"Expatiate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than clocks and chests, are "possessed" by denizens of the occult world. Of course, everyone has heard of the "unlucky" mummy, the painted case of which, only, is in the Oriental department of the British Museum, and the story connected with it is so well known that it would be superfluous to expatiate on it here. I will therefore pass on to instances of other mummies "possessed" in a more or less ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... rustling wings. As bees In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides. Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer Their state-affairs: so thick the airy crowd Swarmed and were straitened; till, the signal given, Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless—like that pygmean race Beyond ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... by no means my design, however, to expatiate upon the merits of what I should read you. These will necessarily speak for themselves. Boccalini, in his "Advertisements from Parnassus," tells us that Zoilus once presented Apollo a very caustic criticism upon a very admirable book; whereupon ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... earliest source, near Cirencester, to where it rolls calm, equable, and full, through the magnificent bridges of our splendid metropolis, giving and reflecting beauty,* presents so grand an image of power in repose—it is not now my purpose to speak; nor am I about to expatiate on that still nearer and dearer stream, the pellucid Loddon,—although to be rowed by one dear and near friend up those transparent and meandering waters, from where they sweep at their extremest breadth under the lime-crowned terraces of the Old Park at Aberleigh, to the ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... other officiating Mid[-e] priests, when the conversation is confined chiefly to the candidate's progress. He then gives to each of them presents of tobacco, and after an offering to Kitshi Manid[-o], with the pipe, they expose the articles contained in their Mid[-e] sacks and explain and expatiate upon the merits and properties of each of the magic objects. The candidate for the first time learns of the manner of preparing effigies, etc., with which to present to the incredulous ocular demonstration of the genuineness and divine ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... indescribably stupid. Liza, in the most innocent way, paid no attention to me. No one but Madame Ozhogin observed my solemn taciturnity, and she inquired anxiously after my health. I replied, of course, with a bitter smile, that I was thankful to say I was perfectly well. Ozhogin continued to expatiate on the subject of their visitor; but noticing that I responded reluctantly, he addressed himself principally to Bizmyonkov, who was listening to him with great attention, when a servant suddenly came in, announcing the arrival ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... shady side of fifty. As people grow old they accumulate two kinds of spiritual supplies: one, a pile of doubts, questionings, and mysteries; and the other, a much smaller pile of positive conclusions. There is a great temptation to expatiate upon the former subjects, for negative and critical statements have a seductive appearance of depth and much more of a flavour of wisdom than clear and succinct declarations. But I will endeavour to resist this temptation, and will set down, as concisely as I can, some of the positive convictions ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... the pools, is at the point of death; but the great tide comes, leaping and rushing over the sands, and bears it away out into the middle deeps for renewed activity and joyous life. Let the flood of Christ's life bear you on its bosom, and you will rejoice and expatiate therein. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... little appearance of water or air upon the moon, the conclusion has been inferred that there exists no vegetable or animal life on that globe," [449] other writers, holding opposite views of the moon's physical condition, may be allowed to expatiate on the luxuriant life which an atmosphere with water and temperature would undoubtedly produce. Mr. Proctor's tone is temperate, and his language that of one who is conscious with Hippocrates that "art is long and life is short." He says, in one of his contributions to lunar science, "It may safely ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... continuing, he branched off, to tell me she was the step-daughter of "So-and-so," that her own father, who was "Somebody," had died of "something," and had been buried "somewhere"; and then that hair split, and he proceeded to expatiate on the two fathers' qualities, and state their different business occupations, after which, out of breath, and far, far from the original subject, he had to hark back two and a half pages and tackle ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... repeat that the historians of the time have not done Marie de Medicis justice. They expatiate upon her faults, they enlarge upon her weaknesses, they descant upon her errors; but they touch lightly and carelessly upon the primary influences which governed her after-life. She arrived in her new kingdom young, hopeful, and happy—young, and her youth was blighted by neglect; ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... crow-bar on the wheel, in the tightening of the windlasses at the rack—it is not absent, whatever people may say, in Anne of Geierstein, nor even quite lacking in the better parts of Count Robert of Paris. But we must not expatiate on its effects; we must only give a little attention to the means by ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... to expatiate in its presence on the blessing of rain, and to teach it the enjoyment of all nature's varying moods, ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and me. You ask me how I'm feeling and then I'll tell you. Then I'll ask you how you're feeling and you'll tell me. Then I'll tell you how I imagine you must be feeling from the way you're looking,—and that will give me a chance to expatiate on the delectability of your appearance. I'll work up delicately to the point where you will begin to compare me favorably with all the other nice young men you know,—and then ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... Magna Charta clause by clause, and word by word, and letter by letter. They linger lovingly and proudly over every jot and tittle of that splendid instrument. And you will indulge me this Communion night of all nights of the year if I expatiate still more lovingly and proudly on that great Covenant which our Lord has sealed to us again to-day, and has written again to-day on the walls of our hearts. Moses made haste as soon as the old Charter was read over to him, and nothing shall delay us till we have feasted our ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... the library, where Doctor Joyce was spelling over the "Rubbleford Mercury," while Mrs. Joyce sat opposite to him, knitting a fancy jacket for her youngest but one. He was hardly inside the door before he began to expatiate in the wildest manner on the subject of the beautiful deaf and dumb girl. If ever man was in love with a child at first sight, he was that man. As an artist, as a gentleman of refined tastes, and as the softest-hearted of male human beings, in all three capacities, he was enslaved ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... repeat barbarous experiments with the object of exhibiting a well known physical fact, a hundred times verified and always the same, when it would only be necessary to enunciate it. But this is not the place to expatiate upon the subject. After proclaiming the utility of vivisection, we give it as our opinion that the practice of it should be confined within narrow limits. It is not too much to ask that it be confined to the privacy of laboratories, with the exclusion of visitors, and to require ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... under the statesmen I have mentioned. How fare they with you under the worthies of our time? Is there any likeness or resemblance? I pass over other topics, on which I could expatiate; but observe: in this utter absence of competitors, (Lacedaemonians depressed, Thebans employed, none of the rest capable of disputing the supremacy with us,) when we might hold our own securely and arbitrate ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... customer. He seemed an inferior sort of a person, and I had no idea at first of conciliating him and making a sale. It was not then the custom to observe a fixed price and simply show the goods; but clerks were expected and instructed to use persuasion, to expatiate on quality and beauty, and to take less than they first asked. The cost price was marked with secret characters; the selling price was variable. The more you could get out of a gullible customer, the better; and he who could get the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... continuing the history of swarms, I think it proper to recapitulate in a few words the principal points of the preceding letter, and to expatiate on each, concerning the result of new experiments, respecting which ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... the popular debasement. It certainly were ridiculous enough to fix on a laboring man and his family, and affect to deplore that he is doomed not to behold the depths and heights of science, not to expatiate over the wide field of history, not to luxuriate among the delights, refinements, and infinite diversities of literature; and that his family are not growing up in a training to every high accomplishment, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... answer. A great change had come over the Gaulish lady; she felt a great pride in her virtue, and in the victory she had won over herself, and while she sunned herself in the splendor of her own merits, she wished that Hermas too should feel and recognize them. She began to expatiate on all that she had to forego and to endure in the oasis, and she discoursed of virtue and the duties of a wife, and of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... attributes of Deity, combined with a consciousness of innocence under suffering, that have inspired us with a moral courage which no oppression shall shake, no fulminations overawe. Our limits will not permit us to expatiate, at this time, on the import of the terms, "a system of measures—the sternest principles," &c. We would barely remark that the climax of injustice and cruelty, here suggested, nay, recommended, is the legitimate fruit ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... hospitality—and my own sensations, which were an agreeable compound of those of every one else—each and all were perfect in their respective ways. But the creme de la creme, the essence of the whole affair, that on which the tongue of the poet and the pen of the romance-writer must alike rejoice to expatiate, was the conduct of Mr. Frampton; how he was seized, at one and the same moment, with two separate, irresistible, and apparently incompatible manias, one for kissing everybody, and the other for lifting and transporting (under the idea that he was thereby facilitating the family arrangements) bulky ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Ceremonies of Human Invention were superstitious, and that Kneeling down, where there were Pictures and Sculpture, was a manifest Token of Idolatry; if after this, by an easy Transition, he should go over to the Old Testament, expatiate on the Second Commandment, and produce several Instances of God's Vengeance on Idolaters, and the utter Destruction, that had often been brought upon them by God's own People, fighting under his Banner, and ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... which is to the human mind as the winds to the sea, stirring, and then allaying it;—farewell to poetry and deep philosophy, for man's imagination is cold, and his enquiring mind can no longer expatiate on the wonders of life, for "there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest!"—to the graceful building, which in its perfect proportion transcended the rude ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... stupefying Theme! Whereon with eloquence less deep than full, Still maundering on in slow continuous stream, All can expatiate, and all be dull: Bane of the mind and topic of debate That drugs the reader to a restless doze, Thou that with soul-annihilating weight Crushest the Bard, and hypnotisest those Who plod the placid ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... desired friends, Romans, and countrymen to lend them their ears, or accepted the atrocious accusation of being a young man; and then a Bishop, who had been a schoolmaster himself, delivered an address. It was delightful to see and hear the good man expatiate. I did not believe much in what he said, nor could I reasonably endorse many of his statements; but he did it all so genially and naturally that one felt almost ashamed to question the matter of his discourse. Yet I could not help ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mortal crimes, this character alone might serve as an antidote to the word of mental distempers, and awaken the most callous and sarcastic mind to confess the dignity of our Nature, and the beneficence of our God. In stating to you the merits of HOWARD, I might expatiate with delight on the various qualities of this incomparable man; I might trace his progress through the different periods of a life always singular and always instructive. I could not be checked by any fear of overstepping the modesty of Truth in the celebration of Virtue, so solid and so ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... upon her beauty; I will not expatiate upon her intelligence, her quickness of perception, her powers of memory, her sweet consideration, from the first moment, for the slow-paced tutor who ministered to her wonderful gifts. I was thirty ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... this way, of which I was informed by the worthy gentlemen then present, who were at once delighted and amazed to hear an instrument of so simple an organization use an exact articulation of words, a just cadency in its sentences, and a wonderful pathos in its pronunciation; not that he designs to expatiate in this practice, because he cannot (as he says) apprehend what use it may be of to mankind, whose benefit he aims at in a more particular manner: and for the same reason, he will never more instruct the feathered kind, the parrot having been his last scholar in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... account of the way in which he received his false tendency. Cherished on the "wounded knees" of his aged father, he listened to tales of the great Frederic, whom the veteran had known personally. After an excellent sketch of the king, he says: "I expatiate here, almost in spite of myself, because this was the first great man whose portrait was thus drawn for me at home,—a portrait after nature,—and because my admiration of him was the first symptom of my useless love of arms,—the first cause of one of the most complete delusions of my life." This ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... demeanour. Her sister Martha, on the contrary, spoke out vigorously, daring Miss Wooler so much, face to face, that she sometimes received a box on the ear, which hardly any saint could have withheld. Then Martha would expatiate on the danger of boxing ears, quoting a reverend brother of Miss Wooler's. Among her school companions, Martha was called "Miss Boisterous," but was always a favourite, so piquant and fascinating were her ways. She was not in the least pretty, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... assured him that if it were hung among the drawings in the Uffizi and labelled with a glorious name it would hold its own. My praise seemed to give him extreme pleasure; he pressed my hands, and his eyes filled with tears. It moved him apparently with the desire to expatiate on the history of the drawing, for he rose and made his adieux to our companion, kissing her band with the same mild ardour as before. It occurred to me that the offer of a similar piece of gallantry on my own part might help me to know what manner of woman she was. When she perceived my intention ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... the cataract of the Dee, which dashes down the declivity with impetuous violence in the grounds adjoining to the House. All these I presume you will soon see, so that it is unnecessary for me to expatiate on the subject. I sincerely wish that every happiness may attend you in your progress. I have given you an account of our match in my epistle to Herefordshire. We unfortunately lost it. I got 11 notches the first innings and 7 the 2nd, making 18 in all, which ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... its parts, who go through it always according to their own will, and with the same method, who exercise themselves as they will on any subject which suggests itself to them, who are so well satisfied with themselves and their light, who expatiate upon the preparation and the methods for prayer, will make but little advance in it; and after ten or twenty years of this exercise, will ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... metaphysicals, these fancy-bred extravagations, perhaps somewhat too much: you will dub me dreamer, if not proser—or rather, poet, as the more modern reproach. Let us then, by way of clearing our mind at once of these hallucinations, go forth quickly into the fresh green fields, and expatiate with glad hearts ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the School-master, impatiently. "Country life is ideal only in books. Books do not tell of running for trains through blinding snowstorms; writers do not expatiate on the delights of waking on cold winter nights and finding your piano and parlor furniture afloat because of bursted pipes, with the plumber, like Sheridan at Winchester, twenty miles away. They are dumb on ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... her maternal caress. But alas, the stir, the scramble, the mad whirl of city life, the debasing contact with low material minds, the daily study of Prices Current, make even of me a muckworm. Still, I might work up a brook or two after I get to the woods, or expatiate on a seven-pound trout: my conscience forbids me to weigh them higher, for I never saw any above three. And yet some men will talk familiarly of ten-pounders!—Or I might analyze the mediaeval garments of Hodge and his old Poll. As for the Wayback houses, they are like any other habitations, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... course over continents, and the tides that swell upon their shores, must render the same service every day; but these sons of God are not held to labour by a bridle so short and rigid. They are endowed with reason and will; they are set at liberty, and permitted to expatiate over a wider field. Their master goes out of sight, and trusts to a renewed, loving heart for the diligent outlay and faithful return of all the talents. The Gospel requires and generates not a legal, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Baronius is unwilling to expatiate on the care of the patrimonies, lest he should betray that they consisted not of kingdoms, but farms. The French writers, the Benedictine editors, (tom. iv. l. iii. p. 272, &c.,) and Fleury, (tom. viii. p. 29, &c.,) ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... she felt only the sorrows of her beloved. Nor did Dr. Beaumont betray any feeling which tended to shew that the expectation of stalls and mitres ever withdrew his thoughts from the celestial contemplations in which he loved to expatiate. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... made no doubt, when they had as good a subject to expatiate upon, as I had, in the pleasure before me, of seeing so many agreeable friends of Mr. B.'s, they would maintain the title they claimed ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... true, I might expatiate, did the subject require it, on the many and various objects with which the soul will be entertained in those heavenly regions; when I reflect on which, I am apt to wonder at the boldness of some philosophers, who are so struck with admiration at the knowledge of nature, as to ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... Maroney, so that they had become the thickest of friends. Sometimes Maroney would take a hand in a social game of euchre at Patterson's, at other times he would take Porter or May out for a drive behind "Yankee Mary," and as they drove along expatiate on ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... solemn declaration of the Duke that his own signature was feigned; assuring her that these circumstances must prove more than sufficient to prevent the recognition of the deed in any court of law. When he found that this argument had produced the desired impression, he next proceeded to expatiate upon the benefit which she could not fail to derive from the gratitude of the Guises, should she voluntarily withdraw her claim without subjecting the Duke to the annoyance of a public lawsuit; during ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... satisfaction; yet it did not seem to amount to quite as much as he wished. He repeated, in stronger terms, the necessity there was for caution. He was far from suspecting me to possess an impertinent and talkative disposition, or that, in my eagerness to expatiate on my own concerns, I should overstep the limits of politeness. But this was not enough. I was to govern myself by a persuasion that the interests of my friend and myself would be materially affected ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... what they asked for; and in such interviews he had to know his men and to touch the right chord in appealing to their prejudices or their patriotism. The English tenure of Gibraltar was also a perpetual offence to Spanish pride. Irresponsible journalists loved to expatiate on it when they had no more spicy subject to handle. On this, as on all questions affecting prestige only, Morier was tactful and patient. When they should come within the range of practical politics, he could take a different tone. But he knew that more serious dangers were arising in Morocco, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... and (unknown to her) plead her excuse; but he apprehended Miss Woodley's intention, and evidently shunned her. Mr. Sandford was now the only person to whom she could speak of Miss Milner, and the delight he took to expatiate on her faults, was more sorrow to her friend, than not to speak of her at all. She, therefore, sat a silent spectator, waiting with dread for the time when she, who now scorned her advice, would fly to her in vain ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... brethren's settlement; as those who accompanied the expedition, and who, from their intercourse with the Europeans, had obtained many conveniences by barter, and from the teaching of the missionaries had acquired a knowledge of the gospel. These advantages the latter did not fail to expatiate upon to their heathen countrymen; and once the brethren met with Sybilla, Jonathan's wife, surrounded by a company of women under the shadow of a skin boat, set on edge, exhorting them with great simplicity ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... opinions, anachronisms and anachorisms, foreign both to the age and the country, that maintain a feeble and buzzing existence, scarce to be called life, like winter flies, which in mild weather crawl out from obscure nooks and crannies to expatiate in the sun, and sometimes acquire vigour enough to disturb with their enforced familiarity the studious hours of the scholar. One of the most stupid and pertinacious of these is the theory that the Southern States were settled by a class of emigrants from the Old World socially superiour ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... time to draw to a close. We could expatiate much longer upon this topic, but want of space constrains us to leave unfinished these few desultory remarks—slender contributions towards a subject which has fallen sadly backward, and which, we grieve to say, was better understood by the king of Siam ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... courtier-like declaration, which would have been excusable even if it had had a less basis of truth than it unquestionably possessed in the case of Hwangti, was received with murmurs and marks of dissent by the literati. One of them rose and denounced the speaker as "a vile flatterer," and proceeded to expatiate on the superior merit of several of the earlier rulers. Not content with this unseasonable eulogy, he advocated the restoration of the empire to its old form of principalities, and the consequent undoing of all that Hwangti had accomplished. Hwangti interrupted this speaker ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... commiserating tone confesses, "C'est bien mal beureux—Mai enfin que voulez vous?" ["It's unlucky, but what can be said in such cases?"] and in the same instant they ill recount some good fortune at a card party, or expatiate on the excellence of a ragout.—Yet, to do them justice, they only offer for your comfort the same arguments they would have found efficacious ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... men, were yet to be discovered and named. It might be found the richest land under the sun, exhaustless in fertility, yielding the most valuable productions, and unfailing in its resources. It was possible it would prove a sterile desert. Imagination could not but expatiate in this unbounded field and unexplored wilderness; and there are few persons entirely secure from the influence of imagination. The real danger attending the first exploration of a country filled with wild animals ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... when he became conscious of it, and stop short with an abrupt turn to something else. With a real interest, which he gave humorous excess, he would celebrate some little ingenious thing that had fallen in his way, and I have heard him expatiate with childlike delight upon the merits of a new razor he had got: a sort of mower, which he could sweep recklessly over cheek and chin without the least danger of cutting himself. The last time I saw him he asked me if he had ever shown me that miraculous razor; and I doubt if he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... could say much if we were to expatiate, how few there are that believe this article. For we all pass over it, hear it and say it, but neither see nor consider what the words teach us. For if we believed it with the heart, we would also act accordingly, and not stalk about proudly, ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... for the first time in many a week, listened without irritation while Freddie poured forth his unending praise of "my wife." As Brent knew them intimately, Freddie felt free to expatiate upon all the details of domestic economy that chanced to be his theme, with the exquisite lunch as a text. He told Brent how Susan had made a study of that branch of the art of living; how she had ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... sir,' resumed Mr. Pickwick; 'for to show that I was not wholly unworthy, sir, I should take a brief review of my past life, and present condition. I should argue, by analogy, that to anybody else, I must be a very desirable object. I should then expatiate on the warmth of my love, and the depth of my devotion. Perhaps I might then be ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... catalogues of [of books], and the esteem they are in at present, is so well known, that it were to waste paper to expatiate ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... Jove! You must not neglect to expatiate upon the beauty and fascinations of the adorable Gypsy; that will be your ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... had landed twelve days too late," and the Journalist drew a graphic, and purely imaginary, picture of the pathos of the Belgians straining their eyes in vain to the West for the coming of the men in khaki, and unfortunately he let himself expatiate a bit ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... home, than, to complicate his difficulties completely, he fell in love with Mademoiselle Natalie de Bellefonds, who had just returned from Paris, where she had been completing her education. To expatiate on the perfections of Mademoiselle Natalie, would be a waste of ink and paper: it is sufficient to say that she really was a very charming girl, with a fortune which, though not large, would have been a most desirable acquisition ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... continued to rule were a period of profound peace; the monuments show us the country in full possession of all its resources and its arts, and its inhabitants both cheerful and contented. More than ever do the great lords and royal officers expatiate in their epitaphs upon the strict justice which they have rendered to their vassals and subordinates, upon the kindness which they have shown to the fellahin, on the paternal solicitude with which, in the years of insufficient ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... full and free possession of his own schools, for it thinks he will have no chance of arresting the opposite teaching or of rivalling the fascination of modern science. Knowing little, and caring less for the depth and largeness of that heavenly Wisdom, on which the Apostle delights to expatiate, or the variety of those sciences, dogmatic or ethical, mystical or hagiological, historical or exegetical, which Revelation has created, these philosophers know perfectly well that, in matter of fact, to beings, constituted as we are, sciences which concern this ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the acquiescence of the people in such unheard-of burdens, seems to have utterly bewildered the khan's comprehension.[4] "All classes, from the noble to the peasant, are alike oppressed; yet it is amusing to hear them expatiate on the institutions of their country, fancying it the freest and themselves the least oppressed of any people on earth! They are constantly talking of the tyranny and despotism of Oriental governments, without having set foot in any of those regions, or knowing any thing about the matter, except ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... occur in what has never been tried. Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of what has not existed; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope have all the wide field of imagination, in which they may expatiate with little or ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here. I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them. For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have intended ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flow'rs Fly to and fro: or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd Swarm'd and were straiten'd; till the signal giv'n, Behold a wonder! They but now who seem'd In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... anyone think these too narrow bounds for the capacious mind of man to expatiate in, which takes its flight farther than the stars and cannot be confined by the limits of the world, that extends its thoughts often even beyond the utmost expansion of matter and makes excursions into ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... Imperial Conference raises one or two very delicate questions, as to whether common citizenship is to be observed, or whether the relations between India and the Colonies should remain what they are. I am not going to expatiate upon that to-night, but it did occur to me in reading all these proceedings that the part of Hamlet was rather omitted, because India after all is the only real Empire. You there have an immense Dominion, ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... inconsistency of our presence in his premises, that we retired in all the irritation of the well-meaning and misunderstood. The Senator, however, who had absolute confidence in his phrase book, saw a deeper significance in the remarkable unwillingness of the people of Bologna to expatiate upon the feature which had given them fame. "The fact is," said he gloomily, restoring his note-book to his inside pocket as we entered the terra-cotta doorway of St. Catarina, "they're not anxious to let a stranger into the know of it." And this ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... shores. Improbable as it is that a man uniting to the same degree as Hyder-Ali did political and military genius, will appear in the world again for centuries; most of the princes are politic, some are brave, and perhaps no few are credulous. While England is confiding in our loyalty, we might expatiate on her perfidy, and our tears fall copiously on the broken sceptre in the dust of Delhi. Ignorant and stupid as the king's ministers may be, the East India Company is well-informed on its interests, and alert in maintaining them. I wonder that a republic so wealthy and so ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... to be found, Sir W. Hamilton has not failed to tell us. If mere intellectual speculations on the nature and origin of the material universe form a common ground in which the theist, the pantheist, and even the atheist, may alike expatiate, the moral and religious feelings of man—those facts of consciousness which have their direct source in the sense of personality and free will—plead with overwhelming evidence in behalf of a personal God, and of man's relation to Him, as a person to a person. We have seen, ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... to herself, had been rude to her cousin,—he would have rejoiced for the sake of the family. But, as it was, she did not dare to tell him. He would have received her tidings with silent scorn. And even Henrietta would not be enthusiastic. She felt that though she would have delighted to expatiate on this great triumph, she must be silent at present. It should now be her great effort to ingratiate herself with Mr Melmotte at ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... smile and sometimes feel sorrowful at his changeable appearance; perhaps if one of influence and authority came in, he would put on peculiar airs of suavity, and expatiate upon how things were and should be in prison, while one without that influence might enter and receive entirely different treatment. I here see how our rulers may have been led on at times, unaware ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... of Mr. Savage's performances than to display their beauties, or to obviate the criticisms which they have occasioned; and, therefore, I shall not dwell upon the particular passages which deserve applause; I shall neither show the excellence of his descriptions, nor expatiate on the terrifick portrait of suicide, nor point out the artful touches, by which he has distinguished the intellectual features of the rebels, who suffer death in his last canto. It is, however, proper to observe, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... shalt know, too," answered Alvarado firmly, "that though I break my heart, I, an unknown, can expatiate his guilt with all the pride of most ancient lineage and birth ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... expatiate more largely on the other advantages of the glorious constitution of these by-the-whole-of-Europe-envied realms, but I am called away to take an account of the ladies and other artificial flowers at a fashionable rout, of which a full and particular account will hereafter appear. For the present, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... though, in imitation of the ancient manner [a], he has thought proper, for the sake of a philosophical debate, to take the wrong side of the question. In answer to his argument, we do not desire you to expatiate in praise of the ancients: their fame wants no addition. What we request is, an investigation of the causes which have produced so rapid a decline from the flourishing state of genuine eloquence. I call it rapid, since, according to Aper's ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... talk about the election at Polpenno because all conversation about Tregear was interdicted in the presence of his sister. He could say nothing as to the Runnymede hunt and the two thunderbolts which had fallen on him, as Major Tifto was not a subject on which he could expatiate in the presence of his father. He asked a few questions about the shooting, and referred with great regret to his ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... Lucy—the handsomest, brightest, most amiable and fascinating youth I ever saw.' You see he will call me a 'youth;' possibly this may excite Miss Lucy's curiosity, and she will ask more about me; and then Mowbray will of course expatiate on my various and exalted merits, as every warm-hearted man does when he speaks of his friends. Then Miss Lucy will imagine for herself a beau ideal of grace, elegance, beauty, intelligence and wit, far more than human. She will fall in love with it—and then, when she is hopelessly entangled ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... proceeded to enter into details of the flora, fauna, and geology of his island-home, and to expatiate in such glowing language on its arboreal and herbal wealth and beauty, that the professor became quite reconciled ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... governing and the governed, bear to each other. The first part of the external view of all states, their relation as friends, makes so trifling a figure in history, that I am very sorry to say, it affords me but little matter on which to expatiate. The good offices done by one nation to its neighbor;[8] the support given in public distress; the relief afforded in general calamity; the protection granted in emergent danger; the mutual return of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and languidly, and feels it to be no more than a burden. The mere lessons may be learnt from a sense of duty; but that freshness of power which in young persons of ability would fasten eagerly upon some one portion or other of the wide field of knowledge, and there expatiate, drinking in health and strength to the mind, as surely as the natural exercise of the body gives to it bodily vigor,—that is tired prematurely, perverted, and corrupted; and all the knowledge which else it might so covet, it now seems a wearying ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... to expatiate on several droll mishaps that occurred to Mr Root; how he was once bumped in all the glowing panoply of equine war; how, when one night, with his head well powdered, he crept upon all-fours, as was his wont, into one of the boys' bedrooms, to listen to their nightly ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... ordered them to be taken up, and we were conducted by him to a house, wherein were seated, in a circle, eight or ten middle-aged persons. To them I and my pigs being introduced, with great courtesy they desired me to sit down; and then I began to expatiate on the merits of the two pigs, explaining to them how many young ones the female would have at one time, and how soon these would multiply to some hundreds. My only motive was to enhance their value, that they might take the more care of them; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... you know so much," Pao-yue remarked with a smiling face, "you can dispense with reading poetical works, for you're not far off from proficiency. To hear you expatiate on these two lines, makes it evident to my mind that you've even ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... several cases the god is represented as lending the money. It is obvious that such advances were made from the temple treasury.(653) It is usual from such instances to expatiate on the temple, or the priests, as the great moneylenders. This is a view easily misunderstood. It is quite true that the temples were great landowners, and had steady incomes, and possessed treasuries; but there is no evidence that they lent on usury. It seems rather that these ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... temperament of individuals may serve to heighten the colouring, whether sombre or sunny, in which circumstances may have depicted the landscape. It is not every traveller who can, with Mackenzie, expatiate on the beauty of scenery while in fear of treachery from fickle and bloody savages; or like Fremont, though dripping from the recent flood, and uncertain of the means of existence even for the day, his arms, clothes, provisions, instruments, ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... much to hear Elfie's news but because she loved to hear him talk, and upon no subject could Larry wax so eloquent as upon the foothill country of Alberta. Long after they had secured Larry's new suit and gone on their way through park and boulevard, Larry continued to expatiate upon the glories of Alberta hills and valleys, upon its cool breezes, its flowing rivers and limpid lakes, and always the western rampart of the eternal ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... ANQUETIL DE PERRON, is a recent example of the literary character carrying his indifference to privations to the very cynicism of poverty; and he seems to exult over his destitution with the same pride as others would expatiate over their possessions. Yet we must not forget, to use the words of Lord Bacon, that "judging that means were to be spent upon learning, and not learning to be applied to means," DE PERRON refused the offer of thirty thousand ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the buzzing warfare of the insect battalions: and the shrill cries of lady Tartars rending their lords. And all this existeth of necessity. To war it is, and other depopulators, that we are beholden for elbow-room in Mardi and for all our parks an gardens, wherein we are wont to expatiate. Come on, then, plague, war, famine and viragos! Come on, I say, for who shall stay ye? Come on, and healthfulize the census! And more especially, oh War! do thou march forth with thy bludgeon! Cracked are, our crowns by nature, and henceforth forever, cracked shall ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... arguments, or in pathetic appeals. Many of his scenes have altogether the appearance of a lawsuit, where two persons, as the parties in the litigation, (with sometimes a third for a judge,) do not confine themselves to the matter in hand, but expatiate in a wide field, accusing their adversaries or defending themselves with all the adroitness of practised advocates, and not unfrequently with all the windings and subterfuges of pettifogging sycophants. In this way the poet endeavoured to make ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... raised her head, and wiped her eyes. Lord Courtland perceived the effect his eloquence had produced upon the childish fancy of his daughter, and continued to expatiate upon the splendid joys that awaited her in a union with a nobleman of the Duke's rank and fortune; till at length, dazzled, if not convinced, she declared herself "satisfied that it was her duty to marry whoever papa pleased; but—" and a sigh escaped her as she contrasted her noble ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... to anyone on the payment of a shilling. It contains various Carlylean relics: letters, scraps of manuscript, furniture, pictures, etc., and attracts visitors from all parts of the world. There is no need to expatiate on the life of the philosopher; it belongs not to Chelsea, but to the English-speaking peoples of all countries. Here came to see him Leigh Hunt, who lived only in the next street, and Emerson from across the Atlantic; ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... to lay the feathered, furred, and scaly tribes under contribution to supply her table and tempt her delicate appetite. A proud and happy man was he when skill or fortune enabled him to lay the antlered stag or tusked boar at her feet, and expatiate on the incidents of his sylvan campaign. He, of course, must be often invited to partake of the social meal. Captain Cranfield, of the engineers, had just returned from Badajoz, where he had been repairing shattered bastions, and patching up curtains sadly torn by shot ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... giving the consciousness of resistance, or dead strain, the other permitting movement, and giving the consciousness of the unobstructed sweep of the limbs or members. Whatever else may be in space, this freedom to move, to soar, to expatiate (in contrast to being hemmed in, obstructed, held fast), is an essential part of the conception, and is formed out of our active or moving sensibilities. Now, as far as movement is concerned, we must be in one of two states;—we must be putting forth energy without effecting ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... tight to produce a fine full-blooming countenance: corsets and bag pantaloons are indispensably necessary to accoutre you for the stand. When in this trim, dilate upon the events of the times—know but very little of domestic affairs—expatiate and criticise upon the imperfections or charms of the passing multitude—tell a fine story to some acquaintance who knows but little about you, and, by this means, borrow as much money as will furnish you with a very small bamboo, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... unwilling to expatiate concerning himself, even when he is trying to corner a fellow-man. This principle of human nature perhaps accounts for the frequent failure of thieves to catch thieves, in spite of the proverb; the pursuit suggests somehow the pleasures of autobiography, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... proportion to my slim little body. But admonished by the look which I surprised on Mistress Callista's high-bred face, I quickly recalled an expression so unsuited to my position as guest, and, with a gush of well-simulated rapture, began to expatiate upon the interesting characteristics of the room, and express myself as delighted at the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... that he seemed to have made a stout battle, desired he would sit down and recover wind; and after he had swallowed a brace of bumpers, his vanity prompted him to expatiate upon his own exploit in such a manner, that the confederates, without seeming to know the curate was his antagonist, became acquainted with every circumstance of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of Schiller, he was seized with a strong desire to travel in foreign countries, as if his spirit had a presentiment of its approaching enlargement, and already longed to expatiate in a wider and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... in law too, Counsellor TIM, to thee we bow; Not one of us gives more eclat to The immortal name of FUDGE than thou. Not to expatiate on the art With which you played the patriot's part, Till something good and snug should offer;— Like one, who, by the way he acts The enlightening part of candle-snuffer, The manager's keen eye attracts, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... various other matters they could take up. It must be admitted that the lady who had just gone out was not one of these; Caspar granted all Miss Stackpole's merits in advance, but had no further remark to make about her. Neither, after the first allusions, did the two men expatiate upon Mrs. Osmond—a theme in which Goodwood perceived as many dangers as Ralph. He felt very sorry for that unclassable personage; he couldn't bear to see a pleasant man, so pleasant for all his queerness, so beyond anything to be done. There was always ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... seldom failed to lay a scheme with the small knot that first gathered round me, by which some of those whom we expected might be made subservient to our sport. Every man has some favourite topick of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end. Every man has some habitual contortion of body, or established mode of expression, which never fails to raise mirth if it be pointed out to notice. By premonitions of these particularities I secured our pleasantry. Our companion entered ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... trial occurred in which an eminent land valuer was put into the witness box to swell the amount of damages, and he proceeded to expatiate on the injury committed by railroads in general, and especially by the one in question, in cutting up the properties they invaded. When he had finished the delivery of this weighty piece of evidence, the counsel for the Company put a newspaper ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... and, perhaps, a minister of the Church. After pointing out to Justin the folly of mere theorising, and recommending him to study the Old Testament Scriptures, as well on account of their great antiquity as their intrinsic worth, he proceeded to expatiate on the nature and excellence of the gospel. [366:1] The impression now made upon the mind of the young student was never afterwards effaced; he became a decided Christian; and, about A.D. 165, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of this straw-built citadel, New-nibb'd with balm, expatiate and confer Their state affairs. So thick the very crowd Swarm'd and were ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... expatiate on the effect of this downright refusal of the woman's proposals. If there was anything like tenderness in her bosom—and no woman was probably ever entirely without that feminine quality—it all disappeared at this plain announcement. Fury, rage, mortified pride, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... is dead is far less hateful than to oppress him whilst he lives; and even the victims of their appetite were gently used in life and suddenly and painlessly despatched at last. In island circles of refinement it was doubtless thought bad taste to expatiate on what was ugly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the present day much of what is so loosely expressed in these extracts will appear but the crudities of a tyro in the science, yet, at the time when they were written,—when both Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke could expatiate on the state of Ireland, without a single attempt to develop or enforce those simple, but wise principles of commercial policy, every one of which had been violated in the restrictions on her industry,—it was no small merit in Mr. Sheridan ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... ripened years, if they apply the truth of this axiom, will have no difficulty in correctly conjecturing what must have been his early youth. Even then his predominant weakness was to almost daily, and by the hour, expatiate upon the merits of his great "grandfather," and to entertain boys, smaller and younger than himself, with the revolutionary exploits—more numerous and diversified far than those with a narration of which Othello beguiled the fair Desdemona, performed by that ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... One could expatiate long upon his attitude to Christianity—his final desire to be "ordained Priest"—his alternating pieties and incredulities. His deliberate clinging to what "experience" brought him, as the final test of "truth," made it quite ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... proposal, as may place before them a certain liberal competence, with the opportunity of rising to independence in a sphere where the number of competitors would be so low as to render final success less precarious. It is needless to expatiate more amply upon the benefits which must accrue from an appointment of this nature, which would impose but a trifling additional burden on the crown, since it is extremely possible that a barrister might be obtained for the salary ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... those scenes of felicity, which slaves are said to enjoy. The first advantage which they are said to experience, is that of manumission. But here the advocates for slavery conceal an important circumstance. They expatiate indeed on the charms of freedom, and contend that it must be a blessing in the eyes of those, upon whom it is conferred. We perfectly agree with them in this particular. But they do not tell us that these advantages are ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... the end, and he sat gazing about him in consternation when the audience rose to go. Afterwards he read long dissertations about each symphony before he went, and he would note down the important points and watch for them. The critic would expatiate upon "the long-drawn dissonance forte, that marks the close of the working-out portion"; and Thyrsis would watch for that long-drawn dissonance, and be wondering if it was never coming—when suddenly ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... and the mind more exhausted. Gentlemen, it is under the full persuasion that you and his Lordship are also much oppressed with fatigue, that I can venture to promise you my address will not be very long. But I trust, that considering the point which it will be necessary for me to expatiate upon, you will be ultimately of opinion, that my address, although not long, is still effectual for the interest of ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... been said that sojourns to sacred waters as fraught with merit; that ablutions in such waters is meritorious; and that listening to the excellence of such waters is also meritorious. I desire to hear thee expatiate on this subject, O grandsire. It behoveth thee, O chief of Bharata's race, to mention to me the sacred waters that exist on this earth. I desire, O thou of great puissance, to hear thee discourse on ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... alike in theology, morals, and politics, appeared to him to sap the foundations of every higher principle in human nature, he was led by the whole tenour of his mind to dwell upon the existence in the soul of perceptions not derivable from the senses, and to expatiate on the immutable distinctions of right and wrong. Goodness, freed from all debasing associations of interest and expedience, such as Hobbes sought to attach to it, was the same, he was well assured, as it had existed from all eternity in the mind of God. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... expatiate too much on the merits and capabilities of this part of inner Africa, lest I mislead any commercial inquirers; and it is as well to say at present, that the people near the coast are in such a state of helplessness and ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... jail, where Mr. Patrick Brown was cruelly incarcerate for wiping the floor with the cold refuser of the gin. "Criffens! Fechars!" said Swipey for a twelvemonth after, stunned by the mere recollection of that home of the glories of the earth. And then he would begin to expatiate for the benefit of young Gourlay—for Swipey, though his name was the base Teutonic Brown, had a Celtic contempt for brute facts that cripple the imperial mind. So well did he expatiate that young Gourlay would slink ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... brain, Wingfold was full of both humour and pathos. In their walks and drives, many a serious subject would give occasion to the former, and many a merry one to the latter. Sometimes he would take a nursery-rime for his theme, and expatiate upon it so, that at one instant Barbara would burst into the gayest laughter, and the next have to restrain her tears. Rarely would Wingfold enter a sick-chamber, especially that of a cottage, with a long face and a sermon in his ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... to write a book on Epic Poetry, he dedicated his first chapter to "Differences of Taste in Nations." A critic of to-day might well find it necessary, on the threshold of a general inquiry, to expatiate on "Differences of Taste in Generations." Changes of standard in the arts are always taking place, but it is only with advancing years, perhaps, that we begin to be embarrassed by the recurrence of them. In early youth we fight for the new forms of art, for the new aesthetic shibboleths, and in ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... with a zeal which would seem to imply that something momentous, or of peculiar interest, was connected with it, can advocate it only as a matter of abstract metaphysical science. He cannot participate in that feeling of exaltation and mystery which has led many to expatiate upon a necessary and absolute truth which the Divine Power itself cannot alter, which is equally irresistible, equally binding and compulsory, with God as with man. Of this spirit of philosophical enthusiasm Mr Whewell cannot partake. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... war or civil government who would have to be excused by his wife for some such reason, upon which there would be a chatter of regret and the meeting would fall into a conference upon matters in general. While the gentlemen would "expatiate and confer" with one another as to what breeding would produce the most wrinkles on a sheep's back (thus giving the greatest wool-bearing surface), the ladies would devise new wrinkles to make use of it. And usually the ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... contracted by Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, with John the Grammarian, indicates how much the Arabian mind was predisposed to liberal ideas. Its step from the idolatry of the Caaba to the monotheism of Mohammed prepared it to expatiate in the wide and pleasing fields of literature and philosophy. There were two influences to which it was continually exposed. They conspired in determining its path. These were—1. That of the Nestorians in Syria; 2. That ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... he saw To be God's stamp of approbation great On that vicarious work which his just Law Fulfilled—a ground of hope commensurate To man's great needs in every age and state. These truths so filled his warm and generous soul That he on them would oft expatiate Until his feelings seemed beyond control; And this secured attention from his ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... a very earnest look; his vivacious eyes were for the most part turned upwards, with a thoughtful and rather a gloomy expression, which I have tried to represent. His lips were closed, but the mouth was not an unkindly one. He was ready enough to expatiate on the arrogant vanity and depraved taste of the Viennese aristocracy, by whom he feels himself neglected, or ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... implacably offend. Inform yourself of the characters and situations of the company, before you give way to what your imagination may prompt you to say. There are, in all companies, more wrong beads than right ones, and many more who deserve, than who like censure. Should you therefore expatiate in the praise of some virtue, which some in company notoriously want; or declaim against any vice, which others are notoriously infected with, your reflections, however general and unapplied, will, by being applicable, be thought personal and leveled ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... pace up and down, traverse; scour the country, traverse the country; peragrate^; circumambulate, perambulate; nomadize^, wander, ramble, stroll, saunter, hover, go one's rounds, straggle; gad, gad about; expatiate. walk, march, step, tread, pace, plod, wend, go by shank's mare; promenade; trudge, tramp; stalk, stride, straddle, strut, foot it, hoof it, stump, bundle, bowl along, toddle; paddle; tread a path. take horse, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of 1761 Mr. Thomas Sheridan was at Edinburgh, and delivered lectures upon the English Language and Publick Speaking to large and respectable audiences. I was often in his company, and heard him frequently expatiate upon Johnson's extraordinary knowledge, talents, and virtues, repeat his pointed sayings, describe his particularities, and boast of his being his guest sometimes till two or three in the morning. At his house I hoped to have many opportunities of seeing ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... let things take their course, those sharp, swift consequences that attend the actions of the impetuous. I might, indeed, if this were a sermon and there were a congregation unable to get away, expatiate on the habit these weapons have of smiting with equal fury the just and the unjust; how you only need to be a little foolish, quite a little foolish, under conditions that seem to force it upon you, and down they come, sure ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... delighted to hear of my antipathy and my unfortunate experience, and he proceeded to expatiate on the viciousness of rattlesnakes, particularly those of Arizona. If I had believed the succeeding stories, emanating from the fertile brains of those three fellows, I should have made certain that Arizona canyons were Brazilian jungles. Frank's parting shot, sent in a mellow, kind voice, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... sanctity; virtuous statesmanship, or proud political position attained through the rigid observance of the ethical rules of personal purity, are nothing to the rank and file, the polloi, who can never hope to reach those elevations in this world; as well expatiate upon the virtues of Croesus to a man who will never go beyond his day's wages, or expect the homeless to become ecstatic over the magnificence of Nabuchodonosor's Babylonian palace. Such extremes possess no influence over the ordinary mind, they ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... Union or slavery should live, you chose the Union. The choice may come between the Union and ignorance; and if it does, I have no fear as to which the people will choose. The doctrine of State Rights is a beautiful thing to expatiate upon, but it has been the root of nearly all the evil the country has suffered. However, I believe that this remedy can at once be applied without ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... on which it is not our intention to expatiate here. What we say is, that, in all the relations of civil life, Her people were shamefully and criminally neglected. They were left without education, permitted to remain ignorant of the arts of life, and of that industrial knowledge ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... authors of his joys and woes. "Oh, the women, the women, and the things they have made me do!" he would exclaim with a lustrous eye. "C'est egal, of all the follies and stupidities I have committed for them I would not have missed one!" On this subject Newman maintained an habitual reserve; to expatiate largely upon it had always seemed to him a proceeding vaguely analogous to the cooing of pigeons and the chattering of monkeys, and even inconsistent with a fully developed human character. But Bellegarde's confidences greatly amused ...
— The American • Henry James
... Bryan into the toils of such a fiend in human shape? Or was it the blind Goddess of Justice that led Jackson to meet Miss Pearl and sacrifice her life that the demon Jackson might be exposed to the world, his deeds of evil and misdoings brought to light, and he expatiate the many crimes which he had committed on the gallows or by serving a ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... Beacon they passed in sight of another beacon, and of a village which they call Newworke, in which is a small castle like unto that at Rose Beacon. Here the sea began to expatiate, and about three leagues from hence was the lowest buoy of the river. And now Whitelocke was got forth into the open German Ocean, a sea wide and large, oft-times highly rough and boisterous and full of danger, especially in these parts of it, and as Whitelocke shortly found it to ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... being what it was, I carried this morning to Lord G(ower), who seemed perfectly satisfied with the option you had made, and the manner in which you expressed yourself in relation to himself. Lord North dines with him on Saturday, when he intends to expatiate more at large upon your views, and to urge further your pretensions to ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... affect to perceive a certain coldness in the manner of Mrs. Hazeldean, but began immediately to talk to her about Frank; praise that young gentleman's appearance; expatiate on his health, his popularity, and his good gifts, personal and mental,—and this with so much warmth, that any dim and undeveloped suspicions Mrs. Hazeldean might have formed ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... enter upon this theme? How shall I expatiate upon excellencies which it was my fate to view in their genuine colours, to adore with an immeasurable and inextinguishable ardour, and which, nevertheless, it was my hateful task to blast and destroy? Yet I will not be spared. I shall find, in the rehearsal, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... If affairs be always conducted thus, it will be truly impossible to make the voyage according to the very severe regulations laid down by his Majesty, and with the very slight assistance given by his officials to the religious. I do not expatiate upon the great difficulties in obtaining religious, on their own side, as they are the sons of many mothers; and as soon as they begin the journey they hear a thousand things in regard to the evils of the country where they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... not expatiate on the new ideas which Michael Angelo accepted, or the impulse he gave to art in all its forms, and to the revival of which civilization is so much indebted. Let us turn and give a parting look at the man,—that great creative genius who had no superior in his day and generation. Like ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... virtuous and well-ordered household." Naturally desiring to represent in the most favourable colours the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, though indulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, in order to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously seeks its model and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of the United States that city in which progress advances at the fastest ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... is just one of the great points which the defenders of women's rights forget to expatiate upon. A man may love as often as he chooses, while a woman must only love once, or he considers himself very badly used. Why not be on an equal footing? Not that I want to love any one," says Molly; "only it is the injustice ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... give you my word that I am speaking with absolute sincerity. You think you can live with impunity in this environment without becoming like all the rest of them; while I tell you that that is a natural necessity. Suppose we expatiate on that a bit . . . will you ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... I was like to die of fright and said to them, 'O my brethren, if generosity were lost, it would not be found save with you and had I a secret, which I feared to divulge, your breasts alone should have the keeping of it.' And I went on to expatiate to them in this sense, till I saw that frankness would profit me more than concealment; so I told them the whole story. When they heard it, they said, 'And is this young man Ali ben Bekkar and this damsel Shemsennehar?' ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... in contemplation of improving it by the assistance of imported slaves. What would be the consequence of hindering us from it? The slaves of Virginia would rise in value, and we would be obliged to go to your markets." I need not expatiate on this subject. Great as the evil is, a dismemberment of the union would be worse. If those states should disunite from the other states, for not indulging them in the temporary continuance of this traffic, they might solicit and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... had found a clue to the heart of his cousin, and he began to expatiate, with unusual eloquence, on the nobleness of that daring sin which "lost angels heaven." Florence listened to him with attention, but not with sympathy. Lumley was deceived. His was not an ambition that could attract the fastidious but high-souled ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wife explained, and asked her whether she was enjoying it, she answered with a rapture that was quite astonishing, in reference to her mother's expressions of disgust: "Oh, immensely! Every instant of it," and she went on to expatiate on its peculiar charm in terms so intelligent and sympathetic that Mrs. March confessed it had been part of our wedding journey, and that this was the reason why we were now taking ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... of successive ages. Here, in one visit, the student may imbibe those principles to ascertain which many artists have consumed the best part of their days; and penetrated by their effect, he is spared the laborious investigation by which they came to be known and established. It is unnecessary to expatiate on the advantages which the fine arts may expect to derive from such a repository of antiques in a capital so centrical as Paris. The contemplation of them cannot fail to fire the genius of any artist of taste, and prompt his ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... pursued, "then I need not expatiate on it, and you will understand the sort of place that Mayes fled to, and how it suited him. He was a man of far greater ability than any of the coarse scoundrels in power, and he was worse than all of them. He was not ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... visitors through the city; and at their beck the doors of public buildings and churches, and the gates of palaces and gardens, were thrown open. The party entered the Hotel de Ville, and in one of its large rooms an opportunity was afforded for Mr. Mapps to expatiate a little on the ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic |
