"Garrulity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has not its factories of this description driven by (milk-and-) water power. I cannot conceive the confusion of tongues to have been the curse of Babel, since I esteem my ignorance of other languages as a kind of Martello-tower, in which I am safe from the furious bombardments of foreign garrulity. For this reason I have ever preferred the study of the dead languages, those primitive formations being Ararats upon whose silent peaks I sit secure and watch this new deluge without fear, though it rain figures (simulacra, semblances) of speech forty days and nights together, as it not ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... afternoon the two travellers pushed on mostly in silence, for the glances that house seemed to give him from the edge of its perilous ridge, had driven the mirth from Rodriguez and had even checked the garrulity on the lips of the tougher Morano, if garrulity can be ascribed to him whose words seldom welled up unless some simple philosophy troubled his deeps. The house seemed indeed to glance at him, for as their road wound on, the house showed different aspects, different walls and edges of walls, and ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... experienced by giving me an account—two hours long, and with equal unction—of a tremendous controversy then raging as to the proper form of electing the sub-patriarch of Cairo. It would have been ungrateful to interrupt him, although there seemed no end to his garrulity. Fortunately, two or three people at length came in; I compromised my dignity as a heretic by kissing his hand, and escaped, to turn over this curious story in my mind. Next day I went to the Greek church, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... lecture on the most approved method of making a ptisan from the flowers of the lime-tree, and on the many medicinal properties of that decoction, to which she attributed her good health at so advanced an age. I silently supplemented her peroration by attributing her garrulity ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... of his lightning-flashes of candid garrulity, "Friendship is but a name. I love no one—not even my brothers; Joseph perhaps a little. Still, if I do love him, it is from habit, because he is the eldest of us. Duroc? Ay, him, if any one, I ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... of a slow understanding. How consistently prudent is Ulysses, thro' the whole of his character; we never see him err thro' rashness, but rather commit faults, thro' an over caution. How wonderfully are we reconciled to the great garrulity of the venerable Nestor, which would be inexcusable, did we not reflect, at the same time, on his extreme old age, of which the poet never fails to remind us? How readily do we excuse the ferocity of Achilles, when we reflect that the generous youth prefers a short life, with fame and ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... Jack had now posted him thoroughly, Perk managed to curb his curiosity besides, the chances were his pal would be likely to frown on anything approaching garrulity. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... preparations against it, were interpreted by some of his political enemies as a sign both of personal cowardice and of official self-glorification,—as is indicated by a letter written by the aged Landon Carter to General Washington, on the 31st of October, and filled with all manner of caustic garrulity and insinuation,—a letter from which it may be profitable for us to quote a few sentences, as qualifying somewhat that stream of honeyed testimony respecting Patrick Henry which commonly flows down upon us so copiously ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... carried the secret of a profound and unbroken melancholy. Of the dog, nothing was said, even in whispers, till time had hallowed that grave, and the little children about, grown to be men and women. Then the garrulity of age ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... of the birds that remain with us during the winter. He is a permanent resident, and everybody knows him. He is a lively chatterer and an agreeable companion; and as he never tarries long in one place, he does not tire one with his garrulity. He is our attendant in all our pleasant winter-walks, in the orchard or the wood, in the garden or by the rustic wayside. We have seen him, on still winter-days, flitting from tree to tree, with the liveliest motions and in the most engaging attitudes, examining every twig and branch, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... she answered in a slightly unsteady voice; "let me speak to them all." He yielded, but cut short the garrulity of some who would have liked to mingle reminiscences of her baby-hood with their rejoicing over her return, telling them they must reserve such communication for a more suitable time, as their young mistress was faint and ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... approaches to the character of vulgarism, disturbing all approaches to elegance in conversation, and disorganizing it as a thing capable of unity or of progress? These vices are, first, disputation; secondly, garrulity; ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... kindliness, although they now surveyed Eric with an unconcealed hostility. Her figure, in its merciless dress, was very angular; yet there was about her a dignity of carriage and manner which Eric liked. In any case, he preferred her unsmiling dourness to vulgar garrulity. ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... gazing into the fire, hardly heeding the old weaver's garrulity, and letting him chatter on as he pleased. Occasionally she would look anxiously over her shoulder to ask Rotha if Ralph had got back, and on receiving answer that he had not yet been seen she would resume her position, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... it not Galilee and the Nazarene, that Oriental source from which Mahomet also drew? But he added to the "as it must be" the words, "and as God wills." He was alone in the compartment with Lacey, whose natural garrulity had had a severe discipline in the months that had passed since he had asked to be allowed to black David's boots. He could now sit for an hour silent, talking to himself, carrying on unheard conversations. Seeing David's mood, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... retailed all this for Archie's benefit. He had come in to glean a crumb or two of intelligence, if he could, about the Challoners' movements, and the colonel's garrulity furnished him ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... observation; and the reason is, that as in infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a class, just as in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of them,—so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization is done to the poet's hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother's affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike fondness of repetition ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... unsuspected reserves of vitality. He crept out into the sunshine again, basking in the vernal warmth with a sense of luxury, and entering into the gossip of the ditchers with an unwonted mental activity and garrulity. ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... he lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled to repay the most liberal hospitality by the basest violation of confidence, a man without delicacy, without shame, without sense enough to know when he was hurting the feelings of others, or when he was exposing himself to derision; and because ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... oubliette from whence he threatened with feeble insistence to pop up at any moment like a strange question or a sudden shame. She hid him in a rosy flush which a breath could have made flame unbearably, and she hid from him behind the light garrulity of Mrs. Cafferty, through which now and again, as through a veil, she saw the spike of his helmet, a wiry bristling moustache, a surge of great shoulders. On these ghostly indications she heaped a tornado of words which swamped the ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... Spare that proposal, Father, spare the trouble Of that sollicitation; let me here, As I deserve, pay on my punishment; And expiate, if possible, my crime, 490 Shameful garrulity. To have reveal'd Secrets of men, the secrets of a friend, How hainous had the fact been, how deserving Contempt, and scorn of all, to be excluded All friendship, and avoided as a blab, The mark of fool set on his front? But I Gods counsel have not ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... had not been, the entrance of Elizabeth and Miss Winn would have checked the garrulity of Eunice. Cynthia had been laying down the small diamond-shaped pieces, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... lose the historian in the man, nor suffer the doting recollections of age to overcome me, while dwelling with fond garrulity on the virtuous days of the patriarchs—on those sweet days of simplicity and ease, which never more will dawn on the lovely island ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... speech, and made it perform the functions of a domestic servant. In this capacity it was exceedingly useful; but, through some defect in the machinery, it chattered much more than was agreeable to either philosopher. Various remedies were tried to cure it of its garrulity, but in vain; and one day, Thomas Aquinas was so enraged at the noise it made when he was in the midst of a mathematical problem, that he seized a ponderous hammer and smashed it to pieces.[31] He was sorry ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... he was boisterous or his frankness went freighted of no guile. It is commonest error to believe your frankest talker, your greatest teller of truth; whereas, in a majority of instances, the delusive garrulity is a mask or a feint, meant only to cover facts and screen designs of which the victim's first notice is, snap! when they pin him like a steel-trap. Still, Storri entertained no risks when he broke into confidences with Mr. Harley. It was Mr. Harley who listened ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... once reconciled—or at least resigned—to the mysterious necessity of having to "entertain" a friend of Undine's, had yielded to the first touch on the weak springs of her garrulity. She had not seen Mrs. Heeny for two days, and this friendly young man with the gentle manner was almost as easy to talk to as the masseuse. And then she could tell him things that Mrs. Heeny already knew, and Mrs. Spragg liked to repeat her stories. To do so gave her almost ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... this view literature is a fortuitous series of happy thoughts and heaven-sent findings. But the end of that plan is beggary. Sprightly talk about the first object that meets the eye and the indulgence of vagabond habits soon degenerate to a professional garrulity, a forced face of dismal cheer, and a settled dislike of strenuous exercise. The economies and abstinences of discipline promise a kinder fate than this. They test and strengthen purpose, without which no great work comes into being. They save the expenditure of energy on those ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... marrying a wit or a talker merely, though the brilliant scintillations of the former, or the garrulity of the latter, may amuse or delight you for the time being, yet you will derive no permanent satisfaction from these qualities, for there will be no common bond of kindred feeling to assimilate your souls and hold each ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the undertaking spread through his club, although he endeavored to keep the matter secret as long as possible. Unfortunately, he consulted with that military authority, Colonel Dundas, who was unable to restrain his garrulity concerning anything martial. The current report had it that the colonel intended to make his selection of officers from among certain young men of his acquaintance who were serving, or had served, ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... to a burglar. The incessant assertion of such things can do little to spread your superior culture; and if you say them too often people may even begin to doubt whether you have any superior culture after all. The earnest friend now advising you cannot but grieve at such incautious garrulity. If you confined yourself to single words, uttered at intervals of about a month or so, no one could possibly raise any rational objection, or subject them to any rational criticism. In time you might come to use ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... was caught up by happy men to express the worth of truly worthy things, of brotherhood and garrulity, and the brief and kindly leisure of the poor. Of course, the great part of the more stolid reproaches directed against the Omarite morality are as false and babyish as such reproaches usually are. One critic, whose work I have read, had the incredible foolishness to ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... "is the only case of golfing garrulity I have ever known where a permanent cure was affected. If you would care ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... that he had said quite enough to alarm any old lady. And indeed Mrs. Moon was slowly taking in the idea of disaster, and it sent her poor wits wandering in the past. Her voice sank suddenly from grating; antagonism to pensive garrulity. ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... as the Padre sat by the pillow of the suffering Rosa, he had the simplicity, in the garrulity of his heart, to repeat all these idle reports and malicious insinuations to the invalid: "But," says Baldovini, "as I spoke, Rosa only ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... of fun in his eyes, as though he comprehended our conversation, and interposed a "Hear, hear!" and when he had had enough of it, and we were growing prosy, he would turn over on his back with an expression of abject weariness, as though canine reticence objected to human garrulity. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... willing and well-intentioned, but to all appearance honest and harmless, and to whom he was already so largely indebted. With an effort, therefore, not so much of mind as of mood, he broke the ice which his own indifference had suffered to close, and by giving a legitimate excuse for the garrulity of his companion, unlocked once more the treasurehouse of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... forgotten to relate, in its place, a fact, as an offset to the truculent garrulity of the porters. We were shown round the cathedral by a respectable-looking old man in a red scarf, a cocked hat, and a livery, one of the officers of the place. He was respectful, modest, and well instructed in his tale. The tone of this good ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... for a little, and then started and said: "Are there any more questions, dear guest? The morning is waning fast amidst my garrulity?" ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... edition. Of the further additions made in the fifth edition, Sir Harris Nicolas makes this just criticism: "It is questionable," he says, "whether the additions which he then made to it have increased its interest. The garrulity and sentiments of an octogenarian are very apparent in some of the alterations; and the subdued colouring of religious feeling which prevails throughout the former editions, and forms one of the charms of the piece, is, in this impression, so ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... Byron's garrulity with regard to those delicate matters on which men of more prudence or chivalry are wont to set the seal of silence, has often the same practical effect as reticence; for he talks so much at large—every ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... that broke loose when the French guns were heard in Mulhouse; though here—as in all those war stories whose only satisfactory end is the final confusion of Kaiserdom—one feels that there is a chapter yet to be added. Miss BETHAM-EDWARDS writes with all the vigour (I might add all the garrulity) of intense personal feeling. Her book, as a race study, is a real contribution to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... and St. James's would be desolate, mourning their children, and refusing comfort. The system would act like a proscription. People would give up their friends that they might purchase aid against their enemies. Clubs are more endurable as they are, though members do suffer grievously from the garrulity, the coughs, the slumbrous tendencies, and the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... which, though it may easily be overdone, is undoubtedly now and then precious for the purpose of enabling us to conjure up the things and men of old time more fully and correctly. And there is a Pepysian garrulity as well as a Pepysian shrewdness about Joinville; so that, on the whole, he fills the position of ancestor in the second group of historians, the group of lively raconteurs, as well as Villehardouin leads that of inspired describers. For an instance of the third kind, the philosophical historian, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... last become putrid. He is not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, and to transfer his empty cup from side to side upon it; and because he has not his alms-bag at hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments in his books. He never ceases to chatter with eternal garrulity to his companions; and while he adduces a multitude of reasons void of physical meaning, he waters the book, spread out upon his lap, with the sputtering of his saliva. What is worse, he next reclines with his elbows on the book, and by a short study invites a long nap; and by way of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... but he could not say them to him without losing possession of himself and his tongue; and so he passed from the temper of a cool antagonist to that of an enraged shrew. He had tried to explain the garrulity of the Dublin people by saying that they were obliged to talk and to persist in talking because "otherwise they'd start to think!" but he knew now that that was not an accurate explanation, that it was an ill-natured attempt to cover up ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... hand, the most prying and adroit of politicians were puzzled to read the signs of the times. Despite Henry's garrulity, or perhaps in consequence of it, the envoys of Spain, the Empire, and of Archduke Albert were ignorant whether peace were likely to be broken or not, in spite of rumours which filled the air. So well had the secrets been kept which the reader has seen discussed in confidential conversations—the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dose not strong enough to produce its effect, foreclosures were added to the mixture. Your own heart, Louisa, will tell you what Frank's feelings were at such a mean menace; and, though to stop his garrulity entirely was not in the power of man, he determined to silence him on that subject. But the cunning Abimelech turned even this incident to advantage, by taking care to inform ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... horny beak; "To beat their bosoms trying with rais'd arms, "In air suspended, on those arms they move; "The new-shap'd birds the sylvan tribes increase: "Magpies, the scandal of the grove. Thus chang'd, "Their former eloquence they still maintain, "In hoarse garrulity, and empty noise." ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... few people appreciate the force, the daring, the vitality of Browning, and those who know him best are least inclined to formulate a favorable criticism. They know too well the faults of their hero, his whims, crotchets, digressions, garrulity; his disjointed ideas, like rich plums in a poor pudding; his ejaculatory style, as of a man of second thoughts; his wing-bound fancy, which hops around his subject like a grasshopper instead of soaring steadily over it like an eagle. Many of his ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... of the past. He is eager that Socrates should come to visit him, fond of the poetry of the last generation, happy in the consciousness of a well-spent life, glad at having escaped from the tyranny of youthful lusts. His love of conversation, his affection, his indifference to riches, even his garrulity, are interesting traits of character. He is not one of those who have nothing to say, because their whole mind has been absorbed in making money. Yet he acknowledges that riches have the advantage of placing men above the temptation to dishonesty or falsehood. ...
— The Republic • Plato
... touch of the garrulity of age in this good man's recital; but I consider his record of his early life, slight as it is, yet too strikingly suggestive to be left to chances which might await a private letter. Indeed, the character thus displayed is surely equal to that of the best of the old Romans, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... where I am," said Mrs. Bradford. "There is nothing for two to do, is there? And you know my legs, of course——" She did not trouble to be more explicit, because her unusual garrulity was dying down now Miss Panton and Laura had gone, and she knew Ethel would be reasonable enough to understand that the legs of a married lady could not be expected to go up and down stairs as easily as those of ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... book-rack," she continued, with the garrulity of the invalid when discoursing of his own affairs, "were Hesden's notions, as were many other things in the room. The flowers I had brought in, one by one, to satisfy my hunger for the world without. In the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... certain camaraderie reigning which had been foreign to the yacht before, and Lane gave way to his native garrulity, enlivening the table by some anecdotes, at which even Barraclough ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... histories, the biographical notices form a very considerable portion of the book, and, as usual, its value is diminished in an exactly equivalent degree; for the biographies of Western pioneers are fully as tedious and valueless as the catalogue of ships in the second book of Homer. And, oh! the garrulity of the biographers, the minuteness of detail, the petty incidents, the host of dates! With these we are inflicted because some adventurous Yankee happened, by sheer luck, to build the first shanty on what became the site of a great city, or chanced there to be a pioneer ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... to be rather lavish of electricity, but he did but a small retail business in it, compared with our dear GEORGE FRANCIS, the demi-god, who, when he is not talking with sublime garrulity, is telegraphing without regard to expense. Evidently it has dawned upon the mind (if he has any,) of this extraordinary being, that the world, in none of its quarters, can get along without him, and that the newspaper which does not mention ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... you can excuse the garrulity of age, I can tell you one or two things about Louis Stevenson, his father and even his grandfather, which you may work up some other day, as you have so deftly embedded in the Atalanta article that small remark on his acting. Your paper is pleasant and modest: ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... farmer, who became thenceforth exceedingly chatty, and talked of nothing else but good Queen Bess and her frequent visits to Theobalds in the old Lord Burleigh's time, during the rest of the journey. Little heed was paid to his garrulity by the young couple. They let him talk on, feigning to listen, but in reality noting scarce a word he said. As they entered the park of Theobalds, however, they found their tongues, and Gillian became loud in ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... I was an old, bearded, heavy-going, wrinkled tramp, leaning on a stout stick; my grey hairs blew about my old red ears in wisps. I stopped all passers-by upon the road, and chuckled over old jokes or detained them with garrulity. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... in the one case as in the other. Without difficulty we affirm of a given act that it appertains to a given period. We recognize the noisy sports of boyhood, the business application of maturity, the feeble garrulity of old age. We express our surprise when we witness actions unsuitable to the epoch of life. As it is in this respect in the individual, so it is in the nation. The march of individual existence shadows forth the march of race existence, being, indeed, its representative ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... by a certain new strain of eloquence, as excellent as it was uncommon, with which I spoke." Cicero, when he wrote this of himself, was an old man sixty-two years of age, broken hearted for the loss of his daughter, to whom it was no doubt allowed among his friends to praise himself with the garrulity of years, because it was understood that he had been unequalled in the matter of which he was speaking. It is easy for us to laugh at his boastings; but the account which he gives of his early life, and of the manner in which he attained the excellence for which he ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... prairie-dog, but it isn't about the unexpected. The fact is, the unexpected is the devil—the sooner you find that out, the happier you'll be." He leaned back, tilting his smooth bald head against the blotched mirror behind him, and rambling on with gentle garrulity while Garnett attacked ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Cetoxa, though a gambler and a rake, is a nobleman of birth and high repute for courage and honour. Besides, this stranger, with his noble presence and lofty air,—so calm, so unobtrusive,—has nothing in common with the forward garrulity of an imposter." ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and went up to Sinang, who began with her childish garrulity, "Where have you been all day? We were all asking, where can that soul redeemed from purgatory have gone? And we all said ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the attack of the Indians, and the bloody repulse. All was quiet. The troops were reassembled in camp. The usual garrulity of the soldiers was checked by the recollection of their dead comrades, so recently laid to rest in soldiers' graves. All, too, remembered the danger through which they had passed, and many were ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... frivolous garrulity. Every craft in the East has a jargon of its own and the goldsmith (Zargar) is famed for speaking a language made unintelligible by the constant insertion of a letter or letters not belonging to the word. It is as if we rapidly pronounced How ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... fits of sea sickness, his coughs, his headaches, his devotional moods, his gratitude for the divine protection after a great escape, his struggles to submit himself to the divine will after a disaster, are described with an amiable garrulity hardly to have been expected from the most discreet and sedate statesman of the age. Still more remarkable is the careless effusion of his tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes in his friend's domestic felicity. When an heir is born to Bentinck, "he ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fitness debate or argue: He can only decree. "Let thy words be few"; that is even truer, we {161} instinctively feel, of words put into His mouth than of words addressed to Him. Milton's God suffers even more than Shakspeare's Ghosts from a garrulity which destroys the sense of the awe properly belonging to a supernatural being; and the grim laughter of the Miltonic heaven is in its different way even more fatal to that awe than the Jack-in-the-box appearances and disappearances of the ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... she talked on, and as this seemed her only comfort, they would not check her garrulity. In the hope that they were come to take the house, she now bustled as well as she could, to show all to the best advantage, but bad was the best now, as she sorrowfully said. She was very unwilling that ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... "Music and Manners in the Classical Period." This captivating work contains also a note-book which Haydn kept in London; it is filled with amusing blunders in English and vivid pictures of London life of the time, pictures as delectable in their way as the immortal garrulity of Pepys. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... were always sure to be received with the attention bestowed upon distinguished guests. The old men, of whom there were many in the vale, seldom stirred from their mats, where they would recline for hours and hours, smoking and talking to one another with all the garrulity of age. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... passed him, whose reputation had long ceased to be doubtful, and damaged English ladies, who are constantly seen in company of their faithful attendant for the time being in these gay haunts of dissipation, the old major, with eager garrulity and mischievous relish told his nephew wonderful particulars regarding the lives of these heroines; and diverted the young man with a thousand scandals. Egad, he felt himself quite young again, he remarked to Pen, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... observed taking the air in the village street. It was the Poet who had insisted upon this walk, and he had his own purpose. They looked at the spires of smoke piercing the windless air, and studied the daffodils in the cottage gardens. Dickson was glum, but Heritage seemed in high spirits. He varied his garrulity with spells ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... contribute, for these remove it from the senses, purify the intellect from the irrational forms of life with which it is surrounded, and lead it to the incorporeal perception of ideas. For if these sciences receive the soul replete with images, and knowing nothing subtile and unattended with material garrulity; and if they elucidate reasons possessing an irrefragable necessity of demonstration, and forms full of all certainty and immateriality, and which by no means call to their aid the inaccuracy of sensibles, do they not evidently purify our intellectual life from things which fill us with ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... unknown knight had not returned to the observation-car until the long train was sliding into Sespe, and Kay had no time to satisfy her thirst for information anent young turkeys. With unexpected garrulity, he had introduced himself; with the receipt of this information, she had been rendered speechless, first with surprise, and then with distress as her alert mind swiftly encompassed the pitiful awakening ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... woman's garrulity, and with a bosom bursting with anguish, Alonzo paid for his ale without drinking it, bade her good night, and slowly proceeded to the church-yard. The moon, in full lustre, shone with solemn, silvery ray, on the sacred piles, and funeral monuments of the sacred ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... is, however, an indefinable product, and is apt to strike the traveller who observes for himself as very wide of the mark. The English, who have for ages been described (mainly by the French) as the dumb stiff, unapproachable race, present to-day a remarkable appearance of good-humour and garrulity and are distinguished by their facility of intercourse. On the other hand, any one who has seen half-a-dozen Frenchmen pass a whole day together in a railway-carriage without breaking silence is forced to believe that the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... ludicrous. They were lost in astonishment that a "newspaper essayist" and "bookseller's, drudge" should have written such a poem. On the evening of its announcement to them Goldsmith had gone away early, after "rattling away as usual," and they knew not how to reconcile his heedless garrulity with the serene beauty, the easy grace, the sound good sense, and the occasional elevation of his poetry. They could scarcely believe that such magic numbers had flowed from a man to whom in general, says Johnson, "it was ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... gaining in time a more composed view of nature, and overcome by her habits of garrulity, arrived at a frame of mind in which she found it almost necessary to tell me all about it—nothing less than that. She said that her situation was too unbearable with regard ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... traditions (continues Mr. Hershon) inform us that Eve was made from the thirteenth rib of the right side, and that she was not drawn out by the head, lest she should be vain; nor by the eyes, lest she should be wanton; nor by the mouth, lest she should be given to garrulity; nor by the ears, lest she should be an eavesdropper; nor by the hands, lest she should be intermeddling; nor by the feet, lest she should be a gadder; nor by the heart, lest she should be jealous;—but she was taken out from the side: yet, in spite of all these ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... art drunk, and hast lost thy wits. Why dost thou not leave off, Loki? But drunkenness so rules every man, that he knows not of his garrulity. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... too busy making plans and tearing them up to follow his monotonous garrulity except in a general way. He waited in vain for her to defend her daughter ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... fascinating Aquilina, whose heavy breathing suggests an analogy with the sounds of a storm about to burst," replied Emile, absently engaged in the harmless amusement of winding and unwinding Euphrasia's hair, "you would be ashamed of your inebriated garrulity. Both your systems can be packed in a phrase, and reduced to a single idea. The mere routine of living brings a stupid kind of wisdom with it, by blunting our intelligence with work; and on the other hand, a life passed in the limbo of the abstract or in the abysses of the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... on, dame!" Caroline, depressed as she was, felt the dame's garrulity like a pinch on her impatience. "What said the Intendant to you, on leaving ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and experienced a sudden check, remembering his resolve to fight this man with his own weapons, while here he was only an hour later behaving like a wild boy on his first escapade. He passed at once from garrulity to silence, and the contrast was so marked that the glances exchanged by ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... to the main story, the course of which, as one looks back to it through some 250 years of novels, cannot be very difficult to "proticipate." A continuance of Court interviews and gossip, with the garrulity of Nemours himself and the Vidame, as well as the dropping of a letter by the latter, brings a complete eclaircissement nearer and nearer. The Countess, though more and more in love, remains virtuous, and indeed hardly ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... own condemnation: let him prosper who remembers this truth. The value of mystery, the value of silence, and above all things, the supreme value of a tongue that is a servant and not a master; Coryndon considered these values and wondered again at the garrulity of men. Talk, the fluid, ineffectual force that fills the world with noise, that kills illusions and betrays every latent weakness; surely the high gods laughed when they put a tongue in the mouth of man. He pinched his lips together ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... interrupted every argument with hoydenish trivialities, in one breath, to appeal to Garry the next for refutation. And Garry, the light-tongued and quick-witted, sat almost dumb of lip before her happy garrulity. But his eyes never left her; they spoke his thought aloud. The quick lift and droop of her eyelids, the brilliancy of her lips, made Miriam's face a living thing of happiness—made Barbara's silence seem even more profound. For the latter's ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... down; but there was a soft golden glow prevailing all the same. For many a day George Brand remembered that little luncheon-party; the dull, bronze glow of the room; the flowers; the soft, downcast eyes opposite him; the bright, pleasant garrulity of the little Polish lady; and always—ah, the delight of it!—that strange, trembling, sweet consciousness that Natalie Lind was listening as he listened—that almost he could have heard the beating ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... garrulity was checked by the noiseless entrance of Margeret. He gave a distinct start as ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... indulged in health, and nursed in sickness, and all their wishes and wants attended to. Their company is sought by the young, to whom their conversation is considered an honour. Their advice is asked on all occasions, their words are listened to as oracles, and their occasional garrulity, nay even the second childhood often attendant on extreme old age, is never with the Indians a subject ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... monsieur," Lanyard cut short the old man's garrulity; and went on up the stairs, now a little wearily, of a sudden newly conscious of his ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... appointed evening I directed my steps, under the guidance of the said Miss SPINK, to a certain imposing stucco residence hard by, wherein were an assortment of female women conversing with vivacious garrulity, in a delicious atmosphere of tea, coffee, and ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... consistency in his incidental remarks concerning the lower classes. In his "Clerk's Tale" he finds room for a very dubious commonplace about the "stormy people," its levity, untruthfulness, indiscretion, fickleness, and garrulity, and the folly of putting any trust in it. In his "Nun's Priest's Tale" he further enlivens one of the liveliest descriptions of a hue-and-cry ever put upon paper by a direct reference ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... he glance upward at becoming intervals to the "primal duties," he turns back with a settled predilection to the "sympathies that are nestled at the feet like flowers." But it is within his villa that we love to be admitted to him and to enjoy that garrulity which we forgive more readily in the mother of the muses than in any of her daughters, unless it be Clio, who is most like her. If we are in the library, he is reminded of this or that passage in a favorite author, and, going to the shelves, takes down the ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Casaubon's note on Strabo, p. 400.) Hence the word came to signify generally abusive people. Sulla did not forget these insults when he took Athens (c. 13). Plutarch alludes to this also in his Treatise on Garrulity, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... how I do rattle on—but you know my moods and will make due allowance for what might strike the cold, unfeeling world as being garrulity. ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... shallow persons who taunt him with inconsistency because he makes so much of silence, and yet talks so much, understand little or nothing of him. In half a dozen pages one man may be guilty of shameless garrulity, and another may be nobly reticent throughout a dozen volumes. Carlyle feels the contradictions of the universe as keenly as any man can feel them. He knows how easy it is to appear profound by putting anew the riddles which nobody ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... for she was by nature given to profound silences, almost unbroken for days. Perhaps, she believed the garrulity of her husband ample for the entire family. Nevertheless, in this critical moment, Mrs. Schmidt opened her mouth repeatedly, like a fish out of water, as if she were striving her utmost ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... despair that drove him to cut it short; but Haydon continues his self-autopsy to the last moment, and in pulling the trigger seems to be only firing the train for an explosion that shall give him a week longer of posthumous notoriety. The egotism of Pepys was but a suppressed garrulity, which habitual caution, fostered by a period of political confusion and the mystery of office, drove inward to a kind of soliloquy in cipher; that of Montaigne was metaphysical,—in studying his own nature and noting his observations he was studying man, and that with a singular ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... observances, and his hand was always held out to me in those straitened moments in which my impulsive and ill-regulated manner of life continually landed me. I shall not disturb the serenity of his old age by the indiscreet garrulity of mine. But the brotherhood between him and Lowell brought our lives together, and Lowell was the pole to which both our needles swung. Norton's delicate health made it impossible for him to take part in the excursions made by the Club, though he was ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Lord Palmerston once made historic reference, or profiting by personal acquaintance with a Minister, obtained more or less full knowledge of what the Queen's Speech would contain. But he was bound in honour to preserve his informant from possibly inconvenient consequences of his garrulity, and so the oracular style was adopted. When other papers, put on the track, obtained information in the same way they adopted the same quaint practice, till now it has become deeply ingrained in journalism. To-day, whilst there is ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of this, if further garrulity about myself can be pardoned, I may state that every year, as Christmas approaches, I begin to grow young again. At least I judge so from the fact that a strange, mysterious pleasure, well known to me by this time, though little understood and very varied, begins to glow in my mind ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... with Adam. Not that I ever blamed him for his weakness in the apple incident; but I do blame him for his garrulity, and his paltry cowardice in exposing Eve. Eve was an instinctive agnostic—and she didn't purpose to be anybody's slave. If Adam decided to keep up with the procession, as he at first did decide to do, he had no business to whine over ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... long observed, that the greatest events may be often traced back to slender causes. Petty competition or casual friendship, the prudence of a slave, or the garrulity of a woman, have hindered or promoted the most important schemes, and hastened or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... death-bringing darts. Too late he repented of his rashness, for she had been tenderly beloved by him, and he would fain have recalled her to life; but, although he exerted all his healing powers, his efforts were in vain. He punished the crow for its garrulity by changing the colour of its plumage from pure white to intense black, and forbade it to fly any longer among the ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... career as Benedictine monk and a leading figure in the world of British Catholicism. Eton, Oxford, Rome, and (of course) his own famous monastery at Fort Augustus, are the chief scenes of it; and about them all Sir DAVID talks vividly, even brilliantly. I am not saying that all this pleasant garrulity would not have been the better for the blue pencil, especially in those chapters in which the writer's memory dwells almost to excess upon the births, marriages, deaths and dinner-parties of the orthodox ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... circumlocutions which are substituted for technical phrases are clear, neat, and exact. The illustrations at once adorn and elucidate the reasoning. The sparkling epigrams of Cowley, and the simple garrulity of the burlesque poets of Italy, are alternately employed, in the happiest manner, to give effect to what is obvious or clearness to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have a humbler or more devoted servant. As nothing in his estimation was less becoming to a wise man than matrimony, so nothing was more ornamental than flirtation. He had the old man's weakness, garrulity, and he told the wittiest stories in the world, without omitting any thing in them but the point. This omission did not arise from the want either of memory or of humour, but solely from a deficiency in the malice natural to all jesters. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... Thessalian art, she hoped by that handle to work out some method of release. These doubts occupied her mind during the rest of the day and the long hours of night; and, accordingly, when Sosia visited her the following morning, she hastened to divert his garrulity into that channel in which it had before evinced a ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... share in his convivial enjoyments. He relates that once, while they were feasting together, there was a guest present, a physician, who was a very vain and conceited man, and so talkative that no one else had any opportunity to speak. All the pleasure of conversation was spoiled by his excessive garrulity. Philotas, however, at length puzzled him so completely with a question of logic,—of a kind similar to those often discussed with great interest in ancient days,—as to silence him for a time; and young Antony was so much delighted with this feat, that he ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... managed to stem the torrent of garrulity and interposed a question concerning the telegram ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... and English here. No Boers are to be seen talking to Englishmen. The Boers are very close as to their feelings and intentions, which those who know them interpret as a bad sign, because, as a rule, they are inclined to irresponsible garrulity. A point in which Dutch feeling here tells is that every Dutch man, woman, or child is more or less of a Boer secret service agent, revealing our movements and concealing ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... a something about Sir Felix that tempts to garrulity, and I could fill pages here with an account of our preparations for the Regatta; the daily visits he paid me—always in a fuss, and five times out of six over some trivial difficulty that had assailed him in the still watches of the night; the protracted meetings of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... annihilate everything that lay between her and her lover, and so establish that perfect silence which sounds may traverse from afar. In her tense self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful to her; she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes of midnight sounded ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... anxious, too, to hear everything concerning Mr. Floyd—his friends abroad, his habits, his vie intime at certain houses which had been his favorite lounge for years while he was minister at ——. Garrulity was by no means my habit in those days, but I had talked to her very freely: indeed, she could do with me what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... wish me to disengage the philosophy of this garrulity? It is found whole and entire in an apolog of my son—he too a philosopher without knowing it. He was then seven. As a result of learning fables he was seized with the ambition of writing one, which he brought to me one fine day. It is called the 'Donkey ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... disclaiming responsibility, of disliking such things, of being ready to oppose them if some effective method could only be thought out. He even hinted to those about him at Headquarters that this seeming garrulity was serving a good end, claiming it to be harmless pother to "cover" more immediate trails on which ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... orchards and melon-patches, and the rides to and from the old, country church on the Sabbath; the practical jokes of which I was so fond, and from which even my own father was not exempt. Kind reader, indulge the garrulity of age, and allow me to recount one of these. There are a few who will remember it; for they have laughed at it for fifty years. I never knew my father to tell a fib but upon one occasion in my life. Under the circumstances, I am sure the kindly nature will, at least, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Queen, 'Lo! they have set her on, Our simple-seeming Abbess and her nuns, To play upon me,' and bowed her head nor spake. Whereat the novice crying, with clasped hands, Shame on her own garrulity garrulously, Said the good nuns would check her gadding tongue Full often, 'and, sweet lady, if I seem To vex an ear too sad to listen to me, Unmannerly, with prattling and the tales Which my good father ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... line is a safe and honourable employment?—I do not know when I might get to the end of my tether; and the interest which every reasonable man must take in the extraordinary adventures of my early years, might be grievously marred and broken in upon through the garrulity ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... peculiar position. There were few inmates in the large old house. Besides the invalid herself, there was an old cook and a butler, by name Francis, who had been in the family for many years, and whose garrulity was supplied from an inexhaustible fountain—the fate and fortunes of the Bernards. My patient was a lovely woman in body—a maniac in mind. Her affliction had suddenly shot up into her brain, and left untouched the lineaments of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... emancipation of mind and speech from schoolgirl habits. A defensive assumption of impertinent reserve, varied by fits of superficial garrulity, gave way to real thoughtfulness, to natural amiability. Then came, too, an emboldenment of the facial outline, a constancy to the colour of the cheeks, a certainty of gait, and the first perceptible roundness of ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... saucers, in her little bowl of hot water on the end of the table, as was her custom when the best china had been used, the maid, who was clearing the table, and who had been encouraged to conversation from the lack of another woman in the house, and her mistress's habit of gentle garrulity, spoke upon the subject ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the unconcern of their every-day existence is strikingly contrasted with the dark and fateful purposes of Tell. The shallow innocent garrulity of Stuessi the Forester, the maternal vehemence of Armgart's Wife, the hard-hearted haughtiness of Gessler, successively presented to us, give an air of truth to the delineation, and deepen the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... females learn the wisdom of controlling their natural garrulity when placed in charge of bachelors' flats," said Colwyn with a laugh. "We will get nothing out of her if we stay here all day, so we had ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... assured him. "Nature guards her best men with some sort of singularity not attractive to others. Often she makes them odious with conceit or deformity or dumbness or garrulity. Dante was such a poor talker that no one would ever ask him to dinner. If it had not been so I presume his muse would have been sadly crippled by indigestion. If you had been a good dancer and a lady's favorite I wonder if you would have studied Kirkham ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... which they had been eye-witnesses. One gave a narrative of a feast of which he had partaken, another had danced at my grandfather's wedding, a third had nursed my father, and all of them were past their prime when I was born. To listen to their garrulity, and to witness the pleasure they felt in describing and recalling to each other's recollection, the scenes of years long gone by, and their opinion respecting the alteration in the times, was to me a source of indescribable delight. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... enjoying the moment. In short he forgot himself and, what was equally important, forgot that he was talking to a girl. He felt and behaved as he did with men. "Moly hoses!" said Watts to himself on the front seat, "the old fellow's getting loquacious. Garrulity must be contagious, and he's caught it from Mr. Pierce." Which, being reduced to actual facts, means that Peter had spoken eight times, and laughed twice, in the half hour that was passed between the station and ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... case to become public property in Geneva Square. Still, Miss Greeb was a valuable ally, if only for her wide acquaintance with the neighbourhood, its inhabitants, and their doings. Therefore, after a moment's reflection, he resolved to secure Miss Greeb as a coadjutor, and risk her excessive garrulity. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... than ever. Norvin had no idea how to proceed. He could only wait for some word from his new ally, Vittoria Fabrizi. It might be that she would find a clue, and he feared to complicate matters by any premature or ill-judged action. Meanwhile, he encountered the results of Bernie Dreux's garrulity. He found himself generally regarded as Myra Nell's accepted suitor, and, of course, could make no denial. But when he telephoned to the girl herself and asked when he might call he was surprised ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... His garrulity was an instant arrested; for lifting his eyes, he saw what no one else saw—the black figure of Dr Oman standing on the sunlit lawn and looking steadily into the room. Before he could quite recover himself Cray had ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... emphasis which abruptly broke the quotation in half. He had been frowning moodily at his guest for some minutes, relighting his cigar more than once meanwhile. He had made a mental calculation of what the old man had had to drink, and had reassured himself as to his condition. His garrulity might have an alcoholic basis, but his wits were clear enough. It was time to take a ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... shall have patience to continue, but my memory is still so fresh, or rather so retentive of trifles which first made impression on it, that it is very possible my life (turned of seventy-one) may be exhausted before my stock of remembrances; especially as I am sensible of the garrulity of old age, and of its eagerness of relating whatever it recollects, whether of moment or not. Thus, while I fancy I am complying with you, I may only be indulging myself, and consequently may wander into many digressions for which you will not care a straw, and which may intercept the completion ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... effect, by denouncing their opposition as corrupt. Leland saw the meaning: "Not that, by breaking out into invectives, I may expose myself to the like treatment."] and afford my old adversaries a fresh pretext for getting more from Philip, nor for the purpose of idle garrulity. But I imagine that what Philip is doing will grieve you hereafter more than it does now. I see the thing progressing, and would that my surmises were false; but I doubt it is too near already. So when you are able no longer to disregard events, when, instead of hearing from ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... loquaciousness; talkativeness &c adj.; garrulity; multiloquence^, much speaking. jaw; gabble; jabber, chatter; prate, prattle, cackle, clack; twaddle, twattle, rattle; caquet^, caquetterie [Fr.]; blabber, bavardage^, bibble-babble^, gibble-gabble^; small talk &c (converse) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he cried, with an easy garrulity rather amusing, under the circumstances. "Two more trains came in as I left the depot. If old Phil was on hand with his wagon, several more members of this interesting family may be here before the clock strikes; if not, the assemblage is like to be ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... holding his book in their hands, it is a fair inference that they do not wish to talk about themselves just that moment; indeed, it is not a violent hypothesis to suggest that perhaps they are then willing enough to have him talk about himself. For the egotistic garrulity of the author there is, in fact, no more fit occasion than in the final pages of his book. At that stage of the game he may fairly enough count on the good humor of his readers, since those who might be dissatisfied with him would ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... astonishing." From this it would appear that most of the so-called Gaboons must have been in reality Pygmies caught in the inland equatorial forests, for Bosman, who traded among the Gaboons, merely inveighed against their garrulity, their indecision, their gullibility and their fondness for strong drink, while as to their physique he observed: "they are mostly large, robust well shaped men."[54] Of the Congoes and Angolas the Jamaican writers had little to say except that in their glossy black they were ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... counsel is foolish, they are forgetful of love, most headstrong in their desires, fond of folly, prone to enter rashly into engagements, given to swearing, proud to be asked in marriage, tenacious of enmity, cheerless at the banquet, rejectors of reconciliation, prone to strife, of much garrulity. Until evil be good, until hell be heaven, until the sun hide his light, until the stars of heaven fall, women will remain as we have declared. Woe to him, my son, who desires or serves a bad woman, woe to him who has ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... courtesies like this give to poverty and old age! The old man's face brightened when he heard that he was known at such a distance by such a gentleman as this, and he answered Mr. Brandon's inquiries as to his health and his hearing with eager garrulity. ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... feeble garrulity of age, which loves to diffuse itself in discourse of the departed great. At my years we live in retrospect alone; and, wholly unfitted for the society of vigorous life, we enjoy, the best balm to all wounds, the consolation of friendship, in those only whom we have lost forever. Feeling ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tell me about them all! How are they all? how are the boys?" (with a playful smile of recollection at what used to be my one subject, the one theme on which I was wont to wax illimitably diffuse). But now, at the magic name no pleasant garrulity overcomes me; only the remembrance of my worries; of all those troubles that I mean now to transfer from my own to Roger's broad shoulders, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... conscious of the strain. The speaker pitches his voice high, as if it could not otherwise be heard at a distance. The Reverie, a speculation on the time when Power will show itself fully and therefore be known as love, has some of that vigorous intellectual garrulity which had grown on Browning during the years when unhappily for his poetry he came to be regarded chiefly as a prophet and a sage. An old man rightly values the truths which experience has made real for him; he repeats them again and again, for they constitute the best gift he can offer ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... discrimination. In the prosaic homeliness of the outline, and the magical illusion of the coloring, she reminds us of some of the marvellous Dutch paintings, from which, with all their coarseness, we start back as from a reality. Her low humor, her shallow garrulity, mixed with the dotage and petulance of age—her subserviency, her secrecy, and her total want of elevated principle, or even common honesty—are brought before us like a living ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... But Plutarch's "Morals" is less known, and seldom reprinted. Yet such a reader as I am writing to can as ill spare it as the "Lives." He will read in it the essays "On the Daemon of Socrates," "On Isis and Osiris," "On Progress in Virtue," "On Garrulity," "On Love," and thank anew the art of printing, and the cheerful domain of ancient thinking. Plutarch charms by the facility of his associations; so that it signifies little where you open his book, you find yourself at the Olympian tables. His memory is like the Isthmian ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... but he did not tell me what: there, you know, the seal of the confessional checked his garrulity, and my curiosity. Your confidences, however, had not made an enemy of the good father; it seems he was so struck, and felt so sorry that you should he out on such a night alone, that he had esteemed it a Christian duty to watch ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... as we arrived, and while you went up with the Captain, I wrote my letter and despatched my man. I expect Lady Ellinor will be here before nine o'clock. Meanwhile I have already seen that infamous waiting-woman, and taken care to prevent any danger from her garrulity. And you will be pleased to hear that I have hit upon a mode of satisfying the curiosity of our friend Mrs. Grundy—that is,'the World'—without injury to any one. We must suppose that that footman of Trevanion's was out of his mind,—it is but a charitable, and your good father ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unconverted. "The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity." David says, "I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me." I do not mean that you should ever engage in any sinful conversation in the presence of Christians. I know some professors of religion will indulge in senseless garrulity among themselves, and put on an air of seriousness and solemnity before those whom they regard as unconverted. This they pretend to do for the honor of Christ. But Christ says, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... upon my punctuality, and then again assured me, that I had nothing to fear from what she was about to propose. She had all the garrulity of her age, and spoke for some time but to little purpose, making professions of her attachment, and of her desire to serve me; all of which I foresaw would ultimately diminish the profits of my pipe-sticks, and I therefore stopped her progress, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... find myself inspired to make a second legend of Creative Evolution without distractions and embellishments. My sands are running out; the exuberance of 1901 has aged into the garrulity of 1930; and the war has been a stern intimation that the matter is not one to be trifled with. I abandon the legend of Don Juan with its erotic associations, and go back to the legend of the Garden of Eden. I exploit the eternal interest of the philosopher's stone which enables men to live ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw |
