"Colloquial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inspection. It was of course fitting that Schiller, as a local lion, should take his part in entertaining her; but the voluble lady was an Erscheinung new to his experience, and with his imperfect command of colloquial French he was hard put to it to bear up against the torrent of her conversation. He measured her very correctly at their first meeting, when they fell into an argument on the merits of the French drama. 'For what we call poetry', he wrote to Goethe, 'she has no sense'; nevertheless ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... you have known who has the gift of racy colloquial utterance. Make a list of offhand, homely, or picturesque expressions you have heard him employ, and ask yourself what it is in these expressions that has made them linger in your memory. With them in mind, and with your knowledge ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... and had no motive to act the part either of the hidalgo or of the buffoon, Evelyn, who was neither an unpractised nor an undiscerning judge, conversed much with him, and pronounced him to be a man of singularly polished manners and of great colloquial powers. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stood on a nail in the carpenter's shop, or could not button his robe when he was in a hurry, or whether he laughed over the repartees by which he baffled the priests when they tried to trap him into sedition and blasphemy, or even if you tell any part of his story in the vivid terms of modern colloquial slang, you will produce an extraordinary dismay and horror among the iconolaters. You will have made the picture come out of its frame, the statue descend from its pedestal, the story become real, with all the incalculable consequences that may flow from this terrifying miracle. ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... encountering him at his own weapons, and did not dismiss him without making him feel his presumption through every joint in his frame. The tyranny of Mr. Tyrrel would not have been so patiently endured, had not his colloquial accomplishments perpetually come in aid of that authority which his ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... on his mastery of colloquial expressions in English, was speaking of the serious illness ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... square and compasses as symbols of moral rectitude, which forms such a striking feature of European masonry, finds no place in the ceremonial of the Triad Society, although recognized as such in Chinese literature from the days of Confucius, and still so employed in the every-day colloquial of China. ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... ultimate result of which is a spontaneous amputation of the little toe. It is confined almost exclusively to negroes, chiefly males, and of African descent. In Brazil it is called "ainham" or "quigila." "Ainham" literally means to saw, and is doubtless a colloquial name derived from a supposed slow, sawing process. The Hindoo name for it is "sukha ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Indifferent to praise or blame, has little sense of duty, plays underhand tricks. Is slow, absent-minded, easily confused, in thought, never shows appreciation or interest. So apathetic that he does not hear commands. Voice droning. Speech poor in colloquial expressions. ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... colloquial phrases into the lapidary style of ancient Rome, I confess it is often hard to improve on the brevity of the vernacular, though the admonition "to keep your end up" can be condensed from four words to two in "sursum cauda." Again the familiar eulogy, "Stout fellow," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... conversation that I wondered whether a change had not come over the spirit of the people. They seemed to me as silent as Americans when Americans have not been "introduced," and infinitely less addicted to exchanging remarks in railway trains and at tables d'hote than the colloquial and cursory English; a fact perhaps not worth mentioning were it not at variance with that reputation which the French have long enjoyed of being a pre-eminently sociable nation. The common report of the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... judicious pause for a certain chaste preliminary inspection necessary before reading aloud to a girl. To-night he omitted that modest precaution, and in a pleasant voice, which in reading was singularly free from colloquial infelicities ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... number of marsupial species of the genus Wallabia, etc., related to the kangaroo, but smaller; (colloquial) "on the wallaby (track)", on the move, ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... knowledge, of the extreme incorrigibility of the baneful sentiment to which I allude. I once travelled with a Mr. Lewis from Paris to Dieppe, and found him a man of considerable information, very gentlemanly in his address and manners, and possessing such colloquial powers as contributed to render the journey particularly agreeable; he was an enthusiastic admirer of the arts, and was very fond of drawing, and certainly excelled in that accomplishment, from the very beautiful ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... sentences in colloquial Arvanian that were too idiomatic for Thorn's knowledge of the language to let him understand. A general guffaw came from the rest; and, as no move was made toward the pantry, Thorn decided he was ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst
... more than live with it[1]; they gathered and preserved the choicest of its flowers. Thanks to them, his reputation is kept alive more by what has been saved of his conversation than by his books; and his colloquial exploits necessarily revive the memory of the friends (or victims) ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... hear continual talking and laughing going on there, and by this means Mr. McDougall learnt to talk the Malay language, which he only knew from books when he first arrived. The pure Malay of books is very different from the colloquial patois of Kuching. To my sorrow, I learnt this some time after, when I was trying to prepare two women for baptism: they listened to me for some time, and then one said to the other, "She talks like a book," which I fear meant that they only half ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... Works," 1724, was rejected by Thyer in the edition of 1784, and is not included in the "Genuine Remains," published from the original manuscripts, formerly in the possession of William Longueville, Esq. If not by Butler, it is a successful imitation of his style, and abounds in phrases of sturdy colloquial English, and is of a date long anterior to the popular song, "The ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... another kind of impoverishment which is somewhat mysterious in its causes and perhaps impossible to prevent. This is the kind of blight which attacks many of our most ancient, beautiful, and expressive words, rendering them first of all unsuitable for colloquial use, though they may be still used in prose. Next they are driven out of the prose vocabulary into that of poetry, and at last removed into that limbo of archaisms and affectations to which so many beautiful but dead words of ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... which under Lope and Cervantes sprang suddenly into a grandeur that almost rivalled their own. In the intermixture of tragedy and comedy, in the abandonment of the solemn uniformity of poetic diction for the colloquial language of real life, the use of unexpected incidents, the complication of their plots and intrigues, the dramas of England and Spain are remarkably alike; but the likeness seems rather to have sprung ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... I cannot attempt to render the various plays upon words; but the term "omo[:i]" needs explanation. It means "thought" or "thoughts;" but in colloquial phraseology it is often used as a euphemism for a dying person's last desire of vengeance. In various dramas it has been used in the signification of "avenging ghost." Thus the exclamation, "His thought has ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... tendency to free and easy manners and colloquial license was rapidly destroying all reverence for womanhood; was levelling the distinction between ladies' parlors and gentlemen's clubrooms; was placing the sexes on a platform of equality which was dangerous to feminine delicacy, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... fact remains, that I don't owe him or any other man the shirt on my back!" As he met Stephen's glance he lowered his voice, and added in a tone of boyish candour that was very winning in spite of his colloquial speech: "I like your face, and I'm going to talk frankly ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... It says just what ought to be said, and that in style colloquial, short, sharp, and memorable. ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... in the easy balance of his style. Sanderson, Pearson, Baxter, the two former luminaries of the Church, the latter one of the chief literary lights of Nonconformity, belong more or less to the period, as does Bishop Hall. Baxter is the most colloquial, the most fanciful, and the latest, of the three grouped together; the other two are nearer to the plainness of Chillingworth than to the ornateness of Jeremy Taylor. Few English prose writers again are better known than ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... artistically right. Once or twice he seemed to me to spoil his last line by walking through it. The part of Harry Percy is one full of climaxes which must not be let slip. But still there was always a freedom and spirit in his style which was very pleasing, and his delivery of the colloquial passages I thought excellent, notably of that in the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... colloquial sort of way we talk glibly enough of leaving England, but England is by no means an easy country to leave. If it bids us farewell from the cliffs of Dover, it greets us again on the quay of Calais. It would be a curious ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... irresistibly in his first exclamation. "Who the devil would have thought it? She can act, after all!" The instant the words escaped his lips he recovered himself, and glided off into his ordinary colloquial channels. Magdalen stopped him in the middle of his first compliment. "No," she said; "I have forced the truth out of you for once. I want ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... rhapsodists, like the jongleurs, had texts, and that these were studied by the makers of the Vulgate, interpolations and errors might creep in by this way. As to changes in language, "a poetical dialect... is liable to be gradually modified by the influence of the ever-changing colloquial speech. And, in the early times, when writing was little used, this influence would be especially operative." [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... In the University of Cambridge, Eng., the lowest honor in the schools. The manner in which this word is used is explained in the Gradus ad Cantabrigiam, as follows: "Satis disputasti; which is at much as to say, in the colloquial style, 'Bad enough.' Satis et bene disputasti, 'Pretty fair,—tolerable.' Satis et optime disputasti, 'Go thy ways, thou flower and quintessence of Wranglers.' Such are the compliments to be expected from the Moderator, after the act is ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... lost, for surely there is nothing superstitious about them, disappeared from the book as subsequently revised, and save in the Lectionary of the Church of England have no present recognition. One of them, however, Evensong, seems to be coming very generally into colloquial use. The Order for Matins began with the Lord's Prayer. Then, after the familiar versicles still in use, including two that have no place in our American book, "O God, make speed to save me. O Lord, make haste ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... sonnet shining in the eyes' has been fixed by Mr. Dennis in what is certainly a classic of its class, and he secures an effect of true poetry without straining a simile or defying the canons of Australia's colloquial speech." ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... I heard a woman say that she had got to begin banting. A nice verb, to bant, though not approved of by the dictionary, which scornfully terms it "humorous and colloquial". The humor, to be sure, is usually for other people, not for the person banting. Do you know, I wonder, the derivation of this word? It means, of course, to induce this too, too solid flesh to melt, by the careful avoidance of farinaceous, saccharine ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... volume, as has already been said, is a translation of Lie's first story. His literary style is at times very colloquial, and his sentences are often of great length, running on for ten, fifteen, or even twenty lines without a full stop. The difficulty of rendering such a mass of words into English prose without sacrificing the meaning, and of maintaining the easy familiarity of the conversation ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... goes it?" The perfect colloquial English was gently murmured at me with a French accent as the gentle hand ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... and interests of household affection and sweetness of sympathy with the personal matters of relatives and friends, and if those are not here represented, it is simply that they are in their nature colloquial, and to be taken for granted rather than repeated for reading, when so long separated by time from the conditions and circumstances that called them forth. She was glad to return from Torquay to her family again. "Papa's domestic comfort is broken up by ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... Japan, the spoken and written language was identical, but with the study of the Chinese literature and the composition of native works almost exclusively in that language, there grew up differences between the colloquial and literary idiom, and the infusion of Chinese words steadily increased. In writing, the Chinese characters occupy the most important place. But all those words which express the wants, feelings, and concerns ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... dirty, quarrelsome, dissolute, and somewhat of a cheat. I put up with all his deficiences, because he dressed my hair to my taste, and his constant chattering offered me the opportunity of practising the colloquial French which cannot be acquired from books. He has always assured me that he was born in Picardy, the son of a common peasant, and that he had deserted from the French army. He may have deceived me when he said that he ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... standardized forms of expression, and to leave too little play to the individual writer. In the healthy reaction against this formalism, greater freedom of expression now manifests itself. We note also the introduction of idioms from the colloquial language, along with many poetical words and usages. The ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... was her chief delight, and she could hardly be detached from him. She refreshed her colloquial German (or rather Austrian) with his nurse, who had much to say of the goodness of die Gnadigen Frauen. Poor thing, she was the youthful widow of a guide, and the efforts of the two Frauen had been in vain to keep alive her ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conceived as final. It was not given to them to realize their ambition—to write novels which should not contain a single bookish expression, plays which should reveal that hitherto undiscoverable quantity—colloquial speech, raised to the level of consummate art. The famous ecriture artiste remained an unfulfilled ideal. The expression, first used in the preface to Les Freres Zemganno, merely foreshadows a possible development of style which shall come into being ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... admirable. They are comparable in these respects with the best things yet done in English,—as pleasing and graceful as Cowper's letters, broader in range of subject than the letters of Keats, easier and more colloquial than those of Coleridge, and with less appearance of being intended for the public eye than is the case with the letters of Byron and of Shelley. Rossetti's letters have, moreover, a value quite apart from the merits of their epistolary style, in so far as they ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... father came home that night she briefly recounted the interview with the new lodger, and her discovery of his curiosity. She did this with a possible increase of her usual shyness and abstraction, and apparently more as a duty than a colloquial recreation. But it pleased Mr. Nott also to give it more than his usual misconception. "Looking round the ship, was he—eh, Rosey?" he said with infinite archness. "In course, kinder sweepin' round the galley, and offerin' to fetch you wood and water, eh?" Even when the young girl ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... he) the impropriety of it? To make money is to coin it: you should say get money.' The phrase, however, is, I think, pretty current[557]. But Johnson was at all times jealous of infractions upon the genuine English language, and prompt to repress colloquial barbarisms; such as, pledging myself, for undertaking; line, for department, or branch, as, the civil line, the banking line. He was particularly indignant against the almost universal use of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... going to collaborate on a play. Of course I have technic at my finger-tips. Construction, dramatic suspense, climax are second nature to me. But I confess I have a fatal handicap, one that has doubtless cost me my place at the head of American dramatists to-day. I have never been able to achieve colloquial dialogue! My style is too finished, you understand, my diction too perfect. Manager after manager has been on the verge of accepting a play, and been deterred solely on account of this too literary quality. I suffer from the excess of my ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... "I believe the colloquial term is 'racket,'" Goode said. "Why, that man is a notorious swindler! Mr. Rand, do you know that only a week before his death, Mr. Fleming instructed me to bring suit against him, and also to secure his indictment on criminal ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... the Letters is colloquial but thoroughly accurate. 'The art of letter-writing suddenly rose in Cicero's hands to its full ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... tongues of Dutch and Malay. Ignorance of the former involves separation from the world as revealed by newspapers, and though a smattering of "coolie Malay" is picked up with the aid of a handbook, and the "hundred words" mastered, sanguinely asserted to suffice for colloquial needs, there are many occasions when even the practice of this elementary language requires a more extensive vocabulary. At a New Year's fete given by the proprietor of the hotel to his numerous Malay ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... interfered in the dispute, which was beyond the French colloquial powers of Edward Dorrit, Esquire, and scarcely within the province of the ladies. Miss Fanny, however, now supported her father with great bitterness; declaring, in her native tongue, that it was ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... you chaps shove it under our noses." Beetle dropped into a drawling parody of King's most biting colloquial style—the gentle rain after the thunder-storm. "Well, it's all very sufficiently vile and disgraceful, isn't it? I don't know who comes out of it worst: Tulke, who happens to have been caught; or the other fellows who haven't. And we—" here he wheeled ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... that needs be given to the ignorant blunder of supposing that those who stand up for utility as the test of right and wrong, use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial sense in which utility is opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to the philosophical opponents of utilitarianism, for even the momentary appearance of confounding them with any one capable of so absurd a misconception; which is the more extraordinary, inasmuch ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... unveilings, commencements, dedications, eulogies, and all the train of special public gatherings, offer rare opportunities for the display of tact and good sense in handling occasion, theme, and audience. When to be dignified and when colloquial, when to soar and when to ramble arm in arm with your hearers, when to flame and when to soothe, when to instruct and when to amuse—in a word, the whole matter of APPROPRIATENESS must constantly be in mind lest you write your ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... they thought worth the trouble of transporting. Perhaps the owners of the house, the Vettii themselves, presuming they escaped in the general catastrophe, may have returned with skilled workmen to recover some of their treasures; perhaps some "man of three letters"—the colloquial Roman term for thief (fur)—may have forestalled the masters' efforts—who knows? And at this distance of time, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... glare out of doors, he was not aware of the stranger in the salon till his eyes were used to the gloom. Then madame and Bessie effected Harry's introduction, and as Harry, with a rare wisdom, had practised colloquial French, he and the canon were soon acquainted. Once only had the old man visited England, a visit for ever memorable on account of the guinea he had paid for his first ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Vellacott, Sidney unconsciously told all about Mrs. Carew, Molly, Hilda, and himself. When he reached the point in his narration telling how Vellacott had been attracted into the garden, he became extremely vague and his style notably colloquial. Tell the story how he would, he felt that he could not prevent Mr. Bodery from drawing his own inferences. Young ladies are not in the habit of whistling for youthful members of the opposite sex. Few of them master the ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... of fifteen years. The scholarship connected with the British Civil Service is not, however, monopolised by Mr. Satow, for several gentlemen in the consular service, who are passing through the various grades of student interpreters, are distinguishing themselves not alone by their facility in colloquial Japanese, but by their researches in various departments of Japanese history, mythology, archaeology, and literature. Indeed it is to their labours, and to those of a few other Englishmen and Germans, that the Japanese of the rising generation will be indebted for keeping alive not only ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... his cousin's books with equally lawless and undisciplined independence. The easy-going Don Juan, it is true, attempted to make good his rash promise to teach the boy Spanish, and actually set him a few tasks; but in a few weeks the quick-witted Clarence acquired such a colloquial proficiency from his casual acquaintance with vaqueros and small traders that he was glad to leave the matter in his young kinsman's hands. Again, by one of those illogical sequences which make a lifelong reputation depend upon a single trivial act, Clarence's social status was settled forever ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... regard to the multitude of readers who, being, like all multitude, mediocre, demand the mediocre in literature. And I know that it is equally foolish to neglect the popular elements in the developing American genius—that genius which is so colloquial now, and yet so inventive; so vulgar sometimes, and yet, when sophistication is not forced upon it, so fresh. I have no wish to evade the necessity for consulting the wishes and the taste of the public, which ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... the final sentence of mankind, I have at least endeavoured to deserve their kindness. I have laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations. Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance of its construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence. When common words were less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct in their signification, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... is one of the greatest masters of the Russian vernacular. To translate his Moscow slang into the equivalent dialect of New York would be merely to transfer Broadway associations to the Ilyinka. A translator can only strive to be colloquial and familiar, giving up the effort to render the varying atmosphere of the different plays. And Ostrovsky's characters are as natural as his language. Pig-headed merchants; apprentices, knavish or honest as the case ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... you even to foresee the year in which you could repay it; but,"—here Duplessis paused a minute, and then lowering the tone of his voice, which had been somewhat vehement and enthusiastic, into that of a colloquial good-fellowship, equally rare to the measured reserve of the financier, he asked, with a lively twinkle of his grey eye, "Did you never hear, Marquis, of a little encounter between me and ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reply to your question in very colloquial American," she retorted. "As to the duke—I tied a can to him." She turned and ran lightly up ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... The vivid colloquial scenes in prose have much of that pungent semi-satirical humour of which Browning had shown the first glimpse in Sordello. Besides these, there is one intermediate scene in verse, the talk of the "poor girls" on the Duomo steps, which seems to me one of the most pathetic things ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... matter-of-fact staring them in the face without a label in its mouth, than they would to a hippopotamus!—We may add, before we quit this point, that we cannot conceive of any two persons more different in colloquial talents, in which they both excel, than Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Coleridge. They have nearly an equal range of reading and of topics of conversation: but in the mind of the one we see nothing but fixtures, in the other every thing is fluid. The ideas of the one are as formal and tangible, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... up; he was evidently flattered that we should even thus dubiously entertain his proposal. 'Oh, I've thought about that, too,' he answered, growing more colloquial in tone. 'I've been some days in Bombay, making inquiries and preparations. You see, you had not informed the authorities of your intended visit, so that you were travelling incognito—or should it be incognita?—and if Tillington hadn't written ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... of his life rarely found courage for any more sustained effort than a song. And the nature of the songs is itself characteristic of these idle later years; for they are often as polished and elaborate as his earlier works were frank, and headlong, and colloquial; and this sort of verbal elaboration in short flights is, for a man of literary turn, simply the most agreeable of pastimes. The change in manner coincides exactly with the Edinburgh visit. In 1786 he had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a lifesaver, sure enough," said a young subaltern, answering to the name of "Sally," colloquial for Salford, as he stood amid a circle of officers gathered in the smoking room a few minutes later. "A lifesaver," repeated Sally, with emphasis. "He can have me for his ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... animates the artist in his composition." In the higher sense in which the word imagination is used with us, it could never be applied here; but he certainly has a good deal of "go," which is perhaps not wholly improper as a colloquial Anglicising of the label. These semi-official descriptions, which have always pleased the Latin races, are of more authority in France than in England, though as long as we go on calling Chaucer "the father of English poetry" and Wyclif "the father of English prose" we ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... called speech-making. Their use of language is highly self-conscious, and abounds in marks of elaborateness, as if their mind were more intent on the figure they are making than on what they are talking about: so that the right colloquial tone is lost in a certain ambitious, oratorical, got-up manner of speech; and we feel a want of that plain, native, spontaneous talk wherein heart and tongue keep touch and time together: in short, they speak rather as authors having an audience ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... passion and tragedy we pass by easy steps into the jocular-colloquial region in which the volume opened. Painting in these later days of Browning's has ceased to yield high, or even serious poetry, and Baldinucci's tale of shabby trickery cannot be compared, even for grotesque humour, with the powerful grotesquerie of Holy-Cross Day, while it wholly lacks the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... discoveries of modern science. This influence must long continue. There will be a considerable absorption of English—perhaps also of French and German words—into Japanese: indeed this absorption is already marked in the changing speech of the educated classes, not less than in the colloquial of the ports which is mixed with curious modifications of foreign commercial words. Furthermore, the grammatical structure of Japanese is being influenced; and though I cannot agree with a clergyman who lately declared that the use of ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... Hunt took Dryden's "Fables" as his model in versification, employing the heroic couplet with the frequent variation of the triplet and the alexandrine. The poem is not at all Dantesque in its lax and fluent sweetness, and in that colloquial, familiar manner which is constant in all Hunt's writing, both prose and verse; reminding one, at its best, of Chaucer, who was, indeed, one of his favourite masters. Hunt softens the ferocity of the tale as given by Boccaccio, according ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the previous night, I was recalling dazedly, there had been only three men wearing the horizon blue. Who was this fourth figure, who knew my name and spoke such colloquial English? I raised my candle as high as possible and scanned him. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... meet; the man was a contradiction to himself. Tom was a person of few words, and so intensely lazy that it required a strong effort of will to enable him to answer the questions of inquiring friends; and when at length aroused to exercise his colloquial powers, he performed the task in so original a manner that it never failed to upset the gravity of the interrogator. When he raised his large, prominent, leaden-coloured eyes from the ground, and looked the inquirer steadily in the face, the effect ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... than hindered this bent. I was born in a party camp and grew to manhood on a political battlefield. I have lived through stirring times and in the thick of events. In a vein colloquial and reminiscential, not ambitious, let me recall some impressions which these have left upon the mind of one who long ago reached and turned the corner of the Scriptural limitation; who, approaching fourscore, does not yet feel painfully the frost of age beneath the ravage ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Universalists, or of the more numerous sect of the Presbyterians, was accidentally in the neighborhood, he was ordinarily invited to officiate, and was commonly rewarded for his services by a collection in a hat, before the congregation separated. When no such regular minister offered, a kind of colloquial prayer or two was made by some of the more gifted members, and a sermon was usually read, from Sterne, by ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... opened too, his own soul expanded, and a peace and power, wholly unknown to his tame, mechanical repetitions of the morning, accompanied the simpler expositions of the afternoon, with this added advantage, that he talked on a level with the people and not over their heads, his colloquial, earnest speech ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... calls, under the humane and kindly pretence of wanting to see each other; and when they returned home, they would cry out with a glad voice, saying, "We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out" —not meaning that they found out anything important against the fourteen—no, that was only a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not at home—and their manner of saying it expressed their lively satisfaction in that fact. Now their pretence of wanting to see the fourteen—and the other two whom they had been less lucky with—was that commonest and mildest form of lying which is sufficiently ...
— On the Decay of the Art of Lying • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... Hobhouse, Davies, and myself, formed a coterie of our own at Cambridge and elsewhere. Davies is a wit and man of the world, and feels as much as such a character can do; but not as Hobhouse has been affected. Davies, who is not a scribbler, has always beaten us all in the war of words, and by his colloquial powers at once delighted and kept us in order. H. and myself always had the worst of it with the other two; and even M. yielded to the dashing vivacity of S.D. But I am talking to you of men, or boys, as if you ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... looked at each other in the whites of their eyes, if we may use a phrase so colloquial. Sitting back in the vehicle was a third traveller who took no part in the discussion, and preserved a deep silence. The driver and the patriot and even Gudin paid no attention to this mute individual; he was, in truth, one of those uncomfortable, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... would be rather a luxury to be a little fatigued. She moreover half suspected that Deborah might, and would do better, if not embarrassed with that feeling of hurry and perplexity, which so many of what in colloquial phrase are sometimes termed slow-moulded people, experience when obliged to divide their attention among a ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... enjoy the distinction of having added words or expressions to colloquial English. The name 'Collins' is almost established as the description of a letter of thanks after a visit; and we have heard of a highly intelligent family among whom a guinea is always alluded to as 'something considerable' in memory of the sum believed (on the authority of the Memoir) ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... it so, they would certainly be a fool; but the Muses wished the sister to observe that every art existed by its convention, or by what in the moral world Ibsen would call its life-lie. If you looked at it from the colloquial standpoint, music was the absurdest thing in the world. In the orchestral part of an opera, for instance, there were more repetitions than in the scolding of the worst kind of shrew, and if you were to go about singing what you had to say, and singing it over and ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the gigolos all agreed, and they paid well, though they talked too much. Gedeon Gore was a favourite among them. They thought he was so foreign looking, and kind of sad and stern and everything. His French, fluent, colloquial, and bewildering, awed them. They would attempt to speak to him in halting and hackneyed phrases acquired during three years at Miss Pence's Select School at Hastings-on-the-Hudson. At the cost of about a thousand dollars a word ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... for introducing a new style into Bengali poetry," I began. "He mixed colloquial and classical expressions, ignoring all the prescribed limitations dear to the pundits' hearts. His songs embody deep philosophic truth in emotionally appealing terms, with little regard for the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... to have rested her colloquial fame, as Dr. Johnson would have said, upon a compliment so evidently acceptable, but no one knows where to stop. She thrust her broad, good-natured, delighted countenance forward, and sending her voice from the bottom to the top of the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... and seldom encounters it in his everyday reading. If he learns to write it, which is not often, it is with a rather depressing sense of its artificiality. He may master it as a Korean, bred in the colloquial Onmun, may master the literary Korean-Chinese, but he never thinks in it or quite ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... he said, (colloquial ways,—the vast, broad-hatted man,) "Come dine with us on Thursday next,—you must, you know you can; We're going to have a roaring time, with lots of fun and noise, Distinguished guests, et cetera, the JUDGE, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lips. But the exact course of his remarks has been followed, and as far as possible his expressions have been retained. Though given in the form of a discourse, it must be remembered that this was a conversation, much more fragmentary and colloquial than it ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... both been pounced upon by every kind of apologist for supernatural religion and categorical morality; while the method of appealing to the optimistic prejudices of shallow minds by the use of colloquial and mystical images has of recent years been introducing into European thought what might ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... rival poets out of envy. In treating his characters and subjects Euripides often arbitrarily departed from the received legends, and diminished the dignity of tragedy by depriving it of its ideal character, and by bringing it down to the level of every-day life. His dialogue was garrulous and colloquial, wanting in heroic dignity, and frequently frigid through misplaced philosophical disquisitions. Yet in spite of all these faults Euripides has many beauties, and is particularly remarkable for pathos, so that Aristotle calls him ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... has the knack, perhaps genius would be a better word, of writing in the easiest of colloquial English without descending to the plane of the vulgar or common-place. The very perfection of his work hinders the reader from perceiving at once how good of its kind it is. * * With the added charm of ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... lamentation might have mov'd] This line is left out of the later editions, I suppose because the editors did not remember that Shakespeare uses modern for common, or slight: I believe it was in his time confounded in colloquial ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... of the preacher rose clear, dominant, arresting. "Why did he fail so abjectly, so meanly, so despicably? For there is no excuse for a failure. Listen! No man NEED fail. A man who is a failure is a mean, selfish, lazy chump." Mr. Freeman was colloquial, if anything. "Some men pity him. I don't. I have no use for him, and he is the one thing in all the world that God himself has no ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... never given to a youth; and to enforce it, we present in this volume the life and character of the great man who so lovingly tendered it. By employing the colloquial style, anecdotal illustration, and thrilling incident, the author hopes more successfully to ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... gratitude. When the performance commenced with a scenic representation of the Roman Acropolis, and a venerable elderly man soliloquising lengthily to himself, and then carrying on a protracted logomachy with another greybeard—although I understood sundry colloquial idioms and phrases such as "uxorem duxit," "carum mihi," "quid agis?" "cur amat?" and the like, all of which I assiduously translated viva voce—I could not succeed in learning the reason why they were having such a snip-snap, until the interval, when the lady informed ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... the ohm; of the former the mho. A conductor having a resistance of 100 ohms has a conductivity of .01 mho. The exact correlative terms are resistance and conductance, resistivity and conductivity. The use of the terms as in the foregoing is in accordance with colloquial practice. ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... per can be used indiscriminately). "(2). The little boy returned home quite by himself. This somewhat peculiar idiom obviously means that the child returned alone, and must be rendered thus 'La knabeto revenis domen sole.'" The Editor nearly altered the latter phrase to the more colloquial expression "The little boy returned home quite on his own." It seems to mean "by his own instrumentality," and "per" certainly seems to be correct in this instance. He might, for example, have just commenced to walk, in which ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 5 • Various
... conspicuous far beyond his fellows, both at school and at college. He was always full grown: he had neither the promise nor the awkwardness of a growing intellect. Vanity, early satiated, formed and elevated itself into a love of power; and in losing this colloquial vanity he lost one of the prime links that connect the individual with the species, too early for the affections, though not too early for the understanding. At college he was a severe student; his mind was founded and elemented in words ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... age of colloquial idioms, when to write in a loose slang had become a mark of loyalty, this is the only L'Estrange vulgarism I ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... l. 27. I have thought it worthwhile to vary the interpretation of this word, because though "habitus" may be equivalent to all the senses of [Greek: exis], "habit" is not, at least according to our colloquial usage we commonly denote by "habit" a ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... The colloquial inquiry, "Where do you live?" should be, "Where do you reside?"—for we live everywhere, but we reside only ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson
... merry-looking woman, chiefly remarkable (as I soon discovered) for a peculiar mental obliquity, leading her always to think of the wrong thing at the wrong time, whereby she was perpetually becoming involved in grievous colloquial entanglements, and meeting with innumerable small personal accidents, at which no one laughed so heartily ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... not qualified to decide. I knew him only as a pleasant, gentlemanly man in society; and the indecision of his character rather added to the amenity of his conversation. But when translated from the colloquial circle to the great stage of national concerns, and the direction of the extensive operations of war, whether he has been able to seize at one glance the long line of defenceless border presented by our enemy, the masses of strength which ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... began with not too much confidence in his colloquial powers, "to enquire for a young girl named Josephine de Maistre, who, I am told was admitted here some time ago. I do not know the young lady personally," Guy frankly avowed, "nor have I ever spoken to her; but I have been entrusted with a very serious duty to discharge ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... But the practical fact remains; he it is that is anglicising Europe. For him the Swiss peasant tramps through the snow on winter evenings to attend the English class open in every village. For him the coachman and the guard, the chambermaid and the laundress, pore over their English grammars and colloquial phrase books. For him the foreign shopkeeper and merchant send their sons and daughters in their thousands to study in every English town. For him it is that every foreign hotel- and restaurant-keeper adds to his advertisement: "Only those with fair knowledge ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... in spelling originated in a difference of pronunciation, not the other way about. For metal in its literal sense was originally a scientific word, and in that sense may have been pronounced carefully by people who would pronounce it carelessly when they used it in a colloquial transferred sense ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... closed. It has since been reopened under the name of the Portola-Louvre, where now crowds assemble nightly to listen to music and witness cabaret performances. Here, as well as in a number of other places, one can well appreciate the colloquial definition of "cabaret." That which takes the rest out of restaurant and puts the din in dinner. If one likes noise and distraction while eating such ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... confirmation of the old legends," he was saying through a big yawn, as Smith made connection. He used a colloquial type of language, quite different from the lofty, dignified speech of the Sanusians. "That is, of course, if the woman is telling ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... obtained—had paid. The latter was one of those writers who can throw a convincing air of unreality over the most credible events, and his half-facetious account of the affair appeared in the magazine page of a popular journal. But, happily for Filmer, this person's colloquial methods were more convincing. He went to offer some further screed upon the subject to Banghurst, the proprietor of the New Paper, and one of the ablest and most unscrupulous men in London journalism, and Banghurst instantly seized upon the ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... metaphorical will become the current sense: pronunciation will be varied by levity or ignorance, and the pen must at length comply with the tongue; illiterate writers will at one time or other, by publick infatuation, rise into renown, who, not knowing the original import of words, will use them with colloquial licentiousness, confound distinction, and forget propriety. As politeness increases, some expressions will be considered as too gross and vulgar for the delicate, others as too formal and ceremonious for the gay and airy; new phrases are therefore adopted, which must, for the same ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... family language—Ultramoreen," Morgan explained to him drolly enough; but the boy rarely condescended to use it himself, though he dealt in colloquial Latin as if he ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... With this colloquial farewell Mr. Putnam waved his hand and turned to his papers. Jimmy accumulated his hat and stick, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... greatest sporting cartoonist of all time. "INDOOR" and "OUTDOOR SPORTS" put "T.A.D." in a class by himself. He has originated more slang phrases which have attained national popularity than any other American. These pungent contributions to the colloquial native language have made "T.A.D." beloved by ...
— What's in the New York Evening Journal - America's Greatest Evening Newspaper • New York Evening Journal
... all earthly pleasures, as Sancho Panza said, there cometh in the end satiety. The neighbours, after several years of refreshing colloquial combat, felt an alarming decline of virility and the approach of an anaemic peace. Their arguments grew monotonous, remote, repetitious, amounting to little more than a bald statement of position: "Here I stand"—"There you stand"—"There he stands,"—"What is the ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... liked a too frequent repetition of this letter, for it is omitted often when a following syllable contains it; as pejero for perjero; and grammarians have noticed that the genitive plural of the future participle is of rare occurrence. In the colloquial and provincial Latin, r is often dulled into l. Thus on one of the walls at Pompeii a part of the first line of the Aeneid was found written, "ALMA VILVMQVE CANO TLO"—a rendering which might have ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck
... General Ermolov. Russians have three names—Christian name, patronymic and surname. They are addressed by the first two only. The surname of Maksim Maksimych (colloquial for Maksimovich) ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... related in English, and on these occasions, therefore, for my benefit alone: for but little of the Anglo-Saxon tongue appeared to be known to, or at least used by, any member of his numerous family. Indeed, I can recall but two words of that language which I could positively aver to have heard in colloquial use among them,—poodare and schotte. And why should the old voyageur have thus reserved his experiences from those who were near and dear to him? Simply because most of his adventures with Walker were not of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was that books should he written in the same colloquial and idiomatic language which is employed by cultivated persons in conversation, "Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;" and vulgar she certainly was not, although she sometimes indulged her fondness for familiarity too far. The period was unluckily chosen for carrying such a ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... dresses—charming-looking persons—seated in graceful attitudes on the chocolate-colored steps. In one or two places these young ladies were conversing across the street with other young ladies seated in similar postures and costumes in front of the opposite houses, and in the warm night air their colloquial tones sounded strange in the ears of the young Englishmen. One of our friends, nevertheless—the younger one—intimated that he felt a disposition to interrupt a few of these soft familiarities; but his companion observed, pertinently enough, that he had better be careful. ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... sometimes the words of common speech may differ, as now in England, compared with the South of Scotland, yet there is a written diction, which pervades all dialects, and is understood in every province. But where the whole language is colloquial, he that has only one part, never gets the rest, as he cannot get it but by ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... father. He does not seem to think this detracts much from their value. Others will come, with less pronounced characteristics, and, therefore, more perplexing. The Madrassee will be there, with his spherical turban and his wonderful command of colloquial English; he is supposed to know how to prepare that mysterious luxury, "real Madras curry." Bengal servants are not common in Bombay, fortunately, for they would only add to the perplexity. The larger the series of specimens which you examine, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... to-day at his command a style more nervous, more varied, more flexible, or more direct than Mark Twain's. His colloquial ease should not hide from us his mastery of all the devices of rhetoric. He may seem to disobey the letter of the law sometimes, but he is always obedient to the spirit. He never speaks unless he has something to say; and then he says it tersely, sharply, with a freshness ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... expressions, such as you certainly do not meet with in these days, was to be sought. In their position of society, education either in England, or education conducted by English teachers, has so spread in Scottish families, and intercourse with the south has been so increased, that all these colloquial peculiarities are fast disappearing. Some of the ladies of this older school felt some indignation at the change which they lived to see was fast going on. One of them being asked if an individual whom she had lately seen was "Scotch," ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... power alone of these paintings secures him a fame which is, alas! posthumous. Many Monticellis have been sold by dealers as Diaz's; now they are more eagerly looked for than Diaz, and collectors have made fortunes with these small canvases bought formerly, to use a colloquial expression which is here only too literally true, "for ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... place between those written in the highest and those in the humblest style; as for instance between the Tintern Abbey, and The Thorn, or Simon Lee. Should their taste submit to no further change, and still remain unreconciled to the colloquial phrases, or the imitations of them, that are, more or less, scattered through the class last mentioned; yet even from the small number of the latter, they would have deemed them but an inconsiderable subtraction from the merit of the whole work; ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... gave the Colloquies their definite form at Basle, they had already had a long and curious genesis. At first they had been no more than Familiarium colloquiorum formulae, models of colloquial Latin conversation, written at Paris before 1500, for the use of his pupils. Augustine Caminade, the shabby friend who was fond of living on young Erasmus's genius, had collected them and had turned them to advantage within a limited compass. He had long been dead ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... egotism and vanity, even when they were in so slight a degree that strict politeness would rather tolerate than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin seldom failed to present their caricature in jocose but wounding irony. If these ingredients of colloquial despotism were discernible in unworn existence, they increased as it advanced, fed by an ever growing reputation within and without the pale ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... descriptive epithets seem to have been colloquial exaggerations of the recounter to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... of teaching, it was colloquial; questions were asked and answered in Latin. This method, according to Dr. Rouse of Perse School, brings boys on much more rapidly than does our current fashion, as may readily be imagined; but experts vary in opinion. The method, ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... emotions—with the same truth as their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest contribution Art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies. But while he can copy Mrs. Plornish's colloquial style with the delicate accuracy of a sun-picture, while there is the same startling inspiration in his description of the gestures and phrases of "Boots," as in the speeches of Shakespeare's mobs or numskulls, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... transitions, and few irregular verbs, its forms are quickly learned. It is not polysynthetic, at any rate, not more so than French, and its words undergo no such alteration by agglutination as in Aztec and Algonkin. Syncopated forms are indeed common, but to no greater extent than in colloquial English. The unit of the tongue remains the word, not the sentence, and we find no immeasurable words, expressing in themselves a whole paragraph, such as grammarians like to quote from the Eskimo, Aztec, Qquichua and ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... celebrity as an author; but as a critic, upon whatever subject, his qualifications have rarely been surpassed, though in literary matters and the fine arts they were only exhibited in conversation. His colloquial powers were impressive and fascinating, though he generally seemed a listener rather than a talker; but never failed to say a proper thing ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... his left hand, picked up his right hand, and when he released it the hand fell as helplessly as so much dead flesh. "That's it," he said, without apparent emotion. "It's a shock." He employed the colloquial name for a stroke of paralysis. "My mother was that way. I've been afraid of it—have expected it, as you might say. Mother lived ten years after her shock. I hope to God I won't. For it has taken me just when I'm ready to put up my best fight—and it's my good right ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... Marakinoff leaned over, translated to Lugur. The red dwarf smiled maliciously, drew near the priestess; whispered to her what was without doubt as near as he could come in the Murian to Larry's own very colloquial phrases. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... than it deserved, by Mr. Pitman, of the Manchester Courier, and published nearly verbatim. I have here extracted, from the published report, the facts which I wish especially to enforce; and have a little cleared their expression; its loose and colloquial character I cannot now help, unless by re-writing the whole, which it seems not worth ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... a lovely castle in the air roused Sylvia, and sent her down to skirmish with Mark. Before she could say a word, however, Prue began to talk in a steady stream, for the good soul had a habit of jumbling news, gossip, private opinions and public affairs into a colloquial hodge-podge, that was often as trying to the intellects as the risibles of ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... disappointment to leave the Lodge when we were getting it to our mind; but we 'll have a jolly little home somewhere, and I 'll get a chance of earning something. Dancing now—I think that I might be able to teach some girls how to waltz. Then my French is really intelligible, and most colloquial; besides revolver shooting. Dad, we are on our way to a fortune, and at the worst you 'll have your curry and cheroots, and I 'll have a ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren |
