"Prate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Let the fools prate!" responded Clementine, with an angelic smile. "I do not trouble myself to explain my affection for poor Fougas, but I love him very much, that's certain. I love him as a father, as a brother, if you prefer it, for he is almost as young as I. When we have resuscitated ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... shore showers and fills with its rain our streams. And this, of a truth, I know—no fancy it is of mine: who holds mean his kith and kin, the meanest of men is he! And surely a foolish tongue, when rules not its idle prate discretion, but shows men where thou dwellest with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... determined soul. Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great; All things give way before it soon or late. What obstacle can stay the mighty force Of the sea-seeking river in its course, Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait? Each well-born soul must win what it deserves. Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves, Whose slightest action or inaction serves The one great ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... exclamations of wonder, they are remarks half-sceptically addressed. When a child says, "Why is grass green?" he half implies. "Is it really green, or is it just taking me in?" And we solemnly begin to prate about chlorophyll. Oh, imbeciles, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... die. I bore it, and still live; and it is so much harder for me, because I have to bear it all alone. You have your religion to help you, Margie. Surely that will bear you up! I have heard all you pious people prate enough of its service in time of trouble to ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... die?" asked Ghek. "Your people prate of the just laws of Manator, and yet you would slay three strangers without telling them of what crime they ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was going away, but the Princess held him back, and said: "Trouble me not with your prate, old man, nor mock my grief; I know Bova Korolevich; he is young and handsome, but you are old ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... rare that they are hardly 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 ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... principles of Masonic 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 ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Claribel, Measure us back[407-62] to Naples? Keep in Tunis, And let Sebastian wake! Say, this were death That now hath seized them; why, they were no worse Than now they are. There be[407-63] that can rule Naples As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate As amply and unnecessarily As this Gonzalo: I myself could make A chough[407-64] of as deep chat.[407-65] O, that you bore The mind that I do! what a sleep were this For your advancement! Do you ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... that shall be told, he was sorry that it had ever passed his lips. Still in the boat Sir Geoffrey applauded him, saying that his lady's melancholy had grown beyond all bearing, and that she did little but prate to him about his will and what colour of marble he ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... fiend! Not unawares The sinner swallows Satan's bait, Nor pits conceal'd nor hidden snares Seeks blindly; wherefore dost thou prate Of ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... god or demon? 290 With new kings rise new altars. But, proceed; You are sent to prate your master's will, and not Reply ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... pranks and ceremonies and entertainments; I have not time. I must wed her at once. Canst thou not see, under the circumstances, scandal-mongers will make eyes and prate of wrong for me thus to have a young maid here alone?" Now indeed this thought had not occurred to Constance in just this way; but now it struck her with a mighty force, and she shot at him a piercing glance through the ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... a difference, lad," Cross pointed out, setting down the tankard of beer from which he had been drinking. "You talk sometimes that white-livered stuff about not hitting a man back if he wants to hit you, and you drag in your conscience, and prate about all men being brothers, and that sort of twaddle. A full-blooded Englishman don't like it, because we are all of us out to protect what we've got, any way and anyhow. But that doesn't alter the fact that there's something wrong in the world when ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... better man, and have something, therefore, for which to live. I have not—my heart can know no change. It is no longer under the guidance of reason. It is quite ungovernable now. There was a time when—but why prate of this?—it is too late to think of, and only maddens me the more. Besides, it makes not anything with you, and would detain you without a purpose. Linger no longer, Dillon—speed to the west, and, at some future day, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... 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 ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... tireless, restless, working. Only when men of other races, dark-skinned, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, passed his mental vision, was there the stillness of lazy rest; and Marmot was pleased, for he loved to prate of the Anglo-Saxon and the work they had done, and would do, for the ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... yet!' Sir George retorted fiercely. 'And I warn you that any one who lays a hand on me shall rue it. God, man!' he continued, horror in his voice, 'cannot you understand that while you prate here they are carrying her off, and that time ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... They prate and prattle pleasantly While riding on the way, To those their wicked uncle hired, These ...
— My First Picture Book - With Thirty-six Pages of Pictures Printed in Colours by Kronheim • Joseph Martin Kronheim
... You may prate of the fervour of Phoebus Of days that are calm and serene, When a tint as of teak is imposed on the cheek That is commonly pallid (when clean); But we have a taste that's aesthetic; Mere sunshine seems vulgar and crude, As we gather to gaze with artistic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... of all fare?" Finn cried. "Strong drink, if it be too freely supplied, Or the prate of ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... fate partake, Spite of the immortal mixture in his make, He ripped her womb, and set the child at large, 120 And gave him to the centaur Chiron's charge: Then in his fury blacked the raven o'er, And bid him prate in his white plumes ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... a bowl that shall be quaff'd To loyalty's devotion, And here's to fortune that shall waft Your ship across the ocean, And here's a smile for those who prate Of Davy Jones's locker, And here's a pray'r in every ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... is Antiochus, that he should prate Of peace to me, who am a fugitive? To-day he shall be lifted up; to-morrow Shall not be found, because he is returned Unto his dust; his thought has come to nothing. There is no peace between us, nor can be, Until this banner floats upon ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... The preachers 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 ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... couldst thou sit and hear This demon prate in upper air— Deeds horrible to maiden ear. Begone, thou spokest. Over-head The startled fiend his pinion spread, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... never prate about the harsh words that may or may not be uttered by inferior men. Persons that have earned respect for themselves, even if they are able to retaliate, remember not the acts of hostility done by their enemies, but, on the other hand, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... spider swings And snares the people for the kings: "Luther is dead; old quarrels pass; The stake's black scars are healed with grass"; So dreamers prate;—did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive? But Luther's broom is left, and eyes Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... nothing else, is, for awhile at least, the king's highway of progress. Here, in England, too many painters and writers dwell dispersed, unshielded, among the intelligent bourgeois. These, when they are not merely indifferent, prate to him about the lofty aims and moral influence of art. And this is the lad's ruin. For art is, first of all and last of all, a trade. The love of words and not a desire to publish new discoveries, the love of form and not a novel reading of historical ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gained by Pat's being up with the pike and shillelagh on any or no occasion. God forbid Scotland should retrograde towards such a state—much better that the Deil, as in Burns's song, danced away with the whole excisemen in the country. We do not want to hear her prate of her number of millions of men, and her old military exploits. We had better remain in union with England, even at the risk of becoming a subordinate species of Northumberland, as far as national consequence is concerned, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent, and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there, it carries him through all difficulties as if they did not exist; every one of them has been foreseen and encountered in advance. Let no one come and prate about luck and chance. Amundsen's luck is that of the strong man ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... they have never exchanged a word, in the silly belief they are raising themselves in the estimation of their auditors. It is an odd conceit, yet it prevails with the would-be fast young men of the present day. To hear some of these mollycoddles prate one who was not acquainted with their weaknesses would imagine these chaps were on intimate terms with players—who, as a rule, are slow to cultivate new acquaintances, attend strictly to their own business, ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... unshaved and hairy, Whose old tongues are never weary, Just outside my chamber-door Prate of sheep dips ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... 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 you ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... formed for all the witching arts of love: 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, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... patience, and be trew. This play was never liked, unlesse by few That brought their judgements with um, for of late First the infection, then the common prate Of common people, have such customes got Either to silence plaies, or like them not. Under the last of which this interlude, Had falne for ever prest downe by the rude That like a torrent which the moist south feedes, Drowne's both before him the ripe corne and weedes. Had not ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... 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 of words Takes these into ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... woman? Can't folk have scones and bannocks and singing-hinnies, But you must prate of ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... up, Sanford! You drive me frantic! You prate the same foolishness. over and over! I don't want to hear any more about it. You said you had spoken the last word on the subject, now stop it! I, too, have said my final say. I shall do as I please, and I shall not consider ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... we purely and simply have no choice to do as we list. This privilege is called license, not liberty. We have certain rights as men, but we have duties, too, as creatures, and it ill-becomes us to prate about our rights, or the duties of others towards us, while we ignore the obligations we are under towards others and our first duty which is to God. Our boasted independence consists precisely in this: that we owe to Him not only the origin of our nature, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... becomes you well to prate of confidence and affection, who have ceased to think of your own wife, and have eyes alone for ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... 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
... to me about knowing," said the other, rather contemptuously. "Sure I gev in to you that he has a power o' prate, and the gift o' the gab, and all to that. I own to you that he has the-o-ry, and che-mis-thery, but he hasn't the craps. Now, the man that has the craps is ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... lad about bein' weak-kneed after you have shown the courage he has within the past four an' twenty hours. You an' your mutinous comrades prate loudly of bravery when there is no enemy in sight; but I'll lay odds that not one out of an hundred like you would dare go alone ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... and avocations. The houses[61] and oratories of noble and burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic use were beautiful. Men did not prate of art: they wrought in love and simplicity. The very word art, as denoting a product of human activity different from the ordinary daily tasks of men, was unknown. If painting was an art, even so was carpentry. A mason was an artist: so was a shoemaker. Astronomy ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... 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
... these superfluities signify, but that the venter of them doth little skill the use of speech, or the rule of conversation, but meaneth to sputter and prate anything without judgment or wit; that his invention is very barren, his fancy beggarly, craving the aid of any stuff to relieve it? One would think a man of sense should grudge to lend his ear, ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... since natural right is immutable, the right to contract marriage must always remain. For where nature does not change, that ordinance also with which God has endowed nature does not change, and cannot be removed by human laws. Therefore it is ridiculous for the adversaries to prate that marriage was commanded in the beginning, but is not now. This is the same as if they would say: Formerly, when men were born, they brought with them sex; now they do not. Formerly, when they were born, they brought with them natural right, now they do not. No craftsman (Faber) ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... paws through the long nights of winter?—The panther would teach them savage cruelty and a speedy step, and the deer would counsel them to fly from the pursuit of a snail, or a land-tortoise, or the cry of a wren, or the prate of a jackdaw; the fox might teach them cunning, and the dog sagacity, and the wild cat nimbleness, and the antelope fleetness, and the wolf courage, and the owl an insight into my ways. But there must be a being to repress the insolence, and controul the rage, of the more savage ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... 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 ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... children and simple-minded people, and the very babies in Concord knew and loved him. "Incorrigible spouting Yankee" he called himself; but he was rather a silent man in reality, and did not care to talk excepting when he had somewhat to say. He did not prate eternally of silence, as Carlyle did, while wreaking himself upon speech in the most frantically vehement manner all his days, but he knew when and how to be silent. The glimpses he gives of Mrs. Emerson, in the long correspondence with Carlyle, are all of the most pleasing nature, and his home ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... and after a little further chat, Captain Bouchier asked me for the honour of my hand, but I had previously resolved not to dance, and therefore declined his offer. But he took, of the sudden, a fancy to prate with me, and therefore budged not ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... curses me by all his gods. 'You think that you, now, I daresay, May push whatever stops your way, When you are to Maecenas bound!' Sweet, sweet, as honey is the sound, I won't deny, of that last speech, But then no sooner do I reach The dusky Esquiline, than straight Buzz, buzz around me runs the prate Of people pestering me with cares, All about other men's affairs. 'To-morrow, Roscius bade me state, He trusts you'll be in court by eight!' 'The scriveners, worthy Quintus, pray, You'll not forget they meet to-day, Upon a point both grave and new, One touching the whole ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... by this Congress is more menacing than merely a return to the past—bad as that would be. Our resplendent economic autocracy does not want to return to that individualism of which they prate, even though the advantages under that system went to the ruthless and the strong. They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a people's Government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... fast when the others fast. They make a matter of conscience where there is none, and where there is matter of conscience they make none. This is all the fault of the preachers, because they continually prate of fasting, and never point out its true use, limit, fruit, cause and purpose. So also the sick should be allowed to eat and to drink every day whatever they wish. In brief, where the wantonness of the flesh ceases, ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... think we'll quit the place, When Doll hangs out a newer face? Nail'd to her window full in sight All Christian people to invite. Or stop and light at Chloe's head, With scraps and leavings to be fed? Then, Chloe, still go on to prate Of thirty-six and thirty-eight; Pursue your trade of scandal-picking, Your hints that Stella is no chicken; Your innuendoes, when you tell us, That Stella loves to talk with fellows: But let me warn you ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... (of attorney) konfidatesto. Powerful 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 ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Alas, I fear these happy days when we Can loll in cooling shades while others toil For us, on stipends which like widow's mite Are small: will in the future disappear. These men who prate of slavery in these isles Do know full well that witness false they bear. We buy not souls and on the record place Their names among the chattels which we own, But their life's labor for a certain ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... mayhap you knew it. If not—why prate about it? It's on my own feet I must stand and not on my father's. If I am of any use you will find it out fast enough, father or no father; if I'm not 'twere best you ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... took all of Mrs. Prate's stairway in two moderate leaps and was at her side instantly. A moment of explanation consoled the troubled looking woman for the appearance of a stranger in Dr. Belford's stead, and then on tip toe they turned ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... 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 than ordinarily cruel ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... puppy, daggled through the town, To fetch and carry sing-song up and down; Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cried, With handkerchief and orange at my side; But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate, To Bufo left the whole ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Heaven's name in vain," cried Alan. "Who stood by while it was doing? Whose firmer hand lent aid to the murderer's trembling efforts? Whose pressure stifled her thrilling screams, and choked her cries for mercy? Yours—yours; and now you prate to me of pity—you, the slayer of the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... significance and worth of the great facts of nature are interpreted and stated. "Complement of human kind, having us at vantage still, our sumptuous indigence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! We fool and prate; thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense the constant mountain doth dispense; shedding on all its snows and leaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, oh, watchman tall, our towns and races grow and fall, and imagest the ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... yet, however, ere he learned so to love goodness as to forget its beauty. To him who is good, goodness has ceased to be either object or abstraction; it is in him—a thirst to give; a solemn, quiet passion to bless; a delight in beholding well-being. Ah, how we dream and prate of love, until the holy fire of the true divine love, the love that God kindles in a man toward his fellows, burns the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... church, that understands somewhat besides English: shall I not think that he understands that better? Must I (out of courtship to his Worship and Understanding; and because, perhaps, I am to dine with him) prate abundance of such stuff, which, I must needs know, nobody understands, or that will be the better for it but ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... good master," he said suavely, "do ye not waste your breath in speaking thus loudly. I understand that your sentiments towards me do not partake of that Christian charity of which ye and yours do prate at times so loudly. But I'll not detain you. Doubtless worthy Mistress Lambert will be awaiting you, or is it the sick mare down Minster way that hath first claim on your amiability? I'll ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... 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 ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... 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 there's hope of immortality. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... answered. "You, woman 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 ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... "Prate not to me, but depart from this tent," said the Grand Master; "the Marquis shall not confess this morning, unless it be to me, for I part ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... 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 think ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... 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 you, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... that wavering of belief concerning his own impressions and motives which most human beings who have not a stupid inflexibility of self-confidence must be liable to under a marked change of external conditions. In a life where the experience was so tumultuously mixed as it must have been in the Prate's, what a possibility was opened for a change of self-judgment, when, instead of eyes that venerated and knees that knelt, instead of a great work on its way to accomplishment, and in its prosperity stamping the agent as a chosen instrument, there came the hooting and the spitting and the curses ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... parrot-prate, I suppose, is only intended to vex me," cried the warrior king, who always considered himself, and very naturally, a person of such consequence as ever to be uppermost in the thoughts and minds of others. "If thou must tell a tale, then tell one, Vampire! or else ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... dissensions needed help from England against the savage on their borders have become a nation that may defy every foe but that most dangerous of all foes, herself, destined to a majestic future if she will shun the excess and perversion of the principles that made her great, prate less about the enemies of the past and strive more against the enemies of the present, resist the mob and the demagogue as she resisted Parliament and King, rally her powers from the race for gold and the delirium of prosperity ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... 