"Nonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... word "Khara." The allusion is to the vulgar saying, "Thou eatest skite!" (i.e. thou talkest nonsense). Decent English writers modify this to, "Thou eatest dirt:" and Lord Beaconsfield made it ridiculous by turning it into ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... said. "There is no necessity to go into side issues at all. You have asked me to marry you. I can never marry you. There is the whole question and the whole answer. I say nothing to you about finding somebody worthier, or any nonsense of that sort. Please spare me the usual—impertinences—about there ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... return journey to the pond to make sure of the third duck that I saw for the first time in my life— and I hope the last—the expression on the countenance of these terrible birds in the execution of their duty: more than the mere execution of duty, the determination to have no more nonsense, to put an end to anything so monstrous as self-protection in others; for my horse being directly in the way, he flew under its neck and for a moment I thought that he was confusing me with the desired mallard. Nothing more merciless or purposeful ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... "Nonsense! There is no longer convent, nor rules, nor fasts," cavalierly said Manuel, to induce the poor old man to participate in the general repast. "Besides, you have accomplished sixty years: put away these scruples, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... LEACOCK has published a fresh series of burlesques will, I do not doubt, add to the Christmas jollity of a vast crowd of laughter-lovers. The name of it is Winsome Winnie, and other New Nonsense Novels (LANE), and I can only describe it in that pet phrase of the house-agents as "examined and strongly recommended" for the merriest five-shillings' worth that I have enjoyed this long time. If ever a volume demanded to be read aloud over the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... me very little. It was plain enough. You had come a bad cropper. Some girl, I gathered. You had lost her, you blamed yourself. You talked a great deal of nonsense. I inferred—the usual thing!" ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... a plain business man," he would insist, urbanely, with a wave of his hand. "I have merely brought order, method, system, business principles, logic, to the detection of crime. I know nothing of romance. Romance is usually all nonsense in my estimation. The real detective, who gets results in real life, is NOT a ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... course of disclamation, I should like to make a mild protest against a further charge that Georgian Poetry has merely encouraged a small clique of mutually indistinguishable poetasters to abound in their own and each other's sense or nonsense. It is natural that the poets of a generation should have points in common; but to my fond eye those who have graced these collections look as diverse as sheep to their shepherd, or the members of a Chinese family to their uncle; and if there is an allegation which I would ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... PAIR OF SKATES to be had in York City, made for work, and no nonsense about 'em. We Dunderbunk boys give 'em to you, one for all, and hope you'll like 'em and beat the world skating, as you do in all the things ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... poor, charity from the rich, and much Christian doctrine for everyone; that men ought not to quarrel because I have more than you, and there ought to be patience and decency in the world, for that is what is wanting. What nonsense, eh, uncle? You laugh at it? But His Eminence's recipe rather pleases me, especially that about the bread; but the cursed Catechism is in fault as we have all learnt ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... nonsense is this? How can anybody see a country which is ravaged by brigands and convulsed with civil war? And ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... be!" shouted Phineas Roebach. "We've lost our heads, perhaps; but we haven't lost our hold on the earth. It's nonsense!" ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... have a taste for it." He then explained the delight he received from Mozart, and how greatly he enjoyed the dithyrambic movement of Beethoven; but could never find pleasure in the fashionable modern composers. It seemed to him "playing tricks with music—like nonsense verses—music to please me," added he, "must have a subject." Our friend appeared struck with this observation, "I understand you, sir," she replied, and immediately seated herself at the piano. "Have the kindness to listen ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... "Run on—nonsense!" declared Keziah decisively. "You're goin' to stay right here and help us get that stovepipe down. And 'Bishy'll help, ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "Nonsense," replied Eric; "we are partners, are we not? Besides, I don't want any money. When we leave here, you know, I'm going to sea again with Captain Brown, in the Pilot's Bride; and a sailor, unlike you poor land folk, carries his home ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Minnesota, but not so easy to feel it, all through our bones and marrow. The camp is deprovincializing us very fast. Poor Winthrop, marching with the city elegants, seems almost to have been astonished to find how wonderfully human were the hard-handed men of the Eighth Massachusetts. It takes all the nonsense out of everybody, or ought to do it, to see how fairly the real manhood of a country is distributed over its surface. And then, just as we are beginning to think our own soil has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, up turns a regiment of gallant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... "What nonsense!" she said sharply. "How exceedingly childish, letting yourself be ruled by whims, when common sense must show you that you are wrong. I wonder if you aren't ever ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... you sing. Does this keep out all but sacred music? I should not think that. But it does forbid singing you know not what in a foreign tongue, or mere dead nonsense in your own. I cannot see, for my part, why it is much better to sing "idle words" than to say them. How vapid, how senseless, is many a song one hears from a pretty mouth and a sweet voice. And in music as elsewhere, there is no middle ground: whatever ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... Benson, but he once or twice interposed with a plea for those who might differ; and then he was heard by Mr Bradshaw with a kind of evident and indulgent pity, such as one feels for a child who unwittingly talks nonsense. By-and-by, Mrs Bradshaw and Miss Benson fell into one tete a tete, and Ruth and Jemima into another. Two well-behaved but unnaturally quiet children were sent to bed early in the evening, in an authoritative voice, by their father, because one of them had spoken ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... overcome, than the refusal to sleep unless noise and light are quite shut out. If the sufferer make of his insistent habit a servant, rather than a master, and instead of reiterating "I must have quiet and darkness," will confidently assert, "I must get over this nonsense," he will speedily learn that freedom from resentment, and a good circulation of air, are more conducive to sleep ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... "Don't talk nonsense. You're very much alive. You are in the laboratory, blundering about. You've just smashed a new electrometer. I don't ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the brilliant and victorious situation of France! He talks about the defeat of the Russians, the occupation of Genoa, the innumerable armies that are rising up everywhere. In short, I know not what nonsense he has got in his head."—"What can all this mean?" said I. "Did he speak about Egypt?"—"Oh, yes! Now you remind me. He actually reproached me for not having brought the army back with me! 'But,' observed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in the pursuit of pleasure. They spend no time in sheer idleness, in talking when they have nothing to say, in building air- castles or floating off on the wings of sense: all of which drop human life into the ditch of nonsense, and worse [20] than waste ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... "My dear child, what nonsense!" laughed Dacre. "What harm do you imagine a doddering old fool like this could do to any one? If I were Monck, I should invite him to join the party. Not being Monck, I propose to hear what he has to say and then kick him out. You ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... you got so excited about, with St. John and the angel—right-hand side opposite you as you go in. Come, I can see through that trick, and I'm not going to stand any nonsense." ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... a hundred thousand francs a year? nonsense, you are crazy! Some people will persist in giving millions with the liberality of authors, to whom it doesn't cost a penny to dower their heroines. Madame Firmiani is simply a coquette, who has lately ruined a young man, and now prevents him from making a fine marriage. ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... it was impossible for him to distinguish the qualities of the thing-in-itself from the qualities of the phenomenon beneath his eyes. Had he winnowed his superficial impressions the underlying thought would probably have been: "No woman with a bosom as flat as that can have any nonsense about her." From the first moment of their meeting he had never doubted that it was this lack of "nonsense" which had attracted him. He liked her evident indifference to his opinion of her, and he liked, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Trollope, was at Venice that autumn. I said on meeting him, "Now the first thing is to, make you a member." "Me! a member of a Scientific Congress!" said he. "God bless you! I am as ignorant as a babe of all possible 'epteras and 'opteras, and 'statics and 'matics!" "Oh! nonsense! we are all men of science here! Come along!"—i.e., to the ducal palace to be inscribed. "But what do you mean to tell them I am?" he asked. "Well! let's see! You must have superintended a course of instruction in the goose-step in your day?" "Rather so!" said he. "Very well, then. You ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... greatly regret. Indeed I have seen nobody except a friend or two who had the kindness to hunt me out. Among these was Mr. Story, and I ate a dinner there that it took me a week to digest, having been obliged to swallow so much hard-favored nonsense from a loud-talking baronet whose name, thank God, I forget, but who maintained Byron was not a man of courage, and therefore his poetry was not readable. I was really afraid he would bring John Story to the same ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... Bengal texts for Bhumiretau the reading Bhumireto occurs. The fact is, the latter is a misprint or a mere clerical error. The etau has reference to the two mentioned in the second line. The Burdwan translator actually takes Bhumireto as a correct reading and makes nonsense of the verse. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... now," Bandy-legs remarked, "do you really take any stock in that fairy story he told us about an imaginary fur farm? It struck me Obed is givin to yarnin' just for the love of it. All that stuff about his relatives may have been true, and again only nonsense. It's my opinion there isn't any Granddad Grimes, or Uncle Hiram, Nicodemus and so forth. He grinned like everything when he was reeling those names off so slick. Yes, he was stringing us, I ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... old gentleman, who had remained in the crowd. "Nonsense! Perfectly right, I say, and Ike knows it. What would you do, Ike, if you saw a fellow pounding ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... was standing in the steerage brimming over with the ludicrous character of the previous night's frivolity, was heard to chuckle and say: "What damned nonsense to ask such a ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... The ingenious loophole discovered by House is—mere moonshine, viz., the freedom of the seas in war. That is a one-sided proposition unless they couple with it the freedom of the land in war also, which is nonsense. Nothing can be done, then, until some unfavourable military event brings a new mind to the Germans. Peace talk, therefore, is yet mere moonshine. House has been to Berlin, from London, thence to Paris, then back to London again—from ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... "Nonsense, glad to have you. I needed someone like you badly and you have come just in the nick of time. I'll expect ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... will say—if you put up at a small alehouse in the Borough—upon about ten friends who shall be very fond of you for a couple of days. I think, at the beginning of the third, I had just three and sixpence left wherewith to buy a razor to cut my throat withal. "Stuff and nonsense!" cried the last of the fleeting friends who had abided with me. "Three and sixpence for a razor, forsooth! why, a yard of good new cord, quite strong enough to bear your weight, can be bought in any shop in Tooley-street for a penny. You have just three and fivepence left, brother, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Some one else? Very likely we shall! Very likely!" thus the Sovereign Pontiff with fine scorn. "Come, the regalia, and no nonsense!" ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... false flash and nonsense, and liking to be higher than one ought to be," said Norman. "I am sure there is nothing lower, or more mean and shabby, than getting places and praise a fellow does ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... want to enjoy the poetry of Crossing the Bar, I must not mind what Tennyson says there, but must consider solely how he says it. But in that case I can care no more for a poem than I do for a set of nonsense verses; and I do not believe that the authors of Hamlet and Crossing the ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... "Nonsense, man! It's ninety miles from here, and you can't get there before to-morrow night, although your horse looks pretty fit for another twenty miles or so. What is the earthly use of your camping out to-night? ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... "That's nonsense. If you had waited one minute longer at the barracks you could have done so. I called to you as you were leaving, but you didn't ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a writer of such tales as "Alice"? And is this a strange letter to find in a book of nonsense? It may be so. Some perhaps may blame me for thus mixing together things grave and gay; others may smile and think it odd that any one should speak of solemn things at all, except in church and on a Sunday: but ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... two eyes with the tenderest glances! Her brain had been tickled by reading romances, And those compounds of nonsense called novels, Where Augustus and Ellen, or fair Isabel, With Romeo, in sweet little cottages dwell: Sed meo ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... on her cousin. "We loved each other; and children are born, aren't they, after you've loved? But mine won't be!" From the look on her face rather than from her words, the full reality of her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again. Nonsense! But—what an awful thing, if true! That which had always seemed to her such an exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of life—why! now, it was a tragedy! Instinctively she raised herself and put her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at this nonsense, and proposed to Barre to let his devil enter into competition with the boys of his seventh form; but Barre, instead of frankly accepting the challenge in the devil's name, hemmed and hawed, and opined that the devil was justified in not ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... he has been absorbed in his old interest in shorthand. "It is the only rational alphabet," he declared. "All this spelling reform is nonsense. What we need is alphabet reform, and shorthand is the thing. Take the letter M, for instance; it is made with one stroke in shorthand, while in longhand it requires at least three. The word Mephistopheles can be written in shorthand with one-sixth the number of strokes that is required in longhand. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... should think not; so you had better put that nonsense out of your head, now, once for all; for if you go about telling that mad tale you'll surely be taken for a madman and the mounted police——" He broke off as a flash of fear manifested itself in the half-breed's face, then he smiled maliciously. "I see you do not like the police, ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... to your bed," she said, with her mouth hard and her eyes glinting like cold flint, "and none of your nonsense, or you can go ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... Gertrude, "I think you made me talk a great deal of nonsense. And it depends," she added, "upon what you call the great questions of life. There are some things ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... I see of our colored regiments, and the more I converse with our soldiers, the more convinced I am that upon them we must ultimately rely as the principle source of our strength in these latitudes. It is perfect nonsense for any one to attempt to talk away the broad fact, evident as the sun at noonday, that these men are capable not only of making good soldiers, but the very best of soldiers. The Third Louisiana Native ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... your head with some more of her nonsense." Mr. Travers spoke in a voice which astonished d'Alcacer as much as the smile, a voice that was not irritable nor peevish, but had a distinct note of indulgence. "My dear d'Alcacer, that craze has ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... telegram from Potapenko—"A colossal success." I have had a letter from Mlle. Veselitsky (Mikulitch) whom I don't know. She expresses her sympathy in a tone as if one of my family were dead. It's really quite inappropriate; that's all nonsense, though. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... around me. The sky fell with my dress Leaving my ravished breasts. I was rocking like the earth. In my storming breath I could hear my ankle-bells, Sounding like bees. Drowned in the last-waters of dissolution I knew that this was not the end. Says Vidyapati: How can I possibly believe such nonsense? ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... "'Poh, nonsense!' said Henry. Her brother's name was Henry. 'The bridge is strong enough for a four-ox team. I have been over it a dozen times.' So he drove on. His sister looked very much terrified when they came upon the bridge, but they went ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... her temples and staring at a fixed point. "Something incomprehensible, awful, is going on in the house. You have changed, grown unlike yourself. . . . You, clever, extraordinary man as you are, are irritated over trifles, meddle in paltry nonsense. . . . Such trivial things excite you, that sometimes one is simply amazed and can't believe that it is you. Come, come, don't be angry, don't be angry," she went on, kissing his hands, frightened of her own words. "You are clever, kind, noble. ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... reinstated in their kingdom, inane paper puppets bespangled with impossible sentiment, tinsel and rags which are driven about like chaff by the wind-puffs of romance. The advent of the Amadises is the coming of the Kingdom of Nonsense, the sign that the last days of chivalric romance have come; a little more, and the Licentiate Alonzo Perez will take his seat in Don Quixote's library, and Nicholas the Barber light his ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... we might do that seem mere trifles and nonsense to us, but mean a lot to her; that wouldn't be any trouble or sacrifice to us, but might help to make her life happy. It's just because we never think about these little things—don't think them worth thinking about, in fact—they ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... I am, as you must have already found out, an impostor; that is, I am what is called a religious adventuress—a new term, I grant, and perhaps only applicable to a very few. My aunt was considered, by a certain sect, to be a great prophetess, which I hardly need tell you, was all nonsense; nevertheless, there are hundreds who believed in her, and do so now. Brought up with my aunt, I soon found out what fools and dupes may be made of mankind by taking advantage of their credulity. She had her religious ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... here. I remonstrate formally, with all my strength as a man, with all my authority as a father. Do you suppose I am going to let you drive my child into the street. No, indeed! Oh! no, indeed! Enough of such nonsense as that! Nothing more shall go ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... seemed to see a tiny speck of white that might be Stephen. In the window at the far end Thyme and Martin were exchanging speeches at short intervals; they made no move at Bianca's entrance; and their faces said: "We have no use for that handshaking nonsense!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... nonsense—for a violent exercise like bicycling! Where one gets so hot! So unbecomingly hot! You'd be simply stifled, darling." I caught a darted glance which accompanied the words and which made Ettie recoil into the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... "Nonsense!" said Mrs. Somers, "do you suppose I want to be told what you go there for?—what I do want to know, is whether he's like to get ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... "Nonsense," said the Duke, "if the girl's father does not see reason—why, Julian Wemyss at least knows what is good for his niece. She had better be a peeress in her own right and married with the left hand to my father's son, ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... off. In anybody else Elsmere would have thought all this effusion insincere or patronising. But Lady Helen was the most spontaneous of mortals, and the only high-born woman he had ever met who was really, and not only apparently, free from the 'nonsense of rank.' Robert shrewdly suspected Lady Charlotte's social tolerance to be a mere varnish. But this little person, and her favourite brother Hugh, to judge from the accounts of him, must always have found life too romantic, too wildly and delightfully interesting from top to bottom, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... never yet seen a congregation more deeply impressed, or that seemed to follow the preacher more intelligently; and I was quite sure, though ignorant of the language in which my friend addressed them, that he preached to them neither heresy nor nonsense. There was as little of the reverence of externals in the place as can well be imagined: an uneven earthen floor,—turf-walls on every side, and a turf-roof above,—two little windows of four panes a-piece, adown which the rain-drops were coursing thick and fast,—a pulpit grotesquely ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... water. She for a time was swept about, a weed in this fury of storm. She was lost, effortless, at death's threshold. But she awoke herself from the nightmare, walked herself about, and reason returned. It was nonsense, unwholesome nonsense. Why, that first time, he was in the library with James and Francis Lingen, his second visit to the house! Why, when she was at the Opera he had been at Peltry with the Mabels. And as for Wycross, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... "What nonsense!" she said, with a flash of scorn in her slumberous hazel eyes. "How it spoils life to count up the chances like that! How it takes the fun out of everything! The right way is to go ahead and enjoy yourself, and work your prettiest, and take things when they come. They always ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... not between classes of sensations (58). Equally absurd are those "probable and undisturbed" sensations they profess to follow. The doctrine that true and false sensations are indistinguishable logically leads to the unqualified [Greek: epoche] of Arcesilas (59). What nonsense they talk about inquiring after the truth, and about the bad influence of authority! (60). Can you, Cicero, the panegyrist of philosophy, plunge us into more than Cimmerian darkness? (61) By holding that knowledge is impossible you weaken ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... sesame," by means of a special pass, was needed to enter this City of Beautiful Nonsense. Below the gateway, up the steep hillside, sentries stood at a white post across the road, which lifted up on pulleys when the pass had been examined by a military policeman in a red cap. Then the sentries slapped their hands on their rifles to the occupants of any motor-car, sure that more staff-officers ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... smiled. "This is all stuff and nonsense!" she exclaimed. "My idea is that it would be better to give a hundred taels. For if we don't comply with what's right, we shall, not to speak of your ridiculing us, find it also a hard job by and bye to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "Altro! Nonsense!" the Veronese exclaimed, laughing, for the gondolier looked little like one who was suffering from hunger, as he stood swaying in keen enjoyment of the motion which showed his prowess, of the wind as it swept his bronzed cheek, of the talk which ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... his extravagance than Shakespeare. Shakespeare's comedy is of a pastoral and poetical cast. Folly is indigenous to the soil, and shoots out with native, happy, unchecked luxuriance. Absurdity has every encouragement afforded it; and nonsense has room to flourish in. Nothing is stunted by the churlish, icy hand of indifference or severity. The poet runs riot in a conceit, and idolizes a quibble. His whole object is to turn the meanest or rudest objects ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... absurd assumptions are required to deduce all this harmony from the blind mechanism of matter set in motion by chance! In vain do those who deny the unity of intention manifested in the relations of all the parts of this great whole, in vain do they conceal their nonsense under abstractions, co-ordinations, general principles, symbolic expressions; whatever they do I find it impossible to conceive of a system of entities so firmly ordered unless I believe in an intelligence that orders ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... torment than being obliged to speak continually without time for recollection. I know not whether it proceeds from my mortal hatred of all constraint; but if I am obliged to speak, I infallibly talk nonsense. What is still worse, instead of learning how to be silent when I have absolutely nothing to say, it is generally at such times that I have a violent inclination; and, endeavoring to pay my debt of conversation ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... living of Delaford, now just vacant, as I am informed by this day's post, is his, if he think it worth his acceptance—but that, perhaps, so unfortunately circumstanced as he is now, it may be nonsense to appear to doubt; I only wish it were more valuable. It is a rectory, but a small one; the late incumbent, I believe, did not make more than 200 L per annum, and though it is certainly capable of improvement, I fear, not to such an amount as to afford him a very ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... "Nonsense!" said his mother. "Burt is going to settle down now and be steady. We'll make him sign a pledge before he ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... up!" his friend whispered. Churchill coughed tentatively. The two voices drew nearer. To confuse the sentries, should they be listening, the one officer talked nonsense, laughed loudly, and quoted Latin phrases, while the other, in a low and distinct voice, said: "I cannot get out. The sentry suspects. It's all up. Can you ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... hay! the old man said. Still harping on the hay—the hay which doesn't amount to anything and cannot be of any real help. It's sheer nonsense to think that the hay in that stack is enough to feed the flocks of a whole district. There is no use talking about it I will not throw that tiny mouthful to all the four winds. It will do no good if divided among so many, but it is a comfort to me, to me alone. No, I will not ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... be intil't but jist fulish nonsense? Ye ken some fowk has a queer trick o' sayin' the same thing ower an' ower again to themsel's, wi'oot ony sense intil't. There was the auld laird himsel'; he was ane o' sic. Aye an' ower again he wad ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... were talking all sorts of nonsense about him," Natasha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to be praised. "We have ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... "O, that's all nonsense; there used to be a good deal of truth in that; but the procedure is now so altered that you can do pretty much what you like: this is an age of despatch; you bring your action, and your writ is almost like a ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... a most important, yet neglected subject. People are squeamish, cursed with mock modesty, ashamed to speak with their lips what their Creator spoke through their own minds and bodies when he formed them. It is time such nonsense—nonsense shall we say?—rather say it is time such fatal folly were withered and cursed by the sober common sense and ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... positivists, only recognizing those things that can be weighed and measured. Anything beyond that they consider as rather discreditable nonsense, that same nonsense about which they held yesterday the ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... violently. "That's all nonsense! Give me just one word of permission. That is all that is required ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... no nonsense at all," said Budge. "I don't think it's nice for to say that, when his stories are always about Joseph, an' Abraham, an' Moses, an' when Jesus was a little boy, an' the Hebrew children, an' lots of people that the Lord loved. ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... "Nonsense," said Mr. Boyce testily. "They got along in your Uncle Robert's days, and they can get along now. Charity, indeed! Why, the state of this house and the pinch for money altogether is enough, I should think, to take a man's mind. Don't you go talking to ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her face, but it passed, and she answered, 'Aunt, that's nonsense. I know him well enough, and can assure you that if he had only known I was running after him, he would have looked round sharply enough, and would have given his little finger rather than have missed me! I don't make myself so silly as to run after a gentleman ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... "Don't talk nonsense," cried David. "If I did that I'd lose my job, and we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done for me? All I know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... mode of expression in music. This youth of scarce sixteen was in danger of losing his wits. "I had visions both waking and sleeping, in which the key note, third and quint appeared bodily and demonstrated their importance to me, but whatever I wrote on the subject was full of nonsense," he ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... greatest curse I meet below) Who know me not, may not pretend to know. 130 Let none of those whom, bless'd with parts above My feeble genius, still I dare to love, Doing more mischief than a thousand foes, Posthumous nonsense to the world expose, And call it mine; for mine though never known, Or which, if mine, I living blush'd to own. Know all the world, no greedy heir shall find, Die when I will, one couplet left behind. Let none of those, whom I despise, though great, Pretending friendship to give malice weight, 140 ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... I feel as if I could live here for ever. Of course you are very kind and patient about it all, but you are not at home—and I don't care a bit about your disapproval now." She talked to me much about Lucius, who seemed to have a great attraction for her. "He is all right," she said. "There is no nonsense about him,—we understand each other; I don't get tired of him, and we like the same things. I seem to know exactly what he feels about everything; and that is one of the comforts of this place, that no one asks questions or makes mischief; ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to appeal to the selfish instincts of those whom he was addressing. He demonstrated to them, as they thought conclusively, that the Temperance Act would have the effect of entirely destroying the market for their barley and rye, and even depreciate the price of their farms. Of course his nonsense was received as it should be by the educated and thoughtful; but it was not to these he was appealing, but to the ignorant, illiterate masses, and upon them it had the effect ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... perceived are ideas or sensations, call them which you will. But how can any idea or sensation exist in, or be produced by, anything but a mind or spirit? This indeed is inconceivable. And to assert that which is inconceivable is to talk nonsense: is it not? ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... "Nonsense, sheriff!" said his enlightened honor. "The Papists never read the Bible. I have a boy, Thomas Noonan,—you know him,—and he neither will read it himself, nor listen to it read. The priest won't allow him. No Catholic is allowed to have or read ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... "Nonsense," said the doctor, trying to make himself a hard man. "She will be properly looked after there, and—and in time ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... they pocket Silver spoons, and fear not e'en in the stocks to be placed." "Whence do ye, then, derive the destiny, great and gigantic, Which raises man up on high, e'en when it grinds him to dust?"— "All mere nonsense! Ourselves, our worthy acquaintances also, And our sorrows and wants, seek we, and find we, too, here." "But all this ye possess at home both apter and better,— Wherefore, then, fly from yourselves, if 'tis yourselves that ye seek?" "Be not offended, great hero, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "but what nonsense to have emancipated a self-willed girl. Your parents did not do you a good ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... he can evoke deep faith only by absolute sincerity and utter clearness in the presentation of his fable. Unless the reader of "The Brushwood Boy" and "They" has absolute faith that Mr. Kipling knows the truth of his themes, the stories are reduced to nonsense; for they present no evidence (through running parallel to actuality) which proves that the author does know the truth. Unless the reader has faith that Stevenson deeply understands the nature of remorse, the conversation ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... human beings are to be found in states, or in that rudimentary social something which foreshadows the state. To talk of the morality of the isolated individual is nonsense. Morality is the expression of the social will; and if we think of even Robinson Crusoe as a good man, it means that we apply to him social standards. Had he not been moralized, he would have killed and eaten Friday, when the ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... Tom, but he had a perfect command of his face, and could talk the greatest nonsense with the most serious face. He went on unmoved ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... I suppose," said he, "that when once you are safely married and have received Mademoiselle Sabine's dowry, you will take leave of us. Not so, my dear young friend; and if this is your idea, put it aside, for it is utter nonsense. I should hold you then ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... [in the 53d. of Isaiah,], he afterwards applied the oracle to some other person, and finally to Moses!" Now in the name of common sense I would, ask, of what value can the testimony and authority of a man be, who could be capable of such contradictory nonsense as this. ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... "Nonsense! father," Dennis heard the young lady say; "you are too old to flatter. As for that hare-brained youth of the dust-brush, he looked as if he might have the failing of poor Pat, and not always be able ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... bishop might feel if he heard that a favourite curate had become a Mahometan or a Mumbo-Jumboist, did not enter his mind. All he considered was that the story of his dealings with Mike showed him, Firby-Smith, in the favourable and dashing character of the fellow-who-will-stand-no-nonsense, a sort of Captain Kettle on dry land, in fact; and so he proceeded to tell it ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Amiria. It's nonsense to pretend you don't know it. All the town is talking about you." The white face looked at the brown, mischievously. "And now that you have got ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... one thing, drunken Job is calling out in the rum-hole that he'll kill his wife if he finds her up to any more religious nonsense; and she is up to something of that sort, and he's quite able to do it, too. I heard him ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... interested. Do be nice and let me into a rehearsal. I never take sides in questions of art, and though of course I'm a friend of the Senniers, I'm really praying for you to have a triumph. Surely the sky has room for two stars. What nonsense all this Press got-up rivalry is. Don't believe a word you see in the papers about Henriette and your libretto. She knows nothing whatever about it, of course. Such rubbish! Susan is pining to see her beloved Charmian. Can't you both lunch ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Though these words were already found in the first edition, Clemen (Justin 1890, p. 56) has misunderstood me so far as to think that I spoke here of conscious intention on the part of the Apologists. Such nonsense of course ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... of refining and controlling our mutual relations. Why should we not take our share of the task? Since history began we have asked many things of women, and then kept our real respect for those who refused them—a mean and cowardly attitude. Women are not angels and it is mere sentimental nonsense to pretend that they are. But they can be splendid companions when men help them towards the attaining of that relationship. Often we have seemed to want of them only sentimental dalliance, with the result that they often grant it. But many women would rather pass men ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... is the truth about the Salamander, and the people of the country all say the same. Any other account of the matter is fabulous nonsense. And I may add that they have at Rome a napkin of this stuff, which the Grand Kaan sent to the Pope to make a wrapper for the Holy ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... are corner fireplaces and high mantels, there are curtains and portieres and lambrequins, there are pictures and brackets and cabinets, easels with their "studies," and much bric-a-brac. Jasper Wilmarth insists that the sleeping chamber and sitting-room shall be kept free from this "nonsense," as he calls it, and does not meddle his head about the rest. Indeed, he rather smiles to himself to see of what consequence his name has made her. He does not even object to being considered a hero of romance ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas |
