"Excursive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who recriminated on him in his turn, and seemed to gain credit at the court of Versailles. While the two armies lay encamped in the neighbourhood of each other, nothing passed but skirmishes among the light troops, and little excursive expeditions. The French army was employed in removing their magazines, and fortifying Giessen, as if their intention was to retreat to Franckfort-on-the-Maine, after having consumed all the forage, and made a military desert between the Lahn and that river. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of persons, but rather seemed to exult in having such important antagonists. He talked with greater volubility than ever, and soon drowned them with declamation on the subject of taxes, poor's rates, and the national debt. Master Simon endeavoured to brush along in his usual excursive manner, which had always answered amazingly well with the villagers; but the radical was one of those pestilent fellows that pin a man down to facts, and, indeed, he had two or three pamphlets in his pocket, to support everything he advanced by printed documents. The general, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... such an edifice. From that piece of monotony to the prawn is already a good step; and how far above that is the seal! how do we surpass them both, as well as the seastar, the crab, and the lobster, my trustiest cousin, in our excursive irregularities, which defy all the mathematicians in the world to find an expression for their law. But coz, pray where did you get those two gorgeous teeth? the incomparable couple cut a grand and gloomy figure there across the chasm ... of your unfathomable mouth, and ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Then went to Pentonville, to old Mr. Handley, a solicitor of the old school, and manager of the Devonshire property. Had an account of the claim arising on the estate of one Mrs. Owen, due to the representatives of my poor wife's mother. He was desperately excursive, and spoke almost for an hour, but the prospect of L4000 to my children made me a patient auditor. Thence I passed to the Colonial Office, where I concluded my extracts. [Lockhart and I] dined with Croker at the Admiralty au grand couvert. No less than five Cabinet Ministers were present—Canning, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... of fact by the descriptive imagery and colourings of fiction. To a writer, also, who could at once handle the pen of the biographer and of the poet, few names would offer a more ample field for the excursive range of historical romance than the life of Henry of Monmouth. From the day of his first compulsory visit to Ireland, abounding as that time does with deeply interesting incidents, to his last ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the other sort—gallant, excursive spirits, and as soon as Kate became acquainted she had pleasure in picking and choosing. She nibbled at this person and that like a cautious and discriminating mouse, venturing on a full taste if she liked the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... the young, man, woman, child, Unite in social glee; even stranger dogs, Meeting with bristling back, soon lay aside Their snarling aspect, and in sportive chase, Excursive scour, or wallow in the snow. With sober cheerfulness, the grandam eyes Her offspring 'round her, all in health and peace; And thankful that she's spared to see this day Return once more, breathes low a secret prayer, That God would shed ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... mind was capacious, his curiosity excursive, and his industry continual, his writings are very numerous and his subjects various. With his theological works I am only enough acquainted to admire his meekness of opposition, and his mildness of censure. It was not only in his ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... knew that the Basin way of proceeding to get a nail put in the horse's shoe meant a day of widely excursive incident and pleasure, in which the main or stated object was cast far from our poetical ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... creation of offices to bring suitable emoluments to the younger sons of deserving families. The protective tariffs to which recourse is sometimes had, are of the same general nature and purpose. Of course, it is in this latter, aggressive or excursive, issue of the well-to-do bias in favor of investment and invested wealth that its most pernicious effect ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... concluding word, Mrs. Chump was no longer sustained by her excursive fancy. She broke down, and wrung her hands, crying, "En'mies! Pole's children my en'mies! Oh, Lord! that I should live to hear ut! and Pole, that knew ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... delight; as through the falling glooms Pensive I stray, or with the rising dawn On Fancy's eagle wing excursive soar; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... the two or three years of his life just elapsed, I have been enabled by the rich resources in my hands, with but few interruptions, to attain. Having now, however, reached that point of his career from which a new start was about to be taken by his excursive spirit, and a course, glorious as it was brief and fatal, entered upon,—a moment of pause may be permitted while we look back through the last few years, and for a while dwell upon the spectacle, at once grand and painful, which his life ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... rumour also of some strange adventures Had gone before him, and his wars and loves; And as romantic heads are pretty painters, And, above all, an Englishwoman's roves[kq] Into the excursive, breaking the indentures Of sober reason, wheresoe'er it moves, He found himself extremely in the fashion, Which serves our thinking ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... same year. On this occasion he selected a subject very congenial to his own turn of thought and favorite study, the influence of Italian upon English literature. He had previously gained another prize for an English essay on the philosophical writings of Cicero. This essay is perhaps too excursive from the prescribed subject; but his mind was so deeply imbued with the higher philosophy, especially that of Plato, with which he was very conversant, that he could not be expected to dwell much on the praises of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... descent of Hyder Ali upon the Carnatic—in vast and fantastic conceptions such as arose from time to time in the brain of Napoleon, he had no part or lot. But in force of moral and political imagination, in bold, excursive range, in the faculty of illuminating practical and objective calculations with lofty ideals of the strength of states, the happiness of peoples, the whole structure of good government, he has had no superior among the rulers of England. His very ardour of temperament ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... boy. It was the custom of that youth on Saturdays, to roll up his shirt sleeves to his shoulders, and pervade all parts of the house in an apron of coarse green baize; moreover, he was more strongly tempted on Saturdays than on other days (it being a busy time), to make excursive bolts into the neighbouring alleys when he answered the door, and there to play at leap-frog and other sports with vagrant lads, until pursued and brought back by the hair of his head or the lobe of his ear; thus he was quite ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... not; then coming home, Describes and prints it, that the world may know How far he went for what was nothing worth; So I, with brush in hand and pallet spread With colours mixed for a far different use, Paint cards and dolls, and every idle thing That fancy finds in her excursive flights. ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... and kept in exercise; but he also writes on the general question with some force and talent, considering that his subject is incapable of being reduced into a regular form, and is of a nature particularly seductive to an excursive talent. He appears to have studied legerdemain for the purpose of showing how much that is apparently unaccountable can nevertheless be performed without the intervention of supernatural assistance, even ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... frequent references to history, his allusions to various kinds of knowledge, and his images selected from art and nature, with his observations on the operations of the mind and the modes of life, show an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... love, and even its lighter caprices, are incompatible with the pursuits of the student; but to feel friendship like a passion is necessary to the mind of genius alternately elated and depressed, ever prodigal of feeling and excursive in knowledge. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... stopped his too excursive discourse by hastily saying that she always respected old folks like him. The corporal thought she inquired why he always kept his hat on, and answered that it was because his head was injured at Valenciennes, in July, Ninety-three. 'We were trying to bomb down the tower, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... of their decorations, yet their appropriateness might be questioned amidst the simplicity of a country church. They descended loftily from the carriage, and moved up the line of peasantry with a step that seemed dainty of the soil it trod on. They cast an excursive glance around, that passed coldly over the burly faces of the peasantry, until they met the eyes of the nobleman's family, when their countenances immediately brightened into smiles, and they made the most profound and elegant courtesies, which were returned in a manner that showed they were ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... beyond wan and reticent yokels, engaged in the primitive husbandry of this slave section, they never encountered any one that could be counted overt enemies of the cause. Money was plenty among these excursive groups, and they were welcomed in Company K with effusive outbreaks ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan |
