|
|
|
More "Laconic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seems to have been inspired with the ambition of a moralist, and distributed Hermae, or stone busts of Mercury, about the city and the public roads, which, while answering a similar purpose to our mile-stones, arrested the eye of the passenger with pithy and laconic apothegms in verse; such as, "Do not deceive your friend," and "Persevere in affection to justice;"—proofs rather of the simplicity than the wisdom of the prince. It is not by writing the decalogue upon mile-stones that the robber would be ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to arrive. He shuffled in without answering the laconic greetings accorded him, and his usually mild ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... that way. Burns's gifts, expressed in conversation, are the theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts: from the gracefulest utterances of courtesy, to the highest fire of passionate speech; loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight; all was in him. Witty duchesses celebrate him as a man whose speech 'led them off their feet.' This is beautiful: but still more beautiful that which Mr. Lockhart has recorded, which I have more than once alluded ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... triumph; "the foe long since in silence slept"; but throughout there resounds a note of pure and deep rejoicing at the victory of justice over oppression, which Concord fight so aptly symbolized. In "Hamatreya" and "The Earth Song," another chord is struck, of calm, laconic irony. Shall we too, he asks, we Yankee farmers, descendants of the men who gave up all for freedom, go back to the creed outworn of medieval feudalism and aristocracy, and say, of the land that yields us its produce, "'Tis mine, my children's, and my name's"? Earth laughs ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... had heard nothing yet about Mrs. Bal, was anxious for the story. I saw that Somerled desired me to speak, but I threw the responsibility on him. I wanted to know how he would tell the story; but I might have guessed that he would be as laconic, as non-committal as possible, and that, much as he might yearn to do so, he ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in general, are not treated with great indulgence, nor rewarded by many commendations; for the English are laconic and reserved towards their domestics; but an approving nod and kind word from master or mistress, goes as far here, as an excess of praise or indulgence elsewhere. Neither do servants exhibit any animated marks of affection to their employers; yet, though quiet, they are strong in their ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... to be studied in the university, and the surpassing interest of student life. The impressionable boy decided to abandon the idea of his military career, and to prepare for his matriculation in the university. He wrote to his father to this effect, and received the stern and laconic reply: ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... "don't say that you'll take me to Sweden. I wouldn't go to the hateful country. It's a hideous language, anyway, isn't it, Archie? It is a nasty, laconic, ugly tongue. You heard me say Tig to her just now. Tig means 'be silent.' Could anything sound ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... November 1893, with happy memories of the World's Fair and to good news from Colorado. "Telegram ... from Denver—said woman suffrage carried by 5000 majority," she recorded in her diary.[386] This laconic comment in no way expressed the joy ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... drilled into the youth an unmistakable conception of what was expected of him in life; if he failed in these expectations the misfortune would be his alone to bear; a road had been carved out for him and behind him stretched a long line of guide-posts whose laconic instructions might be ignored but never forgotten. Edwin Peter Brewster evidently made his will with the sensible conviction that it was necessary for him to die before anybody else could possess his ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... glittering in the sunshine, seemed to greet and cheer him. These two laconic but expressive words, sans souci, smoothed the lines which the crown and its duties had laid upon his brow, and made his heart, which was so cold and weary, beat with the hopes ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... laconic response. "Fremont issued, without consulting me, his famous proclamation last August. I saw your hand, Senator, in that clause 'freeing' the slaves in the State ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... man of a distinguished appearance. His hair was white. His face was handsome and good to see. He was laconic in speech, but his eyes were closely observant of all within their range, and they asked searching questions. He had a reverent soul, wisely tolerant as to creeds, and he loved his country with a passion which absence from it constantly intensified. He was believed ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... but rather famous class of letters which perhaps should receive separate though brief notice. It is that of laconic and either intentionally or unintentionally humorous utilisations of the letter-form. Of one sort Captain Walton's "Spanish fleet taken and destroyed as per margin" is probably the most noted type: of another the equally ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... came to this country to offer his services to Congress. "What can you do?" asked Washington. "Try me," was the laconic reply. In course of time, he was sent to Schuyler as ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... man's hand is as visible in the country as in the town to all those who make use of their eyes." Yet this sentiment is a fair specimen of the stern stuff of which Mr. St. John's creeds and opinions are made up.[8] Nevertheless, the volumes are entertaining, and in proof we have carved out a few laconic extracts: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... across the bridge in the sunlight? As she drew near she stared at the stranger with the big, dumb eyes of a wild animal. There was no fear, only a sort of surprised observation in them. And as she passed she uttered, without a smile, some brief and laconic salutation in Gaelic, which of course the young man could not understand. He raised his cap, however, and said "Good-morning!" and went on, with a fixed resolve to learn all the Gaelic that Duncan ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... liberation of his country. He is purposely drawn in sharp contrast to the cultivated charming Russian gentlemen with whom he talks. Indeed, he rather dislikes talk, an unusual trait in a professional reformer. Elena is immediately conquered by the laconic answer he makes to her question, "You love your country very dearly?" "That remains to be shown. When one of us dies for her, then one can say he loved his country." Perhaps it is hypercritical to observe that in such ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... laid before them by Sieyes; who enjoyed the reputation of being the greatest of scientific politicians. The Abbe, however, had soon perceived that Napoleon was to be the real creator of whatever should be adopted; and, in the progress of the ensuing consultations, submitted, step by step, to the laconic Dictator, who accepted or discarded propositions, exactly as they happened to coincide, or be at variance with, his own notions of his own personal interest. He cared little in what manner the structure of the future representative assemblies might be arranged; but there must be no weakening ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the friend in question was likewise approached for a political contribution, whereupon he handed out $100 for himself and the same amount for Vanderbilt. On being told of his debt, Vanderbilt declined to pay it, closing the matter abruptly with this laconic pronunciamento, "When I give anything, I give it myself." At another time Vanderbilt assured a friend that he would "carry" one thousand shares of New York Central stock for him. The market price rose to $115 a share and then ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... This laconic message struck her like a blow. It was as if Douglass himself had refused her outstretched hand. Her nerves, tense and quivering, gave way. Her resentment ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... greatest security of a commonwealth consists in being provided with the proper antidote against this poison, her greatest danger, must be from the absence of an agrarian, which is the whole truth of the Roman example. For the Laconic, I shall reserve the further explication of it, as my lord also did, to another place; and first see whether an agrarian proportioned to a popular government be sufficient to keep out monarchy. My lord is for the negative, and fortified by the people of Israel electing ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... the landlord, with laconic assurance. "I went to the station with them and saw them off. ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... Village." Diderot was also a warm partisan of the Italians. Pergolesi's beautiful music having been murdered by the French orchestra players at the Grand Opera-House, Diderot proposed for it the following witty and laconic inscription: ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... direction the Cambridge horse-car took when I found it, and I hinted to the driver my anxieties as to why he should be starting east when I had been told that Cambridge was west of Boston. He reassured me in the laconic and sarcastic manner of his kind, and we really reached Cambridge by the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a Roman's feelings in the personal deformity of baldness, connected with the Roman theory of its cause, for the exposure of it was perpetual.] bareheaded, and never assumed a hat or a cap, a petasus or a galerus, a Macedonian causia, or a pileus, whether Thessalian, Arcadian, or Laconic, unless when they entered upon a journey. Nay, some there were, as Masinissa and Julius Csar, who declined even on such an occasion to cover their heads. Perhaps in imitation of these celebrated leaders, Hadrian adopted the same practice, but not with the same result; for to him, either ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... with laconic indifference. "I value my looks too much to spoil 'em. She wants my hair to get another lover with; though if stories are true she's broke the heart of many ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... inexorable face: But now Fate stuns as with a mace; The savage of the skies, that men have caught And some scant use of language taught, Tells only what he must,— 30 The steel-cold fact in one laconic thrust. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... as if petrified, and this outburst of the grief of the usually haughty and laconic young man filled him with the utmost surprise ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... are the only prophecies known to us that deserve any particular attention. The prediction in both is timid and laconic; but, in those regions where the least gleam of light assumes extraordinary importance, it is not to be neglected. I admit, for the rest, that there has so far been no time to carry out a serious ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... "So laconic!—what ails you? Do you grieve for the loss of the Pisani? Take example by me. I have already consoled myself with Bianca Sacchini,—a handsome woman, enlightened, no prejudices. A valuable creature I shall find her, no doubt. But as for ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... childhood, while he lived among the peasants, he became familiar with their mode of thought and speech, and it entered into his being, and became his own natural mode of expression. There is in his daily conversation a certain grim directness, and a laconic weightiness, which give an air of importance and authority even to his simplest utterances. This tendency to compression frequently has the effect of obscurity, not because his thought is obscure, but rather because ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... this laconic advice, I soon found myself near a tree whose branches were sheltering a guru with an attractive group of disciples. The master, a bright unusual figure, with sparkling dark eyes, rose at ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... precaution. They were attacked by the natives. Fifteen of them were wounded, four of whom died. Some women who had been sent ashore to wash the soiled linen were carried off. Ponce's report of the event was laconic: "I wrote from San Lucas and from la Palma," he writes to the king (August 7th to 8th). "In Guadeloupe, while taking in water the Indians wounded some of my men. They shall be chastised." Haro, one of the crown officers in ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... in this capacity were soon needed, for on December 9, 1621, the Fortune was burned to the ground. Alleyn records the event in his Diary thus: "Memorandum. This night at 12 of the clock the Fortune was burnt." In a less laconic fashion John Chamberlain writes to Sir Dudley Carleton: "On Sunday night here was a great fire at the Fortune in Golding-Lane, the fairest playhouse in this town. It was quite burnt down in two hours, and all their apparel ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... responded in such sharp terms to this laconic opinion that the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted before. Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all. He had flatly declined. Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy, particularly as Japheth was about to leave that side of the county, so that ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... virtuously clutching in my hand half-a-crown, the final change out of the "fiver." This in due course I put in an envelope, together with the batch of receipts, and laid on Crofter's table after morning school, with the laconic message under the flap, ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... Texas Rangers. They took their men in dead or alive. This particular member of the force was an unusually tough nut to crack. In the heart of Tony was the drench of a chill wave. He was no coward, but he knew he had no such unflawed nerve as this man. Through his mind there ran a common laconic report handed in by Rangers returning from an assignment—"Killed while resisting arrest." Alviro did not want Ranger Roberts ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... The usual laconic answer was given; and, for a few moments, the Bristol trader was seen diverging a little from the line in which the other approached; but a second glance assured Wilder that the attempt was useless. The strange ship (every man on board felt certain it was ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... for St. Petersburg, was his laconic reply, as he looked around for another chair. Everything was littered with books and papers, and at last he leaned over and lifted the dress from the chair to place it on the bed, as the easiest way of securing a seat ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... the laconic reply. "Ingiris' danna san live in Japan, Japanese girl very nice. Ingiris' danna san go away, no want Japanese girl. Japanese girl no want go away Japan. Japanese girl go to other country, she feel very sick; heart ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... completely bewildered among these various documents, the explanations in which were harder to understand than conundrums. Although greatly averse to following the notary's advice as to seeking Claudet's assistance, he found himself compelled to do so, but was met by such laconic and surly answers that he concluded it would be more dignified on his part to dispense with the services of one who was so badly disposed toward him. He therefore resolved to have recourse to the debtors themselves, whose names he found, after much difficulty, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... wardrobe room as even the least of these cabins. It was impossible, to be sure, that in one's amused researches one had not missed a cupboard ingeniously disguised somewhere. And the multiplicity of mirrors, and the message of the laconic monosyllable "Hot" on silver taps, and the discretion of the lighting, all indicated that the architect and creator of these marvellous microcosms had "understood." The cosy virtue of littleness, and the entire absurdity of space for the sake of space, were strikingly proved, and the demonstration ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Even the laconic Jake appeared relieved when they forced their way a little farther through the tangled undergrowth, until finding a clear space they set ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... himself; and as he has already served four years, there is a fair chance of his getting his promotion when he returns home.' The rest is private," observed the admiral, when he had concluded this somewhat laconic epistle. "And now, Jack, I congratulate you, my lad," he continued. "You have been quite long enough on shore to rub up your shore manners, and that is as long as a midshipman ought to remain at home. How ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the Kayans to laconic speech is well illustrated by their way of referring to well-known stories or fables with one or two words, in order to sum up or characterise a situation — much ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the terms of the two papers. I remember that the kingly laconic style of one of them, and the expression of having no further occasion for my service, made me smile. The other was an order to give up the papers in my office, all which might have been contained in a letter-case of a moderate size. I gave the duke the Seals and some papers which I could readily ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... back against the table. His speech was nothing curt or "Laconic"; it was even drawling. "On the contrary, dear Democrates, I was only commending your excellent foresight, something that I see characterizes all you do. You are the friend of Glaucon. Since Aristeides has been banished, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... chariot with copper, and in the seventeenth year of the same reign half a shekel of silver and 1 gur of wheat from the royal storehouse were paid to five men who had brought a flock of sheep to the King's administrator in the city of Ruzabu. The following laconic letter also tells the same tale: "Letter from Tabik-zeri to Gula-ibni, my brother. Give 54 qas of meal to the men who have dug the canal. The 9th of Nisan, fifth year of Cyrus, King of Eridu, King of the World." The employer had a right to the workman's ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... young colonel to his bride; "I will join you again in a few moments. The emperor is laconic enough in his communications. Meanwhile, I leave you to the care ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Forrestal administration. This is understandable because the subject of integration was extremely delicate and not readily susceptible to the usual staffing needed for most policy decisions. Furthermore, Forrestal's laconic manner of expressing himself, famous in bureaucratic Washington, inhibited the usual flow of ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... desires than the mere capture of the brigantine;" returned the laconic and sententious Patroon. "The opinion that Alida de Barberie is in her, has ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... officers requested a furlough. The reason being asked, and given, that the place was unhealthy, and the applicant feared to die an inglorious death from fever: Napoleon replied, in his accustomed laconic style, "Go to your ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... shelter the poor skinless creature. And, mark as curious, it must have been on two of those mornings, towards the end of the Siege of Schweidnitz, when things were getting so intolerable, and at times breaking out into electricity, into "rebuke all round," that Friedrich received that singular pair of Laconic Notes from Rousseau in Neufchatel: forwarded, successively, by Lord Marischal; NOTE FIRST, of date, "Motier-Travers, Neufchatel, September," nobody can guess what day, "1762:" "I have said much ill of you, and don't repent it. Now everybody has banished me; and it is on your threshold that ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was. In the Five Towns we are apt to end our marriages in that laconic manner. Toby did not complain too much; he simply and unaffectedly went. It might be imagined that the situation was a trying one for Priscilla. Not so! Priscilla had experienced marriage with Toby and had found it wanting. She ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the officers, who came on board his ship for instructions previous to the engagement with Admiral de Winter, was both laconic and humorous, "Gentlemen, you see a severe winter approaching; I have only to advise you to keep up a ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... can't tell you here,' was the laconic reply of my companion; 'come, let's go. You are sure that is the lady,' he continued, when we ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... be successively conducted. This novelty in the work will prove very frequently of great utility, especially to those visitors who have too little time for their trip, and who, for want of such a laconic memento wherever they go, are known in a thousand instances to pass by the most interesting objects unnoticed,—not being ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... found expression in the curt and pithy harangue of Sthenelaidas, one of the five Ephors, a college of magistrates which in recent years had greatly encroached on the authority of the kings. Sthenelaidas spoke with true laconic brevity. "I don't understand," he said, "all the fine talk of these Athenians. They have told us a great deal about their own merits, but have not said a word in answer to the charges brought against them. Even if we accept their own account of ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... was the laconic reply, as the old fellow shaded his brow, and gazed long and anxiously beyond the headland they were ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... expression used by J. W. H., "the connexion of the Welsh dwr with the Greek [Greek: hudor] is remarkable," he appears not to have known that Vezron found so many resemblances in the Doric or Laconic dialect, and the Celtic, that he thereupon raised the theory that the Lacedaemonians and the Celts were ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... day or two to shake hands with Medici, who, after some hard fighting, was within a march of Trento. The order was explicit: instant evacuation of the enemy's territory. Garibaldi, to whom from first to last had fallen an ungrateful part, took up his pen and wrote the laconic telegram: 'Obbedisco.' 'I have obeyed,' he said to the would-be mutineers, 'do you obey likewise.' Someone murmured 'Rome.' 'Yes,' said the chief, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Kalidasa and another poet, is more laconic in this alliterative line: Bhaso hasah, Kalidaso vilasah—Bhasa is mirth, Kalidasa ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... earthquakes since the time when Legaspi and Urdaneta first set foot on these shores. But the old chroniclers, who dwell upon the political happenings with an attention to detail which is occasionally overdone, were invariably laconic when there was question of earthquakes and similar natural phenomena; as a rule they were satisfied with mentioning the occurrence in a general and therefore vague way, without any attempt at precision as to dates and places. Still the writers in the Philippines did nothing ...
— Catalogue of Violent and Destructive Earthquakes in the Philippines - With an Appendix: Earthquakes in the Marianas Islands 1599-1909 • Miguel Saderra Maso
... low brows, his thin, tight-locked lips, obstinate square jaw, and close-cropped wiry hair, was hardly accepted as a handsome man. Striking, too, was the contrast between her undisguised happiness and brilliant gaiety, and his laconic reserve. Yet neither she nor his friends would have wished him different, even in those days; for this reserve was characteristic of him. Matters on which he would have staked his life were turned by him into mere every-day commonplaces, when he permitted himself ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... bride was most warmly received in her new home, and about the anniversary of her own marriage-day, the Queen had the happiness of receiving from her new son this laconic telegram: "The whole royal family is enchanted with my ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Muscovite opens his mouth and says, 'Sir, I have orders from the emperor, my master, to assure the Catholic King that he loves him very much.' 'And I,' replies Guerra, 'do assure you that the king my master loves your master the emperor very much.' After this laconic conversation they stare at one another for a quarter of an hour without saying anything, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... May it be a sturdy one, and let its owner beware. What of our turkey and oyster dressing? Of our broiled fish and bacon? Of our clam chowder, our divine Bouillabaisse? If the ingredients and component parts of such dishes were enumerated in the laconic and careless Apician style, if they were stated without explicit instructions and details (supposed to be known to any good practitioner) we would have recipes just as mysterious as ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... possible means to display him to advantage, seldom thought of himself, and kept up the conversation rather by assenting to what was said by the others than by advancing any ideas of his own. The Alto was a grave, learned, and sententious man. He supported the discourse of the first Violin by laconic maxims, striking for their truth. The Bass was a worthy old lady, rather inclined to chatter, who said nothing of much consequence, and while she was talking the other interlocutors had time to breathe. It was, however, evident that she had a secret ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... make them work. What makes me sell them is that l'Eveille is accused of being the head of a plot of some thirty Mobile slaves to run away. He stoutly denies this; but since there is rarely smoke without fire I think it well to take the precaution."[24] The converse of this is a laconic advertisement at Charleston in 1800: "Wanted to purchase one or two negro men whose characters will not be required."[25] It is probable that offers were not lacking ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Stocker Newhall, a manufacturer of roundings in sole leather, was a just man, of positive views, and although interesting himself in the political issues of the day would not take office. Eminently social he was at times somewhat abrupt and laconic in denouncing what he conceived to be shams. As a manufacturer his motto was, "the laborer is worthy of his hire." He died in 1875, aged 67 years. George Pearson was Treasurer of the town and one of the Selectmen, and also Treasurer and Deacon of ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... promptness he started at once for Washington, arriving there the 8th of March. The laconic conversation which took place between the President and the general has been reported ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... wires broken!" was Tom's laconic answer. "I'll have to volplane down. Sit tight, there's ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... would soon send Young America out on the world to proclaim manifest destiny.' I said amen, and the punch disappeared into his depot, as he concluded. It was clear his inards warmed, he beginning to brighten up soon after. With a laconic air, he touched me on the elbow, and said, 'Somehow, it seems to touch the right place—I declare it does! I am half inclined to the belief that General Pierce sups formidably of this just before he talks about winding things up ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... I approached him, that my chances were but indifferent. I found him as "close as a clam." Our conversation was very brief; his answers laconic. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... was the ordinary laconic, non-committal man of business who answered. A pause, then a significant amplification. "This is the age of the trolley. There are a hundred miles of suburban lines contracted for as well. No one will recognize this country as it is now ten ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... pleased with that close mode of oratory, which in a laconic manner states the facts, and forms an immediate conclusion: in that case, it is obvious how necessary it is to be a complete master of the rules of logic. Others delight in a more open, free, and copious style, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... Intelligence was now brought from Asia Minor that Pharnaces, son of Mithridates the Great, was inciting a revolt among the peoples of that region. Caesar met the Pontic king at Zela, defeated him, and in five days put an end to the war. His laconic message to the Senate, announcing his victory, is famous. It ran thus: Veni, vidi, vici,—"I ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... "self-existent." In other words, a self-existent substance cannot be created,—a truism which scarcely required the apparatus of a geometrical proof by means of propositions, scholia, and corollaries, or, as Professor Saisset says, with laconic naivete, "ce qui a a peine besoin d'etre demontre." But, while the only proof that is offered extends no further than to self-existent or uncreated substance, it is afterwards applied to everything ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... He signed this laconic order, which I instantly despatched to General Ferino. I acquainted my cousin with what had passed, and remained at ease as to the result of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... not in the course of preparation to-day, for Leam had never been more laconic or more candidly disdainful than she was now; and what sweetness the pomegranate flower might hold in its heart was certainly not shaken abroad on the surrounding world. She answered when she was spoken to, because even Leam felt the constraining influences of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... there are depths of feeling that remain unexpressed; whether from native pride or from a sense of the inadequacy of mere words to set forth a critical moment of life, his men and women are distinguished by the most laconic utterance, yet their speech always has dramatic fitness and bears the stamp of sincerity. Jaeger speaks of the manifold possibilities of this laconic method in ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... of our wary senior is infectious, and we confess ourselves so far disenchanted by it, that, when we go into a library, the lettering on the backs of nine-tenths of the volumes contrives to shape itself into a laconic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... methods of interpretation which were practised by the Sophists—for the following reasons: (1) The transparent irony of the previous interpretations given by Socrates. (2) The ludicrous opening of the speech in which the Lacedaemonians are described as the true philosophers, and Laconic brevity as the true form of philosophy, evidently with an allusion to Protagoras' long speeches. (3) The manifest futility and absurdity of the explanation of (Greek), which is hardly consistent with the rational interpretation of the rest of the poem. The opposition ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... for war, sent ambassadors to the Florentine Republic, to assert her innocence of the crime imputed to her by public opinion, and did not hesitate to send excuses even to the Hungarian court; but Andre's brother replied in a letter laconic and threatening:— ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... jest, or the least invitation to continue the correspondence. Such a billet displeased me; nevertheless I determined to persevere. Six long letters were the result, for each of which I received a few laconic lines of thanks, with some declamation against his enemies, followed by a joke on the abuse he had heaped upon them, asserting that it was extremely natural the strong should oppress the weak, and regretting that he was not ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... clean shave—not too close, and a bath afterward," was his laconic order; and a modest tip facilitated things ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... the storekeeper in a hollow voice, yet eyeing the prince sternly; "very laconic, indeed, I must say. If I was you, I would n't be quite so laconic. How the (sheol) comes it that you did ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that butt of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as any Spartan. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... take the opportunity of Mr Innes's parcel, which leaves this to-morrow afternoon, to give you a more succinct account of my affairs than you could derive from my laconic epistle of last week. I must, however, preface by requesting you to write me as soon as you conveniently can, either by Innes or L. Smith's conveyance, as I am anxious to hear the state of your cold, and how James is succeeding ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... their ambitions, in comparison with a society where mind and morals had the glorious license of Olympians and could follow the unobstructed paths of inclination in realms controlled only by fancy! Napoleon's greeting was laconic, "Vous etes un homme." This flattered Goethe, who called it the inverse "ecce homo," and felt its allusion to his citizenship, not in Germany, but in the world. The nineteenth-century Caesar then urged the great writer to carry out an already-formed design and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... degree of glory which can never be reached by the keenest followers of Fame—They seek not panegyricks; and panegyricks can add nothing to their honour. The Eulogies have perished which were devoted by the luxuriant genius of Tully, and by the laconic spirit of Brutus, to the public virtue of Cato; yet the name of that illustrious Roman is still powerful in the world, and excites in every cultivated mind, an animating idea of independent integrity. The name of Howard has superior force, and a happier ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... the Russians in the Crimea (an English translation of his book had appeared in 1785). The satire upon this gallant soldier's veracity appears to be quite undeserved, though one can hardly read portions of his adventures without being forcibly reminded of the Baron's laconic style. It is needless to add that the amazing account of De Tott's origin is grossly libellous. The amount of public interest excited by the aeronautical exploits of Montgolfier and Blanchard was also playfully satirised. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... to the Beethoven Lieder-Cyclus I have just received a letter from Mr. Haslinger which I do not communicate in full because of the personal details it contains, but this is the passage, as laconic as it is satisfactory, with ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... reduced as they were to conjectures by Papa Ravinet's laconic answers, nevertheless knew full well that some great event was in preparation, something unexpected, and yet decisive. What it was, they did not know; but they understood, or rather felt, that Daniel's return would and must totally change the aspect of affairs. But would ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... modest creature,[16] concerning whom the biographers have been only too laconic, saw all this, and mourned over it in silence, but though weak as mothers are, she would not despair of her son, and when the neighbors told her of Francis's escapades, she would calmly reply, "What are you thinking about? I am very sure that, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... due primarily to the immensity of the Russian artillery, which maintained a violent, continuous fire, smashing the successive rows of wire entanglements, breastworks, and trenches. The town was surrounded with nineteen rows of entanglements. The laconic order to attack was given at dawn on June 7, 1916. Up to noon the issue hung in the balance, but at 1 o'clock the Russians made a breach in the enemy's position near the village of Podgauzy. They repulsed a fierce ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... told me, and may consider that you've done your duty in doing so," replied the skipper, grimly laconic. "But I'm not going to ease down till seven bells, my hearty, unless we run across Dick Haldane's ship before, when we'll go as slow as you like and bear up again on our ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... horses, how admirable was that answer of Dr. Johnson's, when a lady asked him how on earth he allowed himself to describe the word pastern in his dictionary as the knee of a horse. "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance," was his laconic reply. So great a man could well afford to confess utter ignorance of matters outside his own sphere. But how few of mankind are ever willing to own themselves mistaken about any subject under the sun, unless it be bimetallism or some equally unfashionable and abstruse (though ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... prius leader, had been intimate with Thurlow, and long flattered himself with the hopes of succeeding to some valuable appointment in the law; but, several good things passing by, he lost his patience and temper along with them. At last he addressed this laconic application to his patron: 'The Chief Justiceship of Chester is vacant; am I to have it?' and received the following laconic answer—'No! by ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... days after this rather bitter disillusion, an apprentice brought Christophe the following laconic little missive:— ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... breeding, to his genuine benevolence, to his almost sentimental craving for appreciation and affection. In a paper on his books, it is permissible to end with a bookish anecdote. One of his favourite memories, much repeated in his latter days, was that of Cowley's laconic Will,—"I give my body to the earth, and my soul to my Maker." Lady Eastlake shall tell the rest:—"This ... proved on one occasion too much for one of the party, and in an incautious moment a flippant young lady exclaimed, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... "No," came the laconic reply, "I will take you—and this," he said, reaching for the piece of scribble-paper I had in my hands, "and any baggage ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... much affected by this laconic piece of intelligence, as I might have been had I known more of the sea; and perhaps I should have regarded it still less, but for the gloomy glances and apprehensive air of those around me. I was not stunned by it at ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... detailed description. Artists will especially delight in the view of a fourteenth-century church close to the castle, with its chancel with creepers growing over it, and peeping out between the stones; and historians will be interested in the laconic inscription on its walls, 'rebuilt in 1438, a year of war, death, plague, and famine.' If such artists as Brewer, or Burgess, would only come here and give us drawings of these streets (of one especially, taking in the cathedral at the end, with its ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... argue therefore, that God cannot have left man to such uncertainty, is to argue, as the pertinacious lawyer did, who, on seeing a man in the stocks, asked him what he was there for; and on being told, said, 'They cannot put you there for that.' 'But I am here,' was the laconic answer. ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... "Thanks," came the laconic answer from the foremost airship; and then Lennard saw twenty-five winged shapes circle round the observatory and drop to rest one by one in perfect order, just as a flock of swans might have done, and, as the last came to earth, he turned the ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... regain your health. I saw my young cousin before I set out—she is more charming than ever. I am sure by the time you return she will be the finest woman in England." Lord Nelville said nothing—and Mr Edgermond was also silent. Some other words passed between them, very laconic, though extremely friendly, and Mr Edgermond was going, when suddenly turning back, he said, "Apropos, my lord, you can do me a kindness—they tell me you are acquainted with the celebrated Corinne: I don't much like forming new acquaintances, but I am quite ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... won in August. But the people's eyes were mostly fixed upon the land. So a much greater effect was produced by Sherman's laconic dispatch of the second of September announcing the fall of Atlanta. The Confederates, despairing of holding it to any good purpose, had blown up everything they could not move and then retreated. This thrilling news heartened the whole loyal North, and, as Lincoln at once sent word to Sherman, "entitled ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... with us and we were very uncertain of their whereabouts, though apparently not altogether out of touch with them, for one of their Officers, who was met in hospital later in the day, reported having received from someone in our Battalion the laconic message: "We are at ——. Where is the Australian Corps?" The enemy were still holding in force a position at no great distance from our left flank, and indeed, at one time were reported to be massing for a counter-attack which, ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... It would ill become us to detain him when the head of the family has taken leave of us." "You are right," replied the king, smiling; "besides, an old broom taken from a masthead would be as useful to us as he would." Then, turning to M. de la Vrilliere, the king dictated the following laconic notice:— "COUSIN,—I have no further occasion for your services; I exile you to Praslin, and expect you will repair thither within four and twenty hours after the receipt of this." "Short and sweet," cried I. "Now let us drop the subject," said Louis; "let madame ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... more laconic phrase, to employ a more scientific, though perhaps a less striking expression: "The rate of wages depends upon the proportion which the supply of labor bears to ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... that Europe is not curious in the matter, and will be easily satisfied. A few copies of the annual Budget are published; they are certainly not in everybody's reach. The statement of receipts and expenditure is prodigiously laconic. I have now before me the estimates prepared for 1858, in four pages, the least blank of which contains just fourteen lines. The Finance Minister sums up the receipts and the outgoings, both ordinary and extraordinary. Under the head of Receipts, he lumps the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... The parliament of James I. would have done wisely to have embraced the philosophic sentiment of a Hungarian prince (1095-1114) who is said to have dismissed the absurd superstition with laconic brevity: 'De strigis vero, quae non sunt, nulla ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... convenient and frequented sea-ports in Laconia were Trinassus and Acria, situated on each side the mouth of the Eurotas; and Gythium, not far from Trinassus, at the mouth of a small river on the Laconic Gulf. The mouth of this river, which was navigable up to Sparta, was defended by a citadel, the ruins of which were remaining in the time of Pausanias. As the Lacedaemonians regarded this town as their principal port, in which their naval forces, as well as the greater part of their merchant ships ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... himself of this laconic order, and soon afterwards returned, stating not only that there was no rope, but that the hook alluded to had ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... best, perhaps the fullest; whereby I mean that inspection of his intellectual labour has always restored to me the time so wisely occupied in regarding it, proving that there is goodness, virtue, essence in it, past all fellowship with ephemeral things. There is a true, not a laconic, logical, and prophetic inference in it that is apropriately styled, "time"; the finest embodiment of musical equipoise; felt to a "tick"; no faltering, barbaric, or false quantities, but a sustained and equable, uniform tone of chromatic measure, meted out as by a mind imbued by but sacrificing ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... to give any colour to the suspicion that I am about to confuse my narrative with extraneous details; but I must confess that Bill's laconic benison had for me a personal appeal. She was, I felt, entirely and generously right. She had not overstepped the mark at all. Miss Fraenkel was very nice, but—it has nothing to do with my story. It is a point ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the Way of Thinking and the Style must be Laconic: Much must be contained in a little Compass. Brevity of Diction adds new Life to a good Thought: And since every perfect Stroke ought to be a distinct Representation of a particular Feature, Matters shou'd be so order'd, that every ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... retold it in my own way. It deals with the old law—the old border days—therefore it is better first. Soon, perchance, I shall have the pleasure of writing of the border of to-day, which in Joe Sitter's laconic speech, "Shore is 'most as bad ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... you both," Constance breathed, realizing the import of Mr. Critchlow's laconic words. "I'm sure ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... that it was now a question of a satisfactory table. But here he knew he was strong. Mother Boswell's cooking—there was none better obtainable. He was already in a hurry to prove to this laconic stranger who demanded the best he had of everything, including breezes, that in the matter of food Boswell's Inn could satisfy the most exacting. Not in elaborately dressed viands of rare kitchen product, of course—that was not to be expected off here. But ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... cried, divining his thoughts; "here's somebody who will clear it up." And I pointed to a cottage-door at which I suddenly espied the old woman whose handling of the roller-towel had so impressed me. "Where," I shouted, addressing her, "where is the wounded man?" "Took away," was the laconic reply. "Took away!" I said; "and who has had the impudence ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... as Steve was returning, Beatrice and her aunt departed for a whirl in Florida, with a laconic invitation that Steve and his father-in-law follow them. Steve declined the ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... the same stomach. May it be a sturdy one, and let its owner beware. What of our turkey and oyster dressing? Of our broiled fish and bacon? Of our clam chowder, our divine Bouillabaisse? If the ingredients and component parts of such dishes were enumerated in the laconic and careless Apician style, if they were stated without explicit instructions and details (supposed to be known to any good practitioner) we would have recipes just as mysterious as ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... him who he was and what was the matter with the child; also what crime he had committed and where they were taking him with such an escort. Kohlhaas doffed his leather cap to her and, continuing his occupation, made laconic but satisfactory answers to all these questions. The Elector, who was standing behind the hunting-pages, remarked a little leaden locket hanging on a silk string around the horse-dealer's neck, and, since no better topic of conversation offered itself, he asked him what it signified ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a practised rider. Her habit was of very dark blue, with huge puffed sleeves and a high lace collar. She wore a top-hat of black, a long blue veil trailing down her back. He heartily agreed with the laconic bystander who remarked that she ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... what to say to her. There was a species of abandon in her gaiety. Her exotic language embarrassed one who had been used to mariners' laconic directness of speech. She looked at him, teasing him with her eyes. He was a bit relieved when the pale-faced secretary came dragging himself up the ladder and broke in ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... instructions, not perhaps inexplicable; Mr. Dickson had been lunching, and he might have made some fatal oversight in the address. What was the thoroughly prompt, manly, and business-like step? thought Gideon; and he answered himself at once: "A telegram, very laconic." Speedily the wires were flashing the following very important missive: "Dickson, Langham Hotel. Villa and persons both unknown here, suppose erroneous address; follow self next train.—Forsyth." And at the Langham Hotel, sure enough, with a brow expressive of despatch and intellectual ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the chauffeur answered in the laconic way he affects sometimes, but there was an odd smile in his eyes, almost like defiance—of me, or of Fate. I didn't know which but I should have ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... was given little except physical drill and instruction in the Spartan virtues. His food and clothing were scant and his bed hard. Each older man was a teacher. Running, leaping, boxing, wrestling, military music, military drill, ball-playing, the use of the spear, fighting, stealing, and laconic speech and demeanor constituted the course of study. From eighteen to twenty was spent in professional training for war, and frequently the youth was publicly whipped to develop his courage and endurance. For the next ten years—that is, until he was thirty years old—he was in the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... life. Every streak, every spot, every shade of its brown coat I remembered. Its extreme thinness was the only circumstance in which the picture was unlike my Caesar. I inquired from the scolding woman of the shop how she came by this picture—'Honestly,' was her laconic answer; but when I asked whether it were to be sold, and when I paid its price, the lady changed her tone; no longer considering me as the partisan of the little boy, against whom she was enraged, but ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... estate of Sutton Park, (the seat of Sir J. Burgoyne.) near Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, which states it formerly belonged to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who gave it to an ancestor of the present proprietor, named Roger Burgoyne, by the following laconic grant:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head in its wimple And look with laconic, black eyes? Or is sleep coming over ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... Paretz had to be exchanged for the restraints of court life. Little as either of the two desired regal pomp, they played their new parts well. Friedrich Wilhelm, stately in bearing, and acknowledged as the handsomest man in his realm, looked every inch a king; and if his laconic speech and caustic criticisms sometimes gave offence, the winning gentleness of his beautiful wife more than made amends. Nobles and citizens, statesmen, soldiers, and savants were alike made welcome; and Louise knew instinctively ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... too close, and a bath afterward," was his laconic order; and a modest tip facilitated things and provided the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... he knew any thing about the wonders and curiosities of Moscow he kept it a profound secret. It was only by the most rigid inquiry and an adroit system of cross-examination that I could get any thing out of him, and then his information was vague and laconic, sometimes a little sarcastic, but never beyond what I knew myself. Yet he was polite, dignified, and gentlemanly—never refused to drink a glass of beer with me, and always knew the way to a traktir. To the public functionaries ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... without sugar when it was a high-priced luxury brought painfully in small quantities from the Orient, and assured one another that it was not a necessary article of diet. At last we all agreed to Karstens's laconic advice, "Forget it!" and we spoke of sugar no more. When we got on the ridge the chocolate satisfied to some extent the craving for sweetness, but we all missed the sugar sorely and continued to miss it to the end, Karstens ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... chains of political bondage, what were nations and their ambitions, in comparison with a society where mind and morals had the glorious license of Olympians and could follow the unobstructed paths of inclination in realms controlled only by fancy! Napoleon's greeting was laconic, "Vous etes un homme." This flattered Goethe, who called it the inverse "ecce homo," and felt its allusion to his citizenship, not in Germany, but in the world. The nineteenth-century Caesar then urged the great writer to carry out an already-formed design and compose ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Bob, "though Joe told me the story in his own very laconic fashion, I am sure that it was much more interesting than I can make it. I'll do the best I ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... de la Tremouille. He seems to have been a blackguard of unusually low pattern, for, after he had extracted from her some L200 of her pin money and a few diamond brooches, he left her one fine day with a laconic word to say that he was sailing for Europe by the Argentina, and would not be back for some time. She was in love with the brute, poor young soul, for when, a week later, she read that the Argentina was wrecked, and presumably every soul on board had perished, she wept very many ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... me up to the date of my receiving, in Waterbury, the laconic cable from Edward to the effect that he wanted me to go to Branshaw and have a chat. I was pretty busy at the time and I was half minded to send him a reply cable to the effect that I would start in a fortnight. But ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... characters we are constantly made to realize that there are depths of feeling that remain unexpressed; whether from native pride or from a sense of the inadequacy of mere words to set forth a critical moment of life, his men and women are distinguished by the most laconic utterance, yet their speech always has dramatic fitness and bears the stamp of sincerity. Jaeger speaks of the manifold possibilities of this laconic ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... lieutenants. This war, however, did not detain him long; for Pharnaces, venturing to come to an open battle with the Dictator, was utterly defeated on the 2d of August near Zela. It was in reference to this victory that Caesar sent the celebrated laconic dispatch to the Senate, Veni, vidi, vici, "I came, I saw, I conquered." He then proceeded to Rome, caused himself to be appointed Dictator for another year, and nominated M. AEmilius Lepidus his Master of the Horse. At the same time he quelled a formidable mutiny of his troops which ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... king. The embassy was accompanied by a strong force of these fierce warriors, who knew well how to fight, but who had become conscious that they did not know how to govern themselves. Their message was laconic but explicit: ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the Duke of Wellington declined the invitation to the Lord Mayor's civic dinner in the following laconic speech:—"Pray remember the 9th November, 1830."—"Ah!" said Sir Peter Laurie, on hearing the Duke's reply, "I remember it. They said that the people intended on that day to set fire to Guildhall, and meant to roast the Mayor and Board of Aldermen."—"On the old system, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... evening's festivities was half in the mind to pass on without reply; then her curiosity as to Huldah's costume got the better of her, and she compromised, with a laconic, ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... Shi contains curious confirmation of the facts which led up to Marco Polo's conducting a wife to Arghun of Persia, who lost his spouse in 1286. In the eleventh moon of that year (say January, 1287) the following laconic announcement appears: 'T'a-ch'a-r Hu-nan ordered to go on a mission to A-r-hun.' It is possible that Tachar and Hunan may be two individuals, and, though they probably started overland, it is probable that they were in some way connected with ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... then. I am a Romanoff by marriage merely, But I do feel a rare belittlement And loud laconic ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... side of the conductor. 'What are yer a-driving on for just as a party's getting in? Will nothing suit but to break a party's neck?' 'Wake up, will yer? or do yer want that ere Bayswater to pass us?' are inquiries he will make in the most peremptory manner. Or he will concentrate contempt in the laconic but withering observation: ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... upon Abner, just as he had done before, when Mrs. Whyland had first made them acquainted. He frankly admired the strength and the stature of the only man in the room who was taller and more robust than himself, as well as the intent sobriety of his glance and the laconic ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... temperateness, and in pitying love of human nature, in the instinctive hope of helping it to know and redeem itself. His quality was philosophy, his style forgiveness. And for this temperate and logical and laconic work—giving nothing to the world for its mere enjoyment, but going beyond all that to ennoble each reader by his perfect renunciation of artistic claptrap and artistic license—for this aim he needed a mental method ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... conversational gifts, Mr. Carlyle wrote: "They were the theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts, from the gracefullest allusions of courtesy to the highest fire of passionate speech, loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight, all ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... asked what answer he should bear to his Majesty. I still remained silent, and the Minister again urged me to give an answer. "Well, then," said I, "tell him he may go to the devil." The Minister naturally wished to obtain some variation from this laconic answer, but I would give no other; and I afterwards learned from Duroc that M. de Champagny was compelled to communicate it to Napoleon. "Well," asked the latter, "have you seen Bourrienne?"—"Yes, Sire."—"Did ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... there were mechanical difficulties in the way that rendered the plan impracticable at the present time. I added that I felt that I had not the electrical knowledge necessary to overcome the difficulties. His laconic answer was, 'GET IT!' I cannot tell you how much these ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... Spartan surliness with his smooth songs and odes, the better to plant among them law end civility, it is to be wondered how useless and unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war. There needed no licensing of books among them, for they disliked all but their own laconic apothegms, and took a slight occasion to chase Archilochus out of their city, perhaps for composing in a higher strain than their own soldierly ballads and roundels could reach to. Or if it were for his broad verses, they were ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... doors; and, in the strong way of the old Commonwealth men, they protested against this presence as "a breach of privilege, and inconsistent with that dignity and freedom with which they had a right to deliberate, consult, and determine." The Governor's laconic reply was,—"I have no authority over His Majesty's ships in this port or his troops within this town; nor can I give any orders for their removal." The House, resolving that they proceeded to take part in the elections of the day from necessity and to conform the Charter, chose their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... murmured. She forced her rebellious lips to the laconic assent. She drooped the lids over her rebellious eyes, lest he should detect her ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... searching eye under his briery brows, and could be as stern towards ingratitude as he was soft to misfortune. Henry once caught a glimpse of this as they spoke of a mutual friend whom he had helped to no purpose. Mr. Fairfax never used many words, on this occasion he was grimly laconic. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... quickly, for at this juncture in the final proceedings of the war Sheridan was vigorously carrying out Grant's laconic instruction to "press things." When the sentinel waked the captain, Sheridan's lines were less than fifty yards in front and were pouring heavy volleys into the ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... expressive of the writer's thanks; but without a single jest, or the least invitation to continue the correspondence. Such a billet displeased me; nevertheless I determined to persevere. Six long letters were the result, for each of which I received a few laconic lines of thanks, with some declamation against his enemies, followed by a joke on the abuse he had heaped upon them, asserting that it was extremely natural the strong should oppress the weak, and regretting that he was not in the list of the former. He then ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... closed the door, and the carriage turned into Piccadilly Circus. The woman did not pay very much attention to him. She made a laconic explanation, the sort of explanation one would make ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... the control wires broken!" was Tom's laconic answer. "I'll have to volplane down. Sit tight, there's ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... "War Stories" is the laconic sub-title of "Wounds in the Rain." It was not war on a grand scale that Crane saw in the Spanish-American complication, in which he participated as a war correspondent; no such war as the recent horror. But the occasions for personal ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... answered, in her literal and simple manner, "It was only half-a-crown." This sum the Prince paid her. He then saluted her, and said: "Notwithstanding all that has happened, I hope, madam, we shall meet in St. James's yet." In this calm, and, apparently laconic manner, he bade Flora adieu. But, though fate did not permit Charles to testify his gratitude at St. James's, he is said never to have mentioned without a deep sense of his obligations the name of his young protectress. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... This last laconic entry terminated the journal. It seemed to me that, coming as it did after four days' complete silence, it told a clearer tale of shaken nerve and a broken spirit than could any more elaborate narrative. Pinned on to the journal ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... applause? No—"A vulgar narrative of uninteresting incidents"—was the laconic character given of it in that monthly publication in which, from its reputed impartiality, I most hoped ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... critical powers in art, literature, and science. He penetrated through all shams and impostures. He was rarely deceived as to men or women. He could be eloquent and interesting in conversation. Some of his expressions pierced like lightning, and were exceedingly effective. His despatches were laconic and clear. He knew something about everybody of note, and if he had always been in a private station his intellectual force would have attracted attention in almost any vocation he might have selected. His natural vivacity, wit, and intensity ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... to a point which is overlooked by those who triumphantly pointed to the natural settlement of this question by the swamping of other tongues in the overflowing tide of English speech. English is the most concise and laconic of the great languages. Greek, French and German are all more expansive, more syllabically copious. Latin alone may be said to equal, or surpass English in concentration, because, although Latin words are ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... write a book, and it never occurred to me that everybody would not be just as delighted to read it. The first time my book weighed on me was one morning when a thin, meagre little letter came to me, which turned out to be only a card bearing the laconic inscription,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... be ill, or to die, so overwhelmed am I with scholarly work. But if there is anything which can alleviate the trouble without weakening the body, I beg you to inform me. If you will be so good as to explain at greater length your very concise and more than laconic notes, and prescribe other remedies which I can take until I am free, I cannot promise you a fee to match your art or the trouble you have taken, but I do at least promise you ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... instance is not isolated, As a survey of our statesmen shows; WINSTON now suggests a long post-dated DAN O'CONNELL in his mouth and nose; NORTHCLIFFE's growing more Napoleonic Than the Corsican, though less laconic. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... Barbicane had no reason for silence. He therefore called together his colleagues then in Tampa Town, and, without showing what he thought about it or saying a word about the degree of credibility the telegram deserved, he read coldly the laconic text. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... the marquis should have been crushed by this despatch, which in its laconic terms betrayed Anthony's abject terror. But it was not so. He put it back on the table in the calmest manner, and ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... and returns in a minute or two with the information that dinner is ready, an announcement which Billy greets with the laconic ejaculation, "Proper!" ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... stress under which General S.D. Lee was in the Department of Mississippi, showing that the hands of that officer were more than full. [Footnote: The letter, however, did not reach Johnston till after he had been relieved of command.] On the 10th Johnston had forwarded a laconic dispatch, saying, "On the night of the 8th the enemy crossed at Isham's Cavalry Ford; intrenched. In consequence we crossed at and below the railroad, and are now about two miles from the river, guarding the crossings." [Footnote: Official Records, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... and don't believe she is telling the truth," was the laconic refusal of the prosecutor to ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Desiree had obeyed Barlasch's blunt order to write to their father. They did not know whither he had fled, neither had they received any communication giving an address or a hint as to his future movements. It would appear that the same direct and laconic mind which had carried out his escape deemed it wiser that those left behind should be in no ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... writer, speaking of Kalidasa and another poet, is more laconic in this alliterative line: Bhaso hasah, Kalidaso vilasah—Bhasa ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... is one small but rather famous class of letters which perhaps should receive separate though brief notice. It is that of laconic and either intentionally or unintentionally humorous utilisations of the letter-form. Of one sort Captain Walton's "Spanish fleet taken and destroyed as per margin" is probably the most noted type: of another the equally famous rejoinder of the Highland magnate ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... was not over, the majority of the audience had begun to stream out. Two men who loitered in the gangway in front of Stonehouse exchanged laconic comments. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... good deal of music to French words and produced a French opera, "Le Devin du Village." Diderot was also a warm partisan of the Italians. Pergolesi's beautiful music having been murdered by the French orchestra players at the Grand Opera-House, Diderot proposed for it the following witty and laconic inscription: "Hic Marsyas Apollinem."* ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... east. The capture of the fortress was due primarily to the immensity of the Russian artillery, which maintained a violent, continuous fire, smashing the successive rows of wire entanglements, breastworks, and trenches. The town was surrounded with nineteen rows of entanglements. The laconic order to attack was given at dawn on June 7, 1916. Up to noon the issue hung in the balance, but at 1 o'clock the Russians made a breach in the enemy's position near the village of Podgauzy. They repulsed a fierce ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... down the broad stairs (thinking fast!)and flashed out upon Byrom like a young empress in her robes. And a sinecure he had of it for the next few hours. To stand at the carriage door and receive the most laconic of orders; to see her pass from carriage to store and from store to carriage, erect and tall and stately, and with no more apparent notice of the icy sidewalks than if they had been strewn with cotton wool. If he followed close to pick her up, Wych ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... often say, "A ghost has just leaped from the tree into the cave; that is why the earth is shaking." Down below the ghosts are received by Tulmeng, lord of the nether world. Often he appears in a canoe to ferry them over to the further shore. "Blood or wax?" is the laconic question which he puts to the ghost on the bank. He means to say, "Were you killed or were you done to death by magic?" For it is with wax that the sorcerer stops up the fatal little tubes in which he encloses the souls of his enemies. And the reason why the lord of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... It was a laconic interview, crisp as autumn ice and bitter as gallberries. Colonel Clark had no respect whatever for Hamilton, to whom he had applied the imperishable adjective "hair-buyer General." On the other hand Governor Hamilton, who felt keenly the disgrace of having to ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Ramsey was laconic in response to inquiries upon this subject. When someone remarked: "You served him right for calling you a boob and a poor fish and so on before all the society, girls and ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... we can do for him.' At the same time he rang a tiny hand-bell. A boy, rather the worse for printer's ink, appeared at the summons. Mr. Lancaster handed him Ernest's careful manuscript unopened, with the laconic order, 'Press. Proof immediately.' The boy took it without a word. 'I'm very busy now,' Mr. Lancaster went on in the same wearied dispirited manner: 'come again in thirty-five minutes. Jones, show these gentlemen into a ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... madame know that her order for a steak, a peck of potatoes, and two lemons, is registered in the grocery boy's book under the laconic title, "Pink"? ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... sanction of the treaties being signified October 23, 1865, by the following laconic decree(308) addressed to the shogun: "The imperial consent is given to the treaties, and you will therefore undertake ...
— Japan • David Murray
... would write to your father, and enquire—what time it will be most convenient for him to receive my visit, and I will come to Town immediately to the time appointed and accompany you to the Rural Shades and Fertile Fields of Hants. You must excuse the laconic Style of my Epistle as this place is damned dull and I have nothing to ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... deserved! Did he think that one born in the purple chamber could be divorced—murdered, perhaps—with the petty formula of the Romans, 'Restore the keys—-be no longer my domestic drudge?'[Footnote: The laconic form of the Roman divorce.] Was a daughter of the blood of Comnenus liable to such insults as the meanest of Quirites might bestow on ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the illiterate who could ride and shoot and live to himself was far more esteemed than the educated who could not do those things. The more a man depends upon himself and the closer is his contact to a quick judgment the more laconic and even-poised he becomes. And the knowledge that he is himself a judge tends to create caution and judgment. He has no court to uphold his honor and to offer him protection, so he must be quick to protect himself and to maintain his own standing. His nature saved him, or it executed; and ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... would have driven the point of his lance through a laced doublet. Sir Piercie Shafton, a man of rank and high birth, by no means encouraged or endured this familiarity, and requited the intruder either with total neglect, or such laconic replies as intimated a sovereign contempt for the rude spearman, who affected to converse with him upon ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... in the last act, I approached that truly dreadful five-page speech, which after a laconic "Go on!" from the young minister is continued through several more pages, I actually trembled with fear, lest her ennui should find some unpleasant outward expression. However, I dared not balk at the jump, so took it as bravely ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... marriage, in spite of the violent and arrogant manner of her husband, whose fame as a violent braggadocio was a safeguard against the advances of young Piero de' Medici. Three years after the marriage a child was born, to whom the name of Cosimo was given, a laconic compliment to the old libertine! A second son appeared in 1571, Bartolommeo, but he died within a twelvemonth of his birth, and then, in 1577, came a third child to the Panciatichi mansion, another Bartolommeo, ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... Hottentot's tale as I picked it up from his laconic, colourless, Dutch patois sentences, then and afterwards; a very wonderful tale I thought. But for him, his fidelity and his bushman's cunning, where should I have found ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... safe venture or escape from peril, by means of faithful representation of the event in painting or drawing, as the material and art is more common now than in the days of ancient Greece, who recorded its cures by simple inscription in laconic terms. Modern medicine labors under the disadvantage of presuming that the people are endowed with an intelligence that was unknown to ancient or mediaeval people, when, in fact, the people are as credulous and as subject to imposition as they were in the earlier ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Lieder-Cyclus I have just received a letter from Mr. Haslinger which I do not communicate in full because of the personal details it contains, but this is the passage, as laconic as it is satisfactory, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... IRVING MONTAGU, some time on the artistic staff of The Illustrated London News, gives his experiences of the Russo-Turkish Campaign. He concisely sums up the qualifications of a War Correspondent by saying that he should "have an iron constitution, a laconic, incisive style, and sufficient tact to establish a safe and rapid connecting link between the forefront of battle and his own head-quarters in Fleet Street or elsewhere." As Mr. IRVING MONTAGU seems to have lived up to his ideal, it is a little astonishing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... don't,' was the millionaire's laconic response; but perhaps he was thinking of his ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... "Born here," was the laconic reply. But the other pressed him for fuller detail and he proceeded cheerfully. "The Halloway millions didn't come to us on a tray borne by angels. My father made his pile, and much of it he made in coal and iron—here and there in the Appalachians. He ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... folded this laconic epistle, put it in his pocket, and gave the order for departure. His voice, which rang above the east wind, had something solemn ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... to him with intense interest, his countenance gradually lighting into a smile of pleasure, and the instant Mr. Wharton concluded his laconic reply he turned on his heel and left the apartment. The Whartons, judging from his manner, thought he was about to proceed in quest of the object of his inquiries. They observed the dragoon, on gaining the lawn, in earnest and apparently ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... was located the wireless telegraph station from where Commander Peary flashed to the civilized world his laconic message, "Stars and Stripes nailed ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... hit on a "perfect cure"? (What ails me I am not quite sure that I'm sure) To Nice, where the weather is nice—with vagaries? The Engadine soft or the sunny Canaries? To Bonn or Wiesbaden? My doctor laconic Declares that the Teutonic air is too tonic. Shall I do Davos-Platz or go rove the Riviera? Or moon for a month in romantic Madeira? St. Moritz or Malaga, Aix, La Bourboule? Bah! My doctor's a farceur and I am—a fool. I will not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... on, nobody left the canyon except on weekly 'copter-lifts to the ranch grazing lands for fresh supplies. Fortunately, that area was undisturbed, and so were its laconic occupants. They neither knew nor cared what went on in the world outside; what cities were reported destroyed, what forces triumphed or went down into defeat, what ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... guest to arrive. He shuffled in without answering the laconic greetings accorded him, and his usually mild eyes ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... penny one,' was Theodore Racksole's laconic request, and he walked out of the shop smoking the penny cigar. It was a new ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... his errand of good nature by handing over the physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic verbal direction that "it's to be all took d'rectly." Secondly, Mr. Snagsby has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual panacea for an immense variety of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr. Bucket has to take Jo by the arm a little above the elbow and walk ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... life, Burnside was laconic, and told them all that had happened. Tom spoke not a word, but ran up to the stable and had a horse out, saddled in a minute, he was dashing into the house again for his hat and pistols when he came against Mary in the passage, leaning against ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... his white surplice at the organ on Sundays, leading the singing with his strong tenor voice, or whether he were in the workshop with the boys, he was always a centre of magic and fascination to her, his voice, sounding out in command, cheerful, laconic, had always a twang in it that sent a thrill over her blood, and hypnotized her. She seemed to run in the shadow of some dark, potent secret of which she would not, of whose existence even she dared ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... required more than any other this purification; and from whom the great power which it had been necessary to place in his hands fully justified the regent in exacting it. It was not, however, advisable to proceed against him with the laconic brevity adopted towards Brederode and the like; on the other hand, the voluntary resignation of all his offices, which he tendered, did not meet the object of the regent, who foresaw clearly enough how really dangerous he would become, as soon as he should ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... move," was the laconic but excellent speech of Mr. Henry Plumb. He already had his forefinger on the trigger of ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... Logrono on its way northwards, and the Count had the pleasure of a brief visit from Herrera. A few hours after the troops had again marched away, a courier arrived from Vittoria, bringing the much wished-for answer. It was cold and laconic, written by one of the ministers of Don Carlos. Regret was expressed for the Count's misfortune, but that regret was apparently not sufficiently poignant to induce the liberation of two important prisoners, in order that a like ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... porter, Lady Chatterton observed to him significantly—"Nobody at home, Willis."—"Yes, my lady," was the laconic reply, and Lord Herriefield, as he took his seat by the side of his wife in the carriage, thought she was not as ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... [227] The 'abrupt and laconic structure' of Glover's periods appears at the very commencement of Leonidas, which has something military in its movement, but rather the stiff gait of the drilled soldier than the proud march ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... alive. This particular member of the force was an unusually tough nut to crack. In the heart of Tony was the drench of a chill wave. He was no coward, but he knew he had no such unflawed nerve as this man. Through his mind there ran a common laconic report handed in by Rangers returning from an assignment—"Killed while resisting arrest." Alviro did not want Ranger Roberts to ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... with "Mice and Men" is a characteristic Frohman story. Charles ordered this play written from Madeleine Lucette Ryley for Maude Adams. When he read the manuscript he sent it back to Miss Ryley with the laconic comment, "Worse yet." She showed it to Gertrude Elliott, who bought it for England. When Charles heard of this he immediately accepted the play, and it proved to be a success. The moment a play was in demand it became valuable ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... my narrative which I have left behind me in London. He is exceedingly neat and prim in his ways, dresses always with great care in white drill suits and high brown mosquito-boots, and shaves at least once a day. Like most men of action, he is laconic in speech, and sinks readily into his own thoughts, but he is always quick to answer a question or join in a conversation, talking in a queer, jerky, half-humorous fashion. His knowledge of the world, and very especially of South America, is surprising, and he has ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sergeants and corporals were a little uncertain about Gerhardt. His laconic speech, never embroidered by the picturesque slang they relished, his gravity, and his rare, incredulous smile, alike puzzled them. Was the new officer a dude? Sergeant Hicks asked of his chum, Dell Able. No, he wasn't a dude. Was he a swellhead? No, not at all; but he wasn't a good mixer. He was ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... went through this list again, only naming each letter himself, and receiving laconic answers from Grimm—answers which seemed to be numbers, but I could not be sure. For minutes together I caught nothing but the scratching of pens and inarticulate mutterings. But out of the muck-heap I picked five pearls—four ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... when the gun had "cooled" nobody thought of doubting for an instant; and when three hours had sped, when the gun had had time to become a veritable cucumber, the rumour-monger, positive, superior, laconic to the last, attributed its silence to a "loose screw!" But, for us, the screw was never tightened; Kimberley had indeed heard the last of Long Tom. Our scepticism, however, remained robust, and would not permit us to treat with aught but ridicule the vaunted wonders with which the ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... sufficient to lessen her charms, thus expresses himself: "Six months ago, when I met her, she was still so beautiful that I know not any heart of adamant which would not have been moved at the sight of her."—To give you a perfect idea of her person, take this laconic description, which is not one of fancy, but ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Michelangelo regarding his own works is one of the most trying things about him. It is true indeed that his correspondence between 1534 and 1541 almost entirely fails; still, had it been abundant, we should probably have possessed but dry and laconic references to matters connected with the business ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... under the influence of his injurer's glance and presence, would acknowledge whatever misdeed, debt, and even crime was attributed to him, responding to the demand if what his accuser said was true, with the invariable and laconic words: ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... the reception given him. Not that his manner betrays anything like swagger—for he is evidently not one of the swaggering sort. Rather is his behaviour characterised by a cool, quiet effrontery—a sort of sarcastic assurance—ten times more irritating. This is displayed in the laconic style of his salutation: "Morning girls! father at home?"— in the fact of his dismounting without waiting to be invited—in sharply scolding the dog out of his way as he leads his horse to the shed; and, finally, in his throwing the saddle-bags over his arm, and stepping inside ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... considered the matter for some moments, chewing energetically the while, then, having delivered himself with the same delicacy and skill as before of his surplus tobacco juice, made laconic reply: ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... the writer to this end, but to most of us censoring is a beastly bore, and one views with dismay the enormous pile of letters that your platoon sergeant dumps down on your bed each day at noon with the laconic announcement of "Mail, sir!" ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... has not made a satisfactory apology to me before the hand of my watch points to the hour, I will thrash him till he does. I am an officer in the English army, and always keep my word.' A small band of Australians was in the cabin. One and all of them applauded this laconic speech. It was probably due in part to these that the offender did not wait till the six minutes ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the inner room of the office, William laid down the money he had collected with the laconic statement, "It's kinder ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... shrank closer to myself, not without grave doubts—which I think occur naturally to people in like situations—that this was the general rule of humanity and I was a solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception. It was a relief when a laconic announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl caused a general movement in the family. We walked across the dark platform, which led to another low-ceiled room. Its entire length was occupied by a table, at the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... would henceforth reckon him among his friends—"Yours very sincerely, H. Bullinger." This literary effort he carefully dispatched by a Guinea-pig to its destination, and awaited a reply with the utmost impatience. The reply was laconic, but highly satisfactory. It was a verbal one, given by Oliver himself in class that afternoon, who volunteered the information to the delighted Bullinger that it was a ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... was dumbfounded that the laconic Coleman could on occasion talk so much, or perhaps he understood everything and was impressed by the argumentative power. At any rate he suddenly wilted. He made a gesture which was a protestation of martyrdom and picking up his ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... years, B—— says. A decade of this intense heat, compared to which a breath of outdoor air in the close mill-yard, with the midsummer sun in the nineties, seems chilly, wears a man out—"only fit for the boneyard then, sir," was the laconic estimate of an intelligent boss whom ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... the captain's speech was laconic in the extreme, being "much shorter, indeed, than his nose," as my fellow mid was forced to acknowledge in a ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... between them can never lead to a comprehension of life in nature. For in such a search man loses sight of the real signature of life: form as a dynamic element. Accordingly, in his Ethics of the Dust, Ruskin does not answer the question: 'What is Life?' with a scientific explanation, but with the laconic injunction: 'Always stand by Form against Force.' This he later enlarges pictorially in the words: 'Discern the moulding hand of the potter commanding the clay from the merely beating foot as it ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... and simplicity; so much so, that in spite of its complex inflections, when once a vocabulary is acquired, it is more easy and natural for a modern than his ancestral Latin itself. Latin is the stiffer tongue; it is by nature at once laconic and grandiloquent, and the exceptional condensation and transposition of which it is capable make its effects entirely foreign to a modern, scarcely inflected, tongue. Take, for instance, these ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... disagreement of the uncertain Wobbles brothers who owned the land. It was a day of failures; and at four o'clock he returned to the office and inscribed, upon the credit side of his unique little day-book, the laconic entry: ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... weary the reader with any detailed description. Artists will especially delight in the view of a fourteenth-century church close to the castle, with its chancel with creepers growing over it, and peeping out between the stones; and historians will be interested in the laconic inscription on its walls, 'rebuilt in 1438, a year of war, death, plague, and famine.' If such artists as Brewer, or Burgess, would only come here and give us drawings of these streets (of one especially, taking in the cathedral at the end, with its stone walls built over by shops, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... their conduct, attain a degree of glory which can never be reached by the keenest followers of Fame—They seek not panegyricks; and panegyricks can add nothing to their honour. The Eulogies have perished which were devoted by the luxuriant genius of Tully, and by the laconic spirit of Brutus, to the public virtue of Cato; yet the name of that illustrious Roman is still powerful in the world, and excites in every cultivated mind, an animating idea of independent integrity. The name of Howard has superior force, and a happier effect. It is a sound, at which ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... Kamchadals, who returned from here, we muffled ourselves from the biting air in our heaviest furs, took seats on our respective sledges, and at a laconic "tok" (go) from the taiyon we were off; the little cluster of tents looking like a group of conical islands behind us as we swept out upon the limitless ocean of the snowy steppe. Noticing that I shivered a little ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the absence of the favourite senior conductor, was called upon to lead the music to Egmont at Munich, I induced him, amongst other things, to attend to the proper rendering of this passage. It proved at once strikingly effective—concise, laconic—as Beethoven meant it. The tempo, which up to that point had been kept up with passionate animation, was firmly arrested, and very slightly modified—just as much, and no more than was necessary to permit the orchestra properly to attack this thematic combination, so full of energetic decision ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... I think it very easy, and consequently pretty; but, from the ease, should never have guessed it Glover's. I delight in your, "the patriots cry it up, and the courtiers cry it down, and the hawkers cry it up and down," and your laconic history of the King and Sir Robert, on going to Hanover, and turning out the Duke of Argyle. The epigram, too, you sent me on the same occasion ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... to this country to offer his services to Congress. "What can you do?" asked Washington. "Try me," was the laconic reply. In course of time, he was sent to Schuyler as engineer of ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... quick as a cat. She threw herself bodily upon both scooper and pick—the latter an old fork with but one tine left. Bep promptly threw herself on top of her twin, while Peter, a laconic lad, calmly set himself to rehabilitating the hind wheel of a battered tin toy express which ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... will description become—how laconic all comment! You will no more listen to one of the old circumlocutionary conversers than you would travel by the waggon, or make a ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... comparison with a society where mind and morals had the glorious license of Olympians and could follow the unobstructed paths of inclination in realms controlled only by fancy! Napoleon's greeting was laconic, "Vous etes un homme." This flattered Goethe, who called it the inverse "ecce homo," and felt its allusion to his citizenship, not in Germany, but in the world. The nineteenth-century Caesar then urged the great writer to carry out an already-formed design and compose a ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... wrote with temperateness, and in pitying love of human nature, in the instinctive hope of helping it to know and redeem itself. His quality was philosophy, his style forgiveness. And for this temperate and logical and laconic work—giving nothing to the world for its mere enjoyment, but going beyond all that to ennoble each reader by his perfect renunciation of artistic claptrap and artistic license—for this aim he needed a mental method that could entirely command itself, and, when necessary, weigh and ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... documents, the explanations in which were harder to understand than conundrums. Although greatly averse to following the notary's advice as to seeking Claudet's assistance, he found himself compelled to do so, but was met by such laconic and surly answers that he concluded it would be more dignified on his part to dispense with the services of one who was so badly disposed toward him. He therefore resolved to have recourse to the debtors themselves, whose names he found, after much difficulty, in the books. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Artists will especially delight in the view of a fourteenth-century church close to the castle, with its chancel with creepers growing over it, and peeping out between the stones; and historians will be interested in the laconic inscription on its walls, 'rebuilt in 1438, a year of war, death, plague, and famine.' If such artists as Brewer, or Burgess, would only come here and give us drawings of these streets (of one especially, taking in the cathedral at the end, with its stone walls built ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... petrified, and this outburst of the grief of the usually haughty and laconic young man filled him with the utmost surprise ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... without grave doubts—which I think occur naturally to people in like situations—that this was the general rule of humanity and I was a solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception. It was a relief when a laconic announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl caused a general movement in the family. We walked across the dark platform, which led to another low-ceiled room. Its entire length was occupied by a table, at ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... separated from the Hellas by bad weather, and in returning to the rendezvous at Spetzia, he lost two of his masts and two men, in a hurricane off Cape Malea. Shortly after his return to Poros, where he was again compelled to refit, he received the following laconic communication from Lord Cochrane, in which all mention of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... and the talk turned on the political situation. Rogers remarked, 'What a powerful band Lord John Russell will have to contend with! There's Peel, Lord Stanley, Sir James Graham——;' and the Duke interrupted him at this point with the laconic reply, 'Lord John Russell is a host ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... sharp terms to this laconic opinion that the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted before. Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all. He had flatly declined. Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy, particularly as Japheth was about to leave that side of the county, ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... into the mechanics of the heavens: I cannot prevail upon him, cannot make him share my audacity. He calls it a mad scheme, which will exhaust us and come to nothing. Without the advice of an experienced pilot, with no other compass than a book, which is not always very clear, because of its laconic adherence to set terms, our poor bark is bound to be wrecked on the first reef. One might as well put out to sea in a nutshell and defy the billows of the vasty deep. He does not use these actual words, but his gloomy estimate of the extreme difficulties to be encountered is enough to ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... the opportunity of Mr Innes's parcel, which leaves this to-morrow afternoon, to give you a more succinct account of my affairs than you could derive from my laconic epistle of last week. I must, however, preface by requesting you to write me as soon as you conveniently can, either by Innes or L. Smith's conveyance, as I am anxious to hear the state of your cold, and how ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... are not treated with great indulgence, nor rewarded by many commendations; for the English are laconic and reserved towards their domestics; but an approving nod and kind word from master or mistress, goes as far here, as an excess of praise or indulgence elsewhere. Neither do servants exhibit any animated ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... canoes, swim your horses, camp on the island," was the laconic message. Evidently, in view of the coming struggle, Multnomah wanted the loyal Cayuses close ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... chauffeur answered in the laconic way he affects sometimes, but there was an odd smile in his eyes, almost like defiance—of me, or of Fate. I didn't know which but I should ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... find out how glad he was to receive this laconic epistle from his only living relative. He cast about for a ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... reasonably enough thinks gave rise to the lock on the modern musket. The old logicians illustrate the distinction in their quaintest fashion. Bayle, explaining the difference between testimony and argument, uses this laconic simile, "Testimony is like the shot of a long-bow, which owes its efficacy to the force of the shooter; argument is like the shot of the cross-bow, equally forcible, whether discharged by a dwarf ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... the interesting complications that were being woven for him in the hot-hearted frontier community of which he was now a part; for Merrifield and Sylvane, as correspondents, were laconic, not being given to spreading themselves out on paper. His work in the Assembly and the pre-convention campaign for presidential candidates completely absorbed his energies. He was eager that a reform ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... Harbor was located the wireless telegraph station from where Commander Peary flashed to the civilized world his laconic message, "Stars and Stripes nailed to the ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... minute or two of silence, during which Bienville seemed to probe for the meaning of the two laconic words. If anything could be read from his countenance, it was doubt as to whether to relinquish the prize with dignity or to pay its price in humiliation. There was an instant in which he appeared to be bracing ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... sometimes gets so he doesn't answer questions at great length. I even know a young woman who becomes excessively laconic when interrogated ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the fellow sharply as he got into the wagon and noticed nothing in his disfavor. His laconic account of himself was borne ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... are chiefly pleased with that close mode of oratory, which in a laconic manner states the facts, and forms an immediate conclusion: in that case, it is obvious how necessary it is to be a complete master of the rules of logic. Others delight in a more open, free, and copious style, where the arguments are drawn from topics of ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... Women, in particular, had played ducks and drakes with his career. Weakly chivalrous, mindlessly gallant, he lacked the faculty of learning by experience—especially where the other sex were concerned. "Predestined to be stung!" was, his first wife's laconic comment on her ex-husband. She, for instance, was undoubtedly the blameworthy one in their marital failure, but she had managed to extract a ruinous alimony from him. Twice married and twice divorced, he was traveled through the Orient to write a series of muck raking articles ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... a suggestion of physical disdain in the tone of the laconic question, as well as in the look he fixed on the neat, middle-aged man doing his best to be cool and collected Wayne glanced over his shoulder toward the telephone on the wall. Norrie Ford understood and ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... over. Not long after this, the friend in question was likewise approached for a political contribution, whereupon he handed out $100 for himself and the same amount for Vanderbilt. On being told of his debt, Vanderbilt declined to pay it, closing the matter abruptly with this laconic pronunciamento, "When I give anything, I give it myself." At another time Vanderbilt assured a friend that he would "carry" one thousand shares of New York Central stock for him. The market price rose to $115 a share and ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... plagiarizing, rose to the surface of his mind. Such deep wells of eyes he had never looked into in all his life before, and they were as ever, filled to the brim with reverence, even awe of him. It was a heady draught he quaffed before she looked down and answered his laconic remark. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... that Pharnaces, son of Mithridates the Great, was inciting a revolt among the peoples of that region. Caesar met the Pontic king at Zela, defeated him, and in five days put an end to the war. His laconic message to the Senate, announcing his victory, is famous. It ran thus: Veni, vidi, vici,—"I ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... quarts) of flour for overlaying a chariot with copper, and in the seventeenth year of the same reign half a shekel of silver and 1 gur of wheat from the royal storehouse were paid to five men who had brought a flock of sheep to the King's administrator in the city of Ruzabu. The following laconic letter also tells the same tale: "Letter from Tabik-zeri to Gula-ibni, my brother. Give 54 qas of meal to the men who have dug the canal. The 9th of Nisan, fifth year of Cyrus, King of Eridu, King of the World." The employer had a right to the workman's labor so long as he furnished him ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... jumped up from his chair, and went forward to the new-comer. 'You are not long behind us, then,' he said, with laconic disquietude. 'I thought you were ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... this fierce reply should be rendered to him in writing for the satisfaction of his chief. "I will answer your master by the mouth of my cannon," replied the angry Frenchman, "that he may learn that a man of my rank is not to be summoned in this manner." Thus ended the laconic conference. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... J. W. H., "the connexion of the Welsh dwr with the Greek [Greek: hudor] is remarkable," he appears not to have known that Vezron found so many resemblances in the Doric or Laconic dialect, and the Celtic, that he thereupon raised the theory that the Lacedaemonians and the Celts were of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... frightened. But man, reckless animal, is so made that in him curiosity, the paltriest curiosity, will overcome all terrors, every disgust, and even despair itself. To my laconic invitation to come in for a drink he answered by a deep, gravely accented: "Thanks, I will" as though it were a response in church. His face as seen in the lamplight gave me no clue to the character of the impending communication; as indeed from the nature of things it couldn't do, its normal ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... heard no tidings of, although he was upon the eve of his departure, and he had taken leave of Cornwallis in a more particular manner than any other person. This obliged the Chevalier to write him a billet, which was rather laconic. It ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... both the Way of Thinking and the Style must be Laconic: Much must be contained in a little Compass. Brevity of Diction adds new Life to a good Thought: And since every perfect Stroke ought to be a distinct Representation of a particular Feature, Matters ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... not spread to the master and mistress of the establishment. The Kerry Sentinel quickly had an allusion to 'a report that Mr. Hussey turned into bed after the outrage with one of his laconic jokes—that he should be called when the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... where—Hampstead, Greenwich, Windsor? WHERE?????? while the day is bright, not when it has dwindled away to nothing! For who can be of any use whatsomdever such a day as this, excepting out of doors?" Or it might be interrogatory summons to "A hard trot of three hours?" or intimation as laconic "To be heard of at Eel-pie House, Twickenham!" When first I knew him, I may add, his carriage for his wife's use was a small chaise with a smaller pair of ponies, which, having a habit of making sudden rushes up by-streets in the day and peremptory standstills ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... through the sudden disagreement of the uncertain Wobbles brothers who owned the land. It was a day of failures; and at four o'clock he returned to the office and inscribed, upon the credit side of his unique little day-book, the laconic entry: ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... for P.B. is on the table," was the laconic message: on reading which I inserted my key, swung the heavy door outward, and opened the lighter inner door. The note was lying on the table and I brought it out to the landing to read by the light ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... amiable word of farewell the Prince departed. The doctor threw himself into an easy chair. His single exclamation was laconic but forcible. ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that his manner betrays anything like swagger—for he is evidently not one of the swaggering sort. Rather is his behaviour characterised by a cool, quiet effrontery—a sort of sarcastic assurance—ten times more irritating. This is displayed in the laconic style of his salutation: "Morning girls! father at home?"— in the fact of his dismounting without waiting to be invited—in sharply scolding the dog out of his way as he leads his horse to the shed; and, finally, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the hasty summons, heard the message before the clerk had time to write it out. His lips were closely compressed as he put his own hand on the key and sent these laconic sentences: "O.K. Keep perfectly dark. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... notice him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that butt of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as any Spartan. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... welcomed home very cordially by their mother. Mrs. Bennet wondered at their coming, and thought them very wrong to give so much trouble, and was sure Jane would have caught cold again. But their father, though very laconic in his expressions of pleasure, was really glad to see them; he had felt their importance in the family circle. The evening conversation, when they were all assembled, had lost much of its animation, and almost all its sense by the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... enemy. Of the thirteen officers present some were for retreating to Point Isabel, others for intrenching upon the spot, and only four for pushing ahead. The general, after hearing all opinions, settled the question by the laconic declaration, "I will be at Fort Brown before to-morrow night if I live." In the morning ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the Spartan surliness with his smooth songs and odes, the better to plant among them law end civility, it is to be wondered how useless and unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war. There needed no licensing of books among them, for they disliked all but their own laconic apothegms, and took a slight occasion to chase Archilochus out of their city, perhaps for composing in a higher strain than their own soldierly ballads and roundels could reach to. Or if it were for his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... with intense interest, his countenance gradually lighting into a smile of pleasure, and the instant Mr. Wharton concluded his laconic reply he turned on his heel and left the apartment. The Whartons, judging from his manner, thought he was about to proceed in quest of the object of his inquiries. They observed the dragoon, on gaining the lawn, in earnest and apparently pleased conversation with ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... if you had a brother, who, in a like case, were to act by you, as you do by me?—You cannot but remember what a laconic answer you gave even to my father, who recommended to you Miss Nelly D'Oily—You did not like her, were your words: and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... thought, with much probability, to have belonged to the Aesculapian temple in the Insula Tiberina. The present translation, in which some errors either of the artist or copyist are rectified, is extracted from the first volume of Gruter's Corp. Inscriptionum. The narrations are perspicuous and laconic. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... surplice at the organ on Sundays, leading the singing with his strong tenor voice, or whether he were in the workshop with the boys, he was always a centre of magic and fascination to her, his voice, sounding out in command, cheerful, laconic, had always a twang in it that sent a thrill over her blood, and hypnotized her. She seemed to run in the shadow of some dark, potent secret of which she would not, of whose existence even she dared not become ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Chantraine district," was the laconic answer; and like the gentleman who could not weep at the sermon because he belonged to another parish, this specimen of a French Dogberry would not hear reason except in ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... thoughts my cheeks began to burn even more hotly than Milly's. I had been questioning Eagle about his adventures, and he had been answering in the laconic way most brave men have when teased to talk of themselves; but for a minute, keen though I was, I lost the thread of narrative I had begun eagerly drawing out. This was when I met Milly's eyes and flung a challenge ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... about brings me up to the date of my receiving, in Waterbury, the laconic cable from Edward to the effect that he wanted me to go to Branshaw and have a chat. I was pretty busy at the time and I was half minded to send him a reply cable to the effect that I would start in a fortnight. But I was having a long interview ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... was Charm's laconic translation of this note, "means that he wishes us to be ready at eleven for the excursion to P——, to spend the day, you may remember, at that old manor. He wants to paint in a background, he said yesterday, while we stroll ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... is no Where more seen than in the dispatches of the one and the bulletins of the other. In his demeanour to his men, the Duke was reserved; in his language, curt and laconic. If his troops felt the moral certainty that he was leading them to victory, and honoured him accordingly, it was not from personal enthusiasm, such as the wild love the emperor inspired in those around ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... was as laconic as the query. "Because the trap was set for my car, going west; not for the ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... now understand why I count Martell among my friends and am at this moment, as I said before, smoking one of his cigars. It came in a box of a hundred, with the laconic note, "One for each." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... mistaken; for the captain's speech was laconic in the extreme, being "much shorter, indeed, than his nose," as my fellow mid was forced to acknowledge in ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... that Love does not speak: To-day commanding and to-morrow meek, One hour laconic and the next verbose, With hope triumphant and with doubt morose, His varying moods all forms of speech employ. To give expression ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... hour. He shared our frugal breakfast, answered Yes, and No to my uncle's questions as to the nature of the road, and at last when asked where we were to pass the night was as laconic as usual. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... thet I wants ter be selfish er onreasonable, but ..." Judd stopped. Words of passionate love trembled on his lips, but were held there by a barrier of inherited reticence in matters of the heart. Iron reserve and laconic speech were essentially typical of his breed; but, at length, the eager utterances strained against the fetter of ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... say that you'll take me to Sweden. I wouldn't go to the hateful country. It's a hideous language, anyway, isn't it, Archie? It is a nasty, laconic, ugly tongue. You heard me say Tig to her just now. Tig means 'be silent.' Could anything sound more ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... so suddenly while I was strapped by etiquette in my chair, with my face to the window, and two pair of most disconcerting eyes, at least, opposite. I was angry with myself—generally angry—refused more tea rather dryly, and was laconic to Lord Ilbury, all which, of course, was very cross and foolish; and afterwards, from my bed-room window, I saw Cousin Monica and Lady Mary among the flowers, under the drawing-room window, talking, as I instinctively ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... to which it related. All was in order, but in alarming order for him, because each note only referred to the very essence of the business it alluded to, and related only to the exact point of its then relations with France. These laconic notes proved as enigmatic to Louis, as did the letters in cipher which covered the table. Here all was confusion. An edict of banishment and expropriation of the Huguenots of La Rochelle was mingled with treaties with Gustavus Adolphus ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... not over, the majority of the audience had begun to stream out. Two men who loitered in the gangway in front of Stonehouse exchanged laconic comments. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... captured... and Hindenburg's still counting..."). And all you could find in the papers was the General Staff report that "at one place the fighting has been very severe; up to the present we have made some twenty-six thousand prisoners," etc., and even this laconic sentence lost in the middle of the regular communique beginning: "Yesterday on the Belgian coast, after a ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... have it, what do you make on't? The seer is ancient, the style laconic, the sentences dark like those of Scotus, though they treat of matters dark enough in themselves. The best commentators on that good father take the jubilee after the thirtieth to be the years that are included in this present age till ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of my residence at Sydney I find as the result of one day's experience, the following laconic and somewhat enigmatical memorandum: "Is this grass?" The question implies a doubt, which it would not be easy for any person unacquainted with the circumstances of time and place, to solve: but the reader, when he has seen the explanation, will understand ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... thoughts; "here's somebody who will clear it up." And I pointed to a cottage-door at which I suddenly espied the old woman whose handling of the roller-towel had so impressed me. "Where," I shouted, addressing her, "where is the wounded man?" "Took away," was the laconic reply. "Took away!" I said; "and who has had the ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... loosened, their soft pink shirts unbuttoned at the collar. They were listening with gloomy voracity to the instruction of a third. They sat at a table bared of its customary sporting ornaments, and from time to time they questioned, sucked their pencils, and scrawled vigorous, laconic notes. Their necks and faces shone with the bloom of out-of-doors. Studious concentration was evidently a painful novelty to their features. Drops of perspiration came one by one from their matted hair, and their hands dampened ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... san come," was the laconic reply. "Ingiris' danna san live in Japan, Japanese girl very nice. Ingiris' danna san go away, no want Japanese girl. Japanese girl no want go away Japan. Japanese girl go to other country, she feel very sick; heart ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... were both silent. And now, tired of finding the ill- success of each particular enquiry, she thought a more general one might obtain an answer less laconic, and therefore begged she would inform her what was the most fashionable place of diversion for ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... scrutiny and revision. The modern or metaphysical system of criticism, in short, supposes the question, Why? to be repeated at the end of every decision; and the answer gives birth to interminable arguments and discussion. The former laconic mode was well adapted to guide those who merely wanted to be informed of the character and subject of a work in order to read it: the present is more useful to those whose object is less to read the work than to dispute upon its ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... courts, camps of the rich and great, The vast Xerxean army, I retreat, And to the small Laconic forces fly Which hold the straits of poverty. Cellars and granaries in vain we fill With all the bounteous summer's store: If the mind thirst and hunger still, The poor rich man's emphatically poor. Slaves to the things we too much prize, We masters ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... her rebellious lips to the laconic assent. She drooped the lids over her rebellious eyes, lest he should detect her wounded feelings ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... birth, and consequently his true home. At a particular season of the year, corresponding to the summer of our own country, he makes a roving expedition to the lower regions; and for what purpose? This was the very question which Alexis put to the tigrero. The answer was as curious as laconic: ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... sunshine, seemed to greet and cheer him. These two laconic but expressive words, sans souci, smoothed the lines which the crown and its duties had laid upon his brow, and made his heart, which was so cold and weary, beat with the hopes ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... his imagination. Miss Cooper says that her father followed Indian delegations from town to town, observing them carefully, conversing with them freely, and was impressed "with the vein of poetry and of laconic eloquence marking their ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... I have ever encountered from a reviewer was the laconic and cynical remark (commenting upon my rather altruistic belief in the duty of giving one's best thought to the conversational circle), that "Nowadays, people don't talk: if they have any good ideas, they save them and write them out and sell them." The critic implied that, ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... health. I saw my young cousin before I set out—she is more charming than ever. I am sure by the time you return she will be the finest woman in England." Lord Nelville said nothing—and Mr Edgermond was also silent. Some other words passed between them, very laconic, though extremely friendly, and Mr Edgermond was going, when suddenly turning back, he said, "Apropos, my lord, you can do me a kindness—they tell me you are acquainted with the celebrated Corinne: I don't much like forming new acquaintances, but I am ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... words and produced a French opera, "Le Devin du Village." Diderot was also a warm partisan of the Italians. Pergolesi's beautiful music having been murdered by the French orchestra players at the Grand Opera-House, Diderot proposed for it the following witty and laconic inscription: ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... always exempt; though to say the truth, he had nothing of it in his manner. He moved about taciturn and reserved as usual, among the gaping crowd in his gingerbread-colored travelling cap, with his hands in his pockets. He gave laconic orders to John as he packed away the thousand and one indispensable conveniencies of the night, double loaded his pistols with great sang-froid, and deposited them in the pockets of the carriage, taking no notice of a pair of keen eyes gazing on him from among the herd ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... curiosities of Moscow he kept it a profound secret. It was only by the most rigid inquiry and an adroit system of cross-examination that I could get any thing out of him, and then his information was vague and laconic, sometimes a little sarcastic, but never beyond what I knew myself. Yet he was polite, dignified, and gentlemanly—never refused to drink a glass of beer with me, and always knew the way to a traktir. To the public functionaries with whom we came ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... it was now a question of a satisfactory table. But here he knew he was strong. Mother Boswell's cooking—there was none better obtainable. He was already in a hurry to prove to this laconic stranger who demanded the best he had of everything, including breezes, that in the matter of food Boswell's Inn could satisfy the most exacting. Not in elaborately dressed viands of rare kitchen product, of course—that ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... day after) "that the sum intended for the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada, should be given to the Wesleyan Methodists, who are now, and who may be hereafter, connected with the British Wesleyan Conference." I believe Lord Sydenham's laconic reply was, that he had to do with religious bodies ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... The capture of the fortress was due primarily to the immensity of the Russian artillery, which maintained a violent, continuous fire, smashing the successive rows of wire entanglements, breastworks, and trenches. The town was surrounded with nineteen rows of entanglements. The laconic order to attack was given at dawn on June 7, 1916. Up to noon the issue hung in the balance, but at 1 o'clock the Russians made a breach in the enemy's position near the village of Podgauzy. They repulsed a fierce Austrian counterattack and captured ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... to offer his father eight thousand pounds of Charlotte's fortune, if he would give them one thousand a-year in present, and settle a jointure on her. The Earl returned this truly laconic, for being so unnatural, an answer. "Lord Huntingtower, I answer your letter as soon as I receive it; I wish you joy; I hear your wife is very accomplished. Yours, Dysart." I believe my Lady Huntingtower must contrive ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... little remorse as he would have driven the point of his lance through a laced doublet. Sir Piercie Shafton, a man of rank and high birth, by no means encouraged or endured this familiarity, and requited the intruder either with total neglect, or such laconic replies as intimated a sovereign contempt for the rude spearman, who affected to converse with him ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... through this list again, only naming each letter himself, and receiving laconic answers from Grimm—answers which seemed to be numbers, but I could not be sure. For minutes together I caught nothing but the scratching of pens and inarticulate mutterings. But out of the muck-heap I picked five pearls—four sibilant nouns and a ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... entered the farm-house to visit him. To start the conversation, Lady Heloise asked him who he was and what was the matter with the child; also what crime he had committed and where they were taking him with such an escort. Kohlhaas doffed his leather cap to her and, continuing his occupation, made laconic but satisfactory answers to all these questions. The Elector, who was standing behind the hunting-pages, remarked a little leaden locket hanging on a silk string around the horse-dealer's neck, and, since no better topic of conversation offered itself, he asked him what it signified and what was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Men of laconic speech say much by tone and gesture, and often by silence. In Ike's tone Shock read contempt, ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... go back into his stall," was Byrne's laconic rejoinder, as he pushed his mount forward to pass ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... inquired my way to Cambridge there; but I was sceptical of the direction the Cambridge horse-car took when I found it, and I hinted to the driver my anxieties as to why he should be starting east when I had been told that Cambridge was west of Boston. He reassured me in the laconic and sarcastic manner of his kind, and we really reached Cambridge by the route ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... joined, and we were soon the centre of a crowd. We imagined in time of war even a stray automobile must prove of account. We all laughed to find ourselves of such importance. Then up came a charming boy officer, who asked the chauffeur if he spoke German. "Ja wohl," was the laconic reply. "Are you ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... and while yet in his travelling dress, did the amiable kind man hasten up to me. He now knew me, and he came to me with cordiality. I was just then standing and packing my clothes in a trunk for a journey to the country; I had only a few minutes time: by this means my reception of him was just as laconic as had been ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... liberation of Trento by more than half a century, and greatly modified the problems of Italian policy in recent years. The story is well known of the recall of Garibaldi, which reached him at the moment of victory at Bezzecca, and of his famous reply, a model of laconic self-discipline, in the one word "Ubbidisco"—"I obey." The little town of Bezzecca lay this July behind the Italian lines, but in full view and easy range of the Austrians. A company of Arditi was billeted here, with whom I lunched one day, returning ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... be March. "The portfolio of war was withdrawn from him, by a very laconic letter from the king, March 10, 1792; he had held it three months and three days." (Nouvelle Biographie Gnrale: ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... could not pretend that he had been the cause of what old-fashioned people would call her "fall." He had gone so far as to belie his own convictions, to neglect his mission, and was even prepared to contemplate marriage. Yet he received a laconic note instead of a friendly letter, a go-between instead of herself. It was as if he had been struck with a knife, and a cold shiver ran through his body. It was not the old lady who had invented these measures, for Vera ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Sim Relander feelingly, as if that laconic reply had been the only thing necessary to establish ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the influence of his injurer's glance and presence, would acknowledge whatever misdeed, debt, and even crime was attributed to him, responding to the demand if what his accuser said was true, with the invariable and laconic words: "What he says ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... Rubens is crimsoned, the massacres, the executioners torturing, martyring, and making their victims howl, we recognize that here we have a noble execution. Everything in it is restrained, concise, and laconic, as in a ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... twice or thrice, pausing between whiles. The envelope bore the London postmark. Then he took out his cigar case, selected a promising weed, and wrapping the laconic note prettily round one of his scented matches, lighted it, and the note flamed pale in the daylight, and dropped still blazing, at the root of the old tree he stood by, and sent up a little curl of blue smoke—an incense to the demon of the wood—and turned in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... henceforth reckon him among his friends—"Yours very sincerely, H. Bullinger." This literary effort he carefully dispatched by a Guinea-pig to its destination, and awaited a reply with the utmost impatience. The reply was laconic, but highly satisfactory. It was a verbal one, given by Oliver himself in class that afternoon, who volunteered the information to the delighted Bullinger that it was a ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... heaving, swearing, laughing mass of more or less dilapidated humanity interested in the retail sale of newspapers. At six o'clock Ephraim Bander, a retired constable, now on the staff of the Beacon, had taken his station at the door, in order to greet would-be purchasers with the laconic ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... this instance is not isolated, As a survey of our statesmen shows; WINSTON now suggests a long post-dated DAN O'CONNELL in his mouth and nose; NORTHCLIFFE's growing more Napoleonic Than the Corsican, though less laconic. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... commented Dixon with laconic directness. "It seems just no use workin' over a good horse when any mut of a crook who is takin' a turn at plungin' can get at the boy. I believe Boston Bill's game of gettin' a straight boy to play, an' lettin' the horses go hang, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... have been inspired with the ambition of a moralist, and distributed Hermae, or stone busts of Mercury, about the city and the public roads, which, while answering a similar purpose to our mile-stones, arrested the eye of the passenger with pithy and laconic apothegms in verse; such as, "Do not deceive your friend," and "Persevere in affection to justice;"—proofs rather of the simplicity than the wisdom of the prince. It is not by writing the decalogue ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the valley of the Mississippi, give us, then, a man who is called a "sawed-off" by those who love him—a very thick, very short, very tobaccofied, strong man in cavalry pants, with a jacket of the heaviest chinchilla—a restless, oathful, laconic, thirsty, never-drunk "editor." It is a man after the sailor's own heart. It is a man, too, well known to the gamblers, and they all vote ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... village had ever known? Thus, a few days after the widow's departure, the stocks was again the object of midnight desecration: it was bedaubed and bescratched, it was hacked and hewed, it was scrawled over with pithy lamentations for Lenny, and laconic execrations on tyrants. Night after night new inscriptions appeared, testifying the sarcastic wit and the vindictive sentiment of the parish. And perhaps the stocks was only spared from axe and bonfire by the convenience it afforded to the malice of the disaffected: it ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Paul never knew where they were except when a telegram announced that they were going somewhere else. He did not even know that there was any method of communication between mothers and sons less laconic than that of the electric wire; and once, when a boy at school asked him if his mother often wrote, he had answered in all sincerity: "Oh yes—I got a telegram ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... captain had to silence him. Then the captain praised the company. (He also sent a message to us at Retreat, where the lieutenant commanded—we had done well; he would try to keep us out of brooks hereafter. I like these laconic statements; they mean much.) Then I company, with full cartridge belts, took up the advance-guard work along the road, and we saw them rummage out of a barn some cavalrymen who had hidden there. But soon, the day's manoeuvre over, we began the hike to camp. I wish you ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... books in the eyes of Amru, and made him scrupulous of giving them away without permission of the Caliph. He forthwith wrote to Omar, stating the merits of John, and requesting to know whether the books might be given to him. The reply of Omar was laconic, but fatal. "The contents of those books," said he, "are in conformity with the Koran, or they are not. If they are, the Koran is sufficient without them; if they are not, they are pernicious. Let them, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Susan's laconic "The spring's dry," was not necessary. He fell forward on the seat with a moan, his head propped in his hands, his fingers buried in his hair. Courant sent a look of furious contempt over his abject figure, then gave a laugh that fell on the silence bitter as a curse. Daddy ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... guessed and expressed his badly expressed idea. Levin smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition from the confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this laconic, clear, almost wordless communication of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... General S.D. Lee was in the Department of Mississippi, showing that the hands of that officer were more than full. [Footnote: The letter, however, did not reach Johnston till after he had been relieved of command.] On the 10th Johnston had forwarded a laconic dispatch, saying, "On the night of the 8th the enemy crossed at Isham's Cavalry Ford; intrenched. In consequence we crossed at and below the railroad, and are now about two miles from the river, guarding the crossings." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... them in the role which to my mind they never before occupied—that of organizers. I started the trip to see the real French Army in the most open but unexpectant frame of mind. For weeks I had read only laconic official communiques that told me nothing. I saw well-fed officers in beautiful limousines rolling about Paris with an air that the war was a million miles away. The best way now to explain my enthusiasm is to give the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... impersonal, dry, easy, cool, laconic, and yet it could not have been more pregnant with meaning. Jean's sharp sensibilities absorbed much. None of the slouch-sombreroed, long-mustached Texans—for so Jean at once classed them—had ever seen Jean, but they knew him and knew ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... dialect of those Indians common in Guinana is soft, agreeable, and regular, and their substantives are Hebrew. "Their language, in the roots, idioms, and particular construction, has the genius of the Hebrew language, as their orations have the bold, laconic, and figurative style ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... gladly know—albeit Pigafetta's journal and the still more laconic pilot's logbook leave us in the dark on this point—how the ignorant and suffering crews interpreted this everlasting stretch of sea, vaster, said Maximilian Transylvanus, "than the human mind could conceive." To them it may well have seemed that the ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... "The epistle is laconic," said D'Artagnan; "and if there had not been a postscript, probably I should not have understood it; but happily there ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not a proof of their confidence in him? Moreover, on Garibaldi's return to Rome, Mazzini made a last effort to induce him to unburden his mind, at least to himself, by asking him in writing to tell him frankly what were his wishes. Here is the laconic answer, characteristic of the writer; frank and unabashed as the round, clear handwriting of the original, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... room of the office, William laid down the money he had collected with the laconic statement, "It's kinder ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... to be seen, and how best seen in the shortest time, in every place to which he may be successively conducted. This novelty in the work will prove very frequently of great utility, especially to those visitors who have too little time for their trip, and who, for want of such a laconic memento wherever they go, are known in a thousand instances to pass by the most interesting objects unnoticed,—not being aware even ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... the morning before they reached the bank. The gold was taken out and deposited in the vaults, and the three went up to the Hall. They brought out brandy and refreshed themselves, after which John remarked, in his usual laconic style, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... passed the porter, Lady Chatterton observed to him significantly—"Nobody at home, Willis."—"Yes, my lady," was the laconic reply, and Lord Herriefield, as he took his seat by the side of his wife in the carriage, thought she was ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
Copyright © 2025 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
