"Nothings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have looked up a cheap school for Harry and Sidney, have discharged my daily duties as first flute of the Peabody Orchestra, have written a couple of poems and part of an essay on Beethoven and Bismarck, have accomplished at least a hundred thousand miscellaneous nothings.... We are in a state of supreme content with our new home; it really seems to me as incredible that myriads of people have been living in their own homes heretofore; as to the young couple with a first baby it seems impossible that a great ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... novel and refreshing themes, centres in its own operations and creations, broods over threadbare topics until it has grown morbid; and, instead of deriving healthful nourishment from the world that surrounds it, exhausts and consumes itself, like fabled Araline, spinning its substance into filmy nothings." ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... to which they went later, he moved from box to box, from tier to tier, taking snuff with the men, saying charming nothings to the ladies; the centre always of a laughing throng, whose proximity must surely have been distressful to any persons so unfashionable as to desire to listen to what the actors were saying. He even went behind and upon the stage, as spectators were still permitted to do, although there was ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... been exhausted by producing a race of heroes like the Pepins and the Charleses. The family became, soon, as contemptible as the ox-drawn, long-haired "do-nothings" whom it had expelled; but it is not our task to describe the fortunes of the Emperor's ignoble descendants. The realm was divided, sub-divided, at times partially reunited, like a family farm, among monarchs incompetent ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... talking of nothings, a conversation in which Daniel joined with somewhat of surliness, while Bell, grave and anxious, kept wistfully looking from one to the other, desirous of gleaning some further information on the subject, which had begun to trouble ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... walked and talked, only as it seemed the other day;—he appeared, as it were, removed from her by an immeasurable distance,- -his spirit and hers had gone wide apart,—his was throned upon a height of noble ideals,—hers was low, low down in a little valley of worldly nothings,—and oh, how small and insignificant she felt! Cicely's hand caught hers and gave it an affectionate little pressure, as they bowed their heads together under the ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... pretty much everywhere? Why you floor the cellar with cement, don't you? Well, the soil of a city is cemented all over, one may say, with certain qualifications of course. A first-rate city house is a regular sanatorium. The only trouble is, that the little good-for-nothings that come of utterly used-up and worn-out stock, and ought to die, can't die, to save their lives. So they grow up to dilute the vigor of the race with skim-milk vitality. They would have died, like good children, in most average country places; but ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... expresses sincere sympathy for my state of "judicial blindness," told me to-day that I should not go down to the real bonâ fide pit or abode of perdition, but to a dull shadowy place, "the region of nothings," and I might get out again and ascend to Jennah, (جنّة) "paradise;" and this, because I was near to them (the Mussulmans), and read and wrote Arabic, and was not afraid to write or repeat ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... with her chum, Marjorie went. She wondered how they were going to act a love scene together that evening. The soft nothings they had rehearsed would seem very hollow after the mutual ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... was dull and empty again. I went out alone, aping myself and shouting: "Bricks for the palace! The calf is much stronger today!" And when this was done, I did other nothings, and when my money began to run out, I wrote to my publisher, pretending I would soon send him an unbelievably remarkable manuscript. In short, I behaved like a man in love. These were ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... with the Church. The faculties which fit a man to be a great ruler are not those of society; some great rulers have been unintelligible like Cromwell, or brusque like Napoleon, or coarse and barbarous like Sir Robert Walpole. The light nothings of the drawing-room and the grave things of office are as different from one another as two human occupations can be. There is no naturalness in uniting the two; the end of it always is, that you put a man at the head of society who very likely is remarkable ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... more wonderful instance than this of the production of a line of thought, from the world of the senses into the region of pure imagination. I mean by imagination here, not that play of fancy which can give to airy nothings a local habitation and a name, but that power which enables the mind to conceive realities which lie beyond the range of the senses—to present to itself distinct images of processes which, though mighty in the aggregate beyond all ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Martines, that jacknape of mine is driving me mad with all his carrying on. I say to him, I say: 'Anything wrong in this house, jail-bird? Well, then, why go tearing around with that gang of good-for-nothings, who will die at the end of a rope, every one of them!' now oste sinor Martines, you know how to talk in good grammar. You just tell him what is what. You tell him they'll put him in the lock-up at Valencia if ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... be pardoned for again emphasising the fact that it is not only for his discoveries and inventions that Watt is to be credited, but also for the manual ability displayed in giving to these "airy nothings of the brain, a local habitation and a name," for his greatest idea might have remained an "airy nothing," had he not been also the mechanician able to produce it in the concrete. It is not, therefore, only Watt the inventor, Watt the discoverer, ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... of matter can have a will, and by that will put matter into motion, then the Materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences, is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say, they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by the Lockes, the Tracys, and the Stewarts. At what age* ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... master-passion in a child who is not yet two years old. In a case where the possibility of imitation was excluded I have seen a little girl adore a small baby, stroke its hands, whisper quasi-maternal sweet nothings to it—"mother it," in short—as plainly as I have seen the sun at noon; and there is no reason to suppose that this deeply impressive spectacle ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... has had the same history—a long record of sleepless nights and of poverty, of disillusions and of joys, of partial improvements discovered by several generations of nameless workers, who have added to the original invention these little nothings, without which the most fertile idea would remain fruitless. More than that: every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... round Lady Joan Fitz-Warene, who was gratified by the devotion of the Cupid of May Fair. He uttered inconceivable nothings, and she replied to him in incomprehensible somethings. Her learned profundity and his vapid lightness effectively contrasted. Occasionally he caught her eye and conveyed to her the anguish of his soul in a glance of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... people counts for what it does well. Also I instance men of standing in the loose Indian body politic. A traveller can easily discover the reverse of the medal. These have their shirks, their do-nothings, their men of small account, just as do other races. I have no thought of glorifying the noble red man, nor of claiming for him a freedom from human imperfection—even where his natural quality ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... of numerical measurement. Against the heavy battalions led by the statisticians, and the experimental psychologists, and the efficiency experts, what chance is there for successful resistance? On the opposing side can be rallied only such mere irregulars as are willing to fight for airy nothings—for the zest and colorfulness of life, for sociability and good fellowship, for preserving to each man access to those resources of relaxation and refreshment which, without injury to others, he finds ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... immutability: many had considerably developed their character, both for good and evil, in the other world; and this gave rise to some singular results. Some who had been heroes and saints on earth had there sunk into scamps and good-for-nothings; and there were examples, too, of a contrary transformation. For instance, the fumes of self-conceit mounted to Saint Anthony's head when he learned what immense veneration and adoration had been paid to him by all Christendom; and he who here below withstood the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... all! Lemme outer this. I'm goin'!" said the veteran and Jimmy was compelled to stand up to let him pass, and then, thinking this an excellent opportunity to escape, himself fled. The Judge was still uttering profound nothings when his last words were audible, and that proved that he was a great and blossoming statesman for whom ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... were not to be deceived by platitudes about "strategic purposes," or empty nothings about "a campaign to nullify it." They had gotten now beyond that; and saw the terrible blow that had been dealt them in all its naked strength. They felt that an army that had failed to check Sherman, when it was behind strong works, would hardly do so in the open field. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort,{7} As sev'ral garbs with country, town, and court. Some by old words to fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; Such labor'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile, Unlucky, as Fungoso{8} in the play, These sparks{9} with awkward vanity display What the fine gentleman wore yesterday; And but so mimic ancient wits at best, As apes our grandsires, in their doublets ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... fantasies which had vanished with the fever that had so recently left him. The awful shapes, the struggles of demoniac men, the processions of strange and beautiful forms, which had visited him in his delirious visions,—all these were airy nothings; but ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... probably less clear notions than these men of the drift or philosophic significance of their activity, helped all over Greece in the promulgation of this new gospel of self-interest. Many Sophists no doubt troubled themselves very little with philosophical questions; they were 'agnostics,' know-nothings; all they professed to do was to teach some practical skill of a verbal or rhetorical character. They had nothing to do with the nature or value of ideals; they did not profess to say whether any end or aim was in itself good or bad, but given an end or aim, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... would not mind it. I would probably continue on. We know it now as we do London or Paris. We can distinguish sea captains, lawyers in politics, commandantes, oldest residents, gentlemenly good for nothings, shipping agents and commission dealers, coffee planters and men who are "on the beach" with unerring eye. We know the story of each before he tells it, or it is told by some one else. The Commandante shot a lot of men by the side of a road during the last revolution, first allowing them to dig their ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... then, demanded in the material upon which it was to work, a combination of qualities such as very few subjects could offer. The events and personages must be real and substantial, for he could not occupy himself seriously with airy nothings and creatures of pure fancy. Yet they must not be such events and personages as history had pourtrayed to us with well-known characters, and all their virtues, faults, foibles, and peculiarities. And, lastly, it was ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the clamour of rich and prosperous people invited to pay taxes, and beyond measure bitter. They are going to live abroad, cut their charities, dismiss old servants, and do all sorts of silly, vindictive things. We seem to be doing feeble next-to-nothings in the endowment of research. Not one in twenty of the boys of the middle and upper classes learns German or gets more than a misleading smattering of physical science. Most of them never learn to speak French. Heaven alone knows what they do with their brains! ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... need detain us. This was really a summer idleness: for it was the interval between two of his important undertakings, there was no periodical yet to make demands on him, and only the task of finishing his Haunted Man for Christmas lay ahead. But he did even his nothings in a strenuous way, and on occasion could make gallant fight against the elements themselves. He reported himself, to my horror, thrice wet through on a single day, "dressed four times," and finding all sorts of great things, brought ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... say to him? How would such a letter ever get itself written? Do you suppose he would care for me as a correspondent? I should like you to ask him that question, if you dared. Giles's face would be a study. I fancy I write that letter,—a marvellous composition of commonplace nothings. "My dear brother, I think you will like to hear our Bournemouth news," etc. I can imagine him tossing it aside as he opens his other letters: "Gladys has actually written to me. I suppose she wants another cheque. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to find it out. Brought up in the expectation of a fortune, bred to idleness as others are to industry, his highest ambition having been to amuse himself creditably and to take life easily, what was to hinder his being one of the multitude of "good-for-nothings" in our modern life? If there had been war, he had spirit enough to carry him into it, and it would have surprised no one to hear that Jack had joined an exploring expedition to the North Pole or the highlands of Central Asia. Something uncommon he ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the depths to which the roots of a feeling reach in the soul of a solitary being thus returning to the traditions of mother-love in order to bestow upon a woman the same caressing devotion with which his mother had charmed his life? To him, what grandeur in these nothings wherein were blended his only two affections. Flowers and music thus became the language of their love. Gabrielle replied to Etienne's gifts by nosegays of her own,—nosegays which told the wise old doctor that his ignorant ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... and the simple devoutness of the speaker, who recognises in what to others were trivial commonplaces God's guidance to the end which He had appointed, his recognition of the divine hand moving beneath all the nothings and littlenesses of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... give credence to widely advertised and high-sounding descriptions and specious promises of vast profits, these men find little difficulty in conjuring money out of the pockets of the unsophisticated and gullible, who rush to become stockholders in concerns that have "airy nothings" for a foundation, and that collapse quickly when the bubble is ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... have Mr. March again begin where he had left off, she conversed with the Fairs longer than ever and created half a dozen delays out of pure nothings. So that when she and John were once more alone together he talked hither and yon for a short while before he asked her ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... of a poor sickly seamstress as His instrument for laying the foundations for this great work. He who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will, passing by the rich, mighty, and noble somethings of this world, chose again the poor, weak, base, despised nothings, that no flesh should glory in ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... sincerely wish to have the frivolities of superstition and the endless multitude of nothings which arrogant creed-makers have impiously superadded to pure christianity removed from the church than I do; but wisdom must direct in this great and necessary work. It was those who had more zeal than discernment who asked if they should ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... begins, with Mademoiselle du Plessis in a leading part. "... La Plessis has a quartan fever. It is pretty to see her jealous fury when she comes here and finds the child with me. The fuss there is to have my stick or muff to hold! But enough of these nothings...." ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... she's rather a difficult person to make love to. It would be a bold young man who whispered sweet nothings into her ear; ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... he is not dead, he doth not sleep— He hath awaken'd from the dream of life— 'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife; And in mad trance, strike with our spirits' knife, Invulnerable nothings!" ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... pupil,—a thing, by the bye, which marks the difference between public and private education. The fault was far less with Pierrette than with her cousins. It took her an infinite length of time to learn the rudiments. She was called stupid and dull, clumsy and awkward for mere nothings. Incessantly abused in words, the child suffered still more from the harsh looks of her cousins. She acquired the doltish ways of a sheep; she dared not do anything of her own impulse, for all she did was misinterpreted, misjudged, and ill-received. In all things she ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... went into the Abbey Church, I should like to know, and sat in a pew for ever so long, and looked tender nothings? Oh yes! I saw you, and a pretty sight it was, too!" ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... more than for washerwomen? There is no difference in their compositions; they are all made of the same flesh and blood. The very book these loyal gushers call the Word of God declares that he is no respecter of persons. What are the distinctions of rank and wealth? Mere nothings. Look down from an altitude of a thousand feet, and an emperor and his subjects shall appear equally small; and what are even a thousand feet in the infinite universe? Nay, strip them of all their fictions of dress; reduce them to the same condition ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... one's youth! The mercy of God rather than any virtue in me kept these from being not only infinitely more numerous, but infinitely worse. Yet I had better confess them, such as they are, in this place. For it was some such nothings as those which follow that first brought Helene and me into one way of thinking, though ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... bear nothings either. What's matter over there, nobody hear nothing? Luck, he got no tongue when camera's ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... big one on the wall. 'South Africa is coloured green. Not red for the English, or yellow for the Germans. Some day it will be yellow, but for a little it will be green—the colour of neutrals, of nothings, of boys and young ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Sensitiveness American Morals Territory and Population Effect of Early Education Phases of Liberty Strikes Intelligence Energy 'Cuteness and Eggs Enterprise—Lord-hunting Hospitality—Political Parties Know-nothings The Future My Endeavour My Warning Lord Holland, Hope, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... not what we exact of thee, be not surprised to find thyself stretched out a bit, and to be laid up for three weeks, as well as the good-for-nothings ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... man and his beloved, they dwelt apart in an ephemeral world where only the prosaic hours when they were separated were unreal. Their realities were smiles, sighs, glances,—the thousand and one nothings that make up the joys and agonies of a lover's existence. Thus ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... to whom I owe All that I am in Arts, all that I know. How nothings that, to whom my Country owes, The great renown ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... then had been all that could possibly be expected of him. His manner was perfect. He sat still And gazed with delightfully friendly eyes into Miss Maliphant's pleased countenance, and anon skipped across room or lawn to whisper beautiful nothings to Miss Kavanagh. The latter's change of fortune did not, apparently, seem to affect him in the least. After all, even now she was not as good a parti as Miss Maliphant, where money was concerned, but then ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... was given over to exciting sport, as the girls, and even Mrs. Brewster, tried to outride each other about the great enclosure. Polly made Noddy happy by mounting her silky little back and whispering fond nothings in the long ears. Anne was pleased to find her Chicago friends could ride so well on the restive western horses, and both Chicago girls were surprised to find what a magnificent rider Mrs. Brewster was. She was slowly rising in their ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... remarkable; he was just one of those lovable good-for-nothings that seem born to get better people into trouble all their lives long. He had been spoiled originally by being ten years younger than the next youngest in the family; and then, when the children had been shipped on to Aunt Mary's tender mercies, ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... taint the character of Moore. His modest estimate of himself was from first to last a leading feature in his character. Success never engendered egotism; honors never seemed to him only the recompense of desert; he largely magnified the favors he received, and seemed to consider as mere "nothings" the services he rendered and the benefits he conferred. That was his great characteristic, all his life. We have ourselves ample evidence to adduce on this head. I copy the following letter from Mr. Moore. It is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... of deductions. With what we know of Roderick Anthony and Flora de Barral I could not deduct an ordinary marital quarrel beautifully matured in less than a year—could I. If you ask me what is an ordinary marital quarrel I will tell you, that it is a difference about nothing; I mean, these nothings which, as Mr Powell told us when we first met him, shore people are so prone to start a row about, and nurse into hatred from an idle sense of wrong, from perverted ambition, for spectacular reasons too. There are on earth no actors too humble and obscure not to have a ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... instinctively their theeing and thouing of the sisters' school, those two women who for nearly twenty years had not addressed a word to each other. Why they detested each other, they hardly knew; so many times, it begins thus, with nothings, with jealousies, with childish rivalries, and then, at length, by dint of seeing each other every day without talking to each other, by dint of casting at each other evil looks, it ferments till it becomes implacable hatred.—Here they were, facing each ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... angel come to do a little earthly shopping, and return with the next heavenward tide. Hesper, in response all but unconscious, would be waited on by no other than Mary; and always between them passed some sweet, gentle nothings, which afforded Hesper more pleasure than ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Mr. Winston the light, Ben followed him into his room and busied himself in doing little nothings about the stove and wash-stand. "Let me unbutton your straps, sir," said he, stooping down and commencing on the buttons, which he was rather long in unclosing. "I know, sir, dat you Southern gentlemen ain't used to doing dese yer things for ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... with getting up the case, summoning witnesses, paying their expenses, and carrying out the sentence, it costs a lot to go through all the proper formalities before you can get quit of one of these good-for-nothings, over and above the three thousand francs that you are going to have. There is a saving in time as well. One good thrust of the bayonet into Trompe-la-Mort's paunch will prevent scores of crimes, and save fifty scoundrels from following his example; they will be very careful to ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... arms thrown round Baron's neck, whispering sweet nothings into his twitching ear. If he did not understand the substance of her remarks, he realized the force of her affection, and kept rubbing his nose against her shoulder in a sort of caress, very gently catching her jersey with his ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... has its corps of sleepers and burden of garments, and the tables yet resound with the rattle and clash of dice. Yet the greater part of the company are not doing anything. They walk about, or yawn tremendously, or pause as they pass each other to exchange idle nothings. Will the weather be fair to-morrow? Are the preparations for the games complete? Do the laws of the Circus in Antioch differ from the laws of the Circus in Rome? Truth is, the young fellows are suffering from ennui. Their heavy work is done; that is, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... been rubbed clean by that passionate housewife, Grizel. She was on her knees at present ca'ming the hearth-stone a beautiful blue, and sometimes looking round to address her mother, who was busy among her plants and cut flowers. Surely they were know-nothings who called this woman silly, and blind who said she painted. It was a little face all of one color, dingy pale, not chubby, but retaining the soft contours of a child's face, and the features were singularly delicate. She was clad in a soft gray, and her figure was of the smallest; there was such ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... colonel were of the most delicate and insinuating kind; and Mrs. Wilson several times turned away in displeasure at herself, for listening with too much satisfaction to nothings, uttered in an agreeable manner, or, what was worse, false sentiments supported with the gloss of language and a fascinating deportment. The anxiety of this lady on behalf of Emily kept her ever on the alert, when chance, or any chain of circumstances, threw her in ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... answer polite nothings to all her questions. "Oh, the poor, dear lady!" I thought to myself. The poor, dear lady! What a tearing away of veils and sentimental bandages was written in her book of ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... Mr. Latimer and Mr. Dalken were announced. Polly and Eleanor—the latter had realized that maybe her future, because of this disaster to the mine would not be as luxurious as she had dreamed of—anxiously welcomed the two men. Polly lost no time in polite nothings, but asked, at once, about ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... nothings, nothing was replied, Or something which was nothing, as urbanity Required. Aurora scarcely looked aside, Nor even smiled enough for any vanity. The Devil was in the girl! Could it be pride, Or modesty, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... did perceive it, he set to work, with the inquisitorial sagacity which priests acquire by directing consciences and burrowing into the nothings of the confessional, to establish, as though it were a matter of religious controversy, the following proposition: "Admitting that Mademoiselle Gamard did not remember it was Madame de Listomere's evening, ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... some other people whom I know," returned the man, with a chuckle; for, unlike the majority of his kind, he took a deep interest in the apparel of his wife and daughter, especially in the "pretty nothings" which add so much to the ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... spun glass), or the whirl of white water which the wind is driving like a luminous dust along the roofs, or the fitful disgorgements of the gutter-pipes, sparkling and foaming; in short, the thousand nothings to be admired and studied with delight by loungers, in spite of the porter's broom which pretends to be sweeping out the gateway. Then there's the talkative refugee, who complains and converses with the porter while he rests on his broom like a grenadier on his musket; or the pauper ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... nominally treating of "Many Things," will be found the full expression of what I knew best; namely, that all "things," many or few, which we ought to paint, must be first distinguished boldly from the nothings which we ought not; and that a faithful realist, before he could question whether his art was representing anything truly, had first to ask whether it meant seriously ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Sir Joshua treated it. In continuation, he says—"In many of Titian's portraits the head and hands are mere staring, lightish spots, unconnected with either the drapery or background, which are sometimes too dark, and mere obscure nothings; and in Lely, and even in Vandyke, we sometimes meet with the other extreme of too little solidity, too much flickering and washiness. Sir Joshua's object appears to have been to obtain the vigour and solidity of the one, with the bustle and spirit of the other, without the excess of either; ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... no use interrupting him with questions; he answered them with others; he whispered ambiguities in a manner most portentous; hinted at bewildering paradoxes with an air; nodded mysterious nothings, and finally left them gaping at him, exasperated, unable to make any sense out of what most astonishingly resembled a candid revelation of the hopes, fears, ambitions, and worldly ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the foundation of the Republican party of Massachusetts, and its twenty- fifth anniversary was celebrated accordingly in 1879. But it effected little more than to change the name of the Free Soil party. Few Whigs or Democrats united to the movement. A secret organization called Americans, or Know-Nothings, swept the Commonwealth like a wave, electing all the State officers, and, with scarcely an exception, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... und talks. What do they know over takin' care on mine house? They ain't ladies. They is educated only on the front. Me, I was raised private und expensive in Russia; I was ladies. Und you ist ladies. You ist Krisht[79-1]—that is too bad—but that makes me nothings. I wants you shall ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... had encountered one day in the flowery path where she was a-walking with two ladies—her companions. She shut to the window softly, and to bed again with her lover. 'Twas deep in the night, and they were lying so, kissing and murmuring the softest nothings ever were inspired by Love, whether at Naples or any other spot in all the wide world, when of a sudden they caught a noise of steps mounting the stairway and the rattle of arms; at the same time they beheld ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... few moments she had Mary's long hair down, and was chattering like a blackbird, wreathing the pearls in and out, and saying a thousand pretty little nothings,—weaving grace and poetry upon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... instead of casting yourselves as forlorn sinners at the feet of Christ, leaving it to Him to bless you when and in the manner He pleases. Know that He is the wise and Sovereign God, and that it is your duty to lie before Him as clay, as fools, as sinful nothings. ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... Church in Frankfort, and his friend Hiller surprised them with a new bridal chorus. The wedding tour lasted nearly a month, and the honeymooners kept a journal, in which they both sketched and wrote humourous nothings. The home they chose was in Leipzig, where Fanny Hensel visited them, and found Cecile possessed not only of "the beautiful eyes" Felix had raved over so much, "but possessed also of a wonderfully soothing temperament, that calmed her husband's whims ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... all this laxity of behaviour, let me state that in the very locality where it obtained—the Connecticut Valley—other sweethearts are said to have been forced to a most ceremonious courtship, to whisper their tender nothings through a "courting-stick," a hollow stick about an inch in diameter and six or eight feet long, fitted with mouth- and ear-pieces. In the presence of the entire family, lovers, seated formally on either side of the great fireplace, carried ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... was in his mind, we can read between the lines that he had no use for the theories of ministers, and would obviously have liked to have said in brutal English, "Here I am, gentlemen, do not encumber me with your departmental jargon of palpable nothings. You continue to trust in Providence; give me your untrammelled instructions as to what you wish me to do, and leave the rest to me." Here is another letter from Lord Radstock: "No official news have ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... all was over of communication between us, but I was mistaken. He spoke for a minute or two upon the crowd—early hour of coming—hasty breakfasting and such general nothings; and then, as if involuntarily, he returned to the sole subject on his ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... and cakes, offered by another, is all the further repast. The teacups and cake-basket are a real addition to the scene, because they cause a little lively social bustle, a little chatter and motion,—always of advantage in breaking up stiffness, and giving occasion for those graceful, airy nothings that answer so good a ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... assembled ladies. After the two silent hours of suffering that lay between herself and Axel, how strange it was, this noisy bustle of daily life. She caught fragments of what they were saying, fragments of the usual prattle, the same nothings that they said every day, accompanied by the same vague laughs. How strange it was, and how awful, the tremendousness of life, the nearness of death, the absolute relentlessness of suffering, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... I muttered those inevitable modest nothings which fit such occasions, Miss St. Michael recounted to the bride, whom she was ostensibly calling upon, and to the rest of our now once more harmonious circle, my adventures in the alleys of Africa. These loomed, even with Miss St. Michael's perfectly quiet and simple ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... combining against him. He set one cabal to watch another, and there was never a conspiracy entered into that he did not prepare a similar conspiracy through his numerous secret agents and thus split into harmless nothings and weak attempts what would have been fatal to a continuance of his power. His tricks were nothing but the ordinary everyday methods of the modern ward politician making the dear people believe he is doing one thing when he is doing another. The stern man pitted one antagonist against another until ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equals, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to that, I should prefer emigrating to some other country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... on subsequent explanation, that Cranstoun, who had been whispering soft nothings in the ear of Julia D'Egville, (here the Captain was observed to prick his ear without materially altering his position) hem! Cranstoun, I say, it appeared had also taken it into his head to give her a specimen of his agility, by an ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... black hat with the cherries, but thus urged they were bound to fulfil their social obligations. They offered a selection of ginger-nuts and fancy biscuits, and the best silver cream-jug, and murmured some polite nothings on the hackneyed subject of the weather. The lady helped herself, and regarded them with ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... if he had,—The threads of the web of life, how subtle they are! The finest cotton of Manchester, the finer meshes of the spider, seem three-inch cables by comparison with those moral gossamers which vulgar eyes cannot see at all, the "somethings, nothings," on ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... would have taken this party for stupid, or for know-nothings, would have found themselves very much mistaken. Indeed they were far from being dull or sleepy on the subject of Slavery at any rate. They had considered pretty thoroughly how wrongfully they, with all others in similar circumstances, had been year in and year out subjected ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... respects to M. de Bourgogne, who received him well in spite of all that had passed. Then Vendome went to wait on Monseigneur at the Princesse de Coriti's: here he thought himself in his stronghold. He was received excellently, and the conversation turned on nothings. He wished to take advantage of this, and proposed a visit to Anet. His surprise and that of those present were great at the uncertain reply of Monseigneur, who caused it to be understood, and rather stiffly too, that he would not go. Vendome appeared embarrassed, and abridged his visit. I met him ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... husband, calling him a drunkard, and put them into a little bag, hidden under a heap of old clothes, deploring the misfortune of fathers and mothers who bleed themselves to death for such good-for-nothings. This was the funeral oration of the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... see who willI like it not For, say he was a slave to rank and pomp, And all the nothings he is now divorced from By the hard doom of stern necessity: Yet it is sad to mark his altered brow, Where Vanity adjusts her flimsy veil O'er the deep wrinkles of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Gerty Mountainhead, who is leaning over her chair from behind, with the top of his aquiline nose in ridiculous proximity to her very red face? Who but Mr. Guy Elersley? There he is, whispering all kinds of nothings into the blushing, susceptible ear of dear Miss Gerty, never heeding the thought of the lonely girl at the piano in the quiet home of ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... and changed the subject. "Tell me, what do you do all day in your stateroom? Do you read? Do you play the flute? Do you telepath sweet nothings across the light-years to your girl ...
— The Passenger • Kenneth Harmon
... that it little matters whether it is done this or that way; this occurs in minute matters, which help or hinder but little with regard to the end aimed at; and reason looks upon small things as mere nothings. Consequently there are two things of which we do not take counsel, although they conduce to the end, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. iii, 3): namely, minute things, and those which have a fixed way of being done, as in works ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... every well-to-do family. The invention of a telephone is a great blessing to mankind; it enables friends to talk to each other at a distance without the trouble of calling.[1] Sweethearts can exchange their sweet nothings, and even proposals of marriage have been made and accepted through the telephone. However, one is subjected to frequent annoyances from wrong connections at the Central Office, and sometimes grave errors are made. Once, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... tutored his sister well; and although Miss Faith's face was swollen with crying, she spoke with almost exaggerated cheerfulness to Ruth. Indeed, as they all stood at the front door, making-believe to have careless nothings to say, just as at an ordinary leave-taking, you would not have guessed the strained chords of feeling there were in each heart. They lingered on, the last rays of the setting sun falling on the group. Ruth once or twice had roused herself to the pitch of saying "Good-bye," but when her eye fell ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... you some lines written not long ago, which you may do what you like with, as they are very harmless.[72] Only, if copied, or printed, or set, I could wish it more correctly than in the usual way, in which one's 'nothings are ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... laid down her crochet. She was beginning to feel old, so she often told herself regretfully—older than the Englishwomen of her own age seemed to be. But none of them had worked as hard as she had always worked. Englishwomen, especially English servants, were lazy good-for-nothings! ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... dream I heard her cry of recognition, and knew that she was gliding toward me. Then I was on my knees at her feet, burying my face in the folds of her dress, and moaning incoherent nothings ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... despatch, of folding a letter, of concluding it with this or that formula, he greeted as if he had helped on the happiness of the human race." Napoleon attached, or pretended to attach, great importance to the thousand nothings which up the life of courts. He established in the palace the same discipline as in the camps. Everything became a matter of rule. Courtiers studied formalities as officers studied the art of war. Regulations were as closely observed in the drawing-rooms ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... freckles disappeared in a crimson blush which mounted to her temples, and tinged her very neck beneath the stiff brown band. She twisted her fingers together, and stammered incoherent nothings. ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fools. They had no love for nothings in labor; they had no wish to make their fellows' wage envelopes smaller, but they were determined to make their own larger. They, too, were willing to join in the new union movement. But the unions did not ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... which fell on statuettes ornamenting the consoles, and the gilt frames on the walls: on the tables lay scattered in graceful negligence, albums, elegancies of papier mache, and carved ivory; precious nothings which had constituted the young girl's treasures. At the farther end, the folds of a heavy curtain concealed the bower, sacred to the lady of the castle. Here admittance was at first denied me, and I was obliged to have recourse ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... houses to be let. Howe'er, to keep her spirits up, She sent for company to sup: When all the while you might remark, She strove in vain to ape Wood Park. Two bottles call'd for, (half her store, The cupboard could contain but four:) A supper worthy of herself, Five nothings in five plates of delf. Thus for a week the farce went on; When, all her country savings gone, She fell into her former scene, Small beer, a herring, and the Dean. Thus far in jest: though now, I fear, You think my jesting too severe; But poets, when a hint is ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... African monkeys, by their challenging, crafty air, reminded her unpleasantly of a band of good-for-nothings who for months had spread terror and desolation throughout the country. The chief—or the one who appeared to be the chief—the biggest and strongest, hurled himself at the bars and shook them in his clenched hands. ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... ways so that he gets to bed at one or two o'clock in the morning and sleeps until nine or ten o'clock the next day? Why, bless your soul, the street cleaner and the 'garbage gentleman' are worth a dozen good-for-nothings like that! ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... day, a man usually tucks all the flattering adjectives and tender nothings in his vocabulary away in a pigeon-hole and marks them "Not ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... of anybody else's," said Mr. Bingle, with dignity. "And you can also tell them that they are a pack of blamed good-for-nothings," he added, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... The "Know-Nothings" were a secret society and owed that name to the fact that members, when questioned, professed to know nothing of the ultimate objects of the organization to which they belonged. They proclaimed a general ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... being decided on, what should I get for her? Flowers, photographs, books, music, and all those delicate nothings, which people generally tender as souvenirs for other people's acceptance, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of Arden and on Prospero's Island there live, beyond the touch of time and the vicissitudes of fate, those gracious and beautiful spirits in whom the race sees its noblest hopes come true, its instinctive faith in itself justified. These spirits are not airy nothings, woven of the unsubstantial gossamer of which dreams are made; they are born of a deep insight into the possibilities of the soul, and a rational faith in their reality. Prospero is as real as Trinculo, and Rosalind as true as Cressida. ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... resolutions of silence, all his resolves melted into airy nothings at the sound of that sweet soft voice. Tears, the only tears of pleasure that had for years moistened the cheek of the reckless Buccaneer, burst from his eyes: he could not speak; he felt weak as a new-born infant; his limbs trembled; he would have fallen to the ground, had ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the late Sir Victor, and twenty years younger than he, was a short thick-set man, with a smooth round white face, and a way of speaking so deliberate and weighty that it imparted momentousness to nothings and infallibility to nonsense. When he really had something sensible to say, and that was very fairly often, the effect was enormous. He was now forty-four, a widower, well off by his marriage, and a Member of Parliament. Naturally, Lady Merceron relied much, ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... laughed; and there seemed some danger of a break in that kindliness of feeling which their father had vaunted, till Mrs. Landholm spoke. A word and a look of hers, to one and the other, made all smooth; and they went on again talking, of happy nothings, till it was time to separate for the night. It was only then that Mr. Landholm touched on any matter of more ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... from the beginning of this speech than the conclusion quite bore out, but it was delightful to hear her talking something more than society nothings to him. However, that was ended for the present by the sudden irruption of the spoony young man into the conversation; he had come out very shattered from a desperate intellectual conflict with the young lady from Girton, to whom he had ventured on a ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... ease, My tub, like Saint Diogenes, Now serious am, now seek to please; Now love and hate in turn one sees; The motives now are those, now these; Now nothings, now realities. Thus roll I, never taking ease, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... goes one way, and I another. My friends are good-for-nothings, who have run away and left me to return alone to the Louvre. I had counted on them, and you cannot let me go alone. You are a grave married man, and must take me back to the queen. Come, my friend, my litter is large ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... one day it would be her own, and she would be, for her class in life, a rich girl. Just at present, however, she was passing through a phase, and not a very pleasant one. She thought herself quite good enough to go into any society; and fine dress, loud-voiced friends, and the hollow, empty nothings which she and her acquaintances called conversation seemed the best things possible that could come into life. She was, therefore, not at all in the mood to give up her friendship with ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... beckoning him. He walked along under the wall until he came to a gate, and there someone was waiting for him, and he was gently led into the shadow of a dark cedar tree. In the dim twilight he saw two bright eyes looking at him, and he understood their message. In the twilight a thousand meaningless nothings were whispered in the light of the stars, and the hours fled swiftly. When the East began to grow light, the Princess (for it was she) said it was time ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... but this element of immutable and eternal truth was certainly not contained in the inane and empty formula, "that numbers are real existences, the causes of all other existences!" If the fame of Pythagoras had rested on such "airy nothings," it would have melted away before the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance! It is in the last virtues especially, that we are, or should be, strengthened by the unaccomplished visions of our youth; for, who shall say that they are not our teachers to deal gently even with the impalpable nothings of the earth! ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... touches of light hurrying sarcasm, worthy of any pen. Burke used to deny its merit, but he was probably trying it b too lofty and ideal a standard. Hazlitt, on the other hand, has praised it overmuch, and perhaps "monstered" some of its "nothings." That it has power is proved by its effects on literature. It did not, we believe, create many robbers, but it created a large robber school in the drama and the novel; for instance, Schiller's "Robbers," Ainsworth's "Rookwood," ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... their ideas. In the midst of the elegant assembly both found pleasure in those enjoyable sensations given by the voice, the gestures, the attitude of one beloved. The soul then fastens upon absolute nothings. No longer do ideas or even language speak, but things; and these so loudly, that often a man lets another pay the small attentions—bring a cup of tea, or the sugar to sweeten it—demanded by the woman he loves, fearful ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... equivalent to Silence. This, then, illustrates the famous fundamental aphorism of the Philosophy of Hegel: SOMETHING (equal to) NOTHING; and the seemingly absurd Hegelian affirmation that the real Something is the resultant of the conjunction of two Nothings. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... so easy to get it vised again overnight." All these impertinencies were only [Greek: pidakos ex hieres olige libas]. Besides all this, Mr Snapley was a miserable monopolizer of pompously advanced nothings. He would not willingly suffer any other man's goose to feed upon the common—he cared for nobody but himself, and every thing that was or he esteemed to be his—his very joints were worked unlike those of another man—he must have had a set of adductors and abductors, of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... especially with young ladies of from sixteen to twenty-six years of age, both inclusive. He could imitate the French-horn to admiration, sang comic songs most inimitably, and had the most insinuating way of saying impertinent nothings to his doting female admirers. He had acquired, somehow or other, the reputation of being a great wit, and, accordingly, whenever he opened his mouth, everybody who knew him laughed ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... continued Miss Mitford, "that I merely passed through London that season, and, being detained by some of the thousand and one nothings which are so apt to detain women in the great city, I arrived at the exhibition, in company with a still younger friend, so near the period of closing, that more punctual visitors were moving out, and the doorkeeper actually turned us and our money back. I persisted, however, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... idolatry; compare Jer. xliv. 17. Every effort is made to move the idols to help. But if help be, notwithstanding, refused—and how could it be otherwise, since they from whom it is sought are Elilim, i.e., nothings?—they by and by begin to bethink themselves, and to recover their senses. They discover the nothingness of their idols, and return to the true God. This apostasy and return are in a touching manner described ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... presented itself to me as I passed one of them, "there is more of the Jarndyce property," and I never saw an "old clo'" man that the rascally Fagin and his hopeful proteges did not rise to my recollection. How wonderful is the power of genius which can not only "give to airy nothings a local habitation and a name," but fix them as realities in ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... Taine in an easy chair, with a bottle of his favorite whisky; and went over the place—from the arbor in the rose garden to Yee Kee's pantry—Mr. Rutlidge, critically and authoritatively approving; Louise, effervescing the same sugary nothings at every step; Mrs. Taine, with a pretty air of proprietorship; Conrad Lagrange, thoughtfully watching; and Aaron King, himself, irresponsibly gay and boyishly proud ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... question of etiquette— "utrum annunciatio debuerit fieri per angelum"—Quaest. 30, Articilus 2. I protest, till now I had thought Gabriel a fellow of some mark and livelihood, not a simple esquire, as I find him. Well, do not break your lay brains, nor I neither, with these curious nothings. They are nuts to our dear friend, whom hoping to see at your first friendly hint that it will be convenient, I end with begging our very kindest loves to Mrs. Gillman. We have had a sorry house of it ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... had paid a short visit to the wounded hero in the study; but now they were grouped round the tea-table, leaving him temporarily alone. Evelyn had just filled his cup; and being in no mood to interrupt her exchange of light-hearted nothings with George Rivers, she glanced across at Wyndham, who promptly understood the situation and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... dims the lustre of their fame. Arthur, bright star of chivalry, dwindles into a Welsh subaltern; the Cid Campeador, defender of the faith, sells his sword as often to Moslem as to Christian, and sells it ever; while Siegfried and Feridun vanish into nothings. ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... slowly by the fair river, and the pretty little nothings they said to each other began to be mere vehicles for those soft tones and looks, in which love is made, far more than by ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... it smote him speechless, and in the depth of his astoundment he forgot his foolish fear of me and fell to pacing up and down, though always with the table cannily between us. And as he shuffled back and forth the thin lips muttered foolish nothings, with here and there a tremulous oath. When all was done he dropped into a chair and stared across at me with leaden eyes; and truly he had the look of one struck with ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... life now. I rise at midday and go to bed at seven; I linger absurdly long over meals; I saunter about slowly, standing motionless, an hour at a time, before a single plant; I gaze into the leafy trees; I take a sober and serious interest in mere nothings; I long for shade, silence, and night; in a word, I fight through each hour as it comes, and take a gloomy pleasure in adding it to the heap of the vanquished. My peaceful park gives me all the company I care for; everything there is full of glorious images of my vanished joy, invisible ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... who is bereaved, it could not be wholly cast down so long as warm clinging hands were about his arm, a bright face looking up into his, and a clear voice, from which every note of sadness was excluded, murmuring a thousand entertaining nothings in his ear. ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... enforced. The Whig Party was destroyed and the Republican Party rose in its place. On July 6, a State Convention of all anti-Nebraska citizens irrespective of former political affiliations assembled. This Convention designated the fusion of Whigs, Free Soilers, "Know Nothings," and Democrats who opposed the extension of slavery, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... contact, playing always into each other's hands, never once heard of each other, know nothing of each other, is a fact which would seem at the first blush to point to the secret of these 'Know-Nothings,' who are men of science in an age of popular ignorance, and therefore have a 'secret'; who are men of science in an age in which the questions of science are 'forbidden questions,' and are therefore ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... President, 1856.—The Whigs and the Know-Nothings nominated Millard Fillmore for President and said nothing about slavery. The Democrats nominated James Buchanan of Pennsylvania for President and John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for Vice-President. They declared their approval of the Kansas-Nebraska ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... of his Ambition; and therefore I cannot but think the Flights of this rapid Author very proper to be opposed to those laborious Nothings which you have observed were the Delight of the German Wits, and in which they so happily got rid of such a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... who is down? Frankly, nothing, unless his strength holds. I advise such a one never to seek for help from any one but himself, and never to try for any of the employments which are supposed to be "easy." Cool neglect, insulting compassion, lying promises, evasive and complimentary nothings—these will be his portion. If he cannot perform any skilled labour, let him run the risk of seeming degraded; and, if he has to push a trade in matches or flowers, let him rather do that than bear the more or less ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... met Aubert at the St. Lazare Station, gave him his ticket and the two set out for Chatou—a strange journey Mme. Fenayrou was asked what they talked about in the railway carriage. "Mere nothings," she replied. Aubert abused her mother; for her own part, she was very agitated—tres emotionnee. It was about half-past nine when they reached their destination. The sight of the little villa ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... duty for reason. M. du Chatelet had besides a very pretty talent for filling in the ground of the Princess' worsted work after the flowers had been begun; he held her skeins of silk with infinite grace, entertained her with dubious nothings more or less transparently veiled. He was ignorant of painting, but he could copy a landscape, sketch a head in profile, or design a costume and color it. He had, in short, all the little talents that a man could turn to such useful account ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... one of Foster's off days. The only wonder was he had not more of them. He sat in darkness, with few diversions, occupations, ameliorations. His mind churned mightily on the scanty materials that came his way. He founded big guesses on nothings; he raised vast speculative edifices on the slightest of premises. To dislike a man he could not even see! Well, the blind—and the half-blind—had their own intuitions and followed ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... The public is wiser and better than any man or any board. A plain statement every year of the real condition of the College, the real difficulties in the way of its organization, would have been far better than the carefully uttered nothings of which the Annual Reports have generally consisted. It was to Philadelphia that Girard left his estate. The honor of Philadelphia is involved in its faithful administration. Philadelphia has a right to ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... will doubtless be disposed to admire, and to consider an act of great heroism on Mr. Bumble's part: he being in some sort tempted by time, place, and opportunity, to give utterance to certain soft nothings, which however well they may become the lips of the light and thoughtless, do seem immeasurably beneath the dignity of judges of the land, members of parliament, ministers of state, lord mayors, and other great public functionaries, but more particularly beneath the stateliness ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... that, he being their 'loquax numen,' their 'prating god,' yet that quitted him not, but all men stood upon their guard, and called for aid and rescue, when they were seized upon by so tedious an impertinence. And indeed, there are some persons so full of nothings, that, like the strait sea of Pontus, they perpetually empty themselves by their mouth, making every company or single person they fasten on to be their Propontis, such a one as was Anaximenes, who was an ocean of words, but a ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... was it all weakness? What if this weakness was itself a sign of returning life, not of advancing death—of the dawn of a new and genuine strength! For he wept because, in the visions of his troubled brain, he saw once more the cottage of his father the shepherd, with all its store of lovely nothings round which the nimbus of sanctity had gathered while he thought not of them; wept over the memory of that moment of delight when his mother kissed him for parting with his willow whistle to the sister who cried for it: he cried now in his turn, after five and fifty years, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... higher powers. His name was Shir Ali, in rank a Beg, and a Shirazi by birth. Although natives of the two rival cities of Persia, yet without any particular previous cause, and by a combination of those nothings which give rise to most friendships, we became inseparable companions. He had given me a piece of watermelon one hot day when I was thirsty; I had lighted his pipe for him on another occasion: he had bled me with his penknife when I had overloaded my stomach with too much rice; and I had cured ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... word borrowed from the life. Mark three or four persons standing idly at the point where one street bisects at right angles another, and discussing there the idle nothings of the day; there you have the living explanation of 'trivial,' 'trivialities,' such as no explanation not rooting itself in the etymology would ever give you, or enable you to give to others. You have there the 'tres viae,' the 'trivium'; and 'trivialities' properly mean such talk as is ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... to you this morning from my favourite place, without anything having happened since last night that is worth recording—save perhaps the thousand flitting nothings in the landscape. I got up with the sun, which now floods all the space with silver. The cold is still keen, but by piling on our woollen things we get the better of it on these nights in billets. There is only this to say: that to-morrow we go to our trenches in the second line, in the ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... Saint Paul was the great modern exponent. That the Theological Quibblers' Club existed long before his time we know full well. In fact, the chief invective of Jesus against Judaism was that it had degenerated into a mere matter of dispute concerning intricate nothings. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... is that the morrows went on, each one sweeter than the last, and all the little incidents went on that were such nothings at the time, but were so sure to be borne in mind for ever! You know all about it, you who read. Like enough you can remember now, old as you are, how you and she (or he, according as your sex is) got lost in the wood, and never found where the picnic had come to an ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan |
