"Nothings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... five hundred extempore macaronic verses; composed and executed an oratorio and opera" upon a piano without strings, namely the center-table; drawn "an entirely original view of Nantasket Beach"; made a temperance address; and given vent to "innumerable jests, jokes, puns, oddities, quiddities and nothings," interrupted by his own laughter and that of his hearers. Besides this, he had eaten "an indefinite number of raisins, chestnuts(!), etc., etc., etc., ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... over of communication between us, but I was mistaken. He spoke for a minute or two upon the crowd—early hour of coming—hasty breakfasting and such general nothings; and then, as if involuntarily, he returned to the sole subject on his ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... rather a difficult person to make love to. It would be a bold young man who whispered sweet nothings into her ear; they'd sound so ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... State than it has with the Church. The faculties which fit a man to be a great ruler are not those of society; some great rulers have been unintelligible like Cromwell, or brusque like Napoleon, or coarse and barbarous like Sir Robert Walpole. The light nothings of the drawing-room and the grave things of office are as different from one another as two human occupations can be. There is no naturalness in uniting the two; the end of it always is, that you put a man at the head of society who very likely is remarkable ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... new blacks fools. They had no love for nothings in labor; they had no wish to make their fellows' wage envelopes smaller, but they were determined to make their own larger. They, too, were willing to join in the new union movement. But the unions did not want them. Just as employers monopolized meat and steel, so they ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... come and look at our tapestry?" said Aldous to his neighbour, after a few nothings had passed between them as to the weather and her walk from Mellor. "I think you would admire it, and I am afraid my grandfather will be a few minutes yet. He hoped to get home earlier than this, but his Board meeting ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bestowed by their descendants. Such a system could not fail to establish a belief in good and evil genii, and of tutelar spirits presiding over families, towns, cities, houses, mountains, and other particular places. It afterwards required no great stretch of the imagination to give to these "airy nothings a local ...
— 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
... reminiscences, which, though of nothings, I could see was bringing the red spot to Bessie's cheek, I put out my hand for the book: "Let me write something down to-day;" and I hastily scribbled: "September 28. Charles Munro and Bessie Stewart, to sail for ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... pitiful blank, and her lips babbled vacant nothings as she dragged herself on and on, further and further away from Ellsworth, and into the lonely woods, unconsciously leaving the beaten track, and pursuing a lonely bridle path that led her into the very ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... houses to be let. Howe'er, to keep her spirits up, She sent for company to sup: When all the while you might remark, She strove in vain to ape Wood Park. Two bottles call'd for, (half her store, The cupboard could contain but four:) A supper worthy of herself, Five nothings in five plates of delf. Thus for a week the farce went on; When, all her country savings gone, She fell into her former scene, Small beer, a herring, and the Dean. Thus far in jest: though now, I fear, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... but with tears in her eyes, and in the renewed stress of parting which he thought he had put from him, March went on taking note, as with alien senses, of the scene before him, while they all talked on together, and repeated the nothings they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... spangled Canopy, or Banquet my Guests and Gossips with imagin'd Nectar; pure Orleans would do better: No, no, Father, though I could be well pleas'd to have my Husband a Courtier, and a Scholar, young, and valiant; these are but gawdy nothings, if there be not something to ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... nothings did the credulous women put their trust, entranced by the voice of the sanguine charmer. Their faith in him was absolute. For was not this daring leader wise and powerful and popular? Had he not been Vice President and had he not come within one vote of being President ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Who didn't write "Junius," or "Nothing to Wear," Who never have visited London or Paris; Who am not a phantom, a myth, or a mystery, But a "homo," as solid as any of history; As real as Antony, Caesar, or Brutus,— A wide-awake Yankee, so "tarnation 'cute" as To always write Nothings, while Nothings will pay, Am the author of this ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... has a large variety of interest, now running into grotesque drollery, now bordering upon the sphere of tragic elevation, now revelling in the most sparkling brilliancy. The play indeed is rightly named: we have several nothings, each in its turn occasioning a deal of stir and perturbation: yet there is so much of real flavour and spirit stirred out into effect, that the littleness of the occasions is scarcely felt or observed; the thoughts being far more drawn to the persons who make the much ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... atmosphere (a species of chasing not unlike the capricious threads of spun glass), or the whirl of white water which the wind is driving like a luminous dust along the roofs, or the fitful disgorgements of the gutter-pipes, sparkling and foaming; in short, the thousand nothings to be admired and studied with delight by loungers, in spite of the porter's broom which pretends to be sweeping out the gateway. Then there's the talkative refugee, who complains and converses with the porter while he rests on his broom like a grenadier on ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... talked on in characteristic fashion, saying a hundred nothings as only Frenchmen and women can, touching life lightly like a skilled musician, running nimble fingers over the keys, and striking a chord half by accident here and there which was sonorous and had a deeper meaning. He ordered the luncheon, argued with ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... comfort and good is ever done. For how can he live among the poor as one of the poor when at the same time he has to keep in the "good books" of the wealthy, who pay the pew rents, and the evil-minded "do-nothings," who are ever ready to declare that he is demeaning himself and their Church when he breaks down the barrier of caste and position in his efforts to live and suffer and work as do the men and women he wishes to make happier and better? ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... echoed the empress, surprised "Yes, your majesty. Surely there must be something more than a pair of vague sentences, a pair of 'ohs' and 'ahs;' and a sick nun and a silly priest. These insignificant nothings are certainly not enough to overturn the structure which for ten years we have employed all our skill to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... left Amapala. And if it were not that you are all alone up there, I would not mind it. I would probably continue on. We know it now as we do London or Paris. We can distinguish sea captains, lawyers in politics, commandantes, oldest residents, gentlemenly good for nothings, shipping agents and commission dealers, coffee planters and men who are "on the beach" with unerring eye. We know the story of each before he tells it, or it is told by some one else. The Commandante shot a lot of men by the side of a road ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... profiting from its existence. The errors of the various parties that have been opposed to it have often been matter for mirth to the Democratic party, as well they may have been; but neither Federalists, nor National Republicans, nor Whigs, nor Know-Nothings, nor Republicans were ever guilty of a blunder so enormous as that which this party itself perpetrated at Chicago, when it virtually announced its readiness to surrender the country into the hands of the men who have so pertinaciously sought its destruction for the last four years. So strange has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... raptures over Miss Schley's performance, had got up to speak to Fritz, but found the latter being steadily hypnotised by Mrs. Leo's trumpet, which went up towards his mouth whenever he opened it. He bellowed distracted nothings but could not make her hear, obtaining no more fortunate result than a persistent flutter of pink eyelids, and a shrill, ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... met the eye. If this was actually the old Committee of 1851, it meant business. There was but one way to find out and that was to go and see. Number 105-1/2 Sacramento Street was a three-story barn-like structure that had been built by a short-lived political party called the "Know-Nothings." The crowd poured into the hall to its full capacity, jammed the entrance ways, and gathered for blocks in the street. There all waited patiently ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... thoughts of ancestors which I am unable in any clearer way to bring out of darkness. But enough! I must say no more, for I again find myself in the land of vague fancy, gliding phantoms and illusive nothings. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... that the violin was capable of simulating all the subtle inflexions of song, whether of passion or tenderness, and players sighed for an ideal bow that should be tongue-like in its response to the performer's emotion. A bow that should at once be flexible to "whisper soft nothings in my lady's ear"; strong—to sound a clarion-blast of defiance; and, withal, be ready for any coquetterie or badinage that might suit its owner's whim. This is what Francois Tourte, ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... had loved him because he courted her, because he was young, rich, kind, and attentive. She had loved him because it is natural for young girls to love men who whisper sweet nothings to them. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Whether they were or not, I cannot tell. They said, however, a variety of agreeable nothings, and I am to see the count to-morrow. He kept Porthos and Aramis and, I suspect, gave the ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... given over to exciting sport, as the girls, and even Mrs. Brewster, tried to outride each other about the great enclosure. Polly made Noddy happy by mounting her silky little back and whispering fond nothings in the long ears. Anne was pleased to find her Chicago friends could ride so well on the restive western horses, and both Chicago girls were surprised to find what a magnificent rider Mrs. Brewster was. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... should help his enemies offer him so great an affront. How could it be, that while he, amid fatigues and perils in cold and savage regions, was fighting the Germans and holding in subjection the European provinces, that jeunesse doree of good-for-nothings, cynics, idlers, poets, which infested the new generation, was conniving with his wife to set against him a child of fourteen?—to gain, as it were, sanction from a law that the State would not be safe till by the side of ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... the same degrees of prosperity and respect as come to members of other avocations. There never was so large a number of theatres or of actors. And their type is vastly improved by public recognition. The old days when good-for-nothings passed into the profession are at an end; and the old Bohemian habits, so far as they were evil and disreputable, have also disappeared. The ranks of the art are being continually recruited by deeply interested and earnest young men of good education and belongings. ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... right to call soon afterwards. It was the first time Molly had seen any of the family since she left the Hall, since Mrs Hamley's death; and there was so much that she wanted to ask. She tried to wait patiently till Mrs. Gibson had exhausted the first gush of her infinite nothings; and then Molly came in with her modest questions. How was the squire? Had he returned to his old habits? Had his health suffered?—putting each inquiry with as light and delicate a touch as if she had ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was hinted at rather than expressed. To-night Mr. Wendover seemed most inclined to mere nonsense talk—the lively nothings that please children. Of himself and his Norwegian ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... follows: "That season has filled a greater space in my life than all the rest of my days. When I think of the past, it is there where my thoughts travel at once. How relate to you the particulars of our happiness? When destiny protects us, happiness is composed of a thousand charming nothings that the hearts of others cannot understand. During those three months I was entirely happy; I wished to live for ever in this charming retreat for him that I loved a thousand times more than myself. I wished to abandon the opera, that opera that the Count de Melun could not make ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... then you would impose upon the fact of our relationship, and on your belief that I had plenty of means without the amount you owed me: and so you would join the great army of good-for-nothings in ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... it was through him that I ultimately became noticed by the higher powers. His name was Shir Ali, in rank a Beg, and a Shirazi by birth. Although natives of the two rival cities of Persia, yet without any particular previous cause, and by a combination of those nothings which give rise to most friendships, we became inseparable companions. He had given me a piece of watermelon one hot day when I was thirsty; I had lighted his pipe for him on another occasion: he had bled me with his penknife when I had overloaded my stomach with ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... retorts of the auctioneer, to the highest bidder,—and they will be sadder, if not wiser, men than they were before. Such scenes should have more effect on them than all the fine sermons on the vanities and nothings of life ever preached. Sir Richard Steele, in his beautiful paper, in the "Tatler," on "The Death of Friends," says, in speaking of his mother's sorrow for his father's death, there was a dignity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... him, but all was somehow mixed up with frightful fantasies which had vanished with the fever that had so recently left him. The awful shapes, the struggles of demoniac men, the processions of strange and beautiful forms, which had visited him in his delirious visions,—all these were airy nothings; but ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... incidents occurred that might as well not have occurred, but apparently no scars were left nor any incurable pang. True, Molly Hesketh made eyes at Ricky von Elster; but she reproved him bitterly when he kissed her hand in the orangery one evening; true also that Sir Thorald whispered airy nothings into the shell-like ear of Alixe von Elster until that German maiden could not have repeated her German alphabet. But, except for the chaperons, the unmarried people did well enough, as unmarried people usually do ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... begins, with Mademoiselle du Plessis in a leading part. "... La Plessis has a quartan fever. It is pretty to see her jealous fury when she comes here and finds the child with me. The fuss there is to have my stick or muff to hold! But enough of these nothings...." ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... in full-blown variety; sublime, languid peers, needy placemen, hilarious foxhunters, brave tradesmen, aspiring mechanics, poor good-for-nothings; sober housewives, whose thoughts were still of their husbands' shirt-fronts and their hasty-puddings, and who never dreamt that they were impugning their sobriety by attending a play; and above all, fine ladies armed with their fans and their essences. As a whole, the audience was in ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... man and his beloved, they dwelt apart in an ephemeral world where only the prosaic hours when they were separated were unreal. Their realities were smiles, sighs, glances,—the thousand and one nothings that make up the joys and agonies of a lover's existence. Thus the ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... the cellar with cement, don't you? Well, the soil of a city is cemented all over, one may say, with certain qualifications of course. A first-rate city house is a regular sanatorium. The only trouble is, that the little good-for-nothings that come of utterly used-up and worn-out stock, and ought to die, can't die, to save their lives. So they grow up to dilute the vigor of the race with skim-milk vitality. They would have died, like good children, in most average country places; but eight months of shelter in a regulated temperature, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that of all things in the world he most despised and shunned banality, and that Varenika herself used to make fun of forced conversations on the weather and similar matters. Why, then, when meeting in society, did they both of them talk such intolerable nothings, and, as it were, shame one another? After talks of this kind I used to feel silently resentful against Woloda, as well as next day to rally Varenika on her overnight guests. Yet one result of it was that I derived all ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... favorite color peeps out from wall and drapery; her books, well-thumbed and hearing evidences of intimate association, lie cozily about, and her workbasket reveals the source of certain dainty covers and indescribable nothings which so materially refine the whole aspect of the room. Though she receives her formal calls in the drawing-room, it is in her bedroom that those confidential chats, so dear to the feminine heart, take place; therefore its background ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... the doctor to answer polite nothings to all her questions. "Oh, the poor, dear lady!" I thought to myself. The poor, dear lady! What a tearing away of veils and sentimental bandages was written in her book of fate for that ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... nobility from combining against him. He set one cabal to watch another, and there was never a conspiracy entered into that he did not prepare a similar conspiracy through his numerous secret agents and thus split into harmless nothings and weak attempts what would have been fatal to a continuance of his power. His tricks were nothing but the ordinary everyday methods of the modern ward politician making the dear people believe he is doing one thing when he is doing another. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... exchange a few sentences with Marie, more expressive by their tones than their ideas. In the midst of the elegant assembly both found pleasure in those enjoyable sensations given by the voice, the gestures, the attitude of one beloved. The soul then fastens upon absolute nothings. No longer do ideas or even language speak, but things; and these so loudly, that often a man lets another pay the small attentions—bring a cup of tea, or the sugar to sweeten it—demanded by the woman he loves, fearful of betraying his emotion to eyes that ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... conversation was frivolous, quite the Shakespeare and musical glasses kind of speech. Then Mrs. Jasher, who had no idea that her good dinner should be wasted in charming nothings, introduced the subject of the mummy by a reference to Professor Braddock. It was characteristic of her cleverness that she did not address Don Pedro, but pointed her speech at ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... of glass were woven separately and then joined at the edges so ingeniously as to defy detection. The inside curtain was one solid color: crimson. Over this was a curtain of snow flakes, delicate as those aerial nothings of the sky, and more durable than any fabric known. Hung across the arched entrance to a conservatory, with a great globe of white fire shining through it, it was lovely as the blush of Aphrodite when she rose from the sea, veiled in its ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... subdued light, which fell on statuettes ornamenting the consoles, and the gilt frames on the walls: on the tables lay scattered in graceful negligence, albums, elegancies of papier mache, and carved ivory; precious nothings which had constituted the young girl's treasures. At the farther end, the folds of a heavy curtain concealed the bower, sacred to the lady of the castle. Here admittance was at first denied me, and I was obliged to have recourse ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... not found by Swedenborg in such a state of fossil immutability: many had considerably developed their character, both for good and evil, in the other world; and this gave rise to some singular results. Some who had been heroes and saints on earth had there sunk into scamps and good-for-nothings; and there were examples, too, of a contrary transformation. For instance, the fumes of self-conceit mounted to Saint Anthony's head when he learned what immense veneration and adoration had been paid to him by all Christendom; and he who here below withstood the most terrible ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... occasionally to look at the display, where the purchasers are found for things that pain the eye and weary the mind to see—history, or landscape, or familiar life, it matters not, nearly all without feeling, elaborate nothings—obtrusions, unless we are disposed to examine only the work of the engraver; and even then we must lament to see it thrown away, or rather employed in disseminating bad taste. How rarely is it we see even a subject of any value ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... it irksome, I think, to Oliver and Maqueda, whose opportunities of meeting were much curtailed by the exigencies of this rigid espionage. Who can murmur sweet nothings to his adored when two soldiers armed to the teeth have been instructed never to let him out of their sight? Particularly is this so if the adored happens to be the ruler of those soldiers to whom the person guarded has no right to be making ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... wife did not long survive. Just long enough to leave him a son and a daughter, who grew up knowing little restraint, chumming around with all the good-for-nothings of the vicinity, plaguing all the neighbors, who on their part, were not slow to punish the rascals. Thus several years went by. The son became a notorious character, the daughter an impudent, cynical little runabout who, on certain occasions, would fill their rickety abode with ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... confess I was powerfully moved, and I think that for five minutes I could not have trusted myself to speak. At last my silent nearness affected him; he stirred and turned, and then rose and looked at me with a slowly kindling eye. I murmured some kind ineffective nothings about his being ill and needing advice and care, but he seemed absorbed in the effort to recall distinctly what had last passed between us. "You were right," he said, with a pitiful smile, "I am a dawdler! I am a failure! I shall do nothing more in this world. You opened ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... volume of Modern Painters did by no means contain all that even then I knew; and in the third, nominally treating of "Many Things," will be found the full expression of what I knew best; namely, that all "things," many or few, which we ought to paint, must be first distinguished boldly from the nothings which we ought not; and that a faithful realist, before he could question whether his art was representing anything truly, had first to ask whether it meant seriously to represent ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... heard, and the like of which I would walk a long way to hear again. As I stood outside the building waiting for a friend, the congregation came out, and I heard the usual interchange of verbal nothings. The only reference I did hear to the service was from a well-dressed young man to a girl by his side, and this is what he said: "A long-winded fellow, that; let us go on the parade." The remark did ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... with his fiancee is never, of course, as formal as in his letters to other people. This does not mean, however, that his correspondence should be full of silly meaningless "nothings." On the contrary, he should aim to instruct and benefit his future spouse as well as convey to her his tokens of affection. The following letter well illustrates the manner in which a young man may write his fiancee a letter which, while it is replete with proper expressions of amatory good ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... in the depth of his astoundment he forgot his foolish fear of me and fell to pacing up and down, though always with the table cannily between us. And as he shuffled back and forth the thin lips muttered foolish nothings, with here and there a tremulous oath. When all was done he dropped into a chair and stared across at me with leaden eyes; and truly he had the look of one struck ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Busy sought for tracks of imaginary criminals bent on abducting the heiress he naturally drifted to this lonely spot; when Master Courage was bent on whispering sweet nothings into the ear of the other man's betrothed, he enticed her to that corner of the park where he was least like to meet the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... you cantankerous little fabrication of nothings!" Belle said aloud, in a low, throaty, gloating voice. "Take that—and that! And now behave yourself. If you don't, mama spank—but good!" Then, breaking connection, "Thanks a million, Clee; you're tall, solid ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... He nodded cheerily at his welcome—a fusillade of greetings from every "digger" who could find a place at the railings, and a larger number who could not, but contented themselves with shouting sweet nothings from behind their comrades. A lean youngster near Jim Linton looked down enviously at the ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... way unjust. The nothings, or somethings, which form the staple of the book, are not laboured; and they are presented without the semblance of pomp or pretension. The Preface ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... ottoman close by, something that caused her to start as if the gallant officer was not altogether unknown to her, but her memory would not at the moment serve her, yet a feeling of mistrust, a sort of almost indescribable sensation of disquietude came over her as she listened to the polite nothings that issued from his lips; but fearing to attract observation she quietly withdrew, and entering the upper end of the ball room summoned her chobdah and pointing out the figures said, "When that gentleman leaves his present position, tell him that Lady Chutny ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... little Daisy, tossing on your pillow, babbling empty nothings, better would it have been for you, perhaps, if you had dropped the weary burden of your life into the kindly arms of death then and there than to struggle onward into the dark mystery which lay entombed in ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... is nothing which I more wish that you should know, and which fewer people do know, than the true use and value of time. It is in everybody's mouth; but in few people's practice. Every fool, who slatterns away his whole time in nothings, utters, however, some trite commonplace sentence, of which there are millions, to prove, at once, the value and the fleetness of time. The sun-dials, likewise all over Europe, have some ingenious inscription to that effect; so that nobody squanders ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... nothing great, there's nothing wise, Which idle hands and minds supply; Those who all thought and toil despise, Mere nothings live, and ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... and introduced me to a Captain Southgate who came up; and the conversation ran upon West Point things and nothings after that. I was going back over my memory, to find in how far religion had been associated with some other valued things in the instances of my experience, and I heard little of what was said. Mr. Dinwiddie had been a gentleman, as much as any one I ever ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... moped in worse places," he said. "But I'll go with you to-night and be as giddy as you please. I'll whisper pretty nothings to the female lambkins and exchange commonplace lies with the young gentlemen, and then—why then—we'll come away again and straightway forget what manner of things we said and did, and they won't count when we meet on ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... at the well, the gracious courtesy of the fair damsel, and the simple devoutness of the speaker, who recognises in what to others were trivial commonplaces God's guidance to the end which He had appointed, his recognition of the divine hand moving beneath all the nothings and littlenesses of daily ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... she wanted to see every head and hand at work on some noble scheme or task for the world's good. The hearty, comfortable quiet of the Starkes' little farm-house tired her. It was such a sluggish life of nothings, she thought,—even when Jane had brought her chair close to the window where the sunshine came in broadest and clearest through the buttonwood-leaves. Jane saw the look, and it troubled her. She was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... whole length of one wall stood an enormous press in mahogany, with sliding-doors. Two of the doors were slightly open, for Folly knew that clothes, like people and flowers, need a lot of air. Leighton caught a glimpse of filmy nothings hanging on racks; of other nothings, mostly white, stacked on deep shelves; of a cluster of hats clinging like orchids to invisible bumps; and last and least, of tiny ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... disappointment. It looked so like a public dinner of middle-class people. There was no local character in costume or customs. Men and women sat politely bored, expectant, trifling with their napkins, yawning, muttering nothings about the weather or their neighbours. The frozen commonplaceness of the scene was made for me still more oppressive by Signora dell' Acqua. She was evidently satirical, and could not be happy unless continually ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the racket, got fined, cut and run, Being fleeced by the watch and attorney? Or say, have you dined in Guildhall With the mayor and his corporate souls? Or been squeezed at a grand civic ball, With dealers in tallow and coals? Mere nothings are these, though the range Through all we have noticed you've been, When compared to the famed Stock Exchange, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... passionate housewife, Grizel. She was on her knees at present ca'ming the hearth-stone a beautiful blue, and sometimes looking round to address her mother, who was busy among her plants and cut flowers. Surely they were know-nothings who called this woman silly, and blind who said she painted. It was a little face all of one color, dingy pale, not chubby, but retaining the soft contours of a child's face, and the features were singularly delicate. She was clad in a soft gray, and her figure was of ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... usually find a fool. I do not remember that I ever met a very handsome man or woman, who was not as vain and shallow as a peacock. I recently met a magnificent woman of middle age at a railroad station. She was surrounded by all those indescribable somethings and nothings which mark the rich and well-bred traveller, and her face was queenly—not sweet and pretty like a doll's face—but handsome and stylish, and strikingly impressive, so that no man could look at her once without turning to look again; yet I had not been in her presence a minute, before ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... anything particularly remarkable; he was just one of those lovable good-for-nothings that seem born to get better people into trouble all their lives long. He had been spoiled originally by being ten years younger than the next youngest in the family; and then, when the children had been shipped ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... Beau Brummel. Ven I am with the ladies, I talk to dem vit soft words; I whisper sweet nothings, but you, you rummy you, you don't know how to make ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... of his Ambition; and therefore I cannot but think the Flights of this rapid Author very proper to be opposed to those laborious Nothings which you have observed were the Delight of the German Wits, and in which they so happily got rid of such a ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Slavery. The Creole Case. Giddings's Resolutions. Quincy Adams as an Abolitionist. The First Gag Law. Adams's Opposition. The Second and Third. Their Repeal. Pro-slavery Whigs. Submission to Slavocracy. Its Insolent Demands. Death of Whiggism. Americanism. The Know-Nothings. Revolt from the Democracy ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... irresistible. Nobody ever thought of taking offense at Jim Coffroth. He could change his politics with impunity without losing a friend—he never had a personal enemy; but I believe he only made that experiment once. He went off with the Know-nothings in 1855, and was elected by them to the State Senate, and was called to preside over their State Convention. He hastened back to his old party associates, and at the first convention that met in his county on his return from the Legislature, he rose and told them how lonesome ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... nothings. It makes us as if things had never been; and so takes away from the soul one great means of stay, support, and encouragement. When David was dejected, the remembrance of the hill Hermon was his stay. When ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... They talked about nothings: about a new horse which Colonel Campian had just purchased, and which he wanted to show to Lothair; an old opera revived, but which sounded rather flat; something amusing that somebody had said, and something absurd which somebody had done. And then, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... her mother retorted. "You know it wouldn't do at all. It isn't a question of his poverty; your father has money enough: it's a question of his social quality, and of all those little nothings that make up the whole of happiness in marriage. He would be different enough, being merely a man; but being a man born and reared in as different a world from yours as if it were another planet—I want you to think over all the ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... in any previous age; but this element of immutable and eternal truth was certainly not contained in the inane and empty formula, "that numbers are real existences, the causes of all other existences!" If the fame of Pythagoras had rested on such "airy nothings," it would have melted away before the time ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the children in, nurse became very cross indeed. Baby had been somewhat troublesome all the forenoon. Auntie Alice had lately got into the habit of taking him of a morning, walking him about in her arms, crooning sweet nothings over him in her soothing voice. He was old enough to miss her, and to-day was not satisfied at being put off with only nurse. He had, besides, a new tooth coming—a tiny pearly thing, peeping like a speck of ivory from a bed of coral. Very ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... her rest in peace, God bless her!" says the trooper. "What set me on about country boys, and runaways, and good-for-nothings? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your eyes upon the country—marshes ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... gate, and there someone was waiting for him, and he was gently led into the shadow of a dark cedar tree. In the dim twilight he saw two bright eyes looking at him, and he understood their message. In the twilight a thousand meaningless nothings were whispered in the light of the stars, and the hours fled swiftly. When the East began to grow light, the Princess (for it was she) said it was time ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, 85 Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the door, Mrs. Heth gathered her daughter in a convulsive bear-hug, murmuring ecstatic nothings. Little she thought of Settlements ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Bliss Carman, when he had opened the door in reply to my sprightly knock. "Go away! I am giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. This is my busy night—do you not see?" And fully understanding the conditions, for I am a poet myself, I went away and left the author to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... sister well; and although Miss Faith's face was swollen with crying, she spoke with almost exaggerated cheerfulness to Ruth. Indeed, as they all stood at the front door, making-believe to have careless nothings to say, just as at an ordinary leave-taking, you would not have guessed the strained chords of feeling there were in each heart. They lingered on, the last rays of the setting sun falling on the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Just at present, however, she was passing through a phase, and not a very pleasant one. She thought herself quite good enough to go into any society; and fine dress, loud-voiced friends, and the hollow, empty nothings which she and her acquaintances called conversation seemed the best things possible that could come into life. She was, therefore, not at all in the mood to give up her friendship with the ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... thought that such things couldn't happen! She had thought that people's private belongings, like their persons, were inviolable. They all always talked, she had talked, about such things as if they were mere nothings. They had talked about the very taking of the Crew Idol as if it were a splendid joke! But she had not dreamed what such things were like when they were near. When they were held up to you naked they were like this! ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... that jacknape of mine is driving me mad with all his carrying on. I say to him, I say: 'Anything wrong in this house, jail-bird? Well, then, why go tearing around with that gang of good-for-nothings, who will die at the end of a rope, every one of them!' now oste sinor Martines, you know how to talk in good grammar. You just tell him what is what. You tell him they'll put him in the lock-up at Valencia if he ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... plainly one of Foster's off days. The only wonder was he had not more of them. He sat in darkness, with few diversions, occupations, ameliorations. His mind churned mightily on the scanty materials that came his way. He founded big guesses on nothings; he raised vast speculative edifices on the slightest of premises. To dislike a man he could not even see! Well, the blind—and the half-blind—had their own intuitions ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Americans here once, Monsieur. A pretty time I had with them, too. They were deserters. They went away without paying, with the gendarmes after them I hope they were caught and sent to the front, those good-for-nothings." ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Marquis. There is all dat trouble what you read about going on, and Monsieur le Marquis he not so glad to see me for dat risson. 'Mon cher Auguste,' he cry, 'you want to be of officier in gardes de corps? You are not afred?'" (Auguste stiffened.) "'I am a St. Gre, Monsieur le Marquis. I am afred of nothings,' I answered. He tek me to the King, I am made lieutenant, the mob come and the King and Queen are carry off to Paris. The King is prisoner, Monsieur le Marquis goes back to the Chateau de St. Gre. France is a republic. Monsieur—que voulez-vous?" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and doubtless the fortune of the Krupp heiress since then has more than doubled. The subscriptions to war loans and war charities, thrown by Frau Krupp-Bohlen and the Krupp directors as sops to public opinion, are mere nothings to the fat earnings made by that renowned ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... performed—how many he has left undone—and how many he intends to do. The next, he will probably give to his home attractions—his anxious wife, sat musingly round the tea-table—his favourite son George (so like his father)—and all the nine hundred and ninety-nine pretty nothings we hear of, after a brief absence. These will send his heart a long way from the coach, and therefore keep him in the full enjoyment of wakefulness. But this train of delectable musing is by no means exhaustless. The roll of the wheels gradually ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... tooth-rasping words that brought him up to attention. Whether he interpreted or not the exact meaning of what Cunningham had said, he at least produced the desired effect; the servant mumbled apologetic nothings and slunk off the veranda backward—to go away and hold his sides with laughter at the back of the dak-bungalow. There Mahommed Gunga found him afterward and administered a thrashing—not, as he was careful to explain, for disobedience, but for having dared to be ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... doctrine and practice of religious liberty. A new party, calling themselves the "KnowNothings," had carried that State and were proclaiming their opposition to all Roman Catholics as public officers. The "Know-Nothings" were also called the "American Party," and their ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... in the discharge of duty, did not prevent a profound melancholy from taking possession of Isagani and brought back into his mind the beautiful days, and nights more beautiful still, when they had whispered sweet nothings through the flowered gratings of the entresol, nothings that to the youth took on such a character of seriousness and importance that they seemed to him the only matters worthy of meriting the attention of the most exalted human understanding. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... what daily toil Employs thy spirit in that larger Land Where thou art gone; to strive, but not to moil In nothings that do mar the artist's hand, Not drudge unriched, as grain rots back to soil, — No profit out of death, — going, yet still at ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... had made no will; time after time he had pressed it upon her. He was very sure, even while he examined her writing-table, and turned out all the drawers, that nothing would be found. The little Italian cabinet had chiffons in its drawers, fragments of old lace, pieces of ribbon, little nothings of all sorts. Nobody thought of the secret drawer; and if they had thought of it, where could a place have been found less likely? If she had ever made a will, she could have had no reason for concealing it. To be sure, they did not reason in this way, being simply ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... activity and effectiveness, with their sure results in history, which distinguished Him from other gods, the gods of the nations, who were ineffective, or as Jeremiah puts it unprofitable—no-gods, nothings and do-nothings, the work of men's hands, lies or frauds, and mere bubbles.(765) On this line Jeremiah's monotheism marks a notable advance; for alongside of faith in the Divine Unity and Sovereignty there had lingered ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... the delusive regard that she is in the habit of bestowing. He is one whom she could scarcely fail to admire and like, so entertaining is he in conversation, and endowed with such vitality and feeling that his words are not airy nothings. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... the heavy battalions led by the statisticians, and the experimental psychologists, and the efficiency experts, what chance is there for successful resistance? On the opposing side can be rallied only such mere irregulars as are willing to fight for airy nothings—for the zest and colorfulness of life, for sociability and good fellowship, for preserving to each man access to those resources of relaxation and refreshment which, without injury to others, he finds conducive ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... Cleanthis, they are still lovers. There comes a certain age when all this passes away; what suits them well in these early days would look ridiculous in us, old married people. It would be it fine sight to see us embracing each other, and saying sweet nothings! ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... would be easy to conquer the Franks, because the Frankish king at that time was a very weak man. He was one of a number of kings who were called the "Do-nothings." They reigned from about 638 to 751. They spent all their time in amusements and pleasures, leaving the affairs of the government to be managed by persons called ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... resolutions of silence, all his resolves melted into airy nothings at the sound of that sweet soft voice. Tears, the only tears of pleasure that had for years moistened the cheek of the reckless Buccaneer, burst from his eyes: he could not speak; he felt weak as a new-born infant; his limbs trembled; ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... its nest, from earth to the sky and back again. Did you ever hear Rubinstein play the B-flat Prelude and Fugue? If you have not, count something missed in your life. He made the prelude as light as a moonbeam, but there was thunder in the air, the clouds floated away, airy nothings in the blue, and then celestial silence. Has any modern composer written music in which is packed as much meaning, as much sorrow as may be found in the B-flat minor Prelude? It is the matrix of all modern ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... replied, "that that will be a trifle, and that nothing will efface the strength of the feeling you have inspired me with. Do not torment yourself with such mere nothings; they are only of value by your idea ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... that I was a 'coward—dared not face a set of shadows, figments of the brain, empty nothings.' I saw that 'vain was the help of man;' and, retiring to my room, had an awful season ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... although she is talented in nothing else. She must know her METIER DE FEMME, and have a fine touch for the affections. And it is more important that a person should be a good gossip, and talk pleasantly and smartly of common friends and the thousand and one nothings of the day and hour, than that she should speak with the tongues of men and angels; for a while together by the fire, happens more frequently in marriage than the presence of a distinguished foreigner to ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the coveted seat beside her on the couch, and the fire burned low and red. They had ceased to talk of games and dances. They were talking of each other, those intimate nothings that mean a breaking down of distance and ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the tables yet resound with the rattle and clash of dice. Yet the greater part of the company are not doing anything. They walk about, or yawn tremendously, or pause as they pass each other to exchange idle nothings. Will the weather be fair to-morrow? Are the preparations for the games complete? Do the laws of the Circus in Antioch differ from the laws of the Circus in Rome? Truth is, the young fellows are suffering from ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... of our active nature called Belief, Confidence, Conviction, is subject to the same line of remark. This great quality—the opposite of distrust and timidity, the ally of courage, the adjunct of a buoyant temperament—is not fed upon airy nothings. It is, indeed, a true mental quality, an offshoot of our mental nature; yet, although not material, it is based upon certain forces of the physical constitution; it grows when these grow, and is nourished when they are nourished. People possessed of great confidence have it as a gift ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... don't brag of our Importing Jack-Asses, and breeding Mules here, among your other mighty Nothings you boast of so magnificently. For my part, Tom, I see no great Advantage to the Service of Ireland, that a few private Gentlemen have improv'd the Breed of the horned Cattle. You may as well argue, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... leisure, or only pretend to be doing something. All action and story, all individuality of persons, objects, and events, is merged in a pervading atmosphere of tranquil, sunny repose,—as of a holiday-afternoon. It may seem to us an idle lubberland, a paradise of do-nothings;—Mr. Ruskin sees in it only a "dim, stupid, serene, leguminous enjoyment." But whoever knows Rome will at least recognize in Claude's pictures some reflex of that enchantment that still hangs over the wondrous city, and draws ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... that, by practical experience, she knew nothing. Yet Ruth was by no means a "pink-and-white" girl without character; on the contrary, she had plenty of character, but hitherto it had been frittered away on nothings, until it looked as much like nothing as it could. She was the sort of person whom education and circumstances of the right sort would have developed into splendor, but the development had not taken place. Now you are not to suppose that she was uneducated; that would be a libel on Madame La Fonte ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... with the provincial plainness of that gray and ruined house. As they exchanged a few words beside the well in the silent court, or lingered in the garden for the sunset hour, sitting on a mossy seat saying to each other the infinite nothings of love, or mused in the silent calm which reigned between the house and the ramparts like that beneath the arches of a church, Charles comprehended the sanctity of love; for his great lady, his dear Annette, had taught him only its stormy troubles. At this moment ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... feet of a mother and three children, who sat on an elm bough over my head gasping in the sultry air, and holding their wings half-spread for coolness. All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover, and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint Preux(1) standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson. Yet ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... their exalted idea as to what a husband ought to be, have caused their declinature. They have seen so many women marry imbeciles, or ruffians, or incipient sots, or life-time incapables, or magnificent nothings, or men who before marriage were angelic and afterward diabolic, that they have been alarmed and stood back. They saw so many boats go into the maelstrom that they steered into other waters. Better for a woman to live alone, though ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... and always will be; and whereas magistrates are appointed to have them properly executed, I ask, ought we, or ought we not, to do our duty? If we do our duty, we are calumniated. Well, then, taking these things into consideration, I declare that if that horde of good-for-nothings who are in the habit of frequenting the churchyard during Divine service, shall continue to do so, they will have to come ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... answered. "I was not notorious. I was no better and no worse than many another man. I played, I danced attendance, I said soft nothings, but I was tied to no woman in all Ireland. I was frolicsome and adventurous, but no more. There is no woman who can say I used her ill or took from her what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... und talks. What do they know over takin' care on mine house? They ain't ladies. They is educated only on the front. Me, I was raised private und expensive in Russia; I was ladies. Und you ist ladies. You ist Krisht[79-1]—that is too bad—but that makes me nothings. I wants you shall ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... of the world's people, if thee means the flaunters of various colors and loud-voiced nothings. And I do not think of marriage—nay, will not—until thy daughter has taken me into full acquaintanceship and approbation. Thee knows I am not advanced in the world's wealth, and that I am but a beginner in manhood; thee knows that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... had paid a short visit to the wounded hero in the study; but now they were grouped round the tea-table, leaving him temporarily alone. Evelyn had just filled his cup; and being in no mood to interrupt her exchange of light-hearted nothings with George Rivers, she glanced across at Wyndham, who promptly understood the situation ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... and John C. Breckinridge and carried the election. The Whigs and the Know-nothings then disappeared from ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... that map,' and he pointed to a big one on the wall. 'South Africa is coloured green. Not red for the English, or yellow for the Germans. Some day it will be yellow, but for a little it will be green—the colour of neutrals, of nothings, of boys ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... that was certain: He had just seen what had no existence. The twilight spectres were making game of him, poor wretch! The little man in scarlet was the will-o'-the-wisp of a dream. Sometimes, at night, nothings condensed into flame come and laugh at us. Having had his laugh out, the visionary being had disappeared, and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... meal, my place is set; and, invited or not, there are sure to be on the table some dishes for which they know my preference. In playing with the children, in dreaming aloud, in talking seriously, sometimes in a little discussion or backbiting, in laughing, and exchanging those nothings which charm, we know not why, the hours glide away. I leave as late as possible; we give cordial grasps of the hand, which express our regret at parting. The next day, or a few days after, I find myself there with renewed pleasure. It seems as if each evening we become more necessary to one another. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... life that I offered could count for anything with a woman like you, you laughed at me. You told me that if ever you married, you would wed a man, not a fortune nor a social position. You made me see myself as I was—a useless idler, a dummy for the tailors, a superficial chatterer of pretty nothings to vain and shallow women; you told me that I possessed not one manly trait of character that could compel the genuine love of an honest woman. You let me see the truth, that my proposal to you was almost an insult. You made me understand that your very friendship for me was such a ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright |
