"Nonsensical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was that Faustina was the most fascinating girl he had ever met. When he compared the result produced in his mind with his accurate recollection of what had passed between them, he laughed at his haste and called himself a fool for yielding to such nonsensical ideas. The conversation of a young girl, he argued, could only be amusing for a short time. He wondered what he should say at their next meeting, since all such talk, according to his notions, must inevitably consist of commonplaces. And ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... tell. She sat so still, with wistful eyes looking out beyond the stars. But Diana, on the other hand, exceeded herself; and in doing so she made van Hert exceed himself also. She was brilliant, mischievous, reckless, serious, satirical, nonsensical, all in a breath. She drove him hither and thither; led him on one moment, and withered him with her satire the next. It was obvious the man very soon left off treating her with any careless levity; if he did he ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... sat down beside her. Common, pudgy, red-faced, bald-headed as he was, she come to him, and that out of regions of deepest thought, with a sense of refuge. He could scarcely have understood one of her difficulties, would doubtless have judged not a few of her scruples nonsensical and over-driven; yet knowing this it was a comfort to her to come from those regions back to a mere, honest, human heart—to feel a human soul in a human body nigh her. For the mere human is divine, though not the divine, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... journey. They were, therefore, in a fair way of accomplishing the object of the expedition. The sultan of Yaoorie, however, put off their departure from day to day, and from week to week, under a variety of nonsensical excuses, and they were persuaded that it was his intention to detain them, until he had drained them of every thing that was valuable. On Monday the 26th of July, however, to their surprise and pleasure, a messenger from ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... its possible use for baptismal purposes: this sea was composed of the blood that had been shed by piety in furthering the kingdom of the Prince of Peace, and was reputed to be the largest ocean in existence. And it explained the nonsensical saying which Jurgen had so often heard, as to Hell's being paved ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... seems to be justified by its essence and to be degraded by the transformations it suffers in reflection, when men try to find a place for it in their cosmic economy; for its essence is poetical, expressive, contemplative, and it grows more and more nonsensical the more people insist on making it a prosaic, commercial exchange of views ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... student and dreamer, the church warden's favorite resort, when his duties left him at leisure, was a dense grove not far from the town. Thither he went when he wished to be free from all distraction, to think and dream over many things which would appear nonsensical to his sober, practical-minded neighbors. There he indulged in day dreams and poetic fancies; and once, when in a sentimental mood, he carved the initials of the lady of his love on one ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... former chapter—rose, and standing forth into the middle of the room, made a long and grave oration, in which, besides a great deal that was bombastic, much that was irrelevant, and more that was utterly fabulous and nonsensical, he recounted the sorrows of himself and his tribe, concluding with a request that the great chief would take these things into consideration—the principal "things" being that they did not get anything in the shape of gratuities, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... make a broad statement of a nonsensical kind, which, in its particular applications may be said to be endless. A throne won by treachery, violence, and ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... powerful among the emotions that dominate mankind. Mill's article proclaiming these views appeared in 1835, just at the time when the Oxford Movement was stirring up a wave of enthusiasm for the dogmas and ritual which he treated as obsolete and nonsensical; nor is there anything more remarkable or unexpected in the political changes of the last sixty years, than the discomfiture of those prophets who have foretold the decay of all liturgies and the speedy ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... separation. Some wanted to hear of his herding the cows in his youth. One shameless girl called out, "If you do not sing such and such a passage I will not listen." One mere child, by way of teaching the Boisnavi, sang some nonsensical syllables. The Boisnavi, listening to the different demands, gave a momentary glance at Kunda, saying: "Have you no ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... resignation of moral accountability from feudal attachment, is the contemptible and cowardly doctrine of fatalism, which Dryfesdale also professes. It is not with him the philosophic doctrine of the concurring impulses of circumstance, or of natural laws, but rather the stupendously nonsensical notion of the Arabian kismet, that from the beginning of time every event was fore-arranged as in a fairy tale, and that all which is, is simply the acting out of a libretto written before the play began—a belief revived in the last century by readers of Leibnitz, who were truer than ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bludgeon and the bowie-knife over Congressional debate, sapped the foundations of loyalty, dried up the springs of patriotism, blotted out the testimonies of the fathers against oppression, padlocked the pulpit, expelled liberty from its literature, invented nonsensical theories about master-races and slave-races of men, and in due season produced a ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... of even the Spray's small tonnage. I heard a man who called himself a sailor say that "it would require three men to do what it was claimed" that I did alone, and what I found perfectly easy to do over and over again; and I have heard that others made similar nonsensical remarks, adding that I would work myself to death. But here is what the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... senseless, irrational, silly, imbecile, witless, insensate, weak-minded, half-witted, brainless, fatuous, fatuitous, insagacious, unintelligent; indiscreet, imprudent, ridiculous, absurd, asinine, inept, nonsensical, puerile. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... if I mean to continue D.J. &c. How should I know? What encouragement do you give me, all of you, with your nonsensical prudery? publish the two Cantos, and then you will see. I desired Mr. Kinnaird to speak to you on a little matter of business; either he has not spoken, or you have not answered. You are a pretty pair, but I will be even with you both. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... pointed out the mischief which is done to the understanding of children by the nonsensical conversation of common acquaintance.[87] "Should you like to be a king? What are you to be? Are you to be a bishop, or a judge? Had you rather be a general, or an admiral, my little dear?" are some of the questions which every one has probably heard ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... PUNCH,—I have had the advantage of reading the above letters before publication, and am of opinion that they are not one whit more nonsensical than letters about the Foudroyant and the Emmanuel Hospital that were printed early in the nineties. You may make what use you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... with an old bachelor that had not, at some time or other, his nonsensical moment, when he would become tender and sentimental, talk about the concerns of the heart, and have some confession of a delicate nature to make. Almost every man has some little trait of romance in his life, which he looks back to with fondness, and about which he is apt to grow garrulous occasionally. ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... replied Mr Easy, after a pause, "that what you say merits consideration. I acknowledge that in consequence of Mrs Easy's nonsensical indulgence, the boy is unruly, and will not obey me at present; and if your friend does not apply the rod, I will think seriously of sending my son John to ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... well, where it can be done, to let him have clean clothes daily. Where this cannot be afforded, the clothes, as soon as they are taken off at night, ought to be well aired, so as to free them from the perspiration, and that they may be ready to put on the following morning. It is truly nonsensical to endeavour to harden a child, or any one else, by putting ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... better the little ones with whom he could speak of everything. The grown people behaved so foolishly and asked such absurd, dull questions about things that everybody knew, that it was necessary for him also to make believe that he was foolish. He had to lisp and give nonsensical answers; and, of course, he felt like running away from them as soon as possible. But there were over him and around him and within him two entirely extraordinary persons, at once big and small, wise and foolish, at once his own ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... effect. I am not going to attend to nonsensical gossip. Georgina is what she was then, and the same is right for me now as was right last year. I am not going to turn ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been more honest and more liberal to have brushed away the nonsensical indictment in a sentence. Would the Treasury have put Shakespeare on trial for "Hamlet" or "Lear," or would they have condemned the writer of "The Song of Solomon" for immorality, or sent St. Paul to prison for ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... tribe of authoresses that come after you here daily, and, in defect of you, hive and cluster upon us, are the shadows. You encouraged that mopsey, Miss Wesley, to dance after you, in the hope of having her nonsense put into a nonsensical Anthology. We have pretty well shaken her off, by that simple expedient of referring her to you; but there are more burrs in the wind. I came home t'other day from business, hungry as a hunter, to dinner, with nothing, I am sure, of the author but hunger about me, and whom found I ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... man ever witnessed it? You say no. Then it is not certain knowledge. Science is certain knowledge. Therefore spontaneous generation of life and intelligent being is not science. Now, gentlemen, don't prostitute science at the shrine of your nonsensical guessing any more. Throw your guessing to one side and acknowledge God like wise men, and be no ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... condition of misery. All the conscripts repeat these ferocious words without thinking. And then the so-called "father" goes away with a sense of having correctly and conscientiously done his duty. And all these poor deluded lads believe that these nonsensical and incomprehensible words which they have just uttered set them free for the whole time of their service from their duties as men, and lay upon them fresh and more binding duties ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand and laughing at himself. "You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington only that people might spy at me from the country roundabout. And truly that would be a noble pedestal for a ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... smitten swain who had so far entered the lists against him. As a companion, Anne honestly acknowledged nobody could be so satisfactory as Gilbert; she was very glad, so she told herself, that he had evidently dropped all nonsensical ideas—though she spent considerable ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... religious nonsense is the most nonsensical; so enough, and more than enough of it. Only, by the by, will you or can you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a sectarian turn of mind has always a tendency to narrow and illiberalize the heart? They are orderly; they may be just; nay, I have known them merciful: but still your children of sanctity ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... not what answer I made to this. It must have been something nonsensical, for my mind was troubled. I did not wish to flatter Pepita by paying her profane compliments, nor, on the other hand, did I wish ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... this vulgar trash of the K.G.C., which is only not absolutely ridiculous, because so nearly connected with most sanguinary aims. Be it borne in mind that the Southern character has always been eminently receptive of the puerile and nonsensical, while the vast proportion of semi-savage, semi-sophomorical minds in Dixie, half-educated and altogether idle and debauched, has made their land a fertile field for quack Bickleys, brutal and arrogant Pikes, and other petty tools of greater and more powerful ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... gentlemen in his dominions." Greville goes on to say: "But I believe he is mad, for yesterday he gave a dinner to the Jockey Club, {176} at which, notwithstanding his cares, he seemed to be in excellent spirits, and after dinner he made a number of speeches so ridiculous and nonsensical beyond all belief but to those who heard them, rambling from one subject to another, repeating the same thing over and over again, and altogether such a mass of confusion, trash, and imbecility, as made one laugh and blush ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... as much," said Hayle angrily, as he threw down the bar. "You've been humbugged, and our long journey is all undertaken for nothing. I was a fool ever to have listened to your nonsensical yarn. I might have known it would have come to nothing. It's not the first time I've been treasure-hunting, but I'll swear it shall be the last. I've had enough ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... portion, then! But once again he inwardly swore that this inexperienced youngster could be no match for an old veteran like himself, and then added aloud: "The prefect of police must have more money than he knows what to do with, to pay two men for such a nonsensical ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... (calterita), a nonsensical word employed by Bruno for the purpose of mystifying the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... unexpected question. What was her Purpose in Life? To get to the heart of the color of the world? That was rather vague. Also nonsensical when so formulated. She took refuge ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... as if to say that discussion with such a nonsensical fellow was useless, and took his seat at his desk, where an unfinished pile of MSS. awaited ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind - ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... can your wisdom come to that conclusion, dame?" said the apprentice. "My money, indeed, I can conceive—that is, if I comply with your proposal; but—my pretty Marget!—how serving this lord, whom she has set her nonsensical head upon, can do me good with her, is far ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... nor anybody else can abide. We congratulate them on clinging to all they have cast away, and on imitating everything which they came into existence to insult. And when we have established all these nonsensical analogies with a nonexistent nation, we wait until there is a crisis in which we really are at one with America, and then we falter and threaten to fail her. In a battle where we really are of one blood, the blood of the great white race throughout the world, when we really have ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... "you can do anything you want to if you only think you can do it." And she told her a marvelous tale of how I earned the money to go to college when things seemed determined to go against me. Which is all perfectly nonsensical; the chance of earning money to go to college fell right into my lap. Pearl only opened her eyes wider at Hinpoha's recital and answered with a sigh, "Oh, I never ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... answer. "Such foolishness," he said sharply, "give the lad a chance. There is a great career before William. If he begins thinking of love, or thinks he is thinking seriously of love now, it will be the end for him. I hope you have not been trying to put any such nonsensical ideas into his head." ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... these doctors agreed among themselves, that the line of argument they followed would disprove the authorship of any page ever written, that decisions from difference of style, wise as they might be, philologically, were, rationally and logically, nonsensical; for Burns, no doubt, wrote his letters as well as his poems, and Shakspeare's 'Sonnets' were written by the hand that wrote 'King Lear,' although, according to these wise doctors, it is assumed to be utterly impossible that the same man can use two styles, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... by Laura Matilda, is not of the first quality. The verses, to be sure, are very smooth, and very nonsensical—as was intended; but they are not so good as Swift's celebrated Song by a Person of Quality; and are so exactly in the same measure, and on the same plan, that it is impossible to avoid making ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... conspicuous, needless to say, by their total absence (to say nothing of M'Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out to his companion B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... shadowy form in reverie, and in more substantial form in the slips we make in conversation and in writing, and in the things we laugh at; but clearest of all in dreams. I say the meaning is clear to the initiated because it does require special training and experience to analyze these seemingly nonsensical slips of tongue and pen, these highly elaborated and apparently meaningless dreams, into the wishes (instinct and habit impulses) which gave them birth. It is fortunate for us that we are protected in this way from having ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... when Uncle Remus went off into these rhapsodies. However nonsensical they might seem to others, to the child they were positively thrilling, and he listened with rapt ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... a knowledge of French is necessary in order to appreciate Voltaire or Hugo is nonsensical. For a student anxious to study the works of these masters, to set to work to learn the language of the writers would be like my building a flight of stairs to go down to supper. The stairs are already there. Some other person built them ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... often nonsensical element in dream-pictures arises from the fact that the astral body cannot, on account of its separation from the sense-organs of the physical body, relate its pictures to the correct objects and events of the outer environment. ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... boy of twelve years when he was brought to me showed the mental powers of a stupid child of four. In a silly way he repeated every question which he heard without answering it; he talked steadily to himself in a nonsensical manner, mostly repeating nursery rhymes without end, never holding his attention to anything in the room, giving the impression that there was no attention whatever. The boy was a child of rich parents; he had his own teachers, but was for a large part of the year under the influence ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... are quiet in the sepulchres of the present. In his treatise on "Isis and Osiris," Plutarch writes, "The Egyptians believe that while the bodies of eminent men are buried in the earth their souls are stars shining in heaven." It is equally nonsensical in itself and unwarranted by evidence to imagine that, in the Egyptian faith, embalming either retained the soul in the body or preserved the body for a future return of the soul. Who can believe that it was for either of those purposes that they embalmed the multitudes of animals whose mummies ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... that is also a waste of energy when you have none too much to spare. The one dream of every girl in the world these days is to be allowed the privilege of caring for a good-looking soldier. Sally had her opportunity under particularly romantic and nonsensical circumstances. Besides, men will always be grateful to Sally Ashton for something or other as long as she lives, grateful because she is pretty and soft and selfish and, dear me, I suppose she is what one calls essentially feminine! ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... long-continued mental emotion may induce or cure disease. Heart disease may be produced by a morbid direction of the thoughts to that organ. Warts disappear under the operation of a strong belief in the efficacy of some nonsensical application. In olden time, scrofula, or the 'king's evil', was cured by the touch of the king. The mind of the patient, of course, accomplished the cure. Under the influence of profound mental emotion, the hair of the beautiful Marie Antoinette ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... the human heart have been affected emotionally by the nonsensical teachings of the King's Highway. These teachings are commonly known us 'Narrow-Gauge Ideas.' If these nerves are rendered insensible, there is scarcely any trouble of that kind again. We can, by an intricate operation, paralyze the mother-nerve leading to the heart, and thereafter you may ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... devil he meant by presenting her with a brace of miserable red partridges. "And why not?" said Matta: "ought they to have been blue, too, to match the cockade and sword-knots you made me wear the other day? Plague not me with your nonsensical whimsies: my life on it, in one fortnight your equal in foppery and folly will not be found throughout the confines of Turin; but, to reply to your questions, I did not call upon Monsieur de Senantes, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Orthodox procession carrying relics; but Vane's idea that the procession might carry the Jew as well, himself a venerable and historic relic, was misunderstood on both sides. In short, he was a man who particularly prided himself on having no nonsense about him; with the result that he was always doing nonsensical things. He seemed to be standing on his head merely to ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... as best he could, on all fours, Hal making the load of his own weight as light as he could. Over the ground the pair moved in this nonsensical ride, the cadets following and grinning their appreciation of ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... Sun's fault!" cried Ardan, angrily trying to throw the blame on something, and, like every angry man in such circumstances, bound to be rather nonsensical. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... not have wasted three sheets of paper upon such a nonsensical request as that," observed the turnkey. "Old Jackson wouldn't shell out sixpence to save her or anybody else from ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... around about it, and the neighbors came to me to say that I must under no circumstances drink from it. What if I had said, "I will decorate the well house that I may change the water?" It would have been as nonsensical as to say, "I will change the environment of a man who is wicked by nature, and thereby make him good." Judas had lived close to Jesus, he had been with him on the mountain, walked with him by the sea, was frequently with him, I am sure, in Gethsemane, for we read in John the eighteenth chapter ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... much, is an extraordinary woman, with more common sense than I almost ever met with. Great quickness in discovering characters, penetration in going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that never fails in a likeness—seldom a favourable one. She exacts and preserves, spite of her birth and their nonsensical prejudices about nobility, great court and attention. This she acquires by a thousand little arts and offices of friendship: and by a freedom and severity, which seem to be her sole end of drawing a concourse to her; for she insists on scolding those ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... to his indignation, that there is an intimate relation between industrial success and justice; and however much, as a practical man, he may despise the abstract principles which declare Slavery a nonsensical enormity, he cannot fail to read its nature, when it slowly, but legibly, writes itself out in curses on the land. He finds how true is the old proverb, that, "if God moves with leaden feet, He strikes with iron hands." The law of Slavery is, that, to be lucrative, it must ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... of these last impressions I arrived in Vienna in a very cheerful frame of mind. I at once announced my return to Cornelius by sending him a small Venetian gondola, which I had bought for him in Venice, and to which I added a canzona written with nonsensical Italian words. The communication of my plan for the immediate composition of the Meistersinger made him almost frantic with delight, and until my departure from Vienna he remained in ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Murrough, and that killed Phadrig the O'Donoghoe in single combat at the fight of Shoch-knockmorty, and bit off his nose, calling it a sweet morsel of revenge, what does he do but tell me I was mad, and that he would have none of my nonsensical tales of the savage Irish. So I said I couldn't stand to hear my family insulted, and then—would you believe it? he would have it that it was I that was insolent, and when I was not going to apologize for what I had borne from him, he said he ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... answered curtly. "I took some trouble to make young Little understand it when he came to me with a nonsensical proposition not long ago. Like the rest of them, he's always wanting something. I asked him where he thought the money ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the existence of the scientific man is recalled to the popular mind by some extravagant headlines in the daily press, announcing some utterly impossible "discovery" or some extravagantly nonsensical dictum made by an alleged "scientist." The "discovery" was never made, the dictum never uttered, but no matter; to-morrow its place will be taken by the latest political or matrimonial scandal, and the public, with excellent good sense, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... said King. "I'll make you a copy on the typewriter. Now, here's a silly one. I mean nonsensical, you know. But I ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... is an old man, and while he would not believe his son guilty of theft, still it would worry him. There is something else that happened that night—entirely uncriminal—but which we do not wish him to hear about. Therefore I am not going to let you go to him with this nonsensical tale that ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... vehemence, that I spilt a great part of it; but even the colour and flavour did not recover me; so, with a face like a northwest moon, I swilled off the potion, and instantly fell back in my chair "Poisoned! by all that is nonsensical—poisoned catchup oh Lord!" and off I started to my bedroom, where, by dint of an ocean of hot water, I got quit of the sauce, and clinching the whole with a caulker of brandy, I returned to the dinner—table a good deal abashed, I will confess, but endeavouring most emphatically all ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... and nonsensical; and she knew it, for there was a mischievous little gleam in her eye as she spoke. But none the less, shutting her ears to the unsympathetic Stephanie, did she continue to show herself alone in public with the beautiful youth. She had thrown her crown over the windmills for a few ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... darling out of sight. Yet if anybody on earth was to be trusted with so precious a charge it was the herder. Besides, she was annoyed at this talk of "ghosts," and knew that the shortest way to convince Jessica how nonsensical it was, would be by allowing her to go out and seek for ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... the remark that now the practice was the exact opposite of this, the vocal score erroneously following the affected and abrupt transitions and rapid scaling of the instrumentalists. "What is more nonsensical," I cried, leaping from my chair, running to the piano, and opening it quickly, "what is more nonsensical than such an execrable style as this, which, far from being music, is much more like the noise of peas ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... can, but I thought you might like a show. You may have your choice of the two. Miss Rae, by the way, says she's wild to know you; thought you were the most provoking man she ever saw; and that you were—nonsensical idea—engaged to Mae. All because you wouldn't look at her the other day when she passed you two, But you can go with Miss Hopkins, if ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... submit to here to avoid coming to an explosion, which would be attended with many disagreeable effects, and would totally destroy the comfort of the best man and the best friend I have in the world. However, I am determined that my quiet shall not be disturbed, let the nonsensical world go ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... regimental business, I shall listen to you, of course; but if it's some nonsensical love affair, you must go to Colonel Sword. I never trouble myself about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... to its tune, which takes its phrasing ready-made from the world about it, as it takes the street for its temple, and yet which may be at its inner point in the directest contact with God. Religion may suffer from aphasia and still be religion; it may utter misleading or nonsensical words and yet intend and convey the truth. The methods of the Salvation Army are older than doctrinal Christianity, and may long survive it. Men and women may still chant of Beulah Land and cry out in the ecstasy ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... storm, Tomobei kept up a nonsensical, running talk, full of the superstitious fear of the man of the lower classes. "Iya! The affair has been terrible, but misfortune is in the air.... What's that! Ah! Something passes by ... above. O'Iwa! O'Iwa!" He seized the priest's arm and clung to him in terror. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... their country. To mark the opposition to Italian operas, it is sung by some cast singers, two Italians, and a French girl, and the chapel boys; and to regale us with sense, it is Shakspeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, which is forty times more nonsensical than the worst translation of any Italian opera-books. But such sense and such ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... deserves full credit, and we should give old Scrofton his due, for, though his theories are nonsensical, he is an excellent boatswain," observed Jack. "I am convinced that every accident on board a ship occurs from the carelessness, and often from the culpable neglect, of some one concerned in fitting her out, or ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the stock in the pasture. How stolid they were and how matter of fact and how sensible. They affected no high, nonsensical sentiments. Weren't they, after all, to be envied, rooted as they were in their solid simplicity? Why should human beings everlastingly try so hard to be different? He and Rose would have to get down to a genuine basis, and the quicker the better. Meanwhile he must remember that, ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... of human nature. The rather wild vagaries of the converts, too, aroused distrust and disgust in the sober minds of the western pioneers. At religious meetings converts would often arise to talk in gibberish—utterly nonsensical gibberish. This was called a "speaking with tongues," and could be translated by the speaker or a bystander in any way he saw fit, without responsibility for the saying. This was an easy way of calling a man names without ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... The struggling barrister, the clerk, the curate, the brainless masher—such are their prey; and if they make richer prizes than these, still the match cannot be called good; presently there is dis-union as the clever husband finds the pretty but nonsensical wife utterly unable to follow him through the paths of life that Fate has opened out ...
— How to Marry Well • Mrs. Hungerford
... King, when we heard the story, Was a little abash'd by the hero's glory; And, "Look you here, you boys; you may laff But I ain't the man to start at chaff. I know without any jaw from you, 'Twas a darned nonsensical thing to do; But I tell you plain—and I mean it, too— For all it was such a ridiculous thing, I should do it again!" ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... ever and again I glanced at other things. Nettie was always there in the background of my mind, regarding me enigmatically. It was part of my pose to Parload that I had a romantic love-affair somewhere away beyond the sphere of our intercourse, and that note gave a Byronic resonance to many of the nonsensical things ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... trouble Little Billy with a recital of MacLean's outburst. The poor fellow's mind was feverish enough without being bothered with the old Scotchman's wild, nonsensical raving. Martin knew the hunchback would consider gravely, and be disturbed, if he spoke. Little Billy apparently had some faith in Sails' ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... expensive and inconvenient, and might perhaps have proved detrimental to the Maypole business. Wherefore, and because he looked with no favourable eye upon young girls, but rather considered that they and the whole female sex were a kind of nonsensical mistake on the part of Nature, he took occasion to retire and shake his head in private at the boiler; inspired by which silent oracle, he was moved to give Joe various stealthy nudges with his elbow, as a parental reproof and gentle admonition to mind his own business ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the smith. "You know I love you for your own sake and for my mother's; but by St. Dunstan, who was a saint of my own craft, I will have the command of my own house; and if you leave me without any better reason but your own nonsensical suspicions, you must think how you will have the door open to you when you return; for you shall have no help of mine, I ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Mice (page 12) is an old-fashioned Round. Many a band of little folks has been divided into groups and has sung the nonsensical rhymes until every boy and girl broke down in laughter. Do you poor modern people know how it was done? The school was divided into a half-dozen sections. The first section began to sing and when its ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... laughed again at the end of this seemingly nonsensical harangue, and fixed her dark eyes on Hiram Hooker. The giant stood staring at her, and not a thought of Lucy Dalles was in his mind now. His blue eyes caught her dark ones, and his glance was lowered in confusion. Womanlike, Jerkline Jo took him in at a glance, and something within ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... kindly, and made a little nonsensical speech. He then unfolded a paper which he handed to Madame Guerard, asking her to read it and then to sign it. This paper was my contract, and mon petit Dame explained that she ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Senator from New England rises up with tongue so thick, and with utterance so nonsensical, that he is led into the anteroom. He was a ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... gone out for a few hours she dispatched a female slave to invite the tailor to drink coffee. To express the rapture of the happy snip is impossible. He fell at the feet of the slave, which he kissed as the welcome messengers of good tidings, gave her a piece of gold, and uttered some nonsensical verses that he had composed in praise of his beloved; then dressing himself in his best habit, he folded his turban in the most tasty manner, and curled his mustachios to the greatest advantage, after which ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... and so successfully for the spread of popular education, first struck a blow at the absurd monopoly of almanack printing. So much behind the age is this privileged Company, that it actually still continues to publish Moore's quack almanack, with the nonsensical old astrological tables, describing the moon's influence on various parts of the human body. One year it is said they had the courage to leave out this farrago, with the hieroglyphics originally stolen by Lilly from monkish manuscripts, and from Lilly stolen by Moore. The ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... nothing of the kind," I answered. "She lives with me, and she likes it very much. We are extremely comfortable, and our boat is not a canoe, or any such nonsensical affair. It is a large, ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... The nonsensical talk served to raise the spirits of those who had been rather plunged in gloom ever since the wreck. Mr. Duncan was given a room to himself where he could be quiet and recover from the shock of ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... of the silliest old gentlemen in his dominions; but I believe he is mad, for yesterday he gave a great dinner to the Jockey Club, at which (notwithstanding his cares) he seemed in excellent spirits; and after dinner he made a number of speeches, so ridiculous and nonsensical, beyond all belief but to those who heard them, rambling from one subject to another, repeating the same thing over and over again, and altogether such a mass of confusion, trash, and imbecility as made one laugh and blush ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... the city. This upstart had dared to say to the soldiers after the death of Caracalla: "The sovereignty properly belongs to me, since I am elder than Macrinus: but inasmuch as I am extremely old, I make way for him." His behavior was regarded as nonsensical, as was also that of Macrinus, in granting the greatest dignity of the senate to such a man, who could not when consul carry on a plain conversation with anybody in the senate, and consequently on ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... not furnish General Shafter with these articles, or with adequate transportation for them; or (2) General Shafter did not believe in microbes and the germ theory of disease, and regarded the suggestions of medical and other experts as foolish and nonsensical; or (3) the commanding general expected to capture Santiago before his troops should be put hors de combat by disease, and did not care particularly what happened to them afterward. If there be any other explanation of the officially ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... madame," said the young man, gently, in a voice free from resentment. "I warned you that my story was laughable; I, better than any one, know how absurd, how nonsensical it is. Yes, the whole thing is perfectly grotesque. But believe me when I tell you that it was no fun in reality. It seems a humorous situation and it remains humorous by the force of circumstances; but it is also horrible. You can see that for yourself, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... fore and aft, while underneath were spinning leather belts and something that whirred and howled and seemed to stagger. The ride-stealers made no attempt to fasten their sleds to a contrivance so nonsensical and yet so fearsome. Instead, they gave over their sport and concentrated all their energies in their lungs, so that up and down the street the one cry shrilled increasingly: "Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Mister, why don't you git a hoss?" But the mahout in charge, sitting ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... you what I'll do," said Maxwell Lane. "I'll compromise. If Sally and the rest of you will let up on your nonsensical plan of staying in this barracks all winter, I'll agree ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... logical consequence of his principles, Mr. Calhoun did not rest until through him religion, morality, statesmanship, the Constitution of the United States, the constitution of man, were all bound in black. Chattel slavery, the most nonsensical as well as detestable of oppressions, was, to him, the most beneficent contrivance of human wisdom. He called it an institution: Mr. Emerson has more happily styled it a destitution. At last the chains of his iron logic were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Jane declared. "Of course your aunt's an old woman, an' 'tain't surprisin' she should harbor a grudge against us. But Martin's younger, an' had oughter be more forgivin'. It's nonsensical feelin' you've got to be just as sour an' crabbed as your grandfather was. I don't humor him in it—at least not more'n I have to to keep the peace. But Mary an' 'Liza hang on to every word Martin utters. If he was to say blue was green, they'd say so too. They'd no more do a thing ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... that some mist had shrouded from their eyes what mattered most, and had let them see nothing but damage done by cattle, bridles, pincers, and all those trivial things which now, as they remembered them, seemed so nonsensical? How was it that with the new owner they lived in peace, and yet had been on bad terms with ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... gay (title) in the front of the book, calls it very honestly Dryden's Virgil, to let the reader know, that this is not that Virgil so much admired in the Augustaean age, an author whom Mr. Dryden once thought untranslatable, but a Virgil of another stamp, of a coarser allay; a silly, impertinent, nonsensical writer, of a various and uncertain style, a mere Alexander Ross, or somebody inferior to him; who could never have been known again in the translation, if the name of Virgil had not been bestowed upon him in large characters ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... put their names down except Paulsberg, who curtly refused. A man who wrote as much as he did could not sign his name to nonsensical notes, he said. And he rose and walked ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... avarice or revenge; whoredoms and ravishments, adulteries and sodomy, are committed to please a vicious appetite, and have always alluring objects; and generally all vices have some previous cause, and some visible tendency. But this, of all vicious practices, seems the most nonsensical and ridiculous; there is neither pleasure nor profit, no design pursued, no lust gratified, but is a mere frenzy of the tongue, a vomit of the brain, which works by putting a contrary upon the course ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... believe it!" said my mother, "it's some nonsensical mistake." Clara looked a little ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... but because they are in rhyme they have been hastily assumed to be spurious or even burlesque.[142] But the evidence of a rhyming formula is the opposite to this. It is evidence of their genuineness, and if some of the words appear to be nonsensical it is due to the fact that the sense of the old formula has been misunderstood, and ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... your life, show your affection for her, and your admiration of her, not in nonsensical compliment; not in picking up her handkerchief, or her glove, or in carrying her fan or parasol; not, if you have the means, in hanging trinkets and baubles upon her; not in making yourself a fool by winking at, and seeming pleased at, her foibles, or follies, or faults; but show them by acts ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... now, my beloved, there is no such thing as good-bye; it is a word that has no real meaning; but it is so English and pretty and sweet and child-like and nonsensical that I could write it over and over again—just ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... little intrigues: he trafficked with the obscure Reviews of the times. He was a correspondent in "The Works of the Learned," where the account of his first volume of the Divine Legation, he says, is "a nonsensical piece of stuff;" and when Dr. Doddridge offered to draw up an article for his second, the favour was accepted, and it was sent to the miserable journal, though acknowledged "to be too good for it." In the same journal were published all his specimens ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the old-fashioned stories in this volume I find only one that seems to me "really funny," and that is "Uncle David's Nonsensical Story about the Giants and Fairies." Think of a giant so tall that "he was obliged to climb up a ladder to comb his own hair." But this bit of humor is not so good as a very modern nonsense-story entitled "The Giant's Shoes," which I read the other day, and from ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... I'm going to give him his chance," Caleb cut in. His voice was hushed, but vehement. "Why, man, think what he has this minute, to start with! A brain as clear as a diamond, absolutely fresh, absolutely unspoiled or fagged with the nonsensical fol-de-rol which makes up the bulk of the usual boy's education of his age, and a working knowledge, for instance, of this north country which most men might envy. Why, the possibilities ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... on us any night in walking down a dark lane. If, therefore, nonsense is really to be the literature of the future, it must have its own version of the Cosmos to offer; the world must not only be the tragic, romantic, and religious, it must be nonsensical also. And here we fancy that nonsense will, in a very unexpected way, come to the aid of the spiritual view of things. Religion has for centuries been trying to make men exult in the 'wonders' of creation, but it has forgotten that ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... there were some foolish people who did not know the law, and others who challenged one another to do what was forbidden, well knowing that, if caught, severe blows of the paddle would be their portion. Every now and then, howls and shouts would call the attention of the crowd to some nonsensical being running full speed down the middle of the road, or across it, pursued by the angry soldiers, who, when they captured him, began by knocking him down, and continued by beating him with their heavy sticks and paddles, until he became senseless, if not killed. When ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... constitutes one of the counts in the orthodox indictment of him: it is cited as proof that his capacity for consecutive thought was limited, and that he was thus deficient mentally, and perhaps a downright moron. The argument, it must be obvious, is fundamentally nonsensical. What deceives the professors is the traditional prolixity of philosophers. Because the average philosophical writer, when he essays to expose his ideas, makes such inordinate drafts upon the parts of speech that the dictionary is almost emptied these defective observers jump to the conclusion that ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... playfully resisting. "Don't be so nonsensical! Don't you think the bride looked lovely, with that dress of spotless white and with those orange blossoms ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... her, and he induced me to lay aside all other considerations and make up my mind to come and woo her on his behalf. But when I told him in what an uncourteous way I had been dismissed, he in the most nonsensical way stole into your house in the guise of a cooper, intending to win her favour and then actually to run away with her. But—you cured him with that good sound blow across his back; my best thanks for it. And now he has found a lady of rank who most likely is, after all, the Rose ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... especially from the "Eonx of Ruby." Chivers, according to Taylor's showing, had become infatuated with Poe, and adorned his verses with every sort of beautiful word which he could coin, the result being as nonsensical a medley as was ever known. Earlier in the evening, Taylor, Fields, and myself had each of us been giving a lecture, and this led Taylor to speak of a recent experience of his while holding forth in one of the smaller towns of Massachusetts. The chairman of the lecture committee, being seated ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... soon after entering another society, and perhaps with a manner a little confused. "Have you met Dr. Johnson?" my friends exclaimed. "Yes, I have." "And what passed between you?"'" and so on. All this at any rate is legendary outgrowth on the very face of it, and nonsensical even for that. But even the story itself, as told so circumstantially by Scott, is demonstrably mythical in most of its circumstances. Johnson was never in Glasgow except one day, the 29th of October 1773, and in October 1773 ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae |
