"Topical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down, cheerful at the prospect of getting into port, and singing a new topical ditty that had come up from the Santa Fe by way of La Junta. Nobody knows who makes these songs; they seem to follow events automatically. Mrs. Kronborg made Giddy sing the whole twelve verses of this one, and ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... interestedly perusing the stories. Just so, the all-photoplay program in a picture theatre, at the time of which we speak, was one made up entirely of either "dramatic"[1] or "comedy" subjects. Films classified as "scenic," "educational," "vocational," "industrial," "sporting," and "topical," were not included ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... crawled through the canvas at the back of the stage they cheered us to the echo. The platform was about the size of a dining table, which rather cramped our style. We always began our shows with a topical song, each taking a verse in turn, and then all singing the chorus. Towards the end of our first song the Lieutenant and the others arrived. The guns boomed so loudly at times the words were quite drowned. The Programme consisted of Recitations, Songs at the Piano, ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... topical, not a narrative, history. We have tried to set forth the important aspects, problems, and movements of each period, bringing in the narrative ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... direction. The pictures on the wall included an oleograph portrait of the late King Edward in the costume of an Admiral, a large engraving of Mr. Landseer's inevitable stag, and several coloured and illuminated texts. One of the latter struck me as being topical if a little ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... necessary to abandon [Page ix] the chronological order in favor of the topical, for during the early years at Hull-House, time seemed to afford a mere framework for certain lines of activity and I have found in writing this book, that after these activities have been recorded, I ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... colorless or yellowish syrupy solution of pyroxylin, ether, and alcohol, used as an adhesive to close small wounds and hold surgical dressings, in topical medications, ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... act, but even the authors agreed that it wanted bringing up-to-date in parts. They explained that it was, in a manner of speaking, their life-work, that they had actually started it about ten years ago when they were careless lads. Inevitably, it was spotted here and there with smart topical hits of the early years of the century; but that, they said, would be all right. They could freshen it up in a couple of evenings; it was simply a matter of deleting allusions to pro-Boers and substituting lines about Marconi shares and mangel-wurzels. "It'll be all right," ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... rather vapid sentimentalism and abstract theorizing of many of the periodicals controlled by the Sinn Feiners was his own sheet, the Irish Volunteer. It was the most practical of all the periodicals, and, beyond ordinary editorials and topical articles, always contained "Orders for the Week," which included night classes and lectures and drills, while diagrams of trenches and earthworks appeared which covered the ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... of their parental tasks, are not so clearly present, if present at all, in special aids given to all the population in matters of public sanitation, personal hygiene and the care of the sick. If we make our public aid topical rather than by classes, and to all citizens alike in definite aid, we avoid much of the taint of charity. Few, if any, propose, for example, to give maternity aid to the rich. Fewer still advocate old-age pensions for those of independent incomes of moderate size. Many see, however, that ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... they would have done the same for 1579. Without question men were regretting in 1600 the genius of the youthful Shakespeare of the '80's, later quenched by commercialism (see the appeals to the pit and the topical references in "Hamlet"); and good conservatives were certainly regretting the sad course of the drama which, torn from the scholars and flung to the mob, had become mad clowning. What we need in the Tory line is not such ice-bound ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... All this is true; 260 Yet 'tis not fit that all men knew, Those mysteries and revelations, And therefore topical evasions Of subtle turns and shifts of sense, Serve best with th' wicked for pretence, Such as the learned Jesuits use, 265 And Presbyterians for excuse Against the Protestants, when th' happen To find their Churches taken napping: As thus: A breach of oath is duple, And either way admits ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... penny of that there insurance, and the old gentleman'll have to pay up the defissit on his own account," says he. "How's that, Mr. Micklethwaite?" says I. "Because," says he, "there's a clause in the policy agin exceptional risks, in which is included naval and military services, furrin residences, topical voyages, and mountain-climbin'," says he; "and you mark my words," says he, "they'll never get a penny of it." In which case, sir, it's my opinion that old Mr. Oswald'll be clean broke, for he can't never make up the defissit out of his own ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... beauty. And when, by some rare chance, you catch them in the act of admiring a beautiful object, it will never be for its beauty—it will be in spite of its beauty for some other, some extra-aesthetic interest it possesses—some topical or historical interest. Beauty is necessarily detached from all that is topical or historical, or documentary or actual. It is also necessarily an effect of fine shades, delicate values, vanishing distinctions, of evasiveness, inconsequence, suggestion. It is also absolute, unrelated—it is positive ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Devonshire in a letter calls himself yours obediently, you know that he means the opposite of what he says. Religious forms are, at the worst, fables; they might be true. Secular forms are falsehoods; they are not true. Take a more topical case. The German Emperor has more uniforms than the Pope. But, moreover, the Pope's vestments all imply a claim to be something purely mystical and doubtful. Many of the German Emperor's uniforms imply a claim to be something which he certainly is not and which it would ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... arrangement. There are, moreover, delineations of rustic character that are truer to life than many of the more celebrated ones in the rest of the novelist's fiction; and, in the episode entitled the Napoleon of the people,—the narration of an old soldier of the First Empire,—there is a topical realism that makes one regret the never-achieved Battle. Add to these excellences the writer's having put into his work, for the nonce, a sincere aspiration towards the idea; and, despite flaws, the whole can ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... a topical index, somewhat to its own disadvantage, but it contains a map of Haiti, a rather confusing appendix, a list of the Presidents of Haiti from 1804 to 1906 and a list of the names and works of the more noted Haitian authors. The author does ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... be combined in varying proportions; e.g., lectures with "supplementary" (or "collateral") readings, with or without an occasional meeting in a quiz section. Along with these main methods often are used such supplementary methods as topical reports requiring individual library work; laboratory exercises, as in statistics, accounting, etc.; individual field work to study some industrial problem; and visits, as a class, and with guidance, to factories ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the teacher must supply it. In the smaller classes the teacher generally will have to tell in good part what he wishes to convey; in the larger classes, there are the possibilities of home preparation, topical reports, the lecture, and the socialized recitation built up by questions and discussions. It is not intended here to discuss the various methods of lesson presentation—the thought being simply that in some way the lesson statement ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... fevers, an account of certain matters relating to them being premised, such as excrementitious discharges, critical days, and other appearances, and concluding with certain symptoms which are the concomitants of fevers. The third book relates to topical affections, beginning from the crown of the head and descending down to the nails of the feet, and so on. Briefly, the fourth book treats of external diseases; the fifth, of wounds and bites from venomous animals; the sixth book is the most important and is devoted to surgery, and contains ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... judge, it is the embusque, who is the special pet, and after him come the high cost of living, the lack of fuel, the obscurity of the streets, the length of women's skirts, etc.—all pretexts for more or less amusing topical songs. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... Chronological but a Systematic and Topical Gospel. There is order in the arrangement of materials so that a definite result may be produced. Materials are treated in groups, as the miracles in chapters eight and nine and the parables of chapter thirteen. There is order and purpose also in the arrangement of these groups of miracles ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... greatest poet, was the greatest moral teacher that England has ever produced. I was brought up on Shakspere,' said Mr. Knight, smiling. 'My father often sent communications to the leading London papers on subjects of topical interest, and one of my most precious possessions is a collection of these which he ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... destruction or of looting. German troops had marched through in the advance and in the retreat without being billeted. A hurrying army with another on its heels has no time for looting. Other villages had been points of topical importance; they had been in the midst of a fight. General Mauvaise Chance had it in for them. Shells had wrecked some houses; others were burned. Where a German non-commissioned officer came to the door of a French family and said that room must be made for German ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... somebody in the United Kingdom who could make a better book. It was pathetic that so capable a cast—Miss LILY LONG in particular—should have such second-rate stuff to say and sing. Seldom could one detect any attempt to evade the obvious. Of topical allusions, apart from timeworn themes of coupons and profiteers, there was scarce a sign, and such burlesque as there was had no sort of subtlety in it. Take, for example, the opportunity lost in the imitation of a bedroom scene from modern drama. It announced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... great artists, in his perception of the fact that they also had regarded with pleasure and had admitted into the canon of their works such types of physiognomy as give those works the strongest possible certificate of reality and trueness to life; a modern, almost a topical savour; perhaps, also, he had so far succumbed to the prevailing frivolity of the world of fashion that he felt the necessity of finding in an old masterpiece some such obvious and refreshing allusion to a person about whom jokes could be made and repeated and enjoyed to-day. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... fine in a feathered hat, black brocade, a diamond brooch, and with many rings and jangling bangles. There were some battered, bearded bushmen who seemed to be friends of Colin's, though he did not introduce them to his wife, and who talked on topical subjects in a vernacular which Lady Bridget thought to herself she would never be able to master. There was a professional horse-breaker whom McKeith hailed as Zack Duppo, and to whom he had a good deal to say also. There were some gangs of shearers or stockmen ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... as the logician uses for his means the noblest of all instruments, that is, demonstration or the demonstrative syllogism; so the dialectician, the topical syllogism; and the sophist, the sophistical, that is, the apparent and deceitful; the rhetorician, the enthymeme, and the poet, the example, which is the least worthy of all. So the subject of poetry is the feigned fable and the fabulous, ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... went as they chose, but throughout the program the place was well filled. The films shown had no relation to the war. They were of the ordinary dramatic or comic types, and I fancy they were of pre-war manufacture. Nothing of topical interest ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... nursery of the topical song. There, by lantern or candle-stump, wit Rabelaisian, Aristophanic or Antarctic was cradled into rhyme. From there, behind the scenes, the comedian in full dress could step before the footlights into salvoes of savage applause. "A Pair of Unconventional Cooks are we, are ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... impressive is that Carey not only refers to the three managers of Drury Lane but mentions them in the same order and as bearing the same relationship to himself. Several highly topical theatrical allusions in the pamphlets, by which the works can be dated, accord closely to the life, views, and writings of Carey. All three managers of Drury Lane were subscribers to Carey's Poems on Several Occasions (1729), ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... fantastically mendacious, was evolved in this country. Of this type Munchausen was the modern original, and remains the classical example. The adaptability of such a species of composition to local and topical uses might well be considered prejudicial to its chances of obtaining a permanent place in literature. Yet Munchausen has undoubtedly achieved such a place. The Baron's notoriety is universal, his character proverbial, and his name as familiar as that of ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... the time while the others slept, it seemed to Peter. He wrote verses about the adventures of his fellow-prisoners, and presently he was writing verses about the jailers, and about other prisoners in this part of the jail. He would have moods of inspiration, and would make up topical verses as he went along; then again he would sink back into his despair, and say that life was hell, and making ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... present very much in the public eye. We subjoin a specimen which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar whose name for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we believe that our readers will find the topical allusion rather more than an indication. The metrical system of the canine original, which recalls the intricate alliterative and isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more complicated but we believe our readers will agree that the spirit has been well caught. Perhaps ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... hurry calls, reporters of the Ten o'Clock Club assembled in the foyer. How far what later followed was due to their presence and to the efforts of the press agent only that gentleman can tell. It was in the second act that Miss Blanche Winter sang her topical song. In it she advised the audience when anxious to settle any question of personal or national interest to "Put it up to the Man in the Moon.'" This night she introduced a verse in which she told of ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... Lord John"—had been not only crowded, but crowded out, and London was by now fully aware that it possessed in Arthur Meadows a person capable of painting a series of La Bruyere-like portraits of modern men, as vivid, biting, and "topical"—mutatis mutandis—as the great French series were in ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... envied them! Then the whole superficies of his mind became filled with a desire to conceal this difference. He recalled the various characteristics of those who worked along with him. One knew all topical songs, slang and phrases; another affected a smartness in dress; a third discussed theatres with semi-professional knowledge. Harvey, however, could never have entered the world, or lived in it, if he had first to pass through the portals of such ideas! He delivered his letter; he was wearied out, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... a person well known in a place. a term invented in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1862, in a popular topical song, by Mr. R. Thatcher, an improvisator. In the song the "Old Identity," the former resident of Dunedin, was distinguished from the "New Iniquity," as the people were ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... definite recommendation; they must exhibit remarkable allusions; they may be written by an ancestor or namesake of the buyer in view; at all events, if they are not by a good author, they must be on a good subject. Their interest must be (1) personal; (2) local; or (3) topical. There is a drift on the part of collectors of the purer type toward accredited and certified securities—toward recognised writers. Established character goes for more than mere rarity. The trade can always ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... divided into four topical groups. These are—the northern outliers; the "Tombs of the Kings," so called by ourselves because they distinguish themselves from all the others; the "buttressed caves" (two sets); and the southern outliers. The first mentioned ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Enormous public interest was excited, and Croft—baronet, parson, and literary adventurer—got hold of copies which Hackman had kept of some letters he had sent to the charming Miss Reay. These he published as a sensational topical novel in epistolary form, calling it Love and Madness. This is quite worth reading for its own sake, but much more so for its 49th letter, which purports to have been written by Hackman to satisfy Miss Reay's curiosity about Chatterton. ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... that doctrinal sermons are outmoded—old-fashioned and unpopular—and we dread as we dread few other things, not being up to date. Besides, doctrinal preaching offers little of that opportunity which is found in expository and yet more in topical preaching for exploiting our own personalities. Some of us are young. It is merely a polite way of saying that we are egotistical. We know in our secret heart of hearts that the main thing that we have to give the world is our own new, fresh selves with their corrected and arresting ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... called Tza-chin, has a bitter taste, but when eaten with salmon imparts an agreeable zest, and effectually destroys the disagreeable smell of that fish when smoke-dried. Saint John's wort is very common, and has been successfully applied as a fomentation in topical inflammations. A kind of weed, which the natives convert into a species of flax, is in general demand. An evergreen, similar to that we found at the mouth of the Columbia, with small berries growing in clusters like grapes, also flourishes ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... Introversion. William A. White. A Study of a Severe Case of Compulsion Neurosis. H.W. Frink. A Summary of Material on the Topical Community of Primitive and Pathological Symbols ("Archeopathic" Symbols), F.L. Wells. A Literary Forerunner of Freud. Helen Williston Brown. The Technique of Dream Interpretation. Wilhelm Steckel. The Social and Sexual ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... wheat farm, giving the results of experiments made, lists of varieties of wheat to plant and when to plant them, are issued in large numbers, and either given to the farmer free or sold at a nominal price. Agricultural gazettes and journals are also issued monthly, while topical information is made public through the columns of the press, which in Australia devotes an unusual amount of space regularly ...
— Wheat Growing in Australia • Australia Department of External Affairs
... though Browne is wholly lacking in that delicate humour which Burns possesses, and which overtakes the tenderness of the poem as the lights and shadows overtake one another among the hills. The other eclogue, " The Invasion," has something of a topical interest at a time like the present, when England is once more engaged in war with a continental power; for it was written when the fear of a French invasion of our shores weighed heavily upon the people's minds. In the eclogue this danger is earnestly ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... necessitated the omission of "pictures of colonial life," which cannot be briefly and at the same time accurately described. These and similar matters can easily be studied by the pupils in their topical work in such books as Higginson's Young Folks' History, Eggleston's United States and its People, and McMaster's School History. References to these books and to a limited number of other works have been given in the margins of this text-book. These citations also ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... the child by what is really a conversation between the two, the teacher asking simple questions and the child responding to them. In more advanced grades the questions may be so arranged as to require longer and more complex answers, and thus lead up to the topical method ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... 'Eroico,' 'Negromantico,' and 'Baccanale.' It is now known to represent a revision of the piece made, probably by Antonio Tebaldeo, for representation at Ferrara, and in it much of the popular and topical element has been eliminated. The action of the piece is based in a general manner upon the story given by Ovid in the tenth book of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... his thin, fine face, the puff of curled white hair at the back of his neck, the gayety of his glance gave an almost theatric touch to his appearance, so that one felt he might at any moment come down stage and sing a topical song in ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... the breakfast table at Porticobello House, Ladbroke Grove. Myself and other select boarders engaged in masticating fowl eggs with their concomitant bacon, while intelligently discussing topical subjects (for we carry out the poetical recipe of "Plain thinking ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... cautioning us against the dangers of over-estimating it. Any contact on the side of the lyric and the drama was, he declares, very slight[32], and the peninsular writings actually circulated in our country at this time, in translations, he divides into three classes; occasional literature, that is topical tracts and pamphlets on contemporary Spanish affairs; didactic literature, comprising scientific treatises, accounts of voyages such as inspired Hakluyt, works on military science, and, more important still, the religious writings of mystics like Granada; and lastly artistic ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... kept pouring from a pen whose apparent ease concealed a vast deal of studious labor, until the lucky 13, the opus-number of a bundle of "Water Scenes," brought Nevin the greatest popularity of all, thanks largely to "Narcissus," which has been as much thrummed and whistled as any topical song. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... from aloe, used as a laxative. alum Double sulfates of a trivalent metal such as aluminum, chromium, or iron and a univalent metal such as potassium or sodium, especially aluminum potassium sulfate, AlK(SO4)2 12H2O, widely used in industry as clarifiers, hardeners, and purifiers and medicinally as topical astringents ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Where you got that stuff I don't know, But you would be a riot in the two-a-day. Quit this hanky-panky And I'll make you a headliner." Well, I fell for his line of talk Like the sod busters had fallen for mine. Aaron Hoffman wrote me a topical monologue; Max Marx made me a suit of clothes; And Lew Dockstader wised me up On how to jockey my laughs. I opened in Hartford; Believe me, I was some scream. I gave them gravy, and hokum, And when they ate it up I came through With the ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... over to France and so into Belgium, and obtained a series of pictures that delighted my employers, and pleased the picture theatre public. But I wanted something more than snapshots of topical events. ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... houses, they do not like house-cleaning. They have certain absurd notions which they would wish to carry out; such, for instance, as that constant-quiet, preventive care, or frequent topical applications, carefully applied, would gradually renovate the whole interior. But who wishes to be cleaning all the time? Who wishes to be always dusting? Indeed, at the best, we are constantly with broom, brush, or besom in hand; but the men will not perceive ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur |
