"Prolix" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these are still on the decay. The Jarcoorts, inhabiting the country to the west of the great lake 'Carangermite,' once a very numerous and powerful people, are now reduced to under sixty. But time would fail, and I fear it would be deemed too prolix, were I to attempt to particularise in ever so small a degree, the previous state, condition, and declension of the original inhabitants of ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... and Royalty of the Kingdom of God in the Soul of Man (1683), and Appearance of God to Man in the Gospel (1710).[40] His prose style is lofty and often marked with singular beauty, though he is almost always too prolix for our generation, and too prone to divide his discourse into heads and sub-heads, and sub-divisions of sub-heads. Here is a specimen passage of his dealing with a topic which Plato and the great poets have often handled: ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Carrion de los Condes, a town in the Kingdom of Leon. Some of his companions had been admitted at Lerida, and at Balaguer, in Catalonia, under very extraordinary circumstances, which are omitted not to be too prolix. Zachary and Gautier, who had been sent into Portugal, had had much to suffer in the beginning; but Queen Urraqua, the wife of Alphonso II, who then reigned, was a most pious princess. She, having caused their Institute to be examined by ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... wanting in inventive power, in occasional situations that are intensely thrilling, and in subtle analysis of character; but they are fatally defective in art. The narrative is by turns abrupt and tiresomely prolix, proceeding not so much by dialogue as by elaborate dissection and discussion of motives and states of mind, interspersed with the author's reflections. The wild improbabilities of plot and the unnatural ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... was ignorant of those arts in which I thought he excelled, I began to despair of his opening and solving the difficulties which perplexed me (of which indeed however ignorant, he might have held the truths of piety, had he not been a Manichee). For their books are fraught with prolix fables, of the heaven, and stars, sun, and moon, and I now no longer thought him able satisfactorily to decide what I much desired, whether, on comparison of these things with the calculations I had elsewhere read, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... with alarm. He is indeed betwixt two fires. Gioberti has published one of his prolix, weak addresses, in which, he says, that in the beginning of every revolution one must fix a limit beyond which he will not go; that, for himself, he has done it,—others are passing beyond his mark, and he will not go any farther. Of the want of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... down cooly, and consider within himself the true state and condition of man, and distinguish the main end and design of his being;—or—to shorten my translation, for Slawkenbergius's book is in Latin, and not a little prolix in this passage—ever since I understood, quoth Slawkenbergius, any thing—or rather what was what—and could perceive that the point of long noses had been too loosely handled by all who had gone before;—have ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... of the Banims in literature is to be estimated from the merits of the O'Hara Tales; their later works, though of considerable ability, are sometimes prolix and are marked by too evident an imitation of the Waverley Novels. The Tales, however, are masterpieces of faithful delineation. The strong passions, the lights and shadows of Irish peasant character, have rarely been so ably and truly depicted. The incidents are striking, sometimes even ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... 'method', 'methodical', 'function', 'numerous', 'penetrate', 'penetrable', 'indignity', 'savage', 'scientific', 'delineation', 'dimension'—all which he notes to have recently come up; so too 'idiom', 'significative', 'compendious', 'prolix', 'figurative', 'impression', 'inveigle', 'metrical'. All these he adduces with praise; others upon which he bestows equal commendation, have not held their ground, as 'placation', 'numerosity', 'harmonical'. ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... were all serious. After listening to a dozen prolix stories from people who merely wished to "talk" but had nothing ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... have said to thee so far, Anselmo, has had reference to what concerns thee; now it is right that I should say something of what regards myself; and if I be prolix, pardon me, for the labyrinth into which thou hast entered and from which thou wouldst have me ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... translation of the Horatian poems, on the other hand, seems to me on the whole undoubtedly successful, though, for whatever reason, its merits do not appear to have been recognized by the public. It is unequal, and it is too prolix: but when it is good, which is not seldom, it is very good, unforced, idiomatic, and felicitous. In one of its features, the habit of supplying connecting links to Horace's not unfrequently disconnected thoughts, perhaps ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... follows; and we have his story given us by Mr. M'Combie, in a simple unassuming little volume—not to be read without many thoughts, perhaps not rightly without tears. Mr. M'Combie has been wise enough not to attempt panegyric. He is all but prolix in details, filling up some half of his volume with letters of preternatural length from Alexander to his publishers and critics, and from the said publishers and critics to Alexander, altogether of an unromantic and business- like cast, but entirely successful ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... like manner will all the emphasis and elaboration in the literature of sensuality become a weariness without meaning, also. Congreve's caustic wit will turn to spasmodic truism; and Theophile Gautier's excess of erotic ardour, into prolix and fantastic affectation. All its sublimity, its brilliance, and a large part of its interest, depend in art on the existence of the moral sense, and would in its absence be absolutely unproducible. The reason of this is plain. The natural pains and pleasures of life, merely manipulated ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... he has settled down, like his people; and here is a picture of him. A real photograph of a live old Goth, nearly 1400 years ago. Gibbon gives a good translation of it. I will give you one, but Sidonius is prolix and florid, and I have had ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... general, are strangely prolix in their natural history. What Linnaeus says with respect to insects holds good in every other branch: ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... altogether, only alluding to it once in vague and general terms; he succeeded in getting the story, down to the burial of the Argive dead, within the compass of twelve books of not inordinate length. But it is possible to be prolix without being an Antimachus, and the prolixity of Statius is quite sufficient. The Argives do not reach Thebes till half-way through the seventh book,[550] the brothers do not meet till half-way through ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... of the very nature of the case, it was wholly within the cognizance of the royal Audiencia, and concerned laymen. For this reason, the usual royal decree was issued, in order that the notary should come to make report. This being made known to the archbishop, he made a very prolix reply, taking the ground, in very disrespectful language, that the appeal was not legitimate, and that he was not obliged to send the documents; but saying that, upon the necessary declarations, and with the stipulation that the acts should not pass ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... and as Times discover to them the Insufficiency of those Laws, they make others with an Intent to enforce, mend, explain or repeal the former; till the Body of Laws grows to such an enormous Bulk, that to understand it is a tedious prolix Study, and the Numbers that follow and belong to the Practise of it, come to be a Grievance almost as great as could be fear'd from Injustice and Oppression. Nothing is more necessary than that ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... after roasting which we started for the interior of the island, and without meeting with anything beyond the ordinary routine of bad bush and mountain travelling; certainly encountering nothing that would justify me in inflicting a prolix description upon the reader—we arrived late on the following evening at the rendezvous, found the 'Daylight' safely at anchor, and thus completed one portion of our search, without having obtained the faintest clue to an elucidation of the ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... conditions, positive and negative taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent invariably follows. The negative conditions, however, of any phenomenon, a special enumeration of which would generally be very prolix, may be all summed up under one head, namely, the absence of preventing or counteracting causes. The convenience of this mode of expression is mainly grounded on the fact, that the effects of any cause in counteracting another cause may in most cases be, with strict scientific exactness, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... historian of the Middle Ages, has literary skill, a vivid though prolix style, a keen eye for the picturesque, bold and independent judgment, wonderful breadth and range, and an insatiable curiosity. He was a man of the world, a courtier and a scholar; he took immense pains to collect his facts from documents and eye-witnesses, and had great advantages in this respect ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... type—Parliamentary debates and the like—was more soporific than large, besides spinning out the length and deferring the relaxation of turning over, when in book-form. Short accidents, and not too prolix criminal proceedings were on the whole the most palatable forms of literature. It was not to be wondered at that old Mrs. Prichard should go to sleep over the newspaper at her age, seeing that none but the profoundest scholars ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... would sometimes catch the faint sound of far distant waterfalls, or the whole scene around him would imprint itself with new force upon his perceptions.—Read the sonnet, if you please;—it is Wordsworth all over,—trivial in subject, solemn in style, vivid in description, prolix in detail, true metaphysically, but immensely suggestive of "imagination," to use a mild term, when related as an actual fact of a sprightly youngster. All I want of it is to enforce the principle, that, when the door of the soul is once ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... hours of the day. At first I thought to mysel', it was to hear news of you. But she kens as weel as us when the posts come in, besides the letters she gets from Agnes Anne—some that cost as muckle as sevenpence—a ruination and a disgrace!" [Tom Gallaberry must have been prolix that week.] "Then I thought it was maybe some of the lads—for, like it or no, ye had better ken soon as syne, that maiden's e'e is filled with vanity and the gauds o' grandeur, disdaining the true onputting of a meek and ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... some things respecting this business that come within my knowledge; which are too prolix for a letter, but if the Court chuses to notice my petition, I shall be happy and ready to give any intelligence ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... sonnet precedes, The Strayed Reveller itself. There is "the note," again, and I daresay the orientalism has the exactness of colour on which, as we know from the Letters, Mr Arnold prided himself. Yet the handling of the piece seems to me prolix and uncertain, and the drift either very obscure or somewhat unimportant. But about the Shakespeare sonnet which follows there can be no controversy among the competent. "Almost adequate" is in such a case the highest praise; and it ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... the hall and the sitting was resumed. The jurors were required to give reasons for their verdict, and each spoke in turn facing the empty chair. Some were prolix, others confined themselves to a sentence; one ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... be deemed prolix if I dwell with some particularity upon an occasion so historic. I had first encountered the newly elected President the afternoon of the day in the early morning of which he had arrived in Washington. It was a Saturday, I think. He came to the capitol under the escort ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... institution from 1821 to 1826. I am glad to find that it still continues in active operation. In November 1880 the number of students attending the Edinburgh School of Arts amounted to two thousand five hundred! I have been led to this prolix account of the beginning of the institution by the feeling that I owe a deep debt of gratitude to it, and because of the instructive and intellectually enjoyable evenings which I spent there, in fitting myself for entering upon the practical work of ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... great stress on the degree and manner in which this element enters into the composition of the New Testament; that ethical truths are there expressed in every variety of form which can fix them upon the imagination and the heart, with an entire absence of those prolix discussions and metaphysical refinements which form so large a portion of Aristotle and Plato. If we find in these writers a moral truth expressed with something approaching the comprehensive beauty and simplicity of the Gospels, we are filled with surprise and rapture, and dig out with joy the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... statue of Henri IV. replaced, on the pedestal of which appeared the following words: 'Ludovico reduce, Henricus redivivus', which were suggested by M. de Lally-Tollendal, and were greatly preferable to the long and prolix inscription composed for ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... listened rather impatiently to the prolix story. He might have heard it before, he did not remember. There were ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... therefore, complacently enough to Bergenheim's prolix explanations, interested himself in the planting of trees, thought the fields very green, the forests admirable, the granite rocks more beautiful than those of the Alps, went into ecstasies over the smallest ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... work of a foreigner; but, having no access to the original, has necessarily been adopted for the present occasion, after being carefully revised and corrected. No farther alteration has been taken with that version, except a new division into sections, instead of the prolix and needlessly minute subdivision of the original translation into a multitude of chapters; which change was necessary to accommodate this interesting original document to our plan of arrangement; and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... nothin' prolix about Boggs. Which on the contrary, his nacher is shorely arduous that a-way. If it's a meetin' of the committee, for instance, with intent then an' thar to dwell a whole lot on the doin's of some malefactor, Boggs allers gets to a mental ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the first who dared to cross the threshold of the church, which he did, however, not for his own benefit, but to do honor to the memory of Leo I. The inscription in which he describes the event is too prolix to be given here. It tells us that the grave of Leo the Great was in the vestibule below the sacristy. There he lay "like the keeper of the temple, like a shepherd watching his flock." But other graves had crowded ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... country. In the islands of Japon they have another factory, from which they procure supplies and military stores, and which is of much importance to them. Of the other islands of this archipelago no mention is made, to avoid being prolix, although there are a ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... exist who are capable of such a measure of self-control? Grant that there are whole volumes of devotional matter, original and compiled, which one may ransack without finding a single form that is not either prolix, wishy-washy, or superstitious—it does not follow that if the Prayer Book is to be enriched, the enrichments must necessarily come from such sources. Moreover it is to be remembered that there is another vice of style to be shunned in liturgical composition quite as carefully as ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... and died suddenly in 1609, having made himself famous for a time by a poem, entitled 'Albion's England,' called by Campbell 'an enormous ballad on the history, or rather the fables appendant to the history of England,' with some fine touches, but heavy and prolix as a whole;—as Sir John Harrington, who was the son of a poet and the favourite of Essex, who was created a Knight of the Bath by James I., and who wrote some pointed epigrams and a miserable translation of Ariosto, in which heeffectually tamed that wild Pegasus; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... am getting prolix, I shall hurry over the next few years I remained in Leeds. I became a partner of the house; our transactions were very extensive, more particularly in the United States of America, where we were deeply engaged in the cotton ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... not occasioned by any irascible contraction of the muscles, but apparently the deep-worn channels of two rivulets of gravy that oozed out from the huge mouthfuls that he masticated. But I forbear to dwell on the odd beings that were congregated together in one hotel. I have been thus prolix about the old general because you desired me in one of your letters to give you ample details whenever I happened to be in company with the 'great and glorious,' and old Trotter is more deserving of the epithet than any of the personages ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... being the oldest man present, was entitled to the position of spokesman; and he made a very prolix statement of all the events which had transpired since he first ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... flare at that time of the morning, and fell into a doze before it. I seemed to have been dozing a whole night when the clocks struck six. As there was full an hour and a half between me and daylight, I dozed again; now, waking up uneasily, with prolix conversations about nothing, in my ears; now, making thunder of the wind in the chimney; at length, falling off into a profound sleep from which the daylight woke ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... mine the Spaniards for no other reason, but only to gratifie their bloody mindedness, cut off the Hands, Noses, and Ears, both of Indians and Indianesses, and that in so many places and parts, that it would be too prolix and tedious to relate them. Nay, I have seen the Spaniards let loose their Dogs upon the Indians to bait and tear them in pieces, and such a Number of Villages burnt by them as cannot well be discover'd: Farther this is a certain Truth, that they snatched ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... to begin. But one man cannot stop the tide, though he may keep it for a short time from one guarded and sheltered spot; and the rebellious Vermont congregation, after two or three years of tedious three-hour sermons, arose in a body and crowded out the purposely prolix preacher, and established the wished-for Sunday-school. The vanquished parson thereafter sullenly spent the noonings in the horse-shed, to which he ostentatiously carried the big church-Bible in order that it might not be at the service of the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... prolix on this subject, it may be said, shortly, that when the chain and sinker of the next buoy were being hauled in, a three-inch rope snapped and grazed the finger of a man, fortunately taking no more than a little of the skin off, though ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... curious supplementary vesicles. These are evidently plasmodic, embraced, shot-through, by all the neighboring capillitial threads, withal warted like a spore. They remind of the curious, belated, spore-like but giant cells found in stipes, as in arcyriaceous forms. With all the wealth of his prolix, poetic, metaphoric tongue, the Polish author gives them abundant consideration. In the Mon., Tab. IX., Figs. 166 and 180, he clearly shows the structure, although in the explanation of the plate he has strangely mixed this species ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... a single word upon kith, kin, and ally; I promise you I will not be prolix. But it is necessary to the authenticity of my legend, that you should know that Sir Philip Forester, with his handsome person, elegant accomplishments, and fashionable manners, married the younger Miss Falconer ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... my neighbour; and, indeed, it was true I had; for it was at a season when the church was in danger, and when all good men expected they knew not what would happen to us all. I then answered boldly, if he thought I had given my promise, he affronted me in proposing any breach of it. Not to be too prolix; I persevered, and so did my nephew, in the esquire's interest, who was chose chiefly through his means; and so I lost my curacy, Well, sir, but do you think the esquire ever mentioned a word of the church? Ne verbum quidem, ut ita dicam: within two years he got a place, and hath ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... should not have gone into this prolix detail of opinions from any consideration of their special importance on the present occasion; but having happened to state that such was the actual opinion of the government of England at the present time, and the accuracy ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... in the night, I am not well satisfied of the exquisiteness of that sense in them. I believe their smelling or hearing does much contribute to their dexterity in catching mice, as to all those animals who are born with those prolix smelling hairs. Fish will gather themselves in shoals to any extraordinary light in the dark night, and many are best caught by that artifice. But whatever may be said of these, and other senses of fish, you know how much the sagacity ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... in the Godhead and humanity, is here again declared, though contradicted in the intervening chapters. In this and the following chapters we have a prolix statement of the births, deaths, and ages in the male line. They all take wives, beget sons, but nothing is said of the origin or destiny of the wives and daughters; they are incidentally mentioned merely as necessary factors in the propagation of ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the books which profess to deliver that system, minute directions for every case and occurrence that may arise. This, say they, is necessary to render a revelation perfect, especially one which has for its object the regulation of human conduct. Now, how prolix, and yet how incomplete and unavailing, such an attempt must have been, is proved by one notable example: "The Indoo and Mussulman religions are institutes of civil law, regulating the minutest questions, both of property and of all questions which come under ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... was the unconscious: that he was a wild Arab lion of the desert, and did speak-out with that great thunder-voice of his, not by words which he thought to be great, but by actions, by feelings, by a history which were great! His Koran has become a stupid piece of prolix absurdity; we do not believe, like him, that God wrote that! The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force of Nature: whatsoever is truly great in him ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... blase on oaths; they numbered among themselves veterans and virtuosi of perjury. The passage about the army did not, however, escape them. They observed with annoyance that the message, despite its prolix enumeration of the lately enacted laws, passed, with affected silence, over the most important of all, the election law, and, moreover, in case no revision of the Constitution was held, left the choice ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... dwelt upon by Bossuet, the obligation of the canons upon the Pope, was of very little worth in De Maistre's judgment, and he almost speaks with disrespect of the great Catholic defender for being so prolix and pertinacious in elaborating it. Here again he finds in Thomassin the most concise statement of what he held to be the true view, just as he does in the controversy as to the relative superiority of the Pope or the Council. 'There is ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... taking both sides of an argument. This rhetorical device, so wearisome to modern readers, is used by Chretien preferably when some sentiment or deep emotion is to be portrayed. Ovid may well have suggested the device, but Ovid never abuses it as does the more prolix mediaeval poet. For the part playing by the eyes in mediaeval love sophistry, see J.F. Hanford, "The Debate of Heart and Eye" in "Modern Language Notes", xxvi. 161-165; and H.R. Lang, "The Eyes as Generators ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... poems, the poems of England and Germany give indication of a progress in style from a more archaic and repressed, to a more developed and more prolix kind of narrative. The difference is considerable between Hildebrand and Waldere, between ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... two townsmen don't seem to have seen much of each other in the big city. Their meetings were rare, and, so far as I can make out, for the most part accidental. But, as I said before, my oldest inhabitant is somewhat hazy, and excruciatingly prolix; his chaff is in the proportion of some fifty to one of his wheat. I've given a good deal of time to this case already, you see, Mr. Hawkehurst; and you'll find your work very smooth sailing compared to what ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... was so prolix, so tedious, so confused, the queen said—his sentences were so long drawn and so little to the purpose—that she sate down before he had half-finished. When he came to the words "Marry a subject," she could remain silent ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... proper, in order to reduce the Bulk and Price of the Impression, that the Notes, where-ever they would admit of it, might be abridg'd: for which Reason I have curtail'd a great Quantity of Such, in which Explanations were too prolix, or Authorities in Support of an Emendation too numerous: and Many I have entirely expung'd, which were judg'd rather Verbose and Declamatory (and, so, Notes merely of Ostentation), ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... make such extracts from his works, as seem to me most striking and important to the general reader. They are somewhat numerous, and there may be a few repetitions; but I was more anxious to preserve his exact language—which is rather prolix—than to abridge too much, at the ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... race, had long become a sort of literary dialect, used in writings of a lofty character and understood by a select few, but unintelligible to the common people. The populace in town or country talked an Aramaic jargon, clumsier and more prolix than Assyrian, but easier to understand. We know how successfully the Aramaeans had managed to push their way along the Euphrates and into Syria towards the close of the Hittite supremacy: their successive encroachments had been favoured, first by the Assyrian, later by the Chaldaean ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... pendulum, perpetually repeating No, no, occupied, with its variegated dial, the most prominent place among the solid pieces of furniture of the dining-room, the adornment of the walls being completed by a series of French engravings representing the exploits of the conqueror of Mexico, with prolix explanations at the foot of each concerning a Ferdinand Cortez, and a Donna Marine, as little true to nature as were the figures delineated by the ignorant artist. In the space between the two glass doors which communicated with the garden ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... overflowing in what is called in England Parliamentary circumlocution, in which, instead of direct, simple expressions, bombastic paraphrases are always chosen, which become in the end intolerably prolix and dull, and are enough to drive a foreigner to despair." The style is indeed august; but the real penman is not the King, whose strong point was not grammatical composition, but some confidant, very likely Sir Herbert Taylor, who was employed ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... that I am getting somewhat trivial and prolix; but there was hardly an incident in my two days' tramp which did not give me some small fresh insight into the terra incognita of the country; and there may be those among my readers, to whom it is not uninteresting ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... said on this subject. And, indeed, what is there on which much cannot be said? It might perhaps be Landivisian, for even the most prolix man is obliged to be concise in his remarks, when there is a lack of matter. I have noticed that good places are usually the ugliest ones. They are like virtuous women; one respects them, but one passes on in search ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... I have been rather prolix, and have entered much more fully into detail than some may deem necessary in the account of this trip, for two important reasons. It is a trip that none should fail to take, and I have made it a sort ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... well north of the Spanish possessions, and fell among a people who knew nothing of the white man. A native in a canoe speedily came out to the ship, as soon as she cast anchor; and, standing at a long distance, made delivery of a very prolix oration, with many gestures and signs, moving his hand, turning and twisting his head and body, and ending with a great show of reverence and submission. He returned to shore. Again, and for a third time, he came out and went through the same ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... father of the celebrated Sir John Moore, published Zeluco. Various views of Human Nature, taken from Life and Manners, Foreign and Domestic, in 1789. Zeluco was an unmitigated scoundrel, who led an adventurous life; but the prolix narrative of his villanies does not recall Childe Harold. There is, perhaps, some resemblance between Zeluco's unbridled childhood and youth, due to the indulgence of a doting mother, and Byron's early ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... we at various times explained this massing of words. When the Holy Spirit is prolix, there is a cause for it. Let us therefore, consider what fear, dread and peril Noah and his family endured and it will be easily understood why it was necessary for God to say and to emphasize the same ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... put that old fool right. He knew nothing of the forms of the House;—was more ignorant of them than an ordinary schoolboy;—but on that very account felt less trepidation than might another parliamentary novice. Mr Brown was tedious and prolix; and Melmotte, though he thought much of his project and had almost told himself that he would do the thing, was still doubting, when, suddenly, Mr Brown sat down. There did not seem to be any particular end to the speech, nor had Melmotte followed ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... say is right—perfectly right. You speak as a Christian should, and I honour you for it; but go on," replied Captain Poynder, who was evidently anxious to arrive at the conclusion of the master's somewhat prolix narrative. ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... as childishly garrulous, stupidly prolix, swollen with comments not interesting in themselves and leading to nothing. Mr Hardy possesses the power of being able to shape events; he can mould them to a certain form; that he cannot breathe into them the spirit of life ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... for he was going to be mad;' and the Queen, who sent to Dr. Warren, on his arrival, privately communicated her knowledge of his situation for some time past, and the melancholy event as it stood exposed. I am prolix upon all these different reports, that you may be completely master of the subject as it stands, and which I shall continue to advertise you of in all its variations. Warren, who is the living principle in this business, (for poor Baker is half crazed himself,) and who I see every half ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... interruptions of all kinds. In respect to the value of their contents, they are exceedingly unequal. Modest records of marvellous adventures and sacrifices, and vivid pictures of forest-life, alternate with prolix and monotonous details of the conversion of individual savages, and the praiseworthy deportment of some exemplary neophyte. With regard to the condition and character of the primitive inhabitants of North America, it is impossible to ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... concise, condensed, sententious, laconic, succinct, summary, epigrammatic, pithy; limited, inadequate, insufficient, deficient, scanty; abrupt, curt, uncivil; lacking, shy, unsupplied; crisp, friable, brittle. Antonyms: diffuse, prolix, long. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... omitting no details in the action and unrolling endless descriptions of dresses, trappings, gardens, etc. He invented plots and situations full of fine possibilities by which later poets have profited, but his own handling of them was feeble and prolix. Yet there was a simplicity about the old French language and a certain elegance and delicacy in the diction of the trouveres which the rude, unformed English failed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... commendation as a writer than as a thinker. There is a manifest straining to secure style, by manipulation and rehandling, which contrasts unfavorably with the unaffected ease, the pregnant spontaneity, of his unpublished writings. His periods are almost interminable, and his rhetoric is prolix and monotonous. We can trace the effort to emulate the authors of antiquity without the ease which is acquired by practice or the taste that ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... discoloured swollen countenance of the rough-clad stranger, the elegant proportions, the healthful, blooming, showy face, and elaborate fopperies of the Jasper Losely who had sold to him a Phenomenon which proved so evanishing, Rugge entered into a prolix history of his wrongs at the hands of Waife, of Losely, of Sophy. Only of Mrs. Crane did he speak with respect; and Jasper then for the first time learned—and rather with anger for the interference than gratitude for the generosity—that she ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of my father's which I had never thought of taking away. "Return it to me," she said, insisting upon it so strongly, that I instituted a search for the book, and at last unearthed it from the bottom of a cupboard where it had been placed, as if on purpose, under a heap of other books. Julie's prolix narrative only enlightened me as to the sad cause of what I had taken for the oddity of a ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... amused. Bismillah! he wills it so. If the story-teller becomes prolix and tedious—the bow-string and the sack, and two Nubians to drop him into the Piscataqua! But truly, Jack, I have a hard task. There is literally nothing here—except the little girl over the way. She is swinging in the hammock at this moment. It is to me compensation ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... not so much of the sensibilities as of the intellect. They agonized toward the truth, if not by intense thinking, yet by what many good people are apt to mistake for it,—immense endurance of the prolix thought of others. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... whom her master attempts to seduce and eventually marries, but in "Clarissa" the heroine, after harrowing misfortunes, dies unrewarded. Richardson had always a moral end in view. He hated vice and honoured virtue, but he is too often prolix and wearisome. He wished to write novels that should wean the young from the foolish romances of his day. In "Pamela" he rewarded struggling virtue; in "Clarissa" he painted the cruel selfishness of vice; in "Sir Charles" he tried to represent the perfect Christian gentleman. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... will have remarked that in our recent correspondence I have, with a definite purpose, endeavoured to impart to you such a general knowledge of our business as was practicable, without being too prolix. ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... more might be said; but having told you what is most material, and you being wise and judicious, I am satisfied there is nothing of it but what you understand, and therefore will not be more prolix. Thus much may serve to satisfy your curiosity, it being as much as the shortness of time and my business would permit me to say. So, I remain most ready to satisfy and serve his Highness to the utmost, in all the commands he shall lay ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... Fitzallen and Eleanor, being of a less romantic cast, are closed in three pages only. The three noble couples were married in Queen-Hoo Hall upon the same day, being the twentieth Sunday after Easter. There is a prolix account of the marriage-feast, of which we can pick out the names of a few dishes, such as peterel, crane, sturgeon, swan, etc., with a profusion of wild-fowl and venison. We also see that a suitable song was produced by Peretto on the occasion, and that the bishop, who blessed the bridal beds ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... presents in a book of about 300 pages the main facts of our national history, and a very fair and judicial presentment it is, too. While the general reader will find it of interest, it has been prepared more particularly for the young, who are easily wearied by the prolix details which encumber so many of the histories prepared for them. Mrs. Parmele very truly remarks that the child, bewildered in a labyrinth of unfamiliar names and events, fails to grasp the main lines and soon dislikes ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... interest in this visit of the departed guid-man, and, having touched a chord which was extremely sensitive and not easily put to rest after having been made to vibrate, old Mrs Cameron entertained her with a sweet and prolix account of the last illness, death, and burial of the said guid-man, with the tears swelling up in her bright old eyes and hopping over her wrinkled cheeks, until Flora forbade her to say another word, reminding her of the ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... been already prolix with respect to these Gypsies, but I will not leave them quite yet. The intended combatants at length arrived; it was necessary to clear the ring, - always a troublesome and difficult task. Thurtell ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... resembling that of almonds, and very palatable honey and sugar. The palm possesses the above qualities, together with many other virtues. I have told them in part, because it is so remarkable a thing, and a cause of wonder to all who go to those districts. I leave the rest unsaid, not to be prolix. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... Meilhan for being prolix in his answers, now scolded him for anticipating the questions. But the fact was that Meilhan was not ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... written or so negligently followed, as to make grammar, in the mouths of our juvenile orators, little else than a crude and faltering jargon. Murray evidently intended that his book of exercises should be constantly used with his grammar; but he made the examples in the former so dull and prolix, that few learners, if any, have ever gone through the series agreeably to his direction. The publishing of them in a separate volume, has probably given rise to the absurd practice of endeavouring to teach his grammar without them. The forms of parsing ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... intended saying something about the two other articles that relate to home politics, but I have been already too prolix. I must tell you, however, how much I like them. Whigs as well as Tories will soon cease to be separate; the struggle will soon be between those who have culottes and those who have not. We have got already to the Girondist ministry—a party ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... the conclusion of a very long grace, betwixt every section of which Dalgetty handled his knife and fork, as he might have done his musket or pike when going upon action, and as often resigned them unwillingly when the prolix chaplain commenced another clause of his benediction. Sir Duncan listened with decency, though he was supposed rather to have joined the Covenanters out of devotion to his chief, than real respect for the ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... afresh in a vein of the extremest circumstantiality. With deliberate malice I loaded a prolix narrative with every triviality that a fairly retentive memory could rake out of the half-forgotten past. I cudgelled my brains for irrelevant incidents. I described with the minutest accuracy things that had not the faintest significance. ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... Thopas," as it is generally called, is introduced by Chaucer as a satire on the dull, pompous, and prolix metrical romances then in vogue. It is full of phrases taken from the popular rhymesters in the vein which he holds up to ridicule; if, indeed — though of that there is no evidence — it be not actually part of an old romance ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... after having already put you to so prolix a trouble, it is time for me to relieve you with a promise of putting speedily a period to it; And to make good that promise, I shall from all that I have hitherto discoursed with you, deduce but this one proposition ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... descants on his humble talents and his modesty—would seem, as far as I was able to judge by turning over the pages hastily, to be composed in a remarkably clear style, and to abound with naive phrases and genuine expressions of the king himself, wrought into the mass and substance of a prolix theological dissertation, that no doubt was prepared and digested for the purpose by the divines of the period. With regard to the correspondence with Anne Boleyn, which places the royal author altogether in a different point of view before the public, the latter ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... independent tastes, and ideas, and pursuits.' Scotland at this time was distinguished by the liberality of mind of its leading clergymen, which was due, according to Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p 57), to the fact that the Professor of Theology under whom they had studied was 'dull and Dutch and prolix.' 'There was one advantage,' he says, 'attending the lectures of a dull professor—viz., that he could form no school, and the students were left entirely to themselves, and naturally formed opinions far more liberal than those they ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... dedicatory epistle of 1591, to Chemnitz's Loci, Polycarp Leyser says: "That sainted man, Martin Luther, never took greater pains than when he drew up into a brief sum those prolix expositions which he taught most energetically in his various books.... Therefore he composed the Short Catechism, which is more precious than gold or gems, in which the pure doctrine of the prophets and apostles (prophetica et apostolica doctrinae puritas) ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... lecturer was beginning to grow somewhat prolix, a cormorant below created a slight diversion for awhile by settling in his flight on the very highest point of Michael's Crag, and proceeding to preen his glittering feathers in the full golden flood ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... is impossible with mere human democracy, will be rendered possible by the divine influence of a rightly preached Christianity. To Christian socialists, as such, I have as yet made no special reference; nor will it be necessary now to be very prolix in our dealings with them; but in their attitude and their equipment for the task of effecting an economic revolution, they throw so strong a light on the character of contemporary socialism generally that a brief ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... Nature's benevolent tricks That you grow hard of hearing as I grow prolix? And that look of delight which would angels beguile Is the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... chimney-corner, and I would fain hope that such accounts as I shall give them of our histories and proceedings, our quiet speculations or more busy adventures, will never be unwelcome. Lest, however, I should grow prolix in the outset by lingering too long upon our little association, confounding the enthusiasm with which I regard this chief happiness of my life with that minor degree of interest which those to whom I address myself may be supposed to feel ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... of the schism, of the charges of the Greeks against the Latins, are deposited in the epistles of Photius, (Epist Encyclica, ii. p. 47—61,) and of Michael Cerularius, (Canisii Antiq. Lectiones, tom. iii. p. i. p. 281—324, edit. Basnage, with the prolix answer ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... you conclude?" said Rastignac, with that curtness of speech which to a prolix speaker is a warning to ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... patience, severe conscientiousness, and imperturbable frigidity in a style that was pure, though somewhat prolix, that History of Florence, virtually a history of Italy, which from its first appearance was hailed as a classic and has remained one. His history is altogether that of a statesman; he passed his life among prominent public affairs, being Governor of Modena, Parma, and Bologna, ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... said with the poet, "I avoid long-windedness, and I become obscure." Samuel ben Meir, on the other hand, grandson and pupil of Rashi, is, at least in his Talmudic commentaries, so long-winded and prolix that at first glance one can detect the additions made by him to the commentaries of his grandfather. It is related, that once, when Rashi was ill, Samuel finished the commentary Rashi had begun, and when Rashi got well he weighed ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... phraseology, than for what seems to them true, real—for what, as they would express it, "takes hold of them." This is no plea or excuse for careless work, but rather a suggestion that the day of prolix, fine, flowery writing is passing. The immense number of well-written books in circulation has made success with careless, slovenly manuscripts impossible. Publishers and editors will not even read, much less publish them. Simplicity, lucidity, strength, a ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... has its paroxysms and its subsidences. I have once or twice found myself on a sudden in total silence in the middle of a somewhat prolix, though humorous story, commenced in an uproar for the sole recreation of my pretty neighbour, and ended—patched up, renounced—a faltering failure, under the converging gaze ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... first time to Charleston, to make acquaintance at head-quarters with the universal Masonry of Lucifer and its Pontiff Albert Pike. Charleston is the Venice of America, the Rome of Satan, and the great City of Lucifer. Always enormously prolix, and adoring the details which swell the flimsy issues of cheap periodical narratives, our witness describes at great length the city and its Masonic temple, with the temple which is within the temple and is consecrated to the good ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... housekeeper, immediately on being left alone, resolved themselves into a committee of ways and means, and discussed the arrangements which should be made for the reception of the young bride. As they were, like some other committees, extremely dull and prolix in debate, this history may pursue the footsteps of Newman Noggs; thereby combining advantage with necessity; for it would have been necessary to do so under any circumstances, and necessity has no law, as all the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... listening with interest and attention is one which should be specially cultivated. Even if the talker is prosy and prolix, the well-bred person will appear interested, and at appropriate intervals make such remarks as shall show that he has heard and understood all that has been said. Some superficial people are apt to style ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... that cases have occurred within your knowledge of which the easiest apparent solution could be one which involved a belief in supernatural agencies?" persisted Latimer, who was rather prolix ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... wife arrived yesterday. Both very well. At dinner-time to-day came Dr. Jamieson[304] of the Scottish Dictionary, an excellent good man, and full of auld Scottish cracks, which amuse me well enough, but are caviare to the young people. A little prolix and heavy is the good Doctor; somewhat prosaic, and accustomed to much attention on the Sunday from his congregation, and I hope on the six other days from his family. So he will demand full attention from ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... which, in its turn, underwent considerable revision. Burke had all his principal works printed two or three times at a private press before submitting them to his publisher. Akenside and Gray were indefatigable correctors, labouring every line; and so was our prolix and more imaginative poet, Thomson. On comparing the first and latest editions of the Seasons, there will be found scarcely a page which does not bear evidence of his taste and industry. Johnson thinks the poems lost much ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... cities west of Chicago, including those on the Pacific coast. Houses publishing competitive lines and non-copyright books have other methods and machinery for distribution. I speak only for the copyright salesman, and not to be too prolix, take only the copyright novel as an illustration of ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... whirlpools of banquets, and the various allurements of luxury, I omit, that I may not be too prolix, and with the object of passing on to this fact, that some people, hastening on without fear of danger, drive their horses, as if they were post-horses, with a regular licence, as the saying is, through the wide streets of the city, over the roads ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... which had only been an exception before. But, as will have been seen earlier, the continuation of romance genealogically had been not uncommon, and there had been a constant tendency to lengthen from the positively terse Roland to the prolix fifteenth-century forms. In fact this went on till the extravagant length of the Scudery group made itself impossible, and even afterwards, as all readers of Richardson know, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... that the Cabinet was so constructed as to make it harmonize with the southern policy of the administration. It was not long before the announcement was officially made in prolix sentences, of which Secretary Evarts was no doubt the author, that the army could not and would not be used to uphold and sustain any State Government in an effort to maintain its supremacy and enforce obedience to its mandates. In other words, it was a public announcement of the fact that if there ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... an obscure and prolix author may not improperly be compared to a Cuttle-fish, since he may be said to hide himself under ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... too, the regular dialect of this region, differs very greatly, as we have already implied, from that of Chaucer, with much less infusion from the French; to the modern reader, except in translation, it seems uncouth and unintelligible. But the poem, though in its final state prolix and structurally formless, exhibits great power not only of moral conviction and emotion, but also of expression—vivid, often homely, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... meeting these brothers and sisters were no better than the rest of the human family, but on the whole were, to put the case mildly, as bad as most, in respect of giving short weight in their shops, and not speaking the truth, - I say, before this knowledge became forced upon me, their prolix addresses, their inordinate conceit, their daring ignorance, their investment of the Supreme Ruler of heaven and earth with their own miserable meannesses and littlenesses, greatly shocked me. Still, as their term for the frame of mind that could not perceive them to ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... find it used by a Byzantine historian, John Zonaras, during the tenth and the eleventh century, in the composition of his chronicles. It omitted the speeches and historical evidences of the fuller work and pruned its excessive garrulousness. By the uncritical scholiasts and the prolix chroniclers of the Byzantine and Papal courts, Josephus was esteemed as a distinguished and godlike historian, and as a truthloving man ([Greek: philalaethaes anaer]). He was dubbed by Jerome "the Greek ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... Air yer rheumatics mendin' enny?" he demanded, with the condolent suavity of the would-be son-in-law, or grand-son-in-law, as the case may be. And he hung with a transfixed interest upon her reply, prolix and discursive according to the wont of those who cultivate "rheumatics," as if each separate twinge racked his own sympathetic and filial sensibilities. Not until the tale was ended did he set ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... these proceedings. The "Memoir," written by an old man who had squandered his energies and sunk into deserved obscurity, is tedious and magniloquent, and sometimes inaccurate. Moreover, Dillon has not always chosen the extracts judiciously. Clark's decidedly prolix speeches to the Indians are given with intolerable repetition. They were well suited to the savages, drawing the causes of the quarrel between the British and Americans in phrases that could be understood by the Indian mind; but their inflated hyperbole is not now ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... in German daily papers are those devoted to family advertisement. There you find the prolix intimate announcements of domestic events compared with which the first column of the Times ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... nuisance. They generally consist of choicely turned disclosures to the confidants, delivered in a happy moment of leisure. That very public whose impatience keeps the poets and players under such strict discipline, has, however, patience enough to listen to the prolix unfolding of what ought to be sensibly developed before their eyes. It is allowed that an exposition is seldom unexceptionable; that in their speeches the persons generally begin farther back than they naturally ought, and that they tell one another what ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... 'methodical', 'function', 'numerous', 'penetrate', 'penetrable', 'indignity', 'savage', 'scientific', 'delineation', 'dimension'—all which he notes to have recently come up; so too 'idiom', 'significative', 'compendious', 'prolix', 'figurative', 'impression', 'inveigle', 'metrical'. All these he adduces with praise; others upon which he bestows equal commendation, have not held their ground, as 'placation', 'numerosity', 'harmonical'. Of those neologies ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... too prolix, I persevered, and so did my nephew, in the esquire's interest, who was chose chiefly through his means; and so I lost my curacy. Well, sir, but do you think the esquire ever mentioned a word of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... is practicable in elms especially, and all such trees as are apt of themselves to put forth suckers; but of this more upon occasion{25:1} hereafter. And now to prevent censure on this tedious and prolix Introduction, I cannot but look on it as the basis and foundation of all the structure, rising from this work and endeavour of mine; since from station, sowing, continual culture and care, proceed all we really enjoy in the world: Every thing must have birth and beginning, and afterwards by ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... ingenuity and originality of the "Romance" are greater: our friend the skeleton is better than that Thing which was behind the Black Veil, the escapes of Adeline are more thrilling than the escape of Emily, and the "Romance" is not nearly so long, not nearly so prolix as "Udolpho." ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... drawn into sympathy with the reformatory movement. Unsatisfied with herself and with the influences surrounding her, she sought in Briconnet a spiritual adviser and guide. The prelate, in the abstruse and almost unintelligible language of exaggerated mysticism, endeavored to fulfil the trust. His prolix correspondence still exists in manuscript in the National Library of Paris, together with the replies of his royal penitent. Its incomprehensibility may perhaps forever preclude the publication of the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... begin with. One word suffices—Chaos. It will take a great many words to explain why my little suburban retreat, on which I had prided myself for so many years of my bachelor life, was a mass of conglomerated wreckage. I will be as brief as I can. I am not a prolix man; I know the value of time, and of other people's time. I should not have had a flourishing business in Bermondsey, if I didn't know. Golden Birch Villa, Streatham, then, had been burgled. Broken into, despoiled ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... been given to the world, somewhat prolix and trite, but illustrative of the familiar and practical manner in which Augustine Washington, in the daily intercourse of domestic life, impressed the ductile mind of his child with high maxims of religion and virtue, and imbued him with a spirit of justice and generosity, and above all ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... apt, even unconsciously, to be egotistical, and to linger too long and too fondly over scenes and incidents of which one might say, in Virgilian phrase, quorum pars, si non magna, at parva fui. Should the reader deem any portions unduly prolix, he will, perhaps, kindly excuse it on this score. But I have known several instances, and especially of late two in this neighbourhood, when a person advanced in years and of wide experience, has passed away, and there has been a general, and doubtless ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... because if you rightly consider them, there is not one of them from which you may not draw some useful example; and were I not afraid of being too prolix, I might show you what savoury and wholesome fruit might be extracted from them, collectively ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... have united to find fault with certain elements of Cooper's art. Mark Twain, in one of his least inspired moments, selected Cooper's novels for attack. Every grammar school teacher is ready to point out that his style is often prolix and his sentences are sometimes ungrammatical. Amateurs even criticize Cooper's seamanship, although it seemed impeccable to Admiral Mahan. No doubt one must admit the "helplessness, propriety, and incapacity" of most of Cooper's women, and the dreadfulness ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... faith. The tasks which the greatest of our poets set himself when near the age of thirty, and to which he presumably brought all the powers of which he was then conscious, were the uninspired and pitilessly prolix poems of VENUS AND ADONIS and THE RAPE OF LUCRECE, the first consisting of some 1,200 lines and the second of more than 1,800; one a calculated picture of female concupiscence and the other a still more calculated picture of female chastity: ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Such a 'bout'; such a "periless buffetting," was enough to have hurt the health of a strong man. Few constitutions can bear to be long wet through in intense cold. I fear it will tire you to death to read this prolix scrawled story. ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull |
