"Prolixity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I would she were as lying a gossip in that, as euer knapt Ginger, or made her neighbours beleeue she wept for the death of a third husband: but it is true, without any slips of prolixity, or crossing the plaine high-way of talke, that the good Anthonio, the honest Anthonio; o that I had a title good enough to keepe his name company! ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... prolixity and puerile ingenuity personified. Yet Letamendi was no different from all other Spaniards of his day, including even the most celebrated, such as ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... determination to walk in the path of duty, and to obey his father's counsels and example in the future administration of the provinces. This long address of the prelate was responded to at equal length by Jacob Maas, member of the Council of Brabant, a man of great learning, eloquence and prolixity, who had been selected to reply on behalf of the states-general, and who now, in the name of these; bodies, accepted the abdication in an elegant and complimentary harangue. Queen Mary of Hungary, the "Christian widow" of Erasmus, and Regent of the Netherlands during the past twenty-five years, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bow-kneed grey mare, and a cabriolet de place, which, by its label, belonged to Paris; the pair wandering the street under what it would be flattery to call the guidance of an eminently drunken driver. I boarded him; he dissolved at once into maudlin tears and prolixity. It appeared that on the 29th he had brought over a bourgeois family from the capital, and had spent the last three days in perambulating Etampes, and the past three nights in crapulous slumber within his vehicle. Here was my chance, and I demanded to know if ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... indeed, that no further mention of them is needed. They mark one extreme, the extreme of brevity, found in the savage method of building up hand, foot, and finger names for numerals; while the Zuni scale marks the extreme of prolixity in the formation of such words. A somewhat ruder composition than any yet noticed is shown in the numerals of ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... 'sophs,' when I was hardly a 'soph' myself. But this I should not have taken upon myself to mention, but only in defence of the 'length' of my letter; for nobody writeth 'shorter' or 'pithier,' when the subject requireth 'common forms' only—but, in apologizing for my 'prolixity,' I am 'adding' to the 'fault,' (if it were one, which, however, I cannot think it to be, the 'subject' considered: but this I have said before in other words:) so, Sir, if you will excuse my 'post-script,' I am sure you will not find ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... henchmen important tributary impulses are given toward the following development. Unfortunately, the third act, dramatically considered, is concerned chiefly with details. It suffers, even more than the first act, from a certain prolixity which is not wholly made good by its theatrically effective ending. However bright and skillfully wrought in the incident of the fraudulent miracle, it might well be spared, with a view for the whole. And the same is true of a considerable ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... are not difficult to pick up; nevertheless, there are an awful quantity of them and they are at the best most imperfect mediums of communication. No one who has been on the Coast can fail to recognise how inferior the native language is to the native's mind behind it—and the prolixity and repetition he has therefore to employ ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... grave sweetness, their choice wording, their originality in epithet, name, and phrase, were novelties of Milton's own. His English masters were Spenser, Fletcher, and Sylvester, the translator of Du Bartas's La Sepmaine, but nothing of Spenser's prolixity, or Fletcher's effeminacy, or Sylvester's quaintness is found in Milton's pure, energetic diction. He inherited their beauties, but his taste had been tempered to a finer edge by his studies in Greek and Hebrew poetry. He was the last of the Elisabethans, and {154} his style ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... that fatal carouse, Raphael had stifled every least whim, and had lived so as not to cause the slightest movement in the terrible talisman. The Magic Skin was like a tiger with which he must live without exciting its ferocity. He bore patiently, therefore, with the old schoolmaster's prolixity. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... powers of speech and metaphor, was fain to wind up his tale with a most lame and impotent conclusion. I now give it to the reader, not from a wish to punish him as I was punished, but because from the prolixity of the narrator he necessarily most minutely described scenes and customs, which, though they had nothing on earth to do with the "Dragon's Mouth," may prove interesting to the reader, as illustrating ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... days before, in order to send him with authority on this expedition, as appears from the title itself, dated July first, one thousand five hundred and ninety-one, and which was drawn before Juan de Cuellar, government notary. The writ for it does not accompany the present, because of its prolixity. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... might henceforth dig to unknown depths. More especially it may now be declared that Professor Teufelsdroeckh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigour, are here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... sagacity to discriminate character, without elegance of style to relieve the tediousness of narrative, without enlargement of mind to draw any conclusions from the facts they relate, simply pour forth anecdotes, and retail conversations, with all the minute prolixity of a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... wealth of material, does not hesitate to take his time in building up his effects. Perhaps the most common criticism of him heard to-day refers to his slow movement. Superabundance of matter is accompanied by prolixity of style, with a result of breeding impatience in the reader, particularly the young. Boys and girls at present do not offer Scott the unreserved affection once his own, because he now seems an author upon whom to exercise the gentle art of skipping. Enough has been said as to Scott's ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... without suffering myself to be deterred, either by the fear of being thought to give the subject a degree of importance to which it is not entitled, or by the apprehension of being tiresome to my readers by the prolixity of my descriptions,—I shall proceed to investigate the subject in all its parts and details with the utmost care and attention. —And first with ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... any short passage, who is the imaginary author. Consequently, readers who can bear to have their amusement diluted, who are content with an imperceptibly slow development of plot, and can watch without impatience the approach of a foreseen incident through a couple of volumes, may find the prolixity less intolerable than might be expected. If they will be content to skip when they are bored, even less patient students may be entertained with a series of pictures of character and manners skilfully contrasted and brilliantly coloured, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... very well, objects reader, and very easy to consider this done; but the difficulty is—not so much to do it, answers writer, as to escape the bother of prolixity by proving how much has been done, and how speedily all might be even completed, had poor poesy in these ticketing times only a fair field and no disfavour; for there is at hand good grist, ready ground, baked and caked, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... not weary you with unnecessary prolixity. Let it suffice to say, that I was married to Lord Glenfallen with all the attendant pomp and circumstance of wealth, rank, and grandeur. According to the usage of the times, now humanely reformed, the ceremony was made, until long past midnight, the season ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... seems to have been inserted by Parchas, who informs us likewise, that he possessed divers letters from Mami, captain of the gallies at Mokha, to Captain Saris, which he omits, as he says, to avoid prolixity, being similar to that of Haydar aga. In the Pilgrims he has inserted figures of three of their seals, by way of novelty, stating that these seals were stamps in ink, not on wax. He likewise adds a piece of a letter ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... following in the steps of Chlodwig, were outdoing each other in bloodshed and cruelty. In the midst of this hard time Fortunatus stood out alone among the poets by virtue of his talent and purity of character. His poems are often disfigured by bombast, prolixity, and misplaced learning; but his keen eye for men and things is undeniable, and his feeling for Nature shews not only in dealing with scenery, but in linking it with ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... mo., &c.:—or more compactly thus: 1d., 2d., 3d., &c.;—1mo., 2mo., 3mo., &c. But, take which mode of naming we will, our ordinary expression of these things should be in neither extreme, but should avoid alike too great brevity and too great prolixity; and, therefore, it is best to make it a general rule in our literary compositions, to use the full form of proper names for the months and days, and to denote the years by Arabic ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... as a writer we have already made some comments. One goes to his books with confidence; in the assurance that whatever ever he saw is put down. Nothing is hidden and there is no attempt to Munchausenize. His besetting literary sin, as we said, was prolixity. Any one of his books reduced to one-quarter, or better, one-sixth the size, and served up artistically would have made a delightful work. As it is, they are vast storehouses filled with undusted objects of interest and value, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... above two hundred years in all. For that he was aged, when his misfortunes crowded on him, may be hence inferred, that, altho' his three friends are stiled old men,[41] yet in his disputes with them, he does not seem to honour them for their age, as Elihu does. To avoid prolixity, I join with Spanheim in opinion, that Job's time coincides with the bondage of the children of Israel in Egypt, so as to be neither posterior to their quitting that country, nor anterior ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... avoiding prolixity is the reason why I wave the examination of the will and direct passions, as they appear in animals; since nothing is more evident, than that they are of the same nature, and excited by the same causes as in human creatures. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Cromwell have a formidable reputation for prolixity, confusion, and excessive tediousness; yet we have not, for our own part, found these volumes to be of the dry and scarce readable description which their title foreboded; and we would caution others not to be deterred by any fears of this nature from their perusal. They will find ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... writing it is nearly impossible to affix a date—with the exception of a "dramatic journal," kept by fits and starts during the Christmas holidays when he was sixteen. G.K. solemnly tells the reader of this diary to take warning by it, to beware of prolixity, and it does in fact contain many more words to many fewer ideas than any of his later writings. But it is useful in giving the atmosphere of those years. Great part is in dialogue, the author appearing ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... DATE this from shady bowers, nodding groves, and amaranthine shades,—close by old Father Thames's silver side- -fair Twickenham's luxurious shades—Richmond's near neighbour, where great George the King resides. You will wonder at my prolixity—in my last I informed you that I was going into the country to transact business for a private gentleman. This gentleman is the Hon. Horatio Walpole, son to the late great Sir Robert Walpole, who is very studious, and an admirer of all the liberal ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... subtleties, and often charmingly told. Flyveposten ("The Flying Mail") was translated into English (Boston and Cambridge, 1870) but attracted no particular attention. For all that, Goldschmidt, in spite of occasional prolixity, stands the test of time remarkably well. His Jewish stories, notably Maser, Aron og Esther, and En Joede, contain a higher order of work, though less dramatically effective, than that of Sacher-Masoch, and Emil Franzos, and the later Ghetto romancers. Goldschmidt's double nationality, as ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Couperin and Rameau. But all these Variations, however interesting from a historical point[81] of view, are very labored and lack any real poetic growth. They are, moreover, often prolonged to an interminable length—one example, as late as Handel, consisting of an Air with sixty-two Variations; prolixity or "damnable iteration" being as bad a blemish in music as in any of the other arts. In the early days of instrumental composition, about all that composers could do was "to put the theme through its paces." ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... sister, having an experienced horror of prolixity, glanced over it. "Far as I kin see he takes mor'n two hundred words to say you've got to take him on trust, and sez it suthin' in a style betwixt a business circular and them Polite Letter Writers. I thought you allowed he was ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... thoughts and diction are different from those of the poet, so that there arises an incongruity of style, or they are the same and indistinguishable, and then it presents a species of ventriloquism. The fourth class includes prolixity, repetition, and an eddying instead of progression of thought. His fifth defect is the employment of thoughts and images too great for the subject; an approximation to what might be called mental bombast, as ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... it such a keen personal joy to evoke and follow out, and realize to myself by means of pen and pencil, all these personal reminiscences; and with such a capital excuse for prolixity! ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... close, we have not attempted to exhaust the subject; we refer it rather to the calm meditations of others, who will find materials enough within themselves. And lest the impatient should throw aside our essay with the disgust of satiety, or the persevering should by our prolixity be vexed with the very spirit which we would rather teach them to exorcise, we here take a respectful leave, with our sincerest wishes, that life may be to the reader a succession of pleasant emotions, and death a resting place neither coveted ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Jefferson's writings and correspondence, which have been published, throw no light upon his domestic relations. We have complained of the prolixity of Mr. Randall's book, but we do not wish to be understood as complaining of the number of family letters it contains. They form its most pleasing and novel feature. They show us that the placid philosopher had a nature which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... little investigation and practiced extortions to verify the matter, he was unable to ascertain who the person was, or why he was going, because the matter had been managed by a priest. And although a long relation can be made here of his objectionable acts, we shall, in order to excuse prolixity, touch on only ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... the prevailing air of sombreness is rarely lightened by any success in the management of minor incidents. The introduction too was marked by (p. 075) one of Cooper's besetting faults, intolerable prolixity. But the main cause of his failure lay in his inability to delineate the Puritan character. It was not knowledge that was wanting, it was sympathy; or perhaps it is better to say that it was his lack ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... occasion; but as numbers at home and abroad will hear of the insurrection, and will read the speech, that may know nothing of the documents to which it might refer, I conceived it would be better to encounter the charge of prolixity by giving a cursory detail of facts, that would show the prominent features of the thing, than to let it go naked into the world, to be dressed up according to the fancy or inclination of the readers, or the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... had kept his word with me; so mounted upon a strong hackney, I set out with Power on the road to Brussels. I have had occasion more than once to ask pardon of my reader for the prolixity of my narrative, so I shall not trespass on him here by the detail of our conversation as we jogged along. Of me and my adventures he already knows enough—perhaps too much. My friend Power's career, abounding as it did in striking ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... apologies for the unprepared state in which he finds himself, informs his hearers that he appears before them only as a substitute for his very intimate and particular friend, General Vardant. He, too, has a wonderful prolixity of compliments to bestow upon the free, the patriotic, the independent voters of the very independent district. He tries to be facetious; but his temperament will not admit of any inconsistencies, not even in a political contest. No! he must be serious; because the election of a candidate to so ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... said that I had plenty to think about besides Randall, I meant to string off a list. My prolixity over the Volunteer Training Corps came upon me unawares. I wanted to show you that my time was fairly well occupied. I was Chairman of our town Belgian Relief Committee. I was a member of our County Territorial Association and took over a good deal of special ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... simple enough in its complexity. The poem is a long Roman d'Aventure (which it is perhaps as well to say, once for all, is not the same as a "Romance of Chivalry," or a "Romance of Adventure"), redeemed from the aimless prolixity incident to that form by its regular plan, by the intercommunion of the adventures of the several knights (none of whom disappears after having achieved his own quest), and by the constant presence ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Prolixity characterised these solemn utterances, packed full of cant phrases such as "undigested securities" and "the treacherous attack ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... came home and read it in the usual way he declared that, while the opening was killingly funny, when he got into the story itself it seemed to him that he was "made a fellow-sufferer with the Sultan from Scheherazade's prolixity." ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac might find relief (for the history ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... speech.] Prolix to the point of somnolence. It might be affirmed without inexactitude that the prolixity of counsel is the somnolence of the judiciary. I am fatigued, ah! [A little suddenly, awaking to the fact that his orders have not been carried out to the letter.] Thomas! My Post is not in ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... heaven, as in spring-time flowers in the green pastures, so, honourable damsels, in the hour of rare and excellent converse is wit with its bright sallies. Which, being brief, are much more proper for ladies than for men, seeing that prolixity of speech, when brevity is possible, is much less allowable to them; albeit (shame be to us all and all our generation) few ladies or none are left to-day who understand aught that is wittily said, or understanding are able to answer it. For the place ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... contemporary development of literary expression. Two qualities, according to Bokenam, characterize his own style; he writes "compendiously" and he avoids "gay speech." He repeatedly disclaims both prolixity and rhetorical ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... Essex. It seems to have been an elaborate written embodiment of a policy which the Minister may have heard before from its author's mouth. It differs from Ralegh's letter in being absolutely in harmony with Howard's conduct at the time and after. In it the writer, with the 'Asiatic endless' prolixity which James himself ridiculed, propounded a plan for arranging that 'Cobham, the block all mighty that gives oracles, and Ralegh, the cogging spirit that prompteth it,' should be set in responsible positions in which they would be sure to fail. There is ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Scottish presbyterian phrase, God-ward and man-ward. No divine was more attentive in visiting the sick and afflicted, in catechising the youth, in instructing the ignorant, and in reproving the erring. And hence, notwithstanding impatience of his prolixity and prejudices, personal or professional, and notwithstanding, moreover, a certain habitual contempt for his understanding, especially on affairs of genius and taste, on which Blattergowl was apt to be diffuse, from his hope of one day fighting his way to a ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... had long compelled him to lay aside, and which belonged to those days of awful authority in which he predominated over Widow Butler, and dictated the mode of cultivating the crofts of Beersheba. He made known to Reuben, with great prolixity, the prospect of his changing his present residence for the charge of the Duke of Argyle's stock-farm in Dumbartonshire, and enumerated the various advantages of the situation with obvious self-congratulation; but assured the patient hearer, that nothing had so ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fell into a deep thinking fit, as he does sometimes. He had had his own say, it is true, but he had established his character as a listener to my own perfect satisfaction, for I, too, was conscious of having preached with a certain prolixity. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in his "History," with that quaint prolixity which was his peculiar proclivity gives numerous instances of the rise and fall of families connected with Birmingham. In addition to the original family of De Birmingham, now utterly extinct he traced back many others then and ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... history, in a country quite new, and full of most interesting objects in this science, and that he had no means of measuring heights, or ascertaining the temperature or pressure of the air; and notwithstanding a want of method, and a heaviness and prolixity in the style, this book possesses great interest, from the scenes of nature and pictures ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... them but little worthy of his approval, he will not have reason at the same time to condemn their prolixity: their brevity will, at least in some degree, atone for their want of fire ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... the Hall. He inquired into the state of the horses; examined their feet; prescribed a drench for one, and bleeding for another; and then took me to look at his own horse, on the merits of which he dwelt with great prolixity, and which, I noticed, had the best ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... story is as old as the Odyssey, but the moral and the colouring are comparatively modern. By avoiding the prolixity which marks the speeches and the descriptions in Homer, I have gained a rapidity to the narration, which I hope will make it more attractive and give it more the air of a romance to young readers, though I am sensible that ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... for the general reader. Until that appears, I offer this little book, which attempts to cover lightly but accurately the whole ground, including the history of cacao, its cultivation and manufacture. This is a small book in which to treat of so large a subject, and to avoid prolixity I have had to generalise. This is a dangerous practice, for what is gained in brevity is too often lost in accuracy: brevity may be always the soul of wit, it is rarely the body of truth. The expert will find that I have ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... Athos!' cried D'Artagnan, losing all patience at the innkeeper's prolixity,—'Athos, what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... "You must pardon my prolixity, Fillmore. I will now give you the reason for my present visit to Solaris. After my mother became very ill, some weeks before her death, she received a letter from Caroline Houghton, a life long friend, an old schoolmate. At that ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... and again in every-varying alternation, until the song died away like the soft breath of the wind as it were. Old Falieri appeared not to pay the slightest heed to the song; on the contrary, he was relating to the Dogess with much prolixity the meaning and history of the solemnity which takes place on Ascension Day when the Doge throws his ring from the Bucentaur and is married to ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... prolixity, which is yet too brief for all I could wish to say.—God give you comfort and all that are of your household.—Our loves and best good wishes to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... and Padua, he taught literature in his monastery at Bury St. Edmunds. He appears to have been a bright, clear-minded, earnest man, with a love of the beautiful, and a faculty of pleasant, flowing verse. He wrote copiously and with tiresome prolixity whatever was required of him, moral tales, legends of the saints, and histories, and his total output is enormous, reaching 130,000 lines. His chief works are Troy Book (1412-20), written at the request of Henry V. when Prince ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... been set upon her book, and had pulled it to pieces with almost rabid malignity. One would have thought that so slight a thing could hardly have been worthy of such protracted attention. Error after error was laid bare with merciless prolixity. No doubt the writer of the article must have had all history at his finger-ends, as in pointing out the various mistakes made he always spoke of the historical facts which had been misquoted, misdated, or misrepresented, as being familiar in ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... a peculiarity in the productions of this author, that, on whatever he employs his pen, he exhausts the subject; not with any prolixity that fatigues the attention, but by a quick succession of new ideas, equally brilliant and apposite, often expressed in antitheses. Void of obscenity in expression, but lascivious in sentiment, he may be said rather to stimulate immorally the natural passions, than to corrupt ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... deal for five minutes with the abstract, and when Philip gave way to his taste for generalising she very quickly showed that she was bored. Mildred dreamt a great deal, and she had an accurate memory for her dreams, which she would relate every day with prolixity. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... containing Attraction, Heat, Light, and Electricity. It is, as the author intended it to be, "less learned and elaborate than the usual systematic works, and at the same time more detailed, connected, and explicit than the 'Conversations' or 'Catechisms.'" It avoids "all prolixity of language and the use of less intelligible terms;" and, to speak plainly, the illustrative applications throughout the work are familiar as household words. Witness the following extract from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... materials have been since used for the basis of more than one narrative, not inaccurate, in French, German and Spanish journals of high authority. It is seldom the case that French writers err by prolixity. They have done so in this case. The present narrative, which contains no sentence derived from any foreign one, has the great advantage of close compression; my own pages, after equating the size, being as 1 to 3 of the shortest continental form. In the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... without ceremony, without indulging in a long speech: cut it short with an apophthegm;[6] quick, quick, Mr. Gorgibus, make haste, avoid prolixity. ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... the scanty notice given to it in the only two works published on the subject, both of them highly technical, and written for scientific purposes by medical men. Therefore I hope to be forgiven if I have tried the patience of my readers by any prolixity. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... however, packing may easily be overdone; and here is one of the dangers of the written sermon as compared with one in which the preacher, having gathered together his knowledge and his thought upon a matter, leaves the choice of words to the hour of delivery. A little wise prolixity may be necessary to the speaker. A little repetition; the putting of a truth, first in this way, then in that, and again perhaps in quite a different fashion, so that different minds may have in turn their chance—even this may ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... or causes follow the simple laws of nature, and have no embarrassment of laws and doubts and contrary interpretations. They have no delays by reports or prolixity of writs, for they do not waste a single dedo [65] of paper in that. The accusation, the plea, and the evidence are quickly heard—all in the manner of the time of Noah. If there is no testimony, they admit the parties ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... give these details even at the risk of incurring the charge of too great prolixity, as hitherto a one-sided account only has been given to the world. Every channel of information, whether it be the telegraph from Ragusa or the Slavonic press, does its best to mislead the general public, by exciting sympathy for the Christians, as unjust as ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... pestilence, and the chymicall oyle thereof is very availeable (as himselfe affirmeth to have sufficiently proved) against the stone and stopping of urine, and many other outward maladies and diseases, (Andernaeus and Gesner adde to these the Apoplexy) all which, for avoyding of prolixity, I doe ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... whether the latter shewed itself when some of the caustic ley was poured into lime water; but in vain—no precipitation took place. Indeed, I tried in several ways to obtain the lost air from this alkaline mixture, but as the results were similar to the foregoing, in order to avoid prolixity I shall not cite these experiments. Thus much I see from the experiments mentioned, that the air consists of two fluids, differing from each other, the one of which does not manifest in the least the property of attracting phlogiston, while the other, which composes between the third ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... narrative, is the mainstay of the fabric her imagination has reared. That incomparable style of hers is like some magic fairy-ring, that bears the wearer, safe and victorious, through manifold perils—perils these of prolixity, exaggeration, and disdain of careful construction. Both Indiana and Valentine, moreover, contain scenes and passages offensive to English taste, but it is impossible fairly to criticise the fiction of a land where freer expression in speech and in print than with us is habitually recognized ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... illustrate Guarini's laborious method of adding touch to touch without augmenting th force of the picture.[184] We find already here the transition from Tasso's measured art to the fantastic prolixity of Marino. And though Guarini was upon the whole chaste in use of language, his rhetorical love of amplification and fanciful refinement not unfrequently betrayed him into Marinistic conceits. Dorinda, for instance, thus addresses Silvio ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... give many more Reasons, but to avoid Prolixity, I refer you to my Memorial, knowing how precious Time is to ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... President himself, although he admitted that it concerned the Sovereigns more closely than any other person, pointed out certain objections which he begged their Majesties to ponder. And Councillor after Councillor rose and protested against the scheme with the utmost solemnity and prolixity. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... who was to reform Italian opera. The school of Paisiello, notwithstanding its many merits, had several grievous weaknesses, of which the most prominent were uniformity of melodic type, nerveless and conventional orchestration, and intolerable prolixity. Rossini brought to his task a vein of melody as inexhaustible in inspiration as it was novel in form, a natural instinct for instrumental colour, and a firm conviction that brevity was the soul of wit. He leapt into fame with 'Tancredi,' which was produced in 1813 and established ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... has curtailed the same, and formed it so as to serve his own purpose: And had this Credit been contained in as few words as this author relates it, the Regent might have easily inserted the whole of it in her letter, without any unbecoming prolixity. I do, therefore, recommend to my readers not to satisfy themselves with this account of the Credit, but to look into that which Archbishop Spottiswood narrates; which, as it is much more distinct in answering to each part of complaint from the Congregationers, so it has all the ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... indefinable—we question whether he would have regarded him in the light of a maniac, an incendiary, or a foreign spy—whether he would not have handed him immediately over to the exterminators of the law, as a being too depraved, too degraded for human sympathy. And yet—for our prolixity warns us to conclude—and yet the festering contagion of this baneful example is now-a-days hidden under the mask of fashion. FASHION! and has it indeed come to this? Is fashion to trample on the best and finest feelings of our nature? Is fashion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... had seen before was capable of exciting my surprise, what I now beheld transported me into perfect ecstacy. I entered a large court surrounded with buildings of an admirable structure, the description of which I will omit, to avoid prolixity. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... attempted, we fear with too much prolixity and repetition, to describe the evils attendant on a neglected state of the minds of the people. The representation does not comprehend all those even of magnitude and prominence; but it displays that ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... of which no other system can boast, would be, if required, perfectly easy. At present it is sufficient to remark, that it imbodies all that is essentially excellent and useful in other systems, while it is entirely free from that tediousness of method and prolixity of definition which so much ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... delicious pleasure"; but their reign over him was over, and long before Savonarola's famous "bonfire of vanities," he had destroyed those love-songs in the vulgar tongue, which would have been such a relief to us, after the scholastic prolixity of his Latin writings. It was in another spirit that he composed a Platonic commentary, the only work of his in Italian which has come down to us, on the "Song of Divine Love"—secondo la mente ed opinione ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... bearing a despatch* in which, to China's simple "greeting," Japan returned a "respectful address;" to China's expression of ineffable superiority Japan replied that the coming of the embassy had "dissolved her long-harboured cares;" and to China's grandiloquent prolixity Japan made answer with half a dozen brief lines. Imoko was now accompanied by eight students four of literature and four of religion. Thus was established, and for long afterwards maintained, a bridge over which the literature, arts, ethics, and philosophies ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... this letter of the usual length; and indeed, after the volumes that I have written to you, all I can add must be unnecessary. However, I shall probably, 'ex abundanti', return soon to my former prolixity; and you will receive more and more ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... to approve women's chastity," is the best of Greene's tales, and approaches more closely the modern novel than any work of the time. It is related with much less than the usual prolixity, and contains two characters of distinct individuality. The scene is placed in Venice, partly in consequence of the Italian origin of the story, and partly, it would seem, because writers of fiction imagined that the further distant they could represent their incidents ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... nature, that he advocated with intelligence, and not on purely sentimental grounds, a milder discipline, we are justified in assigning to him a high, if not the highest, place among modern educational writers. The voluminousness of his treatises, their prolixity, their repetitions, and their defects of styles have all operated to prevent men studying him. The substance of what he has written has been, I believe, faithfully given by me, but it has not been possible to transfer to these pages the fervor, the glow, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... misrepresentations, and eccentric spelling. In the eighteen enormous folio volumes, which he filled with his minute and gothic characters, he gives his own version of the story of what he terms his downfall, and, having, notwithstanding his prolixity, exhausted this subject in the first five of the eighteen tomes, he proceeds to deal with so much of the history of his own day as came immediately under his notice ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... declining day. We bear our shades about us; self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste without a tree. Thanks to Benevolus—he spares me yet These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines, And, though himself so polished, still reprieves The obsolete prolixity of shade. ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... of Goettingen are generally divided into Students, Professors, Philistines, and Cattle, the points of difference between these castes being by no means strictly defined. The "Cattle" class is the most important. I might be accused of prolixity should I here enumerate the names of all the students and of all the regular and irregular professors; besides, I do not just at present distinctly remember the appellations of all the former gentlemen; while among the professors are many who as yet have no name at all. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of the fire, talk about appearances and presentiments and religion. The guides cheer the night with bear-fights, and catamount encounters, and frozen-to-death experiences, and simple tales of great prolixity and no point, and jokes of primitive lucidity. We hear catamounts, and the stealthy tread of things in the leaves, and the hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises, the laughter of the loon. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... away as he warmed with his subject, dwelling at length on M'liss's better qualities, and did not return until in a breathless pause he became aware that this woman's bright eyes were bent upon him. The color rose in his cheek, and with a half-muttered apology for his prolixity he offered his ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the Romans, was kept back (the divine will being against them) from their attempt, and occupied at home with their own troubles. But while I know many other cases of this kind, I shall pass them over to avoid prolixity. These are surely enough to show the ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Lovel's servant's hall to the fascination of her favorite author, "Shikspur," is asked, "Who wrote Shikspur?" she replies, with that promptness which shows complete mastery of a subject, "Ben Jonson." In later days, another lady has, with greater prolixity, it is true, but hardly less confidence, and, it must be confessed, equal reason, answered to the same query, "Francis Bacon." This question must, then, be regarded as still open to discussion; but, assuming, for the nonce, that the Comedies, Histories, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Difference which would only help to confound the Practitioner, and thereby swell this Treatise in many Places; but, as I have promised, so I will endeavour to lay down the easiest Method I can to avoid Prolixity, and ...
— The Art of Confectionary • Edward Lambert
... over and around it, as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden houses, and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my life. I am a citizen of somewhere else. My good townspeople will not much regret me; for—though it has been as dear an object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some importance in their eyes, and to win myself ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... true it is, that were I to relate the entire of my life with a similar diffuseness, my memoir would extend to a length far beyond what I intend it to occupy. Such, however, is very remote from my thoughts. I have dwelt with, perhaps, something of prolixity upon the soldier-life and characteristics of a past day, because I shall yet have to speak of changes, without which the contrast would be inappreciable; but I have also laid stress upon an incident trivial in itself, because it formed an event in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... William of Malmesbury or of Roger of Hoveden. The one English chronicler of the thirteenth century who is a considerable man of letters, Matthew Paris, belongs to the early half of it, before the academic tradition was fully established, and even with him prolixity impairs the art without injuring the colour of his work. The age of Edward I., the great time of triumphant scholasticism, is recorded in chronicles so dreary that it is hard to make the dry bones live. Walter ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... which it dealt have ceased to be disputed questions, or no longer attract much interest. Above all, its course was clouded and confused by verbal misunderstandings, arising in part, perhaps, from the occasional prolixity of Hoadly's style, but chiefly from the distorting ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... us a further step in advance in the direction of minute imitation of ordinary surroundings. Dr. Weismann has published a very long and learned memoir, fraught with the best German erudition and prolixity, upon this highly interesting and obscure subject. As English readers, however, not unnaturally object to trudging through a stout volume on the larva of the sphinx moth, conceived in the spirit of those patriarchal ages of Hilpa and Shalum, when man lived to nine hundred ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... I will close this letter, in order to send it to you in the morning early. Nevertheless, I will begin another, upon supposition that my doleful prolixity will be disagreeable to you. Indeed I am altogether indisposed for rest, as I have mentioned before. So can do nothing but write. I have also more melancholy scenes to paint. My pen, if I may say so, is untired. These scenes are ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... dispiriting labors and chagrins, such as were seldom laid on any man; almost beyond bearing, but incurable, and demanding to be borne. Wilhelmina is away, away; to D'Argens alone of mortals does he whisper of these things; and to him not wearisomely, or with the least prolixity, but in short sharp gusts, seldom now with any indignation, oftenest with a touch of humor in them, not soliciting any sympathy, nor expecting nearly as much as he will get from the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... mind when adequately trained, we shall be right in handing over the more particular care of the body; and in order to avoid prolixity we will now only give the general outlines of ...
— The Republic • Plato
... topography of the moon and planets. The field was then almost untrodden; he had but few and casual predecessors, and has since had no equal in the sustained and concentrated patience of his hourly watchings. Both their prolixity and their enthusiasm are faithfully reflected in his various treatises. Yet the one may be pardoned for the sake of the other, especially when it is remembered that he struck out a substantially new line, and that one of the main ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... the defects of his qualities. There is altogether too much of the "Go to: let me be Titanic" about the book. AEschylus has grown a trifle too well aware of his reputation, has taken to underscoring his points, and tends to prolixity in consequence. Mr. Hall Caine has not a little of Hugo's audacity, but, with it, not a little of Hugo's diffuseness. Standing, like Destiny, with scourge lifted over the naked backs of his two poor sinners, he spares them no single stroke—not so much as a little ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... forms, have exhibited their own portraits. Such portraits are often the most interesting, and sometimes the only interesting parts of their writings; and if they be sincere, we seldom complain of the minuteness or prolixity of these personal memorials. The lives of the younger Pliny, of Petrarch, and of Erasmus, are expressed in the epistles, which they themselves have given to the world. The essays of Montaigne and Sir William Temple bring us home to the houses and bosoms of the authors: we smile without contempt ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... collective testimony. [Symbol: Aleph]AB with the rest of the uncials and, what is of more importance, the whole body of the cursives, exhibit [Greek: hote],—which, as every one must see, is certainly what St. John wrote in this place. Tischendorf's assertion that the prolixity of the expression [Greek: ephonesen ek tou mnemeiou kai egeiren auton ek nekron] is inconsistent with [Greek: hote][101],—may surprise, but will never convince any one who is even moderately acquainted ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... during the seventeenth century, when the Jansenists, in their inveterate obstinacy, identified him with the defence of their cause? The reputation of sour austerity and of argumentative and tiresome prolixity which attaches to the remembrance of all the writers of Port-Royal, save Pascal—has that affected too the work of Augustin, enlisted in spite of himself in the ranks of these pious schismatics? And yet, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... prolixity of the eye-witness he was detailing the points of the battle; what troops were engaged; how the flank was turned; how the reserve was delayed; how the guns were planted; how the cavalry was ordered to charge over impracticable ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and abridged what follows, being impatient of its prolixity, as well as ashamed of what is truly called the ludicrous under-estimate of the mass of ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... of the precious trees in the Spice Islands, in order to raise the value of what remained, was a policy which poets would do well to imitate. It was a policy which no poet understood better than Lord Byron. Whatever his faults might be, he was never, while his mind retained its vigour, accused of prolixity. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... catalogue of 500 new nebulae, though extremely valuable to the practical astronomer, leads to no general conclusions of importance, and abounds with the defects which are peculiar to the Doctor's writings—a great prolixity and tediousness of narration—loose and often unphilosophical reflections, which give no very favorable idea of his scientific powers, however great his merit may be as an observer—above all, that idle fondness for inventing names ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... reforms effected by Linnaeus was in the matter of scientific terminology. Technical terms are absolutely necessary to scientific progress, and particularly so in botany, where obscurity, ambiguity, or prolixity in descriptions are fatally misleading. Linnaeus's work contains something like a thousand terms, whose meanings and uses are carefully explained. Such an array seems at first glance arbitrary and unnecessary, but the fact that it has remained in use for something like two centuries ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... report of that trial is contained in the work now republished, which was compiled under the superintendence of the judges who presided, by Master Thomas Potts, clerk in court, and present at the trial. His report, notwithstanding its prolixity and its many repetitions, it has been thought advisable to publish entire, and the reprint which follows is as near a fac-simile as possible of ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... many others which I omit to avoid prolixity, have been executed up to the present age of our artist, which is above seventy-six years. Titian has been always healthy and happy; he has been favored beyond the lot of most men, and has received ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... children, and are well calculated to excite their attention, inform their understanding, and improve them in the art of reading, the greatest care has been observed to render the style easy, the language comprehensive, and the description natural. Prolixity has been studiously avoided. The line of distinction between virtue and vice has been rendered distinctly visible; and chastity of expression and sentiment have received due attention. Strict fidelity has been observed in the composition: consequently, no circumstance has been intentionally ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... events, that took place in France, it is entitled to almost unqualified praise: in regard to what happened to other countries, he necessarily depended on the information which he received from them, and cannot therefore be equally relied upon. The prolixity, with which he is now reproached, was not felt at the time in which he wrote; every event, however small, was then thought to be important, and multitudes were personally interested in it. But the charm of his work is, that every page of it shews a true lover of his ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... omitting some circumstances which he might have been expected to have retained, and adding others with good judgment and in general with good effect, but which by some fatality usually tend in his hands to excessive prolixity. This is certainly not the case with his dignified and spirited exordium, but in the fourth stanza he begins to copy history, and his muse's wing immediately flags. No more striking example of the ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... now acquaint you (without prolixity if possible) with the few things I have been able to comprehend of all these sublime ideas. With regard to the system of our world, disputes were a long time maintained, on the cause that turns the planets, and keeps them in their orbits: and on those causes which make ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... more indulgent, closed its eyes to certain expressions, certain turns of style borrowed from the secular language of the same century, and the Catholic idiom had slightly purified itself of its heavy and massive phrases, especially cleaning itself, in Bossuet, of its prolixity and the painful rallying of its pronouns; but here ended the concessions, and others would doubtless have been purposeless for the prose sufficed without this ballast for the limited range of subjects to which the Church ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the idea that to merit in poetry prolixity is indispensable, has for some years past been gradually dying out of the public mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity, we find it succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the brief period it has already endured, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... basis I calculate that each Navajo squaw weaves, on an average, nine thousand blankets a year; and while she is so engaged her husband, the metal worker of the establishment, is producing a couple of tons of silver bracelets set with turquoises. For prolixity of output I know of no female in the entire animal kingdom that can compare with the Navajo squaw—unless it ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... ridiculous noise struck our ears, nothing less than a loud snore from my father, who thus gave us to know that he did not take a very keen interest in the explanations furnished in his name with a certain prolixity. I don't know whether Jacques Bricheteau's vanity being touched put him slightly out of temper, but he rose impatiently and shook the arm of ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... The world, too, has now accumulated a myriad handbooks of facts and compilations of statistics, which enable writers with a fondness for theory, like Buckle, to have all their material ready to spin into generalization. Then there is a popular education toward prolixity in the telegraphic part of newspapers. The associated press writers from Washington seem to be selected for their inability to be terse and pithy, and dribble out the simplest fact with pitiful iteration. The special news-writers, being often at their wits' end ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... his dress, or not having yet quite recovered an unlucky extra tumbler of exciting fluids, and the green curtain has therefore unduly delayed its ascent, you perceive that the thorough-bass in the orchestra charitably devotes himself to a prelude of astonishing prolixity, calling in "Lodoiska" or "Der Freischutz" to beguile the time, and allow the procrastinating histrio leisure sufficient to draw on his flesh-colored pantaloons and give himself the proper complexion for a Coriolanus or Macbeth,—even so had Sir Sedley made that long ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those against Father La Combe have sprung from rage and revenge, because he, as my director, did not oblige me to do what they wanted; as well as out of jealousy. I might enter into a long detail on this, sufficient to convince all the world; but I suppress, to avoid prolixity. I shall only say, that they threatened to deprive me of what little I had reserved to myself. To this I only replied that I would not go to law, that if they were resolved to take from me little I have left (little indeed in comparison of what I had given ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... amplification &c. v.; dilating &c. v.; verbosity, verbiage, cloud of words, copia verborum[Lat]; flow of words &c. (loquacity) 584; looseness. Polylogy[obs3], tautology, battology[obs3], perissology|; pleonasm, exuberance, redundancy; thrice-told tale; prolixity; circumlocution, ambages [obs3]; periphrase[obs3], periphrasis; roundabout phrases; episode; expletive; pennya-lining; richness &c. 577. V. be diffuse &c. adj.; run out on, descant, expatiate, enlarge, dilate, amplify, expand, inflate; launch ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Is brevity or prolixity a quality of these early narrators? What English prose written before 1640 is superior to the work of these three men? Why is it especially important for Americans to know something of their writings? What advance in prose ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... of what overtaxes their intellectual energies, either by difficulty, or monotony, which gives them an instinctive fondness for lightness of treatment and airiness of expression, thus making them cut short all prolixity and reject all heaviness. When these womanly characteristics were brought into conversational contact with the materials furnished by such minds as those of Richelieu, Corneille, the Great Conde, Balzac, and Bossuet, it is no wonder ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... and pleasantly, and also with a calm ease which at the moment was superior to their own. So she heard their explanation of what had befallen them, and of their resolution to visit her; and a slight account of their drive from Independence; all which Mrs. Lenox gave with more prolixity than she had intended ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... into heaven. The legend, of course, rose from some remarkable natural feature of the spot; as it is first told, a shadowy unreality hangs over it, and it is doubtful whether it is more than a vision of the boy; but in the later prose all is crystalline; the story is drawn out, with a barren prolixity of detail, into a series of angelic visitations. And again, when Patrick is described, as the after-apostle, raising the dead Celts to life, the metaphor cannot be left in its natural force, and we have a long weary list of literal deaths and literal raisings. So in many ways the freshness ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... grievances, their artificial ones (if any they should avow) will soon appear, and with them will their cause be deserted by every friend to limited monarchy, and by every well-wisher to the interests of America. I have endeavored, in this uncultivated home-spun essay, to avoid prolixity as much as possibly I could. I have aimed at no flowers of speech, no touches of rhetorick, which are too often made use of to amuse, and not to instruct or persuade the understanding. I have no views but your good, and the credit ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... of their ancestors in quite another sense; the war was their chosen topic; its exploits were their own patent of nobility; and where a man or a race has had but one adventure, and that heroic, we must expect and pardon some prolixity of reference. They told me the country was still full of legends hitherto uncollected; I heard from them about Cavalier's descendants—not direct descendants, be it understood, but only cousins or nephews—who were still prosperous people ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... periodical called L'Europeen. In 1833 he published an Introduction a la science de l'histoire, which was received with considerable favour (2nd ed., improved and enlarged, 2 vols., 1842). Notwithstanding its prolixity, this is an interesting work. The part which treats of the aim, foundation and methods of the science of history is valuable; but what is most distinctive in Buchez's theory—the division of historical development into four great epochs ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... sublime poetry. But the grossest improprieties of this poem discover an originality of invention, and its absurdities often border on sublimity. We are surprised that a poet should write one hundred cantos on hell, paradise, and purgatory. But this prolixity is partly owing to the want of art and method, and is common to all early compositions, in which everything is related circumstantially and without rejection, and not in those general terms which are used by modern ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... been optically conclusive; and we cannot see, according to any of the mesmeric hypotheses, any mesmeric reason why it should not have succeeded: it was, however, declined. We are obliged to omit many other points in this evening's proceedings to avoid prolixity. Though many facts were curious, and certainly not easy of explanation by ordinary means, there was nothing which defied it; every experimentum crucis failed, and we, of course, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... fees supplied, Hence eloquence takes either side. Your hand would have but paltry gleaning Could every man express his meaning. Who dares presume to pen a deed. Unless you previously are fee'd? 'Tis drawn; and, to augment the cost, In dull prolixity engrossed. And now we're well secured by law, Till the next brother find a flaw. 20 Read o'er a will. Was't ever known, But you could make the will your own; For when you read,'tis with intent To find out meanings never meant. Since things ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the second century wrote, so to speak, their own history; for it was their comrades, eye-witnesses of their sufferings and their virtue, who gave an account of them in a long letter addressed to their friends in Asia Minor, and written with passionate sympathy and pious prolixity, but bearing all the characteristics of truth. It seems desirable to submit for perusal that document, which has been preserved almost entire in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... "'Pardon my prolixity; but, as I talked, I became more interested in the fate of my countrymen, even than in that of my fellow-exiles and myself. You understand me, my old friend? I know that you will speak for ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... you please, purposely forbear in this Essay, though not strictly from pointing at, yet from making it a part of my present work explicitly and circumstantially to deliver, especially since I now find (though late and not without some Blushes at my prolixity) that what I intended but for a short Essay, is already ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... green light," broke in Richard, with his usual impatience of prolixity. "What is ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... dispatches of a distinguished Swedish statesman—the present Prime Minister, if I am not mistaken—who, when he was called upon to consider a scheme of the English Government for the administration of Schleswig, which entered into minute details with a power and prolixity which could have been acquired only by a constitutional Minister who had long served an apprenticeship in ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... inspector Matias Beltran de Manurga. Either of them is, in my opinion, a person as capable as is necessary for the said offices, as well as for things of more importance. I entreat your Majesty to pardon my prolixity in matters in which you have not asked my advice; for my zeal and desire for your royal service, and also for some one who may aid me therein, obliges me to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... compulsion with regard to security as before, and elected to stand his trial at once, which was precisely what the Attorney-General desired. The indictment, which may still be seen among the records at Osgoode Hall, was a truly formidable instrument, and set out the offence with great prolixity. The trial took place on Saturday, the 25th, before Mr. Justice Sherwood, who, in charging the jury, inveighed against the defendant with nearly as great vehemence as did the Crown prosecutor, stigmatizing him as "a wholesale retailer of calumny." He pronounced ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... recommend Adair to the patient reader, if such may be found in these United States, with the assurance that, if he will have tolerance for its intolerable prolixity and dryness, he will find, on rising from the book, that he has partaken of an infusion of real Indian bitters, such as may not be drawn from any of the more attractive ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... been desirous to explain and justify the state of feeling in which we enter on the consideration of a new poem by Robert Browning. Those who already feel with us will scarcely be disposed to forgive the prolixity which, for the present, has put it out of our power to come at the work itself: but, if earnestness of intention will plead our excuse, we ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... "greater length of the separate essays, by their closer connection with each other, and by the predominance of one object, and the common bearing of all to one end." It was, of course, exactly this plus of prolixity and minus of variety which lowered the sum of the Friend's attractions so far below that of the Spectator as to deprive the success of Addison of all its value as ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... opinion, and able though brief argument upon themes which relate to the social, moral and religious well-being of mankind. Touching the style of the writer, as evinced in these selections, we should say that it was formed mainly upon a due avoidance of prolixity, (an observance not always characteristic of BENTHAM'S writings,) concerning which he himself very justly remarks: 'Prolixity may be where redundancy is not. Prolixity may arise not only from the multifarious insertion of unnecessary articles, but from the conservation of too many ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... kind broken-hearted man's hands, the hermit seized the other, and began (but on account of his great age, with a prolixity which we shall not endeavor to imitate) to narrate the events which we have already described. Let the dear reader fancy, while his Reverence speaks, the glazed eyes of the Margrave gradually lighting up with attention; the flush of joy which ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray |
