"Prate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he burst out to Doctor Keltridge over a cigar, one day; "we are bound by all our articles of indenture, we preachers, to prate about the hand of the Lord and special Providences, when all the time we know the trouble came out of somebody's running up against simple, scientific law. It's theology, not science, we poor beggars are set up to preach, even in funeral sermons of men like Opdyke, although it's not theology, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... pardon, Lord above! "My child, with pray'rs invoke his love, "The Almighty never errs?" "O, mother! mother! idle prate, "Can he be anxious for my fate, "Who never heard ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... read, and to reflect upon what she read, and to apply it to the purpose for which it is valuable, viz. in enlarging her mind and cultivating her taste; but she had never been accustomed to prate, or quote, or sit down for the express purpose of displaying her acquirements; and she began to tremble at hearing authors' names "familiar in their mouths as household words;" but Grizzy, strong in ignorance, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... sentiment, to think of his material and nothing else, is, for awhile at least, the king's highway of progress. Here, in England, too many painters and writers dwell dispersed, unshielded, among the intelligent bourgeois. These, when they are not merely indifferent, prate to him about the lofty aims and moral influence of art. And this is the lad's ruin. For art is, first of all and last of all, a trade. The love of words and not a desire to publish new discoveries, the love of form ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spirit of our soldiers, it is easy to understand their contempt for those civilians who go on strike, prate of weariness, scream their terror when a few Hun planes sail over London, devote columns in their papers to pin-prick tragedies of food-shortage, and cloud the growing generosity between England and America by cavilling criticisms and mean reflections. Their ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... churchyard, a Cambridge scholar, and none of the soberest neither, inquired what the meaning of that concourse of people was (it being a week-day); and being told that one Bunyan, a tinker, was to preach there, he gave a lad twopence to hold his horse, saying he was resolved to hear the tinker prate; and so he went into the church to hear him. But God met him there by His ministry, so that he came out much changed; and would by his good will hear none but the tinker for a long time after, he himself becoming a very ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... Prate not of thy repentance. But believe The spark divine dwells in thee: let it grow. That which the upreaching spirit can achieve The grand and all-creative forces know; They will assist and strengthen as the light Lifts up the acorn to the oak tree's ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... then went those pretty babes, Rejoicing at that tide, Rejoicing with a merry mind They should on cock-horse ride. They prate and prattle pleasantly, As they ride on the way, To those that should their butchers be And work their ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... he forbears to prate of the life he gave me. But am I not reminded of the oppressive gift every time he dares to contradict me? Would I endure his interference as I do; would I be shouldered and butted at, by him; would I permit his opinion to be asked, or ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... immediate danger in China seems, so far as I can judge, to be that the anti-foreign feeling, which is undoubtedly intense especially in the south of the Empire, may come to a head any day and prematurely explode. The nincompoops and quidnuncs and newspaper men ravenous for copy who prate about a "yellow peril" may, in this latter fact, find some slight excuse for their blatant lucubrations. There is no real "yellow peril." Poor old China, which has been so long slumbering, is just rousing herself and making arrangements for defence against ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... to stand and work for the principles it claimed to have for its foundation. Be it said to the credit of each society, sect and organization, they all responded heartily and co-operated with Penloe and Stella in helping forward the grand reform; for they saw it was useless to prate about love, purity, justice and freedom, with woman debarred by law from her legal and political rights and tolerating a social custom which excited the worst passions and bred prurient curiosity. It was a grand and glorious sight, such as the world had not witnessed before, to see ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... fiend pricks thee now?' 'Aha!' said I, 'henceforth I have no cause To bid thee speak, thou cursed traitor thou! I'll shame thee, bearing truth of thee to men.' 'Away!' he answered: 'what thou wilt, relate: But, shouldst thou get from hence with breath again, Mention him too so ready with his prate." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... Jaw," says Captain Night. "I shall be thirstier anon from listening to your prate. Will you hurry now, Gadfly, or is the sun to sink before ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... broad Atlantic Comes scornful menace? it is naught to thee— 'Tis but the jealous raving, wild and frantic, Of those who would, but never can, be free;— Who, slaves to selfish passions bold ambition, Hold up their shackled arms in heaven's broad light, And prate of freedom, boast their high position, And strive to turn to ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... human life is so overflowing with woe and pain and misery, it seems to me a narrow dilettanteism or downright charlatanism to devote one's self to petty or bizarre problems which can have no relation to human happiness, and to prate of self-satisfaction and self-expression. One can have all the self-expression one wants while ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... his cloak up to his mouth, 'the night grows cold; I cannot stay here while you prate to that blind girl: come, let her follow you home, if you wish to ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... a great deal, Davy. My wits are nothing to yours. You'll shoot ahead of all your old friends, my boy, some day. But there's one thing you know nothing about—absolutely nothing—and you prate as if you did. Perhaps you must turn Christian before you do. I don't know. At least, so long as you're not a Christian you won't know what we mean by it—what the Bible means by it. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cant!" said Julian, starting from his seat, aroused by his hypocritical prate into unwonted intolerance; and he suddenly observed, by the cowering attitude which Hazlet assumed, that the worthy youth was afraid of receiving at his head the water-bottle, on which Julian's hand was ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... are swarming with haggard slaves. We declare that to be President of the United States is the most honorable office a man can hold, and our elected candidates (except when they have the splendid self-abnegating courage of a Cleveland!) wade to Washington through a perfect bog of venal promises. We prate of our democratic institutions, and forget that free trade is one of the first proofs of a free people, and that protected industries are the feudalism of manufacture. We sneer at the corruption of a Jeffreys or a Marlborough in the past, and concede ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... you know all I have endured. To me, earth has been a hell—not the place of flames and torments of which your divines prate, but the true hell—that of the conscience and the soul. I, too, a man whose whole nature was athirst for truth. I sought it first among its professors; there I found that they who, too idle or too weak to demonstrate their creed, took ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... whan Memnon made warre for Darius agaynste Alexander, he harde one of his souldyours crake and speake many yll wordes agaynst Alexander; wherfore he rapte hym on the pate with a iauelynge, sayenge: I hyred the to fyght agaynste Alexandre, and not to crake and prate. ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... great notice of the little boys. He dilated their hearts, and set them a prating; and was pleased with their prate. The doctor, who had never seen him before in the company of children, applauded him for his vivacity, and condescending talk to them. The tenderest father in the world, he said, could not have ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... Fynnett is here, and desires to be my bedfellow to-night. So I shall not have an opportunity to sit down with that seriousness and attention which the subjects of yours require. For she is all prate, you know, and loves to set me a prating; yet comes upon a very grave occasion—to procure my mother to go with her to her grandmother Larking, who has long been bed-ridden; and at last has taken it into ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... "Prate not to me, but depart from this tent," said the Grand Master; "the Marquis shall not confess this morning, unless it be to me, for I ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... become a nation that may defy every foe but that most dangerous of all foes, herself, destined to a majestic future if she will shun the excess and perversion of the principles that made her great, prate less about the enemies of the past and strive more against the enemies of the present, resist the mob and the demagogue as she resisted Parliament and King, rally her powers from the race for gold and the delirium of prosperity to make firm the foundations on which that prosperity ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... God of war himself were dead, Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice, Not to be molten out.' And roughly spake My father, 'Tut, you know them not, the girls. Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think That idiot legend credible. Look you, Sir! Man is the hunter; woman is his game: The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Let women-folk prate as they will of a boy Who is heedless of knickers and shirt; I hold that the badge of a young fellow's joy Are cheeks that are covered with dirt. So I look for him nightly to greet me that way, His joys and misfortunes to tell, ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... wits or witlings pass'd my days, To spread about the itch of verse and praise; Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town, To fetch and carry sing-song up and down; Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cried, With handkerchief and orange at my side; But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate, To Bufo left ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... companions-in-arms in the service of the French king, and I came over from Ireland especially to take a dying message and a token from my father to the Earl. That is all you need know about that; but I would have you leave off your prate of your friend the Earl of Westport, for I understand full well you couldn't distinguish between him and a church door, although 'tis scandalously little you know of church doors. So we will stop there on that point. Then I will go on to the next point. The next point is that I am going ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... other similar neighbourhoods—supplied a striking answer to those futile theorists who prate of the equality of mankind, for the inhabitants instinctively formed themselves into groups, the more superior types drawing together, separating themselves from the inferior, and rising naturally to the top, while the others gathered themselves into distinct classes, grading downwards, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... wedding, woman? Can't folk have scones and bannocks and singing-hinnies, But you must prate of weddings—you, and all! ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... prate comfortable blasphemies, scientific or other; natural selection or the inscrutable decrees of God. Whereas this was manifestly a Hobson's selection, most unnatural and forced, to choose want of all ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... told, not a moment cou'd rest; While the OWL her brain rummag'd, (now quite on th' alert,) [p 21] For a few scraps of learning, by way of dessert: But the PEACOCK had no inclination to wait, And the PARROT was still more impatient to prate: So the Poem was read, and the OWL vow'd she never Had heard any Verses she thought ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... protectively over their people. Perhaps the Milovka study-house boasted even Cabbalists starving themselves into celestial visions and graduating for the Divine kiss. How infinitely restful after the Milovka market-place! No more, for that day at least, would he prate of Self-Defence and the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... bring this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price! The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him. And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the day of ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... aggressively burst into a guffaw of derisive laughter. "Miss Loomis is just one of those admirable women," said he, "that empty-headed idiots prate about. I wish other people had half her sense." A luckless way of essaying the defence of the absent, for it reflected ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... glowing roof cast over Hell, and if you were here, you might see the fire on the farther side of your walls kindling, to burn you down into Hell." Some mocked them, others threatened to stone them unless they ceased their unmannerly prate; but some few asked, "whither shall we fly?" "Hither," said the watchman, "fly hither to your lawful king, who yet offers you pardon through us, if you return to your obedience, and abandon the rebel Belial ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... themselves in dark Holes, Closets, Beds, &c. We are all for Humour, Gallantry, Conversation, and Courtship, and shou'dn't endure the chief Lady in the Play a Mute, or to say very little, as 'twas agreeable to them: Our amorous Sparks love to hear the pretty Rogues prate, snap up their Gallants, and Repartee upon 'em on all sides. We shou'dn't like to have a Lady marry'd without knowing whether she gives her consent or no, (a Custom among the Romans) but wou'd be for hearing all the Courtship, all the rare and fine ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... fortune. There, at least; is one who deserves what he will get. For once I shall not be sorry to see a lad get on, who has been brought up in the school of adversity. But, pshaw! he will be like all the rest. Prosperity will turn his brain. Already he begins to prate of his ancestors. . . . Poor humanity he almost made me laugh. . . . But it is mother Gerdy who surprises me most. A woman to whom I would have given absolution without waiting to hear her confess. When I think that I was on the point of proposing ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... "Thou dost prate like an ass, For were I to bend my bow, I could send a dart quite thro' thy proud heart, Before thou couldst strike me ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the bitter heart of hate, Smote England, now nineteen dark years ago, As when the tide's full wrath in seaward flow Smites and bears back the swimmer. Fraud and fate Were leagued against her: fear was fain to prate Of honour in dishonour, pride brought low, And humbleness whence holiness must grow, And greatness born of shame ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark. The world," added he, "is chiefly unjust and ungenerous in this, that all are ready to encourage a man who once talks of leaving it, and few things do really provoke me more than to hear people prate of retirement, when they have neither skill to discern their own motives, or penetration to estimate the consequences. But while a fellow is active to gain either power or wealth," continued he, "everybody produces some hindrance to his advancement, some sage remark, or some ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... welcome business, welcome strife, Welcome the cares, the thorns of life, The visage wan, the purblind sight, The toil by day, the lamp by night, The tedious forms, the solemn prate, The pert dispute, the dull debate, The drowsy bench, the babbling hall,— For thee, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... afflict us prate Of Plasters unsurpassable, and hate To Cut a corn—ah cut, and let the Plaster go, Nor murmur if ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the next fifty years, at the climate, the country, and the people; to drawl out her maudlin regrets for olive groves, and pout for the Bay of Naples; to talk of her loves; exhibit a cameo or a crucifix, (the parting pledge of some inamorato, probably since hanged), prate papistry, and profess liberalism; pronounce the Roman holidays "charming things," and long to see the carnival, and the worship of the Virgin together, imported to relieve the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... think upon Some other pleasures: these to me are none. Why do I prate Of women, that are things against my fate! I never mean to wed That torture to my bed: My Muse is she My love shall be. Let clowns get wealth and heirs: when I am gone And that great bugbear, grisly Death, Shall ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... But why prate history, why evoke phantoms of the past, when we can gaze on this exquisitely concrete thing—this glad and simple creature of Hokusai? Let us emulate his calm, enjoy his enjoyment as he sprawls before us—pinguis, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... coats-of-arms; to resent the friendly advances of your baker's wife, and the lady of your butcher, (you being yourself a cobbler's daughter); to talk much of the "old families" and of your aristocratic foreign friends; to despise labour; to prate of "good society;" to travesty and parody, in every conceivable way, a society which we know only in books and by the superficial observation of foreign travel, which arises out of a social organization entirely unknown to us, and which is opposed to our fundamental and essential principles; ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... now elate, His grinning Rival 'gan to prate. Oh, fie! my friends; upon my word, You're too severe: he should be heard; For Mind can ne'er to glory reach, Without the usual aid of speech. If thus howe'er, you seal his doom, What hope have I unknown to Rome? But since the truth be your dominion, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... in his face as he walks the streets, but then they have done with him; and a man may live an age in their country without hearing a dozen words from them. But of all the people I ever saw, heaven defend me from the French! With their damned prate and civilities, and doing the honour of their nation to strangers (as they are pleased to call it), but indeed setting forth their own vanity; they are so troublesome, that I had infinitely rather pass my life with the Hottentots than set my foot in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... and balance are so rare that they are hardly to be found in perfection among the sons of men. The very fact of his greatness made his failings all the more dangerous and unfortunate. To be blinded by the splendor of his fame and the lustre of his achievements and prate about the sin of belittling a great man is the falsest philosophy and the meanest cant. The only thing worth having, in history as in life, is truth; and we do wrong to our past, to ourselves, and to our posterity if we do not strive ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of the squires and gentlemen? Very truly does M. Taine say, "These three syllables, as used ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... instinct would she prate, And of the rising from the dead, As hers by right of full-accomplish'd Fate; And at the last ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... not a passion, demanding rage or religious fervour, or patriotic enthusiasm, for its inspiration. It was the very law of their life, the essential spirit in them. They were unconscious of it as a man is unconscious of breathing, unless diseased. Their honour was not a thing to talk about. To prate about the honour of the army or the honour of England was like talking about the honour of their mother. It is not done. And yet, as Mark Antony said, "They were all honourable men," and there seemed an austerity of virtue ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... irrefutable truths would show how utterly unworthy and false are the vulgar taunts which attribute "treason" to those who, in the late secession of the Southern States, were loyal to the only sovereign entitled to their allegiance, and which still more absurdly prate of the violation of oaths to support "the Government," an oath which nobody ever could have been legally required to take, and which must have been ignorantly confounded with the prescribed oath to ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... that he had done well by Maestro Diego. Plainly the quick wit of the lad betokened good blood, let him prate ever so surely on ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... then?" he was thinking. "What clergyman could raise his voice against my rule? Ah! Their 'high principles' they prate of so eloquently, their crack-brained economics, their rebellions and their strikes—the dogs!—would soon bow down before that power! Men have starved for stiff-necked opposition's sake, and still may do so—but with my hand at the throat of the world, with the world's very life-breath ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... in a hoarse cry, half fury, half contempt. "What is fear?—I know not the thing, nor the word!—Go, prate of fear to Cicero, and he will ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... gave these Sages four, Above the buried Emperor; It was no foolish women's prate That held them thus ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... had wrought. But, lest his offspring should her fate partake, Spite of the immortal mixture in his make, He ripped her womb, and set the child at large, 120 And gave him to the centaur Chiron's charge: Then in his fury blacked the raven o'er, And bid him prate in his white ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... my Spirit of Cant, A second-hand suit, but a "shplendid fit," As a Jew would assure me—but then I sha'nt. His work is to preach the humbug which passes For gospel among the "down-trodden masses;" And to prate of the "wrongs and indignities," which Are heaped on their ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... "What heart can bear Such slanders false, devised by hate and spite? Or with stayed patience, reproaches hear, And not revenge by battle or by fight? The Norway Prince hath bought his folly dear, But who with words could stay the angry knight? A fool is he that comes to preach or prate When men with swords their right ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... tinsel! why we see The old mark of rouge upon your cheeks. You prate of nature! you are he That spilt his ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... upon the countenance of the chancellor as he replied—"Such friendship, my lord, as is consistent with perpetual strife—open and concealed—shall, if it please you, subsist between us. Pardon me, but we prate a silly jargon when we talk of private friendship ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... man clasped his hands, looked upwards, and said, "O God, I thank thee—he will live. Hush, hush, my sweet one, thou must not prate;" and he retired on tiptoe, and I heard him mutter triumphantly, as he walked away, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... men were surrounded by in their daily lives and avocations. The houses[61] and oratories of noble and burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic use were beautiful. Men did not prate of art: they wrought in love and simplicity. The very word art, as denoting a product of human activity different from the ordinary daily tasks of men, was unknown. If painting was an art, even so was carpentry. A mason was an artist: so was a shoemaker. Astronomy and grammar were arts: ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... they all sat at the table, began to groan and quake gradually until at length the whole bench shook. Then rising up she began to pray, shrieking so that she could be heard as far as the river. This done, she was quickly in the dish, and her mouth began immediately to prate worldly and common talk in which she was not the least ready. When the meal was finished, Ephraim obtained a horse for himself and his wife, and we followed him on foot, carrying our travelling bags. Our host took us to the path, and Ephraim's servant was to ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... behoove Americans to stand on inviolate shores and prate of the wickedness of wrath. Moreover, this evil is not to be exorcised by a pious wish for it not to be. It is. And there is every excuse under the arch of ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... devilish necromancies of vicious women and viler men, if he remembered his father's character, and his father's death? No; memory must be a blank, and we, who suffered with our royal master, are fools to prate of ingratitude or neglect, since the son who can forget such a father may well forget his father's servants and friends. But we will not talk of public matters in the first hour of our greeting. Nor need I prate of the King, since ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the hearts of cowards who prate, Afraid to dare or spend, The doctrine of a narrower state More easy to defend; Not this the watchword of our sires, Who breathed with ocean's breath, Not this our spirit's ancient fires, Which naught could quench ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... But the earl has a will of his own. He is a master worth serving though. And there is my lady Elizabeth and my lady Mary—not to mention my lord Herbert!—But,' he concluded, rubbing his injured knee with both hands, 'why do I prate of them ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... "Prate not to me, my lord, of truth or honor amongst these savages," he replied. "Did not their chief himself but even now lie to me? Well knew the rascally heathen where the Spaniard hides! The truth indeed! They know not the ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... what god or demon? 290 With new kings rise new altars. But, proceed; You are sent to prate your master's will, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... there's the mystery! God knows how else you could have come, unless you are a modern Ganymede. Where then's your aquiline steed, sir? We have no neighbours here—none to stare, and pry, and prate, and slander." ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... later, John Adams, speaking of a conversation with Arbuthnot, a Boston physician, says: "He began to prate upon the presumption of philosophy in erecting iron rods to draw the lightning from the clouds. He railed and foamed against the points and the presumption that erected them. He talked of presuming upon God, as ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... it To let truth shape like that!—I also said That when my arms were round him I forgot That I was not his mother. So spoke I, But oh me,—I remembered it too well!— He was a lovely child; in his fond prate His father's voice was eloquent. One might say I am well punished ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie. We can tell them the moment we see them. They always throw out a few feelers; they never cast themselves adrift till they have sounded every individual and know that he has not traveled. Then they open their throttle valves, and how they do ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sixteen years' study, compare one of our college Latinists, who has thrown away so much time in nothing but learning to speak. The world is nothing but babble; and I hardly ever yet saw that man who did not rather prate too much, than speak too little. And yet half of our age is embezzled this way: we are kept four or five years to learn words only, and to tack them together into clauses; as many more to form them into a long discourse, divided into four or five parts; and other five ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... are the rabbins. The sublimest passages of the Scriptures they shamefully corrupt. As a case in point, they prate concerning Enoch that, while he was good and righteous, he very much inclined toward carnal desires. God, therefore, out of pity, prevented his sinning and perishing through death. Is not this, I pray you, a shocking ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... score less three; so about was SHE - The maiden I wronged in Peninsular days . . . You may prate of your prowess in lusty times, But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays, And see too ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... you going, by your theoretical treatises on philosophy, to make me learn the practical part of it, and prate upon learning while I am supporting ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... laugh to hear the Fools prate about Preheminence: They would all fain be Masters, and yet they know they are but all my Servants; they make their Boast, of this and that, and talk of their great gains: and forget that I rule the Roast, and that both their ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... expression. But Arschot swore that no man had the right to take precedence of him in the council of state, and that the appointment of this or any Spaniard was a violation of the charters of the provinces and of the promises of his Majesty. As if it were for the nobles of the obedient provinces to prate of charters and of oaths! Their brethren under the banner of the republic had been teaching Philip for a whole generation how they could deal with the privileges of freemen and with the perjury of tyrants. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fools prate!" responded Clementine, with an angelic smile. "I do not trouble myself to explain my affection for poor Fougas, but I love him very much, that's certain. I love him as a father, as a brother, if you prefer it, for he is almost as ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... gods, I grow a talker!"[637] Let us prate. The next of perils, though I place it sternest, Is when, without regard to Church or State, A wife makes or takes love in upright earnest. Abroad, such things decide few women's fate— (Such, early Traveller! is the truth thou learnest)— But ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... (aside). With his innocent prate He will awake my mercy which lies dead. (Aloud.) Read this, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... family, without a quarrel in the world, but set at variance bv thieves and tricksters, maim and mangle and kill each other with fractricidal hands, which ought to have been clasped in friendship and brotherhood. Yet these hireling priests, who consecrate the banners of war, dare to prate that God is a loving father and that we are all his children. What monstrous absurdity! What disgusting hypocrisy I Surely the parent of mankind, instead of allowing his ministers to mouth his name ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... threats of the scholars were renewed, and further intimations of violence were exhibited. Again the peas rattled upon the hands and faces of the halberdiers, till their ears tingled with pain. "Prate to us of the king's favorites," cried one of the foremost of the scholars, a youth decorated with a paper collar: "they may rule within the precincts of the Louvre, but not within the walls of the university. Maugre-bleu! We hold them cheap enough. We heed not the idle bark of these full-fed ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Izdubar will seek The cool enchantment of the cove, and slake His thirst with its sweet waters bubbling pure, Where Love has spread for him her sweetest lure, The maids expectant listening, watch and wait His coming; oft in ecstacies they prate O'er his surprise, and softly sport and splash The limpid waves around, that glowing flash Like heaps of snowy pearls lung to the light By Hea's[1] hands, his Zir-ri[2] to delight. And now upon the rock each ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... perchance, you know, Is second hand; I write as folks dictate; A Mrs. B. tells Mr. So-and-So Th' extent of some-one's personal estate; He in his turn the same again will prate; A Mr. C. has struck his little wife Is the last movement worthy to relate, 'Tis now affirmed he took away her life, In the next terrace where th' appalling tale ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... cheater's coin; when all the kings that promise peace while they swell their armouries and armies; when all the statesmen that chatter of the people's weal as they steal up to the locked casket where coronets are kept; when all the men who talk of "glory," and prate of an "idea" that they may stretch their nation's boundary, and filch their neighbour's province—when all these are no longer in the land, and no more looked on with favour, then I will believe your cry that you hate the toys which ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... referring to the one person in half a million to whom Art is anything more than a name. Dismissing the countless hordes who have absolutely never heard the word, and confining attention to the few thousands scattered about Europe and America who prate of it, how many of even these do you think it really influences, entering into their lives, refining, broadening them? Watch the faces of the thin but conscientious crowd streaming wearily through ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... rushing behind him, and, by a rapidly conceived flank movement, giving Joseph a good sound kick. "How does the head of the family like the foot of the family? Don't ever prate of accidents ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... shillelagh on any or no occasion. God forbid Scotland should retrograde towards such a state—much better that the Deil, as in Burns's song, danced away with the whole excisemen in the country. We do not want to hear her prate of her number of millions of men, and her old military exploits. We had better remain in union with England, even at the risk of becoming a subordinate species of Northumberland, as far as national consequence is ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... you want to prate such nonsense as that to these folks for? They won't need any kind of fertilizers in this country for twenty years. You'd better be resting instead of shooting such useless stuff as ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... should I set you on? Even for my love then, I beseech you, sir, To seek him out, and lest he prate of me To put your knife into him ere he come forth: Meseems this were not such wild work ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... And dost thou prate of all that man shall do? Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be Glad in his gladness that comes after thee? Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to: Cover thy ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... singularity is, that when I say that Freedom is of God, and Slavery is of the devil, I mean just what I say. My fanaticism is, that I insist on the American people abolishing Slavery, or ceasing to prate of the rights of man. My hardihood is, in measuring them by their own standard, and convicting them out ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... it was to a dear, stupid lot of old marketwomen and overworked men and mischievous children. Oratory is a collaboration—let him wax eloquent about the precession of the equinoxes, and prate of Plato and Pythagoras if he wished—no one could understand him! Rome is wise—the crystallized experience of centuries is hers. Responsibility tames a man—marriage, political office, churchly preferment—read history and note how these things have dulled the bright blade of revolution ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... How did he prate against wedlock! how did he strut about as a wit and a smart! and what a wit and a smart did all the boys and girls of our family (myself among the rest, then an urchin) think him, for the airs he gave himself?—Marry! No, not for the world; what man of sense would bear the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... feel, can you be so shallow as to dream that I feel nothing? What is your love for Tom Faggus? What is your love for your baby (pretty darling as he is) to compare with such a love as for ever dwells with me? Because I do not prate of it; because it is beyond me, not only to express, but even form to my own heart in thoughts; because I do not shape my face, and would scorn to play to it, as a thing of acting, and lay it out before you, are you fools enough to think—" but ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Sirs, I prate and prate, And never have I said what brought me here. Sirs, if you want a boat to-morrow morn, I'm bold to say there's ne'er a ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... will force me to write a book about Italy myself, to give them 'the loud lie.' They prate about assassination; what is it but the origin of duelling—and 'a wild justice,' as Lord Bacon calls it? It is the fount of the modern point of honour in what the laws can't or won't reach. Every man is liable to it more or less, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and have something, therefore, for which to live. I have not—my heart can know no change. It is no longer under the guidance of reason. It is quite ungovernable now. There was a time when—but why prate of this?—it is too late to think of, and only maddens me the more. Besides, it makes not anything with you, and would detain you without a purpose. Linger no longer, Dillon—speed to the west, and, at some future day, perhaps ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... scanty weal, except * To while away the time in chat and prate: Then shun their intimacy, save it be * To win thee lore, or ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Newspapers might prate about wealth till commonplace print was exhausted, but as matter of habit, few Americans envied the very rich for anything the most of them got out of money. New York might occasionally fear them, but more often laughed or sneered at them, and never showed ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... are poor. For the activity, the push, the vigor of our modern life, his substitute is a life aimless and unbroken. And so we have to say to communists what George Eliot might have said: Be not blinded by the passions of the moment, but when you prate about your own wrongs and the sufferings of your offspring, take heed lest in the long run you make a worse time of it for your own generation, and leave a bad ...
— The Altruist in Politics • Benjamin Cardozo
... school-room table, on the drawing-room bookshelf, or beneath the pillow of the most gently nurtured of our daughters. "This," the reviewer went on, "is high praise, especially in these days when we are deafened by the loud-voiced clamor of self-styled 'artists.' We would warn the young men who prate so persistently of style and literature, construction and prose harmonies, that we believe the English reading public will have none of them. Harmless amusement, a gentle flow of domestic interest, a faithful reproduction of the open and manly ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Harz country, who was a preacher at one of the churches, took the lead; and he was certainly the most important and most dangerous personage among them. He accounted the civil authorities, with their rights, no more as Christians than he did the clergy and the hierarchy; and began already to prate of universal equality and communism. This novel and exciting doctrine soon won adherents, and propagated the 'spirit of revelation.' Already disturbances were brewing. But the magistrates took vigorous and timely measures. Storch, Stubner, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... hands of Peter, half dead at his hotel, where he will be laid out, with all his marvelous masculine virtues, for a week at least. Now do not waste your arguments on these prigs from Union College. Take each, in turn, the ten-miles' circuit on 'Old Boney' and they'll have no breath left to prate of woman's inferiority. You might argue with them all day, and you could not make them feel so small as I made that popinjay feel in one hour. I knew 'Old Boney' would keep up with me, if he died for it, and that my escort could neither stop nor dismount, except by throwing himself ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton |
