"Nonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... medical skill; a woman with courage, loyalty, and devotion beyond compare, and with all the ardor for service and adventure that any man could have—who can she be? And—damn it, now! Who am I, to be thinking of such nonsense, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... nonsense! He'll come back safe enough. You don't deserve that he should be so patient ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... yet she doesn't dress any more stylishly than Mrs. Sullivan; and she never bought a jewel in her life. She supports a mother, and sends a brother to college in Florence. You people think we are fast. That's all nonsense. It is only the little dancers, la canaille, who can afford to be dissipated. I can't, I know that. I'm too tired after the theatre to think of going out on a spree, as they call it. Besides, it doesn't do for a dancer to be too cheap. It hurts ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... planters were invoked to cease from one kind of villany, only to practise another! as if the manumitted slaves must necessarily be driven out from society into the wilderness, like wild beasts! This is talking nonsense: it is a gross perversion of reason and common sense. Abolitionists have never said, that mere manumission would be doing justice to the slaves: they insist upon a remuneration for years of unrequited toil, upon their employment as free laborers, upon their immediate ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... to talk idly, presumptuously, or foolishly, but not necessarily incoherently. To jabber is to utter a rapid succession of unintelligible sounds, generally more noisy than chattering. To gossip is to talk of petty personal matters, as for pastime or mischief. To twaddle is to talk feeble nonsense. To murmur is to utter suppressed or even inarticulate sounds, suggesting the notes of a dove, or the sound of a running stream, and is used figuratively of the half suppressed utterances of affection or pity, or of complaint, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... education raised their still familiar outcry about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a scheme, if properly carried out, ought ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... has sent his son to the Mediterranean; taking him from the Narcissus, where I had been at so much pains to place him. I know not where to find a frigate to place him. He never will be so well and properly situated again. I am more plagued with other people's business, or rather nonsense, than ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... phrase and yet but a modern variant of Domitian's: "Your god and master orders it." Incidentally, in addition to the Garter, an honorific which the Duke of Cambridge admirably summarised as "having, sir, none of the damned nonsense of merit about it," he had other distinctions. He had—and has—uranomania, that is to say, a flight of fancy in which the patient believes himself associated with God. He had also defilirium tremens, which manifested itself ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... a shrewd Intimation, in cunningly diverting, or cleverly retorting an Objection: Sometimes it is couched in a bold Scheme of Speech, in a tart Irony, in a lusty Hyperbole, in a startling Metaphor, in a plausible Reconciling of Contradictions, or in acute Nonsense; Sometimes a scenical Representation of Persons or Things, a counterfeit Speech, a mimical Look or Gesture passeth for it. Sometimes an affected Simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous Bluntness giveth it Being. Sometimes it riseth from a lucky Hitting upon what is ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... an answering ray. Their eyes are like glow-worms, and their motions graceful and flowing, as if a place were already found for them, like rivers flowing through valleys. The distinctions of morality, of right and wrong, sense and nonsense, are petty, and have lost their significance, beside these pure primeval natures. When I consider the clouds stretched in stupendous masses across the sky, frowning with darkness or glowing with ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... are you ashamed of me?" She lifted her head again, before he could answer, and controlled herself by a sudden effort of resolution. "I don't know what's the matter with me this morning," she said, looking at him with a pleading fear in her eyes. "Never mind my nonsense—I'll do the copy!" She began to write the unendurable assertion that change is a law of Nature, with trembling fingers and fast heaving breath. Amelius took the pen gently out of her hand. His voice faltered as he ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... sisters to call the new member at first by his Christian name. Much will depend on his age and his disposition. There are some people whom one can never address otherwise than formally, while with others it seems perfect nonsense to call them otherwise than by the most ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... do not act thus. When they are passing through the Louvre or British Museum they never pause and overlook artists, despite the notices requesting them not to do so. Of course not. Yet I once knew a charming young American lady, who scouted the idea as nonsense that she should not watch artists at work. "Why, we used to make up parties for the purpose of looking at them!" she said. "It was half the fun of going there. I'm sure the artists were delighted to get a chance to talk to us." Doubtless. And yet there are really very few artists who ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... "Nonsense! The doll isn't lost. I saw it a minute ago. Come, Millicent; I'll go with you and Anne for a little walk toward King's Chapel," and Rose held out a hand to each of ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... "Stuff an' nonsense! Sorry, sir, but I admire Doris Martin. I like to see a girl like her liftin' herself out of the common gang. She's the smartest young lady in the village, an' not an atom of a snob. No, no. She isn't for Fred Elkin. Before this murder cropped up everybody would have it that ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... place, with the lack of sympathy that one sometimes remarks in unimaginative minds, she did not in the least understand the terror with which it inspired the child, but assured her, in her good-humoured way, that that was all nonsense, and the she would get over it in time. So the skull remained, and Madelon was miserable, till one night, in a moment of desperation, she jumped out of bed, seized it with both hands, and flung it with all her might through the window into the garden below. She was frightened when she heard the ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... "Boy and girl nonsense," said Mr. Barrett, sharply. "Why, it's fifteen years ago. I don't suppose I should know her if I saw her. ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... of the bed and stand listening, with blanched cheeks, to the delirious ravings of his wife. "She doesn't know what she is saying, remember; and she will be better to-morrow, doubtless. Don't distress yourself more, by listening to all this nonsense." ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... week—Margaret's were around twelve dollars. For one thing, there was a holiday. No wonder employers groan over holidays! The workers begin to slacken up about two days ahead and it takes two days after the day off to recover. Then, too, we indulged in too much nonsense that last week. We laughed more than we worked, and paid for it. The next week Mamie and Margaret claimed they were going to bring their dinners the whole week to work that noon hour and make up for our evil days. ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... half-way to his mouth. Here was a direct attack on his dignity, and he was not disposed to put up with it. "I never talk nonsense," he answered sharply. ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... "I'm determined to stand no nonsense this morning. Get out your copy books." Five minutes later would begin: "Oh, Miss Jones, I can't write with this pencil. May I find a better one?" Granted permission, Mary's head and large spectacles would disappear inside the schoolroom cupboard. Soon Jeremy would say ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... because they wish to please me in that way also. Well, but they remind me of my hour of death. But be that as it may, I want to live a while longer. Only, little sir, don't repeat these remarks of mine; respect the ecclesiastical profession—only fools do not respect it; and I am to blame for talking nonsense in ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... was arrant nonsense for Hamilton to act like this. Admitting the man believed in himself,—and Covington believed that much,—he was, after all, Teddy Hamilton. The fact remained, even as he himself admitted, that he was not fit to be in the same room with her. It was not possible for a man in a month to ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... What nonsense! Where could we go, that he would not follow us? No; such folly is not to be thought of. What we ought to do is to take a firm stand and defend ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... power is exclusively vested in the President and Senate, and not in this House. Need I say that we fly in the face of that resolution when we pretend that the acts of that power are not valid until we have concurred in them? It would be nonsense, or worse, to use the language of the most glaring contradiction, and to claim a share in a power which we at the same time disdain as exclusively vested in ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... was that?"—a sudden thud, as if something had fallen somewhere in the house; then silence, except for the loud beating of my heart, that threatened to suffocate me. "Nonsense," I said to myself, "I am foolishly nervous to-night. It is nothing here, or Bogie would bark;" so I tried again to sleep. Hush! Surely that was a footstep going up or down the stairs! I could not endure the agony of being alone any longer, but would go to my sister's room, just across the ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... "Nonsense!" the older brother said. "That fool would only squander his inheritance! To every poor beggar that comes along he'd give an alms until soon my poor father's savings would be all gone! No! I'll give him three golden ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... that crazy fool? Love a thing that brought on the war? Love a creature with the brains of a mouse? Nonsense. I don't believe the Lord ever meant us ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... Chinese writings, translated by the missionaries, have undergone so great a change in their European dress, that they ought rather to be looked upon as originals than translations. It is true, a literal translation would be nonsense, but there is a great difference between giving the meaning of an author, and writing a commentary upon him. Sir William Jones observes that the only method of doing justice to the poetical compositions ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk. It is no matter whether one talks wisdom or nonsense, the case is the same, the bulk of the enjoyment lies in the wagging of the gladsome jaw and the flapping of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... What nonsense one could write of the reception here—such as "Everybody at service this morning listened attentively; commented on address or conversation; children all come to school, so intelligent, and seemingly anxious to learn; ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... the runner on the mark, or like the burden-bearer lifting a great weight, and Byrne gathered, in some mysterious manner, the impression that Barry sent through his hands and into the body of Cumberland a continual stream of nervous strength—an electric thing. Nonsense, of course. And it was nonsense, also, to think that the huge dog which lay staring up into the face of the master understood all this affair much better than the practiced mind of the physician. Yet the illusion held with Randall Byrne in spite of ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... reason that his offence came on for trial in the Personal Bereavement Court. The lad, who was undefended, pleaded that he was young, inexperienced, greatly in awe of his guardian, and without independent professional advice. "Young man," said the judge sternly, "do not talk nonsense. People have no right to be young, inexperienced, greatly in awe of their guardians, and without independent professional advice. If by such indiscretions they outrage the moral sense of their friends, they must expect to suffer accordingly." He then ordered the prisoner to apologise to his ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... guns," Dickens, Carlyle, and the rest; and when I ventured to try my prentice pen, it was Forster who took personal charge of the venture. It was long remembered at the Household Words office how he stalked in one morning, stick in hand, and, flinging down the paper, called out, "Now, mind, no nonsense about it, no humbug, no returning it with a polite circular, and all that; see that it is read and duly considered." That was the turning-point. To that blunt declaration I owe some forty years of enjoyment and employment—for there is no enjoyment ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... on such a day as this?" exclaimed Ingram. "Nonsense! Get an open trap of some sort; and Sheila, just to please me, will put on that very blue dress she used to wear in Borva, and the hat and the white feather, if she has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... "Nonsense," snapped the Colonel. "It was splendid, perfectly splendid." And he arose from his chair and took down from a shelf a little blue volume bearing the title "1914." With a pencil he underlined certain phrases in a sonnet, and handed ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... her lap—"he tried to mix Rindy up in it. It was crazy, awful! He'd brought her some sort of nonhuman toy from one of the lowland towns, Charin I think. It was a weird thing, scared me. But he'd sit Rindy down in the sunlight and have her look into it, and Rindy would gabble all sorts of nonsense about little men ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... have here set you the example of writing nonsense when one has nothing to say, and shall take it ill if you don't keep up the correspondence ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... happen. Petersen Sahib is a madman. Else why should he go hunting these wild devils? He may even require thee to be an elephant catcher, to sleep anywhere in these fever-filled jungles, and at last to be trampled to death in the Keddah. It is well that this nonsense ends safely. Next week the catching is over, and we of the plains are sent back to our stations. Then we will march on smooth roads, and forget all this hunting. But, son, I am angry that thou shouldst meddle in the business that belongs to these dirty Assamese ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... nonsense at all. Just now Toto says he's sorry, and that he'll try to love you for ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... An angel! Nonsense! Everybody so describes his mistress; and yet I find it impossible to tell you how perfect she is, or why she is so perfect: suffice it to say she ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... Mr. Gibbs if he shared the contempt that some people expressed for bullets. He and Mr. Gleeson both said, "Anyone who talks of contempt for bullets is talking nonsense. Bullets mean death at every corner of the street, and death overhead and flying limbs and unspeakable sights." All these men went back. All of them behaved quietly and like gentlemen, but one man asked a friend of his over and ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... "Nonsense," answered the author. "It is not progressing at all." He was making no headway, but was, in fact, floundering hopelessly in the shallows of a desperate situation. Two personages had stuck in the author's throat, and could move neither up nor down; one fat ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... accomplished by an ode from the Persian, an apologue from the Sanskrit, or a song from some unheard-of dialect of Hinduee, of which amateur favors the public with a free translation, without understanding the original, as you will immediately be convinced, if you peruse that repository of nonsense, the 'Asiatic Miscellany.'" He makes one exception, however, in favor of Wilkins. "Ihave never yet seen any book," he writes, "which can be depended on for information concerning the real opinions of the Hindus, except Wilkins's 'Bhagvat Geeta.' ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... "Oh, that's nonsense." He spoke authoritatively. "You could have done nothing else, and I think myself you showed any amount of pluck in carrying out the girl's request. You and I, who have been in India, know what strange and terrible ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... king! Ruling over the earth, thou art the foremost of sovereigns! The Munis praise thee, and besides thee there is none so versed in religious lore'! To him the Rishi Gautama, of great ascetic merit, then indignantly replied saying, 'Atri, do not repeat this nonsense. (It seems) thou art not in thy proper senses. In this world of ours, Mahendra the lord of all created beings (alone) is the foremost of all sovereigns!' Then, O, great prince, Atri said to Gautama, 'As Indra, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... "Nonsense. Barkin' dogs don't often bite, an' so long as we know he means mischief there ain't much chance of trouble. The thing to be figgered out is, how're we goin' ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... Hiven! how they cried, an' the ould she-god grinnin' above thim all so scornful! The dhrink was dyin' out in me fast, an' I was thinkin' harder than the thoughts wud go through my head—thinkin' how to get out, an' all manner of nonsense as well. The women were rockin' in rows, their di'mond belts clickin', an' the tears runnin' out betune their hands, an' the lights were goin' lower an' dharker. Thin there was a blaze like lightnin' from the roof, an' that showed me the inside av the palanquin, an' at the end where ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... chaff. I could hardly breathe under its weight, and certainly had no words for an answer. People wondered what Mr. T. B. would do now with his worrying nephew and, I dare say, hoped kindly that he would make short work of my nonsense. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... to give me a drubbing. The party's going to be defeated in November—there's no ducking that. We'll let Thatcher get the odium of that defeat. About the next time we'll go in and win and there won't be any more Thatcher nonsense. This is politics, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Such ribald nonsense, however, was unfair to a navy which had done magnificently well until smothered and suppressed by sheer weight of numbers. It was in January, 1815, that Captain Decatur finally sailed out of New York harbor in the hope of taking the President ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... X. asserts that his name has always been spelt in such and such a way, he is talking nonsense. If his great-grandfather's will is accessible, he will probably find two or three variants in that alone. The great Duke of Wellington, as a younger man, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... "Nonsense!" she said. "I didna mean to say anything unkind. Christie mustna be so testy. Don't tell me that you like milk better than tea. Christie will enjoy hers all the better if you take one too." And she placed ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... on and on—as long as the moon was a-shinin' on a college campus. It was a mixture of happy nonsense and that questioning with which modern youth has begun to trouble its elders. As a marching tune, the song was a trifle swift for the grades of a mountain canyon; Warner could stop and shout to the canyon-walls, and listen to their answer, and then march on again. He had youth in his heart, and ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... "Nonsense!" cried Dick, "if 'twas there, you'd bring it out fast enough. I sha'n't believe a word of the story until I ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... Balfour, Sheriff Bell himself (who, by the way, is the most voluminous writer of all, his poems, in the list before us, including "The Bachelor's Complaint," "Song to Leila," "Lines about Love, and such like nonsense," "Edinburgh Revisited," and "To a Favourite Actress"), Thomas Bryson, Gertrude, Captain Charles Gray, Mrs. E. Hamilton, Mrs. Hemans, W. M. Hetherington, Alexander Maclagan, John Malcolm, Percy Bysshe ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... were about as transparent. Some might imagine them deep. They puzzled and nonplussed you, and you slunk away. Now I, while rating them at their worth, was able from previous associations to talk a little congenial nonsense, and pass on. They amused me, too. You know I have a sort of laughing philosophy, and everything and everybody amuses me. The fellows would call these creatures angels, and they would flap their little butterfly wings as if they thought they ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... more unhappy, or more disgusted with myself in all my life. I feel as if I never could be happy again. A sailor's life mixes him up with the worst part of the female sex, and we do not know the real value of the better. I little thought when I was talking nonsense to that poor girl, that I was breaking one of the kindest hearts in the world, and sacrificing the happiness of one who would lay down her existence for me, Peter. Since you have been gone, it's twenty times that I've looked in the glass just to see whether I don't look like a villain. But, by ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Succession so far, as (upon that Score), to undo all Mankind. He thinks no Prince fit to govern, whose Principle it must be to ruin the Constitution, as soon as he can acquire unjust Power to do so. He judges it Nonsense for one to be the Head of a Church, or Defender of a Faith, who thinks himself bound in Duty to overthrow it. He never endeavours to justify his taking the Oaths to this Government, or to quiet his ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... like all your poetry—merely meretricious glitter; there is no heart in it. That a man should like to have a nice mistress, a girl he is really fond of, is simple enough, but lamentation over the limbo of unborn loveliness is, to my mind, sheer nonsense." ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... of the poisonous brood who had made this young man believe such villainous nonsense was a foreign woman named Emma Goldman, who for twenty or thirty years went up and down the land, trying to overthrow the law and government, yet always calling for the protection of both when she was in danger. The American Government tolerated ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... affair, was very great. Much greater, surely, than this Editor would have thought of taking; though, on reflection, he does not presume to blame. The world is dreadfully scant of worshipable objects: and if your Theatre is your own, to sweep away intrusive nonsense continually from the gates of it? Friedrich's Opera costs him heavy sums (surely I once knew approximately what, but the sibylline leaf is gone again upon the winds!)—and he admits gratis a select public, and that only. [Preuss, i. 277; and Preuss, Buch fur ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... me downstairs," observed the lady. "But this provoking nonsense of yours, this crying about going a journey, has made you not fit to be seen. If any friend of my lord's saw your red eyes, he would go and say that my own maid was on my lord's side. ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... he said, "that such things could be done. It is nonsense, of course, but such magnificent nonsense! It is the kind of situation, Miss Ffrench, where any man is justified in interfering. I beg you will leave the affair in my hands and think no more of ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... "Nonsense!" he broke in. "I've always denied likenesses. Such things don't really exist. Likeness-seeing is purely an individual matter—a preconception." He spoke fast; he was uneasy under the cool scrutiny of her green eyes. And with a sharp attempt at self-control and reassurance he ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... a professional dancer," said Lewis, "I'd say 'nonsense' to that. But you're not. I'm afraid it would take you weeks, perhaps months, to get the stamina. Take it easy now while ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... TYND. Nonsense; you'll be made a fool of; he'll be prating stuff, to you, neither the feet nor the head of which will ever be visible. The dress only [9] is wanting; in seeing this man, you behold ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... "Nonsense?" And as he spoke he took her by the arm and shook her. He shook her violently so that he hurt her, and her breath for a moment was all but gone from her. "I tell you you must make dollars before I leave you, or I will so handle ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... invalid. She had something else to do. She made efforts to listen with interest to the dilatory gossip of Suzanne, who spoke of her home, and of the trivialities of her monotonous life. This relieved Therese of her own thoughts. Sometimes she caught herself paying attention to nonsense that brought a ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... other men's orders. Childish spiteful desires surged into his mind. If the bugler would only die. He could picture him, a little man with a broad face and putty- colored cheeks, a small rusty mustache and bow-legs lying like a calf on a marble slab in a butcher's shop on top of his blankets. What nonsense! There were other buglers. He wondered how many buglers there were in the army. He could picture them all, in dirty little villages, in stone barracks, in towns, in great camps that served the country for miles with rows of black warehouses and narrow barrack buildings ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... "What nonsense!" with a touch of her old impatience. "You are as bad as mamma; she is always finding fault with me. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones at their neighbors. You do not ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... continued. Barnet knew from his tone that the surgeon was going to begin his characteristic nonsense, and did not encourage him. 'I've had a dream,' repeated Charlson, who required no encouragement. 'I dreamed that a gentleman, who has been very kind to me, married a haughty lady in haste, before he had quite forgotten a nice little girl he knew ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... sitting near Society ladies, did slightly intimidate their neighbors; but Baron von Kelweingstein, let loose in his vice, was beaming; he cracked unsavory jokes, and with his crown of red hair, seemed to be on fire. He paid gallant compliments in his defective French of the Rhine, and his lewd nonsense, smacking of taverns, expectorated through the hole between his two broken teeth, reached the girls in the middle of a ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... My mistress is surely in the great room, and if you care for her as much as you pretend, you will see that she is not lonely, and don't talk nonsense, either." ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "Fir-trees? What nonsense! We are not in a wood. Come with me now to see what you have done." When Heidi saw the devastation that she had caused, she was greatly surprised, for she had not noticed it in ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... concerned in, memory or reason or imagination, still less to any of the emotions, such as anger, joy, jealousy or fear; so all those systems which pretend to tell anything about our mental powers and our dispositions by feeling the shapes of our heads, or the bumps on them, are pure nonsense. ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... thou art cursed. My view of a presiding demon or divinity runs not in such direction. Gods and goddesses roam not to and fro blasting spirits of mortals in such manner. It is an idea born of older times, and doubtless will survive down the ages until men grow wiser; then such nonsense will be looked upon with ridicule, and become a thing of ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... "Nonsense! It's something away back of that! Didn't you hear the old man say that the orders for him to report himself came from Washington LAST NIGHT? No!"—the speaker lowered his voice—"Strangeways says that he had regularly sold himself out to one of them d——d secesh woman ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... "That is nonsense. Everybody seems to know but myself. I am no child. I came to consult you—my spiritual adviser—in regard to this very case. Accidentally I overheard enough to ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... expressed it, "To keep up her drooping spirits." Christine had never entirely overcome her natural shyness, and being the centre of attraction on this occasion greatly embarrassed her, and she was glad of Patty's gay nonsense to ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... I wonder? Plenty of fellows have to spend half the year apart from their wives: the only thing in your case I couldn't understand was the necessity for your doing it. For you know that's all nonsense about ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... Joram has got other fish to fry before this time. It's a marvel to me, Bagwax, that they should give way to all this nonsense. If anything could be done, it could be done in half the time,—and if anything could be done, it could be done here. By the time you're back from Sydney, Caldigate's time will be half out. Why don't you let ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... truth for which he was quite unprepared: he would have been quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched; hard, bandy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that she made a goddess and an only child of the effete and tearful lady; and even as she waited at table her hands would sometimes itch for ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... good of going on with such lies?" said the artilleryman. "There's men who'd do it cheerful. What nonsense ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... of whom you are jealous? Is it possible? That nonsense? I did not talk about anything with her, and that was the funny part of it. Did I not talk just as long with Antonio, whom a short time ago I used to see almost ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... folly, imbecility, miscalculation, senselessness, error, foolishness, imprudence, misjudgment, silliness, fatuity, idiocy, indiscretion, nonsense, stupidity. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... first few minutes after their hostess left them she only noticed that her new acquaintance looked and spoke like a gentleman, that he had a very pleasant voice, and that, without being pedantic, he was not talking nonsense. Imagine the sensation which took place in her head when, at some bright speech from her antagonist—for they had immediately fallen into an argument—she raised her laughing eyes to his face, and saw—one of the youths who had fallen under her righteous indignation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... and is himself so miserable, so m—i—serable! He will think, think, then talk, then he will go and make a declaration of love, and after that he thinks, and thinks again, till he marries. . . . And when he is married, he talks all sorts of nonsense to his wife, and ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... no answer to his suggestion, and finding that we were disposed to be serious, and not likely to stand any more of his nonsense, he requested permission to occupy the same place where he had secreted himself when the bushranger buried his gold; and while one of us walked over the clearing he thought he could tell when we reached the exact ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... myself and scowled at him and told him I was no fool and taunted him with my importance to his schemes and said I was not born yesterday, and that if Paris was to be divided I knew what part I wanted and meant to stand no nonsense ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... "Nonsense!" Bob protested heartily. "Don't you and Aunt Tiny give yourselves any uneasiness about me. I'm happy. I enjoy fussing round the shop with you, Mr. Spence. I'd far rather you took me into what you're doing than left me out. Besides, I don't intend to work every minute while I'm here. ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... "Nonsense! We left Philippe at the Carrefour du Grand-Chene, at the bottom of the hill, didn't we, Suzanne? You remained ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... But father said (and mother agreed with him, because mothers have to agree with fathers, and not because it was her own idea) that children who coated a carpet on both sides with thick mud, and when they were asked for an explanation could only talk silly nonsense—that meant Jane's truthful statement—were not fit to have a carpet at all, and, indeed, SHOULDN'T have one ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... "Care for her? Nonsense, Bessie! Do you want me to call her a mere doll, a hard, waxen—no, for wax will melt—a Parian creature, such as you may see by the dozens in Schwartz's window any day? It doesn't gratify you, surely, to hear me say ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... "Nonsense!" said Conrad, taking the letter; "the professor is as bashful as a young girl. To read one's praise, is no shame. Now listen: 'My dear and honored professor, will you allow one of your pupils to seek a favor from you? I am rich! God has enriched you with the rarest ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... a national rebellion against a trumpery duty on tea, but English writers and English public men seem quite unable to explain the national outcry against Wood's patent, except on the theory that a clever writer, pouring forth captivating nonsense, bewitched the Irish Parliament and the Irish people, and sent them out of their ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... "Nonsense! Anyhow, there is one here who seems quite insensible. I have talked already with Mr. Aynesworth. He would not listen ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... even a connoisseur, who had an exquisite picture by all old master, with only one trifling blemish on it, would hardly trust himself or another to repair and retouch, in order to render it perfect. Can any one recognise in this elaborate nonsense about ideal perfection, any approximation to the feeling which a man has for the wife he loves? If the novelist wished to describe this egregious connoisseurship in female charms, he should have put the folly into the head of some insane mortal, who, reversing the enthusiasm by which some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... feel it, all through our bones and marrow. The camp is deprovincializing us very fast. Brave Winthrop, marching with the city elegants, seems to have been a little startled to find how wonderfully human were the hard-handed men of the Eighth Massachusetts. It takes all the nonsense out of everybody, or ought to do it, to see how fairly the real manhood of a country is distributed over its surface. And then, just as we are beginning to think our own soil has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, up turns a regiment of gallant Irishmen, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... could defer a reform of the constitution (referring to the withdrawal of Lord John's bill) why should they hurry to reform the universities? The talk about the erudite professors of Germany as so superior to Oxford was nonsense. The great men of Germany became professors only because they could not become members of parliament. 'We, on the contrary, are a nation of action, and you may depend upon it, that though you may give an Oxford professor two thousand ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... to be given to the ladies by a club of bachelors. He was going to take Dolly. Mrs. Bond would be there, and Dolly came up to coax her prospective mother-in-law. "Margaret had not gone into any society and was only a school-girl, altogether too young to have her head filled with such nonsense," with many more reasons and conjunctions. Dolly was so sweet and persuasive, and said the simplest white gown would do, young girls really didn't dress much. Then Margaret would have it ready for her graduation. They would be sure to ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... it is considered to be impracticable. "Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property of the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor."[284] "Plans for a national 'dividing up' are not Socialism. They are nonsense. 'Dividing up' means individual ownership. Socialism means collective ownership."[285] "It is obvious that, in the present stage of economic development, individual ownership is impossible. All the great means of production are collectively ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... course of disclamation, I should like to make a mild protest against a further charge that Georgian Poetry has merely encouraged a small clique of mutually indistinguishable poetasters to abound in their own and each other's sense or nonsense. It is natural that the poets of a generation should have points in common; but to my fond eye those who have graced these collections look as diverse as sheep to their shepherd, or the members of a Chinese family to their uncle; and if there is an allegation ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... 1830, when Rodney's Life was first published, it was asserted "that the French navy had been so effectually crippled and reduced by the decisive victory of the 12th of April, as to be no longer in a condition to contest with Great Britain the empire of the seas." This is nonsense, excusable in 1782, but not to the calm thought of after days. The favorable terms obtained were due to the financial embarrassment of France, not to her naval humiliation; and if there was exaggeration in the contention ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... distraught. Presently, he met a friend, to whom he discovered his case, and the other said to him, "Art thou not ashamed to talk thus? How hast thou wasted all this wealth and now comest telling lies and saying, The dog hath mounted on the shelf, and talking such nonsense?" And he reviled him. So the youth returned to his house, and verily the world had waxed black in his eyes and he cried, "My sire said sooth." Then he opened the chamber door and piling up the bricks under his feet, put the rope about his neck and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... well-shod foot petulantly. "Rubbish!" she exclaimed. "You don't suppose I believe that nonsense, do you?" ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... and a half miles from Barnet in memory of the Brinkly family, and it is carefully looked after by members of the family; one of the Lees has a tombstone erected to his memory in Hanwell Cemetery; and such silly nonsense is put out by the cunning, crafty Gipsies as 'dazzlers,' to enable them more readily to practise the art of lying and deception upon their gullible listeners. Then again, with reference to the Gipsies having a religion of their own. There is not a word of truth in this imaginative ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... so much at home in Latin poetry as on the playground. He pronounced the Latin words in flagrant violation of all the rules of quantity, and when he came to give the English meaning, his translation was a ludicrous farrago of nonsense. Yet, poor Mr. Crabb did not dare, apparently, to ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... he said, "and don't talk till you have something to say. And you others need not believe a word of the bear's nonsense. I am much taller than you and I can see a long way over the forest. But as far away as I can see ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... as I complained, of any quality of flesh and blood, a mere anodyne to lull his pains. The most temperate of living critics once marked a passage of my own with a cross and the words, "This seems nonsense." It not only seemed; it was so. It was a private bravado of my own, which I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits that I had grown at last wholly to believe it, and had ended by setting it down as a contribution to the theory of life. So with the more icy parts of this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "What nonsense are you saying, child? Do not let me hear you speak like this again. What motive could a wealthy man like Tonza have in getting rid of one of his own employes? Grief has turned your brain. Cast aside those weird garments, and in three hours be ready ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... and women especially, fancy that the so-called Platonic love is a peculiar species of love, very rare and very noble. It is simply a confusion of ideas. There may be such a thing as Platonic relations, but Platonic love is as much nonsense as dark light. Even love for the dead consists of a longing after their bodily presence as well as their souls. Among the living ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... conversations in a salon where I was a visitor, but could hear nothing; in order to do us better justice, they waited until I had gone. I returned to Brigitte and told her that all these stories were mere nonsense, that it was foolish to notice them; that they could talk about us as much as they pleased and we would care nothing ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... greaves are not found, so far, in Mycenaean tombs in Greece, and Reichel argued that the original Homer knew none. The greaves, [Greek: kunmides] "were gaiters of stuff or leather"; the one mention of bronze greaves is stuff and nonsense interpolated (VII. 41). But why did men who were interpolating bronze corslets freely introduce bronze so seldom, if at all, as the material ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... gritty old wall. Go away, and don't disturb me. I am chock full of beautiful and noble thoughts, and I want to stop like it, because it feels nice and good. Don't you come fooling about, making me mad, chivying away all my better feelings with this silly tombstone nonsense of yours. Go away, and get somebody to bury you cheap, and I'll ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... talking a good deal of nonsense, and she frequently wearied her listeners; but there was a certain shrewdness in her, and at times she got near the truth. Indeed, her companion afterward decided that she had done so in this case. Ida Stirling had met many rising young men, and some who had made their mark, but none of ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... start. "What do you mean?" she exclaimed. "Of course I love you, and you only, but the future and the past are beyond our control. Unless you know of something that is going to happen which may mar our love, your question is silly, not at all like your Mother Goose nonsense—that was dear. And as for the past, ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller |
