"Long-winded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... secret, but you needn't let on to no one about it. That are row next the fence, I grafted it myself: I took great pains to get the right kind. I sent clean up to Roxberry and away down to Squawneck Creek.' I was afeard he was a-goin' to give me day and date for every graft, bein' a terrible long-winded man in his stories; so says I, 'I know that, minister, but how do you preserve them?' 'Why, I was a-goin' to tell you,' said he, 'when you stopped me. That are outward row I grafted myself with the choicest kind I could find, and I succeeded. They are beautiful, but so ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... de Coislin was an exceedingly polite man, and bestowed amiable compliments and civilities upon their hostess, much to the disgust of the Chevalier. At parting, the Duke renewed the politeness he had displayed so abundantly the previous evening, and delayed the others by his long-winded flatteries. When, at last, they left the house, and were two or three leagues away from it, the Chevalier de Coislin said, that, in spite of all this politeness, he had reason to believe that their pretty hostess would not long be pleased ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... cried out: By Bacchus, he was right to forswear talk, if he designed to make such long-winded discourses as would have spoiled all mirth and conversation; but I do not think there is the same reason to forbid philosophy as to take away rhetoric from our feasts. For philosophy is quite of another nature; it is an art of living, and therefore must be admitted into every part of our conversation, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... up so much time with your long-winded talk, but let me see the dear little fellow myself;" and Mrs. Treat lifted her slim husband into a chair, where he was out of her way, and again greeted Toby by kissing him on both cheeks with a resounding smack that rivalled anything Reddy Grant had yet ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... in his most impatient tone, 'old people should not be so long-winded! Tell me what country I have got ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... my voluminous descriptions, as I was with the continual repetition of altars and reliquaries, the Lord have mercy upon you! However, your delivery draws near. The post is going out, and to-morrow we shall begin to mount the cliffs of the Tyrol; but don't be afraid of any long-winded epistles from their summits: I shall be too well employed in ascending them. Just now, as I have lain by a long while, I grow sleek, and scribble on in mere wantonness of spirit. What excesses ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... did it happen? Who got you the sitivation? Look alive! Don't be long-winded, I see they're gittin' our ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... a dummy prospectus from his vest pocket and began a long-winded recital of some figures in which I was not particularly interested. Mr. Bundercombe, however, appeared to be greatly impressed by what ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... man who has been led to believe that he is a brilliant and interesting talker has been led to make himself a rapacious pest. No conversation is possible between others whose ears are within reach of his ponderous voice; anecdotes, long-winded stories, dramatic and pathetic, stock his repertoire; but worst of all are his humorous yarns at which he laughs uproariously though every one else ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... proper title of this article should be "The Influence of American Enterprise upon the Maritime Development of the first Colony in Australia," but as such a long-winded phrase would convey, at the outset, no clearer conception of the subject-matter than that of "The Americans in the South Seas," we trust our readers will be ...
— The Americans In The South Seas - 1901 • Louis Becke
... was over the superintendent, in full dress uniform, stepped to the front of the rostrum and made a brief address. Sailors are seldom long-winded talkers. The superintendent's address, on this very formal occasion, lasted barely four minutes. But what he said was full of earnest manhood ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... Author's part" (and therefore in a mere fraction of whatever represented the extremely small edition of the work), may be sought the "Prefatory Explication, made for the Benefit of My Friends, Male and Female." In recounting the origin of the manual, its author is candid, but at the same time too long-winded for quoting entire. Enough to say, as the substitute for a lengthy tale of facts, that prior to the year 1731 the author of "The Square of Sevens," Mr. Robert Antrobus, "a Gentleman of Bath," was ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... technical style first established itself—a style which at least in its developed shape is nowise inferior to the modern legal phraseology of England in stereotyped formulae and turns of expression, endless enumeration of particulars, and long-winded periods; and which commends itself to the initiated by its clearness and precision, while the layman who does not understand it listens, according to his character and humour, with ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and age she didn't just come out and say—or think—flatly that she was there to keep me in line, I don't know. But there she was, talking all around the main point and delivering the information by long-winded inference. ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... have liked the tone you took about it, Mary. You are so devilish high-handed. In short, I don't mind telling you that I was annoyed by your interference in the matter. But after mature consideration—I turned the matter over in my mind—I was not the least influenced by your long-winded epistle—that in fact rather put me off than otherwise—still after a time I wrote a manly, straightforward letter to Everard, not blinking the facts, and I told him that if his feelings were unchanged—mark that—as I had reason to believe Magdalen's were—he was at liberty ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... in no humour to listen to the long-winded reminiscences of the "star," so he cut him short at once. He ascertained that the "ingrates" were in New York, on their "uppers," and that they could not accomplish the trip to Crowndale unless railroad tickets were provided. The difficulty was bridged in short order by telegrams requesting ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... "There was a long-winded young man," she was saying, "him that sarsed his girl, 'n' he went slashin' round, killin' folks off in a kind of an aimless ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... simple, but by no means short annals of the poor, and especially of the English poor. Yet, Christian, the impatient, the ardent, stood and listened with respectful and absorbed interest. Cottingham might be elderly, egotistic, long-winded, but at this period of her career, Christian's hot heart beat throb for throb with his, and the thought, as he said, of "that pore little bitch stoppin' out, and maybe spoilt, so that there'd be nothin' for us but to shoot her, through learnin' ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... "A little long-winded, Spouter, but you hit the nail on the head," answered Fred. "Old Lemon could quit for good, and I doubt if any of us ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... marshalled upon the table, which fairly groaned beneath their weight. We had innumerable speeches. General Sutton made an excellent address, which an interpreter translated into Arabic. Our Arabian hosts were long-winded, and the recognized local orator was so classical in his phrases and forms and tenses that it was impossible to do more than get the general drift of what he said. Luckily I had in my pocket a copy of the Lusiads, which I surreptitiously read when the speeches ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... Sweet Waters of Europe; for Friday is the Mussulman's day of rest, and on that day all who are able love to go out to the Kiat-hane—the "paper-mill,"—where they pass the afternoon in driving and walking, eating sweetmeats, smoking, drinking coffee, watching gypsy girls dance, or listening to the long-winded tales of professional story-tellers. Almost every day had its regular excursion, and it was clear to me that he always chose the place where on that day of the week there was likely to ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... to greet Mr. Sesemann first. Then he began to reassure his host about the child, pointing out to him that her education had been neglected till then, and so on. But poor Mr. Sesemann, unfortunately, did not get his answer, and had to listen to very long-winded explanations of the child's character. At last Mr. Sesemann got up, saying: "Excuse me, Mr. Candidate, but I must go ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... bosome of thine: it is all fill'd vppe with Guttes and Midriffe. Charge an honest Woman with picking thy pocket? Why thou horson impudent imbost Rascall, if there were any thing in thy Pocket but Tauerne Recknings, Memorandums of Bawdie-houses, and one poore peny-worth of Sugar-candie to make thee long-winded: if thy pocket were enrich'd with anie other iniuries but these, I am a Villaine: And yet you will stand to it, you will not Pocket vp wrong. Art thou not asham'd? Fal. Do'st thou heare Hal? Thou know'st in the state of Innocency, Adam fell: and what should poore Iacke Falstaffe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... long-winded in your reports as you have been in the past," said the manager of the "Wild West" railway to his overseer. "Just report the condition of the track as ye find it, and don't put in a lot of needless words that ain't to the point. Write a business ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... Tale, as Byron perceived, is superior to the execution. The style is laboured and involved, and the narrative long-winded and tiresome. It is, perhaps, an adaptation, though not a literal translation, of a German historical romance. But the motif—a son predestined to evil by the weakness and sensuality of his father, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... happened to Cummings? He used to be aces up, but now comes this tripe of his called "The Exile of Time"; especially the current installment with its long-winded rot about mysticism and theosophy and the Lord knows what. Where was the Editor when this blew in? Surely there are plenty of Swami sheets for that truck; it has no place ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... killed—and not any too soon. If it only were practicable to kill him in real life! A story—to be called The Passing of Polonius—in which a king issues a decree condemning to death every long-winded, didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of rank, and is himself instantly arrested and decapitated. The man who suspects his own tediousness is ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... induce you to allow that fellow the honour of reading with you!" said Forgue. "He's a long-winded, pedantic, ill-bred lout!" ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Mr Willet, who had never beard so many words spoken together at one time, or delivered with such volubility and emphasis as by the long-winded gentleman; and whose brain, being wholly unable to sustain or compass them, had quite given itself up for lost; recovered so far as to observe that there was ample accommodation at the Maypole for all the party: good beds; ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... by dignity and sobriety, but it rarely rises to passion. He represents to a certain extent a reaction towards the pre-Rossinian school of opera, but, to be frank, most of 'La Juive' is exceedingly long-winded and dull. Besides his serious operas, Halevy wrote works of a lighter cast, which enjoyed popularity in their time. But the prince of opera comique at this time was Auber (1782-1871). Auber began his career as a musician comparatively late ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... those preachers who was able to exchange the obscurity of a country parish for the public fame of a London pulpit, by reason of a certain gift of rhetorical power, the value of which it is impossible to estimate to-day. Such of his sermons as are still extant are prosy, long-winded, dogmatic absurdities, overloaded with periphrastic illustrations in scriptural language. They are meaningless to a degree, which would make one wonder at the docility and patience of a seventeenth century congregation, if one had not witnessed a similar spirit ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... Changed his note of a sudden to God save the King,) Still wise as he's blooming and fat as he's clever, Himself and his speeches as lengthy as ever. Here offers you still the full use of his breath, Your devoted and long-winded proser ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... him. "Listen, Pollnitz, you are still a long-winded and doubtful companion, notwithstanding your seventy-six years. Deliberate a moment; if that which you tell me is not important, and requiring speedy attention, I will punish you severely for having dared to interrupt ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... brilliance reaches The playwright's mouthing shams, And the long-winded speeches Grow brisk as epigrams. My heart, in sudden clover, With smiles adorns my face, For, when the Act is over, I need not keep my place. I'll chase my fears, like foxes, When next the curtain falls— I'll then be in the boxes, Though now ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... knew it by every shrinking fibre in his body, he knew it by the sudden dizzy whirling of his brain, at the mere thought of that calamity. An hour and a half, perhaps an hour and three-quarters, if the doctor was long-winded, and then would begin again that active agony from which, even in the dull ache of the present, he shrunk as from the bite of fire. He saw, in a vision, the family pew, the somnolent cushions, the Bibles, the psalm-books, Maria with ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no," replied Canalis; "he is wordy; he's long-winded, a plodder in argument, and a good logician; but he doesn't understand the higher logic, that of events and circumstances; consequently he has never had, and never will have, the ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... that I came into Parliament. My Lord Chatham, whose wisdom his party in those days used to call superhuman, raised his oracular voice in the House of Peers against the American contest; and my countryman, Mr. Burke—a great philosopher, but a plaguy long-winded orator—was the champion of the rebels in the Commons—where, however, thanks to British patriotism, he could get very few to back him. Old Tiptoff would have sworn black was white if the great Earl had bidden him; and he made his son give up his commission in the Guards, in ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... close the conversation, fearing long-winded recollections of "better days." I have heard such so often from one landlady and another. I had not learnt much. Who was the original of the miniature, how it came to be lying forgotten in the dusty book-case were ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... told that it is ably done," continued his majesty, still attentively observing him. "You will acknowledge that it is exceedingly difficult to render the concise style of Tacitus into the prolix, long-winded German?" ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... of soft, kindergarten clay, and all a wife has to do is to sit down and mould him as she pleases. Well, some men may be like that, but Peter isn't. The family never really have forgiven me for calling their darling "Charles Edward" Peter. I perfectly loathe that long-winded Walter-Scotty name, and I don't care how many grandfathers it's descended from. I'm sorry, of course, if it hurts their feelings, but as long as I don't object to their calling him what THEY like, I don't see why they mind. And as for my managing ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... collection men do not threaten. The best of them actually promote good-will through their handling of the accounts. The bully-ragging, long-winded collection letter has no place in self-respecting business. The so-called statements of collection by which papers drawn up to resemble writs are sent through the mails, or served, not only have no place in business but many of them ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... a very healthy and an equally neglected exercise. Few vocations call upon us to fully expand the chest once a month. Running improves the wind, it is said. We give the name of long-winded to those who have a reserve of breathing capacity which they do not use in ordinary exertions, but which lies ready to carry them through extraordinary efforts without distress or exhaustion. Such persons breathe quietly and deeply. Running forms part of the training of the prize-fighter. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... of Doncaster! Come, come, Mr. Deuceace, don't you be running your rigs upon me; I ain't the man to be bamboozl'd by long-winded stories about dukes and duchesses. You think I don't know you; every man knows you and your line of country. Yes, you're after young Dawkins there, and think to pluck him; but you shan't,—no, by —— you shan't." (The ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stared. "You're a long-winded chap," he said, "but I'm blessed if I know what you're driving at. Suppose you tell me what you've come for, Mr."—he referred as if from habit to ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... pere Russel, amusing, long-winded, in many points like papa; mere Russel, nice, delicate, likes hymns, knew Aunt Margaret ('t'ould man knew Uncle Alan); fille Russel, nominee Sara (no h), rather nice, lights up well, good voice, interested face; Miss L., nice also, washed out ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... night, On my left hand my Horace, a nymph on my right: No memoirs to compose, and no post-boy to move, That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love; For her, neither visits, nor parties at tea, Nor the long-winded cant of a dull refugee: This night and the next shall be hers, shall be mine To good or ill-fortune the third we resign. Thus scorning the world, and superior to Fate, I drive in my car in professional state; So with Phia thro' Athens ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... wrong at times: the doctor fumed like his little craters; growled out long-winded, exhaustive German imprecations: wouldn't even eat. Then again the demon of work would drive him with thong and spur: he would rush to his craters, to his laboratories, to his ledger for the purpose of entering unintelligible commentaries. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he ever made friends with anyone in his life—he is constitutionally incapable of friendship. I have seen him in the company of one or two unaccountably dreary men, himself the dreariest of the party. He is long-winded, exact in statement, ponderous. He has no sort of imagination, and no touch of humour. He can be depended upon to give you a mass of detailed information on almost any point, and every subject that he touches turns to lead before your eyes. One has a sense of mental ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gas corporations interrupted freely. The mayor himself was constantly drawn into the argument, but his replies were so simple and convincing that there was not much satisfaction to be had in stirring him. Instead, the various counsel took refuge in long-winded discussions about the methods of conducting gas plants in other cities, the cost of machinery, labor and the like, which took days and days, and threatened to extend into weeks. The astounding facts concerning large profits and the present intentions of not only this but every other ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... once or twice, looked up at the Doctor with eyes which plainly declared "there never was your equal for blessedness and goodness under the sun," and commenced her story in the long-winded manner ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... his long-winded harangue with the logical deduction at the end, he was quite tired, and the perspiration streamed from his face. He could not, alas, even express himself correctly in Russian, though he knew no other language, so that he was quite exhausted, almost ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... magical paralysis. Yet let not patriotism despair. Have we not a virtuous Petion, Mayor of Paris, a wholly patriotic municipality? Patriotism, moreover, has her constitution that can march, the mother-society of the Jacobins; where may be heard Brissot, Danton, Robespierre, the long-winded, incorruptible man. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... a note to Kinmont Willie, I wrote: "There is a prose account very like the ballad in Scott of Satchells' History of the Name of Scott" (1688). Satchells' long-winded story is partly in unrhymed and unmetrical lines, partly in rhymes of various metres. The man, born in 1613, was old, had passed his life as a soldier; certainly could not write, ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... and gravitation, whose minister he is.—This hard work will always be done by one kind of man; not by scheming speculators, nor by soldiers, nor professors, nor readers of Tennyson; but by men of endurance, deep-chested, long-winded, tough, slow and sure, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... stones in the streets of Genoa, and to look back upon the city with affection as connected with many hours of happiness and quiet! But these are my first impressions honestly set down; and how they changed, I will set down too. At present, let us breathe after this long-winded journey. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... had therefore not Mill's educational advantages. He tried energetically, and not unsuccessfully, to improve his mind, but he never quite surmounted the weakness of the self-educated man, and had no special literary talent. His writing, in fact, is dull and long-winded, though he has the merit of judging for himself, and of saying ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... unnoticed, far from it; and from time to time we find the name of Sidney reappearing in French books, while the giants of English literature continued entirely unknown on the continent. When Charles Sorel satirized the long-winded romances of his time in his "Berger Extravagant," he did not forget Sidney, who figures among the authors alternately praised and criticized in the disputation between Clarimond and Philiris. The criticism is not very severe, and compared with the treatment inflicted on other authors, it would ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... Sally Ann headed him off before he'd gone six steps, and says she, 'There ain't anything the matter with you, Job Taylor; you set right down and hear what I've got to say. I've knelt and stood through enough o' your long-winded prayers, and now it's my time to ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... And old Jacob, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, settled himself to recount the adventure of the bear. Hector, who had heard Louis's edition of the roast bear, was almost impatient at being forced to listen to old Jacob's long-winded history, which included about a dozen other stories, all tagged on to this, like links of a lengthened chain; and he was not sorry when the old lumberer, taking his red night-cap out of his pocket, at last stretched himself out on a buffalo skin he had brought ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... tedious to relate each step of the ensuing negotiations. These simple Africans would have needed no instruction from civilization to carry on the most long-winded submarine controversy in the most approved and circuitous manner. At the end of one solid hour of grave and polite exchange it developed that the white man was not at present in camp. Somewhat later Simba permitted ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... and were thrown upon their own wit. In humorous dialogue and naive sentiment the lusty burgesses of the fifteenth century were thoroughly at home, and the comedy and pathos of these scenes must have been as welcome a relief to the spectators, from the |133| long-winded solemnity of many of the plays, as they are to modern readers. In the York mysteries the shepherds make uncouth exclamations at the song of the angels and ludicrously try to imitate it. The Chester shepherds ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... delightful and daring NUANCES of free, free-spirited thought. And just as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in body and conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius are untranslatable for him. Everything ponderous, viscous, and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying species of style, are developed in profuse variety among Germans—pardon me for stating the fact that even Goethe's prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a reflection of the "good old time" to which it belongs, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and slender and supple as she was, and moreover rendered swift with the terrible spur of hysteria, was no match for Annie Eustace who had the build of a racing human, being long-winded and limber. Annie caught up with her, just before they reached Alice Mendon's house, and had her held by one arm. Margaret gave a stifled shriek. Even in hysteria, she did not quite lose her head. She had ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was one of those. A good fellow and a good worker with his father, he began by frequenting corner-stores at night and before long considered himself an authority in politics and was ready to argue in a long-winded and dreary fashion with any who disputed his crude assertions. Taken notice of by leaders in the agitation going on, appointed to committees and consulted as to plans on foot, he became carried away and neglected his home duties. When the explosion took place in December, ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... the way, together with some additional embroideries, are set out at greater length in other volumes by Ferdinand Bac (who confounds Ludwig I with Maximilian II) and the equally unreliable Eugene de Mirecourt and Auguste Papon. German writers, on the other hand, have, if apt to be long-winded, at least avoided the more obvious pitfalls. Among the books and pamphlets (many of them anonymous) of Teutonic origin, the following will repay research: Die Graefin Landsfeld (Gustav Bernhard); Lola Montez, Graefin ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... quickly. "Are my long-winded sacrifices to the god of reason distasteful? I believe I am involuntarily making them so because I am jealous of the fellow after all. Nevertheless I am serious; I want you to get married; though I shall always have a secret grudge against the man who marries you. Agatha will ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... Crites, who is not more long-winded than may be permitted to a polite proser, at least on the Thames of a summer evening, somewhat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... to her when that affair was over. I didn't pester her with long-winded scrawls. She changed her mind, and I've changed mine; and so we're equal. I've paid her, and she can pay me ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... he gazed into her face he forgot where he was, did not even wonder why his brother had suddenly turned away and, beginning some long-winded speech, had rushed after a man who hastily covered his head and tried to escape; he did not notice that thousands of eyes were fixed on him, and among them his mother's; he could merely repeat: "thanks" and "Dada"—the only words he could find. He would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in the papers With a lengthy interview 'Bout the "welfare of the people," And the "octopi" he knew; And he made long-winded speeches As he raked things fore and aft, But he only talked "retrenchment," ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... and since both poems can only work out the justification by long argumentative speeches, both poems lamentably fail as real solutions of the difficulty. To this I shall recur, and here merely observe that qui s' excuse s' accuse: a God who can only explain himself by the help of long-winded scolding, or of long-winded advocacy, though he employ an archangel for advocate, has given away the half of his case by the implicit admission that there are two sides to the question. And when we have put ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... long-winded Letter, full of compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we know well already: that however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science originating in the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... marks in silver, I found out that the Tisch examines my body-servants daily and that, night after night, she sits up hours writing long-winded reports. She is the King's tool, but she let the cat out of the bag when cornered. That gives me the whip hand for ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... The limp loquacity of long-winded rhetoric, so natural to men and soldiers in an hour of emergency, which distinguishes the dialogue between the Black Prince and Audley on the verge of battle, is relieved by this one last touch of quasi-Shakespearean thought or style discoverable in the play of which I must presently take ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... some Indian blood in his veins, which was manifested by a certain Indian complexion and cast of countenance, but more especially by his propensities and habits. He was a tall, lank fellow, swift of foot, and long-winded. He was generally equipped in a half Indian dress, with belt, leggings, and moccasins. His hair hung in straight gallows locks about his ears, and added not a little to his sharking demeanor. It is an old ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the temple precincts and wandered along aimlessly. Turning a corner, I ran into an old acquaintance-one of those long-winded fellows whose conversational powers ignore ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... have been making ourselves more at peace with our own souls. And now that our card-house of high finance has gone to smash, I realize more than ever that I've got to be at peace with my own soul and on speaking terms with my own husband. And if this strikes you as an exceptionally long-winded sermon, my beloved, it's merely to make plain to you that I haven't surrendered to any sudden wave of emotionalism when I talk about migrating over to that Harris Ranch. It's nothing more than good old hard-headed, practical self-preservation, for I wouldn't ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... translation of Varchi's peroration I have endeavoured to sustain those long-winded periods of which he was so perfect and professed a master. We must remember that he actually read this dissertation before the Florentine Academy on the second Sunday in Lent, in the year 1546, when Michelangelo ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... lasts, convinces me more and more that General Trochu is not the right man in the right place. He writes long-winded letters, utters Spartan aphorisms, and complains of his colleagues, his generals, and his troops. The confidence which was felt in him is rapidly diminishing. He is a good, respectable, honest man, without a grain of genius, or of that fierce indomitable energy which sometimes replaces ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... I can tell you WHAT it can do, but the WHY is still as much of a mystery as ever. Briefly, this new element, or maybe it's a compound, I'm not sure which, reacts in a very strange manner to light. Let me show you. That'll beat any long-winded ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... contemptuous or offensive as the word blackguard does. The emptiness of the person to whom it applies is very harmless. Its etymon blague (bladder, tobacco-bag), the pouch, which smoking voluptuaries use to deposit their tobacco, is perfectly symbolic of the inane, bombastic, windy, and long-winded speeches and sayings of the blagueur. Every French commercial traveller, buss-tooter, and Parisian jarvy is one. When he deports himself with modesty, and shows a gentlemanly tact in his peculiar avocation, we call him a craqueur (a cracker). "Ancient Pistol" was the ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... o' the precise words in this case, but that's the sentiment, and everybody knows that sentiment is everything in poetry, whether ye understand it or not. Fire away, leftenant, an' don't be long-winded if ye can ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... the Linnean Transactions.[53] It is admirably done. I cannot conceive that the most firm believer in Species could read it without being staggered. Such papers will make many more converts among naturalists than long-winded books such as I shall write if ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... and morbid visions, constantly suspected each other, and retracted today what they had sworn to yesterday, now whined for mercy, now maintained a defiant silence; while the inhabitants of the city, the villages, the whole province, demanded the termination of the long-winded procedure and the punishment of the evil-doers, with a fanaticism whose fire was tended and fed by mysterious agents; while, finally, the court, in the uncontrollably increasing flood of accusations and calumnies, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the ante-room of the Chief of Command. The Chief was tied up in one of the long-winded meetings which the Silver-sleeves devoted largely to the making of new rules and regulations for the confusion of both men and officers of the Service, but he came out long enough to give me the ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... good turn if I could, an' bound for a lark anyhow. But we'd smuggled in novels and story-papers till our heads was full of what fine things we'd do. They didn't give us better things. There was books—yes, plenty of 'em—but mostly long-winded stuff about fellers that died young, bein' too good for this world. There wasn't anybody to tell us we'd a right to some fun, and the Lord meant us to enjoy life, nor to get us busy in some way ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... knows just what hymn to sing and when to sing it, who can pitch it in the right key, and who has all the leading lines committed to memory. Sometimes it devolves upon the leader to "sing down" a long-winded or uninteresting speaker. Committing to memory the leading lines of all the Negro spiritual songs is no easy task, for they run up into the hundreds. But the accomplished leader must know them all, because the congregation ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... had turned gray from old age. Mrs. Bullfinch's hair was gray, too, and she hadn't taught Freshman English. Jerry would have asked her what had turned her hair gray if he had not been afraid it would have been too long a story. Not that Jerry disliked Mrs. Bullfinch even though she was long-winded. She was kind and she made good cookies. Jerry usually went home from the Bullfinch ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... although Jennens had considerable sense of the picturesque, and offered Handel opportunities for what may be called spectacular music on the grand scale, his literary style was pompous, rhetorical, and long-winded. Handel protested perpetually against the length of the work, for the Handelian style of composition naturally extended the prolixity of the words; Jennens greatly resented the musician's criticism, and insisted on ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... that his heart was set on Freddie and myself, though he thought (and rightly) that I was a mere clodhopper at my books compared to Fred. As far as the classics went, my father was in the right of it. But then Freddie could not write English, except in a kind of long-winded, elaborate way, as if he were translating from Cicero, which very likely was ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... a game!" I cried indignantly. "Why, it was you that took half an hour with some long-winded story about a buffalo. Professor Summerlee will ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... system; on finding a band, one man would do the running for six or eight miles, then another would relieve him, and so on, the idea being to get outside of them and so gradually round them in to the grazing herd. We had special horses kept and used for this purpose, fast and long-winded, as the pace had to be great and one must be utterly regardless of dog and badger holes, etc. This kind of work we kept up for a couple of weeks, some days being successful, some days getting a run but securing nothing. We made a satisfactory ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... reason for all these long-winded preliminaries. Sancho wanted his master to make definite arrangements with him for compensation. But here was the drawback. Don Quixote could recall no incident in any of the many books he had read, when a knight errant had given his squire fixed wages. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... if Mrs. Arnold had divined her friend's thoughts. "Hubert," said she, rather excitedly, "I firmly believe, and will always believe, that if we had not taken matters in time that Phil Lawson, with his long-winded speeches, would have wrought a spell upon papa and so completely influenced him that he would have had Madge body and soul, for I am certain that she was fool enough ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... or five in the afternoon; there were the lawyers of the Chastelet, the Court of Aids, the Court of Accounts, and the Parliament, to say nothing of the city authorities and other constituted bodies. The addresses were no short unmeaning things, like those uttered in our poor cold times, but good long-winded harangues, some in French, some in Latin, and they went on, one after the other, for three days consecutively. On the third day, when the royal patience must have been wellnigh exhausted, and the chancellor's talents at reply worn tolerably threadbare, the king would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... common to all her family, why I was not dancing. I can remember blushing hotly at the question, but at the same time feeling—for all my efforts to prevent it—a self-satisfied smile steal over my face as I began talking, in the most inflated and long-winded French, such rubbish as even now, after dozens of years, it shames me to recall. It must have been the effect of the music, which, while exciting my nervous sensibility, drowned (as I supposed) the less intelligible portion of my utterances. Anyhow, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... living at Bridgnorth two of her tales were published, one called Margarita and the other Susan Grey. Probably very few people now living have ever seen or read these stories; and if we did come across them it is to be feared we should think them very dull and long-winded. But when new they were much admired, particularly Susan Grey, which was one of the earliest tales written to interest rich and educated people in the poor and ignorant. It was widely read and reprinted ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... his kingship by divine grace, and in the Emperor's case because his father had made the journey to Jerusalem thirty years before. The Emperor, lastly, cannot but have been glad to escape, if only for a time, such harassing concerns as party politics, scribbling journalists, long-winded ministerial ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... that demands delicacy, honour, and address. Men of talents were often, he observed, devoid of integrity, and men of integrity devoid of talents. When he had obtained Hervey's assent to this proposition, he next paid him sundry handsome, but long-winded compliments: then he complimented himself for having just thought of Mr. Hervey as the fittest person he could apply to: then he congratulated himself upon his good luck in meeting with the very man he was just ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... to explain the arrival of all these gentlemen. He was himself somewhat intoxicated, but the prince gathered from his long-winded periods that the party had assembled quite ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... I prepared the doctor for the possibility of my going out at night by a long-winded, babbling, and entirely fictitious account of Bolton's morning call, from which it appeared that Mr. Bolton was so interested in Mr. Hobhouse's account of how he saw the ship blow up that he would probably ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... account, and a long vista of pleasant Friday evenings suddenly vanished. He, too, resolved to vary his visits, and, starting with a basis of two a week, sat trying to solve the mathematical chances of selecting the same as Kate Nugent; calculations which were not facilitated by a long-winded account from Mr. Wilks of certain interesting amours ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... with thy definitions," cried Ferret, "and make an end to thy long-winded story. Thou hast no title to be so tedious, until thou comest to have a coif in the Court ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... see my bird," cried Oliver, who was amused by the sailor's long-winded narrative. "If it takes so much time to shoot one bird, how long would it take ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... he raced. Long-legged, light-flanked, long-winded, and underfed, he had the adaptability for speed of a little race-horse. Jerome Edwards was quite a famous boy in the village for his prowess in running. No other boy could equal him. Marvellous stories were told about it. "Jerome Edwards, he can run half ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... which some one gave her of "the thorn in the side of the convention." These annual gatherings were very largely in the nature of mutual admiration societies among the men, who consumed much of the time in complimenting each other and the rest of it in long-winded orations. During this one Miss Anthony arose and said that, as all members had the same right to speak, she would suggest that speeches should be limited so as to give each a chance. She made some of the men furious by stating that they spoke so low they ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... dictates of the heart in defiance of their creed, leave their fate to be sealed by the outcome of deadly combat between the contending factions. Armed to the teeth, the cavaliers of the respective parties march to and fro, haranguing each other in monotonous tones. After a long-winded, wearisome challenge, they brandish their weapons and meet in a series of single combats which merge in a general melee as the princes are vanquished and the hand of the disputed enchantress ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... course. This being, as a rule, true, the business of the historian is to understand the influences which led to the first, not the second, decision of the Representative or Senator or President or even Justice of the Supreme Court. Hence long-winded speeches or tortuous decisions of courts have not been studied so closely as the statistics of the cotton or tobacco crops, the reports of manufacturers, and the conditions of the frontier, which determined more of the votes of members of Congress than ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... What, is it time for your train? Well, Douglas, then here's to our meeting again And meanwhile, old man, don't forget the pedantic And long-winded ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... his own speech, and of course read every word of it once more. As he did so it occurred to him that the reporters had been more than courteous to him. The man who had followed him had been, he thought, at any rate as long-winded as himself; but to this orator less than half a column had been granted. To him had been granted ten lines in big type, and after that a whole column and a half. Let Lord Chiltern ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... for the opportunity that never came, and consoling himself with the fact that no one else seemed more fortunate in winning her favour than he. The only strange male who attained to the privilege of addressing her was a long-winded and elderly gentleman of the British perpetual-travelling type, at least one representative of which is found on every transcontinental train, and it was plain enough that he bored ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... The cloud, and drive the hag to hell. The moon, deliver'd from her pain, Displays her silver face again. Note here, that in the chemic style, The moon is silver all this while. So (if my simile you minded, Which I confess is too long-winded) When late a feminine magician,[1] Join'd with a brazen politician,[2] Exposed, to blind the nation's eyes, A parchment[3] of prodigious size; Conceal'd behind that ample screen, There was no silver to be seen. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... there was Pete Lytell, who wore a gray derby on the side of his head. He always had money and he was customarily cheerful, so Anthony held aimless, long-winded conversation with him through many afternoons of the summer and fall. Lytell, he found, not only talked but reasoned in phrases. His philosophy was a series of them, assimilated here and there ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... peculiar to that hungry season. The cook stood with a huge six-pound piece of pork uplifted on his tormentors, his mate ceased to bale out the pea-soup, and the whole ship seemed paralysed. The boatswain, having checked himself in the middle of his long-winded dinner-tune, drew a fresh inspiration, and dashed off into the opposite sharp, abrupt, cutting sound of the "Pipe belay!" the essence of which peculiar note is that its sounds should be understood and acted on with the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... pretence of morals. At the head of the table sits Mirabel or Belmour (dressed in the French fashion and waited on by English imitators of Scapin and Frontin). Their calling is to be irresistible, and to conquer everywhere. Like the heroes of the chivalry story, whose long-winded loves and combats they were sending out of fashion, they are always splendid and triumphant—overcome all dangers, vanquish all enemies, and win the beauty at the end. Fathers, husbands, usurers are the foes these champions contend with. They are merciless in old ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... toast, while the little girls were having their luncheon, and desperate were the efforts she was obliged to make, to keep from laughing at the speeches they made over the meal. They were twenty times more amusing than the heavy, long-winded jokes with which aldermen, and other big bugs entertain each other for hours at the great public dinners, where they are obliged to give each other the wink to let every one know where the laugh ought to come in. No! it was just one little, rollicking, chuckling laugh all lunch time; ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... or that, dawdling through long-winded tales of travel, and when his recollection or invention flagged Mrs. Habersham introduced topics so inimical to Mrs. Ames' frequently aired views that this lady rose passionately to the fray. Woman's Suffrage, Socialism, the Decline of the Church, ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... proprietors of the Herald (now dead) being also his guest. This gentleman suddenly turned to Donald, and speaking not with intentional brutality, but simply in the frankness of unrestrained good-fellowship, asked him "when that d——d long-winded story of his was going to stop?" adding that it must be got out of the way in a week or two, as they wanted to begin the publication of another. I saw how my poor friend turned pale at the cruel thrust. He faltered out a promise that he would finish the tale at once, but I felt that ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... out on the prairie where his horses were feeding. He carried a rope in his hand, and, throwing it over the fast buffalo horse, that he had told me to ride when I first hunted buffalo, he put the rope in my hand, and said: "Son, I give you this horse; he is fast, and he is long-winded. You have seen that he can overtake buffalo. I tell you now that he is a good horse for war. If you ride him when you go on the warpath, you can get up close to your enemy, and strike him; he will not be able to ...
— When Buffalo Ran • George Bird Grinnell
... just finished a letter to his brother; it was one of these wearisome business letters, enclosing some papers he had had to sign. He never could make out where the proper place was for him to put his name on these tiresome, long-winded documents. But, wonderful to relate, his brother always told him that it was perfectly correct, and Christian Frederick was most particular in such matters. The old gentleman had just sent off the letter, ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... of the two powers confronting each other much ink was shed, however, if no blood, and the representations, letters, bonds, and assurances must have kept the scribes on either side in constant occupation. The Congregation was certainly the more argumentative and long-winded of the correspondents, and never seems to have lost an opportunity of a letter. They pervaded the country, an ever-increasing band, which, whenever an emergency occurred, was multiplied from every quarter at the raising of a finger ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... worth going far to see. He had grown perfectly calm. His weakness had been followed by a sense of strength wholly extraordinary. His old training in the rough athletics of the wilderness had made him supple, agile, wary, long-winded. His eyes hadnever known what it was to be subdued; he had never taken them ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... your long-winded way, if you like," said Algernon; "all I know is, that I should often have wanted a five-pound note, if—that is, if I hadn't happened to be dressed like a gentleman. With your prospects, Ned, I should propose to charming Peggy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his way of writing, and that of all other long-winded authors, appears to me very tedious; for his preface, definitions, divisions, and etymologies, take up the greatest part of his work; whatever there is of life and marrow, is smothered and lost in the preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him, which is a great deal ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... armament which are needed to give their country the protection, and their foreign policy the dignity, which other countries of far less importance are able to sustain. No wonder that her writers are pointing out that instead of being satisfied with immense long-winded despatches and notes, couched in grandiloquent language, which Spanish Foreign Ministers seem to think amply sufficient, strong nations have a habit of sending an iron-clad, or two or three cruisers to back up their demands, and that no other European country but Spain ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... some long-winded, Luby," remarked a tall man who smoked a pipe, "an' likewise yore angry passions has run away with yore sense. Yuh can't string a man up because he won't talk; 'cause if yuh do we'll sick the deputy sheriff on yuh an' mebbe you'll go ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... region; born, and bred there from boyhood, who had long since become wheezy and asthmatical, and short of breath, except in the article of story-telling; in which respect they were still marvellously long-winded. These gentry were much opposed to steam and all new-fangled ways, and held ballooning to be sinful, and deplored the degeneracy of the times; which that particular member of each little club who kept the keys of the nearest church, professionally, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... my dear sir, Mentor sometimes surprised Telemachus. I am Mentor—without being, I hope, quite so long-winded as that respectable philosopher. Let me put it in two words. Emily's happiness is precious to you. Take care you are not made the means of wrecking it! Will you consent to a ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... man's lead, an' she took her revenge out on Hawthorn. She would lean forward an' hold his eye, an' say, in the sweetest voice you ever heard, "Oh. Mr. Hawthorn, I want to tell you somethin' that happened at school;" an' then she would start in an' tell some long-winded tale 'at didn't have no more point than a mush room, an' as she told along she would call his attention to certain details as though they was goin' to figger in at the wind-up. When she would reach the ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason |
