"Verbose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and spirit, while his enthusiasm and devotion to the work he had undertaken have but few parallels in the history of science. His chapter on the wild goose is as good as a poem. One readily overlooks his style, which is often verbose and affected, in consideration of enthusiasm so genuine ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... for which the Germans have the happy name of "Freie Phantasie," or free phantasy; the composer thus giving rein to his imagination and doing whatever he pleases, so long as he holds the interest of his hearers and neither becomes verbose nor indulges in mere mechanical manipulation. There are, alas! developments in which the composer exhausts his themes and his hearers too;[99] but on work of this kind, since it is not real development but labored jugglery, no powder need be wasted. Beethoven began ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... in his narrative the verbose diction characteristic of pagan literature, where we often find one and the same argument embellished and polished by a variety of colors. We find by experience that no human power of description can do justice to inward emotions. In consequence, verbosity, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Little Teacher had given him a verbose definition of the word "pestiferous," David looked at her ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... whose composition was so obscure that Gil Blas could not comprehend the meaning of a single line of his writings. His poetry was verbose fustian, and his prose a maze of far-fetched expressions ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... must confess that the process of wading through Mr. "Commissioner's" verbose and clumsy pleadings has given me a "hot fit," which, I undertake to say, will be followed by not so much as a passing shiver of repentance. And it is under the influence of the genial warmth diffused through ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... his teeth, but from the victor's privilege of verbose taunting he had no redress. After all, it would be a transient victory. Parish might "rub it in" now, but in a few hours he would be dangling ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... implore your pardon," the man continued, humbly enough, "I am afraid our calling, however, is apt to make us a trifle verbose. If you will allow me, I will put what I have to say in as few words ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... Reagan, Postmaster-General. He and Breckenridge looked over them, and, after some side conversation, he handed one of the papers to me. It was in Reagan's handwriting, and began with a long preamble and terms, so general and verbose, that I said they were inadmissible. Then recalling the conversation of Mr. Lincoln, at City Point, I sat down at the table, and wrote off the terms, which I thought concisely expressed his views and wishes, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... delicate form, than the manifestation of a free conception of a grand spirit. Walt Whitman is spontaneous without being careless. His style is unhesitating, his diction is flowing, smooth, without being searching or verbose! It seems as if his soul were responsive—not plaintively, but appreciatively responsive—to all the chords, influences, and objects of nature; and that his imagination were absorptive enough to embrace and love, and reflect all changes ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... 'the Monch von Carmel.'—These letters of Schiller were found among his papers at his death; rescued from destruction by two of his executors, and published at Carlsruhe, in a small duodecimo, in the year 1819. There is a verbose preface, but no note or comment, though some such aid is now and then a ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... long and intensely uninteresting conversation about the maladies to which chickens are subject. He was verbose and reminiscent. He took me over his farm, pointing out as he went Dorkings and Cochin Chinas which he had cured of diseases generally fatal, with, as far as I could gather, ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... immense pains, it must be "gappy and scrappy," while the more these pains are taken the more artificial it will become. In the third, the book is extremely likely, in the taking of these pains and even without them, to become intolerably lengthy and verbose. In the first part at least of the first part of Pamela, Richardson avoided these dangers fairly if not fully; in the second part he succumbed to them; in his two later novels, though more elaborate and important plots to some extent bore up the expansion, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... thus: "And are you yet in doubt, whether Cimber Annius or Veranius Flaccus be more proper for your imitation? Whether you will adopt words which Sallustius Crispus has borrowed from the 'Origines' of Cato? Or do you think that the verbose empty bombast of Asiatic orators is fit to be transfused into (134) our language?" And in a letter where he commends the talent of his grand-daughter, Agrippina, he says, "But you must be particularly careful, both in writing and speaking, to ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Shakespeare was but a poor actor. He could write Hamlet and As You Like It; but when it came to casting the parts, the Ghost in the one and old Adam in the other were the best he could aspire to. Verbose biographers of Shakespeare, in their dire extremity, and naturally desirous of writing a big book about a big man, have remarked at length that it was highly creditable to Shakespeare that he was not, or at all events that ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... but Pete seemed to feel that he had been already verbose. He dismissed the historic ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the facts of this advertisement, with a change of heading, of general phraseology and address. The original, for instance, is long, and verbose, is headed "A Pocket-Book Lost!" and requires the treasure, when found, to be left at No. 1 Tom Street. The copy is brief, and being headed with "Lost" only, indicates No. 2 Dick, or No. 3 Harry Street, as the locality at which the owner may be seen. Moreover, it is ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was the prompt answer. 'Well, what did you think of the Dare-all,—as the vicar calls her sometimes? is she not like a pleasant edition of Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy,—verbose and full of long sentences? How many words did she coin to-night, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... marvelously early; so early and with such unlooked-for fruit that the unthinking world, which first received him with exaggerated honor, presently assailed him with undue dispraise. 'Festus' is not mere solemn and verbose commonplace. Here and there it has passages of great force and even of high beauty. The author's whole heart and brain were poured into it, and neither was a common one. With all its ill-based daring and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... needed. He struck at cherished rights of States, upheld by their highest courts, and struck them down, at a time when the country was unfamiliar with the conception of the United States as a national force. Many of those of judges of inferior ability do not rise above their source. They are verbose, repetitious, slovenly, inaccurate in statement, loose in form; perhaps sinking into a humor or sarcasm always out of place in the reports;[Footnote: See, for instance, Mincey v. Bradburn, 103 Tennessee Reports, 407; Terry v. ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... have been expressed about Wagner in his capacity of philosopher. To some he appears as a verbose dilettante totally unable to put two ideas logically together, while others look up to him as a teacher of the profoundest truths. I cannot say that either view is wrong. On the one hand he possessed the deep insight which is the first qualification ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight |
