"Laconic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forth his contrition, and his hope that Greenfield would henceforth reckon him among his friends—"Yours very sincerely, H. Bullinger." This literary effort he carefully dispatched by a Guinea-pig to its destination, and awaited a reply with the utmost impatience. The reply was laconic, but highly satisfactory. It was a verbal one, given by Oliver himself in class that afternoon, who volunteered the information to the delighted Bullinger that it was ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... "Yes," commented the laconic Ames. "Our aldermen are a very intelligent lot of statesmen, Claus. They're wise enough to see that their jobs depend upon whiskey. It requires very astute statesmanship, Claus, to see that. But some of our congressmen and senators ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... records by the march of an overpowering force, he would then, himself, hunt him down like a wolf, and shoot him with as little ceremony, or stab him in his bed, or waylay him in his walks of recreation. He even wrote the hero of San Jacinto to that effect. The latter replied in a note of laconic brevity: ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... too quickly, for at this juncture in the final proceedings of the war Sheridan was vigorously carrying out Grant's laconic instruction to "press things." When the sentinel waked the captain, Sheridan's lines were less than fifty yards in front and were pouring heavy volleys into ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... backs of the frames, would probably be better observed; and I may mention as a proof of this precaution being necessary, the instance of a {234} baronet in our day having inherited an old house full of pictures, which were one and all described, in laconic and most unsatisfactory terms, as "Portraits of Ladies and Gentlemen Unknown." The losses of works of art and interest by the lamentable fires that have occurred so frequently within the memory of man, may furnish a further motive for using every endeavour to preserve those ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... same reign half a shekel of silver and 1 gur of wheat from the royal storehouse were paid to five men who had brought a flock of sheep to the King's administrator in the city of Ruzabu. The following laconic letter also tells the same tale: "Letter from Tabik-zeri to Gula-ibni, my brother. Give 54 qas of meal to the men who have dug the canal. The 9th of Nisan, fifth year of Cyrus, King of Eridu, King of the World." The employer ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... dry, easy, cool, laconic, and yet it could not have been more pregnant with meaning. Jean's sharp sensibilities absorbed much. None of the slouch-sombreroed, long-mustached Texans—for so Jean at once classed them—had ever seen Jean, but they knew him ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the Duke of Wellington declined the invitation to the Lord Mayor's civic dinner in the following laconic speech:—"Pray remember the 9th November, 1830."—"Ah!" said Sir Peter Laurie, on hearing the Duke's reply, "I remember it. They said that the people intended on that day to set fire to Guildhall, and meant to roast the Mayor and Board of Aldermen."—"On the old system, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... finished writing two laconic notes, one of which is to a young woman whom he tells to visit one of her friends on a certain day, when, he assures her, her husband is always to be found there. At this moment the church bells ring, and Nassedkine, who is religious, goes to vespers. ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... clean shave—not too close, and a bath afterward," was his laconic order; and a modest tip facilitated things ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... injudiciously cut. Herr Seidl, however, succeeded with them everywhere. One time Wagner wrote to him complaining that he made so many cuts in his operas. But Herr Seidl wrote back, giving his reasons, and explaining the situation; whereupon he received the laconic telegram from Wagner, "Schiessen ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... of learning words, names, etc., without a knowledge of the things signified. The difference is like that between learning the names of a list of persons at a reception, and being present to enter into acquaintance and conversation with the guests. The oft-quoted dictum of Kant is a laconic summary of this argument. "General notions (concepts) without sense-percepts are empty." The general definition of composite flowers means little or nothing to a child; but after a familiar acquaintance with the sunflower, dandelion, thistle, etc., such a general statement ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... Worth's laconic answer sent the blood of healthy anger into her face, made her eyes shine. And it brought ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... the pegs!" What unknown, inquisitorial terrors lay behind those dread, laconic words, ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... jumped up from his chair, and went forward to the new-comer. 'You are not long behind us, then,' he said, with laconic disquietude. 'I thought you were ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... offers of Did'ius, who produced immense sums of ready money, prevailed. He was received into the camp, and the soldiers instantly swore to obey him as emperor. 21. Upon being conducted to the senate-house, he addressed the few that were present in a laconic speech, "Fathers, you want an emperor, and I am the fittest person you can choose." The choice of the soldiers was confirmed by the senate, and Did'ius was acknowledged emperor, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. 22. It should seem, by this weak monarch's conduct when ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... when he crossed the plaza to his quarters. Matak, silent as ever but of more cheerful countenance, set the table. At his second laconic announcement Terry rose and crossed to the dinner table, and as he seated himself a white missile was tossed through the open window by an unseen hand and landed with a thud on the bare floor. Matak brought it to him, and unwrapping the paper from about the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... obscure malady in the year 1875 that I ventured to break in on the calm of that deep Silence in which, as in a mantle, my friend Prince Zaleski had wrapped himself. I wrote, in fact, to ask him what he thought of the epidemic. His answer was in the laconic words addressed to the Master in the ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... notice him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... in the event of the declaration of war, the Expedition might be considered as a single unit, so as to preserve its homogeneity. There were enough trained and experienced men amongst us to man a destroyer. Within an hour I received a laconic wire from the Admiralty saying "Proceed." Within two hours a longer wire came from Mr. Winston Churchill, in which we were thanked for our offer, and saying that the authorities desired that the Expedition, which had the full sanction and support of the Scientific ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Higginson had attended to Alfred, Mr Clare and Walter took care of Drake. He was very laconic in his replies to their questions, and made light of the injury; but he was faint from the wound in the head, and his sleeveless arm was so stiff as to ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Genoese shore, where Vereker was making a stay. I wrote him a letter which was to await him at Aden—I besought him to relieve my suspense. That he found my letter was indicated by a telegram which, reaching me after weary days and without my having received an answer to my laconic dispatch at Bombay, was evidently intended as a reply to both communications. Those few words were in familiar French, the French of the day, which Corvick often made use of to show he wasn't a prig. It had for some persons the opposite effect, but his message may fairly be paraphrased. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... about brings me up to the date of my receiving, in Waterbury, the laconic cable from Edward to the effect that he wanted me to go to Branshaw and have a chat. I was pretty busy at the time and I was half minded to send him a reply cable to the effect that I would start in a fortnight. But I was having a long interview with ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... escaped[b] with difficulty from the importunity of the king, and returned to the capital to negotiate with the parliament. There, offering himself in quality of mediator, he requested[c] to know the real grounds of the existing war; but his hope of success was damped by this cold and laconic answer, that, when he had any proposal to submit in the name of the French king, the houses would be ready to vindicate their conduct. Soon afterwards[d] the despatches from his court were intercepted ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... say, as that hideous Indictment was reading, continued calm; 'she was sometimes observed moving her fingers, as when one plays on the Piano.' You discern, not without interest, across that dim Revolutionary Bulletin itself, how she bears herself queenlike. Her answers are prompt, clear, often of Laconic brevity; resolution, which has grown contemptuous without ceasing to be dignified, veils itself in calm words. "You persist then in denial?"—"My plan is not denial: it is the truth I have said, and I persist in that." Scandalous Hebert has borne his testimony as to many things: ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... and laconic reply I immediately left the palace, and was soon after in Rue du Coq-Gris, with M. Clement, a bailiff, who for a long time had been charged with my small affairs, and had given the necessary attention to my farm during the long absences which the journeys and campaigns of ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... farm-house to visit him. To start the conversation, Lady Heloise asked him who he was and what was the matter with the child; also what crime he had committed and where they were taking him with such an escort. Kohlhaas doffed his leather cap to her and, continuing his occupation, made laconic but satisfactory answers to all these questions. The Elector, who was standing behind the hunting-pages, remarked a little leaden locket hanging on a silk string around the horse-dealer's neck, and, since no better topic of conversation offered ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... affected by this laconic piece of intelligence, as I might have been had I known more of the sea; and perhaps I should have regarded it still less, but for the gloomy glances and apprehensive air of those around me. I was not stunned by it at the first announcement; but it was not long before I became sufficiently alive ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... putting the Queen Charlotte out of action. When the larger British ships surrendered, the smaller craft were compelled to follow the example, and the squadron yielded to Perry after three hours of battle. It was in no boastful strain but as the laconic fact that he sent his famous message to the nation. He had met the enemy and they were all his. It was leadership—brilliant and tenacious—which had employed makeshift vessels, odd lots of guns, and crews which included militia, sick ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... robber on a large scale, or religion to men who measure excellence by forbidden meats, or geography to those who represent the earth in this guise. Yet, though few of our ideas are in common, there are many words; the verbosity of these anti-Laconic oriental dialects [11] renders at least half the subject intelligible to the most opposite thinkers. When the society is wholly Somal, I write Arabic, copy some useful book, or extract from it, as Bentley advised, what ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Park, and the talk turned on the political situation. Rogers remarked, 'What a powerful band Lord John Russell will have to contend with! There's Peel, Lord Stanley, Sir James Graham——;' and the Duke interrupted him at this point with the laconic reply, 'Lord John Russell is a ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... and let its owner beware. What of our turkey and oyster dressing? Of our broiled fish and bacon? Of our clam chowder, our divine Bouillabaisse? If the ingredients and component parts of such dishes were enumerated in the laconic and careless Apician style, if they were stated without explicit instructions and details (supposed to be known to any good practitioner) we would have recipes just as mysterious as any of the ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... his liking, thus from necessity setting a fashion his imitators followed from affectation. When approached in the days of his fame by the Sanseverini with proposals to recognise him as a kinsman, he answered with a proud and laconic refusal.[5] The Academy, formed of super-men infected with pagan ideals, contemptuous of scholastic learning and impatient of the restraints of Christian morality, did not long escape the suspicions of the orthodox; suspicions only too well warranted and inevitably productive ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... have given full rein to imagination and have retold it in my own way. It deals with the old law—the old border days—therefore it is better first. Soon, perchance, I shall have the pleasure of writing of the border of to-day, which in Joe Sitter's laconic speech, "Shore is 'most as bad an' ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... waistcoat, the long, blue-grey coat cut in a fashion anterior to this time by thirty years or more, and particularly to the arrangement of his hair. He resembled Napoleon—not the later Napoleon, but the Bonaparte, lean, shy, laconic, who fought at Marengo; and this had startled the Cure in his pulpit, and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... own words in regard to this change of base are laconic: "About this time I entered the king's service (and it was the year 1472), who had received the majority of the servitors of his brother the Duke of Guienne. And he was then at Pont de Ce."[33] This passing from one lord to another happened ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... said a laconic voice from the speaker. At the same time, the blue-clad image of a police officer appeared on the screen. He looked polite, but he also looked as though he expected nothing more than ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... him with intense interest, his countenance gradually lighting into a smile of pleasure, and the instant Mr. Wharton concluded his laconic reply he turned on his heel and left the apartment. The Whartons, judging from his manner, thought he was about to proceed in quest of the object of his inquiries. They observed the dragoon, on gaining the lawn, in earnest ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... had heard nothing yet about Mrs. Bal, was anxious for the story. I saw that Somerled desired me to speak, but I threw the responsibility on him. I wanted to know how he would tell the story; but I might have guessed that he would be as laconic, as non-committal as possible, and that, much as he might yearn to do so, he would not ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... matter to him that his landlady should have a word of his writing? Still, it may be as you say. Then, again, why such laconic messages?" ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle
... express himself in a much more laconic way about the quarrel, than Marie. On the day he left, August thirteenth, he wrote me the ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... Susan's laconic "The spring's dry," was not necessary. He fell forward on the seat with a moan, his head propped in his hands, his fingers buried in his hair. Courant sent a look of furious contempt over his abject figure, then gave a laugh that fell on the silence bitter as a curse. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Bob, "though Joe told me the story in his own very laconic fashion, I am sure that it was much more interesting than I can make it. I'll do ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... especially delight in the view of a fourteenth-century church close to the castle, with its chancel with creepers growing over it, and peeping out between the stones; and historians will be interested in the laconic inscription on its walls, 'rebuilt in 1438, a year of war, death, plague, and famine.' If such artists as Brewer, or Burgess, would only come here and give us drawings of these streets (of one especially, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... should obscure all lesser lights." It was not Arcedeckne, I am assured by Mr. Cuthbert Bradley ("Cuthbert Bede's" son), but Jerrold, who, in Mark Lemon's hearing, crushingly criticised Thackeray's first public reading to the lecturer's face, with the laconic remark, "Wants a piano!" Thackeray, as we all know, was free enough himself in his criticisms of his own features, and his many sketches of his dear old broken nose are familiar enough to every lover of the man. Yet he was not best pleased ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... nonplussed 'perennial bachelor' who ever led a grand march when Karen snapped him up.... Loved him—actually! And it seems to have worked out marvelously.... A baby boy three months old," she concluded in her laconic style. Then, ashamed; "I don't know ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... but were inclined to be reticent and, when they spoke, were laconic. Yet their briefest utterances contained hints which confirmed the only fact I had elicited from the natives: namely, that this traffic was not only unusual along the Flaminian Highway, but had never been seen on it before; was a complete ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... incoherency of his instructions, not perhaps inexplicable; Mr. Dickson had been lunching, and he might have made some fatal oversight in the address. What was the thoroughly prompt, manly, and business-like step? thought Gideon; and he answered himself at once: "A telegram, very laconic." Speedily the wires were flashing the following very important missive: "Dickson, Langham Hotel. Villa and persons both unknown here, suppose erroneous address; follow self next train.—Forsyth." And at the Langham Hotel, sure enough, with a brow expressive of despatch ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Thinking and the Style must be Laconic: Much must be contained in a little Compass. Brevity of Diction adds new Life to a good Thought: And since every perfect Stroke ought to be a distinct Representation of a particular Feature, Matters shou'd be so order'd, that every perfect Sentence ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... this, I must add, was the very best of our Western Ghaut park scenery which is mostly contained in the talook or county of Manjarabad which stretches for about twenty-five miles along the western frontier of Mysore, a tract of country so beautiful that the laconic Colonel Wellesley (afterwards the great Duke of Wellington), who rarely put a superfluous word into his dispatches, could not refrain from remarking in one of them on the beautiful appearance of the country.[5] There are two things especially remarkable about this tract. The ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... the laconic voice of the directing mind. "If you think I am afraid of you, you have erred in judgment. I don't like you and I don't care for your personal appearance. If you so much as squint at me after school today I intend to change the general appearance of your face. It won't be handsome ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... gave the messenger two-pence, and suddenly blushing to his ears, he said: "I must go out." He handed his wife the laconic and mysterious note, rang the bell, and when the servant came in, he asked her to bring him his hat and overcoat immediately. As soon as he was in the street, he began to run, and the way seemed to him to be twice as long as usual, in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... "So laconic!—what ails you? Do you grieve for the loss of the Pisani? Take example by me. I have already consoled myself with Bianca Sacchini,—a handsome woman, enlightened, no prejudices. A valuable creature I shall find her, no doubt. But as ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... consists in the methodical collection of the people: wherefore you have the Israelitish divisions into rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens; and of the whole commonwealth into tribes: the Laconic into oboe, moras, and tribes; the Roman into tribes, centuries, and classes; and something there must of necessity be in every government of the like nature, as that in the late monarchy—by counties. ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... the chains of political bondage, what were nations and their ambitions, in comparison with a society where mind and morals had the glorious license of Olympians and could follow the unobstructed paths of inclination in realms controlled only by fancy! Napoleon's greeting was laconic, "Vous etes un homme." This flattered Goethe, who called it the inverse "ecce homo," and felt its allusion to his citizenship, not in Germany, but in the world. The nineteenth-century Caesar then urged the great writer to carry out an already-formed design and compose a drama on the life ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... The Illustrated London News, gives his experiences of the Russo-Turkish Campaign. He concisely sums up the qualifications of a War Correspondent by saying that he should "have an iron constitution, a laconic, incisive style, and sufficient tact to establish a safe and rapid connecting link between the forefront of battle and his own head-quarters in Fleet Street or elsewhere." As Mr. IRVING MONTAGU seems ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... contained in some twenty lines or thereabouts; like that scede or Sytala Laconica, so much renowned of old in all contracts, which [521]Tully so earnestly commends to Atticus, Plutarch in his Lysander, Aristotle polit.: Thucydides, lib. 1, [522]Diodorus and Suidus approve and magnify, for that laconic brevity in this kind; and well they might, for, according to [523]Tertullian, certa sunt paucis, there is much more certainty in fewer words. And so was it of old throughout: but now many skins of parchment will scarce serve turn; he that buys and sells a house, must have a house full ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... laconic answer as he caught my arm and hurried me along. 'Found this morning. I want you to take a look ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and on foot," was the laconic reply. "As I had only a paper of salt and some matches, I couldn't afford to travel in high style, so I footed it. I had a ring and a blanket, and I traded them up at Karlo for an old tub of a dugout, and got ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... they, as we have stated, were infrequent, so laconic, in reality, that they were mere exclamations rather than speech. But each time an explanation had been asked concerning the state of France, the Englishman openly drew out a note-book and requested those about him, the wine merchant, the abbe, or the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... such sharp terms to this laconic opinion that the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted before. Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all. He had flatly declined. Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy, particularly as Japheth was about ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... three kinds of answers to questions, the necessary, the polite, and the superfluous. For instance, if anyone asked, "Is Socrates at home?" one, as if backward and disinclined to answer, might say, "Not at home;" or, if he wished to speak with Laconic brevity, might cut off "at home," and simply say "No;" as, when Philip wrote to the Lacedaemonians to ask if they would receive him in their city, they sent him back merely a large "No." But another would answer more ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... in the sunshine, seemed to greet and cheer him. These two laconic but expressive words, sans souci, smoothed the lines which the crown and its duties had laid upon his brow, and made his heart, which was so cold and weary, beat with the hopes ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... one,' was Theodore Racksole's laconic request, and he walked out of the shop smoking the penny cigar. It was a new sensation ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... zealous champions of the Catholic Question. He asked, whether on the following day when the question was to be brought forward in the upper house, it would pass. I should here remark, that it is well known here that it will not pass—but that in all probability in the next session it will. The laconic answer of the book ran thus:—'You will have no success this time.' They then made a young American lady ask if she should soon be married. 'Not in this part of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... set the reserved witness suggestive questions and so to learn things that the witness never would have said. Not everybody, indeed, who makes monosyllabic replies in court has this nature, but in the long run, this common characteristic is manifest, and these laconic people are really not able to deliver themselves connectedly in long speeches. If, then, the witness has made only the shortest replies and a coherent well-composed story be made of them, the witness will, when his testimony is read to him, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... congratulate you both," Constance breathed, realizing the import of Mr. Critchlow's laconic words. "I'm sure ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... of serious information as to the nature of a situation, as in Casca's description of the offer of the crown to Caesar. This kind of prose reaches its highest development in Brutus's famous speech, III, ii, with its dignified defense and laconic exposition of his honesty of purpose. (3) The prose of formal documents, as in the letter of Artemidorus, II, ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... with wrought, which is correctly spelled. If Messrs. Plummer and Mosely would be logical, let them write wrought as wrot—or perhaps plain rot would be still more correct and phonetic, besides furnishing a laconic punning commentary on simple spelling in general. The Phoenician's editorial column is conducted with laudable seriousness, the item of "The Power of Books" being well worthy of perusal. What could best be spared from the magazine are the vague jokes and cartoons, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... table. His speech was nothing curt or "Laconic"; it was even drawling. "On the contrary, dear Democrates, I was only commending your excellent foresight, something that I see characterizes all you do. You are the friend of Glaucon. Since Aristeides has been banished, only Themistocles exceeds you in influence ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... from many men would be considered mere foolhardy boasting. But Tucker was a man not given to brag. Indeed, he was apt to be very laconic in speaking of his exploits. A short time after his escape from the three ships, he fell in with an English armed vessel of no small force, and captured her. His only comment on the action in his journal reads, "I fired a gun, and they returned ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... travelling dress, did the amiable kind man hasten up to me. He now knew me, and he came to me with cordiality. I was just then standing and packing my clothes in a trunk for a journey to the country; I had only a few minutes time: by this means my reception of him was just as laconic as had been his of ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... many cables on the new spirit of the French, but never before dared to picture them in the role which to my mind they never before occupied—that of organizers. I started the trip to see the real French Army in the most open but unexpectant frame of mind. For weeks I had read only laconic official communiques that told me nothing. I saw well-fed officers in beautiful limousines rolling about Paris with an air that the war was a million miles away. The best way now to explain my enthusiasm is ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Jake remarked as he rose from the ground. "But I 'low t' point won't want painting t' winter," he added, with a twinkle in his eye. "Howsomever, he's a good one, he is, wherever he be from, and I don't care who says 'tain't so"—high praise from the laconic Jake. ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... did not spread to the master and mistress of the establishment. The Kerry Sentinel quickly had an allusion to 'a report that Mr. Hussey turned into bed after the outrage with one of his laconic jokes—that he should be called when ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... This laconic note contained all that Neb ought to know, and at the same time asked all that the colonists wished to know. It was folded and fastened to Top's collar ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... evidently not in the course of preparation to-day, for Leam had never been more laconic or more candidly disdainful than she was now; and what sweetness the pomegranate flower might hold in its heart was certainly not shaken abroad on the surrounding world. She answered when she was spoken to, because even Leam felt the constraining influences of society, but her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... immensity of the Russian artillery, which maintained a violent, continuous fire, smashing the successive rows of wire entanglements, breastworks, and trenches. The town was surrounded with nineteen rows of entanglements. The laconic order to attack was given at dawn on June 7, 1916. Up to noon the issue hung in the balance, but at 1 o'clock the Russians made a breach in the enemy's position near the village of Podgauzy. They repulsed a fierce ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... costumes, but he said it so promptly and adequately that Mrs. Goldsmith beamed with pride. She sent the girls away to put on the other set—the afternoon frocks, and once more the director's approbation, though laconic, was ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... a remark would have led to a flood of tearful and affectionate reminiscences, but this old lady was laconic. ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... moment, and then replied: "I don't want to express an opinion. It's policy for me to keep silent. You see, I have friends in both places." His speech introducing General Hawley of Connecticut to a Republican meeting at Elmira, New York, is an admirable example of his laconic art: "General Hawley is a member of my church at Hartford, and the author of 'Beautiful Snow.' Maybe he will deny that. But I am only here to give him a character from his last place. As a pure citizen, I respect him; as a personal friend of years, I have the ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... about him as if at a group of neatly despatched marionettes—a glare of furtive hatred distorting his features, which is hastily veiled by his usual laconic humility. ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... to the officers, who came on board his ship for instructions previous to the engagement with Admiral de Winter, was both laconic and humorous, "Gentlemen, you see a severe winter approaching; I have only to advise you to keep ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... The parliament of James I. would have done wisely to have embraced the philosophic sentiment of a Hungarian prince (1095-1114) who is said to have dismissed the absurd superstition with laconic brevity: 'De strigis vero, quae ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... others who have not seen it? There shall be no poor weaving together of words. There shall be no description of orange and mauve and flame-colored sunsets, no juggling with mists and clouds, and sunrises and purple mountains. Mountain dwellers and mountain lovers are a laconic tribe. They ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the last guest to arrive. He shuffled in without answering the laconic greetings accorded him, and his usually mild eyes ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... by his brother-author, a royal saloon carriage on Friday, the 8th of November, conveyed Charles Dickens from London to Liverpool. On the following morning he took his departure on board the Cuba for the United States, arriving at Boston on Tuesday, the 19th, when the laconic message "Safe and well," was ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... kind, is as unique as Poe's, and reaches a height of imaginative faculty not elsewhere found in American verse. His poetry belongs more peculiarly to universal art, so pure in general is its philosophic content and so free from any temporal trait is the style; but it is as distinguished for the laconic expression of American ideas, minted with one blow, as his prose is for the constant breathing of the American spirit. It is the less possible to define the American traits in Emerson, because they constituted the man. He was as purely an American type ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... laconic reply. But the other pressed him for fuller detail and he proceeded cheerfully. "The Halloway millions didn't come to us on a tray borne by angels. My father made his pile, and much of it he made in coal and iron—here and there in the Appalachians. He trained ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... sceptical of the direction the Cambridge horse-car took when I found it, and I hinted to the driver my anxieties as to why he should be starting east when I had been told that Cambridge was west of Boston. He reassured me in the laconic and sarcastic manner of his kind, and we really reached Cambridge by the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Spartan surliness with his smooth songs and odes, the better to plant among them law end civility, it is to be wondered how useless and unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war. There needed no licensing of books among them, for they disliked all but their own laconic apothegms, and took a slight occasion to chase Archilochus out of their city, perhaps for composing in a higher strain than their own soldierly ballads and roundels could reach to. Or if it were for his broad verses, they were not ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... the door. The laconic Bosko returned his all sufficing "Oui, monsieur," to the request that he would bring Mademoiselle Joan's French maid to Princess Delgrado, since it was in Alec's mind that Pauline might ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... wisdom of AEsop's fables. The remarkable part of it was, to be sure, that in my imagination Luther came to stand almost directly beside Moses and Jesus Christ, but without doubt the reason was that his thundering "What is that?" always resounded immediately after the majestic laconic utterances of Jehovah, and that moreover his rough, expressive face, out of which the spirit speaks all the more forcibly because it must manifestly first gain the victory over the thick resisting flesh, was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... say," exclaimed Blucher, "they died of hunger, and, as he says that they were terribly exhausted by a fifty days' march, dropped like flies. Oh, it is true, the Emperor Napoleon is very laconic in his account of that retreat, but he who knows how to penetrate the meaning of his few lines cannot fail to receive a deep impression of the wretchedness that unfortunate army had to undergo. Read on, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... tradition respecting the estate of Sutton Park, (the seat of Sir J. Burgoyne.) near Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, which states it formerly belonged to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who gave it to an ancestor of the present proprietor, named Roger Burgoyne, by the following laconic grant:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... sufficiently mark all the feeling and emotions of the tyrant. Pizarro is stung with jealousy as well as rage; not so much the jealousy of love as of infernal pride; but both rage and jealousy are mastered by triumphant insolence and contempt. The utterance therefore of his laconic decisive sentence, "He dies," should be marked with a triumphant ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... not for St. Petersburg, was his laconic reply, as he looked around for another chair. Everything was littered with books and papers, and at last he leaned over and lifted the dress from the chair to place it on the bed, as the easiest way of securing a seat in the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... who will clear it up." And I pointed to a cottage-door at which I suddenly espied the old woman whose handling of the roller-towel had so impressed me. "Where," I shouted, addressing her, "where is the wounded man?" "Took away," was the laconic reply. "Took away!" I said; "and who has had the impudence ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... music to French words and produced a French opera, "Le Devin du Village." Diderot was also a warm partisan of the Italians. Pergolesi's beautiful music having been murdered by the French orchestra players at the Grand Opera-House, Diderot proposed for it the following witty and laconic inscription: "Hic Marsyas Apollinem."* ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... Donald's laconic reply, "but those women and children will be safe in Vera Cruz under the guns of Admiral Fletcher's fleet by daylight, or ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... impostures. He was rarely deceived as to men or women. He could be eloquent and interesting in conversation. Some of his expressions pierced like lightning, and were exceedingly effective. His despatches were laconic and clear. He knew something about everybody of note, and if he had always been in a private station his intellectual force would have attracted attention in almost any vocation he might have selected. His natural vivacity, wit, and intensity would have secured friends ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Commonwealth men, they protested against this presence as "a breach of privilege, and inconsistent with that dignity and freedom with which they had a right to deliberate, consult, and determine." The Governor's laconic reply was,—"I have no authority over His Majesty's ships in this port or his troops within this town; nor can I give any orders for their removal." The House, resolving that they proceeded to take part in the elections of the day from necessity and to conform ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... to be found, and had some basis of fact for the qualities which he imparted to the Indians of his imagination. Miss Cooper says that her father followed Indian delegations from town to town, observing them carefully, conversing with them freely, and was impressed "with the vein of poetry and of laconic eloquence marking their ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... their eyes." Yet this sentiment is a fair specimen of the stern stuff of which Mr. St. John's creeds and opinions are made up.[8] Nevertheless, the volumes are entertaining, and in proof we have carved out a few laconic extracts: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... visitor to the place of Joshua, whom he invariably greeted as "Cousin." Just what the relationship was is unknown, but it undoubtedly existed. One evening Boone came to the Stephens' place, weary, and said "Twenty-one less." They understood from this laconic remark, that he referred to the number of Indians ...
— The Stephens Family - A Genealogy of the Descendants of Joshua Stevens • Bascom Asbury Cecil Stephens
... would-be assassin. There was no resentment in his heart. The adventure was only part of the day's work. The destroyer neared; her bow overlooked them. The two captains looked at each other. The dialogue was laconic. ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... office boy, whom once I wholly misread as a Cockney dunce, Who only cared for music-hall tunes— And who went and 'listed in the Dragoons. His khaki was much the worse for wear, Soiled and crumpled and needing repair, And he hadn't unlearned since his office days His gruff laconic turn of phrase. So I had to drag it out by degrees That he hadn't been in the lap of ease, But from Mons to Ypres, out at the Front, Had helped to bear the battle's brunt. Rest? Well, they had to do without it; But he didn't make a song about it. Last three weeks he'd never been ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various |
