"Unoriginal" Quotes from Famous Books
... and wandered up the aisle. He felt none of his usual impatience for the beneficent cigarette. Was he hit? Hardly. Inquisitive, certainly. But he had seen so many provocative shells. Vile trick of nature, that—poverty-stricken unoriginal creature that ... — Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... erroneously teach about cases governed by interjections? 4. What say Murray, Ingersoll, and Lennie, about interjections and cases? 5. What is shown of the later teaching to which Murray's erroneous and unoriginal remark about "O, oh, and ah," has given rise? 6. What notice is taken of the application of the rule for "O, oh, and ah," to nouns of the second person? 7. What is observed concerning the further extension of this rule to nouns and pronouns of the third person? ... — The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... employment, that it gratifies pride,—so possible without trenchant opinions, that it does not alarm the conservative,—so thoroughly respectable, safe, and capable of being made illustrious, so comparatively easy to the fluent but unoriginal mind, and practicable to follow, when methodically carried out, in a stated, regular manner, that we can scarcely be astonished at the alacrity with which such voluntary tasks are undertaken or the steadiness with which they are followed; at the same time, it may be because so few are able ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... and only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men. ... — Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... "I've been unoriginal enough, I'm afraid, to name my big baby after myself," he said, "my nickname being Eagle. The golden eagle, you know, ... — Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to his mother at breakfast, and his name is Jeff, and he will undoubtedly be worth five or six hundred thousand dollars, some day, and his opinions on George Moore and commercial paper are equally sound and unoriginal—— Oh, I ought not to speak of him, and I certainly ought not to be spiteful. I'm not at all reticent and ladylike, am I! But—— Somehow I can't see him out here, against a mountain ... — Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... take care of themselves; it is the short story in which I am chiefly interested. Better criticism and greater freedom for fiction might vitalize our overabundant, unoriginal, unreal, unversatile,—everything but unformed short story. Its artifice might again become art. Even the more careful, the more artistic work leaves one with the impression that these stories have sought a "line," and found an acceptable formula. And when one thinks of the multitudinous ... — Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby |