"Digress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... digress a moment to draw attention to the three simple diagrams of Fig. 109. The object, O, in each case is assumed to be to the right of the lens. In the topmost diagram the object is so far away from the lens that ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... some of these associations come into consciousness ahead of time, it is often wise to digress from the question in hand long enough to jot them down. By all means preserve them, for if you do not write them down they may leave you and be lost. Sometimes very brilliant ideas come in flashes, and inasmuch as they are so fleeting, it is wise to ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... I digress again, I see, but my drift I hope is clear. Differ as we may, Belloc and Chesterton are with all Socialists in being on the same side of the great political and social cleavage that opens at the present time. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... fared in my love-affair with Brigitta, the girl that gave me the cuff and had such strange eyes. But I fear now that I am too deeply embarked upon the love-affairs of another to have the leisure to digress into my own adventures. The world is more interested in love's tragedies than in the comedies of love, wherein I have ever played my part, and so I will go back to my Dante and his sad affairs, and leave my little love-tale ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... young moon or the evening star, which hung over us like smiles of heaven; nor were they the fountains, the woods, and the rivers, near which our kindred, the flesh of our flesh, and the bone of our bone, SLEEP! But I digress. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... Milton, tho' upon his secred Subject, comes very near the same thing too; but we must not laugh at silly Sancho, nor put on a Devils face to fright him, but we must be disciplin'd; nay, more, Presented for it. Here, tho' I digress a little, I cannot forbear telling some, that were too busie in doing that Office, that 'tis more easie to accuse our Writings for Blasphemous, than to prove them to be so. To detect us indeed fairly, and prove it upon us, would deserve severe Chastisement; ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... did, and we found it excellent. By the bye, Lord A., to digress to a different latitude, how did you succeed in your last excursion to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... digress. It is a reprehensible habit. It is much better, as a rule, to die game than it is to digress, though on the present occasion there is no reason why I should do either. By the way, if a man has to choose between ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... It yields no fruit, and an unprofitable cow, Yielding no milk, is slaughtered, and the idle drone, Gathering no honey, is contemned; So ungrateful children, that Will yield no natural obedience, must be Cut off, as unfit to bear the name [of] Christians, Whose lives digress both from reason and humanity. But as thou hast dealt unnaturally with me, So I resolve to pull my heart from thee. Therefore, dread prince, vouchsafe to pity me, And grant I may ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... indeed overtaken the camp. But now I must digress a moment to tell you something that the public—at least the public that has derived its knowledge of northern wilderness life from fiction—may find it hard to believe. And this is what I want to say: that every one in that whole brigade of wild men ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... of fossil animals is no less fertile in results. I should digress from my subject if I were to examine here how the organization of animals is developed upon the earth; what modifications, or more strictly speaking, what complications it has undergone after each cataclysm, or if I even stopped to describe one of those ancient epochs during ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... digress. The few of my age will remember, and the many younger will have been told, that at this time the Italian queen-mother was the ruling power in France. It was Catharine de' Medici's first object to maintain her influence over Charles ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... established as the best known for such diseases; notwithstanding their failures and the great mortality under such a system of treatment. They have not felt justified to go beyond the rules of symptomatology as adopted by their schools, with diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. Should they digress from the rules of the etiquette of their alma maters they would lose the brotherly love and support of the medical association to which they belong, under the belief that, "A bad name is as bad ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... digress a moment to make a single remark on a subject of which popular feeling, in America, under the influence of popular habits, is apt to take an exparte view. Accomplishments are derided as useless, in comparison with what is considered household virtues. The ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... piece—that is to say, not of Balzac's competence in the matter but of the artistic value of his introduction of it. Perhaps his enthusiasm does a little run away with him; perhaps he gives us a little too much of it, and avails himself too freely of the license, at least of the temptation, to digress which the introduction of such persons as Elie Magus affords. And it is also open to any one to say that the climax, or what is in effect the climax, is introduced somewhat too soon; that the struggle, first over the body and then over the property of Patroclus-Pons, is inordinately spun out, and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... digress: of all appeals,—although I grant the power of pathos, and of gold, Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no Method 's more sure at moments to take hold Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow More tender, as we every day behold, Than that all-softening, overpowering knell, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... ejaculated their assent; but Gershom was a man who could not express anything sententiously. As the bee-hunter led the way toward his cabin, or shanty, he made his comments with his customary freedom. Before recording what he communicated, however, we shall digress for one moment in order to say a word ourselves concerning this term "shanty." It is now in general use throughout the whole of the United States, meaning a cabin that has been constructed in haste, and for temporary purposes. By a license of speech, it is occasionally applied ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... border at the Limerick Junction, a distance of 20 miles from the Treaty Stone. Splendid views of the Galtee ranges can be had, and on towards Clonmel the wooded slopes of the minor ranges and hills are a delightful picture. If time affords, the tourist can digress from the main road and visit the famous Glen of Aherlow. Back to Tipperary for lunch, good hotels, and splendid roads. Visit the Kickham monument, and then on to Clonmel. Excellent accommodation to be had at Clonmel. Next day ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... digress—the particular thing I wish to explain is that one day at recess the best scholar was in tears, and I went to her and asked what was the matter, and she told me that some of the big girls had openly declared that she—my fine, freckled girl, the check-aproned, ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Each sentence, stuffed with innumerable clauses of restriction, and other parenthetical circumstances, becomes a separate section—an independent whole. But, without insisting on Lord Brougham's oversights, or errors of defect, I will digress a moment to one positive caution of his, which will measure the value of his philosophy on this subject. He lays it down for a rule of indefinite application, that the Saxon part of our English idiom is to be favored ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... is how a bird would do it, if some High Pope of Birds lived in Rome and needed visiting, as, for instance, the Great Auk; or if some old primal relic sacred to birds was connected therewith, as, for instance, the bones of the Dodo.... But I digress. The point is that the straight line takes one over the Brienzer Grat, over the lake, and then over the Wetterhorn. That was manifestly impossible. But whatever of it was possible had to be done, and among ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... I suppose to be upon Thorns at this and the like impertinent Digressions, but let him alone and he'll come to himself; at which time I think fit to acquaint him, that when I digress, I am at that time writing to please my self, when I continue the Thread of the Story, I write to please him; supposing him a reasonable Man, I conclude him satisfied to allow me this liberty, and so ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... 30th.—Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN, returning to the Exchequer after an interval of thirteen years, made a much better Budget speech than one would have expected. It was longer, perhaps, than was absolutely necessary. Like the late Mr. GLADSTONE, he has a tendency to digress into financial backwaters instead of sticking to the main Pactolian stream. His excursus upon the impracticability of a levy on capital was really redundant, though it pleased the millionaires and reconciled them to the screwing-up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... from Coleridge is as follows: "The feeling of gratitude which I cherish towards these men has caused me to digress further than I had foreseen or proposed; but to have passed them over in an historical sketch of my literary life and opinions, would have seemed like the denial of a debt, the concealment of a boon; for the writings of ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... struggle to be a natural boy by a mother who had been a "perfect little lady" in her girlhood and who was moulding her son in the forms that fashioned her. If it were the purpose of this tale to deal in philosophy, it would be easy to digress and show that Mealy Jones was a study in heredity; that from his mother's side of the house he inherited wide, white, starched collars, and from his father's side, a burning desire to spit through his teeth. But this is only a simple tale, with no great ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... what the boy lost through the folly of his mother was redeemed by the wisdom of his father. Truly are our mothers our best friends and worst enemies. Why, when I was but a child my mother gave me money and bade me go prove—but I digress. Well, thus my brother grew up not ignorant of the things a man should know if he is to be a man and not a babu, but the woman, his mother, wept sore whenever he was taken from her, and gave my father trouble and annoyance as women ever do. And when, at last, she begged that the boy might ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... their method, in their simplicity. They have scarcely changed since the days when Solomon built his Temple and draped it with such gorgeous hangings that even the inspired writers digress to emphasise their richness with long descriptions that could not possibly have assisted the cause of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... you. He knows what will sell, and we don't. Make a good, popular book, and get as much money as you can. By-and-by, when you've got a name, you can afford to digress, and have philosophical and metaphysical people in your novels," said Amy, who took a strictly practical ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... gradual, graduate, degrade, digress, Congress, aggressive, progressive, degree; (2) gradation, Centigrade, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the centre, found nothing on a road where its advanced guard itself had to subsist entirely on the leavings of the Russians; it could not digress from its direction, for want of time, in so rapid a march. Besides, the columns on the right and left consumed every thing on either side of it. In order to live better, it ought to have set out later every day, halted ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... "By the way, I digress a little to inform you how I got my segars on shore. When we first went ashore I filled my pockets and hat as full as I could and left the rest in the top of my trunk intending to come and get them immediately. I came back and took another pocket load and left about eight or nine ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... my intention to write the political history of Michelangelo's period, I need not digress here upon the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII., which caused the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, and the establishment of a liberal government under the leadership of Savonarola. Michelangelo appears to have anticipated the catastrophe which was about to overwhelm ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... to digress a little to give you the history of the name. Every effect has a cause you know, and after I got old enough to reason things out, I wondered too why my name was Gullins, so I did some investigating and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... was the first word which I ever heard Thee speak to me, and it made me greatly afraid. But as I shall speak hereafter [5] of this way of hearing, and of other matters, I say nothing here; for to do so would be to digress from my subject, and I have already made digressions enough. I scarcely know what I have said, nor can it be otherwise; but you, my father, must bear with these interruptions; for when I consider what God must have ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... hints that it has gained the greater number of victories; each is inclined in its heart to believe that the other one has actually done so—because, as I suppose, the agony of defeat leaves a more lasting impression than the joy of victory. But I digress. We have not even got to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... To digress a moment: When it comes to the arts, that is quite another matter. If a woman finds herself with a talent (I refrain from such a big word as genius, as only posterity should presume to apply that term to any one's differentiation from ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... I digress here in order to give an account of the intimate processes, which, according to my view, take place within the germ-plasm, and which I have called "GERMINAL SELECTION." These processes are of importance since they form the roots of variation, which in its turn is the root of natural ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... point I will digress for the moment to relate an incident of the Federal march, to show the brutal cowardice and baseness of the Federals in making war upon the non-combatants—women and children—and also the unyielding spirit and ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... that I could digress out of this world altogether! Would that I could digress to a planet where they have no arithmetic! Where a man could be a man, not a figure in an addition sum, a unit in an average, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... continued the vicar, completing his period, as if rounding a sentence in one of his sermons, wherein he was frequently prone to digress, "and I'm glad to learn from your acquiescent reply that you agree with me ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... discernible until the early part of September when he was again left alone. And now, indeed, there is evidence that he was incommoded again, and that more pressingly. To this matter I will return in a moment, but I digress to put in a document which, rightly or wrongly, I believe to have a bearing on the thread of ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... digress. N.J.F. was incapable of sound judgment, not because he did not know the facts, but because, instead of reasoning logically to his conclusion, in accordance with the facts, he was entirely governed by his rather erratic feelings. In other words, he could not reason well from ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... me digress. I live, and have for many years lived, in Derbyshire, a county more celebrated for its caves than any other county in England. I have been through them all, and am familiar with every turn of them; as ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... hide the transgressor; and the tears, the sighs, the blood—aye, the blood—of that solitary cavern are all known to Him, are all put down by the recording angel in the archives of heaven. But we digress. ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... To digress no more. Although I was far from being even commonly virtuous, which is about tantamount to absolute wickedness, I was no longer the thoughtless mortal I had ever been since I left school. The society of Emily, and her image graven on my heart; the close confinement ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon announced the Fourth of July, at daylight, to all who were awake. But many of us got our information at a later hour, from the almanac. All the flags were sent aloft except half a dozen that were needed to decorate portions of the ship below, and in a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... digress no further from the consideration of the Phaenomena, more immediately explicable by this Experiment, we shall proceed to shew, That, as to the rising of Water in a Filtre, the reason of it will be manifest to him, that does take notice, that a Filtre is constituted of a great ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... peregrinations I turn down any green lane or dark alley that may excite my admiration or my curiosity—hurry through glittering saloons or crowded streets—pause at the cottage door or shop window, as it best suits my humour, so, in my intercourse with you, I shall digress, speculate, compress, and dilate, as my fancy or my convenience wills it. This is a blunt acknowledgment of my intentions; but as travellers are never sociable till they have cast aside the formalities of compliment, I wished to start with you at the first stage as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... to digress here just a little bit by quoting one thing that Mr. Best said. I wish, by the way, that we could incorporate some of his homey philosophy into some of our minutes so as to really benefit by some of his remarks. I was impressed ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... here digress for a moment, in the hope that I may be permitted to make mention of my own works, without incurring the charge of undue egotism. Let me, however, by way of apology for calling public attention to the series of forty small Water-Color Drawings, (painted ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... was backed by a Genoese, who had come in the double capacity of interpreter and boon companion. That the reader may the better understand the character he has to deal with, however, it may be necessary to digress, by giving a short account of the history, appearance, and peculiarities ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... do not admit that good faith in taking a negro to Kansas to be held in slavery is a probability with any man. Any man who has sense enough to be the controller of his own property has too much sense to misunderstand the outrageous character of the whole Nebraska business. But I digress. In my opposition to the admission of Kansas I shall have some company, but we may be beaten. If we are, I shall not on that account attempt to dissolve the Union. I think it probable, however, we shall be beaten. Standing as a unit among yourselves, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Stevenson wrote to Mrs. Chalmers, 'I wonder if even you know what it means to a man like me—a man fairly critical, a man of the world—to meet one who represents the essential, and who is so free from the formal, from the grimace.' But I digress. As Stevenson says, Mr. Chalmers is away up the Fly River, a desperate venture! But he is boisterously happy about it, and at sunset on this Easter Sunday evening they anchor off a populous settlement just round a ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... left the road. And he must get back to the road. By this digression he has wasted just as much time as it has taken to come from the direct road to this point added to the time it will take to go back. Do not digress; tell one story at a time; let no incident into your story which cannot answer the question, "Why are you here?" by "I help;" keep your eye on the main incident; things which do not unquestionably contribute something to the main incident ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Sir, to digress a moment from the subject, to give the result of an experiment which seems interesting. Bees, I say, are not charged with the care of transporting into cells, the eggs misplaced by the queen: and, judging by the single instance I have related, you will think me ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... rope you throw out from the stem to the little man in the boat who comes to moor you along the west gully in the Ramsgate Harbour; so is Longnose, the name of a buoy, and of a reef of rocks just north of the North Foreland; so are a great many other words. But I digress. I only put in these words to show you in case you had any dissolving doubts remaining upon the matter, that the kind of stuff you read is very often all nonsense, and that you must not take things for granted merely because they are printed. I have watched you doing it from ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... him up still acted upon his imagination. Brooding on these things he may have come to us perhaps only to see whether here he could sacrifice all or only "two roubles," and in the monastery he met this elder. I must digress to explain what an "elder" is in Russian monasteries, and I am sorry that I do not feel very competent to do so. I will try, however, to give a superficial account of it in a few words. Authorities on the subject ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... is not foreign to the Matter in hand, the Reader will, I hope, pardon me if I digress a little, to shew why we cannot reasonably expect Prophets now. And it seems to me, that there are several Reasons to be given why there should be Prophets during the time of the Mosaical Dispensation, rather than after ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... it will help many readers if I digress a brief moment about the nature and validity of alternative paradigms. Not too many decades ago, scientists thought that reality was a singular, real, perpetual—that Natural Law existed much as a tree or a rock existed. In physics, for example, the mechanics of Newton were considered ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... I may digress, there is one badge of honour in our country, which I never contemplate without serious reflection rising in my mind. It is the bloody hand in the dexter chief of a baronet,—now often worn, I grant, by those who, perhaps, during their whole lives have never raised ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... I will venture to transgress and digress anew, and mention here a kind of melodic malady, a singular obsession to which I am subject, and which I will call unconscious ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... verses 12-14 that is not given by the Greek we get these eight lines in approximately Jeremiah's favourite Qinah-measure. The Greek also lacks verses 16-20, which irrelevantly digress from the exiles to the guilt and doom of the Jews in Jerusalem, and which it is difficult to think that Jeremiah would have put into a letter to be carried by two of these same Jews.(503) Verse 15 goes with 21-23,(504) a separate message to the exiles ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... restraint of ours hath one only exception, which is admirable; preserving the good which cometh by communicating with strangers, and avoiding the hurt: and I will now open it to you. And here I shall seem a little to digress, but you will by-and-by find it pertinent. Ye shall understand, my dear friends, that amongst the excellent acts of that king, one above all hath the pre-eminence. It was the erection and institution of an order, or ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... however, seemed to be in great agitation-of spirits; and Vivian was convinced that his mind must be interested in an extraordinary manner, because he did not, as was his usual practice, digress to fifty impertinent episodes before he came to the point. He only blew his nose sundry times; and then at once said, "I wish to speak to you, Mr. Vivian, about the proposal you did me the honour to make ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... public marks and magnifies a great man's foibles, but forgets both the little fellow and his faults. Jeanjean may hide from the battle in a hollow log, and none hear of it; but let a Demosthenes lose his shield and the world cackles over it for two-and-twenty centuries. To digress for a moment, I believe the story of Demosthenes' cowardice as damnable a lie as that relating to Col. Ingersoll's surrender. Even in his day human vermin sought to wreck with falsehood those they feared. The world—unwisely I think—interests itself in the personality of a genius, and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... if I digress at this time to state that the party of one hundred and sixty-nine, both stern and opposite, besieged my castle on the next day but one, with the punctuality of locusts, and despite all of my precautions, all of ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... I must digress here a bit from my own personal adventures to explain briefly how the fall of Nu-Yok came about, as I learned ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... to digress from his proper theme: e.g. xxxix. 48, 6, 'cuius belli et causas et ordinem si expromere velim, immemor sim propositi, quo statui non ultra attingere externa, nisi ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... the experiences and achievements of this gallant troop of horse. It is not the intention of the present chronicler to digress. Suffice to say, the expedition moved sturdily westward and northward for five or six days without encountering a single Indian. Then they were ordered to return home. There were two casualties. One man was accidentally ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... rule of directness to the introduction of new characters in the scenes that follow. There is one main theme, one main line of development, in every well constructed story—and only one. See to it that you do not digress from it except as you bring up from the rear other essential parts of the action. There is absolutely no place in ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... made apart. Content quietly motioned for him to follow, leading the way into an inner apartment of the house. As a new direction was given by this interruption, to the thoughts of the spectators of the foregoing scene, we shall also take the opportunity to digress, in order to lay before the reader some general facts that may be necessary to the connexion of the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... felt fairly certain that he would not approve, and I do not wish to lay myself open to rebuffs from him after his behaviour concerning the smoking incident. I boil with rage at the thought, but again I digress. ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... apparently digress for the moment and bring all clear and straight. The emotions have no basis in reason. We smile or are sad at the manifestation of jealousy in another. We smile or are sad because of the unreasonableness ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... never weary of reading of these good, heroic, virtuous old times in Italy, and that I am here tempted to digress into declamation about them. There is no study more curious and interesting, and I am fond of tracing the two elements of character visible in Italian society, and every individual Italian, as they flow down from the remotest times to these: the one element, that capacity for ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... this letter. For as to what actually occurred on the day of your start, it supplied me with absoutely no subject for writing. But as when we are together we are never at a loss for something to say, so ought our letters at times to digress into loose chat. Well then, to begin, the liberty of the Tenedians has received short shrift, no one speaking for them except myself, Bibulus, Calidius, and Favonius. A complimentary reference to you was made by the legates from Magnesia and Sipylum, they saying ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... do our readers a greater favor than to digress from the study of the detached lever escapement long enough to say a few words about drawing instruments and tablets or surfaces on which to delineate, with due precision, mechanical designs or drawings. Ordinary drawing instruments, even of the higher grades, and costing a good deal of money, ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... is best explained by a sketch. Captain Keppell, who was always the life and soul of every thing, whether it was a fight or a pic nic, was unanimously elected caterer, and in that capacity he was most brilliant. I must digress a little to bestow upon that officer the meed of universal opinion; for his kindness, mirth, and goodness of heart, have rendered him a favourite wherever he has been known, not only a favourite with ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... a mere ceremony, and a breach Of nothing, but a form of speech; And goes for no more when 'tis took, Than mere saluting of the book. 210 Suppose the Scriptures are of force, They're but commissions of course, And Saints have freedom to digress, And vary from 'em, as they please; Or mis-interpret them, by private 215 Instructions, to all aims they drive at. Then why should we ourselves abridge And curtail our own privilege? Quakers (that, like to lanthorns, bear Their light within 'em) will not swear ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... here digress from the main point of this chapter long enough to explain that equality is not synonymous with identity, as seems to be the impression among the many; a misconception which we regret to say is shared ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... spirit, challenged me to fight. Knowing the nature of his married life, I thought the dash and loyalty he showed delightful. "Do not be afraid," says he; "if I am killed, there is nobody to miss me." It appears you subsequently thought of that yourself. But I digress. I explained to him it was impossible that I could fight! "Not if I strike you?" says he. Very droll; I wish I could have put it in my book. However, I was conquered, took the young gentleman to my high favour, and tore up my bits of ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in England, I find that one of the worst hours of my life was associated with the singular and seemingly inconsequent adventure of the fiery hand. I shall deal with it in this place, begging you to bear with me if I seem to digress. ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... to the most tragical convenience? Again, many things may be told, which cannot be showed: if they know the difference betwixt reporting and representing. As for example, I may speak, though I am here, of Peru, and in speech digress from that to the description of Calicut; but in action I cannot represent it without Pacolet's horse. And so was the manner the ancients took by some "Nuntius," {85} to recount things done in former ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... digress to allude to the fete which we held in our park in honor of three quite eminent artists, who have recently arrived in the spirit world and taken up their abode ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... their ocelli in an exactly intermediate condition. So that here we have two bodies of sterile workers in the same nest, differing not only in size, but in their organs of vision, yet connected by some few members in an intermediate condition. I may digress by adding, that if the smaller workers had been the most useful to the community, and those males and females had been continually selected, which produced more and more of the smaller workers, until all the workers ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... reflect upon it, and it may even be that, in spite of all, I culled some grain of comfort from the reflection. But let that be. My narrative would drag wearily were I to digress that I might tell you at length the ugly course of my thoughts whilst the sands of my last hour were running swiftly out. For, after all, my concern and yours is with the story of Lazzaro Biancomonte, sometime known as Boccadoro the Fool, and not ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... nature, but also as regards the quaint, droll, and humorous varieties of character, concur in rendering their conversation most delightful. I look back on these walks as among the brightest points in my existence. I have been led to digress on this subject. Although more correctly belonging to my father's life, yet it is so amalgamated with my own that it almost forms part of it, and it is difficult for me to separate the one ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... digress here for a minute to speak of a little incident connected with this disastrous feature of the day that has always impressed me as a pathetic instance of the patriotism and unselfish devotion to the cause that was by no means uncommon among the rank ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... To digress for a moment, it is a peculiar coincidence that McKinley made his great reputation, in part, by nominating Mr. Sherman as a candidate for the Presidency in the Minneapolis convention of 1892. Like General Garfield in 1880, Mr. McKinley was perfectly willing to receive the nomination ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... do is to brace up the weak spots in us; to cultivate the strong ones; to teach us to avoid inimical environments; and to constantly remind us of the penalties we pay whenever we digress. ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... at an address in Park Lane, where the butler would pay him his exact fare. This done, he sought the telegraph office and sent three more cablegrams, the concise wording of which he had carefully evolved on the way up from Southampton. These do not come into the story,—which may digress, however, so far as to tell that on receipt of one of them, the Vice-President of the Hands Across Central New York Office remarked to his secretary 'that the old warrior was losing no time. Leisure ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of place to digress a moment to illustrate the moral effect of such a convulsion. Several weeks after this great mine explosion, the 18th Army Corps, to which I then belonged, was holding a line of works recently captured from the rebels, about six miles from Richmond, when one ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... Will she in any way—selfish or otherwise—be the gainer for her annoyance? Furthermore, if it were the custom to eat sugar on baked beans, as it is the custom to put sugar in coffee, this woman would not have been annoyed at all. It was simply the fact of seeing Mrs. Smith digress from the ordinary course of life that ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... I will digress here to explain our after-dinner games. There were several, but the best were what Laura and I invented: one was called "Styles," another "Clumps"—better known as "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral"—a third, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... is, that it has found its appointed place and level, and will abide there.—But to digress, when do you expect ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... be pardoned, he is willing to hope, by the kind reader, if he digress in one or two paragraphs in this part of his work, purposely to expose the great wickedness of prognostication and fortune-telling; as the whole is not only unsound, foolish, absurd and false, but is most peremptorily forbidden ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... to digress here for the purpose of considering how the generators of an acetylene apparatus themselves should be protected from frost; but it may be said at the outset that it is impossible to lay down any fixed ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... the muses, he went so far as to cultivate poetry; he even printed his poems, and were we possessed of a copy, (which we are not, nor probably is the Vatican,) it would give us pleasure at this point to digress for a moment, and to cut them up, purely on considerations of respect to the author's memory. It is hardly to be supposed that they did not really merit castigation; and we should best show the sincerity of our respect for Mr. Lamb, senior, in all those cases where we could ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... digress to relate an episode which has only collateral interest Hosuseri and Hohodemi made fishing and hunting, respectively, their avocations. But Hohodemi conceived a fancy to exchange pursuits, and importuned Hosuseri to agree. When, however, the former tried his luck at angling, he not only failed ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... In the Liturgy it is prayed that "magistrates may indifferently minister justice." Indifferently originally meant impartially. The word extravagant, in its primitive signification, only signified to digress from the subject. The Decretals, or those letters from the popes deciding on points of ecclesiastical discipline, were at length incorporated with the canon law, and were called extravagant by wandering out of the body ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a pretty good view of the interminable procession of the carriages before mentioned: one current of them, as it were, moving forward, and another rolling backward. But, hark!—the notes of a harp are heard to the left ... in a meadow, where the foot passengers often digress from the more formal tree-lined promenade. A press of ladies and gentlemen is quickly seen. You mingle involuntarily with them: and, looking forward, you observe a small stage erected, upon which a harper sits and two singers stand. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... us get out into the woods and lanes, and we will manage to enjoy ourselves there. We can contrive to digress here and there together without being missed. But I think we are judging rather hastily from what we saw this evening even about this family; and we have no right to suppose that all ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... order being equally admitted to the benefit of those funerary and obsequial festivals with the aged rectors and professed fathers. This is the surest ordinary means whereby from God he may obtain forgiveness. Ho, ho, I am quite mistaken; I digress from the purpose, and fly out of my discourse, as if my spirits were a-wool-gathering. The devil take me, if I go thither! Virtue God! The chamber is already full of devils. O what a swinging, thwacking noise is now amongst them! O the terrible coil ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... But we must not digress from our author. Here are a few lines of the deepest feeling and truth, and most appropriate in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... (Individual) that I am tempted to leave you by the side of the stream, to swim it if you can, to drown if you can't, or to go back home and be eaten out with your desire for the ulterior shore, while I digress upon that word Pontifex, which, note you, is not only a name over a shop as "Henry Pontifex, Italian Warehouseman," or "Pontifex Brothers, Barbers," but a true key-word breeding ideas and making one consider the greatness of man, or rather the ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... upon the subject, we have no hesitation in saying that the cause generally assigned is the true one, viz., that the soil is exhausted, worn out, and therefore cannot produce tobacco, or any thing else of consequence. And here let me encroach upon established rules and digress for a few moments, leaving tobacco, to give my reader a little advice to aid him should he ever visit the "Old Dominion." In the first place, if you stop at any point along the shore, and especially should you reach Hampton, never speak of "crabs." If ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Joint Supply and Joint Demand. Here, however, we are beginning to digress. Let us sum up in a general form our conclusions as to the way in which changes in the supply or demand of a commodity react upon the demand or supply of the other things with which it is jointly demanded or supplied. Everything turns, as we have seen, on the possibility of ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... in the first cloisters" if he tried to read all the books of the world. But it is strange so few read those eight or nine volumes, so beautifully printed, which are Pater's legacy to us. How they would be repaid by the delicate dexterity of his art, the wonderful music of his style! But I digress. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... to digress into more minute particulars, may suffice to convey a general idea of the manner in which our churches were internally decorated, and how they were fitted up, with reference to the ceremonial rites of the church of Rome, in and before the year 1535. The walls were covered with fresco ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... peculiar excellences are fairly manifested. The obvious quality of its realism has been pointed out already; the masterly use of the principles of suspense and stimulated interest will hardly pass unnoticed. A negative excellence is the absence of that discursiveness in composition, that tendency to digress into superfluous comment, which is this author's one prevailing fault. De Quincey was gifted with a fine appreciation of harmonious sound, and in those passages where his spirit soars highest not the least of their beauties is found in the melodiousness ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... my good lord, your lordship seeth I have made a long digression from my answer, but I trust your lordship can consider what moveth me thus to digress: Surely it behoveth me not only to live uprightly, but to avoid all probable arguments that may be gathered to render me suspected to her majesty, whom I serve with all dutifulness and sincerity; and therefore I gather this, that if it were understood that there ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Only one native tribe and one native chief stand out from the confused tangle of petty raids and forays which makes up (after the expulsion of the Matabili) the earlier annals of the Boer communities. This chief was the famous Moshesh, to speak of whose career I may digress for a moment from the thread of this narrative. The Kafir races have produced within this century three really remarkable men—men who, like Toussaint l'Ouverture in Hayti, and Kamehameha I. in Hawaii, will go down in history as instances of ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Here I shall digress long enough to point out by way of contrast the true form of divine government. Every one is familiar with the theocratic government of Israel under the Old Testament dispensation. God ruled. He who carefully ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... more than two hundred horse, but most authors say with a body of two thousand cavalry. But, as this man was by far the greatest king of his age, and rendered most essential service to the Romans, it seems worth while to digress a little, to give a full account of the great vicissitudes of fortune he experienced in the loss and recovery of his father's kingdom. While he was serving in Spain in the cause of the Carthaginians, his father, named Gala, died. The kingdom, according to the custom of the Numidians, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... the Mogul sits in public daily to entertain strangers, to receive petitions and presents, to issue commands, and to see and be seen. Before proceeding to give an account of my reception, it may be proper to digress a little, that I may give some account of the customs of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... a little digress from the chronological course of my explanatory narrative to inform the reader that when Lady Ellinor had her interview with Roland, she had been repelled by the sternness of his manner from divulging Vivian's secret. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... digress.—The connexion of scenic exhibitions with the improvement or corruption of the manners of men, has been universally recognized: in other words, the presence or absence of poetry in its most perfect and universal form, has been found to be connected with good and evil in conduct or habit. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... not an accident, but has fixed causes, many of which they can avert, and a great amount of suffering, want, and consequent intellectual depression will be removed.—I hope I shall not be thought to digress too far, when I add, that were the mass of the community more enlightened on these points, they would apply their knowledge, not only to their private habits, but to the government of the city, and would insist on municipal regulations favoring general health. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... to digress or switch off, or whatever that big word is, for a minute. I want t' say that our Old Man, whatever his faults was,—an' I guess he had a-plenty,—he was game. He was a fighter. He said, 'Come ahead,' ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... and has the black hair and pale, clear-cut face of the whole family. I cannot but refer it to vanity that he should heighten his personal advantages with black velvet or a red cross of considerable ostentation, and certainly—but I digress. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... this about? how tell what things you have been used to keep and what to give up? how keen a desire it is well to quell, and which ones? To reach this point, it is necessary to digress again in order to find the element of the magic touchstone which will tell us whether the thing we are looking at is made of gold ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... situated in a corner of my house; if anything comes into my head that I have a mind to search or to write, lest I should forget it in but going across the court, I am fain to commit it to the memory of some other. If I venture in speaking to digress never so little from my subject, I am infallibly lost, which is the reason that I keep myself, in discourse, strictly close. I am forced to call the men who serve me either by the names of their offices or their country; for names are very hard for me to remember. I can ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... were three, with two dogs, we expected to be able to put them through ourselves. We did so through the two first considerable streams, and then could not get them to move on any farther. As they paused, I will take the opportunity to digress and describe the process of putting sheep across ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... I shall allow myself to digress. "Silk possesses the property of dismissing the evil spirits who inhabit the magnetic fluids of the atmosphere," says the Mantram, book v., verse 23. And I cannot help wondering whether this apparent superstition may not contain a deeper ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... in this room representing so powerfully as you do dominant sentiments that are not always felt in England—that in this room there is anybody who is for an era of pure repression. Gentlemen, I would just digress for a moment if I am not tiring you. ("Go on,") About the same time as the transfer, about fifty years ago, of the Government of India from the old East India Company to the Crown, another very important step was taken, a step which I have often thought since I have been concerned with the Government ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... of art, but the vast number of enlightened Americans who continually visit Europe, and many for the purpose of seeing the grand and beautiful in art, tells the story. The English upper-classes are undoubtedly well-educated in art, but not the other classes. But I must not digress. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... rituals of a comparatively modern date contain the order in which it is appointed that the dances are to be performed, and the words of the hymns to the music of which the youthful devotees flung up their pious heels But I digress. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... well known biological law that there ought to be every grade of connecting link between the original and the last evolved product. The law holds good here in our Rhymes. If this last statement holds good then the law must be universal. May we be permitted to digress enough to show that the law is universal because, though it is a law whose biological phase has been long recognized, not much attention has been paid to it ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... world never fully appreciates the struggles of those who are fat—the efforts at starvation, the detested exercise, the long, miserable walks. Well has one of our greatest poets written, "Take up the fat man's burden." But we digress. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the name, I must here digress into a chapter of the history of manners in the nineteenth century, very well worth commemoration for its own sake. In some of the studios at that date, the hazing of new pupils was both barbarous and obscene. Two incidents, following ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bay Roosevelt had instituted "hiking." He and the young people and such of the neighbors as chose would start from Sagamore Hill and walk in a bee-line to a point four or five miles off. The rule was that no natural impediment should cause them to digress or to stop. So they went through the fields and over the fences, across ditches and pools, and even clambered up and down a haystack, if one happened to be in the way, or through a barnyard. Of course they often reached home spattered ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... to Henry and me, who thought our calling was a torch-bearer of civilization. Indeed, one may digress and say that we found the whole estate of the press in France rather disenchanting. For advertising is not regarded as entirely "ethical" in France. The big stores sometimes do not advertise at all; because people look with ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... midst of eloquent dissertations, strike out into little flowery by-paths of your own, quite foreign to the grand paved-ways along which your friend supposes he is so kind as to be leading you. But however digressive your mind may be, do not suffer your eyes to digress. Whatever may be the intensity of your ennui, endeavor to preserve an animated expression, and your success is complete. This is all that is necessary. You will never be called upon for notes or comments. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... But along the way a partridge drummed and nothing would do but he must digress a hundred yards from the shorter and sufficiently painful way, brace himself for the shot and recoil, kill the bird and have his dog retrieve it, and bring his game along with him. Just to show himself that this impossible ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton |
