"Prolixity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them but little worthy of his approval, he will not have reason at the same time to condemn their prolixity: their brevity will, at least in some degree, atone for their ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... volume which I had taken up was the Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning[25]; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... superficial one; but this is far from the truth. A quarto volume on one theme may be entirely superficial, while a lecture or review-article on the same theme may contain the whole gist of the matter. Prolixity is oftener superficial than brevity. Books are superficial if they relate only to the outside of a subject,—if they describe only its husk; and the reverse, if they give its kernel. Many an able review-article ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... time President of the Directory, replied to Bonaparte with so much prolixity as to weary everyone; and as soon as he had finished speaking he threw himself into the arms of the General, who was not much pleased with such affected displays, and gave him what was then called the fraternal embrace. The other members of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... reforms effected by Linnaeus was in the matter of scientific terminology. Technical terms are absolutely necessary to scientific progress, and particularly so in botany, where obscurity, ambiguity, or prolixity in descriptions are fatally misleading. Linnaeus's work contains something like a thousand terms, whose meanings and uses are carefully explained. Such an array seems at first glance arbitrary and unnecessary, but the fact that it has ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... control of all these matters to him, when he is at the Hall. He inquired into the state of the horses; examined their feet; prescribed a drench for one, and bleeding for another; and then took me to look at his own horse, on the merits of which he dwelt with great prolixity, and which, I noticed, had the best ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste without a tree. Thanks to Benevolus [A]—he spares me yet These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines, And though himself so polished still reprieves The obsolete prolixity of shade.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... we have not attempted to exhaust the subject; we refer it rather to the calm meditations of others, who will find materials enough within themselves. And lest the impatient should throw aside our essay with the disgust of satiety, or the persevering should by our prolixity be vexed with the very spirit which we would rather teach them to exorcise, we here take a respectful leave, with our sincerest wishes, that life may be to the reader a succession of pleasant emotions, and death a resting place neither coveted ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... description show that he had a poet's feeling for beauty; he handles the language with the strength and skill of a master. On the other hand, he lacks all sense of proportion, and cannot shape an imaginative plan; his prolixity wearies the reader, and it cannot be denied that as a moral reformer he sometimes topples into immorality. The success of the poem was extraordinary, and extended far beyond France. It was attacked and defended, and up ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... rose from some remarkable natural feature of the spot; as it is first told, a shadowy unreality hangs over it, and it is doubtful whether it is more than a vision of the boy; but in the later prose all is crystalline; the story is drawn out, with a barren prolixity of detail, into a series of angelic visitations. And again, when Patrick is described, as the after-apostle, raising the dead Celts to life, the metaphor cannot be left in its natural force, and we ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... sound opinion, and able though brief argument upon themes which relate to the social, moral and religious well-being of mankind. Touching the style of the writer, as evinced in these selections, we should say that it was formed mainly upon a due avoidance of prolixity, (an observance not always characteristic of BENTHAM'S writings,) concerning which he himself very justly remarks: 'Prolixity may be where redundancy is not. Prolixity may arise not only from the multifarious insertion of unnecessary articles, but from the conservation of too many ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... improprieties of this poem discover an originality of invention, and its absurdities often border on sublimity. We are surprised that a poet should write one hundred cantos on hell, paradise, and purgatory. But this prolixity is partly owing to the want of art and method, and is common to all early compositions, in which everything is related circumstantially and without rejection, and not in those general terms which are used by modern writers." Warton is shocked ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... sees in his subject, and there is hardly a limit to what he may omit. What is required is that he shall say what he elects to say discreetly; that he shall be quick to see the gist of a matter, and give it pithily without either prolixity or ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... by the chains of party, assailed him and his colleagues on every measure brought forward, whether excellent or otherwise. Ministers, moreover, were not only harassed by his bitter sarcasms, but also by Percival's legal knowledge, and by Lord Castlereagh's prolixity. These were thorns in their sides; and as this active opposition had rendered Mr. Fox's appearance in his place necessary, it told with great effect upon his constitution at this time: indeed, Fox was dying from the effects of disease augmented ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Tuesday Eve.—Forgive my prolixity, which is yet too brief for all I could wish to say. God give you comfort, and all that are of your household! Our loves and best good-wishes to ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... which we are engaged has brought forth whole hosts of correspondents. They come not single spies, but in battalions. None of these letters, so far as we have read, can boast of any striking or peculiar excellence. Their great fault is their immense prolixity. Their words far outnumber their facts. An editor having once complained to a writer of the inordinate length of his composition, the writer replied that he had not had time to make it shorter. This is doubtless ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... all this time, through some special providence of our Lord, had practiced it to no profit. It is certain, too, that if he had been successful he would have ruined himself and harmed many others. But I say no more of this, to avoid prolixity. Another Indian had a book containing certain verses of poetry, which they call Golo [74]—most pernicious, because they included an express compact with the devil; this its owner freely gave up, that it might be burned, which was done. Most of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... study of nature, that he advocated with intelligence, and not on purely sentimental grounds, a milder discipline, we are justified in assigning to him a high, if not the highest, place among modern educational writers. The voluminousness of his treatises, their prolixity, their repetitions, and their defects of styles have all operated to prevent men studying him. The substance of what he has written has been, I believe, faithfully given by me, but it has not been possible to transfer to these pages ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... be distinguished from "its celebrated predecessors, the Spectator and the like," by the "greater length of the separate essays, by their closer connection with each other, and by the predominance of one object, and the common bearing of all to one end." It was, of course, exactly this plus of prolixity and minus of variety which lowered the sum of the Friend's attractions so far below that of the Spectator as to deprive the success of Addison of all its value ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Theodos. l. vi. tit. vi. The rules of precedency are ascertained with the most minute accuracy by the emperors, and illustrated with equal prolixity by their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of Speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths. More specially may it now be declared that Professor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigor, are here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in England we cannot promise him. Apart ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... the same words were repeated again and again in every-varying alternation, until the song died away like the soft breath of the wind as it were. Old Falieri appeared not to pay the slightest heed to the song; on the contrary, he was relating to the Dogess with much prolixity the meaning and history of the solemnity which takes place on Ascension Day when the Doge throws his ring from the Bucentaur and ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... he was giving to the world those masterly works which have invigorated the theology and sustained the devotion of unnumbered readers in either hemisphere. Amongst others, folio by folio, came forth that Exposition of the Hebrews, which, amidst all its digressive prolixity, and with its frequent excess of erudition, is an enduring monument of its author's robust understanding and spiritual insight, as well as his astonishing industry. At last the pen dropped from his band, and on the 23d of August, 1683, he dedicated a note to his likeminded friend, Charles Fleetwood: ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... offered to Helga by his henchmen important tributary impulses are given toward the following development. Unfortunately, the third act, dramatically considered, is concerned chiefly with details. It suffers, even more than the first act, from a certain prolixity which is not wholly made good by its theatrically effective ending. However bright and skillfully wrought in the incident of the fraudulent miracle, it might well be spared, with a view for the whole. And the same is true of a considerable part ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... whom he made many books and treatises of many a noble history, as well in metre as in rhyme and prose; and them so craftily made that he comprehended his matters in short, quick, and high sentences, eschewing prolixity, casting away the chaff of superfluity, and shewing the picked grain of sentence uttered by crafty and sugared eloquence; of whom among all others of his books I purpose to print, by the grace of God, the book of the tales of Canterbury, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... looking as helpless as animals of the male kind generally do when appealed to with such prolixity on feminine details; in reply to it all, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... long list of ancients and moderns, who, in various forms, have exhibited their own portraits. Such portraits are often the most interesting, and sometimes the only interesting parts of their writings; and if they be sincere, we seldom complain of the minuteness or prolixity of these personal memorials. The lives of the younger Pliny, of Petrarch, and of Erasmus, are expressed in the epistles, which they themselves have given to the world. The essays of Montaigne and Sir William Temple bring us home to the houses and bosoms of the authors: we smile without contempt ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... of its own prolixity. But how is justice to be done to the gradual evolution of a situation if hard-and-fast laws are to be laid down, restricting the number of words that its chronicler shall employ? Condemn him by all means, but admit at least that every smallest incident of the foregoing narrative had its ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... (without prolixity if possible) with the few things I have been able to comprehend of all these sublime ideas. With regard to the system of our world, disputes were a long time maintained, on the cause that turns the planets, and keeps ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... to explain and justify the state of feeling in which we enter on the consideration of a new poem by Robert Browning. Those who already feel with us will scarcely be disposed to forgive the prolixity which, for the present, has put it out of our power to come at the work itself: but, if earnestness of intention will plead our excuse, we ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... eleven hundred Indians appeared at his call, his larder was sorely taxed to entertain them. The speeches were interminable. Johnson, as master of Indian rhetoric, knew his audience too well not to contest with them the palm of insufferable prolixity. The climax was reached on the fourth day, and he threw down the war-belt. An Oneida chief took it up; Stevens, the interpreter, began the war-dance, and the assembled warriors howled in chorus. Then a tub of punch was brought in, and they all drank the King's health.[292] ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... ever spoken highly: they are excellent and marvellously misplaced—non erat his locus. The text of a story-book is too frail to bear so ponderous a burden of classical Arabian lore, and the annotations injure the symmetry of the book as a work of art. They begin with excessive prolixity: in the Introduction these studies fill 27 closely printed pages to 14 of a text broken by cuts and vignettes. In chaps. i. the proportion is pp. 20, notes: 15 text, and in chaps. ii. it is pp. 20: 35. Then they become under the publisher's protest, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... seeming transgression of my last chapter. Most true it is, that were I to relate the entire of my life with a similar diffuseness, my memoir would extend to a length far beyond what I intend it to occupy. Such, however, is very remote from my thoughts. I have dwelt with, perhaps, something of prolixity upon the soldier-life and characteristics of a past day, because I shall yet have to speak of changes, without which the contrast would be inappreciable; but I have also laid stress upon an incident trivial in itself, because it formed an event in my own fortunes. It was thus, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... both sides under certain heads, which imprint strongly in your memory; and whatever your adversary says, refer it to your own division, and not to his[50]." Grotius's great attention was to avoid prolixity and ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... be fairly anticipated of men in general, even of the most cultivated classes; and with which therefore few only, and those few particularly circumstanced, can be supposed to sympathize: In this class, I comprise occasional prolixity, repetition, and an eddying, instead of progression, of thought. As instances, see pages 27, 28, and 62 of the Poems, vol. I. and the first eighty lines of the VIth ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... The ponderosity and prolixity of Gabriel's "period of a mile," are described with a facetious extravagance, which may be given as a specimen of the eloquence of ridicule. Harvey entitled his various ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... other hand, the persistent instinct for realism provided a partial antidote; the Vices are often very lifelike rascals, abstract only in name. In these cases the whole plays become vivid studies in contemporary low life, largely human and interesting except for their prolixity and the coarseness which they inherited from the Mysteries and multiplied on their own account. During the Reformation period, in the early sixteenth century, the character of the Moralities, more strictly so called, underwent something of a change, and they were—sometimes made ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... performed would have been optically conclusive; and we cannot see, according to any of the mesmeric hypotheses, any mesmeric reason why it should not have succeeded: it was, however, declined. We are obliged to omit many other points in this evening's proceedings to avoid prolixity. Though many facts were curious, and certainly not easy of explanation by ordinary means, there was nothing which defied it; every experimentum crucis failed, and we, of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... capable of exciting my surprise, what I now beheld transported me into perfect ecstacy. I entered a large court surrounded with buildings of an admirable structure, the description of which I will omit, to avoid prolixity. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... many others which I omit to avoid prolixity, have been executed up to the present age of our artist, which is above seventy-six years. Titian has been always healthy and happy; he has been favored beyond the lot of most men, and has received from Heaven only favors and blessings. In his house he has entertained whatever princes, literati, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... popular, particularly in America. The tale is a tragic one throughout, and the prevailing air of sombreness is rarely lightened by any success in the management of minor incidents. The introduction too was marked by (p. 075) one of Cooper's besetting faults, intolerable prolixity. But the main cause of his failure lay in his inability to delineate the Puritan character. It was not knowledge that was wanting, it was sympathy; or perhaps it is better to say that it was his lack of sympathy ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... intelligibility, adds much to their force and liveliness. The lovers of proverbial wit, for many of these characters are strings of judicious adages, are therefore greatly obliged to Mr. Bliss for his pleasing republication of so pregnant a volume. The notes are instructive without prolixity: the index is extremely useful, for it is really astonishing[ES] how large a quantity of good matter is scattered up and down the present duodecimo (the advt. calls it octavo), and the appendix contains an ample store of black-letter information, and will introduce almost every reader to some ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... following in the steps of Chlodwig, were outdoing each other in bloodshed and cruelty. In the midst of this hard time Fortunatus stood out alone among the poets by virtue of his talent and purity of character. His poems are often disfigured by bombast, prolixity, and misplaced learning; but his keen eye for men and things is undeniable, and his feeling for Nature shews not only in dealing with scenery, but in linking it ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... said that I had plenty to think about besides Randall, I meant to string off a list. My prolixity over the Volunteer Training Corps came upon me unawares. I wanted to show you that my time was fairly well occupied. I was Chairman of our town Belgian Relief Committee. I was a member of our County Territorial Association and took over a ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... would she were as lying a gossip in that, as euer knapt Ginger, or made her neighbours beleeue she wept for the death of a third husband: but it is true, without any slips of prolixity, or crossing the plaine high-way of talke, that the good Anthonio, the honest Anthonio; o that I had a title good enough to keepe his name company! Sal. Come, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the risk of some prolixity it is needful to follow the course of events that led to this war a little farther; for here was the culmination of Mr. Madison's career, and from his course in shaping and directing these events we best learn what manner of man he was, and where his true place is ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... in the breast, it excites to exertion, and supports under endurance. But I forget myself,' said the count, checking his enthusiasm; 'I promised to speak soberly. If I have said too much, your own good sense, my lord, will correct me, and your good-nature will forgive the prolixity of an old man, touched upon his favourite subject—the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... were more or less impractical to apply to ordinary composition. The manner of language, of style and of expression has considerably changed since then, the old abstruse complex sentence with its hidden meanings has been relegated to the shade, there is little of prolixity or long-drawn-out phrases, ambiguity of expression is avoided and the aim is toward terseness, brevity and clearness. Therefore, punctuation has been greatly simplified, to such an extent indeed, that it is now as much a matter of good ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... honour of the Queen, as "triumphs," offered by Lord Essex, one probably in 1592 and another in 1595; a third for a Gray's Inn revel in 1594. The "devices" themselves were of the common type of the time, extravagant, odd, full of awkward allegory and absurd flattery, and running to a prolixity which must make modern lovers of amusement wonder at the patience of those days; but the "discourses" furnished by Bacon are full of fine observation and brilliant thought and wit and happy illustration, which, fantastic as the general conception ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... the rule Of Romulus, and Cato sage, And all the bearded, good old school. Each Roman's wealth was little worth, His country's much; no colonnade For private pleasance wooed the North With cool "prolixity of shade." None might the casual sod disdain To roof his home; a town alone, At public charge, a sacred fane Were honour'd with the ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... beloved by women, "wandering over the crooked hills of delicious pleasure"; but their reign over him was over, and long before Savonarola's famous "bonfire of vanities," he had destroyed those love-songs in the vulgar tongue, which would have been so great a relief to us, after the scholastic prolixity of his Latin writings. It was in another spirit that he composed a Platonic commentary, the only work of his in Italian which has come down to us, on the "Song of Divine Love"— secondo la mente ed opinione dei Platonici—"according ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... Howells came home and read it in the usual way he declared that, while the opening was killingly funny, when he got into the story itself it seemed to him that he was "made a fellow-sufferer with the Sultan from Scheherazade's prolixity." ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... misfortunes crowded on him, may be hence inferred, that, altho' his three friends are stiled old men,[41] yet in his disputes with them, he does not seem to honour them for their age, as Elihu does. To avoid prolixity, I join with Spanheim in opinion, that Job's time coincides with the bondage of the children of Israel in Egypt, so as to be neither posterior to their quitting that country, nor ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... cannot be of great and formidable prolixity, because it has not to do with objects of reason, the variety of which is inexhaustible, but merely with Reason herself and her problems; problems which arise out of her own bosom, and are not proposed to ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... schooner from Trapani, built for fishing. An artistic calker had sculptured a wooden cray-fish climbing over the rudder. From the two sides of the prow dangled a double row of cray-fish carved with the innocent prolixity ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... unable to ascertain who the person was, or why he was going, because the matter had been managed by a priest. And although a long relation can be made here of his objectionable acts, we shall, in order to excuse prolixity, touch on only a few ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... prolixity, the visit to Jerusalem, and the two battles of Arbela and Issus mixed into one, are very rapidly passed over, though the murder of Darius and Alexander's vengeance for it are duly mentioned. Something like a new beginning (thought by some to coincide with a change of authors) then occurs, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... I find it such a keen personal joy to evoke and follow out, and realize to myself by means of pen and pencil, all these personal reminiscences; and with such a capital excuse for prolixity! ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... moment was superior to their own. So she heard their explanation of what had befallen them, and of their resolution to visit her; and a slight account of their drive from Independence; all which Mrs. Lenox gave with more prolixity than she had intended ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... of scenario elaboration MUST NOT lead to over-expansion. Brevity and conciseness are not necessarily one, any more than are fullness and prolixity. Be concise—cut close to the line; having started your action by setting forth a basic incident at once interesting and plausible, keep the wheels of your story in motion, letting it accumulate speed as ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... stand his trial at once, which was precisely what the Attorney-General desired. The indictment, which may still be seen among the records at Osgoode Hall, was a truly formidable instrument, and set out the offence with great prolixity. The trial took place on Saturday, the 25th, before Mr. Justice Sherwood, who, in charging the jury, inveighed against the defendant with nearly as great vehemence as did the Crown prosecutor, stigmatizing him as "a ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... or longer than is just sufficient. Although each of those defects does happen sometimes, or indeed often, so that it is necessary either to stop abruptly, or else to proceed further, lest our brevity should appear to have cheated the ears of our hearers, or our prolixity to have exhausted them. But I prefer a middle course; for I am not speaking of verse, and oratory is not so much confined. A full period, then, consists of four divisions, like hexameter verses. In each of these verses, then, there ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... subject, and, like some stately grandame enthroned in high-backed chair, he remembers that his simple auditors are to be not merely entertained by the matter of his discourse, but impressed by the suave tones and high-bred prolixity of the speaker. With a dignified courtesy unknown in these latter times—when biographers and historians do not scruple to take liberties with their heroes to the extent even of designating them by nicknames—the subject of the present memoir is introduced to us as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... China's simple "greeting," Japan returned a "respectful address;" to China's expression of ineffable superiority Japan replied that the coming of the embassy had "dissolved her long-harboured cares;" and to China's grandiloquent prolixity Japan made answer with half a dozen brief lines. Imoko was now accompanied by eight students four of literature and four of religion. Thus was established, and for long afterwards maintained, a bridge over which the literature, arts, ethics, and philosophies of China ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... indefinable—we question whether he would have regarded him in the light of a maniac, an incendiary, or a foreign spy—whether he would not have handed him immediately over to the exterminators of the law, as a being too depraved, too degraded for human sympathy. And yet—for our prolixity warns us to conclude—and yet the festering contagion of this baneful example is now-a-days hidden under the mask of fashion. FASHION! and has it indeed come to this? Is fashion to trample on the best and finest feelings of our nature? Is fashion to be permitted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... the presentation of a whole Middlemarch or Anna Karenine—as the conditions of the Chinese theatre actually do—some dramatists, we cannot doubt, would voluntarily renounce that license of prolixity, in order to cultivate an art of concentration and crisis. The Greek drama "subjected to the faithful eyes," as Horace phrases it, the culminating points of the Greek epic; the modern drama places under the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden houses, and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my life. I am a citizen of somewhere else. My good towns-people will not much regret me; for—though it has been as dear an object as any, in my literary ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... [their obedience] with the same ceremony as was used the other time, namely, of twice raising the royal standard, and in testimony [of the friendship] the Governor embraced them to the sound of trumpets, observing other solemnities which I do not write in order to avoid prolixity. This done, the cacique stood up and, in a vase of gold, gave drink to the Governor and the Spaniards with his own hands, and then all went off to ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... suitable, and the two brothers, the accountant Francisco Beltran de Manurga and the inspector Matias Beltran de Manurga. Either of them is, in my opinion, a person as capable as is necessary for the said offices, as well as for things of more importance. I entreat your Majesty to pardon my prolixity in matters in which you have not asked my advice; for my zeal and desire for your royal service, and also for some one who may aid me therein, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... them; but their grave sweetness, their choice wording, their originality in epithet, name, and phrase, were novelties of Milton's own. His English masters were Spenser, Fletcher, and Sylvester, the translator of Du Bartas's La Sepmaine, but nothing of Spenser's prolixity, or Fletcher's effeminacy, or Sylvester's quaintness is found in Milton's pure, energetic diction. He inherited their beauties, but his taste had been tempered to a finer edge by his studies in Greek and Hebrew poetry. He was the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... little trouble in digging for it. And the writer is enabled,—at any rate for a time, and till his neck has become, as it were, warm to the collar,—to throw off from him the difficulties and dangers, the tedium and prolixity, of description. This rushing "in medias res" has doubtless the charm of ease. "Certainly, when I threw her from the garret window to the stony pavement below, I did not anticipate that she would fall so far without injury to life ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... chymicall oyle thereof is very availeable (as himselfe affirmeth to have sufficiently proved) against the stone and stopping of urine, and many other outward maladies and diseases, (Andernaeus and Gesner adde to these the Apoplexy) all which, for avoyding of prolixity, ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... of the term was feverish. Corps work was revivified under the stimulus of war; the field days by Babylon Hill provided genuine excitement, in spite of the prolixity of Rogers's subsequent summary of the day's work. There were going to be very few football matches; but "uppers" were played with the old keenness, and there was fierce competition for the last places in the scrum. Ferrers wrote a long article to The Country on "The ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... the rest of the uncials and, what is of more importance, the whole body of the cursives, exhibit [Greek: hote],—which, as every one must see, is certainly what St. John wrote in this place. Tischendorf's assertion that the prolixity of the expression [Greek: ephonesen ek tou mnemeiou kai egeiren auton ek nekron] is inconsistent with [Greek: hote][101],—may surprise, but will never convince any one who is even moderately acquainted with ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... spoken of only from hearsay. By this neglect, is he atoning for the renewal of glory in which he shone during the seventeenth century, when the Jansenists, in their inveterate obstinacy, identified him with the defence of their cause? The reputation of sour austerity and of argumentative and tiresome prolixity which attaches to the remembrance of all the writers of Port-Royal, save Pascal—has that affected too the work of Augustin, enlisted in spite of himself in the ranks of these pious schismatics? And yet, if there have ever been any beings who ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... mean by this that he never used a superfluous word (which, in fact, he rarely did), but that he kept quite clear of the hazy, half-relevant ideas which encumber meaning and are the chief source of prolixity. He threw away every idea that did not decidedly help on his argument, and expressed the others in the fewest words that would make them clear. He began at once where the pith of his argument began; and had the secret, possessed by few writers, of stopping the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... in order to send him with authority on this expedition, as appears from the title itself, dated July first, one thousand five hundred and ninety-one, and which was drawn before Juan de Cuellar, government notary. The writ for it does not accompany the present, because of its prolixity. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... amplification &c. v.; dilating &c. v.; verbosity, verbiage, cloud of words, copia verborum[Lat]; flow of words &c. (loquacity) 584; looseness. Polylogy[obs3], tautology, battology[obs3], perissology|; pleonasm, exuberance, redundancy; thrice-told tale; prolixity; circumlocution, ambages [obs3]; periphrase[obs3], periphrasis; roundabout phrases; episode; expletive; pennya-lining; richness &c. 577. V. be diffuse &c. adj.; run out on, descant, expatiate, enlarge, dilate, amplify, expand, inflate; launch out, branch out; rant. maunder, prose; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the real reason of your absence, couldn't understand why you stay away. I had to squelch him, and Linda abetted me successfully. However, that's beside the point. I hope I haven't irritated you. I'm such a dumb sort of brute generally. I don't know what imp of prolixity got into my pen. I've got it all off my ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... there are an awful quantity of them and they are at the best most imperfect mediums of communication. No one who has been on the Coast can fail to recognise how inferior the native language is to the native's mind behind it—and the prolixity and repetition he has therefore to employ to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... that took place in France, it is entitled to almost unqualified praise: in regard to what happened to other countries, he necessarily depended on the information which he received from them, and cannot therefore be equally relied upon. The prolixity, with which he is now reproached, was not felt at the time in which he wrote; every event, however small, was then thought to be important, and multitudes were personally interested in it. But the charm of his work is, that every page of it shews a true lover of his country, ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... story is as old as the Odyssey, but the moral and the colouring are comparatively modern. By avoiding the prolixity which marks the speeches and the descriptions in Homer, I have gained a rapidity to the narration, which I hope will make it more attractive and give it more the air of a romance to young readers, though ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... still waited for the point of the story, but my friend, after exhausting his powers of speech and metaphor, was fain to wind up his tale with a most lame and impotent conclusion. I now give it to the reader, not from a wish to punish him as I was punished, but because from the prolixity of the narrator he necessarily most minutely described scenes and customs, which, though they had nothing on earth to do with the "Dragon's Mouth," may prove interesting to the reader, as illustrating the peculiarities of the people amongst whom we ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... this letter, in order to send it to you in the morning early. Nevertheless, I will begin another, upon supposition that my doleful prolixity will be disagreeable to you. Indeed I am altogether indisposed for rest, as I have mentioned before. So can do nothing but write. I have also more melancholy scenes to paint. My pen, if I may say so, is untired. ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... with many others which I omit, to avoid prolixity, have been executed up to the present age of our artist, which is above seventy-six years.... In the year 1566, when Vasari, the writer of the present history, was at Venice, he went to visit Titian, as one who was his friend, and found him, although then very old, still with ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... a peculiarity in the productions of this author, that, on whatever he employs his pen, he exhausts the subject; not with any prolixity that fatigues the attention, but by a quick succession of new ideas, equally brilliant and apposite, often expressed in antitheses. Void of obscenity in expression, but lascivious in sentiment, he may be said rather to stimulate immorally ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... history. Whether that half-century of continuous war would have been possible with the artillery, means of locomotion, and other machinery of destruction and communication now so terribly familiar to the world, can hardly be a question. The preterhuman prolixity of negotiation which appals us in the days when steam and electricity had not yet annihilated time and space, ought also to be obsolete. At a period when the news of a great victory was thirty days on its travels from Gibraltar to Flushing, aged ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the French comedies, as you know, in which the dulness and prolixity of legal argument is intended to be severely satirized, while the advocate is tediously groping among ancient lore having nothing to do with his case, the judge grows impatient, and at last cries out to him to come down ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... too tired for speech.] Prolix to the point of somnolence. It might be affirmed without inexactitude that the prolixity of counsel is the somnolence of the judiciary. I am fatigued, ah! [A little suddenly, awaking to the fact that his orders have not been carried out to the letter.] Thomas! My Post is ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... and I have felt it the more necessary because of the scanty notice given to it in the only two works published on the subject, both of them highly technical, and written for scientific purposes by medical men. Therefore I hope to be forgiven if I have tried the patience of my readers by any prolixity. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... saw this evening, when the cat, which had shown it could not be drowned, was found suffocated under a feather-bed in the cabin. I will not endeavor to describe his lamentations with more prolixity than barely by saying they were grievous, and seemed to have some mixture of the Irish howl in them. Nay, he carried his fondness even to inanimate objects, of which we have above set down a pregnant example in his demonstration of love and tenderness towards his boats and ship. He spoke of a ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... them. Then, when two or three among them suggested that the report was too favorable, that he glided too lightly over certain protests that had reached the committee, the maker of the report spoke with surprising assurance, with the prolixity and exuberance of men of his province, proved that a deputy should not be held responsible beyond a certain point for the imprudence of his electoral agents, that otherwise no election would stand against an investigation that was at all minute; and as, in reality, he was pleading ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... English ideal of prolixity in discussion, for which Engineering has recently patted it on the back approvingly, treats us, in its issue of February 11th, to a page article, to be continued, under the title of "Warming and Ventilation ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... above human nature to avoid treading on the ground with the mass; a weariness of genius which gave to judgment the ascendency over the imagination; an innate love of all that was precise and finished, which resulted in a prolixity in which grand ideas were diluted; the spirit of the religious sects, which enchained within a narrow circle talents created to survey a vast horizon. But neither these nor other reasons can keep one from wondering that there ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... few. Hence the spectacle in the new Spanish and Portuguese world, as in the old, of men and women who are at once journalists, novelists, dramatists, politicians, soldiers, poets and what not else. Such a versatility, often joined to a literary prolixity, no doubt serves to lower the artistic worth of works ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... possesses the defects of his qualities. There is altogether too much of the "Go to: let me be Titanic" about the book. AEschylus has grown a trifle too well aware of his reputation, has taken to underscoring his points, and tends to prolixity in consequence. Mr. Hall Caine has not a little of Hugo's audacity, but, with it, not a little of Hugo's diffuseness. Standing, like Destiny, with scourge lifted over the naked backs of his two poor sinners, he spares them no single stroke—not so much as a little ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... vol. ii, p. 414. Should be one another, and not one of them is properly a geyser. "How much better for you as seller and the nation as buyer ... than to sink ... in cutting one another's throats." Should be each other's. "A minister, noted for prolixity of style, was once preaching before the inmates of a lunatic asylum. In one of his illustrations he painted a scene of a man condemned to be hung, but reprieved under the gallows." These two sentences are so faulty that ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... with that quaint prolixity which was his peculiar proclivity gives numerous instances of the rise and fall of families connected with Birmingham. In addition to the original family of De Birmingham, now utterly extinct he traced back many others then and now well-known names. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... slightly modified and abridged what follows, being impatient of its prolixity, as well as ashamed of what is truly called the ludicrous under-estimate of the mass of the ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... (the carved wooden perpetual almanac) has been extirpated by the printed calendar, and now only exists in the cabinets of the curious. In fifty years more sun-rings will probably be quite extinct throughout Europe. I hope this will cause you to excuse my prolixity. Will no astronomer among your readers direct his attention to this subject? Does anything of the kind ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... many minds an impression of needless preparation and a kind of bustling prolixity. But the truth is that the very rapidity of such a man's mind makes him seem slow in getting to the point. It is positively because he is quick-witted that he is long-winded. A quick eye for ideas may actually make a writer slow in reaching his goal, just as a quick ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... his word with me; so mounted upon a strong hackney, I set out with Power on the road to Brussels. I have had occasion more than once to ask pardon of my reader for the prolixity of my narrative, so I shall not trespass on him here by the detail of our conversation as we jogged along. Of me and my adventures he already knows enough—perhaps too much. My friend Power's career, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... subtilize it into sentiment; and next, from that dread of what overtaxes their intellectual energies, either by difficulty, or monotony, which gives them an instinctive fondness for lightness of treatment and airiness of expression, thus making them cut short all prolixity and reject all heaviness. When these womanly characteristics were brought into conversational contact with the materials furnished by such minds as those of Richelieu, Corneille, the Great Conde, Balzac, and Bossuet, it is no wonder that the result was something ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... it partakes of the nature of verse. In this endeavour to provide an adequate structure for the support of the mass of imagery that the taste of the age demanded, it showed itself superior to the rival prose fashions. Euphues is a model of form beside the tedious prolixity of the Arcadia, or the chaotic effusions of Nash. The weariness, which the modern reader feels for the romance of Lyly, is due rather to the excessive quantity of its metaphor, which was the fault of the age, ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... place, tree, shrub, or plant used by the people has its proper name; it is harmonious and pleasing, abounding in vowels and liquids, destitute of gutturals, and sparing in aspirates and other harsh consonants. At the same time, like the rest of the family, it is clumsy and unwieldy, whilst immense prolixity and frequent repetition must develope the finer shades of meaning. Its peculiarity is a greater resemblance to the Zanzibarian Kisawahili than any tongue known to me on the Western Coast: often a question asked by the guide, as "Njia hapa?" (Is this the road?) and "Jina lako nani?" ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... to this palace, in which Giulio executed many other works worthy to be praised, of which, in order to avoid prolixity, I shall say nothing, he reconstructed with masonry many rooms in the castle where the Duke lives at Mantua, and made two very large spiral staircases, with very rich apartments adorned all over with stucco. In one hall he caused the whole of the story of Troy and the ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... of thought as modified by feeling, is equal to that of Tacitus in energy and genuine conciseness, and is as perspicuous as that of Livy, whilst it is free from the affectations, obscurities, and lust to surprise of the former, and seems a sort of antithesis to the slowness and prolixity of the latter;—(this remark does not, however, impeach even the classicality of the language, which, when the freedom and originality, the easy motion and perfect command of the thoughts, are considered, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... pass on to Saints and Bishops. I shall only instance one of each, because I hate prolixity. The first Saint that presents himself to me, is the renowned St. Augustin, who himself owns, that he used to get drunk sometimes. Crapula autem nonnunquam surrepit servo tuo misereberis ut longe fiat a me. Thy servant has been sometimes crop-sick ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... thought and language that he pours out incessantly, when they are lost like drops of water in the ground. The principal work, in which he has attempted to embody his general views of things, is the FRIEND, of which, though it contains some noble passages and fine trains of thought, prolixity and obscurity are ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... philosophical grasp of the problems of existence, yet her weakening powers were shown in the length of tedious passages, in an undue prominence of ethical purpose, in the more studied and, on the whole, duller characters, and in the prolixity ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... has left an immense number of volumes behind him, which have been printed at various times, the greater number of them after his death. It would be possible to reduce them to a tenth part if we could rid them of all useless and foreign matter, and of a prolixity which I find almost overwhelming; were this only done, his books should be regarded as among the best we have on the subject of natural history in its entirety. The plan of his work is good, his classification distinguished for its good sense, his dividing lines well marked, his descriptions ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... Alf's most sharp-nailed subordinates had been set upon her book, and had pulled it to pieces with almost rabid malignity. One would have thought that so slight a thing could hardly have been worthy of such protracted attention. Error after error was laid bare with merciless prolixity. No doubt the writer of the article must have had all history at his finger-ends, as in pointing out the various mistakes made he always spoke of the historical facts which had been misquoted, misdated, or misrepresented, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... AMIE,—Nothing doubting that your curiosity will be upon the tenters to hear the wonderful events of the long-expected 4th of June, I take the pen to inform you that not one worth mentioning has taken place. Were I inclined to prolixity, I might, indeed, narrate at length how near a thousand gentlemen (myself among the number) offered their services to the magistrates to act as constables for the preservation of the peace—how their services were accepted—what ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... shame had burned my cheeks whenever I recalled my dismissal from the lips of the daughter of the house. But I had received a letter from Mrs. Bowser, setting forth that I was wanted at the house of Doddridge Knapp, and her prolixity was such that I was unable to determine whether she, or Mrs. Knapp, or Luella, wished to see me. But as all three appeared to be concerned in it I pocketed pride and resentment, and made my bow with some nervous quavers at the Pine ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... prolixity and puerile ingenuity personified. Yet Letamendi was no different from all other Spaniards of his day, including even the most celebrated, such as ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... use long periods of flowered prolixity and pretentious phrases—who write in complicated form with meaningless flourishes, do not make an impression of elegance and erudition upon their readers, but flaunt instead unmistakable evidence of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Sovereigns more closely than any other person, pointed out certain objections which he begged their Majesties to ponder. And Councillor after Councillor rose and protested against the scheme with the utmost solemnity and prolixity. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... not expect that you will reproach me with the prolixity of these details. The subject is attractive to me, and I feel that you will accompany me with pleasure in my pilgrimage, from chapel to shrine, dwelling with me in contemplation on the relics of ancient skill and the memorials of the piety of the departed. Nor must it be forgotten, that the hand ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... velocity of a current passing diminishes. The experiments thus far described have been made with jets of an oblong shape, and they give results differing in some degree from those obtained with circular jets. Yet as the general conclusions from both are found the same, it will avoid unnecessary prolixity by using the data from experiments made with a circular jet of 0.05 square inch area, discharging a stream at the rate of 40 ft. per second. This amounts to 52 lb. of water per minute with an available head of 25 ft., or 1,300 foot-pounds per minute. The tubes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... mystery was embodied in a small sacramental narrative, which we possess under four forms,[1] very similar to one another. John, preoccupied with the Eucharistic ideas,[2] and who relates the Last Supper with so much prolixity, connecting with it so many circumstances and discourses[3]—and who was the only one of the evangelists whose testimony on this point has the value of an eye-witness—does not mention this narrative. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... and at various places, but chiefly in bar-rooms, did this Ulysses of Monte Flat recount the story of his wanderings. There were several discrepancies in his statement; there was sometimes considerable prolixity of detail; there was occasional change of character and scenery; there was once or twice an absolute change in the denoument: but always the fact of his having visited his wife and children remained. Of course, in a sceptical community like that of Monte ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte |
