"Digression" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... digression. The age of manly sport, as above described, has long passed away; and the only hope is for a revival under the changing conditions of modern China. Some few athletic exercises have survived; and until recently, archery, in which the Tartars have always excelled, was regarded almost as a semi-divine ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... reading were adopted, the meaning would be as indicated (in the Sastras). The second line literally rendered, is "pacify thy son Duryodhana." But how Dhritarashtra is to pacify his son having listened to the geographical digression, is not ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and dissipation, and a means of influencing the men. It was not until the year 1864 that Mr. Gomes asked us to visit Lundu and welcome a little party of women, the first converts to the faith which their fathers and husbands had long professed. This is a long digression from the history of the Lundus' visit to Kuching in 1855, which was at the time a great event. I find the following passage in my journal: "Every evening, before late dinner, the Lundus go up to Mr. Gomes's ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... digression of thought was but superficial, and the sense that something serious underlaid it remained always latent. The professor leaned back in his chair, and sighed again heavily. It was true that he was growing old, and now that he contemplated action, he felt ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... some one may exclaim. Surely! we reply; and though it will necessitate a digression, we touch upon the question en passant. Cicero informs us that "Xenophanes says that the moon is inhabited, and a country having several towns and mountains in it." [49] This single dictum will be sufficient for those who bow to ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... digression. I had set out to say something of a day's experience of the French front, though I shall write with a fuller pen when I return from the Argonne. It was for Soissons that we made, passing on the way a part of the scene of our own early operations, including the battlefield of Villers Cotteret—just ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the attorney, "I am not so miserly of my time, but at night every minute is precious. So be brief and concise. Go to the facts without digression. I will ask for any explanations I may consider ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... about Homer. And we do not therefore understand the propriety of intermingling this dispute with the general Homeric litigation. However, to comply with the practice of Germany, we shall throw away a few sentences upon this, as a pure ad libitum digression. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... This historical digression was necessary, in order to explain how it was that the 6th of the line was the regiment to enter Tarragona, and why the disorder and confusion, natural enough in a city taken by storm, degenerated for a time into ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... this digression to the subject of recoil, we found that sandbags placed at a certain distance in rear of each wheel not only effectually checked the carriage, but also (a great consideration) ran it out again. This system was used both by the ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... a digression, but I hope not an uninteresting one. To return—on the 1st March, Sir T. Shepstone met the Executive Council, and told them that in his opinion there was now but one remedy to be adopted, and that was that the Transvaal should be united ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... double digression. To return: your letter of course gave us all great pleasure. It also gave your mother and May some anxiety, where it tells of the necessity of your going up to that wild-west place, Traitor's Trap, ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... that the cause may then seem beyond our grasp. Already the finalist theory of life eludes all precise verification. What if we go beyond it in one of its directions? Here, in fact, after a necessary digression, we are back at the question which we regard as essential: can the insufficiency of mechanism be proved by facts? We said that if this demonstration is possible, it is on condition of frankly accepting the evolutionist hypothesis. We must now show ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... is now time to return from this digression to the poem which suggested it, and which, more than any other, serves to illustrate its author's mood of feeling about the life beyond the grave. The last lines of "Adonais" might be read as a prophecy of his own death by drowning. The frequent recurrence of this thought in his poetry is, to say ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... an offense, the exposure to view of man's natural external beauties! This is about as far as it is safe to go on the subject of natural right, both from considerations of propriety and modesty, and also, as it almost amounts to a digression from the subject immediately under consideration; but we are merely following the advocate of emancipation, on the score of equality and natural right, just where his principles lead him; and as it forcibly suggests the inexpediency ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... picture: "That most beautiful and graceful poem on the Scholar-Gipsy (the Oxford student who is said to have forsaken academic study in order to learn, if it might be, those potent secrets of nature, the traditions of which the gypsies are supposed sedulously to guard) ends in a digression of the most vivid beauty.... Nothing could illustrate better than this [closing] passage Arnold's genius and his art.... His whole drift having been that care and effort and gain and pressure of the world are sapping human strength, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... you pass your time! Indeed your charming, frank confession Betrays no sort of heinous crime, But marks a wonderful digression From puritanic views, less bold, That we ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... The unexpected digression into contemporary satire made the whole cafe laugh. Gradually other atoms had drifted toward the new magnet. From the remotest corners eyes strayed and ears were pricked up. Pinchas was indeed a figure ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... his smooth cheek which did not escape the attention of the ladies,—"purely as an exigency of verse, and that the inspired authoress might more easily express herself to a friend. My acquaintance with Mrs. M'Corkle has been only epistolary. Pardon this digression, my friends, but an allusion to the muse of poetry did not seem to me to be inconsistent with our gathering here. Let me briefly conclude by saying that the occasion is a happy and memorable one; I think I echo the sentiment of all present when I add that it is one which will ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... From this digression let us now return, To note what WILLIAM found with deep concern; That "'Tis not good for Man to be alone," As said by God, in Wisdom's solemn tone. This now appeared to him a serious truth, Far more than it had done in days of youth. The birds still paired, and had their separate nest, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... far wider series of travels, which, beginning with Rome, Naples, Venice, and Milan, should then be extended across the Alps, and comprehend Brussels, Paris, and ultimately London. This ambitious programme had to be curtailed by the omission of the southern tour to Rome and Naples, as well as the digression to Brussels, but the rest of the scheme was carried out, and about the beginning of June they left Casa Guidi for an absence which extended over ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... has too grave an appearance, and its consequences would be too lamentable, to permit us to disregard it. It becomes, therefore, indispensable, before entering the sanctuary of Revelation, to remove the obstruction of such an error, even at the cost of a digression from our path, in order to consider the matter in ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... {p.017} to my uncle's (then my abode), musing what there could be in the spirit of authorship that could inspire its votaries with the courage of martyrs. He died within less than the period he assigned—with which event I close my digression. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... This digression from the subject of this chapter has probably prepared us to see that the potentiality of consciousness and the presence of over-personal elements presenting themselves to consciousness are the two main elements in the construction of the several grades of reality which present themselves ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... poet,—writing another poem. The only difference in his art is that the poet here speaks for himself in the first person, and not, as usual, dramatically in the third person. The idea of the poem may be found, stripped of digression and fanciful comparisons, in the eighth, twelfth, fourteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth stanzas. Something of the same idea appears ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... through the ages. It is inexorable and insidious; it is concrete. Out of the unknown comes terror. Through the love for the great professor I have pitted myself against it. From the beginning it has been almost hopeless. I remember that last digression in ethics. "The mystery of the occult may be solved. We are five-sensed. When we bring the thing down to the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... digression over, I revert to my father about whose respectable practice at the Four Courts I know nothing except that he allowed others to become judges, and did not find solicitors putting his services ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... the progress of modern degeneracy, the stately architecture of Argyle Street was formed. But not to insist at too great a length on such topics of antiquarian lore, we shall now insert Dr. Pringle's account of the funeral, and which, patly enough, follows our digression concerning the middens and magnificence of Glasgow, as it contains an authentic anecdote of a manufacturer from that city, drinking ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... apologize humbly to the reader for this digression; but if he be musical he will forgive me, for that tune was the "Serenade" of Schubert, and I had never ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... back, after this long digression, to the conversation with the intelligent Englishman. We begin skirmishing with a few light ideas,—testing for thoughts,—as our electro-chemical friend, De Sauty, if there were such a person, would test for his current; trying ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the reader will excuse this digression. It may not be altogether useless, at a time when declamations, springing from St. Simonian, Phalansterian, and Icarian books, are invoking the press and the tribune, and which seriously threaten the liberty ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... boldness of transition as a circumstance which is peculiarly characteristic of the Ode. Lyric Poets have in all ages appropriated to themselves the liberty of indulging imagination in her most irregular excursions; and when a digression is remotely similar to the subject, they are permitted to fall into it at any time by the invariable practice of their Predecessors. Pindar expressly lays claim ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... upon Marivaux with age; but we must return to his early years at Paris and to his first literary attempts, after this long digression, which has served, I hope, to give something of an idea of the milieu in which he moved, and of the influences at work upon the formation of ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... disquisition, to such a point that the presiding judge interfered, whereupon he immediately sat down with a strange smile. His client was condemned to pay a considerable sum of money, a circumstance which did not, however, seem to cause Eugene the least regret for his irrelevant digression. He appeared to regard his speeches as mere exercises which would be of use to him later on. It was this that puzzled and disheartened Felicite. She would have liked to see her son dictating the law to the Civil Court of Plassans. At last she came to entertain a very unfavourable opinion of her ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... anguish, ran out of the house to a neighbor's, borrowed a shotgun, and ran back and emptied it into the brute's body, killing him on the spot. Fifteen years in prison for that! Shall we rejoice and say that justice, at last, is satisfied?—But that is a digression. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... internal as the case may be, too often sterilises the efforts of the teacher. Not that the efforts of the teacher would in any case be productive so long as the attitude of popular thought towards the Bible remained unchanged. To go into this burning question would involve me in an unjustifiable digression; but I must be allowed to express my conviction that the teaching of the Bible in our elementary schools will never be anything but misguided and mischievous until those who are responsible for it have realised that the Old Testament ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... digression. Sir Everhard Greaves did not seem to be very well pleased with the conduct of his son at London. He got notice of some irregularities and scrapes into which he had fallen; and the squire seldom wrote to his father, except to ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... upon it at times with a gloomy kind of Envy. For while it lasted I had many many hours of pure happiness. Dream not Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of Fancy, till you have gone mad. All now seems to me vapid; comparatively so. Excuse this selfish digression. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... a digression suggested by the sight of a man I had known in other scenes, despatch-riding round a fleet in a petrol-launch. There are many of his type, yachtsmen of sorts accustomed to take chances, who do not hold masters' certificates and cannot be given ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... anecdotical digression. Saadi gives this whimsical piece of advice to a pugnacious fellow: "Be sure, either that thou art stronger than thine enemy, or that thou hast a swifter pair of heels." And he relates a droll story in illustration of the use and abuse of the phrase, "For the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... knighthood and to shining arms! O foul dishonour to my household's grave! O impious act, including all foul harms! A martial man to be soft fancy's slave! True valour still a true respect should have; Then my digression is so vile, so base, That it will ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... the Emperor, while the Italians come mountebanking along in an ill-fitting, machine-made suit of second-hand flourishes, as though that were the best they could lay their hands on. They have not done themselves justice. But this is not the place for a digression; before returning to Pilate and his visitors, however, let me say distinctly that the music was the Italian Marcia Reale played, not as the other scraps were played, but with a loud and jaunty heartlessness as though the miraculous pen were ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... us now return to the point whence we made our 82 digression and tell how the stock of this people of whom I speak reached the end of its course. Now Ablabius the historian relates that in Scythia, where we have said that they were dwelling above an arm of the Pontic Sea, part of ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... the deterring others from attempting innovations under their government. This discourse of the Roman military conduct may also perhaps be of use to such of the curious as are ignorant of it, and yet have a mind to know it. I return now from this digression. ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... acquired a stability in some degree corresponding to its growth, he foolishly imagined it was still as susceptible of change and improvement as in the days of its infancy. Let the reader pardon the length of this digression, if for the sake of any future schemer who may chance to adopt a similar conceit, I cite from the preface to this volume a specimen of the author's practice and reasoning. The ingenious attorney had the good sense quickly to abandon this ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... list is a digression. With regard to the stories reprinted, "The Last Room of All" illustrates old-world influence, surely, in its recountal of events in an age long past, the time of the Second Emperor Frederick of Swabia. In its revival of old forms, old ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... of them magnificent cities in Roman times, some very ancient books did linger, and here is room for a digression. Lyons had a Pentateuch in Latin which was a great rarity, for not only was it in uncials of the fifth century, but it was of the Old Latin version, that made from the Greek before St. Jerome made his version from the Hebrew, ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... like him best; and I am not at all sure that I should like him any better if he cured himself of his cardinal fault. With his tongue in his cheek he dashes away from his story to give us either a long or short digression; no more confirmed digressionist ever put pen to paper, and the wonderful thing is that these wanton excursions are worth following. True he often apologises for them, but I do not think that we need take these apologies seriously. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... is a digression I must close here, and which, indeed, the recollection of my fair friends at Albany alone could have betrayed me into. Acquainted with so much that is attractive and admirable in private life in ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... we git?" said Tom, in a quick, imperious tone, ignoring the digression. She had moved ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... appeared to be the principal room, I was stopped by an old woman, who assured me "qu'il n'y avoit rien que du chauffage." It was true enough: the whole of the untenanted interior contained nothing but wood fuel. Returning to the principal street, and making a slight digression to the right, you descend somewhat abruptly by the side of a church in ruins, called St. Etienne le Vieil. In Ducarel's time this church is described as entire. On the exterior of one of the remaining buttresses is a whole length figure, about ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... To return from this digression to my first essay in lecturing work. An invitation to read a paper before the Co-operative Society came to me from Mr. Greenwood, who was, I believe, the Secretary, and as the subject was left to my own choice, I determined that my first public attempt ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... For now began to unroll. Does this paragraph constitute a digression, or is it a useful amplification of the narrative? Does De Quincey exaggerate when he terms these experiences of the Tartars "the most awful series ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... Palmerston; and though it states in another part of the journal (from English authority) that the Prince had never seen Lord Palmerston, yet the lie will remain uppermost—the people and the editor will believe it to the end of time. . . . See to what a digression yonder little fellow in the tall hat has given rise! Let us make his picture, and have done ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... digression to that which gave me the occasion of making it: And I believe you are now convinced, that if the Parliament of Ireland were as temptable as any other assembly within a mile of Christendom (which God forbid) ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... digression is not out of place, as it will enable the artist better to understand that it is in their quality, not in their hue, that colours are advancing or retiring; and that he must rely on the depth, delicacy, &c., of his pigments, and not ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... digression, we proceed on our way, past Berrynarbor and the old farm of Bowden, where Bishop Jewel was born, and the beautiful church where he was baptized, with its great Perpendicular tower, built of red and grey ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... the brevity of this letter. You are not used to more from me than a bare statement of facts, without comment or digression. One fact I have omitted—that the Klesmers on the eve of departure have behaved magnificently, shining forth as might be expected from the planets of genius and fortune in conjunction. Mirah is ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... these works is to discover the author's characteristic method: first, his framework or argument is carefully constructed so as to appeal to reason; then this framework is buried out of sight and memory by a mass of description, digression, emotional appeal, allusions, illustrative matter from the author's wide reading or from his prolific imagination. Note this passage from ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... will make a slight digression for the sake of our story. In 1548, just twenty-seven years after Cortes discovered the land of Mexico, Cabrillo's expedition had sailed up the Coast of California, and in 1602 Sebastian Vizcaino had made further ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... this digression," continued the Doctor, "I repeat that every man has a vein of the vagabond, a streak of the savage in him, which can never be clean wiped out. Educate him, polish him as you may, it will be in him still, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... old monk thinks that he has said enough about this rather foreign subject, and apologizes for his digression in another paragraph that should remove any lingering doubt there might be with regard to the genuineness of his monastic character. At the end of the passage he makes the application in a very few words. The personal element in his confession is so naive and so simply straightforward ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... complaint in the old man's voice, and they knew that he meant his own son Seffy. To add to their embarrassment, this same son was now appearing over the Lustich Hill—an opportune moment for a pleasing digression. For you must be told early concerning Old Baumgartner's longing for certain lands, tenements and hereditaments—using his own phrase—which were not his own, but which adjoined his. It had passed into a proverb of the vicinage; ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... requisite to the Constitution of particular Concretes. For that otherwise they are like to give us but a very imperfect account of the Origine of very many mixt Bodies, It would, I think, be no hard matter to perswade you, if it would not spend time, and were no Digression, to examine, what they are wont to alledge of the Origine of the Textures and Qualities of mixt Bodies, from a certain substantial Form, whose Origination they leave more obscure than what it ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... This digression from the rewards and punishments of children, to the distillery laws, may, it is hoped, be pardoned, if the useful moral can be drawn from it, that, where there are great temptations to fraud, and continual opportunities of evasion, no laws, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... am at the INLAND VOYAGE again: have finished another section, and have only two more to execute. But one at least of these will be very long - the longest in the book - being a great digression on French artistic tramps. I only hope Paul may take the thing; I want coin so badly, and besides it would be something done - something put outside of me and off my conscience; and I should not feel such a muff as I do, if once I saw the thing in boards with a ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a digression, it might be interesting to speculate upon the reason why, in view of their expressed opinions of Silverdale, both the Vicomte and Mr. Spence remained during the week that followed. Robert, who went off in the middle of it with his family to the seashore, described it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pass this digression, and to come to my argument, namely, that men are justified from the curse of the law, before God, while sinners in themselves; this is evident by what hath already been said; for if the justification of their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... been judged necessary to detail these transactions in a manner which may, to some readers, appear an impertinent digression from the narrative in which this history is at present engaged, in order to set in a clearer light some points of the greatest importance. In the first place, from the summary review of the affairs of Scotland, and from the complacency ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... book about Greenwich Village and not a defence of Thomas Paine. Yet, since the reader has come with me thus far, I am going to take advantage of his courteous attention for just another moment of digression. Here is my promise: that it shall take ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... This is the reason why manure is spread upon land—the manure consisting of substances that are for the most part organic, and contain the principles of life and vegetation. Of course, gentlemen, these things are known to you; but you will pardon my digression, as my children are listening to me, and I never lose an opportunity of instructing them in facts that may hereafter be ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... This apparent digression was necessary to a right understanding of the character of Berlin and its neighborhood in comparison with Vienna. Berlin was at the start a frontier post, but, unlike Vienna, it soon ceased to be one. Colonization and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... evolved out of the original exciting cause; they are passed on from one idea to another and go steadily forward, plodding along one line of thought in spite of the amplest concessions of the hearer, or wandering from it in endless digression in spite of his remonstrances. Now, if, as is very certain, no one would envy the madman the glow and originality of his conceptions, why must we extol the cultivation of that intellect which is the prey, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... forgive a digression. We will leave Tyope and his companions on the brink of the Rito, and abandon them for a while to their sombre thoughts; nay, we will leave the Rito even, and transport ourselves to our own day. I desire to relate a story, an Indian folk-lore tale of modern origin, which is authentic ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... to a little digression. In a letter to Mr. Phillips, the dear friend of our revered Dr. Charming, I asked him if he remembered what recumbent statue it was of which Dr. Charming was wont to speak as of a sight that impressed him more than anything else in Rome. He said, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... and trace the road by which the writer arrived at his present position; yet it would be very hard to tell why he came hither, or to see how the journey up to this point will at all put him toward his destination. He has digressed; he has left the road. And he must get back to the road. By this digression he has wasted just as much time as it has taken to come from the direct road to this point added to the time it will take to go back. Do not digress; tell one story at a time; let no incident into your ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... flowing past breathed some tender message from the village above and linked his heart into a closer and fonder memory of sweeter hours. And these letters laden with love's tender offerings, with here and there some whisperings of loneliness, some unlooked-for digression embracing the gossip of the neighborhood, or some delicious speculation as to ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... wisest books on Language affect one, after all, like a series of brilliant puns. More important merits than this must, no doubt, be attributed to Max Mueller; but, after all, so wayward is he and so whimsical, such a lover of paradox and of digression, that he must perpetually exasperate that sedate race of men whom Philology is supposed to have peculiarly chosen for its own. In this second series of Lectures, especially, "we have been at a great feast of languages, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... without a church but with a record that bars him from getting another one. I do not say this state of affairs is universal. But I do say, from bitter experience, that it is far too prevalent. Forgive my digression. I will get back to my statement with ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... things about books and little Indian beasts and natives, and there is another digression to the subject of "English v. British Union, and the Imperial Idea," and a sail over the Bay with a piratical (looking) crew, to ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... this apparent digression, it was at the king's court—if we may extend the courtesy of this phrase to a group of thatched houses—that were gathered the bards and those skilled in song, those in whose memories were stored the mythologies, traditions, genealogies, proverbial wisdom, and poetry that, warmed by emotion, was ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... constructive plan which will take the reader step by step through the work to be done, and make clear constantly both the principles and the practice of garden making and management, and at the same time avoid every digression unnecessary from the practical point of view. Other books again, are either so elementary as to be of little use where gardening is done without gloves, or too elaborate, however accurate and worthy in other respects, ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... is gone, and I am an elderly woman with an increasing tendency to live in the past. The contrast between my old doctor at home and the Casanova doctor, Frank Walker, always rouses me to wrath and digression. ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... digression, but, it came from contemplating the singular beauty of one woman's soul, among the tarnished multitude of victims to that social levity and those superficial virtues that society honors, and with which our modern fashionable women persuade themselves they are doing marvels ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... army through Scythia and Paeonia, into Italy. Pompey, on the other side, judging it easier to destroy his forces in battle, than to seize his person in flight, resolved not to tire himself out in a vain pursuit, but rather to spend his leisure upon another enemy, as a sort of digression in the meanwhile. But fortune resolved the doubt; for when he was now not far from Petra, and had pitched his tents and encamped for that day, as he was talking exercise with his horse outside the camp, couriers came riding up from Pontus, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... his mother during his absence. Having thus glanced over the events which had occurred previously to the opening of this new scene of our story, we will now return to the point we left to make the digression. ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... to return from this digression. Matters being now in a good train at Cape Palmas, we go to ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... who, from the part he took in the conversation alluded to above, appeared to be the ring-leader. Here, in order that the reader may fully understand the narrative, it becomes necessary for us to make a very short digression. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... tale of Laura,—for I find Digression is a sin, that by degrees Becomes exceeding tedious to my mind, And, therefore, may the reader too displease— The gentle reader, who may wax unkind, And caring little for the Author's ease, Insist on knowing what he means—a hard And ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Jemmy Davis was the ambassador of his tribe, and that he had introduced himself and Dugingi to John Ferguson. We will therefore, now, after our epic digression, resume our narrative, by repeating the conversation ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... this digression. One great advantage of the councils would be that those who represent the workmen upon them will probably be men who are actually engaged in manual work in the trades concerned, or have been so engaged, and who will look at each ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... digression, though it seemed proper to allude to the subject of these contests here, since it is on these occasions, perhaps, that parents are most frequently led, or, as they think, irresistibly impelled, to the infliction ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... en passant, for my principal objects in writing this work are to amuse myself and to instruct society. In some future hook, probably the twentieth or twenty-fifth, when the plot logins to wear threadbare, and we can afford a digression. I may give a ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... should escape my pen, my only object being to justify myself before the public by a general recrimination. But I could not refrain from branding so odious a mode of exploitation, and I trust that this short digression will be pardoned. Property does not avenge, I hope, the injuries ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... drifted too far adown the currents of the ocean. From our digression let us return to out special "Waifs." We left them making preparations to roast the shark-flesh,—not in single steaks, but in a wholesale fashion,—as if they had intended to prepare a "fish dinner" for the full crew ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... Clare, I must return to you; [ii] And, sure, apologies are due: Accept, then, my concession. In truth, dear Clare, in Fancy's flight [iii] I soar along from left to right; My Muse admires digression. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... as a futile, questionable digression from the straight path of woman suffrage. To Clara Colby, who praised it in her Woman's Tribune, she wrote, "Of all her great speeches, I am always proud—but of her Bible commentaries, I am not proud—either of their spirit or letter.... I could ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... moccasins,' it is merely by way of illustration, and is not to be understood as an expression of my private sentiments. Our married life—Meg's and mine—began with that of Adam and Eve, and our honeymoon is not yet on the wane. Just here, I should be tempted to go off at a tangent into wide digression, had long observation not taught me that there is nothing so galling to a hunter's patience as a hang-fire gun. As with a gun, so with a speaker. Then, in fine, I will say, 'trust me, and to the latest day of your life you never shall ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... garrison day by day You may not think a chivalrous way To take a fortification. The story is dull: by way of relief, I make a digression, very brief, And leave the "ins" to swallow their beef, The "outs" ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... have digressed from the original purpose of my essay, but I hope for pardon, if, believing the digression to be of more value than the original matter, I have not checked my pen, but let it run on even as my heart ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... to say. She is uncommonly clean in the run aft, she has enough bluffing off in the bows to keep her dry, and the lower berths are most of them double. She has a lot of advantages, but I won't cross in her again. Excuse the digression. I got on board. I hailed a steward, whose red nose and redder whiskers were ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... after Master James. He was a powerful man, Father Montfort, and an excellent climber. Yes, poor old Jim! he did not climb again for several days. Well, as I was saying, after all this very egotistical digression, I found the box in question some forty years ago. I withdrew the—a—contents—and substituted for them my totem. ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... of distinguishing between a fellow who has nothing but his colour-box and brushes to make him a painter, and the really gifted natures who appear only at wide intervals." He illustrates the position that noble qualities in the artist are indispensable to nobility in the work of art, by a digression on religious painting and sculpture. "In order to represent in some degree the adored image of our Lord, it is not enough that a master should be great and able. I maintain that he must also be a man of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Metternich near Coblentz, the former the birthplace, the latter the property, of Prince Metternich, lead M. Dumas into a little digression on the subject of the celebrated diplomatist. The family name, we are informed, was originally Metter, but received the addition of the last syllable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... so bad as that," with a feeble attempt at a pun. He paused to light a cigar, and absent-minded as usual, continued in digression. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... This is a long digression, but it passed rapidly through my mind as the little, hard-faced old gentleman stood before me, looking at me with a piercing glance, and a resolute air. At length, unlike a ghost, he ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... this into a single story, and storing it with incident for a time, and bringing it to a full and final tragic close by the loves of Lancelot himself and Guinevere—this great achievement, it has been frankly confessed, is so much muddled and distracted with episode which becomes positive digression, that some have even dismissed its pretensions to be a whole. Even those who reject this dismissal are not at one as to any single author of the conception, still less of the execution. The present writer has stated his humble, but ever more and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the hatchway; so that I lost the kiss to which I was entitled for my services. I consoled myself by the reflection that, "please the pigs," I might be more fortunate the next time that I officiated in my clerical capacity. This is a digression, I grant, but I cannot help it; it is the nature of man to digress. Who can say that he has through life kept in the straight path? This is a world of digression; and I beg that critics will take no notice of mine, as I have an idea that my digressions in this work are ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... people engaged in special religious services—so that the heretic observer, and especially the representative of the Gazette, referred to by name, might couple the salvation of souls with the perdition of hens, to the great discredit of the faith. But this is a digression. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... fearing she would go off in a long digression and lose sight of the all-important topic, "dey is refreshin'; as preserves is to de taste so is meetin's to de spirit—soothin', ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... be drawn into this digression apropos of a ploughman. It is the story of a ploughman that I set out to tell you, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... feet again trod the daisied meadows of England; the song of her birds was in my ears; I wept with delight to find myself once more wandering beneath the fragrant shade of her green hedge-rows; and I awoke to weep in earnest when I found it but a dream. But this is all digression, and has nothing to do with our unseen dwelling. The reader must bear with me in my fits of melancholy, and take me ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... is a digression; I return to my landing. It would be endless to take notice of all the ceremonies and civilities that the Spaniards received me with. The first Spaniard whom, as I said, I knew very well, was he whose life I saved; he came towards the boat attended by one ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... is a digression. The only connection of the Nantucket branch with Newbury is that old Tristram lived there for a brief period, before repairing to his island home, and his son (the younger of the name of Tristram, the family name of a grandmother) and his posterity occupied the old mansion down through seven ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... Kingsley is at his best for children. He writes without digression, the language is clear and dignified, and we feel the spirit of the bygone age of which the story tells. Many of the illustrations are ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... his people in the warre, the whiche those your wise men alledge for ensample, there is no man, (his particulare passions laied a side) that doeth not judge this fault, to be in thesame kyngdome, and this negligence onely to make hym weake. But I have made to greate a digression, and peradventure am come out of my purpose, albeit I have doen it to aunswere you, and to shewe you, that in no countrie, there can bee made sure foundacion, for defence in other powers but of their ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... assists her; perhaps all this is not done without a reason. On the other hand, he commits a blunder by urging you to marry some young lady! Perhaps he knows that you took the place of his son, without knowing that you are a girl. But this digression might gradually carry us too far; let us return to that secret which I am impatient ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... this trifling digression by speaking of the houses now built in that suburb of Birmingham inhabited by the wealthier classes. These residents are, as I have said, better educated than their fathers, and they have different notions ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... The above digression had nearly caused me to omit that Macallan had one peculiar failing. His language, from long study, had been borrowed from books, more than from men and when he entered upon his favourite science of natural history, his enthusiasm made him more pedantic ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the knot, and set the question at rest, by admitting at once that every man does, popularly speaking, believe in the existence of matter, and that he practically walks in the light of that belief during every moment of his life? This observation tempts us into a digression, and we shall yield to the temptation. The problem of perception admits of being treated in three several ways: first, we may ignore it altogether,—we may refuse to entertain it at all; or, secondly, we may discuss it in the manner just proposed—we may lay it down as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... are an index to the native life of Cairo, a greater claim may be made for the mosques, in which the city abounds; for they represent political changes, social evolution, and artistic development, as history proves. To substantiate this claim of the mosques, a brief digression ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... our narrative. At the proper time I will describe to you in detail what I have only just touched upon in this digression. ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... reflected on the Policy of those, who forsake a safe and profitable Path, for vain and dangerous Flights; I fancied my self a Politician too, and imagined I knew what a Nation of Projectors must bring their Country to. I shall here make a Digression, without giving any Reason for it; for since I am not bound to the Unities of Time, and Place, as we are in Poetry, I stand in no Awe of the ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... digression: I must return to the Elizabethan garden, which I have hitherto only described as a great square, surrounded by wide, covered, shady walks, and with other similar walks dividing the central square into four or more compartments. But all this was introductory to the great feature of the ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... likely to abandon the weapons which have made him the lord and the bully of the planet. He has no other superiority to the races which he arrogantly despises. Under a regime of peace the Asiatic would probably be his master. To return from a short digression, we must note further that a nation with a low standard has no reserve to fall back upon; it lives on the margin of subsistence, which may easily fail in war-time, especially if much food is imported when conditions are normal. It can hardly be an accident that in this war the nations ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... made this short digression because it appeared to me seasonable at a time when there is only too much tendency to overthrow natural religion to its very foundations. I return then to the Averroists, who were persuaded that their dogma was proved conclusively in accordance with reason. As a ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... The digression is a lengthy one; but even now a further step must be taken. The man has, in the dog, his one real intimate in the whole animal world. It will be generally admitted that the dog depends exceptionally upon the man and the man often largely also upon the dog, ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... digression; the present volume, as I have already stated, is not designed to include—except incidentally-anything in the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... to be pardoned for this digression, wherein I pay a just tribute of veneration and gratitude to one from whose writings and conversation I have received instructions of which I experience the value in every ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... here indulged in a very appropriate digression upon female modesty, which he wound up by asserting that that estimable virtue became more and more influenced by the secretive organ, in proportion as the favoured suitor approached near and nearer to a definite proposal. It was the duty of a gallant and honourable lover to make that ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Rebellion, of which the outside world, even when it was at its height, knew little, but which, so recently as a couple of months prior to the date of writing, threatened to spell extermination to the foreigners in North-East Yuen-nan. And the reader, too, may welcome a digression ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle |
