"Prate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... write to you, you said, frequently and copiously: you did not mean, I suppose, that I should always be scribbling, but I cannot help it. I can do nothing but converse with you. When present, my prate is incessant; when absent, I can prate to you with as little intermission; for the pen, used so carelessly and thoughtlessly as I use ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... professing to experiment upon pure metal, at least to see that it was not mere dross they were casting into the crucible. Plainly, however, they despise any such nice distinctions. The most earnest prayer and the emptiest ceremonial prate are both alike to them. What sort of a process they imagine prayer to be may be at once perceived from the sort of trials to which they desire to ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... used to prate of plates and prints And "quick developers" before, In spite of not unfrequent hints That these in time become a bore; But then this photographic craze Seemed little but a foolish fad, While now its very latest phase Appears ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... so about was SHE - The maiden I wronged in Peninsular days . . . You may prate of your prowess in lusty times, But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays, And see too well ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... best," the lawyer said; "On your commands I wait." "Be silent, sir," says Brentford, "A plague upon your prate! Come take your pen and paper, And ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... "They prate of God! Believe it, fellow-creature, There's no such bugbear: all was made by Nature. We know all came of nothing, and shall pass Into the same condition once it was By Nature's power, and that they grossly lie That say ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Though thus in arms they emulate her sons, And in the horrid phalanx dare to move, 'Tis but the tender fierceness of the dove, Pecking the hand that hovers o'er her mate: In softness as in firmness far above Remoter females, famed for sickening prate; Her mind is nobler sure, her charms ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... men who prate about Bibliolatry, and labor to lower men's estimate of the Bible. They may spare their breath. The people who idolize the Bible too much are creatures of their own imagination only, and not living men and women. People may love ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... thy dogs, said Little John, Friar, at my bidding thee; Whose man art thou, said the curtal friar, That comes here to prate to me? ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... shouted Judge Harlin. "A nice lot to prate about law and order, and ready to do murder yourselves! That is what you are preparing to do! Murder! As cold-blooded a murder as ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... human traits, nowhere more so than among those from whom they should not be expected; nowhere more so than among those who are debarred from hope. The great captains of industry so-called, themselves blown full of pride of circumstance, prate often of the inefficiencies of human cattle; yet continually the wonder remains that these same cattle continue to do that which their conscience tells them is right for them to do, and to do it for the sake of the doing. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... preach the gospel of man's pre-eminence;—you who prate of God and know nothing whatsoever about Him! The horse, dog, cat,—even the wild animals, whose vices, perchance, pale beside your own, may go to Heaven before you. The Supreme Architect is neither a Nero, nor a Stuart, nor a clown. He will recompense all who deserve ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... writting made as it were vpon a table, or in a windowe, or vpon the wall or mantel of a chimney in some place of common resort, where it was allowed euery man might come, or be sitting to chat and prate, as now in our tauernes and common tabling houses, where many merry heades meete, and scrible with ynke with chalke, or with a cole such matters as they would euery man should know, & descant vpon. Afterward the same came to be put in paper and in bookes, and vsed as ordinarie missiues, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... should be tied By trustful faith and free affection. If ours be mutual love and pride, Who's going to "sever the connection"? Let plotters scheme, and pedants prate, They will not pick our true love's true lock Whilst truth and justice arm the State With ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... might prate about wealth till commonplace print was exhausted, but as matter of habit, few Americans envied the very rich for anything the most of them got out of money. New York might occasionally fear them, but more ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... unshaved and hairy, Whose old tongues are never weary, Just outside my chamber-door Prate of sheep ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Minor, and are now almost in sight of Europe. The camp-fire is extinguished; the tent is furled. We are no longer happy nomads, masquerading in Moslem garb. We shall soon become prosaic Christians, and meekly hold out our wrists for the handcuffs of Civilization. Ah, prate as we will of the progress of the race, we are but forging additional fetters, unless we preserve that healthy physical development, those pure pleasures of mere animal existence, which are now only to be found among our semi-barbaric brethren. Our progress is nervous, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... me to write a book about Italy myself, to give them 'the loud lie.' They prate about assassination; what is it but the origin of duelling—and 'a wild justice,' as Lord Bacon calls it? It is the fount of the modern point of honour in what the laws can't or won't reach. Every man is liable to it more or less, according ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... You prate of duty and honor, of a patriot's glorious death, Of love of country, heroic deeds—nay, for shame's sake, spare your breath! Pray, what have you done for your country? Whose was the blood that was shed In the hellish warfare that served your ends? ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... of your own nose. But, if you called me out of hell merely for this chit-chat, permit me to return for ever. I have long known your inclination to prate about that which ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... it seems to me ridiculously inconsistent for gentlemen upon this floor to prate so much about a republican form of government, and rise here and offer resolution after resolution about the Monroe doctrine and the downtrodden Mexicans, while they force upon the people of this District ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... fashions from all Europe brought. 'T was in those days an honest grace would hold Till an hot pudding grew at heart a-cold, And men had better stomachs for religion, Than now for capon, turkey-cock, or pigeon; When honest sisters met to pray, not prate, About their own and not their neighbors' state, During Plain Dealing's reign, that worthy stud Of the ancient planter-race ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... not blindly prating what the gurus prate, But to love, as God hath loved them, all things, be they small or great; And true bliss is when a sane mind doth a healthy body fill; And true knowledge is the knowing what is ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... even the dark days of Dixie proved no exception to the rule. It was not unusual to hear prate of the vast benefits derived from the blockade; of the energy, resource and production, expressed under its cruel constriction! Such optimists—equally at fault as were their pessimistic opponents—pointed proudly to the powder-mills, blast-furnaces, foundries ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... angry heaps provokes them forth. If then this world, which holds all nations, Suffers itself such alterations, That not this mighty massy frame, Nor any part of it can claim One certain course, why should man prate, Or censure the designs of Fate? Why from frail honours, and goods lent Should he expect things permanent? Since 'tis enacted by Divine decree That nothing ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... about the sugar prate! They do not care one dump About the blacks and their sad state— Just please to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... went those pretty babes, Rejoicing at that tide, Rejoicing with a merry mind They should on cock-horse ride. They prate and prattle pleasantly, As they ride on the way, To those that should their butchers be And work ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... then?" he was thinking. "What clergyman could raise his voice against my rule? Ah! Their 'high principles' they prate of so eloquently, their crack-brained economics, their rebellions and their strikes—the dogs!—would soon bow down before that power! Men have starved for stiff-necked opposition's sake, and still may do so—but with my hand at the throat of the world, with the world's ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... have guessed, and this I have heard men say, And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway." —"Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! Ye have hampered Heaven's Gate; There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate! O none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within; Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for doom has yet to run, And. . .the faith that ye share with ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... with the evil eye, do you suppose that I wish you here to bring all the ills you prate of upon my head? I say that I am afraid of you. Why, for your sake, once, years ago, I made a vow to the Blessed Virgin that, whatever I worked on men, I would never again lift a hand against a woman. To that oath I look to help me at the last, for I have kept it sacredly, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the stern answer. "To come here and prate to me of my dead father's dissoluteness and of an ancient quarrel between him and yours, to bleat of my trumped-up course of piracy and my own ways of life as a just cause why I may not wed your ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... breast, A mansion suited well to such a guest, Immortal, unimpair'd, she rears her head, And damns alike the living and the dead. Oft have I known thee, Hogarth, weak and vain, Thyself the idol of thy awkward strain, Through the dull measure of a summer's day, In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away, 460 Whilst friends with friends, all gaping sit, and gaze, To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth's praise. But if athwart thee Interruption came, And mention'd with respect some ancient's name, Some ancient's name who, in the days of yore, The crown ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... my life, if you're so disposed. You're welcome to it. And let's see if either of these women, who prate of their love for ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... many moons, Here dwelling voiceless by the voiceful sea, Thou hast not set thy thoughts to paltry tunes In song or sonnet. Them these golden noons Oppress not with their beauty; they could prate, Even while a prophet read the solemn runes On which is hanging some imperial fate. How know they, these good gossips, what to thee The ocean and its wanderers may have brought? How know they, in their busy vacancy, ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... or demon? 290 With new kings rise new altars. But, proceed; You are sent to prate your master's will, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Voice, its owner, fat red arms akimbo, blocking up the doorway, "Nick, me useless man! ye kin prate t' me 'bout arrestin' hoboes. I tell ye right now—that hobo that was a-bummin' roun' here t'other mornin's got nothin' on you ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... thou to seduce me then with words that have no meaning? Parrots so can learn to prate, our speech by pieces gleaning: Nurses teach their children so about ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... the muttering tone, A proper mixture of the squeak and groan; No borrow'd grace of action, must be seen, The slightest motion would displease the dean. Whilst every staring graduate would prate, Against ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... such questions, but disdained to answer them. He knew who he was, and what his grandfather had been, and he never cared a—short word—what sort of stuff long tongues might prate of him. Barbarous broad-drawlers, murderers of his Majesty's English, could they even pronounce the name of an officer highly distinguished for many years in both of the royal services? That was his description, and the Yorkshire ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... latter city, while only twenty in London. Nor is Chicago the leading city in crime, since it is only seventh on the list, which is headed by four Southern cities, and San Francisco and Los Angeles. In view of such a terrible condition of affairs, it seems ridiculous to prate of the protection society ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... moral instinct would she prate, And of the rising from the dead, As hers by right of full-accomplish'd Fate; And at ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the universal old age pension did not satisfy him. That, however, is beside our present discussion. I am writing now only of the sort of property that Socialism would destroy, and to show how little benefit or safety it brings to the small owner now. The unthinking rich prate "thrift" to the poor, and grow richer by a half-judicious, half-unconscious absorption of the resultant savings; that, in brief, is the grim humour of our present ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... when all the kings that promise peace while they swell their armouries and armies; when all the statesmen that chatter of the people's weal as they steal up to the locked casket where coronets are kept; when all the men who talk of "glory," and prate of an "idea" that they may stretch their nation's boundary, and filch their neighbour's province—when all these are no longer in the land, and no more looked on with favour, then I will believe your cry that you hate the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the sear and yellow leaf, ma'am, without that which should accompany old age, sir, one has a right to suspect that some time or other, he has done something or other, ma'am, which makes him fear lest the very stones prate of his whereabout, sir. And you did not deny, ma'am, that the mystery was suspicious; but you said, with uncommon good sense, that it was nothing to me what Mr. Waife had once been, so long as he was of use to me at that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those, whether men or women, whether strangers or kinsfolk, from whose religion he disagrees. 'It is not ancient impressions only,' said Pascal, 'which are capable of abusing us. The charm of novelty has the same power.' The prate of new-born scepticism may be as tiresome and as odious as the cant of gray orthodoxy. Religious discussion is not to be foisted upon us at every turn either by defenders or assailants. All we plead for is that when the opportunity meets the freethinker full in front, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... continue to sit there; who or what, then, is to follow? "Free Parliament," right of election, constitutional formulas of one sort or the other—the thing is a hungry fact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured by it! And who are you that prate of constitutional formulas, rights of Parliament? You have had to kill your king, to make pride's purges, to expel and banish by the law of the stronger whosoever would not let your cause prosper: there are but fifty or threescore of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... intrigues of Metternich: at present, the opportunity is gone by; and he would every where proclaim me for a suspicious tyrant, who had sacrificed him without any cause. Go to him: say nothing to him of Montron or Bresson; let him prate at his ease, and bring me a full ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... except in darkness; Thought will not work except in Silence; neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of "those secrets known to all." Is not Shame (Schaam) the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals? Like other plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the eye of the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... a true disciple of Geber," cries Ferret. "No, sir," replied Mr. Clarke, "Counsellor Caper is in the conveyancing way—I was clerk to Serjeant Croker." "Ay, now you may set up for yourself," resumed the other; "for you can prate as unintelligibly as the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Rue du Mail—"Commission-Exportation"—had a very definite idea. He wished to give up his shop, to retire from business, and for some time he had been thinking of going to see Sidonie, in order to interest her in his new schemes. That was not the time, therefore, to make disagreeable scenes, to prate about paternal authority and conjugal honor. As for Madame Chebe, being somewhat less confident than before of her daughter's virtue, she took refuge in the most profound silence. The poor woman wished that she were deaf and blind—that ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... take it and thee! I never heard a man yet begin to prate of his conscience, but I knew that he was about to do something more ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... what the priest may prate, But to love, as God hath loved them, all things, be they small or great; And true bliss is when a sane mind doth a healthy body fill; And true knowledge is the knowing what is good and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... chastize you, and wt a ton[131] do ye ever think for to make a man, Sir; no, I promise you no. [He killed Kincairnes father by boyling the antimonian cup, which ought only to seep in.][132] Inter bonos bene agier.[133] When any plead a prate[134] and all denied it, I know the man, yet neminem nominabo, Honest Cicero hes ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... the epilogue, by rule, Should come and turn it all to ridicule; Should tell the ladies that the tragic bards, Who prate of Virtue and her vast rewards, Are all in jest, and only fools should heed 'em; For all wise women flock to mother Needham. This is the method epilogues pursue, But we to-night in everything are new. Our author then, in jest ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... for her to accept such a proposition as mine, especially after all that has happened, and still prate ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... cackle, gabble, murmur, prattle, blurt, chat, gossip, palaver, tattle, blurt out, chatter, jabber, prate, twaddle. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... and prate fatuously that "there were giants in those days," ignorant of the thoroughly attested fact, that the average stature of the European races has increased some four inches since the days of the Crusaders, as shown by the fact that the common British ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the Deluge, for instance, is an old wives' story, and the economy of times and seasons a human fabrication:—when Astronomical and Mechanical Science strut up to the Throne whereon sits the Ancient of Days,—prate to Him, (the first Author of Law,) about the "supremacy of Law,"—and tell Him to His face that His miracles are things impossible:—when Physiology insinuates that Mankind cannot be descended from one primval ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... more angry because he would begin explaining and apologizing, first at the levee and then at the drawing-room; and he reprehended him very sharply at both places. An explanation afterwards took place through Lord Camden, to whom he said that he was angry because de Saumarez would prate at the levee, when he told him that it was not a proper place for ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... to be found in perfection among the sons of men. The very fact of his greatness made his failings all the more dangerous and unfortunate. To be blinded by the splendor of his fame and the lustre of his achievements and prate about the sin of belittling a great man is the falsest philosophy and the meanest cant. The only thing worth having, in history as in life, is truth; and we do wrong to our past, to ourselves, and to our posterity if we do not strive to render simple justice ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... every footstep he prints upon the turf or gravel of his garden—when he abstains from every sort of animal food—and, above all, when he abstains from his great pursuit of torturing his fellow men—then let him prate, if he will, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... was fond enough of me last year, I know," she said to herself, recalling some of the dances and the good-night leave-takings at that time. "It's because he is so put upon by everybody now. What with Juan Can in one bed sending for him to prate to him about the sheep, and Senor Felipe in another sending for him to fiddle him to sleep, and all the care of the sheep, it's a wonder he's not out of his mind altogether. But I'll find a chance, or make one, before this day's sun sets. If I can once get a half-hour with him, I'm not afraid ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and going through our performance without caring a rush for the Lord Chamberlain or the Middlesex magistrates, must convince all who know us, that we are for a thoroughly free trade in theatricals; but, nevertheless, we think the Great Unactables talk egregious nonsense when they prate about the possibility of their efforts working "a beneficial alteration in a law which presses so fatally on dramatic genius." We think their tom-foolery more likely to induce restrictions that may prevent others from exposing their mental imbecility, than to encourage ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... well to preach and prate of law: Methinks, my haughty lords of Padua, If ye are hurt in pocket or estate, So much as makes your monstrous revenues Less by the value of one ferry toll, Ye do not wait the tedious law's delay With such sweet patience as ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... prate of one's duty, of course," she agreed. "Not that you do—far from it. But, as I was saying, our ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Wifeless, childless, living solitary, dying alone, unregretled, unmourned. What is the wickedness you are plotting? Your father is dead, you can do him neither good nor harm. This girl is alive. She loves you. Love her. Let the canting hypocrites prate as they will." ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... "Hold your prate and listen to me. The next time you look at a public-house say to yourself, Peter Crawley, that is not a public-house to you—it is a hospital, a workhouse, for a dunghill—for if you go in there John Meadows, that is your friend, will be ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... significance, without knowing yourself. Shall you permit it to bind you for your whole life? Shall you allow it to make us both miserable for all time? No, Ada, love, that eternal, undying right of the human heart, must have its own. Men prate of guilt, others of destiny. It is destiny which is beckoning us to-day, and we must follow after. A feeble ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... evil. My singularity is, that when I say that Freedom is of God, and Slavery is of the devil, I mean just what I say. My fanaticism is, that I insist on the American people abolishing Slavery, or ceasing to prate of the rights of man. My hardihood is, in measuring them by their own standard, and convicting them out of ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... manacles; or romping girl Bounced, leapt, and pawed the air; or mumbling sire, A scare-crow pattern of old age dressed up In all the tatters of infirmity All loosely put together, hobbled in, 425 Stumping upon a cane with which he smites, From time to time, the solid boards, and makes them Prate somewhat loudly of the whereabout [W] Of one so overloaded with his years. But what of this! the laugh, the grin, grimace, 430 The antics striving to outstrip each other, Were all received, the least of them not lost, With ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Why prate of social status, class, or rank when earth Is common tenting-ground, the heritage of all mankind? Except in purity is there no royal birth, No true nobility but nobleness of ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... "But when they prate of you and me, As the two gifts they want, Say Classic lore and Cookery Are things for which they pant; Believe me, my dear Heptarchy, They ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... weal, except * To while away the time in chat and prate: Then shun their intimacy, save it be * To win thee lore, or better ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... and by day. If he is your doctor, he is more trouble to you than your disease: if he is on board ship with you, he disgusts you more than sea-sickness; if he praises you, he is more fulsome than blame. It is more pleasure associating with bad men who have tact than with good men who prate. Nestor indeed in Sophocles' Play, trying by his words to soothe exasperated Ajax, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... angry with my mayds for letting in watermen, and I know not who, anybody that they are acquainted with, into my kitchen to talk and prate with them, which I will not endure. Then out and by coach to my Lord Treasurer's, who continues still very ill, then to Sir Ph. Warwicke's house, and there did a little business about my Tangier tallies, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... no gratitude, none of the nobler attributes of man, and whose mission seems but destruction to his race, and deadly enmity to his country. The Times, who in these days of victory and triumph of Union arms, would "steal the livery of heaven to serve the devil in," and prate of its devotion to the Union, furnishes us some information it were well for good citizens to know, and which we will presume is (unlike most statements in ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... I can guess well enough how learnedly he would prate, and how little he could do. But I will not object to his visit, if it satisfies you that, since I should die under the hands of the doctors, I may be permitted to indulge my own whim in placing ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brass tray. Yet the semblance of the thing is there and this often deceives the very elect. Around every art studio are found the young men in velveteen who smoke infinite cigarettes, and throw off opinions about this great man and that, and prate prosaically in blase monotone of the Beautiful. Sometimes these young persons give lectures on "Art as I Have Found It"; but do not be deceived by this—the art that lives is probably being produced by small, shy, red-headed men who work on a top floor, and whom you can only find with the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... boast much of their doctrine, but theirs is not the Word of truth whereby men are made children of God. They teach naught, and know naught, about how we are to be born God's children through faith. They prate much about the works done by us in ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... procure the slightest gratification, should it not impress the thinking mind with amazement, how much of fortitude and patience the honest poor display in the exercise of self-denial! Oh! ye prosperous! prate of the uses of adversity as poetically as you please, we who are obliged to learn of them by bitter experience would greatly prefer a ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... shall that Claribell Measure vs backe to Naples? keepe in Tunis, And let Sebastian wake. Say, this were death That now hath seiz'd them, why they were no worse Then now they are: There be that can rule Naples As well as he that sleepes: Lords, that can prate As amply, and vnnecessarily As this Gonzallo: I my selfe could make A Chough of as deepe chat: O, that you bore The minde that I do; what a sleepe were this For your aduancement? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... I placed in you, sirrah?' he rejoined, in a terrible voice; and stooping still farther forward he probed me with his eyes. 'You who prate of trust and confidence, who received your life on parole, and but for your promise to me would have been carrion this month past, answer me that? What of the ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... you want to prate such nonsense as that to these folks for? They won't need any kind of fertilizers in this country for twenty years. You'd better be resting instead of shooting such useless stuff ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... swore that no man had the right to take precedence of him in the council of state, and that the appointment of this or any Spaniard was a violation of the charters of the provinces and of the promises of his Majesty. As if it were for the nobles of the obedient provinces to prate of charters and of oaths! Their brethren under the banner of the republic had been teaching Philip for a whole generation how they could deal with the privileges of freemen and with the perjury of tyrants. It was late in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... adopted is not only rigorously in accordance with the canons of scientific logic, but that it is the only adequate method. Critics exclusively trained in classics or in mathematics, who have never determined a scientific fact in their lives by induction from experiment or observation, prate learnedly about Mr. Darwin's method, which is not inductive enough, not Baconian enough, forsooth, for them. But even if practical acquaintance with the process of scientific investigation is denied them, they may learn, by the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... blunts the faculties of man—-that because vainglory finds no vent in words, creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault so gross and obvious. If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a year's time he would ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of the squires and gentlemen? Very truly does M. Taine say, "These three syllables, as used ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... transcendent Being and superessential Nothingness. Concerning this St Augustine says: the best thing that man can say about God is to be able to be silent about Him, from the wisdom of his inner judgement. Therefore be silent and prate not about God, for whenever thou dost prate about God, thou liest, and committest sin. If thou wilt be without sin, prate not about God. Thou canst understand nought about God, for He is above all understanding. A master saith: If I had a ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... a pretty fellow to prate about sallying forth at midnight to do good to thy fellow creatures!—Here we find thee, within an hour after thy departure from thy home, on an 'errand of mercy,' embraced in the soft arms of a pretty wanton, and revelling in the delights of voluptuousness. We might have ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... prate of fallen man And choirs repeat the chant, While unco' guid with unction urge Repression of the joys that surge, And jail for those who can't. The poor deluded duds forget That something drew the sting When Adam tiptoed to his fall, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... as well to put the best face on the matter; and, besides, I have never been able, all the days of me, to hide my light under a bushel, as the clerks prate about. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... beneficence, and close the ear to the wail of distress and the cry of suffering; to eulogize the intelligence of the people, and plot to deceive and betray them by means of their ignorance and simplicity; to prate of purity, and peculate; of honor, and basely abandon a sinking cause; of disinterestedness, and sell one's vote for place and power, are hypocrisies as common as they are infamous and disgraceful. To steal the livery of the Court ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... together prate, O'er punch or tea, of this or that, What silly poor unmeaning chat Does all their talk engross! A nobler theme employs my lays, And thus my honest voice I raise In well-deserved strains to praise The worthy Man ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... who are you that talk to me of dishonour?—you that come straying here out of the night with your cicisbeo at your heels? You, with the dew on you and your dress bedraggled, arrive straight from companioning in the woods and prate to me of shame—of the blood of the Colonne!" He smote a hand on the table and spat forth a string of vile names upon her, mixed with curses; abominable words before which she drew back cowering, yet less (I think) ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... "What dost prate about?" he asked, still speaking roughly for he was wroth with her and hated to see the gaping crowd of young, empty-headed fools congregating round him and this persistent suppliant hanging round his ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Robin Hood, "Thou dost prate like an ass, For were I to bend my bow, I could send a dart quite thro' thy proud heart, Before thou couldst strike me ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... art not of those niggard souls, who deem That poesy is but to jingle words, To string sweet sorrows for apologies To hide the barrenness of unfurnished hearts, To prate about the surfaces of things, And make more thread-bare what was quite worn out: Our common thoughts are deepest, and to give Such beauteous tones to these, as needs must take Men's hearts their captives to the end of time, So that who hath not the choice gift ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... back again Brought the late-ejected devil with a score more in his train,— That's for you to judge. Reprieval I procured, at any rate. Ugh—the memory of that minute's fear makes gooseflesh rise! Why prate Longer? You've my story, there's your instance: ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... and his fortune. There, at least; is one who deserves what he will get. For once I shall not be sorry to see a lad get on, who has been brought up in the school of adversity. But, pshaw! he will be like all the rest. Prosperity will turn his brain. Already he begins to prate of his ancestors. . . . Poor humanity he almost made me laugh. . . . But it is mother Gerdy who surprises me most. A woman to whom I would have given absolution without waiting to hear her confess. When I ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... still than Edward's: Depart ye by the Scotch or English gate— Both shall be opened. Lade your beasts of burden— Take all you have—your food, your filthy gold, Your wives, your children, parents, and yourselves! Go to our Scottish king, and prate of courage! Or go to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... thousand brothers, Could not, with all their quantity of love Make up my sum: And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground Singeing his pate against the burning zone Make Ossa like ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... multepova. Powerless senpotenca. Practical praktika. Practice (custom) kutimo. Practice praktiko, kutimo, uzado. Practise praktiki. Prairie herbejo. Praise lauxdi. Prank petoleco—ajxo. Prate babili. Prattle babili. Pray (religious) pregxi. Pray (to request) peti. Prayer pregxo. Prayer-book pregxlibro. Preach prediki. Preacher predikisto. Preaching predikado. Preamble antauxparolo. Prebendary kanoniko. Precarious duba, necerta. Precaution ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Buss. Hence! prate no more! Or, by thy villans bloud, thou prat'st thy last! A barbarous groome grudge at his masters bountie! But since I know he would as much abhorre His hinde should argue what he gives his friend, 220 Take that, Sir, for your aptnesse to ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... "Nowadays we prate less priggishly about honor because it is no longer a word with a single meaning." He paused a moment, then went on in a climax of vehemence. "From this moment on your New England code and my inherited chivalry may be hanged on ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... shall we die?" asked Ghek. "Your people prate of the just laws of Manator, and yet you would slay three strangers without telling them of what ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... will drive me to desperation. I should like you to have my disease, and then we should see if you would prate as you do. Ah! here is ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... in the day, Hogan, for you and me to prate of honour?" asked Crispin bitterly, yet with averted gaze. "God knows my honour is as like honour as a beggar's rags are like unto a cloak of ermine. What signifies another splash, another rent in that which is tattered beyond all semblance ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... Tricked for a part of woe and somber-drest. "Lo, who art thou," they ask, "that thou shouldst fret To find, forsooth, one single heart undone? The page thou turnest there is purple-wet With blood that gushed from Caesar overthrown! Lo, who art thou to prate of sorrow?" Yet, This little woe, it ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... who prate hypocritically about keeping their daughters' minds pure; and then abuse a girl's ignorance, in order to sell her to ruin. Let them keep her mind pure, in heaven's name; but let them consider themselves all the more bound in honour to use on her behalf the experience in which ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... to be hoped for? Is not a soul athirst a joyous thing? Where lies content to him whose eye doth rest on higher things? What satiation can compare to hope? Yet who among the satisfied hath need of hope? What can he hope for if he's satisfied? 'Tis but conceit, and nothing more, to prate of satisfaction! God spare the day when I am satisfied! I do not want the earth, Yet nothing less will leave me quite content; And once 'tis mine, I'm very sure you'll find me roaming ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... peace, old man! Neither good nor ill wilt thou ever prate of mortal more, for I've drawn thy sting. Once thou wert kind to me; twice, in return, did I steal for thee, and once took a beating from thy shoulders. But thou wert more loyal to thy master than thou wert friend to me—and in a matter such as this, I take no chances. As ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Prate not of thy repentance. But believe The spark divine dwells in thee: let it grow. That which the upreaching spirit can achieve The grand and all-creative forces know; They will assist and strengthen as the light Lifts up the acorn to the oak tree's height. Thou hast but to resolve, and ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... saw the deed, Detesting the vexatious breed, Bespoke him thus: "When coxcombs prate, They kindle wrath, contempt, or hate; Thy teasing tongue, had judgment tied, Thou hadst not like ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... which takes longer, and, accordingly, the nights are long. Such is the doctrine drawn from Holy Scripture, says Cosmas, and as for the vain blasphemers who pretend that the earth is a round ball, the Lord hath stultified them for their sins until they impudently prate of Antipodes, where trees grow downward and rain falls upward. As for such nonsense, the worthy Cosmas cannot ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... have edgtooles I graunte it; but does his grave majestie looke like a lorde of that mettall? Come, come, be not seveare; let us prate whylst ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... secret triumph now elate, His grinning Rival 'gan to prate. Oh, fie! my friends; upon my word, You're too severe: he should be heard; For Mind can ne'er to glory reach, Without the usual aid of speech. If thus howe'er, you seal his doom, What hope have I unknown to Rome? But since the truth ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... much gall in it To let truth shape like that!—I also said That when my arms were round him I forgot That I was not his mother. So spoke I, But oh me,—I remembered it too well!— He was a lovely child; in his fond prate His father's voice was eloquent. One might say I am well punished for my ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... cried, "what doth this fellow prate of? ... Past love? ... Thou profane boaster! ... how darest thou speak of love to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... would be a different thing indeed! Justice wears a sword, because she is of gentle birth. Work-people with axes must not prate of rights, or a prison will be their next one. Your right is to be disdained, young man, because you were not born a gentleman; and your duty is to receive scorn with your hat off. You like it, probably, because your father did. But come ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... utter scoundrel, after all? Have you no honour left? Is there nothing in you to which a woman can appeal? You talk of being human! You prate of your man's nature! And in the same breath you threaten an innocent girl with public infamy, if she will not disgrace herself of her own free will! Is that your love? Did I give you mine for that? Shame on you! And shame on ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... witty Fetches, or hiding themselves in dark Holes, Closets, Beds, &c. We are all for Humour, Gallantry, Conversation, and Courtship, and shou'dn't endure the chief Lady in the Play a Mute, or to say very little, as 'twas agreeable to them: Our amorous Sparks love to hear the pretty Rogues prate, snap up their Gallants, and Repartee upon 'em on all sides. We shou'dn't like to have a Lady marry'd without knowing whether she gives her consent or no, (a Custom among the Romans) but wou'd be for hearing all the Courtship, all the rare and fine things that Lovers can say ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... shoot the pheasant, but it costs too much And does not tend to decimate the Dutch; Your duty plainly then before you stands, Conscription is the law for seagirt lands; Prate not of freedom! Since I learned to shoot I itch to ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... the countenance of the chancellor as he replied—"Such friendship, my lord, as is consistent with perpetual strife—open and concealed—shall, if it please you, subsist between us. Pardon me, but we prate a silly jargon when we talk of private friendship and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Church as to the pillar of truth; to lay all their complaints before the Church; to hold for heathen all who are cast out of the Church; and that nevertheless so many men for so many centuries should not know where the Church is or who belong to it! This much only they prate in the darkness, that wherever the Church is, only Saints and persons destined for heaven are contained in it. Hence it follows that whoever wishes to withdraw himself from the authority of his ecclesiastical superior has only to persuade himself that the priest has fallen into ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... Hould your prate! Be still, Paddy! Tear an' ages, Molly Blake, don't be holding me that way; let us hear his reverence. Put him up on the barrel. Haven't you got a chair for the priest? Run, and bring a table out of Mat Haley's. Here, Father—here, your reverence; take care, will you,—you'll have ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the Bunions that afflict us prate Of Plasters unsurpassable, and hate To Cut a corn—ah cut, and let the Plaster go, Nor murmur if the Solace come ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who is the greater villain, you or I? You, who prate of your birth, rank and position in life, and propose a murder, or I, making no pretensions whatever, I that have committed a murder at the instigation of one of your class, in the hope of reward? ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... happiness, Alas! for human sorrow; Our Yesterday is nothingness, What else will be our Morrow? Still Beauty must be stealing hearts, And Knavery stealing purses; Still Cooks must live by making tarts, And Wits by making verses; While Sages prate and Courts debate, The same Stars set and shine; And the World, as it roll'd through Twenty-eight, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... Why prate of peace? when, warriors all, We clank in harness into hall, And ever bare upon the board Lies the necessary sword. 1319 ROBERT ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... moreover,' said Diabolus, 'that there be spies continually walking up and down the town of Mansoul, and let them have power to suppress and destroy any that they shall perceive to be plotting against us, or that shall prate of what by Shaddai and ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... against love?" Helen demanded, almost fiercely. "A sister may prate about them, Philippa. A wife couldn't. I'd sacrifice every principle I ever had, every scrap of self-respect, myself and all that belongs to me, to ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... half way," said the man Ruffo, meaning well. "I may have mistaken the driver. They cannot take hold of a river, how should they? Water slips through your fingers. Where it was set running in the beginning of the world, there it will go on running till the crack of doom. Let them look; let them prate; they can't ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... of aversion are the rabbins. The sublimest passages of the Scriptures they shamefully corrupt. As a case in point, they prate concerning Enoch that, while he was good and righteous, he very much inclined toward carnal desires. God, therefore, out of pity, prevented his sinning and perishing through death. Is not this, I pray you, a shocking corruption of the text before us? ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... above! "My child, with pray'rs invoke his love, "The Almighty never errs?" "O, mother! mother! idle prate, "Can he be anxious for my fate, "Who never ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... prate history, why evoke phantoms of the past, when we can gaze on this exquisitely concrete thing—this glad and simple creature of Hokusai? Let us emulate his calm, enjoy his enjoyment as he sprawls before us—pinguis, iners, placidus—in the pale twilight. Let us ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... hardly courteous," replied Aymer, "and therefore scarce angels in disguise, even though you prate of the clouds. So if you wish to measure blades I shall not balk you. Nathless," as he slowly freed his own weapon, "it is a quarrel not ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott |
