"Pithy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the banker merely bows and points to one. Lawyers, on the contrary, are expected to behave like any other gentlemen; so also physicians. The patient is directed in both cases to relate his grievances in short, pithy sentences; answer all questions clearly; apologise for taking up their time by asking them in turn—in consequence, he must say, of his own ignorance; and then finish by warmly thanking them for the attention they give to his affairs. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... Minister of Education of that period that the children attending the State schools should be instructed in the duties of citizenship, and that they should be taught something of the laws under which they lived, and I was commissioned to write a short and pithy statement of the case. It was to be simple enough for intelligent children in the fourth class; 11 or 12—it was to lead from the known to the unknown—it might include the elements of political economy and sociology—it might make use ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... Baker, Jack Straw, Jack Trewman, Jack Carter, and probably of many more. Some of the choicest flowers of the publications charitably written and circulated by them gratis are upon record in Walsingham and Knyghton: and I am inclined to prefer the pithy and sententious brevity of these bulletins of ancient rebellion before the loose and confused prolixity of the modern advertisements of constitutional information. They contain more good morality and less bad ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... bodies which acquire entirely new properties when raised beyond a certain degree of temperature. Indeed, we frequently meet touches of the conversational Johnson in his controversial writing. 'Taxation no Tyranny' is at moments almost as pithy as Swift, though the style is never so simple. The celebrated Letter to Chesterfield, and the letter in which he tells MacPherson that he will not be 'deterred from detecting what he thinks a cheat ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... had a ready method of dealing with obnoxious authors, as poor Peter Wentworth discovered, who wrote A Pithy Exhortation to Her Majesty for establishing her Successor to the Crown, and for his pains was committed to the Tower, where he pined and died. This work advocated the claims of James VI. of Scotland, and was written ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... the architectural history of the cathedral (as distinguished from the description of it, which will be given in due course), it may be well to say a few words upon the principles which have guided the writer in his treatment of the subject. These cannot be better expressed than in a very pithy sentence uttered by Professor Willis at the meeting of the Archaeological Institute at this very place in 1861. "In all investigations of this nature, I am of opinion that it is requisite to ascertain first ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... Roi.' ''Tis a pithy prolegomenon,' quoth I, and so read on.... 'By all which it appears,' quoth I, having read it over a little too rapidly, 'that if a man sets out in a post-chaise for Paris, he must go on travelling in one all the days of his life, or pay ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... return. To this, he readily assented, and searched diligently for his cardcase, but that mark of gentility was not at hand. He, however, made a page from his memorandum book serve his purpose, and took his leave amid the loud congratulations of the applauding crowd, with the following pithy address to the constables: 'I can't well see what use you are. A hundred years ago there were no police, and Lord Mayor's shows went off better than they do now. For my part, I can't see what you do here at all, for you know'—he added ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... Among other pithy and patriotic points made by him in that great speech —[July 9, 1861.]—were these: "So long as there was a hope of a peaceful solution, I prayed and implored for Compromise. I have spared no effort for a peaceful solution of these troubles; I have failed, and there is but ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... despotically ruled Dependencies have ever served to damage the character of our people by feeding the habits of snobbish subservience, the admiration of wealth and rank, the corrupt survivals of the inequalities of feudalism.... Cobden writing in 1860 of our Indian Empire, put this pithy question: "Is it not just possible that we may become corrupted at home by the reaction of arbitrary political maxims in the East upon our domestic politics, just as Greece and Rome were demoralised by their contact with Asia?" Not merely is the reaction ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... enjoyed watching it, as it scolded him from a high limb, but he could not delay and he set about his task quickly. Cutting off the end of each quill, he scraped it clean inside and washed the pithy part out. He had seen his father prepare a quill in this way ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... with Randal's pithy and Spartan logic.)—"Upon my word sir, you express yourself very well. I must own that I began these questions in the hope of differing from you; for I like ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... out with an angry scowl, and as he strode with noisy tread across the hall, said something uncommonly pithy to the footman about "upstarts" and "puppies," and "people who thought they was made o' different dirt from others," accompanied with many other words and expressions which we may ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... inexhaustible supply of firewood. Besides the trees I have mentioned, there is the xanthorea, or grass-tree, a plant which cannot be intelligibly described to those who have never seen it. The stem consists of a tough pithy substance, round which the leaves are formed. These, long and tapering like the rush, are four-sided, and extremely brittle; the base from which they shoot is broad and flat, about the size of a thumb-nail, and very resinous ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... to your pleasant satisfaction in "The Critic's Friend" that I owe the early copy of the Scots Observer, pointed with proud mark, in the blue pencil of office, whereby the impatient author hastened to indicate the pithy personal paragraphs, that no time should be wasted upon other matter with which the periodical ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... "You are pithy at reply, young man; but I know something of Jacob Armitage, and we know," continued he, putting his finger close to some writing opposite the name on the list, "with whom he has been associated, and with whom he has served. Now allow me to put one question. You have come, you ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... fiction of which I have yet been guilty."), and must thank you for the great pleasure which it has given me. Your discussions are, as it seems to me, clear to a quite marvellous degree, and many of the little interspersed flashes of wit are delightful. I particularly enjoyed the pithy judgment in about five words on Comte. (292/2. Possibly the passage referred to is on page 52.) Notwithstanding the clearness of every sentence, the subjects are in part so difficult that I found them stiff reading. I fear, therefore, that it will be ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... any other American to advance the material prosperity of his countrymen. It is said that his widely and faithfully read maxims made Philadelphia and Pennsylvania wealthy, while Poor Richard's pithy sayings, translated into many languages, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... paring down a straight slender stick of aromatic sumac, about three feet long, to the general thickness of less than half an inch, but leaving a head or button at one end. A ring was fashioned from a transverse slice of some hollow or pithy plant, so that it would slide freely up and down the slender wand, but would nob pass over the head. Eagle down was secured to the wooden head and also to the ring. In the dance (paragraph 129) the eagle down on the stick is burned off in the fire while the ring is held in the palm of the hand. ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... all history under the mantle of allegory. If histories so unlike as those of Hercules and Jesus, can, by a fertile imagination and allegorical interpretations, be brought to the same tally, no line of distinction remains between fact and fancy. As this pithy morsel will not overburthen the mail in passing and repassing between Quincy and Monticello, I send it for your perusal. Perhaps it will satisfy you, as it has me; and may save you the labor of reading twenty-four ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... weathercock on the top of the market house you look in there. A local fisherman was coming out, and in reply to the inevitable question as to the state of the river, he said, "Weel, she's awa' again." Pithy and characteristic, and full of information was this. It was a verdict—You may fish, but shall fish in vain this day. The Tweed is ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... to the Belgian Revolution; this was followed, in 1845, by a critical military work of great merit, "The Russo-Turkish Campaign of 1828-29 in European Turkey," which created a deep impression in military circles, and proved of considerable service in the Russo-Turkish campaign of 1877-78. Moltke's pithy and laconic style was founded on the model of his chief, General von Mueffling, his instructor in practical and theoretical tactics, in which the members of the German General Staff are required to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... man of the critical school takes the pithy aphorism "Melius autem est naturam secare quam abstrahere"[1] for his motto, the champion of free speculation may retort with another from the same hand, "Citius enim emergit veritas e falsitate quam e confusione;"[2] ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... had less to say than Langholm had been led to expect. He breathed again when he had read the sequence of short but pithy paragraphs. Mrs. Minchin's new name was not given after all, nor that of her adopted district; while Langholm himself only slunk into print as "a well-known novelist who, oddly enough, was among the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... times, through Borrow's books, he will probably dip into them here and there at intervals. By so doing he gradually makes his own anthology; but it may be that he will yet find place for another man's, if it has no pretension to completeness or authority, and will go into his pocket. Borrow is not a pithy writer, nor is he best when sententious; the following passages are, therefore, somewhat longer than is usual in this series of Anthologies. Even so, many of the best things in his books, especially from Wild Wales, have had to be omitted, because they are longer ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... There were others, however, who could not possibly deny, because they either saw or met with witnesses who had seen. These declared roundly that the whole thing was of the devil, drawing from Christ one of those pithy, common-sense arguments in which He excelled. The same two classes of opponents, the scoffers and the diabolists, face us to-day. Verily the old world goes round and so do the events upon ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to master this very intricate economic problem. W. H. Harvey's Coin's Financial School was the most widely read campaign document, although hundreds of similar pamphlets and books had an enormous circulation. The pithy and plausible arguments of "Coin" and his ready answers to questions supposedly put by prominent editors, bankers, and university professors, as well as by J. R. Sovereign, master workman of the Knights of Labor, tickled ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... the remark of Herodotus respecting one of the theories which he had heard for explaining the inundation of the Nile by a supposed connexion with the ocean—that the man who carries up his story into the invisible world, passes out of the range of criticism."[2] And he adds the following pithy note:—"Niebuhr puts together all the mythical and genealogical traces, many of them in the highest degree vague and equivocal, of the existence of Pelasgi in various localities; and then, summing up their cumulative effect, asserts, 'not as an hypothesis, but with full historical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... was actually junior partner in the firm—the firm of which it was said in the City, "If a man has Macnaughton, Macnaughton, Macnaughton, Macnaughton & Macnaughton behind him he is all right." The City is always coining pithy little epigrams ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... borders of woods, that is very poisonous. The cap of a true mushroom has a frill, the gills are free from the stem, they never grow down against it, but usually there is a small channel all around the top of the stem, the spores are brown-black, or deep purple black and the stem is solid or slightly pithy. It is said if salt is sprinkled on the gills and they become yellow the mushroom is poisonous, if black, they are wholesome. ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... which we choose to put by our conjecture into his mind; and after our toilful scrutiny is over we remain painfully conscious of the greatness of the chance that we have scarcely even approached the truth. Neither diary nor letters guide us; naught save reports of occasional pithy, pointed, pregnant remarks, evidence the most dubious, liable to be colored by the medium of the predilections of the hearer, and to be reshaped and misshaped by time, and by attrition in passing through ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... pie to the last moment, appeared at the kitchen-door bearing before her, with that air of extraordinary importance peculiar to the negro countenance on eventful occasions, a huge brown dish with which she advanced to the head of the table, and with an emphatic bump, answering to the pithy speeches of warriors and statesmen at critical moments, deposited the great Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. Looking proudly around, she ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... be laid down that short sentences are preferable to long ones. The tendency of the best writers of the present day is towards short, snappy, pithy sentences which rivet the attention of the reader. They adopt as their motto multum in parvo (much in little) and endeavor to pack a great deal in small space. Of course the extreme of brevity is to be avoided. Sentences can be too short, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... a sharp knife, remove seeds, and sprinkle with sugar, or loosen pulp; cut out pithy white centre; wipe knife after each cutting, so that the bitter taste may be avoided. Pour in white wine or sherry and sprinkle with powdered sugar, and let stand several hours in ice-chest to ripen. Serve cold in the shell. Decorate with ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... engaging, we conclude it is largely due to their lucidity, spontaneity, and large simplicity—qualities which make up a style original, fresh, convincing. His writing, whether about nature, literature, science, or philosophy, is always suggestive, potent, pithy; his humor is delicious; he says things in a crisp, often racy, way. Yet what a sense of leisureliness one has in reading him, as well as a ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... earliest days, man has attempted to formulate the relationships between causes and effects without, however, always possessing the specific knowledge essential to accuracy. Pithy statements have always had great appeal to man, as evidenced by the existence of proverbs, maxims, and adages preserved from times of great antiquity. Frequently, however, such statements are not expressive of the truth. Sometimes, again, they state facts, without, ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... the Amphitheatre, which is in a perfect state of preservation, and more elliptical in form than any of those I have yet seen, and the School of Eloquence, where R** mounted the rostrum, and gave us an oration extempore, equally pithy, classical and comical. About sunset we got into the carriages, and returned ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... verse more attracted the Roman amateurs than the Epigram. There was something congenial to the Roman spirit in the pithy distich or tetrastich which formed so considerable an element in the "elegant extracts" of Alexandria. The term epigram has altered its meaning with the lapse of ages. In Greek it signified merely an inscription ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Tale. The tendency toward diffuse expansion, an excess of diluting epithets, which became a feature of eighteenth-century poetry, Dryden has sensibly shunned, and has stuck close to the brisk narrative and pithy descriptions of Chaucer. If the subject in hand be concrete description, as in the Temple of Mars, Dryden is at his best, and surpasses his original; but if the abstract enters, as in the portraiture on the walls, he expands, and when ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... precious thoughts; not lofty soarings in philosophical and religious contemplation, which tax the brain to comprehend, like the thoughts of Pascal, but plain maxims for the daily intercourse of life, showing great purity of character and extraordinary natural piety, blended with pithy moral wisdom and a strong sense of duty. "Men exist for each other: teach them or bear with them," said he. "Benevolence is invincible, if it be not an affected smile." "When thou risest in the morning unwillingly, say, 'I am rising to the work of a human being; why, then, should I be ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... copy of the Will, framed on these instructions, to Lord Byron, the solicitor accompanied some of the clauses with marginal queries, calling the attention of his noble client to points which he considered inexpedient or questionable; and as the short pithy answers to these suggestions are strongly characteristic of their writer, I shall here give one or two of the clauses in full, with the respective ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... company save Dioneo being delivered of their several stories, he wist that 'twas his turn to speak. Wherefore, without awaiting any very express command, he enjoined silence on those that were commending Guido's pithy quip, and thus began:—Sweet my ladies, albeit 'tis my privilege to speak of what likes me most, I purpose not to-day to deviate from that theme whereon you have all discoursed most appositely; but, following in your footsteps, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... got to the back of the Oriental mind. He embodied the results of his long experience at times in sweeping and profound generalisations, which covered the whole field of Oriental thought and action, and at others in pithy epigrammatic sayings in which the racy humour, sometimes tinged with a shade of cynical irony, never obscured the deep feeling of sympathy he entertained for everything that was worthy of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... he always did; with great distinctness and deliberation, so that everybody in the church, young and old, could catch every syllable; and he preached, considerately enough, a very short sermon—pithy, homely, and affectionate. He reminded them that he was then preaching his thirty-first Christmas-day sermon from that pulpit! The service and the sacrament over, none of the congregation moved from their places till the ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Trinity, who was then a young man, embodied the best opinion of the time in an excellent pithy letter. He wrote to me that the trial simply established, what every one believed, that "Sir William Wilde was a pithecoid person of extraordinary sensuality and cowardice (funking the witness-box left him without a defender!) and that his wife ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... thought, passion, feeling, and volition. Thus, in the structure of his sentences, as in other things, his language is strictly physiognomic of his matter, the speaking exterior of the inward life; which life is indeed the one sole organizing principle of it. Accordingly he has specimens of the most pithy, piercing, sententious brevity; specimens with all the ample and rich magnificence of ordered pomp; specimens of terse, restrained, yet rhythmical, and finely-modulated vigour; specimens of the most ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... condescended to follow up the jester's witticisms with an explanation, to render them more obvious to the capacity of the audience, so that his wisdom became a sort of commentary on the buffoon's folly. And sometimes, in requital, the HOFF-NARR, with a pithy jest, wound up the conclusion of the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... letters are better known in this nation, among Azevedo's work we should be quick to appreciate such a pithy book as the Livro de uma Sogra,—the Book of a Mother-in-Law. And when the literature of these United States is at last (if ever, indeed!) released from the childish, hypocritical, Puritanic inhibitions forced upon it by quasi official societies, we may even relish, from among Azevedo's ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... illustrated in act and embodied in maxims of his own that have already been quoted. He did not employ the terminology of the art, which, though possibly pedantic in sound, is invaluable for purposes of discussion; but he expressed its leading principles in pithy, homely phrases of his own, which showed how accurate his grasp of it was. "If once you get in a soldier's rear, he is gone," was probably in part a bit of good-natured chaff at the sister profession; but it sums up in a few words the significance and strategic importance of his course in passing ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... there was every prospect—the loss of her spars would result in her separation from the remainder of the fleet, and as they remarked upon this to each other, the men smiled grimly, and exchanged certain short pithy remarks which, had they been heard by the occupants of the saloon, would have produced a ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... * "The style of Hobbes is the very perfection of didactic language. Short, clear, precise, pithy, his language never has more than one meaning, which never requires a second thought to find. By the help of his exact method, it takes so firm a hold on the mind, that it will not allow attention to slacken. His little tract on human nature has scarcely an ambiguous or a needless word. He ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... to write two long and instructive letters to his old master and good friend, Mr. John Walker of Whitby, which are to be found in Dr. Young's work. They give a rapid glance at the different places visited, with a few pithy remarks as to their peoples and productions; mention the pleasing reception he had from the king, and he alludes to the probability of being despatched on a second voyage ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... plunge back for the hall and, as luck would have it, found three of the four reporters at the table. The early close had left them ahead of time, and two were copying out their shorthand while the third was engaged on a pithy paragraph or two under the headline of "Stormy Proceedings—A Professor Ejected. What happens to Dogs ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on Caleb Harper, soberly, "an' save fer statin' hit es I goes along I hain't got nuthin' more ter say erbout hit—albeit hit seems ter me a right pithy matter fer young folks ter study erbout. I don't jedgmatically know nothin' erbout yore affairs," he nodded his head toward Maggard. "So fur's I've got any means ter tell, ye mout be independent rich or ye mout not hev ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... best. Perhaps there is a slight falling off in 'Following the Equator'; a trace of fatigue, of weariness, of disenchantment. But the last book of travels has passages as broadly humorous as any of the first; and it proves the author's possession of a pithy shrewdness not to be suspected from a perusal of its earliest predecessor. The first book was the work of a young fellow rejoicing in his own fun and resolved to make his readers laugh with him or at him; the latest book is the work of an older man, who has found that life is not all laughter, ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Mary M. Sisson, is a collection of well written and sensible paragraphs on amateur journalism, which ought to assist in arousing enthusiasm amongst many members hitherto dormant. Editor Dowdell's pithy little epigrams at the foot of each page form an entertaining feature, many of them being of considerable cleverness. Dowdell's Bearcat will soon revert to its original newspaper form, since Mr. Dowdell intends to make newspaper ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... public establishments ever dreamed that it was their duty to protect the life, property, or character of travellers, or indeed of any other human beings, save the members of their own families. In this pithy question the Amil of Bhilsa described the nature and character of the government. All the revenues of his immense dominions are spent entirely in the maintenance of the court and camps of the prince; ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Franklin, for the purpose of conveying important lessons in regard to the formation of character, and thus stimulating the young in the path of well-doing. Whole volumes of meaning are condensed into many of his wise and pithy sayings. ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... limes, and oranges. There is something about those oranges I should like to have explained. They are usually green and sweetish in taste, nor have they much white pith, but now and again you get a big bright yellow one from those trees that have been imported, and these are very pithy and in full possession of the flavour of verjuice. They have also got the papaw on the Coast, the Carica papaya of botanists. It is an insipid fruit. To the newcomer it is a dreadful nuisance, for no sooner ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... center of the cap, yet it may be eccentric or lateral; when it is wanting, the pileus is said to be sessile. The stem is solid when it is fleshy throughout, or hollow when it has a central cavity, or stuffed when the interior is filled with pithy substance. The stems are either fleshy or cartilaginous. When the former, it is of the same consistency as the pileus. If the latter, its consistency is always different from the pileus, resembling cartilage. The stem of the Tricholoma affords a good example ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... equally familiar. Instead of skimming Shakespeare, he went down into his depths. Few have written so subtly of Shakespeare's mysterious sonnets. Through all Lanier's productions we trace the influence of his early literary loves; but nowhere do the pithy quaintnesses of the old bards and chroniclers display themselves more effectively — not only in the illustrations, but through the innermost warp and woof of the texture of his ideas and his style — than in some ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... how do you do it? That Georgian's cue, it, Compared with your sceptre, is just a mere withy. You quietly front in with that calm "Voluntas," (Expressed for our guidance in epigrams pithy) You hint you can rule us, and guide us, and school us, "All off your own bat," without Clergy or Minister, Giving swift gruel to stage-prank, or duel, Or any thing else you think stupid ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... II., 1458) is still more explicit. In a few pithy sentences he gives the geography of Wallachia and Transylvania; the history of Dacia from the time of the Persian and Greek wars to the Roman conquest; the fall of the colony; the derivation of the name from Flaccus; and then he adds: 'The ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... your lordship knew the gentleman," enthusiastically writes Walsingham (August 12th, 1571) to the Earl of Leicester. "For courage abroad and counsell at home they give him here the reputation to be another [name in cipher]. He is in speech eloquent and pithy; but which is chiefest, he is in religion, as religious in life as he is sincere in profession. I hope God hath raised him up in these days, to serve for an instrument for the advancement of His glory." Digges, 128. In another ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... occasionally, so that it was impossible for any of her occupants to move, lest by so doing they should cause her to fill and swamp. The said occupants therefore did what they could in the way of relieving their feelings by vigorously anathematising us in good sonorous Spanish, and explaining, in short, pithy sentences, the sort of treatment that we might confidently look for when next they got us into their power. Then one of them happened to remember that all this time a brace of loaded pistols were sticking in his belt, whereupon he whipped them out and blazed away at us, his companions promptly ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Psalms, an anthology of sacred lyrics, the spirit of Hebrew poesy attains to its highest flight. Examples of didactic poetry are the Book of Job, and books like the Proverbs, composed mainly of pithy sayings or gnomes. Nowhere, save in the Psalms, does the spirit of the Hebrew religion and the genius of the people find an expression so grand and moving as in the Prophets, of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... morning, radiant with delight at seeing one of the most cherished purposes of his life so nearly accomplished, the venerable philosopher, attended by his seven colleagues, presented to the legislature of Pennsylvania a copy of the Federal Constitution, and in a brief but pithy speech, characterized by his usual homely wisdom, begged for it their most favourable consideration. His words fell upon willing ears, for nowhere was the disgust at the prevailing anarchy greater than in Philadelphia. But still it was not quite in order for the assembly to act upon the matter ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... in choosing to consort with them, and partly for what I had gained. As having nothing, yet possessing all things; as poor, yet making many rich—the boast of St. Paul, the hope of St. Francis of Assisi! in those pithy antitheses is the summa ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... most important element for success in top-working hickory trees. The technique of grafting has been so simplified as to make it fairly easy, and native stocks are usually vigorous. But unless the scions have full vitality success will be limited. They should be plump and not pithy. A limited success is possible with scions of feeble growth, or those subjected to devitalising influences in keeping or handling, but the largest success will be had with well grown scions, cut from vigorous trees or grafts, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... by a thick and high wall, beyond which we had, through the trees, a glimpse of a stately mansion. Our guard was a genuine Irishman, strongly resembling the late actor Power in physiognomy, with the very brogue which Power sometimes gave to his personages. He was a man of pithy speech, communicative, and acquainted apparently with every body, of every class, whom we passed on the road. Besides him we had for fellow-passengers three very intelligent Irishmen, on their way to Dublin. One of them was a tall, handsome gentleman, with ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... cheer was the only reply to the captain's short but pithy speech. The cheer was feebly answered by the enemy, who from her uncertain movements was evidently puzzled at the apparent change in Sir Sidney Salt's tactics. It seemed to those on board the Pride that contrary orders had been issued; ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... and bibliographical notes; according to Bibl. Krohn, p. 256, no. 3582.——BADENHAUPT. Bibliotheca selectissima; sive Catalogus librorum magnam partem philologicorum, quos inter eminent. Auctores Graeci et Romani classica quos collegit E.F. Badenhaupt, Berol, 1773, 8vo. The pithy bibliographical notes which are here and there scattered throughout this catalogue, render it of estimation in the opinion of the curious.——BALUZE. Bibliotheca Balusiana; seu catalogus librorum bibliothecae D.S. Baluzii, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... back the pre-revolutionary order, and that its main result had been to put the Jacobin spirit in chains. Canning's accession to office in 1822 meant that the foreign policy of England was to be definitely opposed to the policy of the 'Holy Alliance.' A pithy statement of his view is given in a remarkable letter, dated 1st February 1823, to the prince who was soon to become Charles X.[33] The French government had declared that a people could only receive ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... their vocabulary is as apt and as extensive for this purpose as that which suffices for the mental or spiritual needs of the bulk of European people, indeed, the capacity for abstracting the general nature and character from the particular experience or emotion into pithy expressions by way of simile or metaphor that admirably convey the perceived generalisation is as highly evolved in the Native as ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... purpose, or forestall any man's invention, but leave it every one to dilate and amplify as he shall think fit in his own judgment: let him advise with Siracides cap. 9. 1. "Be not jealous over the wife of thy bosom;" read that comfortable and pithy speech to this purpose of Ximenius, in the author himself, as it is recorded by Gomesius; consult with Chaloner lib. 9. de repub. Anglor. or Caelia in her epistles, &c. Only this I will add, that if it be considered aright, which causeth this jealous passion, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... green centre, pink-tinted outside, about 1/4 in. across, in bracted racemes 2 to 8 in. long. Calyx of 4 or 5 rounded persistent sepals, simulating petals; no corolla; 10 short stamens; 10-celled ovary, green, conspicuous; styles curved. Stem: Stout, pithy, erect, branching, reddening toward the end of summer, 4 to 10 ft. tall, from a large, perennial, poisonous root. Leaves: Alternate, petioled, oblong to lance-shaped, tapering at both ends, 8 to 12 ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... but for the latest news and the brightest "stories." The reputation for a newspaper which has been looked upon as pre-eminently desirable is not that it should be regarded by the public as well-informed or as expressing a sound judgment, but as pithy and interesting. The inevitable consequence of this tendency is that the great mass of English daily newspapers have lost their former high place in the estimation of the public as serious and necessary ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... which is instinctive in the boy, whatsoever his race or colour. Young, lusty shoots several feet long, and full of sap, are placed in the fire for a few minutes, and upon being "bashed" on a log or other hard substance the heated gas contained in the pithy core bursts out ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... were being cut by half a dozen of the Arrowhead forces. Two of these were swiftly detached and bade to repair the break in the fence by which one Timmins was now profiting, the entire six being first regaled with a brief but pithy character analysis of the offender, portraying him as a loathsome biological freak; headless, I gathered, and with the acquisitive ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... United States a national one, conceded to be useful. He has preached from the White House many doctrines; but among them he has left impressed on the American mind the one great truth of economic justice couched in the pithy and stinging phrase 'the square deal.' The task of making reform respectable in a commercialized world, and of giving the national a slogan in a phrase, is greater than the man who performed it is ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... was not bare, for a patch of great sunflowers found moisture enough for their roots somewhere far below, and sent up their great pithy stalks close to the house door, spread their rough leaves, and imitated the sun's disk in their broad, round, yellow flowers. There was an ugly euphorbia too, with its thorny, almost leafless branches and brilliant scarlet flowers; while grotesque and hideous-looking, ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... to the memory of an honest man, and still his mound remain without a monument. Not so, however, with the candle-maker. At an early day, Plain Talk had procured a plain stone, and was digesting in his mind what pithy word or two to place upon it, when there was discovered, in China Aster's otherwise empty wallet, an epitaph, written, probably, in one of those disconsolate hours, attended with more or less mental aberration, perhaps, so frequent ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... "To daunton me," must have been in the mind of the poet when he wrote this pithy lyric ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... observes, that 'it must not be understood that every accident implies a total wreck, with the loss of all hands. If a ship carries away any of her important spars, or, on entering her port, strikes heavily against a pier, whereby serious damage is occasioned, the accident is duly registered in this pithy chronicle of Lloyd's. Nevertheless, as we glance up and down the columns, it is no exaggeration to say, that two-thirds of the accidents recorded are of the most serious description. We are unable to say to what degree this ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... are stripped off when the grain is hard, and carried in carts to the barns, and placed in corn cribs adapted for the purpose. The grains are taken off the pithy cylinder on which they grow, by being rubbed or scraped on a piece of iron: in America a bayonet (a weapon called by the Yankees Uncle George's toasting fork) is invariably used for the purpose: the cylinder, now bared of its grain, is called the cobb. The delicate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire." Still repeating the awful words, his voice broken to a terrified whisper, "His rebuke with the flames of fire!" And in particular moods, when the prophets, however sonorous, were inadequate to his need, my uncle would have recourse to his own pithy vocabulary for terms with which to anathematize himself; but these, of course, may not be ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... that hears, that he should have something else to do, than to think of words. The way of speaking that I love, is natural and plain, the same in writing as in speaking, and a sinewy and muscular way of expressing a man's self, short and pithy, not so elegant and artificial as ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... first let me see what is in this paper which I am to affix upon the man's dress after I have killed him." I held it up to the light, and read, in capital letters, "The reward of a traitor!" "Short and pithy," muttered I, as I replaced it in my pocket: "now I'll back to the spot of assignation, for the hour must ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... was a ripe, kindly age that was coming over her. Her excellent practical sense, perhaps, made her a more masculine character than her brother. He was often so much perplexed by the problems of life, that he let the time for action go by; but she kept him in check by her clear, pithy talk, which brought back his wandering thoughts to the duty that lay straight before him, waiting for action; and then he remembered that it was the faithful part to "wait patiently upon God," and leave the ends in His hands, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and to the point. It opened with a pithy but pungent expression of Don Silvio's opinion of the capacity of a Governor who could permit his city to be captured and held by a handful of English pirates; then proceeded succinctly to refuse to accede to any of those pirates' demands; and wound up by saying that if the garrison and citizens ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... extraordinary, and never contemplated—the exigency beyond immediate solution. As James Dows, one of the coolest in judgment and wisest in counsel of the Executive Committee, pertinently described the situation in the pithy remark, "We started in to hunt cayotes, but we've got a grizzly bear on our hands, and we don't know what to do with him." The Executive Committee were not themselves masters of the situation. Behind them, subject to them and ready to obey ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... announcement of its subject is almost a mannerism. Incidentally there is no better rough test of the unity of your paragraphs than thus to give them something of the nature of a title in the first sentence. Often, too, at the end of an important paragraph it is worth while to sum up its essence in pithy form. Mankind in general is lazy about thinking, and more than ready to accept an argument which is easy to remember and repeat. The end of a paragraph is the place ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... variations of his subject, it still bends and does not break. In felicity and originality of epithet, the usual sign of a writer's genuineness of perception, he is excelled by no theologian of the time. He also has that power of pithy and pointed language which so condenses a statement of a fact or principle that it gives forth the diamond sparkle of epigram. The effect of wit is produced while the purpose is the gravest possible: as when he tells some brother religionists, who base ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... frequently calmed excited diggers in a way that commanded their respect and admiration. When the diggers broke into rioting at Charters Towers, the tact, patience and courage of Clohesy was of more use and value than a posse of police. Many a time I have heard a witty remark, or a pithy Irish phrase from him, turn a likely disturbance into a pleasant laughing meeting. Wherever he controlled, he kept things in order without his hand being felt. When he died about 1879, Queensland lost a good officer, and many a northern ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... Congratulations were passed, and crowds of the very old, and the very young, to whom an Engine heretofore had been a figment of imagination, gazed with wonder at 'The Montgomery' while their more travelled neighbours adjourned to the Bowling Green, where Mr. R. Owen made a short pithy speech. He very properly acknowledged the business-like activity of Messrs. Davies and Savin, to whom the public were so largely indebted for the arrival of a locomotive at Welshpool. Mr. Webb, on behalf of the contractors, ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... what is a cure for gout?" was the question of an indolent and luxurious citizen. "Live upon sixpence a-day—and earn it!" was the pithy answer. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... And that pithy chapter in Machiavelli's Prince which treats of cruelty and clemency, and whether it be better to be loved or feared, anticipates the defence of the Terrorists, in the maxim that for a new prince it ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... various important articles. Large quantities of toddy, or palm-wine, are prepared from the juice, which, when boiled, yields very good palm sugar or jaggery, and also excellent sugar candy. Sago is also prepared from the central or pithy part of the trunk, and forms a large portion of the food of the natives. The fiber from the leaf stalk is of great strength; it is known as Kittool fiber, and is used for making ropes, brushes, brooms, etc. A woolly kind of scurf, scraped off the leaf stalks, is used for calking ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... humor. Thus it hits the need of the average man and woman, and all others that reckon themselves above the average. The whole book is pervaded by strong and pure moral feeling, and the chapters are well dotted with pithy anecdotes and amusing ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... an established English classic, in which capacity Caxton had honoured him by twice issuing an edition of his works from the Westminster printing-press. Henry VIII's favourite, the reckless but pithy satirist, Skelton, was alive to the merits of his great predecessor, and Skelton's patron, William Thynne, a royal official, busied himself with editing Chaucer's works. The loyal servant of Queen ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Graham it was very pleasant to take such a turn. I always liked dearly to hear what he had to say about either pictures or books; because without pretending to be a connoisseur, he always spoke his thought, and that was sure to be fresh: very often it was also just and pithy. It was pleasant also to tell him some things he did not know—he listened so kindly, so teachably; unformalized by scruples lest so to bend his bright handsome head, to gather a woman's rather obscure ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... of De Morgan's correspondents. But the name most likely to arrest us is that of Giordano Bruno, the same philosopher, heretic, and martyr whose statue has recently been erected in Rome, to the great horror of the Pope and his prelates in the Old World and in the New. De Morgan's pithy account of him will interest the company: "Giordano Bruno was all paradox. He was, as has been said, a vorticist before Descartes, an optimist before Leibnitz, a Copernican before Galileo. It would be easy to collect a hundred ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... with his cold nose, but hurrying away, though she would fain have patted him. Success to your search, Fidelity! And there sits a great yellow cat upon a window-sill, a very corpulent and comfortable cat, gazing at this transitory world, with owl's eyes, and making pithy comments, doubtless, or what appear such, to the silly beast. O sage puss, make room for me beside you, and we will ...
— Little Annie's Ramble (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's heart, that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the Key as spectators could not refrain from tears. But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away, that were thus loth to depart, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... conception are also the terse, pithy language which allows us to surmise the unlimited possibilities hidden in the saga literature, and the equally succinct ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... cruel edict of the Scottish bishops, and it hardly admits of doubt that he submitted to Melanchthon, and got corrected by him, his little treatise against their decree, forbidding the New Testament Scriptures to be used by the laity in the vernacular. It is a very pithy and forcible bit of pleading for the right of the Christian laity to possess and study the Scriptures in their own tongue. This remarkable treatise struck the true key-note in the contest it ushered in, and helped it on to victory—a victory which was substantially to ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... The pithy chapter of instructions above detailed was delivered in far less time than it takes to read it. The speaker never paused till he had uttered the final emphatic expression, which was one of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... guide book. No bulky volume this, but a handy booklet full of pithy information on all the most important subjects connected with our ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Moreover, in the vernacular everything would have appeared too direct, too personal, too real, for his taste. He could not do without that thin veil of vagueness, of remoteness, in which everything is wrapped when expressed in Latin. His fastidious mind would have shrunk from the pithy coarseness of a Rabelais, or the rustic violence ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... happily to infringe the resolution, and then it became, "I will always, if possible, hear Daniel Wilson." Sentences of his were very memorable; for instance, "Nineteen- twentieths of sanctification consist in holy tempers," and, besides exhibiting a pithy force of language, his sermons were prepared with infinite care and labour. When at St. John's, where he had no parochial charge, he selected his text on Monday and carried it about with him, so to speak, all the week, chewing the cud of it ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... that this pithy and pretty address proceeded from the mouth of Mr. Tom Thornton. He was somewhat more than half drunk, and his light prying eyes twinkled dizzily in his head. Dartmore, who was, and is, the best natured fellow alive, hailed the signs of his intoxication as a sort ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pithy remarks on the habitual English attitude toward music may be found in the history of Stanford and Forsyth, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding |
