"Harping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jimmy. "He'll be more than pleased. Your sublime cookery will delight him. He adores the west, but he can't endure its cooking. He's always harping on his mother's pantry and the good old down-east dinners. He's dyspeptic and pessimistic most of the time, and he's got half a dozen cronies just like himself. All they think of is railroads and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of vanity, the remains on which thou lookest are but the earthly attire of those who, in their day, led or followed in the pursuit of worldly pleasure. And such shalt thou be, for all thy mincing and ambling, thy piping and thy harping—thou, and all such ministers of frivolous and worldly pleasure, must become like these poor bones, whom thy idle nicety fears and loathes ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... looked forward to it might be read in the invariable eagerness of his welcome; and this was even harder to explain, because the Elder never failed to harp—seldom, indeed, relaxed harping—on old misdeeds and the lost insurance money. Nay, perhaps in scorn of his own weakness, he insisted on this more and more offensively; rehearsing each day, as he climbed the hill, speeches calculated to offend or hurt. But in the intervals ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and harping enter we The feast-hall opened wide; Peace to our hostess kind and free, All happiness to her betide. O'er Solhoug's roof for ever may Bright ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... minutes we were both inside old Jimmy's cosy quarters. His whole bearing seemed to have changed suddenly, and he ran about with alacrity, getting supper ready, and seeming quite like himself again. During the whole evening he kept harping at intervals on the subject of the mysterious voice, but we heard no sound whatever, and I felt more and more certain that the whole thing was due to hallucination on the part of the old man. At eleven o'clock a skiff came up through the lock, and almost immediately ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... oftentimes aught but noble, if all tales be true, was sufficient to endow us with the most splendid of modern books. It is strange to see how that crabbed man with the passionately-loving heart keeps harping on the beneficence of sorrow. Once he spoke of "Sorrow's fire-whips"; but usually his strain is far, far different. He cleaves to the noble and sorrowful figures that crowd his sombre galleries; and I do not know that he ever gives more than a light and careless word ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Gillian would have fussed herself into a frantic state of anxiety and self-reproach, but her parents, when her mother had once heard as much outpouring as she thought expedient, would not permit what Sir Jasper called 'perpetual harping.' ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... course, people criticized and joked about the mosquito brigade, but the colonel went ahead pouring oil upon the water, cleaning up filth, and compelling sanitary measures, paying not the slightest attention to the harping critics. ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... for women has certainly had startling moral results. The reasons are obvious enough. It is a necessary consequence of our modern insistence on individual values; the harping of one generation on freedom, which has caused our young women, in many directions, to carry their ideas of freedom far beyond the accepted conventions of our ordinary civilized human association. It has been shown as manifestly ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... of "many waters" Is murmuring on my ear, And mingling in the mystic strains A mother's voice I hear. Two white rob'd cherub sisters Stand harping by her side; A brother in the concert joins, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... declare that he would not quarrel with Dr Thorne, and of course he did not do so. But he, himself, had no wish whatever that his son should marry Mary Thorne; and as a falling drop will hollow a stone, so did the continual harping of his wife on the subject give rise to some amount of suspicion in his own mind. Then as to Beatrice, though she had made no promise that she would not again visit Mary, she was by no means prepared to set her mother's ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... plainly the SQUIRE'S show, and its direction must be left to him. When there followed long succession of eminent men discussing Budget, Mr. G. felt that if he remained any longer he must yield to temptation. Accordingly, withdrew from scene. Returned again an hour later; still harping on the Budget; the SQUIRE had spoken twice, and there seemed nothing to be done but to work off whatever remaining speeches had been prepared in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... court ordered that from and after the 20th day of March next ensuing, it shall not be lawful for any of the inhabitants of this county to take, strike, or destroy any sort of fish in the night time with fish gigs, harping irons, or any other instrument of that nature, sort or kind, within any river, creek or bay which are accounted belonging to or within the bounds or precincts of this county. And it is further ordered that if any person or ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... before you. I am old. In a very few years I shall be so old that you will not be able to realise that there was a time when I was "the one woman in the world" for you. I am not harping on your youth in order to vex you—your youth that you hate for my sake! I know that you are not fickle; but I know, too, that the laws of life and the march of ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... be 'apt to teach,' and must lose himself in his task if he is to transfuse his blood into the veins of boys. Above all, he must be a real man and not a manikin, and he must enjoy his boys—love them, without being quite conscious of the love, or at least without harping on it. ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... for me." It is hard to imagine any more depressing talk for a poor landsman on a dirty night; it is hard to imagine anything less sailor-like (as sailors are supposed to be, and generally are) than this persistent harping on the minor. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... — N. repetition, iteration, reiteration, harping, recurrence, succession, run; battology, tautology; monotony, tautophony; rhythm &c. 138; diffuseness, pleonasm, redundancy. chimes, repetend, echo, ritornello[obs3], burden of a song, refrain; rehearsal; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... say that you are harping still on that old affair. I assure you Gilly Jillingham is unworthy of you. You are not thinking still of each other, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... and tried each string in turn with the key, so that it sounded awesomely at his touch. And Phoebus Apollo laughed for joy; for the sweet throb of the marvellous music went to his heart, and a soft longing took hold on his soul as he listened. Then the son of Maia, harping sweetly upon his lyre, took courage and stood at the left hand of Phoebus Apollo; and soon, while he played shrilly on his lyre, he lifted up his voice and sang, and lovely was the sound of his voice that followed. He sang the story of the deathless gods and of ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... Manuel met El Conejo he listened to the nonsense that the hunchback spoke, with his eternal harping on the Bishop of Madrid-Alcala, and then tried to shift the conversation toward the topic of Senor ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... shark, Indeed, the bill of fare prescribed for him was scarcely sufficient to sustain a boy of twelve years of age. In consequence of this he had got it into his head that the season was a season of famine, and on this calamitous dispensation of Providence he kept harping from morning to night. The idea of the dinner, however, was hailed by them all as a very agreeable project, for which the squire, who only thought of the opportunity it would give himself to enjoy a surfeit, was highly complimented. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... clear my plan had taken hold upon his fancy, for he kept musing to himself till we were called to dinner and the company of Mrs. Rankeillor; and that lady had scarce left us again to ourselves and a bottle of wine, ere he was back harping on my proposal. When and where was I to meet my friend Mr. Thomson; was I sure of Mr. T.'s discretion; supposing we could catch the old fox tripping, would I consent to such and such a term of an agreement—these and the like questions ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Christopher," she went on, harping fitfully on her favourite string, "remember that keeping in love is as much the profession for a man as it is the art for a woman, and that love feeds on little delicacies rather than on meat and drink. Don't forget the little things, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... description of Fathom's ups and downs, first as the petted beau, and then as the fashionable doctor. In chronicling the latter meteoric career, Smollett had already observed the peculiarity of his countrymen which Thackeray was fond of harping on in the next century—"the maxim which universally prevails among the English people . . . to overlook, . . . on their return to the metropolis, all the connexions they may have chanced to acquire during their residence ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the danger is heightened when it takes the form of religious brooding. In Dr. Starbuck's collection of cases, seventy-five per cent. of the males and sixty per cent. of the females confessed to feelings of depression, anxiety, and sadness before conversion. This may be attributed partly to the harping upon a conviction of sinfulness, which in itself is wholly of an unhealthy character. It does not indicate moral health, and it is very far from indicating physiological health. The following confessions are pertinent, and will illustrate both points. ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... in "Piers Plowman," dwelt on the social wrongs of the time; Ball was fond of quoting from Langland, and of harping on ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... a fierce delight in my efforts to assert myself as mistress in my husband's house, but now (taking her former advantage) she was for ever harping upon my foolishness in allowing ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... believe And glory in the days of old; While some are dreamers, harping still Upon an unknown ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... (a murrain on the word!) is just like you and me, or he would not be average. It was Whitman who stamped a kind of Birmingham sacredness upon the latter phrase; but Whitman knew very well, and showed very nobly, that the average man was full of joys and full of poetry of his own. And this harping on life's dulness and man's meanness is a loud profession of incompetence; it is one of two things: the cry of the blind eye, I cannot see, or the complaint of the dumb tongue, I cannot utter. To draw a life without delights is to prove I have not realised it. To picture a man without ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him, bathing the hurt in his leg, the which I found very angry and inflamed. This done I bade him be of good comfort and yield himself to slumber. But this he could no way accomplish, being restless and fevered and his mind harping continually on the strange fate had set him thus in Joanna's power and the sure belief that he must die, soon ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... passed through the swing gate, and to Waller's great relief he was able to make his way back to the hall, very silent now as he went over the day's proceedings, and thought of the chances of the men coming back to make a fresh search, while the gardener kept on harping metaphorically upon the broken ladder, and what "master would ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... all noble; I play at chess so free, At ravelling runes I'm ready, At books and smithery; I'm skill'd o'er ice at skimming On skates, I shoot and row, And few at harping match me, Or minstrelsy, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... my masters. Still harping on Home Rule. Second night's debate on Second Reading. Naturally supposed to be in heyday of vigour. But Benches empty; level of oratory third-rate; STANSFELD a hoary Triton among the Minnows; ELLIS ASHMEAD BARTLETT (Knight) gloomily views the scene. "Thought you were going to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... Though it scarcely dares to breathe Softest murmurs through its teeth, From the frosts that on it lie. The bright pink, in its small sky Shining like a coral star. The blithe bird that flies afar, Drest in shifting shades and blooms— Soaring cithern of plumes Harping high o'er heaven's blue bar. The white rock that cheats the sun When it tries to melt it down, What it melts is but the crown Which from winter's snow it won. The green bay that will not shun, Though the heavens are all aglow, ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... only in our own chaotic minds and perceptions: train these aright, and you shall hear the music of the spheres, perceive the reign of everlasting Law. These impulses from the Oversoul, that create the great epochs, raising one race after another, have perfect rhythm and rhyme. God sits harping in the Cycle of Infinity, and human history is the far faint echo of the tune he plays. Why can we not listen, till we hear and apprehend the tune? Or History is the sound heard from far, of the marching hosts of angels and archangels; the cyclic tread ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... you always harping on that string for? Education isn't everything in the world. Tabitha can get all the learning a woman needs right here in ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... pardon, pardon; there it is at last; are you not tired of that word, monseigneur; are you not weary of harping eternally on ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... crazy if they don't leave me alone!" she declared one night to Quin. "They act as if studying for the stage were the wickedest thing in the world. Aunt Isobel was here all morning, harping on my immortal soul until I almost hoped I didn't have one. This afternoon Aunt Flo came and warned me against getting professional notions in my head, and talked about my social position, and what a blow it would be to the family. Then, to cap the climax, Uncle Ranny had the ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... house, with Watson just returned to the wheel. Once more the colossal, hot-breathing twin chimneys, their slender iron braces holding them so uprightly together and apart, the golden globe—emblem of the Courteney fleet—hanging between them, and their far-stretched iron guys softly harping to one another in the breeze. All these again, and away out beyond the front rail, with a hundred feet depth of empty air between, the jack-staff, high as a pine and as slim for its height as a cane from the brake, its halyards whipping ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier? Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet? Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now, Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack'd voice harping, screeching? ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... friends, gradually and ingeniously leading the conversation, again, round to his favourite Templars. After pushing me, for half an hour, on this point, always insisting on my being the man to vindicate the order, and harping on its connexion with liberty, he took advantage of one of my often-repeated protestations of ignorance of the whole matter, suddenly to say, "Well, then, Monsieur, go and see for yourself, and you will soon be satisfied ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... His attacks on didacticism were especially valuable. His strength as a critic lay in his artistic temperament and in the incisive intellect that enabled him to analyze the effects produced in his own creations and in those of others. His weaknesses were extravagance; a mania for harping on plagiarism; lack of spiritual insight, broad sympathies, and profound scholarship; and, in general, the narrow range of his genius, which has already been made sufficiently clear. His severity has been ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... "...and quit harping on whose fault it was." Malone recognized Mike Fueyo's voice. "That FBI guy was onto us, and we had to pull out; you know that. We always figured we'd have to pull out some ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... surrounds their sight A globe of circular light That with long beams the shamefaced night array'd; The helmed Cherubim And sworded Seraphim, Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd, Harping in loud and solemn quire With unexpressive ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... dew of the dawn, and the Rose of the Mystical Vision, The spirit and soul of the Men of the Future shall rise and be free, They shall hail me with hymning and harping, With eloquent Art and Elysian, - The Singer who sung not but spurned them, The slaves that could sing "Jubilee;" With pinchbeck lyre and tongue, Praising their tyrant sung, They shall fail and shall fade in derision, As wind on ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... curiosity as to the nature of the great far cause that moves them; but in grief—in the destitute bareness, the famished hunger of soul, when "one is not," how one craves for certainties! How one yearns for the solid heaven of one's childhood; the harping angels, the never-failing flowers; the pearl gates and jeweled walls of God's great ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Patty (was she so innocent?) seemed not to suspect the meaning of her friend's talk. Yet Eve must have all but told her in so many words that she was weary of her lover. That hateful harping on "gratitude"! Well, one cannot purchase a woman's love. He had missed the right, the generous, line of conduct. That would have been to rescue Eve from manifest peril, and then to ask nothing of her. Could he but have held his passions ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... be possible to vanquish the Danes, and another story tells how he disguised himself as a musician and boldly entered the Danish lines, to learn for himself how great their numbers might be. Here he wandered from one camp-fire to another, harping and singing, all the while keeping his eyes and ears open and escaping at last with information that would ensure his victory ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... in the company of some Latin nobles with whom he had purposely formed ties of hospitality and friendship, both in public and private, extolled in high terms such harmony and association of their gods, by frequently harping upon the same subject, he at length prevailed so far that the Latin states agreed to build a temple of Diana at Rome[45] in conjunction with the Roman people. This was an acknowledgment that the headship of affairs, concerning which they had so often disputed in arms, ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... postmaster deeply resented. One tourist after another, exclaimed with blank despair: "Alas, poor Mull will get no news from London to-day." "What will Mull do without the London news?" "No news from London, what a misfortune for Mull!" This harping on the forlornness of the island caused the blood of the postmaster to boil with indignation, and he shouted in ire: "It is not Mull I will be sorry for, at all, at all. Mull can do without the London news. But what will poor London do, when ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... this proposal to turn the proprietary colonies into royal provinces. Under such a change, while the Quakers might still have an influence in the Legislature, the Crown would probably give the executive offices to Churchmen. They therefore labored hard to discredit the Quakers. They kept harping on the absurdity of a set of fanatics attempting to govern a colony without a militia and without administering oaths of office or using oaths in judicial proceedings. How could any one's life be safe from foreign enemies without ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... Frank and Will exchange that sudden glance and nod, showing that the little secret they shared in common must have some connection with the subject Bluff was even then harping upon. ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... so the friend, like a musician, in bringing about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always useful. But the flatterer, always harping on one note, and accustomed to play his accompaniment only with a view to please and to ingratiate himself, knows not how either to oppose in deed, or give pain in word, but complies only with every wish, ever chiming in with and echoing the sentiments of his patron. As then Xenophon ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Squires' harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey to any attention to the story that he had told. At each question he went back to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenly without any thought of what ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... 1873, and the dropping of the old silver dollar from coinage. Although this coin has been restored by the act of 1878, and hundreds of millions of such dollars had been coined, yet the Senators from the silver producing states, and especially Stewart, were continually harping on "the crime of 1873," as they called the coinage act of that year, a careful statement of which has already been ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... look after ornamental gardens and South aspics and all, I ought to have my salary raised," said James, still harping on his ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... either side of the Philippa had stood motionless waiting for their orders, but now there was a sharp shout from their leader, and every string twanged together. The air was full of their harping, together with the swish of the arrows, the long-drawn keening of the bowmen and the short deep bark of the under-officers. "Steady, steady! Loose steady! Shoot wholly together! Twelve score paces! Ten score! Now eight! Shoot wholly together!" Their gruff shouts broke through the high shrill cry ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... through space with your wild train, Harping its shrillest, searching tone, Or wailing deep its ancient moan, And ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... in its prosecution. It has not been deemed necessary to retaliate upon the Confederate agents who fill Europe with their tale of woe, by retorting upon them a reference to the unchristian practices of their soldiery. There has been no appeal to the moral sympathies of the Old World, by harping upon the enormities of slavery, and by announcing a crusade against it. Foreign communities have been left to the ordinary modes of information, to the press and the accounts of American and European ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... harping on that one string, John. It is only four years since we were married. Have I become an ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... give to corporations that obey the laws, whose operations are above censure and who add immeasurably to the wealth of the country and to the prosperity of every citizen in it? With this constant presentation of depravity, this incessant harping upon the one string of human dishonesty, what wonder that our visions should be distorted or that we should exclude from our horizon almost everything but the sinister features of modern life. What wonder that the young men and women should look at the career ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... tour we, of course, visited the celebrated basons for the men-of-war. "Still harping upon these ships," I can fancy you exclaiming; "when will he have done with them?" You must bear it patiently. It was on account of these said basons, in a great measure, that I came to Antwerp, so you must endure their ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... habits to which the Dominicans were devoted in their neighboring cells. The festive season was nearly at an end, for it was the 20th of February, but the evening had been more than usually gay, and had been spent in games at chess, tables, or backgammon, reading romances of chivalry, harping and singing. King James himself, brave and handsome, and in the prime of life, was the blithest of the whole joyous party. He was the most accomplished man in his dominions; for though he had been basely kept a prisoner at Windsor throughout his boyhood by Henry IV of England, an education had ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... gave such a desponding look. 'Pierce,' he continued, 'will smash the democracy before he has done, by simply making it ridiculous. Thrice have I remonstrated with him in all my power of persuasion; but it has fallen harmless at his feet, for here he is, up again and harping. He singularly argues in his private despatches that Europe being in a fuzzle generally; that England having enough to do at keeping her grumbling people quiet, and fighting her old friend Russia; that Monsieur Napoleon, the very Republican Emperor, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... own house, eh? And so soon as I say a quarter of a word to them, eh? they will be taking down their guns, eh? and setting out on horseback or on foot, for whatever place I tell them. And don't keep harping on words, for if I gave my word it was because I don't wish to fight; and if I want guerillas there will be guerillas; and if I don't there won't, for I am who I am, the same man that I always was, as every ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... song, that new song that is said to be sung by the hundred forty and four thousand which stand with the Lamb upon Mount Sion, with his Father's name written in their foreheads. These are also called harpers, harping with their harps: 'And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... liable to go under too sometimes, one must not forget," said Hadria, "although most people profess to believe so firmly in the triumph of the best—how I can't conceive, since the common life of every day is an incessant harping on the moral: the smallest, meanest, poorest, thinnest, vulgarest qualities in man and woman are those selected for survival, in the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... his finger-tips tingling with the desire to have just one shot. He kept harping on the theme of the mistake they had made the day before in not going to the support of the 5th corps. If the Prussians had not made their attack yet, it must be because their infantry had not got up in sufficient strength, whence it was evident that their display of cavalry in the distance ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... festivals in company with jugglers and mountebanks. Towards the beginning of the sixteenth century, private orchestras were maintained by the noble and the wealthy. Still the instrumental band held at best but a secondary place beside the vocal choir. "Harping," says the ancient bard, "ken I none, for song is chefe of myn-strelse." The music which it played differed in no essential respect from that intended for singing; indeed the part-song was often arranged ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... enter in, and eat of the delicious fruit! While you are persisting that there is no beauty in the garden, (because you choose to be deaf as well as blind,)—the shadows are lengthening out, and the glory is departing, and the angels are getting weary of harping ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... as you would say—Surath Singh and Mirath Singh, both rather recently promoted from the ranks and therefore likely to see both sides to a question (whereas a naik should rightly see but one). Very early I had taken those two naiks in hand, showing them friendship, harping on the honor and pleasure of being daffadar and on the ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... and a view of the valley with trees, blue in the distance, at the furthest visible point. "Do you see them trees?" he said. "That's where Harping is; 'tis two miles or, perhaps, a little more from Thorpe. There's a church tower among them trees, but you can't see it because 'tis hid. You go by the road till you comes to the church, then you go on by the water, maybe a quarter ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... have had good weather on the whole. The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and I shall be glad enough to get back to town. I cannot say much for June, her health and spirits are very indifferent, and I don't see what is to come of it. She says nothing, but it is clear that she is harping on this engagement, which is an engagement and no engagement, and—goodness knows what. I have grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed to return to London in the present state of affairs, but she is so self-willed that she might ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the intense anger of many critics and readers over the eternal question of Browning's obscurity. They have been harping on this theme for eighty years and show no more sign of exhaustion than a dog barking in the night. Why do the heathen rage? Why do they not let Browning alone, and read somebody they can understand? ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... half of half a quarter, for the matter of that—and then it would be asked, Why did that there honest Deputy Lock, let her go, instead of putting her safe with the Parish? That's what a man of his character ought to have done, it would be argueyfied,' said the Deputy Lock, cunningly harping on the strong string of her terror; 'he ought to have handed her over safe to the Parish. That was to be expected of a man of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... across the surface of the human pyramid before her. However, in the presence of an occasional tea-drinking husband, one or the other of them embraced convention and talked feelingly of Mrs. Brenton's virtues. As a rule, though, she confessed to herself later on that she had been insistently harping upon a non-existent entity. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... up, and although the telephone rang twice after that he would not answer. It seemed to him that Mary V had very little to do, harping away still at that subject. He had been secretly a bit homesick for the ranch, but now he thanked heaven, emphatically enough to make up for any lack of sincerity, that ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... you (what made the thing more curious) that all the time the Tyrolean harps were harping round me in the trees, and even while I looked, a green-and-yellow bird (that, I suppose, was building) began to tear the hair off the head of one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... insistent and steady, like the rolling of water down a fall. The very monotony of the sound, the eternal harping upon one theme, contained power. Henry, susceptible to the impressions of the wilderness, began to feel that his own brain was being heated by it, and he saw as through a dim red mist. The silent and impassive figures of the chiefs seemed to grow in height and size. ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... battle and the thoroughness of the victory, ending in the conflagration of five-and-twenty captured galleys, the poet concludes by an admonition to the enemy to moderate his pride and curb his arrogant tongue, harping on the obnoxious epithet porci leproxi, which seems to have galled the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... much over the ground his proposer had taken, so that, bating the bad temper, the pith of his speech was much the same, quite as much deprecating the political views of his opponent, and harping on O'Grady's worn-out catch-word of "Having chalked out a line ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... possibly be endeavoured, every proof has been crowded into this book in refutation of this favourite allegation of Mr. Froude's. It is only an idle waste of time to be thus harping on his colour topic. No one can deserve to govern simply because he is white, and no one is bound to be subject simply because he is black. The whole of West [191] Indian history, even after the advent of the attorney-class, proves this, in spite of the efforts to ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... reconciled to you. But after doing everything that could be done, not only did I fail to renew his old feelings towards you, but I could not even succeed in eliciting the reason of his alienation. On his part, however, he keeps harping on that arbitration case of his, and the other matters which I knew very well before you left Rome were causing him offence. Still, he has certainly got something else fixed deeper in his mind; and this no letters from you, and no commissioning of me will obliterate as easily as you will do ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to die on his hands after all he had gone through to get her. Altogether he began to be pretty uneasy and you may be sure I did my part to make him so. Every chance I got I would remark how sick his dog seemed. Of course I wasn't supposed to know it wasn't one he had had for years. I kept harping on the puppie's health until I had him fussed to death. At last he said: 'I don't know but what you are right about Trixie, O'Connel. If they are going to put you ashore at Boston to buy supplies, why wouldn't it be a good plan for you to take the dog to the ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... were furst found in old tyme. In the beginning of holi Chirche, it was so that the pepull cam to the Chirche with candellys brennyng and wold Wake and come with light toward nyght to the Chirch to their devocions; and afterwards they fell to lecherie and songs, daunces, harping, piping and also to glotony and sinne and so turned the holinesse to cursaydnesse; wherefore holi faders ordeined the pepull to leve that waking and to fast the Evyn. But it is called Vigilia, that is Waking in English and it is called the Evyn, for at Evyn they were wont to ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... to note in connection with Miss Austen's work; namely, her wholesome influence on the English novel. In Northanger Abbey and in Sense and Sensibility she satirizes the popular romances of the period, with their Byronic heroes, melodramatic horrors and perpetual harping on some pale heroine's sensibilities. Her satire is perhaps the best that has been written on the subject, so delicate, so flashing, so keen, that a critic compares it to the exploit of Saladin (in ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... that?—[Aside.] Still harping on my daughter:—yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.—What ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... concerned—stuck them deep into his trousers' pockets and walked away before he could be betrayed into deeper deceit. It did seem to him rather hard that, merely because he had wanted the roan badly enough to—er—exercise a little diplomacy in order to get him, they should keep harping on the subject like that. And to have Coleman making medicine to get the roan into that contest was, to say the least, sickening. Andy's private belief was that a twelve-year-old girl could go round up the milk-cows on that horse. He had never known ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... surrounds their sight A globe of circular light, That with long beams the shame-faced Night arrayed. The helmed Cherubim, And sworded Seraphim, Are seen, in glittering ranks with wings displayed, Harping, in loud and solemn quire, With unexpressive notes ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... four sides, leaving the centre space for the guests. No seats: every couple occupy the first open standing room they can find at a table, and sup on whatever viands happen to be opposite them. Maybe there is a certain stony sameness about the food, a harping ad infinitum on some eight or ten hackneyed culinary ideas which one always finds where, as here, food and drink for a great many relays of people are provided by contract; but so long as chicken and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... asked Adrian, looking vague. Then, as Anthony vouchsafed no answer, but merely twirled his stick, and gazed with indifferent eyes at the horizon, "Oh—Madame Torrebianca?" he conjectured. "Still harping on my daughter? Of course I know where she comes from. She comes from the land where the love of the turtle now melts into sweetness, now maddens to crime—as who should say a land of Guildhall banquets. She comes from Italy. Have you ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... the minstrel That's harping in the ha', And he'll play gude luck to the bonny boy That comes frae the ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... not only did not walk his body off, but harping on the same string, pertinaciously continued to ply me with alternate arguments and intreaties, until at last fairly wearied out, and more, I believe, with the hope of getting rid of the "importunate chink" of the fellow's discourse, than anything ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... embodiment of tyranny and religious ascendency. The Irish people have long memories, very long memories. Englishmen would say: 'No matter what happened to my great-grandfather; I am treated well, and that is enough for me.' Irishmen still go harping on the landlord, although he no longer has any power. The terrible history of the former relationship between landlord and tenant is still kept up and remembered, and will be remembered for ages, if not for ever. Presently you will see the bearing ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... giants and pygmies was shown with all its accompanying horrors. The firmament dripped crimson. The four cryptic creatures of Ezekiel's vision came out of the north, a great cloud of "infolding fire" and the colour was amber. A cyclopean and dazzling staircase thronged by moving angelic shapes, harping mute harps, stretched from sea to sky, melting into the milky way like the tail of a starry serpent. Followed the opening of the dread prophetic seals; but, after an angel had descended from heaven, his face as the sun and at his feet pillars of fire, the people, prostrate like ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... kingdom every hour in the year, and fastening always on the worst as the most palatable morsels. But she is a circumstantial old lady, communicative, scrupulous, leaving nothing to the imagination, harping on the smallest grievances, a village-oracle and critic, most veritable, most identical, bringing us acquainted with persons and things just as they chanced to exist, and giving us a local interest in all she knows ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... right if the parrot don't die," said the dainty pessimist, still harping on his pet theme. "All that bread spoilt, and ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... yet settled between ourselves, Peter Igntitch. I'll speak to you as I would before God, and you may judge between my old man and me. He goes on harping on that marriage. But just ask—who it is he wants him to marry. If it were a girl of the right sort now— I am not my child's enemy, but ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... doing, subjected her to such a mortification. I certainly am sorry to have done so. As for her ladyship's answer, it would have been to me more a subject of mirth than any other feeling. It has, however, proved the cause of much annoyance from my mother's continually harping ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... over all the atmosphere of careless, magnificent luxury and slow decay; the stucco peeled off in great patches, the stable roofs sagging, the windmill wheelless, the fences following the line of a drunken man's walk, the trees storm-torn, and the mournful cedars harping with every passing wind a requiem for the glory that was gone. As he looked, the memory of the old man's funeral came to Burnham: the white old face in the coffin—haughty, noble, proud, and the spirit of it unconquered even by death; the long procession of carriages, the slow ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... and answered: "I believe you, gallant guests; with your long limbs and broad shoulders, we could never match you here. For we care nothing here for boxing, or for shooting with the bow; but for feasts, and songs, and harping, and dancing, and running races, to stretch our limbs ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Unitarianism. I myself at one period took a pretty strong turn to inveighing against the doctrine of Divine Right, and am not yet cured of my prejudice on that subject. How many projectors have gone mad in good earnest from incessantly harping on one idea: the discovery of the philosopher's stone, the finding out the longitude, or paying off the national debt! The disorder at length comes to a fatal crisis; but long before this, and while they were walking about and talking as usual, the derangement of the fancy, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... endure, A constant harping on one tune, Serious endeavours to assure What everybody long has known; Ever to hear the same replies And overcome antipathies Which never have existed, e'en In little maidens of thirteen? And what like menaces fatigues, Entreaties, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... remember the exact words Withers had used. Also, his harping on Withers' possible guilt struck him as absurd when he considered the strength of the ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... mentioned in the Gazette, and rises proportionally high in his uncle's favour; and what scarcely pleases the young soldier less, he has also shot two seals, and thus put an end to the Antiquary's perpetual harping upon the story of the phoca.People talk of a marriage between Miss M'Intyre and Captain Wardour; ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... jars,—to sail with the morning breeze. Swarthy shipmen ran up and down the planks betwixt quay and ship, balancing their heavy jars on their heads as women bear water-pots. From the tavern by the mooring came harping and the clatter of cups, while two women—the worse for wine—ran out to drag the newcomers in to their revel. Phormio slapped the slatterns aside with his staff. In the same fearful waking dream Glaucon saw Phormio ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... form the whole peninsula into a single state. Morier, at any rate, made it clear that England would throw the whole weight of her power against such treatment of her oldest ally. But alarmist politicians were perpetually harping on this string, and Morier, in a letter written in 1876, compares them to 'children telling ghost-stories to one another who have got frightened at the sound of their own voices, and mistake the rattling of a mouse behind the wainscot for the tramping ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... found out that Cornelia Moran is going there. Are you still harping on that string? And Cornelia never said one word to me. I do not approve of such deceit. In my love affairs I have always been open ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... sometimes when you are grown up," he went on in his feeble voice, harping still on the same subject. "You will have no money, my poor little one—if it had not been for that devil Legros—but it is too late to think of that now. Well, I think you will have beauty, and that will go far even if you have no dot, and I should like you to marry well. But when ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... depress'd, While nestle there inhabitants, a feather'd tuneful choir, That in the strife of song breathe forth a flame of minstrel fire. O happy tribe of choristers! no interruption mars The concert of your harmony, nor ever harshly jars A string of all your harping, nor of your voices trill Notes that are weak for tameness, that are for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and Miss Harding have played several games together during the past week, and I assured him that the fact possessed not the slightest interest to me. Chilvers pretends to think it does, and seems to take much delight in harping on that subject. ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... Courage be wanting to our utmost force. Thus then replied Ulysses, ever-wise. 150 To me the safest counsel and the best Seems this. First wash yourselves, and put ye on Your tunics; bid ye, next, the maidens take Their best attire, and let the bard divine Harping melodious play a sportive dance, That, whether passenger or neighbour near, All may imagine nuptials held within. So shall not loud report that we have slain All those, alarm the city, till we gain Our woods ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... that voice spake urgently: "Open to Me." Still harping in mine ears: "Rise, let Me in." Pleading with tears: "Open to Me that I may come to thee." While the dew dropped, while the dark hours were cold: "My Feet bleed, see My Face, See My Hands bleed that bring thee grace, My Heart doth bleed ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... complete a letter, and was obliged to push over even the simplest calculation to Phoebe. In vain she tried to divert his mind from this perilous exertion; he had not taste nor cultivation enough to be interested in anything she could devise, and harping upon some one of the unpleasant topics that occupied his thoughts was his only entertainment when he grew tired of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the worst of all—a half-confession! But she had escaped! Thank God for that! Again and again in his hopeless perplexity this comfort returned to him,—he had saved her; he had done his duty. And harping upon this in his strange fatalism, it at last seemed to him that this was for what he had lived—for what he had suffered—for what he had fitly ended his career. Perhaps it was left for him now to pass his remaining years in forgotten exile—even ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... "'Still harping,' says Ogden, laughing again. 'Don't you suppose that if I was Black Bill and thought you suspected me, I'd put a Winchester bullet into you and stop my ...
— Options • O. Henry
... fully just how much of this display proceeded from a desire on Iley's part for notice, yet her own passionate, rebellious heart seconded the idle woman, and allowed the continual harping on that string to finally drive her to the set determination that, as soon as Creed could talk to her at all, she would ask him ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... me until life become a burden, harping on my shortcomings. You are too good for this world, Iris—just proper for an angel, and so 'tis best for you to go. I have found one who will fill your place to perfection, and make me a happy man, since she brings wealth ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... died in the assured hope that he would be the leader of a heavenly choir. It does not seem far fetched to believe that his ambition is gratified. At this very hour he may be a director of those harpers that are harping upon their harps. ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... annihilation, either of spirit or of matter (which is illusion). Consequently the gods' heaven and the spirits of good men in that heaven are also re-absorbed into that Supreme, to be re-born in the new age. This is what is meant by the constant harping on quasi-immortality. Righteousness, sacrifice, bravery, will bring man to heaven, but, though he joins the gods, with them he is destroyed. They and he, after millions of years, will be re-born in the new heaven and the new earth. To ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... "Still harping about that?" laughed Faith, pausing in the doorway with her arms full of holly wreaths ready to be hung. "Daytime is made for children. Gail and I didn't intrude at ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... constantly to remind children of their deficiencies or peculiarities. Sensitive children are often seriously injured by the suggestion of inferiority and the exaggeration of defects which might have been entirely overcome. This everlasting harping against the bad does not help the child half as much as keeping his little mind full of the good, the beautiful, and the true. The constant love suggestion, purity suggestion, nobility suggestion will ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... a double-turreted wonder to me why romancers are forever harping about heroines with "tresses in artistic disarray." All the tresses in such condition that I have ever gazed upon have looked most slovenly and ofttimes positively waggish. How any one can think that a girl with a tangled braid hanging down her back, a little wad over ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... to everlasting fame Dan to Beersheba Dance, when you do —attendance Daniel come to judgment Dare, what man dare, I Dark, illumine what is Darkly, through a glass Darkness visible Dart, like the poisoning of a Daughter, still harping on my David, Nathan said to Dawn, exhalations of the Day, what a, may bring forth —, sufficient unto the —, jocund, stands tiptoe —, as it tell upon a —, brought back my night —. the great, important ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... scarcely any rest but what I found in the love of Thy will, O my God, and submission to Thy orders, however rigorous they might be. They incessantly watched my words and actions, to find occasion against me. They chided me all the day long, continually repeating, and harping over and over the same things, even before the servants. How often have I made my meals on my tears, which were interpreted as the most criminal in the world! They said, I would be damned; as if the tears would open Hell for me, which surely they were more likely to extinguish. ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... Victoria has reigned since: it was a pretty tired old world at that time. One might almost say that the further we go back the older and more "played out" the world appears, notwithstanding that the poets, who were generally pessimists of the present, kept harping about the youth of the world and the joyous spontaneity of human life in some golden age before their time. In fact, the world is old in spots—in Memphis and Boston and Damascus and Salem and Ephesus. Some of these places are venerable in traditions, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... leading their opponents off on a tangent. The real question, free-love, will, however, by no means be forgotten by us until the Socialists have been shown up thoroughly. Since the conspirators against family life are so fond of harping on the matter of prostitution, with a view to drawing critics away from attacking their doctrine of free-love, the reader will be shown that even prostitution, instead of decreasing in the Socialist state, would, together with immorality ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... pretty fairly decently; and then last year he went for a trip, and he caught it from some one. He caught it, he caught it, they have told me so—caught all these tricks. Now he doesn't care for any of our Russian ways. He keeps harping on this: "I want to be up to date, I want to be in the fashion. Yes, yes! Put on a cap," he says! What an idea to get! Am I going to try to charm any one in my old age and make myself look lovely? Bah! You just try to do anything with him. He never drank before—really he didn't—but ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky |
