"Irrelevance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... observed with wandering irrelevance, "it can't be said that my death will make much difference ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... above quoted from Berlioz should be suspected of bias or irrelevance, we cite a few phrases from Cherubini's Treatise on Counterpoint and Fugue, of which, though the letter-press is by his favourite pupil, Halevy, the musical examples and doctrine are beyond suspicion his own. Concerning the 16th-century idiom, incorrectly but generally known as the "changing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... digging, and noticing the unusual tears, and struck perhaps by the difference between my garden and the profusion of splendour all around, paused with his barrow on the path in front of me, and remarked that nobody could expect to get blood out of a stone. The apparent irrelevance of this statement made me weep still louder, the bitter tears of insulted sorrow; but he stuck to his point, and harangued me from the path, explaining the connection between north walls and tulips and blood and stones till my tears all dried ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... admonition, even if, in its suggested moral freedom, it does seem to conflict with that other theory—the inevitable sequence of cause and effect, descending from the primal atom. There is seeming irrelevance in introducing this matter here; but it has a chronological relation, and it presents a mental aspect of the time. Clemens was forty-eight, and becoming more and more the philosopher; also, in logic at least, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... above his head; it was his involuntary action when deep emotion stirred him; and his customary ejaculation was, "Praise the Lord!" It was possible that he would have shouted those words even then without regard to their irrelevance; but he was not able to utter a sound when Brophy and Latisan and the other men came ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... would care," exclaimed my aunt, genuinely shocked. "It would be monstrous. You owe it to your descendants as well as to your ancestors. Besides," she added, with apparent irrelevance, "a man in your position ought ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... annoyance arising from the miracles would be the irrelevance of the issue raised by them. Jesus's teaching has nothing to do with miracles. If his mission had been simply to demonstrate a new method of restoring lost eyesight, the miracle of curing the blind would have been ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... committing myself, mark you, Sir Thomas, to any statement whatever, beyond the observation that these coincidences were noticeable. I add, with superficial irrelevance, that Dr. Herrick disappeared ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Archer fancied that Mr. Letterblair must have told her of his coming; but the irrelevance of her next remark made him ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... like a vaccination," continued the little lady in grey, with seeming irrelevance. "When it takes, you don't ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... very thought became a duet. Wilbur, who died in 1912, was a man of a steady mind and of a dominant character, hard-knit, quiet, intense. He has left some writings which reflect his nature; they have a certain grim humour, and they mean business; they push aside all irrelevance, and go straight to the point. After adventures in printing and journalism the two brothers set up at Dayton as cycle manufacturers. The death of Lilienthal, reported in the newspapers in 1896, first called their attention to flight, and they began to read all available books ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... said so. Kenny, however, took immediate advantage of Garry's attitude to sidetrack what he considered the preposterous irrelevance of the shotgun, the one unessential thing in the studio, and point with rising temper to the statuette. It had, alas! been a birthday present from Ann Marvin, whose statuettes, fashionable and satiric, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... at him in his affliction, nor even to be aiming his way: he never could tell when the next shot was coming. At the table, the ladies of his family might be deep in dress, or discussing Mr. Madison's slowly improving condition, when Cora, with utter irrelevance, would sigh, and, looking sadly into her coffee, murmur, "Ah, fond mem'ries!" or, "Why am I haunted by the dead past?" or, the dreadful, "Torn from her I love by the ruthless hand of ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... looking up into the visage of Rogers in silence. "I wonder what you're up to," he said at last; "I should like to know." But as Rogers made no sign of gratifying his curiosity, and treated this last remark of Lapham's as of the irrelevance of all the rest, he said, frowning, "You bring me a party that will give me enough for those mills to clear me of you, and I'll talk to you. But don't you come here with any man of straw. And I'll give you just twenty-four hours to prove yourself ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... certain infusion of contempt for light comedy as something rather beneath him, not wholly worthy of his austere and ambitious capacity. The parliament of pages in this play is a diverting interlude of farce, though a mere irrelevance and impediment to the action; but the boys are less amusing than their compeers in the anonymous comedy of "Sir Giles Goosecap," first published in the year preceding: a work of genuine humor and invention, excellent in style if somewhat infirm in construction, for a reprint of which ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... said Erica, suddenly, and with seeming irrelevance, "then sooner or later we must learn it to be so. Truth MUST win in the end. But it is worse to wait for perfect certainty than for books at the museum," she added, laughing. "It is five minutes to nine ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... little sigh of relief and fell to talking of other things. It was when he rose to go and she walked to his car with him that he asked with seeming irrelevance, "Has this Mr. Tollman ever—made ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... funny to me, Mr. Barton," she almost whined, "that anybody as big as you are—shouldn't be able to understand anybody as little as—I am. But if I only had an attic!" she cried out with apparent irrelevance. "Oh, if just once in my whole life I could have even so much as an atticful of home! Oh, please—please—please, Mr. Barton!" she ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... swelling gone out of his eyes?" Josephine inquired pointedly, with the irrelevance which seemed habitual to her ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... with enthusiasm. "He has been a good son and brother; he is always helping people, and has more friends than any one in the district. I don't see why he cared for me," she added with seeming irrelevance. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... hesitated a moment; then with an irrelevance perhaps natural to the occasion, he inquired where this door so conveniently hidden from the general view led to. It was ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... going," said my mother, with apparent irrelevance, "to entertain in honor of Mary Virginia Eustis. I shall probably have all Appleboro here. I sent for you to explain that you and Armand are to be ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler |
