings. Ordinary drawing instruments, even of the ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... old Philadelphia. Again, the elm tree is in full leaf, yet the "pow-wow" that Penn held with the Indians took place in November, and elm trees do not have leaves on them in this latitude in November. But why digress from the subject about which I started to write, merely to show that artists and those seeking for family distinction are not to be relied upon as truthful ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... fact that physical work is more or less exhausting in different climates, and as I am dealing, or about to deal, with the work of business men, which involves a certain share of corporal exertion, as well as with that of mere scholars, I must ask leave to digress, in order to show that in this part of the country at least the work of the body probably occasions more strain than in Europe, and is followed by greater ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell
... I must here digress to speak of some other work that my sister did during the time she lived in Aldershot. Both she and Major Ewing took great interest in the amateur concerts and private musical performances that took place in the camp, and the V.C. in "The Story of a Short Life," with ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... points of destination, while others move on farther; but the cell that has moved forward is as little derived from the stationary cell as the Indus from the Sarasvati. It is at the points of destination that the true species digress, and when these points are reached, the specific development ceases, and there remains only the possibility of the variety, the origin of which is conditioned by the multiplicity of individuals; but which must never be confounded with a true species. Every species represents an act ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Christians. And it is too great arrogancie for any man, or church [135] to thinke y^t he or they have so sounded y^e word of God to y^e bottome, as precislie to sett downe y^e churches discipline, without error in substance or circumstance, as y^t no other without blame may digress or differ in any thing from y^e same. And it is not difficulte to shew, y^t the reformed churches differ in ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... aspects of nature, but also as regards the quaint, droll, and humorous varieties of character, concur in rendering their conversation most delightful. I look back on these walks as among the brightest points in my existence. I have been led to digress on this subject. Although more correctly belonging to my father's life, yet it is so amalgamated with my own that it almost forms part of it, and it is difficult for me to separate the one from ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... he is allowed the use of those oratorical powers in which, after all, his great strength lay. In those subjects, on the other hand, which are uninteresting because they are familiar, he may pause or digress before the mind is weary and the attention begins to flag; the reader is carried on by easy journeys and short stages, and novelty in the speaker supplies the want of novelty in the matter. Nor does ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... and Alexander, never domiciled themselves at any civil calling. Having caught the roving spirit of camps, they remained in the skirts of the array which the covenanted Lords at Edinburgh continued to maintain; and here, poor lads! I may digress a little, to record the brief memorials ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... believe it of me? But I insist that they believe it of me: I have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about myself, only in very rare cases, only compulsorily, always without delight in 'the subject,' ready to digress from 'myself,' and always without faith in the result, owing to an unconquerable distrust of the POSSIBILITY of self-knowledge, which has led me so far as to feel a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO even in the idea of 'direct knowledge' ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Nariskin, a court chamberlain, took charge of the philosopher, and escorted him in an excellent carriage along the dreary road that ended in the capital reared by Peter the Great among the northern floods. It is worth while to digress for a few moments, to mark shortly the difference in social and intellectual conditions between the philosopher's own city and the city for which he was bound, and to touch on the significance of his journey. We can only in this way understand the position of the Encyclopaedists ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... the subject of chivalry, and that on every other subject he is discreto, one, in fact, whose faculty of discernment is in perfect order. The advantage of this is that he is enabled to make use of Don Quixote as a mouthpiece for his own reflections, and so, without seeming to digress, allow himself the relief of digression when he requires it, as freely ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... left Edwin Gurwood on his way to restore Mrs Tipps her lost ring, and that, therefore, it is our duty to resume the thread of our story, with, of course, a humble apology to the patient reader for having again given way to our irresistible tendency to digress! ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... did, and we found it excellent. By the bye, Lord A., to digress to a different latitude, how did you succeed in your last excursion to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... digress. Throughout the contention that preceded the war, amid the passions that attended the war itself, not one bitter, proscriptive word escaped the lips of Abraham Lincoln, whilst there was hardly a day that ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... 28: The Author trusts to be pardoned, if he suffers these conjectures on Henry's studies in Oxford to tempt him to digress in this note further than the strict rules of unity might approve. They brought a lively image to his mind of the occupations and confessions of one of the earliest known sons of Alma Mater. Perhaps Ingulphus is the first ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... M. Scherer's rough treatment of his subject. In no essay, I think, does he quote so much from others, does he seem to feel it such a relief to find a backer, a somebody to fight with on a side point, a somebody (for instance Professor Nichol) to correct and gloss and digress upon while complimenting him. Mr Arnold is obviously not at ease in this Zion—which indeed is a Zion of an odd kind. Yet this very uneasiness gives to the Essay a glancing variety, a sort of animation and excitement, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... children sometimes arouses the ire of teachers; but adults are little better. When a body of them meets for the discussion of a certain question, the probability is that, if the first speaker speaks directly to the point, the second will digress somewhat, the third will touch the subject only slightly, and the fourth will talk about a different matter. Many a discussion that has started off well leads to much excitement without any one's knowing definitely what the subject of dispute is. It is rarely ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... own frames; let them understand clearly that disease is not an accident, but has fixed causes, many of which they can avert, and a great amount of suffering, want, and consequent intellectual depression will be removed.—I hope I shall not be thought to digress too far, when I add, that were the mass of the community more enlightened on these points, they would apply their knowledge, not only to their private habits, but to the government of the city, and would insist on municipal regulations favoring general health. This they owe to ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... When reading, her thoughts would wander even from her favourite authors: every subject they discussed would remind her of some conversation that had passed at Hungerford Castle; some coincidence or difference of opinion would lead her to digress; some observation more just or more striking; some better expression, or some expression which pleased her better than the author's, would occur, and the book was laid down. These digressions of fancy were yet more frequent when she was endeavouring to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... 7. But, not to digress too much, it will be sufficient to record one instance of his vanity, which, though of no great importance, may serve as a warning to judges. In every quarter of the city which had been adorned at the expense of different emperors he inscribed ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... I beg leave to digress for a moment from the subject under discussion. Mrs. Stowe has told her tale about Southern slavery; and what a wondrous story it is! Remarkable indeed! She has told of deeds, dark and revolting! ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... the name, I must here digress into a chapter of the history of manners in the nineteenth century, very well worth commemoration for its own sake. In some of the studios at that date, the hazing of new pupils was both barbarous and obscene. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expect me to do so. What I am engaged in is a criticism (in the Kantian sense) of an established body of belief which has become an actual part of the mental fabric of my readers; and I should be the most exasperating of triflers and pedants if I were to digress into a criticism of some other belief or no-belief which my readers might conceivably profess if they were erudite Scriptural paleographers and historians, in which case, by the way, they would have to change their views so frequently ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... to be a natural boy by a mother who had been a "perfect little lady" in her girlhood and who was moulding her son in the forms that fashioned her. If it were the purpose of this tale to deal in philosophy, it would be easy to digress and show that Mealy Jones was a study in heredity; that from his mother's side of the house he inherited wide, white, starched collars, and from his father's side, a burning desire to spit through his teeth. But this is only a simple tale, with no great problem in it, save that of ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... Here I shall digress long enough to point out by way of contrast the true form of divine government. Every one is familiar with the theocratic government of Israel under the Old Testament dispensation. God ruled. He who carefully reads the New Testament can not fail to discern the same type ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... leafless tree, the smouldering rim of the sunset over misty fields, are true and symbolical parts of the scene; but if you deal in botany and ornithology and meteorology at such a moment, you cloud and dim the central point—you digress when you ought ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... directness to the introduction of new characters in the scenes that follow. There is one main theme, one main line of development, in every well constructed story—and only one. See to it that you do not digress from it except as you bring up from the rear other essential parts of the action. There is absolutely no place in the photoplay ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... strikes the Rhone Valley at a place called Ulrichen. That is how a bird would do it, if some High Pope of Birds lived in Rome and needed visiting, as, for instance, the Great Auk; or if some old primal relic sacred to birds was connected therewith, as, for instance, the bones of the Dodo.... But I digress. The point is that the straight line takes one over the Brienzer Grat, over the lake, and then over the Wetterhorn. That was manifestly impossible. But whatever of it was possible had to be done, and among the possible things was clambering ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... perpetual sacrifices to the muses, he went so far as to cultivate poetry; he even printed his poems, and were we possessed of a copy, (which we are not, nor probably is the Vatican,) it would give us pleasure at this point to digress for a moment, and to cut them up, purely on considerations of respect to the author's memory. It is hardly to be supposed that they did not really merit castigation; and we should best show the sincerity of our respect for Mr. Lamb, senior, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of oak leaves reconsecrated the altar. It is remarkable that drinking—hard drinking—should have been practised by the priesthood in those remote periods, but as they were pagan heathens any animadversions can be made in safety. I cannot digress upon it. White bulls were sacrificed, and it is a singular coincidence (too striking to be the effect of chance) that white bulls were sacrificed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... digress from yourself else: for, believe it, your travel is your only thing that rectifies, or, as the Italian says, "vi rendi pronto all' attioni," makes you fit ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... vast number of enlightened Americans who continually visit Europe, and many for the purpose of seeing the grand and beautiful in art, tells the story. The English upper-classes are undoubtedly well-educated in art, but not the other classes. But I must not digress. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... digress a little on the subject of night shooting. Every one who has tried it knows the extreme difficulty in seeing the sights of the rifle in a dark night. The common native method is to attach a fluff of cotton wool. On a moonlight night a bit of wax, with powdered ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... it has found its appointed place and level, and will abide there.—But to digress, when do you ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... us get out into the woods and lanes, and we will manage to enjoy ourselves there. We can contrive to digress here and there together without being missed. But I think we are judging rather hastily from what we saw this evening even about this family; and we have no right to suppose that all their acquaintance ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... let me digress. The few of my age will remember, and the many younger will have been told, that at this time the Italian queen-mother was the ruling power in France. It was Catharine de' Medici's first object to maintain her influence over Charles the ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... But to digress thus in the very moment of detection, of recognition, seems irrelevant. The flash of conviction was as instantaneous in its action in my mind as that of the lightning when it strikes its object. I stood confounded, yet enlightened, all ablaze!—but the subject of this ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield |
