"Pithily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... patent-medicine seller, and having leisure in his apprenticeship, and a forwardness of parts, he had taken to study Blackstone and the Statutes at Large. On appealing to Mounsey for his opinion on this matter, he observed pithily, 'I don't like so much law: the gentlemen here seem fond of law, but I have law enough at chambers.' One sees a great deal of the humours and tempers of men in a place of this sort, and may almost gather their opinions ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... twenty year. I will warrant him hanged and one or two of his fellows, but you must not tell your shirt of this yet;" and when he was congratulating the government on his having at length procured the execution of Captain Hemart, the surrenderer of Grave, he added, pithily, "and you shall hear that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... what he sees in his subject, and there is hardly a limit to what he may omit. What is required is that he shall say what he elects to say discreetly; that he shall be quick to see the gist of a matter, and give it pithily without either prolixity or stint ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... districts in early times the objects of suspicion and dislike to their more polished neighbours, that there was, and perhaps still exists, a by-law of the corporation of Newcastle, prohibiting any freeman of that city to take for apprentice a native of certain of these dales. It is pithily said, "Give a dog an ill name and hang him;" and it may be added, if you give a man, or race of men, an ill name, they are. very likely to do something that deserves hanging. Of this Brown had heard something, and suspected more, from the discourse between the landlady, Dinmont, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... man has to propose is pithily summed up in the phrase: "Girls ought to stay at home." The home as woman's sole sphere is even regarded as the ultimate solution of the whole difficulty by many men, who know well that it is utterly impracticable today. A truer note was struck by John Work, when addressing ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... and were a hindrance and an annoyance rather than an absolute barrier to the burghers. The new models, however, were only six hundred yards apart, and were connected by such impenetrable strands of wire that a Boer pithily described it by saying that if one's hat blew over the line anywhere between Ermelo and Standerton one had to walk round Ermelo to fetch it. Use was made of such barriers by the Spaniards in Cuba, but an application of them on such a scale over such an enormous tract of ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Adam's works can now be traced. Of these, two were preserved in Denmark, two in Hamburg, one had perhaps already wandered southward to Leyden, and one as far as Vienna. Dr. Storm, therefore, feels sure that Columbus never saw Adam's mention of Vinland, and pithily adds that "had Columbus known it, it would not have been able to show him the way to the West Indies, but perhaps to the North Pole."[473] From the account of this mention and its context, which I have already given,[474] it is in the highest degree improbable that if Columbus had read the passage ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... the long array of the city companies, which had lined the streets all the way from Fenchurch, presented her with a splendid and ample purse, containing one thousand marks in gold. The queen graciously received it with both hands, and answered his harangue "marvellous pithily." ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... farther back. The subject was first brought to my attention in a brief chapter on the "political non-existence of woman," in Miss Martineau's book on "Society in America," which I read in 1847. She there pithily states the substance of all that has since been said respecting the logic of woman's right to the ballot, and finding myself unable to answer it, I accepted it. On recently referring to this chapter I find myself more ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... wish of Sir Wycherly, that you would draw near the bed, Mr. Wychecombe of Virginia," said the vice-admiral, pithily, though he extended a hand to, and smiled kindly on, the youth as the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of Yen-Tchin-King."—There may be an involuntary anachronism in my version of this legend, which is very pithily narrated in the Kan-ing-p'ien. No emperor's name is cited by the homilist; and the date of the revolt seems to have been left wholly to conjecture.—Baber, in his "Memoirs," mentions one of his Mongol archers as able to bend a two-hundred-pound ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... Prelatists, Erastians, assuming the name of Presbyterians, Independents, Socinians, and Quakers: all of whom Kettledrummle proposed, by one sweeping act, to expel from the land, and thus re-edify in its integrity the beauty of the sanctuary. He next handled very pithily the doctrine of defensive arms and of resistance to Charles II., observing, that, instead of a nursing father to the Kirk, that monarch had been a nursing father to none but his own bastards. He went at some length through the life and conversation ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott |