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 off ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... man - that because vain glory 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 have gone far to weary out our love. I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby Patterne, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not blindly prating 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 ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... dean craze creed tribe drone bean shape steep brine stone bead state sleek spire probe beam crape fleet bride shore lean fume smite blame clear mope spume spite flame drear mold fluke quite slate blear tore flume whine spade spear robe dure spine prate ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... about the usher, and Firth thought that though it was not wise in Hugh to prate about Crofton on the top of the coach, it was worse to sit by and listen without warning, unless the listener meant to hold his own tongue. But he fancied the usher had since heard something which ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... sound for the ancient heights! Clouds of the earth-born battle cloak The heaven that our fathers held from of old; And we—shall we prate to their sons of the gain In gold or bread? Through yonder smoke The heights that never were won with gold Wait, still bright with their old red stain, For the thousand chariots of God again, And the steel that swept thro' a hundred fights ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... prate o' right and wrang, While knaves laugh in their sleeve; But wha blaws best the horn shall win, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... — N. loquacity, loquaciousness; talkativeness &c adj.; garrulity; multiloquence^, much speaking. jaw; gabble; jabber, chatter; prate, prattle, cackle, clack; twaddle, twattle, rattle; caquet^, caquetterie [Fr.]; blabber, bavardage^, bibble-babble^, gibble-gabble^; small talk &c (converse) 588. fluency, flippancy, volubility, flowing, tongue; flow of words; flux de bouche [Fr.], flux ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... end thy lonely road, All for thy task and toward thy God, Thy footsteps day by day. That evil must exist, we prate, And wisely leave it to its ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... seek The cool enchantment of the cove, and slake His thirst with its sweet waters bubbling pure, Where Love has spread for him her sweetest lure, The maids expectant listening, watch and wait His coming; oft in ecstacies they prate O'er his surprise, and softly sport and splash The limpid waves around, that glowing flash Like heaps of snowy pearls lung to the light By Hea's[1] hands, his Zir-ri[2] to delight. And now upon the rock each maid reclines, While Ishtar's form beneath them brightly shines; Beside the fountain ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... tell me that. But give me some food, and then I'll prate with you as long as you please. At present I am starving. Four-and-twenty hours have elapsed since I last ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... 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 to me ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... prime lot of jackasses we Americans are!" he continued. "We talk of liberty and demand license; we prate of democracy and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... preached now, it was to a dear, stupid lot of old marketwomen and overworked men and mischievous children. Oratory is a collaboration—let him wax eloquent about the precession of the equinoxes, and prate of Plato and Pythagoras if he wished—no one could understand him! Rome is wise—the crystallized experience of centuries is hers. Responsibility tames a man—marriage, political office, churchly preferment—read history and note how these things have dulled the bright blade of revolution ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... tenses and moods of that amiable passion? But, my good friend, you have all this time spoke nothing but the paltry gossip which simpletons repeat from play-books and romances, till they give mere cant a real and powerful influence over their minds. Boys and girls prate themselves into love; and when their love is like to fall asleep, they prate and tease themselves into jealousy. But you and I, Frank, are rational beings, and neither silly nor idle enough to talk ourselves into any other relation than that of plain honest disinterested friendship. ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... somewhat aggressively burst into a guffaw of derisive laughter. "Miss Loomis is just one of those admirable women," said he, "that empty-headed idiots prate about. I wish other people had half her sense." A luckless way of essaying the defence of the absent, for it reflected on ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... H.,—The date of my postscript "will prate to you of my whereabouts." We anchored between the Seven Towers and the Seraglio on the 13th, and yesterday settled ashore. [3] The ambassador [4] is laid up; but the secretary [5] does the honours ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... prate comfortable blasphemies, scientific or other; natural selection or the inscrutable decrees of God. Whereas this was manifestly a Hobson's selection, most unnatural and forced, to choose want of all that ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... deficiency; while the good Count wished heartily within himself that his companion had been safely in bed with the enchanted Princess of Zulichium. She performed, right or wrong, the part of a panegyrist of the Normans, until at length the Count, tired of hearing her prate of she knew not exactly what, broke ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... far and wide, without inter- ruption, for so many years? Hold thy peace: to do otherwise, is to tell the foot to see, and the hand to speak. Britain has rulers, and she has watchmen: why dost thou incline thyself thus uselessly to prate?" She has such, I say, not too many, perhaps, but surely not too few: but, because they are bent down and pressed beneath so heavy a burden, they have not time allowed them to take breath. My senses, therefore, as if feeling a portion of my debt and obligation, preoccupied themselves ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... says a beau, And sneers at some ill-natured wit below; But faith, if we should tell but half we know, There's many a spruce young fellow in this place, Wou'd never presume to show his face; Women are not so weak, what e'er men prate; How many tip-top beaux have had the fate, T'enjoy from mama's secrets their estate! Who, if her early folly had made known, Had rid behind the coach that's ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and his daughter, died of grief and mortification, almost penniless. And the Ducal widow is as poor as the mother—and three children to bring up! Children of the royal blood of Saxony, children sanctioned by the Church of which they prate so much, for there is no doubt that the pair married ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... "Prate not to me, my lord, of truth or honor amongst these savages," he replied. "Did not their chief himself but even now lie to me? Well knew the rascally heathen where the Spaniard hides! The truth indeed! They know not the meaning ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... verses: for this Epigramme is but an inscription or 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 ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... you know all I have endured. To me, earth has been a hell—not the place of flames and torments of which your divines prate, but the true hell—that of the conscience and the soul. I, too, a man whose whole nature was athirst for truth. I sought it first among its professors; there I found that they who, too idle or too weak to demonstrate ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... 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 that ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... long black veil is furled. Even the face of Heaven itself seems lost Behind a veil. It takes a fervent soul In these tense times To visualise a God so long defamed By insolent lips, that send out prayers, and prate Of God's collaboration in dark deeds, So foul they put to shame the ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... me too wrought the same Alcimedon A pair of cups, and round the handles wreathed Pliant acanthus, Orpheus in the midst, The forests following in his wake; nor yet Have I set lip to them, but lay them by. Matched with a heifer, who would prate ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... I go to the balls and the races A lonely companionless elf, And the ladies bestow all their graces On others less grey than myself; While the talk goes around I'm a dumb one 'Midst youngsters that chatter and prate, And they call me 'the Man who was Someone Way back in ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... No. The most efficient murderer, a Macedonian boy. "I must civilize," he says. So he starts into his neighbor's country with forty thousand fighters at his back. Does Persia yield its banner? No. Then crush it. Does Thebes resist? Then burn it to the ground. Do the women prate of freedom? Load them with slave chains. What? Do they still hold out? Then slaughter the swine. And as men watch him wading through seas of blood, riding roughshod over prostrate lives and dead hopes and shattered empires, the blind age cries out, ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... they are not conscious of any such painstaking; it remains therefore to be the business of their childhood. And surely the great and multiplied labour of framing abstract notions will be found a hard task for that tender age. Is it not a hard thing to imagine that a couple of children cannot prate together of their sugar-plums and rattles and the rest of their little trinkets, till they have first tacked together numberless inconsistencies, and so framed in their minds ABSTRACT GENERAL IDEAS, and annexed them to every common name they make ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... three; 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 ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... fops and fools 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... and dreamers are not your last word in America. They tell me your ancestral Protestantisms are fast breaking down. Your churches are turning into concert and lecture rooms. Catholicism is growing among you,—science gaining on the quack-medicines! But there—there—I'll not prate. Forgive me. This has been a fascinating half-hour. Only, take care! I have seen you a Catholic once, for ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... men of the Grenadier Guards ceased to be objects of admiration, and the War Office would have howled with exquisite torture at sight of their hair and clothes. Speak of wrapping clothes around head or body to keep out the dust? It is sheer nonsense to prate so. Why it is hard enough to gape and gasp and catch a mouthful of sanded breath, without that added worry. There is nothing for it, but to grin and bear it and get through with the swallowing of that proverbial peck of dust in a life-time, ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... 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 ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... blood:—gaze on the self-same skies Do all your hosts adore the Deities we own? Nay, from your very midst come errors widely sown. Ibere for chief support on erring men relies Yet, what himself may do, to others he denies. What! Francion favor error! This is idle prate: He who from irreligion thoroughly purged the state! Who brought the worship back to altars in decay; Who built the temples up that in their ashes lay; True son of them, who, spite of all thy fathers' feats, Replaced my reverend priests upon their holy seats! 'Twixt Francion and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... mothers 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 ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley |
