"Palaver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the dark square below, his hands in his pockets, his head down, a reflective frown about his eyes. A half-intoxicated old ruffian, a policeman, and a man in a straw hat had stopped below, and were holding a palaver. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... If the furnishings of his home became the least dingy he was for having them torn out and sold and the house done over. If he traveled, money must go ahead of him and smooth the way. He did not want argument, useless talk, or silly palaver as he called it. Every one must discuss interesting topics with him or not talk at all. Letty understood him thoroughly. She would chuck him under the chin mornings, or shake his solid head between her hands, telling him he was a brute, but a nice kind of ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... "Why, what palaver's this?" asked Mr. Dennis, with supreme disdain. "We ain't got no sentimental members among us, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... down to his conceit. I thought that he fancied he could win any woman, and me without the least palaver or trouble. I felt annoyed. I said aloud, "I will become engaged to you;" to myself I added, "Just for a little while, the more to surprise and take the conceit out of you when the ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... at Monrovia, gathered as many recruits as possible from those sent out on the two previous expeditions, and finally anchored at Cape Palmas on February 11, 1834. After the usual tedious "palaver" and bargaining, the natives formally sold the required land. The cape is a promontory some seventy-five feet in height, separated from the mainland, except for a narrow, sandy isthmus. A river, navigable for some miles to small boats, opens opposite it, ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... the present domineering of the pettifogger caste there are hosts of men whose minds run in such small old grooves that they hold legal forms not a means, but an end; these will cry out against this proceeding as tyrannical. No doubt, too, that under the present palaver of the "sensationist" caste, the old ladies of both sexes have come to regard crime as mere misfortune: these will lament this proceeding as cruel. But for this act, if for no other, an earnest man's heart ought in these times to warm toward ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... interminable palaver Margaret induced the servant to leave the room. And she sat down on the chair nearest the bed, and began to cry again, not troubling to wipe her eyes. She sobbed, more and more loudly, and kept touching ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... surprised, but after some palaver he let me in together with the two loafers carrying my luggage. He grumbled at them however and slammed the gate violently with a loud clang. I was startled to discover how many night prowlers had collected in the darkness of the street in such a short time and without my ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... round and throwing himself into the armchair enquired politely after the health of Barbara and Susan. As far as the Persian journey was concerned the palaver was ended. He did not intend to give me his reasons for staying in England and I could not demand them more insistently. At any rate I had discovered the cause of his grumpiness. What creature of Jaffery's temperament could be contented with a soft bed in the centre of civilisation, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched, through slides and dumb-waiters, as it were; in other words, the parlor is so far from the kitchen ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the king, "we have had a palaver. We have made new laws. The old laws were not God's laws. Now all twins and their mothers can live in town. If anyone kills twin babies or hurts the ...
— White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor • A. J. Bueltmann
... a last palaver with our guide; he said that the extreme denseness of the fog gave assured token of "an awful ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... performers of that kind. Who wouldn't pay half a dollar for such an hour as he had passed at Mrs. Burrage's? The sort of thing she was able to do, to say, was an article for which there was more and more demand—fluent, pretty, third-rate palaver, conscious or unconscious perfected humbug; the stupid, gregarious, gullible public, the enlightened democracy of his native land, could swallow unlimited draughts of it. He was sure she could go, like that, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... he smiled; 'and again I say, more emphatically than ever, that you're the very man I'm looking for. If you'll take that chair and pull up to the fire, I'll take the other and we'll have a bit of a palaver.' ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... object—the people who want to act quickly—see this very distinctly. They are for ever explaining that the present is 'an age of committees,' that the committees do nothing, that all evaporates in talk. Their great enemy is parliamentary government; they call it, after Mr. Carlyle, the 'national palaver;' they add up the hours that are consumed in it, and the speeches which are made in it, and they sigh for a time when England might again be ruled, as it once was, by a Cromwell—that is, when an eager, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... together, rattling old pans, making the most horrid noise, in order to drive him out of the town into the sea. The custom is preceded by four weeks' dead silence; no gun is allowed to be fired, no drum to be beaten, no palaver to be made between man and man. If, during these weeks, two natives should disagree and make a noise in the town, they are immediately taken before the king and fined heavily. If a dog or pig, sheep or goat be found at large in the street, it may be killed, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... to be a ceremony of welcome. A few of the ranchmen hurried to the Barracks' kitchen and prepared supper for the visitors, and after this was eaten by the strange guests, sitting where they were under the porch roof, the discarded pipes were again resumed and some sort of palaver followed. ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... interpreter, and both utterly without perceptible resemblance to the rolling consonants and gutturals of the savages. Marcoy imbibed a strong impression that the only terms understood in common were the words of Spanish with which the palaver was thickly interlarded. This was the first time the interpreters were put on their mettle in a strictly professional sense, and the test was not altogether triumphant. However, by a careful raising of the voice in all difficult passages, and a wild, expressive pantomime, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... afraid I have done wrong. You see there was a confounded auction, and what with the hammer, and the folk bidding, and his palaver, I could ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... "What a good little soul you are, Verity—you always say just the right thing! Tell Goliath, with my love, that I am busy, so there must be no pipe and no palaver to-night. I shall have to be up betimes too;" and then he took counsel with Verity as to the hour when his ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... it in the same way as they do rice, with palaver sauce. Fundi ought to be well washed in cold water, and afterwards rewashed in boiling water. If properly prepared it will be white, and perfectly free from ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... up to him. This the men of Connecticut refused to do. Whereupon Sir Edmund with a military following presented himself at their Assembly, declared their governing powers to be dissolved, and, after much palaver, caused the charter itself to be laid upon the table before him. The discussion had been long, having lasted through the day into the night, and the room had been lighted with candles. On a sudden each light disappeared, and Sir Edmund with ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... we can't—I can," Reed asserted. "It's none of our business, Rex, and we really haven't time to palaver. ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... bletherin' about the Volunteers, but all the same I don't like the look o' things, an' if they're not careful there'll be bother. It'll take the men at the top all their time to hold the bottom ones down. It ought never to have been allowed to begin with. The minute they started their drillin' an' palaver, they ought to 'a' been stopped. Have you seen ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... "Swan," abeing doctored. That's where he is,' replied the official curtly. 'Now, come along, and don't let's have no more palaver.' ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... afternoon the band came upon a small palisaded village of thatched huts set in a clearing in the jungle close beside a placid river. At their approach the villagers came pouring out, and Usanga advanced with two of his warriors to palaver with the chief. The experiences of the day had so shaken the nerves of the black sergeant that he was ready to treat with these people rather than take their village by force of arms, as would ordinarily have been his ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... at which Brougham was the 'magnus Apollo.' Sefton is excellent as a commentator on Brougham; he says that he watches him incessantly, never listens to anybody else when he is there, and rows him unmercifully afterwards for all the humbug, nonsense, and palaver he hears him talk to people. They were twenty-seven at dinner. Talleyrand was to have gone, but was frightened by being told that he would get nothing but beefsteaks and porter, so he stayed away. They dined in the brewhouse and visited the whole establishment. Lord Grey was there in star, garter, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... into the canoe, caught up the paddle, and sat down to palaver. A line was made fast to the canoe, and it drifted astern of the Okapi, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... you want to palaver me into saying it's all right. I suppose if my judgment and generosity don't like it, I shall be an old ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... of ready-made nerve an' went to his own funeral. Aristotle Smith was lookin' fer him up in Cheyenne last year. Aristotle said he'd give a century fer five minutes' palaver with him, but he shied th' town an' didn't come back. Yu know Aristotle, don't yu? He's th' geezer that made fame up to Poison Knob three years ago. He used to go to town ridin' astride a log on th' lumber flume. Made four miles in six minutes with th' promise of a ruction ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... ball, her nervous system, which never was particularly sensitive anyway, is completely blunted, so that she takes it as a matter of course to be sold again and again as a piece of property. One hears often enough of a 'woman palaver,' which is regarded exactly like a 'goat palaver,' as a damage to property, but one never, positively never, hears of a love-affair. The negress never has a sweetheart, either in her youngest days or after her so-called marriage. She is regarded, and regards herself, as a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... shoes made out of soft blotting paper, if they had good things said about them in the magazines and if flaming posters went with them than to try to dish out oak-tanned soles with prime calf uppers at half price and with a good line of palaver. It's the lad who sticks type that, when you get right down to ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... patriotic palaver, the propertied classes took excellent care that their own bodies should not be imperilled. Inspired by enthusiasm or principle, a great array of the working class, including the farming and the professional elements, volunteered for military service. It was not long before they experienced the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the appointment of a parliamentary commission, in which they were joined by the artful and cunning suggestions and canting palaver of Mr. Wilberforce. The cry of a jacobinical conspiracy was loudly raised, and Colonel Wardle was reviled, taunted, and menacingly reminded of the great responsibility which he incurred, by making such charges against the illustrious Commander in Chief. The ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... extenuate, deny and palaver as he may, it remains true that the Socialist Party of America teaches the same treasonable doctrines of violence and insurrection as the Russian Bolshevists, but in a more covert way. We have a sample in the pamphlet, "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat," ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... reclaimed unless the other chooses to give him up. The Slatee was very drunk, and when I told him that I was come to pay my respects to him and would give him one jug of rum, he told me he would not allow me to pass unless I gave him ten jugs; and after a good deal of insignificant palaver, I was obliged to give him ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... the agent was afraid to adopt the only course an Indian respects,—prompt and forceful measures. "Talk" means to him delay, compromise, confession of weakness. "Well, if you must palaver," said Boynton, finally, "take me along. I've had more to do with those beggars than Davies, and," he added to himself, "I'll make it possible to nab ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... laughed, sceptically, confidently, as one who could not be deceived. "Pooh!" she said. "That was only a try-on. That was only so that he could begin his palaver! Don't tell me! I may be a simpleton, but I'm not such a simpleton as he thinks for, nor as some other folks think for, either!" (At this point Hilda had to admit that in truth her mother was not completely a simpleton. In her mother was a vein of perceptive shrewdness that occasionally ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... use of so much palaver, when the thing's plain enough?" said Bob peevishly, raising his head ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... that the knife, but I think the looking-glass surprised them most. On seeing their faces reflected, some seemed dazzled, others opened their eyes like saucers, and made a rattling noise with their tongues expressive of wonder. We had quite a friendly palaver, and my watch amused them immensely. I made them understand that they were to bring the whole tribe up next morning to our camp to receive their presents, and we parted the best ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... Constitutions of Clarendon." I shall not easily forget my pleasure in discovering that the quotation "Nollumus leges Angliaemutari" on which Noodle relied in his immortal oration, is to be found in the record of the Barons' great "Palaver." ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... you? Frances darling, pull his hair as you go by: I heard him snap his fingers." Frances pulled his hair heartily, and then went and seated herself on her husband's knee, and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour—foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of. We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph, on an errand from the stables. He tears down my handiwork, boxes my ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... a palaver of all small chiefs unless he notifies the government of his intention, for the government is jealous of self-appointed parliaments, for when men meet together in public conference, however innocent may be its first cause, talk invariably drifts to war, just ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... Isaaco, having performed the task he had undertaken, of guiding them to the Niger, received the payment agreed on; and Park likewise gave him several articles, and told him that when the palaver was adjusted at Sego, he should have all the horses and asses ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... timbers!" exclaimed the sailor, as soon as the voice again ceased to be heard. "If that bean't the palaver o' a little girl, my name wur never Ben Brace on a ship's book. A smalley wee thing she seem to be; not bigger than a marlinspike. It sound like as if she wur talkin' to some un. What the Ole ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... goes pretty nigh straight up from the water, but here it's an easy landing. Being so close to 'em they're sure to know all about it; but even if they didn't, the chap that got away would tell 'em. I don't much expect an attack to-night—the bands won't be back yet. They'll have a grand palaver to-night, and there'll be a big talk afore they decide what is best to be done; so I think we're safe for to-night. To-morrow we'll set to work and build a shelter for the pretty ones up above, where ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... The palaver came to me out of the darkness, like voices from a phonograph-horn, thin and far away. One told the tale of Tahiapepae, the Girl Who Lost ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... on it, and will think on it. We be all determined, so there be an end of the matter, and an end of your palaver. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... the categorical native; but his attempts at palaver were eminently unsuccessful. The naked black man was ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Sunan went out to quiet them. Then a fort sentry fired at something moving on the river, and nearly killed a villager bringing in his women-folk in a canoe together with the best of his domestic utensils and a dozen fowls. This caused more confusion. Meantime the palaver inside Jim's house went on in the presence of the girl. Doramin sat fierce-faced, heavy, looking at the speakers in turn, and breathing slow like a bull. He didn't speak till the last, after Kassim had declared that the Rajah's boats would be called in because the men were required ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... could not be maintained when once a sufficient indigenous population had settled there, but it was no less easy to judge that some local arrangement concerning these exceptional places, conciliating every interest, might easily be made. Would that be possible nowadays, when electioneering palaver has embittered the whole business? After leaving St. George, we spent a long time hunting for our colony of St. Pierre Miquelon in continuous fogs, and only succeeded in finding it by means of a plan of my own invention. The weather happening to be moderate, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... would it be? Come, come, I'll speak to the point. I'm no man for palaver. 'Tis an ear you've whispered more than one sweet thing into, I'll warrant. You're young, Philip, young: you think you can fall in love and nobody find it out. Why, I hadn't been landed two hours, and asked the news, when I was ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... (19th August, 1772),—Queen Ulrique not yet home,—her Son, the spirited King Gustav III., at Stockholm had made what in our day is called a "stroke of state,"—put a thorn in the snout of his monster of a Senate, namely: "Less of palaver, venality and insolence, from you, Sirs; we 'restore the Constitution of 1680,' and are something of a King again!" Done with considerable dexterity and spirit; not one person killed or hurt. And surely it was the muzzling-up of a great deal of folly on their side,—provided only there came wisdom ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "Before they have finished their palaver as to how the accident happened and have repaired the damage, we shall have been here a full half-hour.... Jules ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... arrival, amid the omnipresent murmurous palaver of conversation, there fell an unusual noise. The unusual is always formidable in jail. The noise was nothing in itself, and would have passed unheeded in a hotel dining-room. But over us, crowded together there, spread an instant hush. All knew that men had been stabbed, frenzied ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Elizabeth, but the Virgin-queen, the royal heroine, is the theme of admiration. Not the petty virtues, the pretty sensibilities, the cheap charity, the prim decorum, which modern flatterers dwell upon, degrading royalty, while they palaver its possessor, but Britannia's sacred majesty, enshrined in chaste and lofty womanhood. Our ancestors paid their compliments to sex or rank—ours are addressed to the person. There is no flattery where there is no falsehood—no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... have consistently taught that every man must learn to bear arms, and that both man and woman must be prepared to make any sacrifice for their Fatherland. (2.) They have always held that national interests must be considered before international palaver. ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... my!—Well, once I would have brought her down to the house for Sunday, and advertised her as a 'peach,' and a 'dandy good fellow,' and praised her eyes, and bragged about her cleverness, and generally done my best to smooth over all her little deficiencies with as much palaver as I could. And that little retriever of mine would have gone straight to work and ferreted out every single, solitary, uncomplimentary thing about Ella that she could find, and 'a' fetched 'em to me as pleased and proud as a puppy, expecting, ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... it's all done we can go to the devil and you'll take the gold. I know the palaver, Thirkle. If ye please, I'll take my chances alone ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... "That's all the captain's palaver. If it runs out we kin drop the weemen, and take what o' ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... he says, "Tair best let Injuns go thar own way when thar's a big crowd thegitter. When thar aint, as it chances hyar, it may be wisest to hev a leetle palaver wi' them. They're putty sure to a been arter some diviltry anyhow. 'S like 's not this lot's been a pilferin' somethin' from the new settlement, and air in the act o' toatin' off thar plunder. Ef arter gruppin' 'em, we find it aint so, we kin let go again, an' no dammidge done. But first, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... "I had a palaver before he'd let me in, but when I was in I seed what de matter was. He had a sojer dere, a Linkum sojer, bad wounded, what he'd found in de woods,—he was a runaway hisself, ye see, like me,—an' he'd tuck him to dis ole cabin an'd been nussin him on ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... ornaments, with a straw cigar fixed in his mouth, and, having been placed on the mat in the same manner as when alive, his betel box is set by his side. The friends and relatives then go through the form of conversing with him, and offering the best advice concerning his future proceedings. This palaver over, the corpse is placed in a large wooden box, and kept in the house for several months. At the expiration of this time, the relatives and friends again assemble, and the coffin is taken out and deposited on a ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... clogs, Pushed the brass-barr'd door of a public-house; The spring went hard against her; hand and knee Shoved their weak best. As the door poised ajar, Hullabaloo of talking men burst out, A pouring babble of inflamed palaver, And overriding it and shouted down High words, jeering or downright, broken like Crests that leap and stumble in rushing water. Just as the door went wide and she stepped in, 'She cannot do it!' one was bawling out: A glaring ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... had given him my address in St. James' Square, and had again mingled with the crowd. Alas! I was not fated to get back to Flora so easily! Mr. Robbie was in the path: he was insatiably loquacious; and as he continued to palaver I watched the insipid youths gather again about my idol, and cursed my fate and my host. He remembered suddenly that I was to attend the Assembly Ball on Thursday, and had only attended to-night by way of a preparative. This put it into his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is a grass-widow, and Penelope, the all-but-flapper, an insufficient chaperone. She expresses her disapproval with a hardy insolence which must be rare with vicars' sisters in these emancipated times. Naturally when you have a great deal of palaver about Betty's husband having deserted her two years ago after a serious tiff, and no word spoken or written since, you rightly guess that the expected new Adjutant, Captain Rymill, will be none other than the missing man. But you probably don't guess that Betty, to spoof the Church and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... a way we Americans have. We cannot stop to palaver. What would become of our manifest destiny? But since you are so kind, I will call my Egyptian. Times are changed since we were bondsmen in Egypt, have they not? Ah, I forgot,—you are not an American, and therefore ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... recommended me strongly to become a saka, or water-carrier. 'You are young, and strong,' said he: 'you have a good voice, and would entice people to drink by a harmonious cry. You have besides a great talent for cant and palaver, and for laughing at one's beard. The number of pilgrims who come to Meshed to perform their devotions at the tomb of the Imam is great, and charity being one of the principal instruments which they use for the salvation of their souls, they give freely to those who promise them the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... "Den, atter some mo' palaver, Brer Fox make a bargain dat Mr. Buzzard wuz ter watch de hole, en keep Brer Rabbit dar wiles Brer Fox went atter his axe. Den Brer Fox, he lope off, he did, en Mr. Buzzard, he tuck up his stan' at de hole. Bimeby, w'en all git still, Brer Rabbit sorter scramble down close ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... practically a repetition of the first. They moved very slowly with frequent stops and once they landed in the Kro-lu country to hunt. Here they were attacked by the bow-and-arrow men, whom they could not persuade to palaver with them. So belligerent were the natives that it became necessary to fire into them in order to escape their ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
