"Pithy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for those individual Democrats who believed in woman suffrage, among whom he was always a staunch advocate. Miss Anthony was cheered to the echo and it seemed as if the audience could not get enough of her bright, pithy remarks, as ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... compilation of pithy quotations, selected from a great variety of sources, and alphabetically arranged according to the sentiment. In addition to all the popular quotations in current use, it contains many rare bits of prose and verse not generally ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... as early as 1615 in Germany. But these rhymed gazettes were very numerous. They were more or less bulky pamphlets, with pithy sarcastic programmes for titles, and sometimes a wood or copper cut prefixed. A few of them were of Catholic origin, and one, entitled Post-Bole, (The Express,) is quite as good as anything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... literary and bibliographical notes; according to Bibl. Krohn, p. 256, no. 3582.——BADENHAUPT. Bibliotheca selectissima; sive Catalogus librorum magnam partem philologicorum, quos inter eminent. Auctores Graeci et Romani classica quos collegit E.F. Badenhaupt, Berol, 1773, 8vo. The pithy bibliographical notes which are here and there scattered throughout this catalogue, render it of estimation in the opinion of the curious.——BALUZE. Bibliotheca Balusiana; seu catalogus librorum bibliothecae D.S. Baluzii, A. Gab. Martin, Paris, 1719, 8vo., two vols. Let any enlightened bibliographers ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... was a pithy saying of Persius, and fits our politicians without a wrinkle,—Magister artis, ingeniique ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... to consider the presence of the American Minister and Senator as an expression of the good-will of the American Government. They looked upon him diplomatically. All that he said was listened to with the deepest respect, which was none the less when they did not comprehend a word. His pithy sentences, when translated into Italian, became the neatest epigrams in the world. His suggestions as to the best mode of elevating and enriching the country were considered by one set as the profoundest philosophy, and by another as the ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... of the Will, framed on these instructions, to Lord Byron, the solicitor accompanied some of the clauses with marginal queries, calling the attention of his noble client to points which he considered inexpedient or questionable; and as the short pithy answers to these suggestions are strongly characteristic of their writer, I shall here give one or two of the clauses in full, with the respective ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Wilkins was very respectable. He was known to be highly thought of by his senior partners. His sister's circle admired him. He pronounced adequately intelligent judgments on art and artists. He was pithy; he was prudent; he never said a word too much, nor, on the other had, did he ever say a word too little. He produced the impression of keeping copies of everything he said; and he was so obviously ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... cautious circumspection; he heedlessly ventured and lost. It was then to cover his delinquencies elsewhere, he exposed to sale the estate of Lochalsh; and it was then he was bitterly taught to feel, when his people, without an exception, addressed his Lordship this pithy remonstrance - 'Reside amongst us and we shall pay your debts.' A variety of feelings and facts, unconnected with a difference, might have interposed to counteract this display of devotedness besides ingratitude, but these habits, or his Lordship's ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... making the history of 'muck-raking' in the United States a national one, conceded to be useful. He has preached from the White House many doctrines; but among them he has left impressed on the American mind the one great truth of economic justice couched in the pithy and stinging phrase 'the square deal.' The task of making reform respectable in a commercialized world, and of giving the national a slogan in a phrase, is greater than the man who performed it is ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... Limoges, to make a contribution to a kind of literature which has seriously modified the practical arrangements and social relations of the western world. In 1766 he published his Essay on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth—a short but most pithy treatise, in which he anticipated some of the leading economic principles of that greater work by Adam Smith, which was given to the world ten years later. Turgot's Essay has none of the breadth of historic outlook, and none of the amplitude of concrete illustrations from real affairs, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... his position, to its cheapness, and its advertising patronage, which was considerable. In the fourth place, it early secured the assistance of William H. Attree, a man of uncommon abilities as a reporter and a concocter of pithy as well as ludicrous chapters greatly calculated to captivate many readers. In fact, this clever and talented assistant in some respects never had his match. He did not, as other reporters do, take down in short-hand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... patted him. Success to your search, Fidelity! And there sits a great yellow cat upon a window-sill, a very corpulent and comfortable cat, gazing at this transitory world, with owl's eyes, and making pithy comments, doubtless, or what appear such, to the silly beast. O sage puss, make room for me beside you, and we will be a ...
— Little Annie's Ramble (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... first let me see what is in this paper which I am to affix upon the man's dress after I have killed him." I held it up to the light, and read, in capital letters, "The reward of a traitor!" "Short and pithy," muttered I, as I replaced it in my pocket: "now I'll back to the spot of assignation, for the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... neither the leisure nor the training to master this very intricate economic problem. W. H. Harvey's Coin's Financial School was the most widely read campaign document, although hundreds of similar pamphlets and books had an enormous circulation. The pithy and plausible arguments of "Coin" and his ready answers to questions supposedly put by prominent editors, bankers, and university professors, as well as by J. R. Sovereign, master workman of the Knights of Labor, tickled the fancy of thousands of farmers who saw ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... skimming Shakespeare, he went down into his depths. Few have written so subtly of Shakespeare's mysterious sonnets. Through all Lanier's productions we trace the influence of his early literary loves; but nowhere do the pithy quaintnesses of the old bards and chroniclers display themselves more effectively — not only in the illustrations, but through the innermost warp and woof of the texture of his ideas and his style — than in some ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... creature, in the case of dropping out of the coach, will enjoy a coroner's inquest; consequently he will enjoy an epitaph. For I insist upon it, that the verdict of a coroner's jury makes the best of epitaphs. It is brief, so that the public all find time to read; it is pithy, so that the surviving friends (if any can survive such a loss) remember it without fatigue; it is upon oath, so that rascals and Dr. Johnsons cannot pick holes in it. "Died through the visitation of intense stupidity, by impinging ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of adulation even a doctor of divinity may go, is well shown in Schoelcher's pithy comment: "This is addressed to a man who pitilessly murdered as many prisoners after the battle as his courage had slain enemies during the combat." It is but just to the composer, however, to say ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... tapping the fruit stem of the cabo negro palm. The process is very simple. At the time of efflorescence the spadix is cut off and the pithy stem is tapped. This operation lasts from 15 to 30 minutes each day and is continued for from 7 to 14 days. After the tapping the stem must be bent into a downward position. This is effected by inclining it downward ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Theophrastus his Works, preserv'd by [T]Diogenes Laertius, there is one Book under the Title peri paroimion concerning Proverbs: But that, probably, was nothing but a Collection of some of those short, remarkable, useful, pithy Sayings, which are of common Use in the World, and which every Nation has peculiar to it self. However, tho' we cannot exactly tell, what the Nature of that Performance was, because the Book is now lost, yet ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... "You are pithy at reply, young man; but I know something of Jacob Armitage, and we know," continued he, putting his finger close to some writing opposite the name on the list, "with whom he has been associated, and with whom he has served. Now allow me to put one question. You have come, you say, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... careful study; they are full of wisdom and of an imaginative philosophy, expressed in pithy and telling form, which continually reminds the reader of Blake's ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... form, but having broader leaves, which are thick like leather, and bearing small knobs like those of the cypress. From these trees hang down many branches into the water, each about the thickness of a walking-stick, smooth, limber, and pithy within, which are overflowed by every tide, and hang as thick as they can stick of oysters, being the only fruit of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... nor the last—that men count for more than machines, that courage and enterprise can reverse in the actual fight the conditions that beforehand would seem to make defeat inevitable. "Give me plenty of iron in the men, and I don't mind so much about iron in the ships," was a pithy saying of the American Admiral Farragut. There was iron enough in the Austrian sailors, Tegethoff and Petz, to outweigh all the iron in the guns and armour of the Italian admirals, Persano and Albini, and the "iron in the men" gave victory to the fleet ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... therefore intend, good gentle audience, A pretty short interlude to play at this present, Desiring your leave and quiet silence, To show the same, as is meet and expedient, It is called The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom, A matter right pithy and pleasing to hear, Whereof in brief we will show the whole sum; But I must be ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... has attempted to formulate the relationships between causes and effects without, however, always possessing the specific knowledge essential to accuracy. Pithy statements have always had great appeal to man, as evidenced by the existence of proverbs, maxims, and adages preserved from times of great antiquity. Frequently, however, such statements are not expressive of the truth. Sometimes, again, they state facts, ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... of the North-west Coast, this gouty tree had previously cast its foliage of the preceding year, which is of quinary insertion, but it bore ripe fruit, which is a large elliptical pedicellated unilocalar capsule (a bacca corticosa) containing many seeds enveloped in a dry pithy substance. Its flowers, however, have never been discovered, but from the characters of the fruit, it was (upon discovery) referred to this natural family. M. Du Petit Thouars has formed a new genus of Capparis pauduriformis of Lamarck, a plant of the Island of Mauritius, which he ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... poem, but he has dressed them so neatly, and turned them out with such sparkle and point, that these truisms have acquired a weight not their own, and they circulate as proverbs among us in virtue of their pithy form rather than their truth. They exemplify his own line, 'What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.' Pope told Spence that he had gone through all the best critics, specifying Quintilian, Rapin, and Le Bossu. But whatever ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... much struck with Randal's pithy and Spartan logic.)—"Upon my word sir, you express yourself very well. I must own that I began these questions in the hope of differing from you; for I ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... mufa vitus oho trahit mifas rutis oho, trahis mutis Humo astra hosti oho, fum Charitas. If the pertingent Reader still craves more evidence of the extent of Hariot's friendships, and the universality of his acquirements, let him read the following pithy, quaint, and beautiful tribute paid to him by blind Old Homer's Chapman in 1616. It is found in the Preface to the Reader in the first complete edition of Homer'sworks translated by ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... to be regretted that London was omitted from the Domesday Survey, for that invaluable record might have furnished us with some information as to the building of the Tower, and perhaps revealed in one of those brief but pithy sentences, pregnant with suggestion, some such ruthless destruction of houses as took place in Oxford and elsewhere[8] in order to clear a site for the King's new castle. Unless the site were then vacant, or perhaps only occupied by a vineyard (for these are ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... real expressions of true Christian love. The next day they went on board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's heart, that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the Key as spectators could not refrain from tears. But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away, that were thus loth to depart, their Reverend Pastor ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... unpleasant vitality as that. What may have happened to the "stools" after Mabel was married to Sir Hubert, we cannot take it upon us to say. At any rate, we prefer the Scotch poet's description, as somewhat the more pithy, and graphic, and intelligible of the two. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... observes, "This is the first time I have heard it said that our Postilions put on rouge." What he adds, shall be given in his own pithy expression.—"Ou la coquetterie va-t-elle se nicher?" What, however is above stated, was stated from a conviction of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... local papers. Send them short, pithy communications, and, when possible, secure a column in each, to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... partisanship on the close similarity of handwriting established by careful comparison of facsimiles; the likeness of the style of Sir Philip's speeches in Parliament to that of Junius—biting, pithy, full of antithesis and invective; the tenderness and bitterness displayed by Junius towards persons to whom Sir Philip stood well or ill affected; the correspondence of the dates of the letters with those of certain movements of Sir Philip; and the evidence ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... last two years had pleased him well: he was connected with a certain large literary society which gave his legal wits plenty of scope. In his leisure hours he wrote moderately well-expressed papers on all sorts of social subjects with a pithy raciness and command of language that excited ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... notes in his diary of everything that mattered. He was delighted with his final selection, and as usual pithy and to the point when describing. Here, for example, is something of what ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... society—as a peer, and as a poet of revolt. Sincere in both, he could never forget the one character in the other. To the last, he was an aristocrat in sentiment, a democrat in opinion. "Vulgarity," he writes with a pithy half-truth, "is far worse than downright black guardism; for the latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense at times, while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all things, signifying nothing." He could never reconcile ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... statements or disclose state secrets that furnish the best story material for the paper next morning. If one does not have an advance copy, one should attempt to get the speech by topics, with occasional verbatim passages of particularly pithy or dynamic passages. As in the case of interviews, it is better not to attempt to take too much of the lecture word for word. The significance, the spirit of the address is of greater worth than mere literalness. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... kitchen-door bearing before her, with that air of extraordinary importance peculiar to the negro countenance on eventful occasions, a huge brown dish with which she advanced to the head of the table, and with an emphatic bump, answering to the pithy speeches of warriors and statesmen at critical moments, deposited the great Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. Looking proudly around, she simply ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... the wooden part of a bow instead of its string. 2d. They yielded to gravity—kept tending down, down, to the righthand corner more and more. In the use of capitals the writer had taken the copyhead as his model. The style, however, was pithy, and in writing that is the first Christian grace—no, I forgot, it is the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... a very short paragraph indeed for so long a subject; but, short as it is, it is not less pithy, and it contains reasons why it should not be longer, and why that new torch of science which he is bringing in upon the human affairs generally, cannot be permitted to enter that department of them in his time. 'The first is, that it is a part of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... use the flower-stem of the grass-tree, which is of a tough pithy nature, and about one inch in diameter. The operation of making the fire is assisted by the use of a little charcoal-powder, which, in Australia, is found on the bark of almost every tree, from the constant passage of grass-fires over the ground. The process ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... of Greek commanders to wind up the courage of their men on the eve of a battle by a short and pithy address, calculated to inspire them with confidence, by giving them a reasonable hope of victory. Such a practice, strange as it may seem to us, was natural among a people whose armies and fleets were recruited ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... wall, beyond which we had, through the trees, a glimpse of a stately mansion. Our guard was a genuine Irishman, strongly resembling the late actor Power in physiognomy, with the very brogue which Power sometimes gave to his personages. He was a man of pithy speech, communicative, and acquainted apparently with every body, of every class, whom we passed on the road. Besides him we had for fellow-passengers three very intelligent Irishmen, on their way to Dublin. One of them was a tall, handsome gentleman, with dark hair and hazel eyes, and ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... at the unappetizing tea in Sara's cup. "I positively dare not order you fresh tea—in the circumstances. Jane would probably retaliate with an ultimatum involving a rigid choice between tea and the preparation of your room, accompanied by a pithy summary of the capabilities of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... know how to comply with your request to have a 'short, pithy, Democratic sentiment.' In glancing at the thousand mystifications which have befogged so many in our presumed intelligent community, I note one in relation to the new-fangled application of a common ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... house, always raised several feet above the level of the ground, or of the water, as the case may be, and, split up into lathes of the requisite size, forms the frame-work of the walls and roof, and constitutes the flooring throughout. With the pithy centre removed, the nibong forms an efficient aqueduct, in the absence of bambu, and its young, growing shoot affords a cabbage, or salad, second only to that furnished by the coco-nut, which will next come into view, together with the betel (Areca) ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... important articles. Large quantities of toddy, or palm-wine, are prepared from the juice, which, when boiled, yields very good palm sugar or jaggery, and also excellent sugar candy. Sago is also prepared from the central or pithy part of the trunk, and forms a large portion of the food of the natives. The fiber from the leaf stalk is of great strength; it is known as Kittool fiber, and is used for making ropes, brushes, brooms, etc. A woolly kind of scurf, scraped off the leaf stalks, is used for calking ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... freedom of the will would have had no existence, if this pithy paragraph had been well pondered by those who oppose the doctrine of necessity. For they rest upon the absurd presumption that the proposition, "I can do as I like," is contradictory to the doctrine of necessity. The answer ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... letters are better known in this nation, among Azevedo's work we should be quick to appreciate such a pithy book as the Livro de uma Sogra,—the Book of a Mother-in-Law. And when the literature of these United States is at last (if ever, indeed!) released from the childish, hypocritical, Puritanic ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... Pithy paragraphs on a wide range of subjects, not one of which but will be found to contain some terse, sparkling truth worthy of thought and attention. A spare ten minutes devoted to such readings ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... well and intelligibly, he wants condensation; and we do not think that his argument has been weakened by being shortened. What he has extended into a volume of nearly five hundred pages, might have been reduced to a pithy essay of one or two hundred, without sacrificing one essential fact, or injuring the strength of any one of his arguments. The art of writing in our times is the art of condensing; and those who cannot condense write ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Espinosa urged the propriety, by every argument which prudence could suggest, of moderating his demands. His claims upon Cuzco, at least, were not to be shaken, and he declared himself ready to peril his life in maintaining them. The licentiate coolly replied by quoting the pithy Castilian proverb, El vencido vencido, y el vencidor perdido; "The vanquished vanquished, and ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... philosophic and meditative taste of the age had produced indeed poetic schools of its own: poetic satire had become fashionable in Hall, better known afterwards as a bishop, and had been carried on vigorously by George Wither; the so-called "metaphysical" poetry, the vigorous and pithy expression of a cold and prosaic good sense, began with Sir John Davies and buried itself in fantastic affectations in Donne; religious verse had become popular in the gloomy allegories of Quarles and the tender refinement which struggles through a jungle of puns and extravagances in George Herbert. ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... argument to the meeting with a pithy discourse on the sacredness of human life, the weaknesses and dangers of circumstantial evidence, and the rights of the accused wherever doubt arose. Then she plunged into the evidence, stripping off the superfluous and striving to ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... led him happily to infringe the resolution, and then it became, "I will always, if possible, hear Daniel Wilson." Sentences of his were very memorable; for instance, "Nineteen- twentieths of sanctification consist in holy tempers," and, besides exhibiting a pithy force of language, his sermons were prepared with infinite care and labour. When at St. John's, where he had no parochial charge, he selected his text on Monday and carried it about with him, so to speak, all the week, chewing the cud of it as it ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... thirteenth, when already part Of the troops were embarked, the siege to raise, A courier on the spur inspired new heart Into all panters for newspaper praise,[hn] As well as dilettanti in War's art, By his despatches (couched in pithy phrase) Announcing the appointment of that lover of Battles to the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... treasure. Well, it must solve itself—I will back to my post; but first let me see what is in this paper which I am to affix upon the man's dress after I have killed him." I held it up to the light, and read, in capital letters, "The reward of a traitor!" "Short and pithy," muttered I, as I replaced it in my pocket: "now I'll back to the place of assignation, for the hour must be ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... respecting one of the theories which he had heard for explaining the inundation of the Nile by a supposed connexion with the ocean—that the man who carries up his story into the invisible world, passes out of the range of criticism."[2] And he adds the following pithy note:—"Niebuhr puts together all the mythical and genealogical traces, many of them in the highest degree vague and equivocal, of the existence of Pelasgi in various localities; and then, summing up their cumulative effect, asserts, 'not as an hypothesis, but with full historical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... artes. For, as touching morall philosophy, all those books are fraught with the precepts thereof, which, for their instructions sake, are alwayes conuersant in the hands of the foresayd students, wherein such graue and pithy sentences are set downe, that, in men void of the light of the Gospell, more can not be desired. [Sidenote: Naturall philosophy.] They haue books also that intreat of things and causes naturall, but herein it is to be supposed, that aswell their ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... each day's expenditure, and his family after his death were to be turned into the street, beggars. If each individual were a unit whose interests ended with himself; if generations were like stratified rocks, superposed one on another but not interconnected; if—to quote a pithy phrase, I do not know from whom—"if all men were born orphans and died bachelors," then the right to draw income from the products of permanently productive capital would for most men lose much of what now ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... not sufficiently recognise the truth of Walt Whitman's pithy saying, "I am not all contained between my hat and my boots," and forget the two-fold nature of the "I AM," that it is at once both the manifested and the unmanifested, the universal and the individual. By losing sight of this truth we surround ourselves with limitations; we see only ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... but it was a ripe, kindly age that was coming over her. Her excellent practical sense, perhaps, made her a more masculine character than her brother. He was often so much perplexed by the problems of life, that he let the time for action go by; but she kept him in check by her clear, pithy talk, which brought back his wandering thoughts to the duty that lay straight before him, waiting for action; and then he remembered that it was the faithful part to "wait patiently upon God," ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Colonial Office, as the Hon. A. Lyttleton. And he, too, left us rather suddenly during this troublous year of 1913. In this year, too, South Africa was visited by a drought which for severity was pronounced to be unprecedented in the knowledge of all the old inhabitants. Remarks — some pithy, some ugly — were made upon the drought by Dutchmen. They all remembered how the God of their fathers used to send them nice soaking rains regularly each spring-time, and that it usually continued to ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... learned Selden has given the history of transubstantiation in a comprehensive and pithy sentence: "This opinion is only rhetoric turned into logic," (his Works, vol. iii. p. 2037, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... from his seat and placing a chair, the banker merely bows and points to one. Lawyers, on the contrary, are expected to behave like any other gentlemen; so also physicians. The patient is directed in both cases to relate his grievances in short, pithy sentences; answer all questions clearly; apologise for taking up their time by asking them in turn—in consequence, he must say, of his own ignorance; and then finish by warmly thanking them for the attention ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... say that this pithy and pretty address proceeded from the mouth of Mr. Tom Thornton. He was somewhat more than half drunk, and his light prying eyes twinkled dizzily in his head. Dartmore, who was, and is, the best natured fellow alive, hailed the signs of his intoxication as a sort ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it was observed of him that he never spoke of his faith, or entered into arguments with men as to the reasons on which he had based it. He was diligent in preaching,—moral sermons that were short, pithy, and useful. He was never weary in furthering the welfare of his clergymen. His house was open to them and to their wives. The edifice of every church in his diocese was a care to him. He laboured at schools, and was zealous in improving the social comforts ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Jugoslavia, and Poland upheld M. Bratiano's contentions in brief, pithy speeches. President Wilson's lengthy rejoinder, delivered with more than ordinary sweetness, deprecated M. Bratiano's comparison of the Allies' proposed intervention with Russia's protection of the Christians of Turkey, and represented the measure ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... material which is treated with plain, common sense, good wit and no lack of humor. Thus it hits the need of the average man and woman, and all others that reckon themselves above the average. The whole book is pervaded by strong and pure moral feeling, and the chapters are well dotted with pithy anecdotes ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... cap of a true mushroom has a frill, the gills are free from the stem, they never grow down against it, but usually there is a small channel all around the top of the stem, the spores are brown-black, or deep purple black and the stem is solid or slightly pithy. It is said if salt is sprinkled on the gills and they become yellow the mushroom is poisonous, if black, they are wholesome. ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... growing sago-tree is not more than half an inch in thickness, and it is filled with a light, pithy matter, from which 'sago' is made. This pithy matter varies in colour from a rusty tinge to white, and is rather like the eatable part of a dry apple. Strings of harder, woody fibre run through it like straight veins, and these are ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... pithy chapter in Machiavelli's Prince which treats of cruelty and clemency, and whether it be better to be loved or feared, anticipates the defence of the Terrorists, in the maxim that for a new prince it is impossible to avoid the name of cruel, because all new states abound in many perils. The difference ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... members of that party, however, Phocion was pure and patriotic in his motives, and a man of the strictest integrity. It was his unquestioned probity and his peculiar disinterestedness that gave him such influence with the people. As an orator, too, he commanded attention by his striking and pithy brevity. "He knew so well," says GROTE, "on what points to strike, that his telling brevity, strengthened by the weight of character and position, cut through the fine oratory of Demosthenes more effectively than any counter oratory from men like AEsehines." Demosthenes ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors, the freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary's spirits like some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning till noon, and from noon till night. They could always talk; and their discourse, witty, pithy, original, had such charms for me, that I preferred listening to, and sharing in it, to doing anything else. St. John did not rebuke our vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was seldom in the house; his parish was large, the population ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... matters that had been the occasion of difficulty among them, especially to help them get their records put into good shape, and kept so for the future; and wind up in the following excellent, and in some of the clauses rather emphatic and pithy, expressions:— ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... his pencil and his pen. About the end of June he formed the acquaintance of J. E. Hitzig, who came down to Warsaw with the rank of assessor in the administrative college in which Hoffmann held that of councillor. The crust of formal courtesy and commonplaces was broken through by Hitzig's pithy answer, to a question asking his opinion about some newly-arrived colleague, that he was "a man in buckram." The borrowed words of Falstaff banished Hoffmann's reserve, and caused his sombre face to light up with joy and his tongue to pour out a brilliant ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the cure for gout?" asked an indolent and luxurious citizen. "Live upon sixpence a day, and earn it!" was the pithy answer. ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... believ'd little in a church as organiz'd-even his own—with houses, ministers, or with salaries, creeds, Sundays, saints, Bibles, holy festivals, &c. But he believ' d always in the universal church, in the soul of man, invisibly rapt, ever-waiting, ever-responding to universal truths.—He was fond of pithy proverbs. He said, "It matters not where you live, but how you live." He said once to my father, "They talk of the devil—I tell thee, Walter, there is ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... lady repeat the following pithy lines, and shall be glad if any of your readers can tell me who is the author, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... The pithy conciseness of the brackish tongue renders it eminently useful on duty. In some of their sea-phrases the French, our great rivals, use a heap of words more than we are wont to do. An instance is given—supposing a ship of the former met with one of ours, and they should ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... knew long since, a white-haired man, Pithy of speech, and merry when he would; A genial optimist, who daily drew From what he saw his quaint moralities. Kindly he held communion, though so old, With me a dreaming boy, and taught me much That books tell not, and I shall ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... followers of holiness in the sight of God. And at the last taking in this place, who was not touched with that feeling prayer, made by that man of God[8]; that godly exhortation, which followed from another[9]; that pithy relation by that man of name[10]; that soul-affecting thanksgiving, wherewith a godly doctor closed the day[11]? and, that no less piety and love of God might appear in you, after you resolved upon the work; you desired that the ordinance might be sanctified to you by the word of God and prayer; ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... from time to time, show what is called the true blood, and are extremely valuable, proving how essential it is that an officer in command should "Never say die while there is a shot in the locker!" a pithy old phrase, which will apply to many situations in life, civil as well as military. Had the gallant commander alluded to, Sir Nathaniel Dance, yielded when the French Admiral Linois, and his squadron, consisting of the Marengo, a line-of-battle ship of 84 ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... for walls, I have one for thee from Oxford, pithy and apposite, sound and solid, and trimmed up becomingly, as a collar of brawn with a crown of rosemary, or a boar's head with ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... could not conjecture a reason for this, till he happened to take off his hat and lay it beside him. As soon as he noticed the button, he rose and said, "Friends, if religion consists in a button, I wouldn't give a button for it." Having delivered this short and pithy sermon, he seated himself, and resumed the offending hat with the ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... published a valuable collection of financial essays, entitled The Banker's Commonplace Book, containing Mr. A. B. Johnson's pithy treatise on the Principles of Banking and the Duties of a Banker, Gilbart's Ten Minutes' Advice on Keeping a Bank, with several articles on Bills of Exchange, and a summary of the Banking Laws of Massachusetts. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... of the Parsees presents, as usual, an amusing contrast with the highflown rhapsodies of the Moslem; their remarks on the same lady are comprised in the pithy observation—"We should not have taken her for more than twenty-six years of age; but we are told she is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... complimenting me for my taste in pithy and wise sentences, said a thing that gave me a high opinion of you; and it was this: 'Men of talents,' said you, 'are sooner to be convinced by short sentences than by long preachments, because the short sentences drive themselves into ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... like many persons of his time and class, was a man of protean employment—joiner, barber, and what not. No doubt he had much pithy and fluent conversation, all of which escapes us. He certainly impressed the Hon. Theodore Atkinson as a person of uncommon parts, for the Honorable Secretary of the Province, like a second Haroun Al Raschid, often summoned the barber to entertain him with his ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... before you touch the instrument, To learne the order of my fingering, I must begin with rudiments of Art, To teach you gamoth in a briefer sort, More pleasant, pithy, and effectuall, Then hath beene taught by any of my trade, And there it is ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... on Caleb Harper, soberly, "an' save fer statin' hit es I goes along I hain't got nuthin' more ter say erbout hit—albeit hit seems ter me a right pithy matter fer young folks ter study erbout. I don't jedgmatically know nothin' erbout yore affairs," he nodded his head toward Maggard. "So fur's I've got any means ter tell, ye mout be independent rich or ye mout not hev nothin' only ther shirt an' pants ye ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... came back to wind up with a lecture or quotation. I ransacked all my classics, and met with many a wise and pithy saying, but not one pleased me. I was about to give up the search in despair, when, taking up a certain book, my eye caught a familiar red pencil-mark. "Eureka!" I cried, and I wrote in large ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... in Shakespeare. He spoke the words and uttered the thoughts of hostlers as well as of kings. Observe the common language in the Bible. It is curious to note the number of the pithy expressions daily appearing among us which are repetitions of what the people were saying in the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the girl's slight figure to her capacious breast, Mrs. Daggett summed up in a single pithy sentence all the legal phraseology of the Document, which by now had been signed by everybody old enough ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... with you, Anne, is that you're thinking too much about yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest and most agreeable to her," said Marilla, hitting for once in her life on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... cardcase, but that mark of gentility was not at hand. He, however, made a page from his memorandum book serve his purpose, and took his leave amid the loud congratulations of the applauding crowd, with the following pithy address to the constables: 'I can't well see what use you are. A hundred years ago there were no police, and Lord Mayor's shows went off better than they do now. For my part, I can't see what you do here at all, for you know'—he added with a significant grin—'you know you don't look ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... really admirable short stories of the sea, very simply told, and placed before the reader in pithy and telling English.'—Westminster Gazette. ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... and patience to wade through a long story, will find here many pithy and sprightly tales, each sharply hitting some social absurdity or social vice. We recommend the book heartily after having read the three chapters on "Taking a Newspaper." If all the rest are as sensible and interesting as ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... afterward so signally illustrated in act and embodied in maxims of his own that have already been quoted. He did not employ the terminology of the art, which, though possibly pedantic in sound, is invaluable for purposes of discussion; but he expressed its leading principles in pithy, homely phrases of his own, which showed how accurate his grasp of it was. "If once you get in a soldier's rear, he is gone," was probably in part a bit of good-natured chaff at the sister profession; but it sums up in a few words the significance and strategic ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... seen by his Works, which still live in Fame and Reputation, writing in Heroick verse the Life of King Henry the Seventh, with the Battle of Bosworth; and also the Battle of Crescy and Poietiers, in which he is very pithy and sententious: I shall only give you two instances, the first out of his Battle ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... own house, and that he never overslept the sunrise. After dinner he would converse with his friends, using commonly his native dialect of Bergamo, and entertaining the company now with stories of adventure, and now with pithy sayings. In another essential point he resembled his illustrious contemporary, the Duke of Urbino; for he was sincerely pious in an age which, however it preserved the decencies of ceremonial religion, was profoundly corrupt ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Straw, Jack Trewman, Jack Carter, and probably of many more. Some of the choicest flowers of the publications charitably written and circulated by them gratis are upon record in Walsingham and Knyghton: and I am inclined to prefer the pithy and sententious brevity of these bulletins of ancient rebellion before the loose and confused prolixity of the modern advertisements of constitutional information. They contain more good morality and less bad politics, they had much more foundation in real ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... one of the most cherished purposes of his life so nearly accomplished, the venerable philosopher, attended by his seven colleagues, presented to the legislature of Pennsylvania a copy of the Federal Constitution, and in a brief but pithy speech, characterized by his usual homely wisdom, begged for it their most favourable consideration. His words fell upon willing ears, for nowhere was the disgust at the prevailing anarchy greater than in Philadelphia. But still it was not quite in order for the assembly to act upon the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... you must know that when we presented ourselves at the gate yonder, his brain was over-burdened with a speech that had been penned for him, and which proved rather an overmatch for his gigantic faculties. Now this same pithy oration had been indited, like sundry others, by my learned magister, Erasmus Holiday, so I had heard it often enough to remember every line. As soon as I heard him blundering and floundering like ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Education of that period that the children attending the State schools should be instructed in the duties of citizenship, and that they should be taught something of the laws under which they lived, and I was commissioned to write a short and pithy statement of the case. It was to be simple enough for intelligent children in the fourth class; 11 or 12—it was to lead from the known to the unknown—it might include the elements of political economy and sociology—it might make use of familiar illustrations ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... you set 10 you get 9 to grow. For scions I go back on two-year wood and oftentimes on three-year wood where there are buds. I don't have trouble at all. With pecans, you have a little more difficulty, because the wood is more pithy inside ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... and teachings he has done more than any other American to advance the material prosperity of his countrymen. It is said that his widely and faithfully read maxims made Philadelphia and Pennsylvania wealthy, while Poor Richard's pithy sayings, translated into many languages, have ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... we are quite aware that we have sacrificed interest, for in many passages, if not in most, a careful paraphrase of Froebel would be much more intelligible and pithy to English readers than a true rendering, since he probably possesses every fault of style except over-conciseness; but we feel that it is better to let Froebel ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... effect of which was considerably heightened by a dirty white handkerchief, spotted with blood, drawn over the crown of his head and tied under his chin: stared ruefully at Ralph in silence, until his feelings found a vent in this pithy sentence: ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... lastly, that the indulgence so often bestowed upon a first effort is as frequently converted into censure on the older offender. My arguments have, however, totally failed, and he remains obdurate and unmoved. Under these circumstances I have yielded; and as, happily for me, the short and pithy direction to the river Thames, in the Critic, "to keep between its banks," has been imitated by my friend, I find all that is required of me is to write my name upon the title and go in peace. Such, he informs me, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... volunteer should be an optimist, and should exercise common sense in guiding the adult over the first lap of the unfamiliar road. I have advised the volunteers who are now in France, and those preparing to go there, to take writing boards, games, bright, pithy stories, and a lot of nonsense verse. I have told these Red Cross workers that they themselves must know how to laugh, must be able to rise above the horrors about them, for they are there to serve heroes, not cowards, heroes who will laugh with a sob in their throats; heroes ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... l'Inghilterra!" and the band actually struck up "God save the King" and followed it by "Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves" (I wished at the time she had ruled under the waves as well.) I went back to the room and the Italians were so delighted with my short and pithy speech, that they invited me to dine with them that night and bring two officers with me. When we got down to the square, the mob crowded round us and shook hands with us, and I was afraid that some of the ladies were going to embrace us. I think people thought we were part of the advance guard that ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... next door as you stand in the gateway of the old inn, and after a glance at the sky and at the weathercock on the top of the market house you look in there. A local fisherman was coming out, and in reply to the inevitable question as to the state of the river, he said, "Weel, she's awa' again." Pithy and characteristic, and full of information was this. It was a verdict—You may fish, but shall fish in vain this day. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... withdrew from their mission. How this result, this check, temporary only as it may prove, chagrined the Government, if not the people, and the mining and manufacturing interests of France, may be understood by the simple citation of a few short but pithy sentences from the Journal des Debats, certainly the most influential, as it is the most ably conducted, of Parisian journals:—"Le 'ZOLLVEREIN,'" observes the Debats, "a prodigieusement rehausse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... resolution we are naturally to speak of its kindred quality, PRESENCE OF MIND, which in a region of the unexpected like War must act a great part, for it is indeed nothing but a great conquest over the unexpected. As we admire presence of mind in a pithy answer to anything said unexpectedly, so we admire it in a ready expedient on sudden danger. Neither the answer nor the expedient need be in themselves extraordinary, if they only hit the point; for ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... was eloquent, but at the same time concise. My choice of words was superb. I crystallised my ideas into pithy sentences which ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... an extent, that on one occasion he stopped suddenly in the centre of the platform, and with a most gracious and benignant smile, extended his arms at full length and gave the audience a regal blessing, in the following pithy sentence: 'Bless ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... a nigger?" was regarded as a knockout anti-Abolitionist argument. The idea, of course, was absurd. "Is it to be inferred that because I don't want a negro woman for a slave, I do want her for a wife?" was one of the quaint and pithy observations attributed to Mr. Lincoln. I heard Prof. Hudson, of Oberlin College, express the same idea in about the same words many ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... remarkable skill. From a servile condition, he rose, by the force of his genius, to be the counsellor of kings and states. His wisdom was in demand far and wide, and on the most important occasions. The pithy apologues which fell from his lips, which, like the rules of arithmetic, solved the difficult problems of human conduct constantly presented to him, were remembered when the speeches that contained them were forgotten. He seems to have written nothing ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... a separate series of Senior's Journals, we have the best, latest, and wisest, of De Tocqueville's thoughts; none the less valuable, and to English readers all the more intelligible and impressive, that we have them in undress; put into the terse, pithy, concentrated style of summarized oral conversation by the recorder, instead of being elaborately tricked out in all the formal grace of French literary diction by one of the most fastidious of French writers. Senior, who habitually wrote down in his Journals the conversation of the great, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... contended in the Senate, "or in the press which supports it and them, a single expression anywhere of a desire to do justice to the people of the Philippine Islands, or of a desire to make known to the people of the United States the truth of the case.... The catchwords, the cries, the pithy and pregnant phrases of which their speech is full, all mean dominion. They mean perpetual dominion.... There is not one of these gentlemen who will rise in his place and affirm that if he were a Filipino he would not do exactly as the Filipinos are doing; that he would not despise them ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the labours of Mr. Brown, had he not entertained an unconquerable repugnance to its adoption. On the 10th of January, 1848, Enoch Price wrote to Mr. Edmund Quincy offering to sell Mr. Brown to himself or friends for 325 dollars. To this communication the fugitive returned the following pithy and noble reply:— ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... beloved lips, into her dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. But, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman's ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. The instilment thereof into her mind would probably have caused this aged sister to drop down dead, at once, as by the effect ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... too has borrowed from previous sources, instead of availing himself of the most popular and admired, has groped out his way, and made his most successful researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers. Mr. Washington Irvine has culled and transplanted the flowers of modern literature, for the amusement of the general reader: Mr. Lamb has raked among the dust and cobwebs of a more remote period, has exhibited specimens of curious ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... air of relief to several members of the party that Miss Ashton at last rapped for order and after a short, pithy, pointed speech of introduction presented the several speakers of the evening. It was, like the audience, a well- balanced programme, which showed the tactfulness and political acumen of Miss Ashton. I shall pass over the speeches, however, as they had no direct bearing on the ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... the deep indebtedness of the English language, both literary and colloquial, to America, for the old words she has kept alive and the new words and phrases she has invented. It is a sheer pedantry—nay, a misconception of the laws which govern language as a living organism—to despise pithy and apt colloquialisms, and even slang. In order to remain healthy and vigorous, a literary language must be rooted in the soil of a copious vernacular, from which it can extract and assimilate, by a chemistry peculiar to itself, whatever nourishment it requires. It must ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... narrative than that towards the close of it, his father was surprised out of his gravity, and ejaculated the word "d—nation!" with great emphasis, at the same time, flinging his pipe into the fire, and exclaiming by way of sermon to his short and pithy text, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... playing on them had knocked down several of his aides-de-camp. As the foe came near, the artillery ceased, the close fight began, and several regiments at once poured in their fire: both sides kept their ground, and hundreds fell at every discharge of musketry. The duke now, in the pithy and familiar language of the soldier, cried out to the Scots, "Ninety-second, you must charge ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... I had got possession of the facts which soon after appeared in the "London Magazine," he wrote in my album the following sententious and pithy apothegm, which, of course, only went to show the marvellous power of adaptation to circumstances which would naturally characterize the man, if his story were true. It was in this way his dupes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... Hall began during the darkest period of our Civil War, in August, 1862 Up to that time I had only known him as the author of that pithy and pellucid little booklet, "Come to Jesus," which has belted the globe in forty languages, and been published to the number of nearly 4,000,000 of copies. When our Civil War broke out, Dr. Hall (with John Bright and Foster and Goldwin Smith) threw himself earnestly on the side of our Union ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... effects Marcella enacted a brief but pithy drama in which she touched a lighted match to a tablespoonful of alcohol, to show the true nature of the stuff and to symbolize the fate of ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... and incisive, and brilliant with epigram and point. It contains pithy aphoristic sentences which Burke himself would not have disowned. But these are not its best features: its sustained power of reasoning, its wide sweep of observation and reflection, its elevated ethical and social tone, stamp it as a work of high excellence, ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... is not a true palm, though it looks like one. It has not the least resemblance to a cabbage. It has a tuft of green leaves, which are rather palmy-looking at a distance, and which springs from the top of a pithy, worthless stem, varying from one to twenty or thirty feet in height. Sometimes the stem is branched at the top, and each branch ends in a tuft. The flax and the cabbage-tree and the tussock-grass are the great botanical ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... hand they receive all the articles of the Athanasian Creed—and of consequence in their present Constitution they have some Gold, Silver, and precious stones as well as much wood, hay, and stubble." He characterizes the accusation in this pithy paragraph: "Too much Charity is the Charge here brought against me,—would to God I had still more of it in ye most important sense. Instead of a Disqualification, it would be a most enviable accomplishment ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... rubbish," she said; "you know perfectly well that your style must come to your aid in whatever you try to write. Then your fiction is not so remarkable for plot as for the careful development of character and your pithy remarks. Your powers of epigram would be abundantly brought to the fore in such a subject as Tom asked you to write about. But never mind, my dear, it is your pleasure to duplicate yourself—I do not think ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... he had had a talk with Mr. Bouncer, and had been fortified by that little gentleman's pithy admonitions to "go in and win," and to "strike while the iron's hot," and that "faint heart never won a nice young 'ooman," he determined to seek out Miss Patty at once, and bring to an end their unfinished conversation. For this purpose he returned to the hall, where he ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... guide book. No bulky volume this, but a handy booklet full of pithy information on all the most important subjects connected with our ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... phenomena. There were others, however, who could not possibly deny, because they either saw or met with witnesses who had seen. These declared roundly that the whole thing was of the devil, drawing from Christ one of those pithy, common-sense arguments in which He excelled. The same two classes of opponents, the scoffers and the diabolists, face us to-day. Verily the old world goes round and so do the ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... addition to the prospects just named, had the advantage of contemplating them in fetters and bondage. We shall not detain the narrative, to relate the quaint morals with which he next endeavoured to cheer the drooping spirits of his more sensitive companion, or the occasional pithy and peculiar benedictions that he pronounced, on all the bands of the Dahcotahs, commencing with those whom he accused of stealing or murdering, on the banks of the distant Mississippi, and concluding, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... pithy vein of those sonnets, began to make further inquiry what he was. Whereupon Rosader discoursed unto him the love of Montanus to Phoebe, his great loyalty and her deep cruelty, and how in revenge the gods had made the curious nymph amorous of young Ganymede. Upon ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Pithy pleasaunt and profitable workes of maister Skelton, Poete Laureate. Nowe collected and newly published. Anno 1568. Imprinted at London in Fletestreate, neare vnto saint ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg |
