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More "Nonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... education raised their still familiar outcry about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a scheme, if properly carried out, ought ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... has sent his son to the Mediterranean; taking him from the Narcissus, where I had been at so much pains to place him. I know not where to find a frigate to place him. He never will be so well and properly situated again. I am more plagued with other people's business, or rather nonsense, than ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... phrase and yet but a modern variant of Domitian's: "Your god and master orders it." Incidentally, in addition to the Garter, an honorific which the Duke of Cambridge admirably summarised as "having, sir, none of the damned nonsense of merit about it," he had other distinctions. He had—and has—uranomania, that is to say, a flight of fancy in which the patient believes himself associated with God. He had also defilirium tremens, which manifested itself ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... a shrewd Intimation, in cunningly diverting, or cleverly retorting an Objection: Sometimes it is couched in a bold Scheme of Speech, in a tart Irony, in a lusty Hyperbole, in a startling Metaphor, in a plausible Reconciling of Contradictions, or in acute Nonsense; Sometimes a scenical Representation of Persons or Things, a counterfeit Speech, a mimical Look or Gesture passeth for it. Sometimes an affected Simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous Bluntness giveth it Being. Sometimes it riseth from a lucky Hitting upon what is ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... an answering ray. Their eyes are like glow-worms, and their motions graceful and flowing, as if a place were already found for them, like rivers flowing through valleys. The distinctions of morality, of right and wrong, sense and nonsense, are petty, and have lost their significance, beside these pure primeval natures. When I consider the clouds stretched in stupendous masses across the sky, frowning with darkness or glowing with ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... are you ashamed of me?" She lifted her head again, before he could answer, and controlled herself by a sudden effort of resolution. "I don't know what's the matter with me this morning," she said, looking at him with a pleading fear in her eyes. "Never mind my nonsense—I'll do the copy!" She began to write the unendurable assertion that change is a law of Nature, with trembling fingers and fast heaving breath. Amelius took the pen gently out of her hand. His voice faltered as he ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... sisters to call the new member at first by his Christian name. Much will depend on his age and his disposition. There are some people whom one can never address otherwise than formally, while with others it seems perfect nonsense to call them otherwise than by the most ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... do not act thus. When they are passing through the Louvre or British Museum they never pause and overlook artists, despite the notices requesting them not to do so. Of course not. Yet I once knew a charming young American lady, who scouted the idea as nonsense that she should not watch artists at work. "Why, we used to make up parties for the purpose of looking at them!" she said. "It was half the fun of going there. I'm sure the artists were delighted to get a chance to talk to us." Doubtless. And yet there are really very few artists who ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... "Nonsense! The doll isn't lost. I saw it a minute ago. Come, Millicent; I'll go with you and Anne for a little walk toward King's Chapel," and Rose held out a hand to each of ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... "Stuff an' nonsense! Sorry, sir, but I admire Doris Martin. I like to see a girl like her liftin' herself out of the common gang. She's the smartest young lady in the village, an' not an atom of a snob. No, no. She isn't for Fred Elkin. Before this murder cropped up everybody would have it that ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... place, with the lack of sympathy that one sometimes remarks in unimaginative minds, she did not in the least understand the terror with which it inspired the child, but assured her, in her good-humoured way, that that was all nonsense, and the she would get over it in time. So the skull remained, and Madelon was miserable, till one night, in a moment of desperation, she jumped out of bed, seized it with both hands, and flung it with all her might through the window into the garden below. She was frightened when she heard the ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... "Boy and girl nonsense," said Mr. Barrett, sharply. "Why, it's fifteen years ago. I don't suppose I should know her if I saw her. ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... of the bed and stand listening, with blanched cheeks, to the delirious ravings of his wife. "She doesn't know what she is saying, remember; and she will be better to-morrow, doubtless. Don't distress yourself more, by listening to all this nonsense." ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... week—Margaret's were around twelve dollars. For one thing, there was a holiday. No wonder employers groan over holidays! The workers begin to slacken up about two days ahead and it takes two days after the day off to recover. Then, too, we indulged in too much nonsense that last week. We laughed more than we worked, and paid for it. The next week Mamie and Margaret claimed they were going to bring their dinners the whole week to work that noon hour and make up for our evil days. ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... half-way to his mouth. Here was a direct attack on his dignity, and he was not disposed to put up with it. "I never talk nonsense," he answered sharply. ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... "I'm determined to stand no nonsense this morning. Get out your copy books." Five minutes later would begin: "Oh, Miss Jones, I can't write with this pencil. May I find a better one?" Granted permission, Mary's head and large spectacles would disappear inside the schoolroom cupboard. Soon Jeremy would say ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... because they wish to please me in that way also. Well, but they remind me of my hour of death. But be that as it may, I want to live a while longer. Only, little sir, don't repeat these remarks of mine; respect the ecclesiastical profession—only fools do not respect it; and I am to blame for talking nonsense in ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... was arrant nonsense for Hamilton to act like this. Admitting the man believed in himself,—and Covington believed that much,—he was, after all, Teddy Hamilton. The fact remained, even as he himself admitted, that he was not fit to be in the same room with her. It was not possible for a man in a month to ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... What nonsense! Where could we go, that he would not follow us? No; such folly is not to be thought of. What we ought to do is to take a firm stand and defend ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... power is exclusively vested in the President and Senate, and not in this House. Need I say that we fly in the face of that resolution when we pretend that the acts of that power are not valid until we have concurred in them? It would be nonsense, or worse, to use the language of the most glaring contradiction, and to claim a share in a power which we at the same time disdain as exclusively vested in ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... was that?"—a sudden thud, as if something had fallen somewhere in the house; then silence, except for the loud beating of my heart, that threatened to suffocate me. "Nonsense," I said to myself, "I am foolishly nervous to-night. It is nothing here, or Bogie would bark;" so I tried again to sleep. Hush! Surely that was a footstep going up or down the stairs! I could not endure the agony of being alone any longer, but would go to my sister's room, just across the ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... that crazy fool? Love a thing that brought on the war? Love a creature with the brains of a mouse? Nonsense. I don't believe the Lord ever meant us ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... Chinese writings, translated by the missionaries, have undergone so great a change in their European dress, that they ought rather to be looked upon as originals than translations. It is true, a literal translation would be nonsense, but there is a great difference between giving the meaning of an author, and writing a commentary upon him. Sir William Jones observes that the only method of doing justice to the poetical compositions ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk. It is no matter whether one talks wisdom or nonsense, the case is the same, the bulk of the enjoyment lies in the wagging of the gladsome jaw and the flapping of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the runner on the mark, or like the burden-bearer lifting a great weight, and Byrne gathered, in some mysterious manner, the impression that Barry sent through his hands and into the body of Cumberland a continual stream of nervous strength—an electric thing. Nonsense, of course. And it was nonsense, also, to think that the huge dog which lay staring up into the face of the master understood all this affair much better than the practiced mind of the physician. Yet the illusion held with Randall Byrne in spite of ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... reason that his offence came on for trial in the Personal Bereavement Court. The lad, who was undefended, pleaded that he was young, inexperienced, greatly in awe of his guardian, and without independent professional advice. "Young man," said the judge sternly, "do not talk nonsense. People have no right to be young, inexperienced, greatly in awe of their guardians, and without independent professional advice. If by such indiscretions they outrage the moral sense of their friends, they must expect to suffer accordingly." He then ordered the prisoner to apologise to his ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... guns," Dickens, Carlyle, and the rest; and when I ventured to try my prentice pen, it was Forster who took personal charge of the venture. It was long remembered at the Household Words office how he stalked in one morning, stick in hand, and, flinging down the paper, called out, "Now, mind, no nonsense about it, no humbug, no returning it with a polite circular, and all that; see that it is read and duly considered." That was the turning-point. To that blunt declaration I owe some forty years of enjoyment and employment—for there is no enjoyment ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... on such a day as this?" exclaimed Ingram. "Nonsense! Get an open trap of some sort; and Sheila, just to please me, will put on that very blue dress she used to wear in Borva, and the hat and the white feather, if she has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... her lap—"he tried to mix Rindy up in it. It was crazy, awful! He'd brought her some sort of nonhuman toy from one of the lowland towns, Charin I think. It was a weird thing, scared me. But he'd sit Rindy down in the sunlight and have her look into it, and Rindy would gabble all sorts of nonsense about little men ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... have here set you the example of writing nonsense when one has nothing to say, and shall take it ill if you don't keep up the correspondence ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... happen. Petersen Sahib is a madman. Else why should he go hunting these wild devils? He may even require thee to be an elephant catcher, to sleep anywhere in these fever-filled jungles, and at last to be trampled to death in the Keddah. It is well that this nonsense ends safely. Next week the catching is over, and we of the plains are sent back to our stations. Then we will march on smooth roads, and forget all this hunting. But, son, I am angry that thou shouldst meddle in the business that belongs to these dirty Assamese ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... An angel! Nonsense! Everybody so describes his mistress; and yet I find it impossible to tell you how perfect she is, or why she is so perfect: suffice it to say she ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... Mr. Gibbs if he shared the contempt that some people expressed for bullets. He and Mr. Gleeson both said, "Anyone who talks of contempt for bullets is talking nonsense. Bullets mean death at every corner of the street, and death overhead and flying limbs and unspeakable sights." All these men went back. All of them behaved quietly and like gentlemen, but one man asked a friend of his over and ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... accomplished by an ode from the Persian, an apologue from the Sanskrit, or a song from some unheard-of dialect of Hinduee, of which amateur favors the public with a free translation, without understanding the original, as you will immediately be convinced, if you peruse that repository of nonsense, the 'Asiatic Miscellany.'" He makes one exception, however, in favor of Wilkins. "Ihave never yet seen any book," he writes, "which can be depended on for information concerning the real opinions of the Hindus, except Wilkins's 'Bhagvat Geeta.' ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... "Oh, that's nonsense." He spoke authoritatively. "You could have done nothing else, and I think myself you showed any amount of pluck in carrying out the girl's request. You and I, who have been in India, know what strange and terrible ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... king! Ruling over the earth, thou art the foremost of sovereigns! The Munis praise thee, and besides thee there is none so versed in religious lore'! To him the Rishi Gautama, of great ascetic merit, then indignantly replied saying, 'Atri, do not repeat this nonsense. (It seems) thou art not in thy proper senses. In this world of ours, Mahendra the lord of all created beings (alone) is the foremost of all sovereigns!' Then, O, great prince, Atri said to Gautama, 'As Indra, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Hiven! how they cried, an' the ould she-god grinnin' above thim all so scornful! The dhrink was dyin' out in me fast, an' I was thinkin' harder than the thoughts wud go through my head—thinkin' how to get out, an' all manner of nonsense as well. The women were rockin' in rows, their di'mond belts clickin', an' the tears runnin' out betune their hands, an' the lights were goin' lower an' dharker. Thin there was a blaze like lightnin' from the roof, an' that showed me the inside av the palanquin, an' at the end where ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... chaff. I could hardly breathe under its weight, and certainly had no words for an answer. People wondered what Mr. T. B. would do now with his worrying nephew and, I dare say, hoped kindly that he would make short work of my nonsense. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... to give me a drubbing. The party's going to be defeated in November—there's no ducking that. We'll let Thatcher get the odium of that defeat. About the next time we'll go in and win and there won't be any more Thatcher nonsense. This is politics, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Such ribald nonsense, however, was unfair to a navy which had done magnificently well until smothered and suppressed by sheer weight of numbers. It was in January, 1815, that Captain Decatur finally sailed out of New York harbor in the hope of taking the President ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... X. asserts that his name has always been spelt in such and such a way, he is talking nonsense. If his great-grandfather's will is accessible, he will probably find two or three variants in that alone. The great Duke of Wellington, as a younger man, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... on and on—as long as the moon was a-shinin' on a college campus. It was a mixture of happy nonsense and that questioning with which modern youth has begun to trouble its elders. As a marching tune, the song was a trifle swift for the grades of a mountain canyon; Warner could stop and shout to the canyon-walls, and listen to their answer, and then march on again. He had youth in his heart, and ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... Balfour, Sheriff Bell himself (who, by the way, is the most voluminous writer of all, his poems, in the list before us, including "The Bachelor's Complaint," "Song to Leila," "Lines about Love, and such like nonsense," "Edinburgh Revisited," and "To a Favourite Actress"), Thomas Bryson, Gertrude, Captain Charles Gray, Mrs. E. Hamilton, Mrs. Hemans, W. M. Hetherington, Alexander Maclagan, John Malcolm, Percy Bysshe ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... were about as transparent. Some might imagine them deep. They puzzled and nonplussed you, and you slunk away. Now I, while rating them at their worth, was able from previous associations to talk a little congenial nonsense, and pass on. They amused me, too. You know I have a sort of laughing philosophy, and everything and everybody amuses me. The fellows would call these creatures angels, and they would flap their little butterfly wings as if they thought they ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... more unhappy, or more disgusted with myself in all my life. I feel as if I never could be happy again. A sailor's life mixes him up with the worst part of the female sex, and we do not know the real value of the better. I little thought when I was talking nonsense to that poor girl, that I was breaking one of the kindest hearts in the world, and sacrificing the happiness of one who would lay down her existence for me, Peter. Since you have been gone, it's twenty times that I've looked in the glass just to see whether I don't look like a villain. But, by ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Succession so far, as (upon that Score), to undo all Mankind. He thinks no Prince fit to govern, whose Principle it must be to ruin the Constitution, as soon as he can acquire unjust Power to do so. He judges it Nonsense for one to be the Head of a Church, or Defender of a Faith, who thinks himself bound in Duty to overthrow it. He never endeavours to justify his taking the Oaths to this Government, or to quiet his ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... like all your poetry—merely meretricious glitter; there is no heart in it. That a man should like to have a nice mistress, a girl he is really fond of, is simple enough, but lamentation over the limbo of unborn loveliness is, to my mind, sheer nonsense." ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... of the poisonous brood who had made this young man believe such villainous nonsense was a foreign woman named Emma Goldman, who for twenty or thirty years went up and down the land, trying to overthrow the law and government, yet always calling for the protection of both when she was in danger. The American Government tolerated ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... affair, was very great. Much greater, surely, than this Editor would have thought of taking; though, on reflection, he does not presume to blame. The world is dreadfully scant of worshipable objects: and if your Theatre is your own, to sweep away intrusive nonsense continually from the gates of it? Friedrich's Opera costs him heavy sums (surely I once knew approximately what, but the sibylline leaf is gone again upon the winds!)—and he admits gratis a select public, and that only. [Preuss, i. 277; and Preuss, Buch fur ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... me downstairs," observed the lady. "But this provoking nonsense of yours, this crying about going a journey, has made you not fit to be seen. If any friend of my lord's saw your red eyes, he would go and say that my own maid was on my lord's side. ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... he said, "that such things could be done. It is nonsense, of course, but such magnificent nonsense! It is the kind of situation, Miss Ffrench, where any man is justified in interfering. I beg you will leave the affair in my hands and think no more of ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... a professional dancer," said Lewis, "I'd say 'nonsense' to that. But you're not. I'm afraid it would take you weeks, perhaps months, to get the stamina. Take it easy now while ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... TYND. Nonsense; you'll be made a fool of; he'll be prating stuff, to you, neither the feet nor the head of which will ever be visible. The dress only [9] is wanting; in seeing this man, you behold ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... invalid. She had something else to do. She made efforts to listen with interest to the dilatory gossip of Suzanne, who spoke of her home, and of the trivialities of her monotonous life. This relieved Therese of her own thoughts. Sometimes she caught herself paying attention to nonsense that brought a ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... other men's orders. Childish spiteful desires surged into his mind. If the bugler would only die. He could picture him, a little man with a broad face and putty- colored cheeks, a small rusty mustache and bow-legs lying like a calf on a marble slab in a butcher's shop on top of his blankets. What nonsense! There were other buglers. He wondered how many buglers there were in the army. He could picture them all, in dirty little villages, in stone barracks, in towns, in great camps that served the country for miles with rows of black warehouses and narrow barrack buildings ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... "What nonsense!" with a touch of her old impatience. "You are as bad as mamma; she is always finding fault with me. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones at their neighbors. You do not ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... continued. Barnet knew from his tone that the surgeon was going to begin his characteristic nonsense, and did not encourage him. 'I've had a dream,' repeated Charlson, who required no encouragement. 'I dreamed that a gentleman, who has been very kind to me, married a haughty lady in haste, before he had quite forgotten a nice little girl he knew ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... sitting near Society ladies, did slightly intimidate their neighbors; but Baron von Kelweingstein, let loose in his vice, was beaming; he cracked unsavory jokes, and with his crown of red hair, seemed to be on fire. He paid gallant compliments in his defective French of the Rhine, and his lewd nonsense, smacking of taverns, expectorated through the hole between his two broken teeth, reached the girls in the middle of a ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... My mistress is surely in the great room, and if you care for her as much as you pretend, you will see that she is not lonely, and don't talk nonsense, either." ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "Fir-trees? What nonsense! We are not in a wood. Come with me now to see what you have done." When Heidi saw the devastation that she had caused, she was greatly surprised, for she had not noticed it in ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... concerned in, memory or reason or imagination, still less to any of the emotions, such as anger, joy, jealousy or fear; so all those systems which pretend to tell anything about our mental powers and our dispositions by feeling the shapes of our heads, or the bumps on them, are pure nonsense. ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... thou art cursed. My view of a presiding demon or divinity runs not in such direction. Gods and goddesses roam not to and fro blasting spirits of mortals in such manner. It is an idea born of older times, and doubtless will survive down the ages until men grow wiser; then such nonsense will be looked upon with ridicule, and become a thing of ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... "That is nonsense. Everybody seems to know but myself. I am no child. I came to consult you—my spiritual adviser—in regard to this very case. Accidentally I overheard enough to ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... expressed it, "To keep up her drooping spirits." Christine had never entirely overcome her natural shyness, and being the centre of attraction on this occasion greatly embarrassed her, and she was glad of Patty's gay nonsense to ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... I wonder? Plenty of fellows have to spend half the year apart from their wives: the only thing in your case I couldn't understand was the necessity for your doing it. For you know that's all nonsense about ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... Joram has got other fish to fry before this time. It's a marvel to me, Bagwax, that they should give way to all this nonsense. If anything could be done, it could be done in half the time,—and if anything could be done, it could be done here. By the time you're back from Sydney, Caldigate's time will be half out. Why don't you let ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... truth for which he was quite unprepared: he would have been quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched; hard, bandy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that she made a goddess and an only child of the effete and tearful lady; and even as she waited at table her hands would sometimes itch for ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... good of going on with such lies?" said the artilleryman. "There's men who'd do it cheerful. What nonsense ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... of whom you are jealous? Is it possible? That nonsense? I did not talk about anything with her, and that was the funny part of it. Did I not talk just as long with Antonio, whom a short time ago I used to see almost ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... folly, imbecility, miscalculation, senselessness, error, foolishness, imprudence, misjudgment, silliness, fatuity, idiocy, indiscretion, nonsense, stupidity. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... first few minutes after their hostess left them she only noticed that her new acquaintance looked and spoke like a gentleman, that he had a very pleasant voice, and that, without being pedantic, he was not talking nonsense. Imagine the sensation which took place in her head when, at some bright speech from her antagonist—for they had immediately fallen into an argument—she raised her laughing eyes to his face, and saw—one of the youths who had fallen under her righteous indignation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... and is himself so miserable, so m—i—serable! He will think, think, then talk, then he will go and make a declaration of love, and after that he thinks, and thinks again, till he marries. . . . And when he is married, he talks all sorts of nonsense to his wife, and ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... no answer to his suggestion, and finding that we were disposed to be serious, and not likely to stand any more of his nonsense, he requested permission to occupy the same place where he had secreted himself when the bushranger buried his gold; and while one of us walked over the clearing he thought he could tell when we reached the exact ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... myself and scowled at him and told him I was no fool and taunted him with my importance to his schemes and said I was not born yesterday, and that if Paris was to be divided I knew what part I wanted and meant to stand no nonsense ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... But father said (and mother agreed with him, because mothers have to agree with fathers, and not because it was her own idea) that children who coated a carpet on both sides with thick mud, and when they were asked for an explanation could only talk silly nonsense—that meant Jane's truthful statement—were not fit to have a carpet at all, and, indeed, SHOULDN'T have one ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... "Care for her? Nonsense, Bessie! Do you want me to call her a mere doll, a hard, waxen—no, for wax will melt—a Parian creature, such as you may see by the dozens in Schwartz's window any day? It doesn't gratify you, surely, to hear me say ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... a national rebellion against a trumpery duty on tea, but English writers and English public men seem quite unable to explain the national outcry against Wood's patent, except on the theory that a clever writer, pouring forth captivating nonsense, bewitched the Irish Parliament and the Irish people, and sent them out of their ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... even a connoisseur, who had an exquisite picture by all old master, with only one trifling blemish on it, would hardly trust himself or another to repair and retouch, in order to render it perfect. Can any one recognise in this elaborate nonsense about ideal perfection, any approximation to the feeling which a man has for the wife he loves? If the novelist wished to describe this egregious connoisseurship in female charms, he should have put the folly into the head of some insane mortal, who, reversing the enthusiasm by which some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... feel it, all through our bones and marrow. The camp is deprovincializing us very fast. Brave Winthrop, marching with the city elegants, seems to have been a little startled to find how wonderfully human were the hard-handed men of the Eighth Massachusetts. It takes all the nonsense out of everybody, or ought to do it, to see how fairly the real manhood of a country is distributed over its surface. And then, just as we are beginning to think our own soil has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, up turns a regiment of gallant Irishmen, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... could defer a reform of the constitution (referring to the withdrawal of Lord John's bill) why should they hurry to reform the universities? The talk about the erudite professors of Germany as so superior to Oxford was nonsense. The great men of Germany became professors only because they could not become members of parliament. 'We, on the contrary, are a nation of action, and you may depend upon it, that though you may give an Oxford professor two thousand ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... to be given to the ladies by a club of bachelors. He was going to take Dolly. Mrs. Bond would be there, and Dolly came up to coax her prospective mother-in-law. "Margaret had not gone into any society and was only a school-girl, altogether too young to have her head filled with such nonsense," with many more reasons and conjunctions. Dolly was so sweet and persuasive, and said the simplest white gown would do, young girls really didn't dress much. Then Margaret would have it ready for her graduation. They would be sure to ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... it is considered to be impracticable. "Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property of the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor."[284] "Plans for a national 'dividing up' are not Socialism. They are nonsense. 'Dividing up' means individual ownership. Socialism means collective ownership."[285] "It is obvious that, in the present stage of economic development, individual ownership is impossible. All the great means of production are collectively ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... course of disclamation, I should like to make a mild protest against a further charge that Georgian Poetry has merely encouraged a small clique of mutually indistinguishable poetasters to abound in their own and each other's sense or nonsense. It is natural that the poets of a generation should have points in common; but to my fond eye those who have graced these collections look as diverse as sheep to their shepherd, or the members of a Chinese family to their uncle; and if there is an allegation ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... 1830, when Rodney's Life was first published, it was asserted "that the French navy had been so effectually crippled and reduced by the decisive victory of the 12th of April, as to be no longer in a condition to contest with Great Britain the empire of the seas." This is nonsense, excusable in 1782, but not to the calm thought of after days. The favorable terms obtained were due to the financial embarrassment of France, not to her naval humiliation; and if there was exaggeration in the contention ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... distraught. Presently, he met a friend, to whom he discovered his case, and the other said to him, "Art thou not ashamed to talk thus? How hast thou wasted all this wealth and now comest telling lies and saying, The dog hath mounted on the shelf, and talking such nonsense?" And he reviled him. So the youth returned to his house, and verily the world had waxed black in his eyes and he cried, "My sire said sooth." Then he opened the chamber door and piling up the bricks under his feet, put the rope about his neck and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... well-shod foot petulantly. "Rubbish!" she exclaimed. "You don't suppose I believe that nonsense, do you?" ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... and a half miles from Barnet in memory of the Brinkly family, and it is carefully looked after by members of the family; one of the Lees has a tombstone erected to his memory in Hanwell Cemetery; and such silly nonsense is put out by the cunning, crafty Gipsies as 'dazzlers,' to enable them more readily to practise the art of lying and deception upon their gullible listeners. Then again, with reference to the Gipsies having a religion of their own. There is not a word of truth in this imaginative ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... so much at home in Latin poetry as on the playground. He pronounced the Latin words in flagrant violation of all the rules of quantity, and when he came to give the English meaning, his translation was a ludicrous farrago of nonsense. Yet, poor Mr. Crabb did not dare, apparently, to ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... he said, "and don't talk till you have something to say. And you others need not believe a word of the bear's nonsense. I am much taller than you and I can see a long way over the forest. But as far away as I can see ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... as I complained, of any quality of flesh and blood, a mere anodyne to lull his pains. The most temperate of living critics once marked a passage of my own with a cross and the words, "This seems nonsense." It not only seemed; it was so. It was a private bravado of my own, which I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits that I had grown at last wholly to believe it, and had ended by setting it down as a contribution to the theory of life. So with the more icy parts of this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and women especially, fancy that the so-called Platonic love is a peculiar species of love, very rare and very noble. It is simply a confusion of ideas. There may be such a thing as Platonic relations, but Platonic love is as much nonsense as dark light. Even love for the dead consists of a longing after their bodily presence as well as their souls. Among the living ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... conversations in a salon where I was a visitor, but could hear nothing; in order to do us better justice, they waited until I had gone. I returned to Brigitte and told her that all these stories were mere nonsense, that it was foolish to notice them; that they could talk about us as much as they pleased and we would care nothing ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... greaves are not found, so far, in Mycenaean tombs in Greece, and Reichel argued that the original Homer knew none. The greaves, [Greek: kunmides] "were gaiters of stuff or leather"; the one mention of bronze greaves is stuff and nonsense interpolated (VII. 41). But why did men who were interpolating bronze corslets freely introduce bronze so seldom, if at all, as the material ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... gritty old wall. Go away, and don't disturb me. I am chock full of beautiful and noble thoughts, and I want to stop like it, because it feels nice and good. Don't you come fooling about, making me mad, chivying away all my better feelings with this silly tombstone nonsense of yours. Go away, and get somebody to bury you cheap, and I'll ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... talking a good deal of nonsense, and she frequently wearied her listeners; but there was a certain shrewdness in her, and at times she got near the truth. Indeed, her companion afterward decided that she had done so in this case. Ida Stirling had met many rising young men, and some who had made their mark, but none of ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... start. "What do you mean?" she exclaimed. "Of course I love you, and you only, but the future and the past are beyond our control. Unless you know of something that is going to happen which may mar our love, your question is silly, not at all like your Mother Goose nonsense—that was dear. And as for the past, ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... Ettie, what nonsense—for a violent exercise like bicycling! Where one gets so hot! So unbecomingly hot! You'd be simply stifled, darling." I caught a darted glance which accompanied the words and which made Ettie recoil into the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... whistling. "I can't undertake to find third parties in common sense; I can only find it for myself. I suppose sense in certain quarters; you suppose mincing bread-and-butter nonsense. It's new to me, but you are ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... "This is all nonsense, Socrates," he said. "Balphurios cannot be a democrat: for I am a democrat, and I do not agree with Balphurios. And you have not the least conception of what is meant by democracy: which is, that certain persons are chosen by the majority of the citizens ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... keep the girl late now, Moriarty, with love making in the pig-stye or any nonsense ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... his excellent method of arguing. Corduroy-road, a novel one. Corner-stone, patent safety. Cornwallis, a, acknowledged entertaining. Cotton loan, its imaginary nature. Cotton Mather, summoned as witness. Country, our, its boundaries more exactly defined, right or wrong, nonsense about, exposed, lawyers, sent providentially. Earth's biggest, gets a soul. Courier, The Boston, an unsafe print. Court, General, farmers sometimes attain seats in. Court, Supreme. Courts of law, English, their orthodoxy. Cousins, British, our ci-devant. Cowper, W., his letters ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... that happens, Clara, and all we say," Mrs. Dane said in a low tone. "Even if it sounds like nonsense, put it down." ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... said David, with a dramatic gesture; "but since we're all of a trade, perhaps our friend will show he doesn't mind my nonsense by ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... statue, thou hast stood besieged By sycophants and fools, the growth of courts; Where thy gulled eyes, in all the gaudy round, Met nothing but a lie in every face, And the gross flattery of a gaping crowd, Envious who first should catch, and first applaud, The stuff of royal nonsense: When I spoke, My honest homely words were carped and censured For want of courtly style; related actions, Though modestly reported, passed for boasts; Secure of merit if I asked reward, Thy hungry minions thought their rights invaded, And the bread snatched from pimps and parasites. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... animate objects cannot receive this affix. 'At the rock' (ompsk-ut), 'at the mountain' (wadchu-ut), or 'in the country' (ohk-it, auk-it), is intelligible, in Indian or English; 'at the deer,' 'at the bear,' or 'at the sturgeons,' would be nonsense in any language. When animate nouns occur in place-names, they receive the formative of verbals, or serve as adjectival prefixes to ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull
... of very vile nonsense talked upon both sides of the matter: tearing divines reducing life to the dimensions of a mere funeral procession, so short as to be hardly decent; and melancholy unbelievers yearning for the tomb as if it were a world too far away. Both sides must feel a little ashamed of their performances ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "greatest of all observers" seems to talk nonsense, for marriage in the seraglio does not hinge on the submission of one wife to one husband, but on a plurality of wives that English and German women have only endured in certain historic cases. In ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... the nonsense," Harry nodded. "But I don't imagine that any further efforts to destroy the wall ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... found much to praise. Hanway often went to the root when he dealt with the evils of life. Thus he writes:—'The introducing new habits of life is the most substantial charity.' But he thus mingles sense and nonsense:—'Though tea and gin have spread their baneful influence over this island and his Majesty's other dominions, yet you may be well assured that the Governors of the Foundling Hospital will exert their utmost skill and vigilance to prevent the children under their care from being poisoned, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... arm off, he darted up the steps and began to make a joyous, boyish disturbance at the door under the heavy eaves. "Jewel! O Jewel! Quick! Here's a friend come," . . . and suddenly peering at me in the dim verandah, he mumbled earnestly, "You know—this—no confounded nonsense about it—can't tell you how much I owe to her—and so—you understand—I—exactly as if . . ." His hurried, anxious whispers were cut short by the flitting of a white form within the house, a faint exclamation, and a child-like but energetic little face with delicate features ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... into the man's face astonished. "What nonsense, Gomez!" he exclaimed. "Do you know what you are talking about! Why, I'm tired out, and almost starved. Here I am and here I shall stop, unless your mistress is as inhospitable as ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... protested Ben Zoof emphatically; "that is all nonsense. It is altogether out of the question to suppose that we are not to see Montmartre again." And the orderly shook his head resolutely, with the air of a man determined, in spite of argument, to adhere ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... flung her heavy brown hair upon the pillow. This was probably some nonsense on the part of a young Wrottesley, and Jane was not going to ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... all nonsense." Prince Andrew again interrupted him, "let us talk business. Have you been to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... what they could do in reading and recitation in combination with their gymnastics. The chapel was crowded to the doors. A plump little German girl was the star of the evening. She stood perfectly serene, her chubby arms stuck out stiffly from her sides, and in a loud, clear voice she recited this nonsense: ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... most resolute liar cannot lie more than once in every three sentences. Folly is more engrossing; for we could prove from the present Elegy that it is possible to write two sentences of pure nonsense out of three. A more faithful calculation would bring us to ninety-nine out of every hundred; or—as the present consists of only fifty-five stanzas—leaving about five readable lines in the entire.... A Mr. Keats, who had left a decent calling ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... just as a first class confectioner made a splendid manager of our gas plant, and a successful Hoki-Poki merchant had the required push to keep our trolley systems going, so the Haberdasher had the precise kind of genius to manage the poets. He won't stand any nonsense from them, and any poem that he can't understand is immediately thrown into the Civic Waste-Basket, taken to the Municipal Ferry and used for fuel to run the boats. I guess we burn nineteen tons of refuse verse a ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... The hay! the old man said. Still harping on the hay—the hay which doesn't amount to anything and cannot be of any real help. It's sheer nonsense to think that the hay in that stack is enough to feed the flocks of a whole district. There is no use talking about it I will not throw that tiny mouthful to all the four winds. It will do no good if divided ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... not talking nonsense now, mamma dear, though I dare say I have been lately," she said. "I felt very ill one night, and I got up and went to Julien's room; there I saw Rosalie lying beside him. My grief nearly drove me mad, and I ran ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... more I see of our colored regiments, and the more I converse with our soldiers, the more convinced I am that upon them we must ultimately rely as the principle source of our strength in these latitudes. It is perfect nonsense for any one to attempt to talk away the broad fact, evident as the sun at noonday, that these men are capable not only of making good soldiers, but the very best of soldiers. The Third Louisiana Native Guard, Colonel ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... passes all understanding, all seems a chaos of prejudice, superstition, pride, vanity, and stupidity. And yet we catch a glimpse here and there that there was some reason in most of that unreason; we see how sense dwindled away into nonsense, custom into ceremony, ceremony into farce. Why then should this surface of savage life represent to us the lowest stratum of human life, the very beginnings of civilization, simply because we cannot ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... woman like her into his calculations. For his part, if he had been desirous of marrying an heiress, and felt that he had a gift that way, he should have looked out a rich German girl; they had less nonsense ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... other. We have already taken up too much space with this subject of witchcraft, else we should be tempted to dwell on Sir Thomas Browne, who far surpassed Glanvil in magnificent incongruity of opinion, and whose works are the most remarkable combination existing, of witty sarcasm against ancient nonsense and modern obsequiousness, with indications of a capacious credulity. After all, we may be sharing what seems to us the hardness of these men, who sat in their studies and argued at their ease about a belief that would be reckoned to have caused more misery and bloodshed ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... a sledge-hammer!—he will preach out, and prose out, and twaddle out another hour of your golden even-tide, "because he is your friend." You don't care whether he is judge or jury,—whether he talks sense or nonsense; you don't want him to talk at all. You don't want him there any way. You want to be alone. If you don't, why are you sitting there in the deepening twilight? If you wanted him, couldn't you send for him? Why don't you go out into the drawing-room, where are music, and lights, and gay people? What ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Of course not,' he said. 'Miss Peters's is well enough for plain Seacove folk, but don't you be getting any nonsense in your head of setting up to be the same as ladies' children. Mrs. Vane comes of a high family, I hear; there will be a French ma'amselle of a governess as like ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... to her as children might have been! The chief ornament of her parlors! And just ready to bloom! This was really asking too much. "I don't believe it's the plants at all," said Julia. "That's sheer nonsense. Anybody living on this green and vegetating earth to be poisoned by plants in a window! I don't suppose they trouble you any more than your lamp all night does me; but I've never said anything about that. I can't bear lamplight at night; I want ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... says Bernard Shaw in his delightful preface to Getting Married, "on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage." And, in truth, it is not easy to avoid such foolishness if we understand at all the complexity of the relationship of the sexes. Sentiment rules our actions in this connection, whereas our talk on the subject is directed by intellect. And the demands ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... you," said Arnold. "Forgive me, Frances, but you are talking nonsense. I came here to be with you, and do you suppose I mind ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... A desk in a city office; most likely a mercantile job on a third of the pay, and a life to which he was as much suited as a square peg to a round hole. All this, that the babe might be spared the illnesses that mortal flesh, in infancy, is prone to, particularly in the East. It was utter nonsense! For the first five years there would be need for special care and intervals spent in a hill climate. In due time would come the change to England and English environment necessary for the proper physical ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Protestant women nurses arrived at Alexandria, where they were made unwelcome. Medical directors, surgeons, ward masters objected, bluntly declaring that they wouldn't endure a lot of women interfering and fussing and writing hysterical nonsense to ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... disappointed? Of course I am. I have made up my mind to that, and having just had tiffin, and drank a whole pint of bitter beer, I feel myself quite competent to criticise the Taj with the best of them, and especially well fitted just now to stand no nonsense. We met an American who was travelling as a matter of duty, and had found, as far as travel was concerned, I suspect, that he belonged to the class represented by the grumbler in paradise, whose "halo didn't fit ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... mine, but she certainly can't go with a sprained ankle. We'd better get busy—there isn't much time left." And Josephine disappeared into her own cubicle where Judith could hear her opening and closing drawers and singing in her funny boyish voice their new nonsense song: ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... I don't like?—please say that; because I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like," said Gwendolen, finding herself in the woman's paradise, where all her nonsense ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... in the country, on the Ganges: now you see him at the waters at Cheltenham; and you will find his letter from that place to comprehend the substance of all his former letters, and to be a digest of all the falsity, fraud, and nonsense contained in the whole of them. Here it is, and your Lordships will suffer it to be read. I must beg your patience; I must acknowledge that it has been the most difficult of all things to explain, but much ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... subject of some drunkard's pastime, Guest replied, savagely, "One who has enough of this d—d nonsense, and will stand no more of it from any one, young or old," and turned ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... with boys who had not been brought up as gently as I worked an immediate, and, in some respects, a beneficial change in my character. I had the nonsense taken out of me, as the saying is—some of the nonsense, at least. I became more manly and self-reliant. I discovered that the world was not created exclusively on my account. In New Orleans I labored under the delusion that it was. Having neither brother nor sister to give ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... war and once it was martial law—that's all nonsense, and I'll tell you what it is: our Marczi and the vine-dresser's Bandi were peasants, and Herr von ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... of nonsense does just as well for them as another: your cousin Sophy bothers me to build an Elizabethan pigsty, and wanted her poor mother to dance with the butler in the servants' hall last Christmas, when the fellow was as drunk as an owl: I hope it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... elephant appeared and said "Why are you burrowing here; I will trample all your work to pieces;" the ants answered "Why do you talk like this; do not despise us because we are small; perhaps we are better than you in some ways;" The elephant said "Do not talk nonsense: there is nothing at which you could beat me; I am in all ways the largest and most powerful animal on the face of the earth." Then the ants said "Well, let us run a race and see who will win, unless you win we will not admit that you are supreme." At this the elephant got into a ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... that the readers of these romances went in the afternoon to the "Globe" to see Shakespeare play his own pieces, and that, admitting their fondness for such dramas, in which, without speaking of other merits, the kitchen is sometimes the place represented, it would be surprising to find only mere nonsense in the whole collection of their favoured romances. Let these suggestions justify us at need in examining one more Arcadia: besides, it is not that of a penniless Bohemian; it is the Arcadia of ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... yourself about it, for it only makes your asthma worse, and does no especial good to anybody. Things may be as you say. Certainly I intended nothing irreligious. Yet these extended naps, appropriate enough for saints and emperors, are out of place in one's own family. So, if it is not stuff and nonsense, it ought to be. And that I ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... of his position, and after a considerable effort he contrived to burst out in a laugh. His laugh was a poor one, however; it rang false, and failed to conceal a sensation of deep anxiety. Growing gradually bolder, he at length exclaimed: "That's nonsense, I had just seen these two women go out by ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... assassinated their king and kissed the feet of an adventurer; but they are afraid, and talk of patience. I told His Majesty, one day, of my embarrassments. 'Sir,' he said to me, 'a Fongereues never begs!' and the next day I received four thousand louis. Confound the nonsense!" ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... over all this ever since your absence, and all you have told me about his cowardly attempts upon that poor boy's life, and his still greater cowardice in believing such stuff as you have made him believe about the lad not being injured by mortal man. Stuff and nonsense! the lad ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Nonsense, nonsense. What greater proof could we have of your guilt? This man here who you gave the letter of introduction is a stranger to the town and the piece of cloth that Mr. Cassily found hangin' on a nail in his back porch after the burglary was committed, is the piece ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... notice symptoms of stomach-trouble. He had suggested timidly that there might be something wrong with his diet, and that if the doctor would tell him exactly what he ought to eat, and how much and how often, he would be glad to adopt the regimen. But the doctor had only laughed and answered, "Nonsense, boy—don't you get to thinking about your food!" And so Thyrsis had gone away, to follow the old plan of eating what he liked. Health, it would seem, must be a spontaneous and accidental thing, it could not be a deliberate and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... one of the other hands followed me up, bringing the same report, he was at length induced to descend the poop ladder and go forward to judge for himself whether we had told the truth or not, muttering the while, though, that it was "all a pack o' durned nonsense!" ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Cantankerous Old Lady, who was a shrewd person in her way, must surely see through this obvious patter; but I had under-estimated the average human capacity for swallowing flattery. Instead of dismissing his fulsome nonsense with a contemptuous smile, Lady Georgina perked herself up with a conscious air of coquetry, and asked for more. 'Yes, they were delightful days in Vienna,' she said, simpering; 'I was young then, Count; I enjoyed life ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... readers will say. I should not dispute it if dramatic poets really were what English public opinion generally assumes them to be during their lifetime: that is, a licentiously irregular group to be kept in order in a rough and ready way by a magistrate who will stand no nonsense from them. But I cannot admit that the class represented by Eschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Shakespear, Goethe, Ibsen, and Tolstoy, not to mention our own contemporary playwrights, is as much in place in Mr Redford's office as a pickpocket ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... step towards cutting off his head) what the next thing should be;—but how they, (bless their Celtic and Petulant and Herulian and Dutch hearts!) told him very plainly that that kind of thing would not wash with them: "Come!" said they; "no nonsense of this sort; be you our emperor, and condemn that old lady your cousin Constantius!—or we kill you right now." Into his bed-room in Paris they poured by night with those terms,—an ultimatum; whether or not with a twinkle in their eyes when ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... number of twenty, but on precipices, banks of rivers and streams, and mountain-passes, and such wands are thrown into the rivers as the boatmen descend rapids and dangerous places. Since my baggage horse fell over an acclivity on the trail from Sarufuto, four such wands have been placed there. It is nonsense to write of the religious ideas of a people who have none, and of beliefs among people who are merely adult children. The traveller who formulates an Aino creed must "evolve it from his inner consciousness." ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... "No nonsense!" declared Bob, quite earnestly now. "We're in for a course of sprouts; it's to come off this very night, and the savage horde which is to begin the hazing operations is that gang of ten who occupy the big ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... an apologue from the Sanskrit, or a song from some unheard-of dialect of Hinduee, of which amateur favors the public with a free translation, without understanding the original, as you will immediately be convinced, if you peruse that repository of nonsense, the 'Asiatic Miscellany.'" He makes one exception, however, in favor of Wilkins. "Ihave never yet seen any book," he writes, "which can be depended on for information concerning the real opinions of the Hindus, except Wilkins's 'Bhagvat ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... not angry with me, are you? It is nonsense to think that we are to go about the world, picking and choosing men and women as if they were fruit and we were to gather the best; as if there was not something in our own hearts which, if we listen to it conscientiously, will tell ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... cousin to a pig, and (I suspect) thirteenth or fourteenth cousin to a rabbit, yet he is the wisest of all beasts, and can do everything save read, write, and cast accounts." People would surely have said, "Nonsense; your elephant is contrary to nature"; and have thought you were telling stories—as the French thought of Le Vaillant when he came back to Paris and said that he had shot a giraffe; and as the king of the Cannibal Islands thought of the English sailor, when he ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... Patterson,' so folks can read it, and thump out the rest on a secondhand typewriter. But that 'ere same scrawl will bring five thousand dollars out of the bank any time I want it. If I had as much eddycation as you have, Dan, nobody couldn't keep me in any school in the land another minute. It's all nonsense,—a dead waste of time ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... mind of her own is no credit to the sex; but I am sorry to say there are too many of that class, at least we might readily suppose so by the easy manner in which they are taken captive with soft, silly nonsense, and smooth, flattering words. If you admire such, the best thing you can do is to go and make love to them; you will progress much faster ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... transfer of them to metaphysical investigation. Opposites, he well observes, are of two kinds, either logical, that is, such as are absolutely incompatible; or real, without being contradictory. The former he denominates Nihil negativum irrepraesentabile, the connection of which produces nonsense. A body in motion is something— Aliquid cogitabile; but a body, at one and the same time in motion and not in motion, is nothing, or, at most, air articulated into nonsense. But a motory force of a body in one direction, and an equal force of the same body in an opposite ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I was mortified by such silly nonsense, and wanting to keep up the credit of the family, dropped another five-cent piece in the hat, and nodded toward E. E., as much as to say: "Never mind; ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... nothing more delightful than the fun of a man of genius. Humor, as Mr. Thackeray observes, is charming, and poetry is charming, but the blending of the two in the same composition is irresistible. There is much nonsense in this book, and some folly, and a little ill-nature; but there is more wisdom than either. They who possess it may congratulate themselves upon having the largest collection ever made of the sportive ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... farce when the fancy seized him. At the time when a certain kind of nonsense verse was popular, he, with Sir Noel Paton and others, added not a few facetious sonnets to Edward Lear's book, which lay on Madame Novikoff's table. His authorship is betrayed by the introduction of familiar ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... profit, and it is enormous at that rate. I said, 'Why did you not refuse it?' But Omar replied they had pay enough after that reduction, which is always made from them, and that in his opinion therefore, it came out of the master's pocket, and was 'cheatery.' How people have been talking nonsense about Jamaica chez vous. I have little doubt Eyre did quite right, and still less doubt that the niggers have had enough of the sort of provocation which I well know, to account for the outbreak. Baker's effusion is a very poor ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... Boyne," she said. I have enough to think of without your nonsense. If this Mr. Trannel is an American, that is all that is necessary. We are all Americans together, and I don't believe it will make remark, Lottie's sitting on ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that's right. Now that you've left off 'speaking your mind,' as you used to call it, you're becoming quite docile and useful. Perhaps, I'll give Ripon another fifty dollars a year. I'm not a hard man, you know, when people understand that I stand no nonsense. But I always have my own way. No one can get over me. You and I understand each other, Mrs. Ripon, eh? Yet, I doubt if you'd have remained so long, if Ripon hadn't married you. He's made a sensible woman of you. Tell him I'm ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... said. "They are precisely two self-satisfied, silly fellows, that have got some ridiculous notions in their heads, and then begin to talk about 'superficial views of duties,' and all such nonsense. My father will set it all right, and the boys ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... There is much nonsense talked in the world about 'born' actors, and 'born' artists, and 'born' nurses. No doubt some are 'born' with greater gifts in these matters than others, but the most famous artists or actors or nurses will all tell you that ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... say to this letter. Will you feel with me that you should live on a housetop and eat cheese? Do you long for a cool stream without flies, and a carpet of golden sand? Do you want a coal fire and a husband home at six-thirty, or a third-class ticket to the realms of nonsense? Are you thinking of Lane's income, or Smith's cleverness, or the ennui of ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... of all this nonsense about Grant not being able to stand rude language and indelicate stories! Why Grant was full of humor, and full of the appreciation of it. I have sat with him by the hour listening to Jim Nye's yarns, and I reckon you know the style of Jim Nye's histories, Clemens. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prancing movement; but nothing he did was half so laughable as the behavior of his mate, who all this while dressed her feathers without once deigning to look at her spouse's performance. Undoubtedly they had been married for several weeks, and she was, by this time, well used to his nonsense. It must be a devoted husband, I fancy, who continues to offer attentions when they are ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... perhaps, "But this is a work that cannot be done. It is too radical and vast to be hopefully attempted." Nonsense! There is no work for the kingdom of God and the glory of His name, which cannot be done! With the Gospel in our hand, we can ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... cried Mrs. Burton. "You're talking all this nonsense to detain us. But I won't stay a minute longer. Come, Sadie, we will go to the police station. I'll never rest until I have that monster ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... well.—Mr. Bernage, Mr. Bernage, Mr. Fiddlenage, I have had three letters from him now successively; he sends no directions, and how the D—— shall I write to him? I would have burnt his last, if I had not seen Stella's hand at the bottom: his request is all nonsense. How can I assist him in buying? and if he be ordered to go to Spain, go he must, or else sell, and I believe one can hardly sell in such a juncture. If he had stayed, and new regiments raised, I would ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... and his school teach a lot of nonsense on that point," said Mr. Wilson, scornfully, "although none of them truly believe what they say. The equality idea is quite an exploded one, and the black savage, superficially civilised, is no more the equal of the European, ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... asked you to come," declared Queen Coo-ee-oh. "It is my business to settle this dispute, not yours. You say my island is a part of the Land of Oz, which you rule, but that is all nonsense, for I've never heard of the Land of Oz, nor of you. You say you are a fairy, and that fairies gave you command over me. I don't believe it! What I do believe is that you are an impostor and have come here to stir up trouble ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... matter upon which a great deal of nonsense has been written by English writers on the early history of Canada, most of whom have been able to see nothing but the spectre of paternalism in every domain of colonial life. It is quite true, as Tocqueville tells us, that the physiognomy of a government can be best judged in ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... left hand, at the head of the table, who is now leaning the other way to talk to my brother. He is a good- tempered, half-informed person, very unreasonably fond of reasoning, and of reasoning people; people that talk nonsense logically: he is fond of disputation himself, when there are only one or two, but seldom does more than listen in a large company of illumines. He made a great fortune in the city, and has the comfort of a good conscience. He is very hospitable, and is generous in dinners; though ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... 1st Sol. Nonsense! nonsense! A few of the ringleaders, Schuyler, and Hancock, and Washington, and a few such, they will hang of course,—but for the rest,—we shall have to take the oath anew, and swallow a few duties with our sugar and ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... want none of yer big words to me. Ef I h'ar any more, b'ars and bufflers, ef I don't crack yer over the head with Sweetlove, my shootin'-iron, so mind what yer say, fur I won't stand no nonsense.' ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... festivals, as the "Compitalia," the "Saturnalia," "Anna Perenna," the "Hot Baths"; or parodies of mythology, as the "Voyage to the Underworld," the "Arvernian Lake." Apt nicknames and short commonplaces which were easily retained and applied were welcome; but every piece of nonsense was of itself privileged; in this preposterous world Bacchus is applied to for water and the fountain-nymph for wine. Isolated examples even of the political allusions formerly so strictly prohibited in the Roman theatre are found in these mimes.(11) As regards metrical form, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... am good at running away when there is any kind of danger, Hamish? Have you got into the English way? Would you call me a coward too? Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, Hamish! I—why, I am going to drink a glass of the coal-black wine, and have done with it. I will drink it to the health of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... talking nonsense," Philippa insisted. "You say that you saw Major Felstead fifty-six hours ago. You cannot mean us to believe that fifty-six hours ago you ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kraal ran over high, bare country that these animals did not frequent, there was now little prospect of our doing so—all of which, of course, showed what I already knew, that only weak-headed superstitious idiots would put the slightest faith in the drivelling nonsense of deceiving or self-deceived Kafir medicine-men. These things, indeed, I pointed out with much vigour to Saduko before we turned in on the last night of ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... my state, and in my whole section of the country go to the common schools. Children should start life as equals. There is no snobbery so cruel as the snobbery that marks off childhood into classes! When you women vote here, the first thing to do is to smash that nonsense. But in the meantime keep the ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... knew that all were waiting for her; she instinctively felt the impatience she did not see, and yet could not resist listening to some honeyed nonsense that her "friend" was saying. Ostensibly, Vinton Arnold was at her side to turn the leaves of the music, but in reality to feast his eyes on beauty which daily bound him in stronger chains of fascination. Her head drooped under his words, but only as the flowers bend under the ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... believe thou art cursed. My view of a presiding demon or divinity runs not in such direction. Gods and goddesses roam not to and fro blasting spirits of mortals in such manner. It is an idea born of older times, and doubtless will survive down the ages until men grow wiser; then such nonsense will be looked upon with ridicule, and become a thing ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... with that of the higher stages. Nevertheless the civilised man can come to understand the savage's form of speech; and it would be strange to say that the savage's form of speech, or that his form of religion, is unintelligible nonsense. Behind the varieties of speech and of religion there is that in the spirit of man which is seeking to express itself and which is intelligible to all, because it is in all. Though few of us understand any but civilised languages, ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... clearer it became to him that she did. Yes, here was being repeated the old story of the attraction of extremes. "She isn't so refined that appreciation of real manhood has been refined out of her," thought he. "And why shouldn't she love me? What does all this nonsense of family and breeding amount to, anyway?" His mind was in great confusion. At one moment he was dismissing the idea of such delicateness, such super-refined super-sensitiveness being taken with ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... "Oh, no! Nonsense!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "That is some poor animal caught in a trap, and he's afraid of being killed himself. I'm going to see who it is. Perhaps it ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... phenomena, and refers the reader for further information to Lecons sur le systeme nerveux, faites par J. M. Charcot, and Etudes cliniques sur l'hystero-epilepsie ou grande hysterie, par le Dr. Richer. As a man is always in danger of talking nonsense in dealing with a subject concerning which his knowledge is superficial, I shall not undertake to pronounce upon the validity of the theory which is here advanced. The play is an inquiry into the significance and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Since the inquests were held here on Monday, there have been twenty-four deaths from starvation; and, if we can judge from appearances, before the termination of another week the number will be incredible. As to holding any more inquests, it is mere nonsense; the number of deaths is beyond counting. Nineteen out of every twenty deaths that have occurred in this parish, for the last two months, were caused by starvation. I have known children in the remote districts of the parish, and in the neighbourhood of the town, too, ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... to distinguish the qualities of the thing-in-itself from the qualities of the phenomenon beneath his eyes. Had he winnowed his superficial impressions the underlying thought would probably have been: "No woman with a bosom as flat as that can have any nonsense about her." From the first moment of their meeting he had never doubted that it was this lack of "nonsense" which had attracted him. He liked her evident indifference to his opinion of her, and he liked, too, her listless silence, when she sat, with clasped hands, gazing straight ahead ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... due to the troops, and some other smaller matters for the Germans, and the press, &c. &c. &c.; so what with these, and the expenses of my suite, which, though not extravagant, is expensive, with Gamba's d—d nonsense, I shall have occasion for all the monies I can muster; and I have credits wherewithal to face the undertakings, if realised, and expect to have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... view, scrap-books are the death of love. Many a very sensible man can "whisper soft nonsense in a lady's ear," when all the circumstances of the scene are congenial. We ourselves have frequently descended to make ourselves merely the most agreeable man in the world, till we unfortunately discovered that the blockheads who could ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... stood amazed at hearing such nonsense, and relieving him of the visor, already battered to pieces by blows, he wiped his face, which was covered with dust, and as soon as he had done so he recognised him and said, "Senor Quixada" (for so he appears to have been called ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the best in all things. They talk science to their readers as they might talk slippers to Baptiste. Kaffir syntax does not shock them. Do not speak to them of the value of a well selected term, set down in its right place, still less of a lilting construction, sounding rather well. Childish nonsense they call all that; the fiddling ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Robinson over their dinner, and was informed in return that he wasn't a prophet, so he needn't think it, and the young men who gave themselves airs and wore smart clothes weren't the ones to get on in the world; and Mrs. Robinson had no patience with such nonsense. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... son to succeed me in the office. But if this consul of their'n keeps up his objections, appeals, and his protests in this way, and finds such men as his honor the district-attorney to second him with his nonsense and his notions, folks of our business might as well move north ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... "That's sheer nonsense!" he answered sharply. "I'm not going to leave you out here all night, for the sake of your own character. If you won't go without me, ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... the former to consult the best models of style in composition, and was the real occasion of his adopting a most critical and thorough plan of self-culture. All this the consequence of conversing properly, instead of spending leisure moments in boyish antics, or uttering nonsense! ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... in the ground, when a wild elephant appeared and said "Why are you burrowing here; I will trample all your work to pieces;" the ants answered "Why do you talk like this; do not despise us because we are small; perhaps we are better than you in some ways;" The elephant said "Do not talk nonsense: there is nothing at which you could beat me; I am in all ways the largest and most powerful animal on the face of the earth." Then the ants said "Well, let us run a race and see who will win, unless you win we will not admit that you are supreme." ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... wrong? Why is the doctor sent for? That child hurt? Nonsense! Hurt seriously with just a mere slip down a few stairs! I will never believe it. It is just making a fuss about nothing. Dr. Grey, we must go to the dinner-party, or what would people say? Phillis, take Arthur from Mrs. Grey and carry him up to ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... his hut drawn by an ass; he thought too highly of the ass for that. Moreover he had observed that the ass, a four-legged thinker little understood by men, has a habit of cocking his ears uneasily when philosophers talk nonsense. In life the ass is a third person between our thoughts and ourselves, and acts as a restraint. As a friend, Ursus preferred Homo to a dog, considering that the love of a ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... self-conscious alike when he remembers, wills, and understands; but in what sense is the generic term "memory" conscious to the generic word "will?" This is mere nonsense. Are memory, understanding, and volition persons,—self-subsistents? If not, what are they to the purpose? Who doubts that Jehovah is consciously powerful, consciously wise, consciously good; and that it is the same Jehovah, who in being omnipotent, is good and wise; in being wise, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Gilfoyle's nerves. He was in travail of another love-jingle, and his tantrums were odious. He kept repeating love and dove and above, and tender, slender, offend her, defender, and kiss and bliss till the very words grew gibberish, detestable nonsense. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... fool, and I would he a greater one if I believed his nonsense," said he. "No, no, my information is warranted and authentic. The king has had a sharp skirmish with the Russians near Reitwan, and driven them back, and then proceeded quietly to Meissen. Thus there is no ground for anxiety, and ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... thought eccentric if she wears low heels. The modern flapper is too sensible for such nonsense as French heels for standing all day behind the counter. Manufacturers have discovered this also, and are making shoes with low heels and broad toes quite as pleasing as the French ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... did you? Your mother nonsense! This is the way to treat a parent, is it? I am nonsense, am I? I will teach you what nonsense is. Nonsense shall be very good sense; you shall find that, sir, that you shall. Nonsense, indeed! I'll write to your guardian, that I will! You call your mother nonsense, do you? And ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... glance at Barlow). Nonsense. Nothing in it. Mere invention of Barlow's. He's a regular ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... going on in her foolish ungrateful way. "I know who'll give me much finer things than your beggarly little pearl nonsense." ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he's a bit doubtful," said Bob. "All the other fellows say it's utter nonsense. But I'm going to ask the old lawyer chap who has charge of Aunt Margaret's money—he'll tell me. We won't bother about it, Tommy; if I can't get you politely, I'll steal you. Just forget the she-dragon ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... years was a breakfast party, its character in other respects remaining the same. Little tables were spread under the dome, around the big telescope; the flowers were roses from Miss Mitchell's own garden. The "poems" were nonsense rhymes, in the writing of which Miss Mitchell was an adept. Each student would have a few verses of a more or less personal character, written by Miss Mitchell, and there were others written by the girls themselves; ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... Power, or words to that effect. He thinks his present Ministers do not treat him well, inasmuch as they do not tell him enough. The last, it seems, constantly fed him with scraps of information which he twaddled over, and probably talked nonsense about; but it is difficult to imagine anything more irksome for a Government beset with difficulties like this than to have to discuss the various details of their measures with a silly bustling old fellow, who can by ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... "Don't talk nonsense," snapped the older man. "It isn't kindness—it's self-interest. Somewhere in this country is the heir to the Tollington millions. I am one of the trustees to that estate and I am naturally keen on discovering the man who will relieve me of my responsibility. There is a hundred pounds awaiting ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... a mighty lot of nonsense," retorted Mistress Polly, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders, "and if that be so, then why don't you go over to France and join hands with the Scarlet Pimpernel? I'll warrant no Frenchman'll want to look twice ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... said Ki Ki. "Nonsense; Kapchack does not much like me now; he gave me a hint the other day not to soar too high. I suppose he did not like to think of my overlooking him kissing ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... her, a whisper on the wind, although she was half a mile away. A moment more, and the hill stood empty between them. Mackenzie turned to prepare supper for the coming of Dad Frazer, who would complain against books and the nonsense contained in them if the food was not on the board when he came ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... dynamometer in order to measure their strength, the anthropometric measurements with a calliper, and the printing of the thumb-marks, caused the Bororos first of all great anxiety, then boisterous amusement. They looked upon it all as utter nonsense—in a way I did not blame them—and repeatedly asked why I did it. I told them that I did it to find ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Alice are belles; they at least will not trouble me with their exaggerated notions about love and all that nonsense.' ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... believe there's such a woman—two such women—in London," replied his friend, correcting himself. "I can hardly imagine such eyes, such an expression. It's what the fellows who write poetry call 'the beauty of a dream,' and I'll never say poetry is nonsense again. No, that's neither more nor less than an imaginary angel, Simon. Simply ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... we?" said the beauty; "and pray, Madam Ursula, how come you, that are not so many years older than me, to talk about such nonsense to me, who am so many years younger, and who yet have too much sense to care about head-gears ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... have the true note of modern vigour. Of course her style has been formed by her favourite reading; more than probably, her ways of thinking and feeling owe much to the same source. If not so already, this will soon, I daresay, be the typical Englishwoman. Certainly, there is "no nonsense about her." Such women should ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... "It is nonsense for a girl in your circumstances to pretend such indifference, I am not deceived, I know that you would be only too glad to make such a match, and he is just foolish enough to take a fancy to a pretty face. But I warn you not to encourage ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... FIRST POLICEMAN Nonsense, nonsense. What greater proof could we have of your guilt? This man here who you gave the letter of introduction is a stranger to the town and the piece of cloth that Mr. Cassily found hangin' on a nail in his back ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... talk fiddle-de-dee nonsense about your life being wrecked. Gilbert, we were children together, we were lad and lass together, and perhaps, if we both live, we may be old people together—but we mustn't be man and woman together; it doesn't answer. Now, tell me, ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... regulate the exercise of these rights; they may settle all minor questions of property, but the inalienable personal rights of citizenship should be declared by the constitution, interpreted by the Supreme Court, protected by congress and enforced by the arm of the executive. It is nonsense to talk of State rights until the graver question of personal liberties is first understood and adjusted. President Hayes, in reply to an address of welcome at Charlottesville, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... "Will the Ohio delegates remain true to Sherman?" Mr. Blaine said: "Of that there can be no doubt. They are riveted and double-bolted to him. The talk of Foraker's scheming for himself is nonsense and malice. Foraker is a young man and has a great future before him. He may go to the Senate and be President later on. No, the Garfield miracle cannot be repeated this ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... more serious anomalies in the ideas, intelligence, and mental condition of the patient. Sometimes the answers given are sensible but are followed by nonsense. Other patients, especially when afflicted with melancholia, speak unwillingly, as if the words were forced from them, one by one. Idiots, cretins, and demented persons are sometimes incapable of expressing themselves. Some ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... strange table-manners and bade him help himself in the usual fashion, he smoothed her ruffled temper with good-humoured excuses, "Quite right. Quite right. I won't do it again; but you always loved a joke, Azalma. When you have youngsters like me at dinner you must look for a little nonsense." ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... about having seen places, I mean, mother, but of course it is all nonsense, because it is impossible, unless one dreams of ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... Genet's recall was pending, the minister proceeded to New York. Already the common sense of the people began to prevail over the nonsense of passion and feeling. Business-men—and the whole population of the country had interests directly associated with business-men—began to reflect upon the tendency of the doctrines of Genet, and clearly perceived ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... ghost is not seen. And he has no dress-coat and no head! All that talk about his death's head and his head of fire is nonsense! There's nothing in it. You only hear him when he is in the box. Mother has never seen him, but she has heard him. Mother knows, because she gives him ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... below stairs. Accordingly, Punch sees no reason why Angelina may have a lover in the parlor, whilst Bridget's engagement forbids her to entertain a fond "follower" in the kitchen; and he perversely refuses to see how it can be right for Miss Julia to listen to the soft nonsense of Captain Augustus Fitzroy in the drawing-room, and entirely wrong for Molly, the nursery-maid, to blush at the blunt admiration of the policeman, talking to her down the area. Punch is independent and original in this respect. His strange creed seems to be, that human nature is human nature,—whether, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... his son at Oxford and was evidently a rural parson of the good old high-and-dry sort; but as I happened to speak of the sermons of the day, he burst out in a voice gruff with theological contempt and hot toddy: "Did you hear that young upstart this afternoon? Did you ever hear such nonsense? Why couldn't he mind his own business, as ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... was early upon the ground. He had quite slept off what he would have called the nonsense of last night, and was very keen upon settlements, consols, mortgages, jointures, and all that dry ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... not reply as Richelieu did to a brother author, "Je ne vois pas la necessite," but this I do say, that if you are in future to live by supplying the public with such nonsense, the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... any the better for it? No, Tummas, no! I say leave Passon alone. Don't upset 'im. Let 'im come out of 'is 'ouse wise an' peaceful like as he allus do, an' let 'im speak as the fiery tongues from Heaven moves 'im, an' as if there worn't no fashion nor silly nonsense in the world. He's best so, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... tone should be assumed by an enthusiastic speculator is not wonderful. The payment of the national debt has been one of the staple dreams of enthusiasts. It would be difficult to believe the wild nonsense that has been written on it; and Hogarth, in his dreadful picture of a madhouse, appropriately represents one of his principal figures hard at work on it. But the remarkable thing—and what shews the perilous nature of such speculations—is, that these theories were worked out ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... chair. "I come because you've got brains, and you're the only girl that has—here." They were Alan's words, almost his words, and for an instant she thought of her brother, end wondered what he would think of this jay's praising her in his terms. "Because," Jeff went on, "you've got more sense and nonsense —than all the women here put together. Because it's better than a play to hear you talk—and act; and because you're graceful—and fascinating, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... curiosity that she wanted to go back to Plumfield at once. But her aunt would not be hurried, and made a long call in mamma's room, sitting on the floor with baby in her lap, making Mrs. Brooke laugh at the pranks of the boys, and all sorts of droll nonsense. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... stammered the landlady. "The chicken is worth thousands of your pea." "I don't care for that; it has got my pea inside it, and the only way I can get my pea is to have that which holds the pea." "What, give you my chicken for a single pea, nonsense!" "Well, if you don't I'll summon you before the justice." "Ah, well, take the chicken and my bad ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... was natural that any man should rule who had the power, and incomprehensible that any one should allow himself to be ruled who could avoid it. Any other than a forced relation to a lord was nonsense to antiquity, and the moral duty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... but presence of mind and bluff, and showing that you weren't going to stand any nonsense. But I don't suppose Corbett or Hawtrey or any of those chaps would have ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... passed off pleasantly enough. Arschot did not read his manifesto, but, as he warmed with wine, he talked a great deal of nonsense which, according to Stephen Ybarra, much resembled it, and he vowed that thenceforth he would be blind and dumb to all that might occur. A few days later, he paid a visit to the new governor-general, and took a peaceful farewell of him. "Your Majesty knows very well what he is," wrote ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... must be resigned: who could withstand the will of God? Yet he must say, in all honesty, that he had talked to many persons about the matter, and some said it was folly and nonsense, and there could be no reason in it. Others, amongst whom was Dr. Cramer, said, if not folly, yet it was a dangerous business to body and soul, and ought not ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Wendel—a very fair question. Well, now, why don't I? Perhaps I shall. There's no telling. But I'd rather not. Do you know, a year ago I would have jumped at an offer. Fact is, I did lease it—the lease ran out yesterday—to a man named Watson. I don't believe a thing in this nonsense; but what I have seen during the past year has ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... were held here on Monday, there have been twenty-four deaths from starvation; and, if we can judge from appearances, before the termination of another week the number will be incredible. As to holding any more inquests, it is mere nonsense; the number of deaths is beyond counting. Nineteen out of every twenty deaths that have occurred in this parish, for the last two months, were caused by starvation. I have known children in the remote districts of the parish, and in the neighbourhood of the town, too, live, ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... devil looked in at the little window, and tried to tempt him to lead a life of idle pleasure; whereupon, having his pincers in the fire, red hot, he seized the devil by the nose, and put him to such pain, that his bellowings were heard for miles and miles. Some people are inclined to think this nonsense a part of Dunstan's madness (for his head never quite recovered the fever), but I think not. I observe that it induced the ignorant people to consider him a holy man, and that it made him very powerful. Which was exactly ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... epithet improper. "His ear for rhythm," he continues, "though less true than in his prose, is seldom wholly at fault, and whether in prose or verse, he had the superlative merit that he could never write nonsense." Bunyan's earliest prison work, entitled "Profitable Meditations," was in verse, and neither this nor his later metrical ventures before his release—his "Four Last Things," his "Ebal and Gerizim," and his "Prison Meditations"—can be said to ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... toward respectability, I eschewed coloured waistcoats and gave out that I was a marrying man. No man under forty, unless he is a positive idiot, will stand forth as a theoretical bachelor. It is all nonsense to say that there is anything unpleasant in being courted. Attention, whether from male or female, tickles the vanity; and although I have a reasonable, and, I hope, not unwholesome regard for the gratification of my other appetites, I confess ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... favourite, Clarence Hervey. As it is well known he is not a marrying man, you never can have thought of him. You are not a girl to expose yourself to the ridicule, &c., of all your female acquaintance by romance and nonsense. I cannot conceive that a niece of mine could degrade herself by a mean prepossession for a man who has never made any declaration of his attachment to her, and who, I am sure, feels no such attachment. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... know I never let you talk anything but wholesome nonsense when I drop in for a smoke with you," says the younger man. "You began very well, with that superstition of yours, but I won't have it spoiled by erudition. Tell me ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... reading of the first I me of this verse is vicious. The Bombay reading kinchidanapadi (for Kasyanchidpadi) is the correct one. The commentator explains that this has reference to alms, loans, and taxes. Both the Bengal translators have made nonsense of this and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... field-marshal's baton may brain a helpless State?—our navies because in ships pirates have "sailed the seas over?" Let us not commit the vulgarity of condemning the dance because of its possibilities of perversion by the vicious and the profligate. Let us not utter us in hot bosh and baking nonsense, but cleave to reason and the sweet ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... commonplace legs. One knows that when she has passed through certain well defined experiences in life, a certain definite range of sentiments must exist behind whatever mask of facial expression she may choose to adopt. It is sheer nonsense, therefore, for Judith to say that I cannot enter into her feelings with regard to ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... cleverest and most fortunate people on earth, and look down with pity and contempt on Europeans. According to them the business of the foreign settlers in their country is folly, and the teaching of the missionaries is nonsense. They subsist by agriculture, hunting, and fishing. Their well-kept plantations occupy the level ground and in some places extend up the hill-sides. Among the plants which they cultivate are taro, yams, sweet potatoes, bananas, various kinds of vegetables, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... stamped her shapely, well-shod foot petulantly. "Rubbish!" she exclaimed. "You don't suppose I believe that nonsense, do you?" ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... true thou say'st, Nor must thou check the flowing vein, For sprightly nonsense suits him best Whom grave reflection ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Montalvo, dropping his bantering tone. "Look, I will be frank with you. I do not want to burn anybody. I am sick of all this nonsense about religion, and for aught I care every Netherlander in Leyden may read the Bible until he grows tired. I seek to marry that Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout, and to do this I desire to prove that the man whom she ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... "Stuff and nonsense!" said Peter Schmidt. "Making dolls like that leads nowhere. You are too good to be doing it. You belong on the ramparts, in the front ranks of the battle line, my ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... think so much of beauty, that plain girls like you are most always apt to be overlooked, but my conscience would reprove me if I did not warn you. Remember my advice! Listen to no flatteries; permit no nonsense to be poured into your ears, and shun, as you would contagion, the deceitful ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... of Behmen's Mysteriun Magnum, 'I can and must say thus much (and that with as full evidence as I can say two and two make four) it is most sublime nonsense, inimitable bombast, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Are acres of orations, and so forth, The glorious nonsense that enchants young hearts With all the humdrumology of "getting parts." Our Chronicle of ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... sound as heavily as possible, but all in vain: the person who was speaking went on in the same tone; and before the landlord could get out of the room again and down the passage to the door of the next chamber, which was some way farther on, Wilton distinctly heard the words, "Nonsense, Sir George! don't attempt to cajole me! I tell you, I will have nothing to do with it. To bring in foreigners is bad enough, when we are quite strong enough to do it without: but I will take no man's blood ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... had arrived at the point when the igniting of a spark would have created a conflagration. There was to be no more chattering. They meant business, and were resolved that they would stand no more red-tape fussy nonsense from either their Government or the Government who kept a regiment of British soldiers to guard his tomb, lest he should again disturb the peace of Europe. They let it be known that no more of that kind of humbug would ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... twenty, but on precipices, banks of rivers and streams, and mountain-passes, and such wands are thrown into the rivers as the boatmen descend rapids and dangerous places. Since my baggage horse fell over an acclivity on the trail from Sarufuto, four such wands have been placed there. It is nonsense to write of the religious ideas of a people who have none, and of beliefs among people who are merely adult children. The traveller who formulates an Aino creed must "evolve it from his inner consciousness." I have taken infinite trouble to learn from themselves ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... opinion that there is nothing so impertinent, so insignificant, so senseless, and foolish as our vulgar way of discourse when mixed with oaths and curses, and I would only recommend a little consideration to our gentlemen, who have sense and wit enough, and would be ashamed to speak nonsense in other things, but value themselves upon their parts, I would but ask them to put into writing the commonplaces of their discourse, and read them over again, and examine the English, the cadence, the grammar of them; then ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... du Papillon. Yes; and you know, mamma, there was the linen-draper's with the sign A la Pensee. I never heard such ridiculous nonsense." ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... O nonsense, parson—tell me not they thrive And jubilate who follow your dictation. The good are the unhappiest lot alive— I know they are from careful observation. If freedom from the terrors of damnation ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... that I'm wiser. I like to think that Wullie's an example of the law of compensation and, by losing physical strength and beauty, has gained a beautiful soul. But for the Lord's sake don't go telling anyone I—a doctor—talked such arrant nonsense," he added with a laugh as he ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... gasping, and more than ever persuaded that Browning's poetry is a mass of inconglomerate nonsense, which nobody understands —least of all ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... about me, looking forward into a vast abyss, and losing my whole comprehension in the boundless space of creation, in dialogues with Whiston and the astronomers; the next moment I am below all trifles, grovelling with T—— in the very centre of nonsense: now I am recreated with the brisk sallies and quick turns of wit, which Mr. Steele, in his liveliest and freest humours, darts about him; and now levelling my application to the insignificant observations and quirks of grammar ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... made to that piece of nonsense he sometimes wondered afterward, but circumstances prevented his making any. The words had only just passed her lips when she sprang to her feet with a wild shriek of horror, shaking her ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... "Football. Nonsense. A boy like you doesn't play football. He hasn't had the chance. Besides, it's not his line. He plays a lone game. No. You've been moping round—crying possibly. Well, I do that myself sometimes. It's a crying business, unless you've got nerves and guts. But you've ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Seating himself by her side with all the familiarity of an old friend, and laying his arm across the back of the sofa, so that to William it looked as if thrown around her shoulders, he commenced a tirade of nonsense as meaningless as it was disagreeable. More than once, too, he managed to let fall a very pointed compliment, feeling greatly surprised to see with ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... saints, by Donatello and others, and all taking a hold upon one's sympathies, even if they be not beautiful. Classic statues escape you with their slippery beauty, as if they were made of ice. Rough and ugly things can be clutched. This is nonsense, and yet it means something. . . . . The streets were thronged and vociferative with more life and outcry than usual. It must have been market-day in Florence, for the commerce of the streets was in great vigor, narrow ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... awful awakening. You may say to me that you see no such likelihood; that Carlos Herrera had an object in fascinating Lucien and making him his double; but that I, an older man with solid principles and no love of luxury, who have lived a life of thought and toil, should fear such influence, is nonsense. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... disposition, who, addressing herself to Cadwallader, asked, by the help of the finger-alphabet, if he knew anything of the magician that made such a noise in town. The misanthrope answered, as usual, in a surly tone: "By your question you must either take me for a pimp or an idiot. What, in the name of nonsense, should I know of such a rascal, unless I were to court his acquaintance with a view to feast my own spleen, in seeing him fool the whole nation out of their money? Though, I suppose, his chief profits arise from his practice, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... yellow. As for clothing, in all warm lands the simpler folk wear little. But as for magicians, there may be magicians among them as there are among all peoples, but it is falseness and absurdity to speak of all as magicians! Nonsense and cowardice! The man who cried that goes not ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... "That's nonsense. I always in my heart, recognized a moral claim you have. Besides, the case isn't finished yet. Perhaps your father may win his contest. I'm all for settling out ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... words the "voix du sang," trusting that, even if the revelation were not formally made, "Nature would send the boy some impulse" of filial affection. It is hard to believe—but it is the fact—that, well within the present century, such ingenuous nonsense as this was gravely presented to the public of a leading theatre, by an author of keen intelligence, who, but for an unhappy accident, would now be at the zenith of his career. There are few more ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... servants and women. Tall, strong and handsome, with intelligence beyond the average, yet with nothing alarming about him, good-humoured about trifles, jealous in matters of love—perhaps that is, after all, the type women really like best. It is sheer nonsense to say that women enjoy being tyrannised over. No doubt there are some who would rather be bullied than ignored. But the hectoring man is, with few exceptions, secretly detested. In so far as one can generalise (always a dangerous thing to do) it may be said that ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... 'Nonsense!' replied her sister. 'Why shouldn't Mr Cheggs be jealous if he likes? I like that, certainly. Mr Cheggs has a good a right to be jealous as anyone else has, and perhaps he may have a better right soon if he hasn't already. You know best about ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the preservation of a mild limited monarchy. And in this they discovered the depth of their wisdom, and the warmth of their friendship to human nature.—But the first place is due to religion.——They saw clearly, that of all the nonsense and delusion which had ever passed through the mind of man, none had ever been more extravagant than the notions of absolutions, indelible characters, uninterrupted successions, and the rest of those fantastical ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... and Usher, (Anal. p. 469.) Livy himself had styled the Alexandrian library, elegantiae regum curaeque egregium opus; a liberal encomium, for which he is pertly criticized by the narrow stoicism of Seneca, (De Tranquillitate Animi, c. 9,) whose wisdom, on this occasion, deviates into nonsense.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... them. I recall the observation of Arnold of Rugby, that if we were not a very active people, our disunion from the Continent would make us nearly as bad as the Chinese. "Foreigners say," he goes on to remark, "that our insular situation cramps and narrows our minds. And this is not mere nonsense either. What is wanted is a deep knowledge of, and sympathy with, the European character and institutions, and then there would be a hope that we might each impart to the other that ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... as I said till their medicine man—sort o' priest, I suppose—stirs 'em to make another try to get the upper hand. Talks a lot o' that nonsense to 'em about fetish and Obeah, as they calls it, and shows the poor benighted chaps a bit of hanky panky work with a big snake like that we saw to-night. Makes 'em think the snake's horrid poisonous, ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... this kind, Athenaeus mentions an ode by Pindar, in which he had purposely omitted the letter S; so that this inept ingenuity appears to have been one of those literary fashions which are sometimes encouraged even by those who should first oppose such progresses into the realms of nonsense. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... proceed: while the infatuated Tories of this and other States were last spring talking of commissioners, accommodation, making the matter up, and the Lord knows what stuff and nonsense, their good king and ministry were glutting themselves with the revenge of reducing America to unconditional submission, and solacing each other with the certainty of conquering it in one campaign. The following quotations are from the parliamentary register of the debate's of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... to be frightened by this nonsense, so consigning all superstitions to their father the Devil, he marched on boldly and unlocked the summer-house door. Now, though this curious edifice had been designed for a summer-house, and for that purpose lined ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... narration, as he took her through long fairy tales, and old-fashioned giant and ghost legends, purely for his own amusement, and much reprimanded all the way by mamma, for filling the child's head with nonsense. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... my best pointers," said his friend, "but recollect, he will stand no nonsense. If you kill the birds, well and good; if not, I ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... un what could happen to 'em. Why, a hunderd things: they could be wracked and drowned, or catched and killed, or tooked and hung." Then, bursting into a laugh at Eve's face of horror, she exclaimed, "Pack o' stuff, nonsense! Don't 'ee take heed o' no fancies nor rubbish o' that sort. They'll come back safe enuf, as they've allays done afore. Nothin's ever happened to 'em yet: what should make it now? T' world ain't a-comin' to an end 'cos you'm come down fra' London town. There, get along with 'ee, do!" and she pushed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... read that famous book, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Dr. Johnson was a man who always said just what he thought, and had no patience with anything like stupidity. The expression fiddlededee, another way of telling a person that he is talking nonsense, was made by him. Irascibility, which means "tendency to be easily made cross or angry," is also one of his words, and so are the ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... fairly. Next came Jim Smith, who did not seem quite so much at home in Latin poetry as on the playground. He pronounced the Latin words in flagrant violation of all the rules of quantity, and when he came to give the English meaning, his translation was a ludicrous farrago of nonsense. Yet, poor Mr. Crabb did not dare, apparently, to characterize it ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... what was the matter with her to-day? How stupid! "The mistress is going to give me notice." Nonsense, as if he would stand that. ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... regarded him as a very great writer of English prose. Literary dilettanti envied him the refrains of his ballades. His essays, many of which were manner without matter, were thoroughly popular. What he said might be nonsense, but the way he ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... of the individual and the race to external reality." The real aim of evolution is purely external, the adjustment of man to environment; consciousness has value in so far as it promotes this adjustment. Flatly, to me, this is pure nonsense, a putting of the cart before the horse, a vulgar hysteron-proteron, none the less execrable because it is the working principle not of a single man, but of the whole of soctety to-day. Consciousness, I hold, is the supremely valuable thing, and progress, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... enraged, "what had he to do with ridiculing any Party, who had travell'd round the whole Circle of Parties and Ministers, ever since he could brandish a Pen." [3] Her Ladyship adds some further sneers on writers pensioned to amuse people with their nonsense. The other counter pamphlet consists of conversations overheard, all over the town, on the subject of Winnington and his Apology. Here a mercer and a bookseller abuse Fielding for boxing the political compass, and for selling his pen. ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... See, what square yards she's got! and how well her masts stand. How light she looks aloft—and yet everything that is required— not a block too large—and yet everything works as easy as possible. On deck, too, you'll find there's no jim-crack nonsense about her— everything is for service, and intended to last; and yet, where there is any brass or varnished wood, it's kept as bright and clean as can be. There isn't a ship on the station can come up to us in reefing or furling; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Northern Crown. 'I,' says M. Cornu, 'will not try to form any hypothesis about the cause of the outburst. To do so would be unscientific, and such speculations, though interesting, cumber science wofully.' This is sheer nonsense, and comes very ill from an observer whose successes in science have been due entirely to the employment of methods of observation which would have had no existence had others been as unready to think out the meaning of observed facts as he appears ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Mannheim, who was amusing himself with his own paradoxes, and from one sally to another had reached extravagant quips and cranks, at which he was laughing immensely, was not accustomed to being taken seriously: he was delighted with the trouble that Christophe was taking to discuss his nonsense, and even to understand it: and while he laughed, he was grateful for the importance which Christophe gave him: he ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... drive down that quiet road towards the Mill, Mary; and don't allow Master Harry to irritate Tim with a whip, or any nonsense of that sort. Do you hear?' he continued, turning round to that young gentleman, who, seated in baby's chair, was pretending to be a motor. 'Promise that you ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... and at the sound of his voice Tom and Ned smiled. "Nonsense! Of course I can go in! Why, bless my watch fob, I must go in! I've got the greatest proposition to lay before Tom Swift that he ever heard of! There's at least a million in it! Let ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... digests these rules will be a treasure at any dinner party. The awful silence which prevails on the removal of the tablecloth—and an awful silence it surely is—will be dispelled. No ordinary man thinks of speaking, except in monosyllables, till he gets a little "elevated," and then he speaks nonsense as a matter of course. You must keep sober—for people will occasionally get "mellow," even in good society—and this you will easily manage to do by thinking of the immense superiority you will thus secure on joining the ladies in the drawing-room. You will be able ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... almost as the sun set I anchored near the said cape to ascertain if it contained gold. For the people I had taken from the island of San Salvador told me that here they wore very large rings of gold on their arms and legs. I really believed that all they said was nonsense, invented that they might escape. My desire was not to pass any island without taking possession, so that, one having been taken, the same may be said of all. I anchored, and remained until to-day, Tuesday, when I went to the shore ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... always reinstated in their kingdom, inane paper puppets bespangled with impossible sentiment, tinsel and rags which are driven about like chaff by the wind-puffs of romance. The advent of the Amadises is the coming of the Kingdom of Nonsense, the sign that the last days of chivalric romance have come; a little more, and the Licentiate Alonzo Perez will take his seat in Don Quixote's library, and Nicholas the Barber light ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... had not been a strong child. They kept the secret from my relatives because they knew they would dislike to hear it and would not believe, and also would dislike me as a queer, abnormal creature. Angus had fears of what they might do with doctors and severe efforts to obliterate from my mind my "nonsense," as they would have been sure to call it. The two wise souls had shielded me on ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "'Poh, nonsense!' said Henry. Her brother's name was Henry. 'The bridge is strong enough for a four-ox team. I have been over it a dozen times.' So he drove on. His sister looked very much terrified when they came upon the bridge, but ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... his face. "How simple you are: who believes a woman promising nonsense, impossibilities? Friendship, foolish boy, who ever built that temple on red ashes? Nay Gerardo," she added gloomily, "between thee and me it must be love ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... all my jokes and nonsense," said the unscrupulous Sarah. "But your ma wouldn't like to know I've said such a thing. And Master Robert wouldn't be so mean as to tell tales, would ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... why I stand and talk this nonsense now, With Guesclin getting ready to play chess, And Clisson doing something with his sword, I can't see what, talking to Guesclin though, I don't know what about, perhaps of you. But, cousin Peter, while I stroke your beard, Let ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... grandeur or nobility save in their King and his Court, all the rest of the world being rubbish. It seemed to him (and indeed it is true) that in Italy there was another kind of excellence, culture, and beauty; and one day, being weary of their nonsense, and chancing to be a little merry, he let slip the opinion that a flask of Trebbiano and a berlingozzo[18] were worth all the Kings and Queens that had ever reigned in those regions. And if the matter ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... eyes that seemed to change color, and a good-sized delicious mouth, with teeth as white as milk. A man could not see her nose for her eyes and mouth; her own sex could and would have told us some nonsense about it. She wore an unpretending grayish dress buttoned to the throat with lozenge-shaped buttons, and a Scottish shawl that agreeably evaded color. She was like a duck, so tight her plain feathers fitted her, and there she sat, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... me view what noxious Nonsense reigns, While yet I loiter on Prosaic Plains; If Pens impartial active Annals trace, Others, with secret Histr'y, Truth deface: Views and Reviews, and wild Memoirs appear, And Slander darkens ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... me, above all other men, that it is dangerous to cross Miss Holt's path," he said. "Almost any young man will flirt with a pretty girl when he finds her so very willing. She understood that it was only a flirtation; but when I met your little friend Dorothy, of course all that nonsense with Nadine ceased." ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... and it seemed to him sometimes as if it had left a taint. There was an old "Garden of the Soul" that she liked to keep by her, though she always protested with an appearance of scorn that it was nothing but nonsense. Still, Oliver would have preferred that she had burned it: superstition was a desperate thing for retaining life, and, as the brain weakened, might conceivably reassert itself. Christianity was both wild and dull, he told himself, ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... God strengthens the intellectual vision, and assists in the detection of error wherever it may reveal itself. Had Pearson enjoyed the same clear views of gospel truth as the Reformer of Geneva, he would not have wasted so many precious years in writing a learned vindication of the nonsense attributed to Ignatius. Calvin knew that an apostolic man must have been acquainted with apostolic doctrine, and he saw that these letters must have been the productions of an age when the pure light of Christianity was greatly obscured. Hence he denounced them so ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Jameson had gotten up the centennial. It was very warm in the kitchen, too, for Mrs. Jameson had herself started the hearth fire in order to exemplify to the utmost the old custom. The kettles on the crane were all steaming. Flora Clark said it was nonsense to have a hearth-fire on such a hot day because our grandmothers were obliged to, but she was in the minority. Most of the ladies were inclined to follow Mrs. Jameson's lead unquestionably on that occasion. They even exclaimed ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... go out and dig a little sassafras root to please him," thought Uncle Wiggily to himself, "and then I'll come back and stay in bed as long as I please. It's all nonsense thinking I have to have fresh root—the ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... 'it'll show him what we can do. He thinks it nonsense, because he doesn't know how hard we mean to work, and how steadily we'll keep on at it. It'll be such fun when he sees we can do a great deal more than ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... confessed his sins, and admonished the others to do the same before the Holy Virgin, that they might obtain the mercy of God, and as he raised the crucifix to bless the people a woman called to him to be silent, that the Mother of God would not listen to such nonsense. He began to undress himself in the pulpit, to show how emaciated he was by labor and sleepless nights. A Carmelite monk then sprang upon the lunatic, compelled him to descend the steps, and dragged him, with the assistance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... know well it's not true. There was once a woman in Stromness, I will allow, who used to sell favourable winds to the sailors. But though there is still a most lamentable amount of superstition in the Orkney folk—belief in witches and warlocks and such nonsense—it's ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... song is said to be between 'two nymphs, each answering other line for line'; but the simple alternation adopted by Spenser makes nonsense of the present poem. The above arrangement seems to distribute the lines best; viz. the first quatrain to Phillis, with interposition of lines 2 and 4 by Amaryllis, the second quatrain to Amaryllis, with interposition of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... to me when we parted, 'I believe I love you a little. But that cannot last. Dog and wolf do not keep house together long. Perhaps, if you adopted the gipsy law, I would like to become your wife. But it is nonsense; it is impossible. Think no more of Carmencita, or she will bring you to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... for flirtations, let them pass: a lovely girl does not grow up without one or two whispering some nonsense into her ear. Why, I myself should have flirted no doubt; but I never had the time. Bonaparte gives you time to eat and drink, but not to sleep or flirt, and that reminds me I have fifty miles to ride, so ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
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