"Prosy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that it is the longest number on the programme. I would dearly love the next number, also, but I must not make the evening too dull and prosy for you. Will you trust me to select your ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... accoutrements for that noble little army, (standing army we call it!) on which the State prides itself not a little, and spends no end of money. For ourselves, (if the reader but permit us,) we have long admired this little Spartan force, saying all the good things of it our prosy brain could invent, and in the kindest manner recommending its uniform good character as a model for our very respectable society to fashion after. Indeed, we have, in the very best nature of a modern ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... knew that it would have a story at the commencement and a moral at the close; but I promised myself that I would enjoy the story and leave the rest. It would be easy to put away the tract as soon as it should seem prosy.' He scampers off to the stable-loft, throws himself on the hay, and plunges into the book. He is captivated by the narrative, and finds it impossible to drop the book when the story comes to an end. He reads on and on. He is ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... the primal civilizer,—the very keystone and foundation of all progress. From the plain, prosy, earthy fact that man is a hungry animal, and must eat, has sprung all the civilization of the world! I shall demonstrate this in my book, beginning with the scriptural legend of Adam's greed for an apple. Adam was evidently hungry at the moment Eve tempted ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... him over her namesake, and Freddy telling Tad the story of Dan's dive among the sharks, to which even the man at "The Polly's" wheel listened with interest, with dad so jolly and friendly, and everything so gay and beautiful around him, it was no wonder that Dan's head, accustomed to sober prosy ways, ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... Madame Roland, to deliberate respecting their measures. Among them there was a young lawyer from the country, with a stupid expression of countenance, sallow complexion, and ungainly gestures, who had made himself excessively unpopular by the prosy speeches with which he was ever wearying the Assembly. He had often been floored by argument and coughed down by contempt, but he seemed alike insensible to sarcasm and to insult. Alone in the Assembly, without a friend, he attacked all parties alike, and was by all disregarded. ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... genuinely interesting matter in the middle of the eighteenth century that many were sorry his novels were no longer. The novelty of productions of this type also added to their interest. His many faults are largely those of his age. He wearies his readers with his didactic aims. He is narrow and prosy. He poses as a great moralist, but he teaches ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... little woman who plainly deplored her environment, longed for larger fields of conquest: George, she said, must remain where he was, for the present at least,—Uncle Ezra depended on him; but Elkington was a prosy place, and Mrs. George gave the impression that she did not belong here. They went to the city on occasions; both cities. And when she told me we had a common acquaintance in Mrs. Hambleton Durrett—whom she thought ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... result of rationalistic doctrines was the "prosaism" into which it led many minor versifiers. These poetasters, afraid of overstepping the limits of good sense, tabooed all imagination and described in deliberately prosy lines the most commonplace events. The movement reached its height at the beginning of the reign of Charles IV (1788-1808) and produced such efforts as a poem to the gout, a nature-poem depicting barn-yard sounds, and even Iriarte's ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... the fields redolent of the past,—and then turn to my own native hills, how poor and barren they seem!—not one touch anywhere of that which makes the charm of the Old World—no architecture, no great names; in fact, no past. They look naked and prosy, yet how I love them and cling to them! They are written over with the lives of the first settlers that cleared the fields and built the stone walls—simple, common-place lives, worthy and interesting, but without the appeal of heroism ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... observations in public on motors, and expressed a doubt as to whether any of her friends would forsake the horse in favour of mechanical locomotion. That time, however, came about, and now the Duchess is claimed as a patroness of the car, which if prosy, compared with the delights of horsemanship, is, nevertheless, useful for accomplishing distances which horses are not expected ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... Wyndham. Oh, yes, Wyndham is a good fellow; a little prosy sometimes, but means well. We endure the Dons, you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... "What you wish, so long as it is not conventional and hackneyed. But I know you will not be prosy, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the least, and about which, to tell the truth, he knew very little. There were also a great many letters either to be answered, or to be prepared for publication in the People's Forum column, and these letters were commonly written by dull asses who had no idea what they were talking about. Prosy people were always coming in with requests or complaints, usually the latter. First and last there was a quantity of grinding detail which, like the embittered old fogeyism of the Blaines College trustees, had not appeared on his rosy ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... All prosy dull society sinners, Who chatter and bleat and bore, Are sent to hear sermons From mystical Germans Who preach from ten to four, The amateur tenor, whose vocal villanies All desire to shirk, Shall, during off hours, Exhibit his powers To Madame Tussaud's ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... except in flagrant cases of slang or grammar, though all bad slips are mentally noted, for introduction at a more favourable time. It will mean that the teacher will respect the continuity of thought and interest as completely as she would wish an audience to respect her occasional prosy periods if she were reading a report. She will remember, of course, that she is not training actors for amateur theatricals, however tempting her show-material may be; she is simply letting the children play with expression, just as ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... at the table slow. Next him,—you see the author in his look,— His forehead lined with wrinkles like a book,— Wrote the great history of the ancient Huns,— Holds back to fire among the heavy guns. Oh, there's our poet seated at his side, Beloved of ladies, soft, cerulean-eyed. Poets are prosy in their common talk, As the fast trotters, for the most part, walk. And there's our well-dressed gentleman, who sits, By right divine, no doubt, among the wits, Who airs his tailor's patterns when he walks, The ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tenuity to convey sounds. Everywhere on the surface of the glassy stream were visible undulations of heat, and the light steam of evaporation lay along the sluggish water and hung like a veil between the eye and the bank. Seated in an armchair and overcome by the heat and the droning of some prosy passengers near by, I fell asleep. When I awoke the guards were crowded with passengers in a high state of excitement, pointing and craning shoreward. Looking in the same direction I saw, through the haze, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... stunning. Turkey and mince-pies first-rate. Champagne might have been drier—but, tol lol! Uncle BOB rather prosy, but his girls capital fun. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... my old friend, I grow prosy, and you tire; Fill the glasses while I bend To prod up the failing fire. . . . You are restless:—I presume There's a dampness in the room.— Much of warmth our nature begs, With rheumatics in our ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... comoedia. The Comoedia Divina is a mockery, not political, but literary, and as such anti-mystic and conservative. Die Ungoettliche Comoedie is wild, mystical, supernatural, republican, and communistic. It contains passages of great power, eloquence, and pathos. German critics are often prosy and inefficient, but not given to wilful misrepresentation or carelessness in examining the books they review. The writer in the Munich journal must be held ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... the Park—to-day—come back to me some day and let me tell you all those foolish, trite, tiresome things that I should have told a son of mine. I am so old that you will not take offense—you will not mind listening to me, or forgetting the dull, prosy things I say about the curse of idleness, and the habits of cynical thinking, and the perils of vacant-minded indulgence. You will forgive me—and you will forget me. That will be as it should ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... your duty. What a dear old chap he must be!—so thoroughly prosy and honest. I'm sure I should love him. I know just the sort of man he is. A downright Nonconformist minister of the midland counties, who was ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... thoughtful and sad, without precisely knowing why. She generally looked forward with pleasure to meeting the Ambroses, but this evening she had been rather disappointed. The conversation had dragged, and the excellent Mrs. Ambrose had been more than usually prosy. Nellie had complained of a headache and leaned ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... from the threshold, as from the brink of an elevator well, the Senior Surgeon found himself staring foolishly into a most sumptuous linen closet, tiered like an Aztec cliff with home after home for pleasant prosy blankets, and gaily fringed towels, and cheerful white sheets reeking most conscientiously of cedar and lavender. Tiptoeing cautiously into the mystery he sensed at one astonished, grateful glance how the change of a partition, the re-adjustment ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... retrospective imagination it cannot afford to be foolish. I thought of all this as I drove back to Blois by the way of the Chateau de Cheverny. The road took us out of the park of Chambord, but through a region of flat woodland, where the trees were not mighty, and again into the prosy plain of the Sologne—a thankless soil to sow, I believe, but lately much amended by the magic of cheerful French industry and thrift. The light had already begun to fade, and my drive reminded me of a passage in some rural novel of Madame ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... we killed that caribou. That night we camped, and I heard stories, from two poor, humble men, that made my head just whirl, for they were really Odysseys, or sagas, or any of the big tales one ever heard of. It would seem, Aunt Jennie, dear, as if the world is not at all the prosy thing some people take it to be. I suppose that the great knights and warriors are altogether out of it now, but I find that it is running over with men one usually never hears of, who accomplish tremendous things without the slightest accompaniment ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... it in white marble, with the little urn concealing the feet. This was placed in St. Paul's Cathedral, of which King was chief residentiary, and may still be seen in the present Cathedral King's elegy is very prosy in starting, but improves as it goes along, and is most ingenious throughout. These are the words in which he refers to the appearance of the dying preacher ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... What he is after no one knows. Some say he is going to Greece, others whisper an invasion of Paraguay, and others, of course, say other things; perhaps equally correct. I think he is for Greece. I know he is one of the most extraordinary men I ever met with. I am getting prosy. Good-bye! Write soon. Any fun going on? How is Cynthia? I ought to have written. How is Mrs. Felix Lorraine? She ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... when daylight came, and had it not been Sunday, he would have packed up and put back for the prosy office and stagnated quietude of the city. But it was Sunday, and after the children, Irish girl, and dogs had been partially quieted, down the carriage came to the door, and as many as could get into it of the Jingos and Triangles, rolled ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... the reader not to be alarmed at the hacknied word, which generally augurs that a person is going to be very egotistical and prosy. This, at least, it will be my ambition to avoid. Nor is it my intention to assume its literary prerogatives in any way as a mask for a sort of mock humility, endeavouring to impose upon good-natured persons by protestations of demerits, want of experience and talent, with that long ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... we Spiritual Lords Whose income just enough affords To keep our Spiritual Lordships cosey, Are told by Antiquarians prosy How ancient Bishops cut up theirs, Giving the poor the largest shares— Our answer is, in one short word, We think it pious but absurd. Those good men made the world their debtor, But we, the Church reformed, know ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... something deliciously refreshing in a sailor's yarn. I have listened to hundreds in the course of my consular career, and have yet to find one that is dull or prosy. They all bear the imprint of truth, perhaps a trifle overdrawn, but nevertheless sparkling with the salt of the sea and redolent of the romance of strange people and distant lands. In listening, one becomes almost dizzy at the ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... smile—a reason strictly feminine, yet doubly masculine. She had walked down the steps that led from the piazza betwixt Rich Hilary and Jack Adair, the catches of the season, in full view of the Hammond girl, who was left to waste her sweetness upon prosy ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... of American fiction, dominated by English writers, like Samuel Richardson. The early novels, like Mrs. Morton's The Power of Sympathy, were usually prosy, didactic, and as dull as the Sunday school books of three quarters of a century ago. The victory of the English school of romanticists influenced Charles Brockden Brown, the first professional American author, to throw off the yoke of classical ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... dream at twenty-one of being the perfect lover? In his dreams he was the perfect lover, then. Yet actually what was he? What was she? What was their courtship, their marriage? You, prosy, contented, forty and forgetful, by your prosy hearth or shaking down the furnace fire, while the children are being put to bed, you dare to call "It might have been" the saddest words of tongue or pen? Those now almost forgotten dreams of what might have been ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... parting fired guns; but those good old days have gone. People have hardly time nowadays to speak even on the broad ocean, where news is news, and as for a salute of guns, they cannot afford the powder. There are no poetry-enshrined freighters on the sea now; it is a prosy life when we have no time to bid one ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... clever folks, pertinaciously silent when we most wish them to shine. Did Shakespeare ever refuse his best thoughts to us, or Montaigne decline to be companionable? Did you ever find Moliere dull? or Lamb prosy? or ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... the day is long," said Augusta, "but rather prosy, after all. This tiresome temperance business! One never hears the end of it nowadays. Temperance papers—temperance tracts—temperance hotels—temperance this, that, and the other thing, even down to temperance pocket handkerchiefs ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had taken place only three days before, nearly a week after Lady Margot's visit to the Court. "Mr Druce told me!" That meant that Margot had met Victor yesterday or the day before, and had talked with him some time, for the prosy Mr Early would not be an early subject of conversation. Victor often went out riding alone, and there was no reason in the world why he should not call on an old acquaintance. But why make a mystery of it, and avoid the call to-day by an obvious subterfuge? Ruth was very quiet ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... at Phyllis, and Phyllis looked at John. If there is ever love at first sight! Perhaps it never happens in this prosy old twentieth century. But, if it ever does, ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... as he blotted and sealed the letter. "That, I should say, is as prosy and didactic as a discourse of my venerated ancestor. I wonder if the tendency to sermonize runs in the blood. I dare say if I had the good fortune to have any religious convictions, I should dogmatize over them in the pulpit, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... "there are plenty of things in the chaparral, and on the prairies, and up the canyons that you don't understand. But I want to thank you for listening to a garrulous old man's prosy story. We old Texans love to talk about our adventures and our old comrades, and the home folks have long ago learned to run when we begin with 'Once upon a time,' so we have to spin our yarns to the stranger ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... went rocking by, doubtless bearing a few belated workers homeward. The stark incongruity of the thing was appalling. How little those weary toilers, hemmed about with the commonplace, suspected that almost within sight from the car windows, amid prosy benches, iron railings, and unromantic, flickering lamps, two fellow-men moved upon ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... receives a favorable Answer) your unknown Adorer." The custom of inserting letters in the course of the story was, as has already been indicated, a heritage from the times of Gomberville, La Calprenede, and the Scuderys when miscellaneous material of all sorts from poetry to prosy conversations was habitually used to diversify the narrative. Mrs. Haywood, however, employed the letter not to ornament but to intensify. Her billets-doux like the lyrics in a play represent ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... 'Fisherman and the Diver,' which he translated for us, and his Prize Poem, which didn't get the prize; and, indeed, I thought it very pompous and prosy," ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... concluded this excellent but somewhat prosy old gentleman, "shall see fit to persist in bringing these mercenary sworders and musketeers into our quiet streets, not on our heads be the responsibility. Think, sir, while there is yet time, that if one drop of blood be shed, that blood shall be an eternal stain upon Your ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with our old-fashioned politeness. "Anything which concerns the welfare, the progress, if one may so phrase it—" "Stop," said the visitor. "You talk too much. You're prosy. Don't talk. Listen to me. Try and fix your mind on what I am about ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... will be grateful while I live, nor question The wisdom that hath made us what we are, With such large range as from the ale-house bench Can reach the stars and be with both at home. They tell us we have fallen on prosy days, Condemned to glean the leavings of earth's feast Where gods and heroes took delight of old; But though our lives, moving in one dull round Of repetition infinite, become 330 Stale as a newspaper once read, and though ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... around like a sportive and giddy elephant set free for the first time in its native jungle, and finding it very much to its liking. His daughter Maria, faithfully at her mother's side, sat with one ear grudgingly lent to the prosy heaviness of Mr. Webb's light talk, and her whole face turned longingly toward the spot where the happy sinners were gyrating, and, seeing her father there, her round eyes grew rounder than ever, as she watched in breathless alarm lest the earth should open ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... of witchcraft, without any poetry in it, without any thing to amuse the imagination, or interest the fancy, but hard, prosy, and accompanied with all that is wretched, pitiful and withering, perhaps the well known story of the New England witchcraft surpasses every thing else upon record. The New Englanders were at this time, towards the close of the seventeenth century, rigorous Calvinists, with long sermons and ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... he was struck with admiration of the maiden's beauty. Acting upon the impulse of this passion, he (the savage) began to hit himself severe thumps in the chest, and to exhibit other indications of being desperately in love, which being rather a prosy proceeding, was very likely the cause of the maiden's falling asleep; whether it was or no, asleep she did fall, sound as a church, on a sloping bank, and the savage perceiving it, leant his left ear on his left hand, and nodded sideways, to intimate to all whom it might ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... a while The arguments prosy and drear,— To lean at full-length in indefinite rest In the lap of the greenery here? Can't you kick over "the Bench," And "husk" yourself out of your gown To dangle your legs where the fishing is good— Can't ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... fair, square prose, with sentences solidly built, and no help from bastard rhythms. Moreover, there is a progression—I cannot call it a progress—in his work towards a more and more strictly prosaic level, until at last he sinks into the bathos of the prosy. Emerson mentions having once remarked to Thoreau: "Who would not like to write something which all can read, like 'Robinson Crusoe'? and who does not see with regret that his page is not solid with a right ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... never learnt very much at school. I got the lessons into my head as long as I had to patter them off by heart like a parrot,—but the teachers were all so dull and prosy, and never took any real pains to explain things to me,—indeed, now when I come to think of it, I don't believe they could explain!—they needed teaching themselves. Anyhow, as soon as I came away I forgot everything but reading and writing and sums—and began to learn all over again with ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... phrases, and he has become a trifle impatient of them as a sort of incantation with which he has little sympathy. At the best, he relegates this order of ministry to the rank and file of humanity; to those whose lives are (to his vision) somewhat prosy and dull; and for himself he proposes to live in a world beautiful, where stars and sunsets and flames and fragrances enchant the hours, where, with his feet shod with silver bells, he is ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... however, that the Peacock presented attractions which enabled the two friends to resist even the invitations of the gifted, though prosy, Pott. It was in the evening that the 'commercial room' was filled with a social circle, whose characters and manners it was the delight of Mr. Tupman to observe; whose sayings and doings it was the habit of Mr. Snodgrass to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Elverson, Philadelphia, Pa. It is filled with the choicest stories, which improve the mind and elevate the morals, as well as please the fancy. The tone of this publication is pure, and yet GOLDEN DAYS is not in the least prosy or dull. Try it for awhile, and you will not do without it. The price is $3 a year, but by special arrangements with the publisher, it will be furnished in club with the Register at ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... in his morning paper. It was his custom to seize the journals the moment they arrived, and read to Dora at the breakfast-table all war news of vital interest—and a good deal more that was prosy, and only interesting to a soldier. By chance, he saw the story of Dick's death before his daughter came upon the scene, and was discreet enough not to mention the matter. Since Dora's refusal of Ormsby, he was fairly certain as ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... art. The reason why the continental European is, to the Englishman or American, so surprisingly ignorant of the Bible, is that the authorized English version is a great work of literary art, and the continental versions are comparatively artless. To read a dull book; to listen to a tedious play or prosy sermon or lecture; to stare at uninteresting pictures or ugly buildings: nothing, short of disease, is more dreadful than this. The violence done to our souls by it leaves injuries and produces subtle maladies which have never been properly ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... feeling at the time bound to do something. You can't sit still so put on your hat and go for a walk; but before you get to the corner of the street you wish you hadn't come out and you turn back. You open a book and try to read, but you find Shakespeare trite and commonplace, Dickens is dull and prosy, Thackeray a bore, and Carlyle too sentimental. You throw the book aside and call the author names. Then you "shoo" the cat out of the room and kick the door to after her. You think you will write your ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... on scientific subjects, and bored her incessantly with a translation of the orations of Demosthenes, which he intended dedicating to her in an elaborate preface. This was more than Ninon could bear with equanimity—a lover with so much erudition, and his prosy essays, appealed more to her sense of humor than to her sentiments of love, and he was laughed out of her social circle. This angered the Academician and he thought to revenge himself by means of an epigram in which he charged Ninon with admiring figures of ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... spite of all this Thomasin was not sorry that she had started. To her there were not, as to Eustacia, demons in the air, and malice in every bush and bough. The drops which lashed her face were not scorpions, but prosy rain; Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever, but impersonal open ground. Her fears of the place were rational, her dislikes of its worst moods reasonable. At this time it was in her view a windy, wet place, in which a person might experience much discomfort, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Patty scrambled to her feet with a look of relief. He took the pillow and the book under his arm, and they started down the hill. "I have preached you a sermon, after all," he said apologetically; "but preaching is my trade, and you must forgive an old man for being prosy." ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod —and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... edge of the roadway between the stone-strewn centre and the ditch, I run into the latter, and am rewarded with my first Cis-atlantic header, but fortunately both myself and the bicycle come up uninjured. Unlike the Swabish peasantry, the natives east of Munich appear as prosy and unpicturesque in dress ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Europe (whatever that may mean), poets, critics, managers, composers, princely folk, musical parasites, and other east winds, as Nietzsche has it, the performance went on leaden feet. The acting of Victor Arnold (Berlin) as prosy old Jourdain just bordered on the burlesque; Camilla Eibenschuetz, not unknown to New York, cleared the air with her unaffected merriment. Strauss, after a delightful overture in the rococo manner of Gretry, contributes some fascinating dance measures, a minuetto, a polonaise, a gavotte, and a ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... and that must still continue to be so, from this praiseworthy undertaking. As an observer of these things, we cannot withhold expressing our opinions upon any part of the system which, in honest thought, appears imperfect, or not so happily directed as it might be. But should PUNCH become prosy, his audience will vanish. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... like so many before it; the sun was low on the horizon, and its yellow beams were throwing a brassy tint over the sea and sky; the sailors were engaged, some fishing with patient assiduity, others, grouped into small knots, listening to prosy yarns; while a few were prostrated round the decks in attitudes of perfect abandonment or sleep. The officers were leaning over the taffrail, trying, with a sportsman-like anxiety worthy of better prey, to hook a shark, which was slowly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... Moreover, she was rather bored by the instructive conversation of the ancient parson, and wanted to attach herself to some younger and more frivolous man. Cupid in cap and gown and spectacles is a decidedly prosy divinity. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... it ought to be the deluge," chuckled Evan; "but as these are prosy times, it simply means the end has been reached, and that to-morrow they will put away mild summer madness, and return to the Whirlpool to paddle about ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... nodded over certain verses which he had flattered Miss Caroline into producing, and fallen fast asleep during her sister's cavatina; and if his conversation, however easy and smooth, had not been felt to be upon the whole rather vapid and prosy. "Just exactly," said young Edward Dunbar, who, in the migration transit between Eton, which he had left at Easter, and Oxford, which he was to enter at Michaelmas, was plentifully imbued with the aristocratic prejudices ...
— The London Visitor • Mary Russell Mitford
... the family of scarlet fish, and some handsome gold-fish. Two of the gold-fish, called respectively Gay and Gilt, were particularly friendly to Sammy, who soon found them much more entertaining than the worthy, but somewhat prosy Pilot. ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... attention that should be given to such a brilliant and original essayist (which is not always an ipso facto of brilliant essayists) as Chesterton. Essayists are of all men extremely elastic. Occasionally they are dull and prosy, very often they are obscure, quite often they are wearisome. The only criticism which applies adversely to Chesterton as an essayist is that he is very often—and I rather fear he likes being so—obscure. He is brilliant in an original manner, he is original in a brilliant way; scarcely any ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... glimpse of his triumph. No other incentive would have taken him so close to that prosy bulletin board. He had vaulted over it but never read it. But now in the moment of supreme victory he limped forward, like an elated artist, to ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... smooth little fair-skinned Lillie is a cold-hearted monster, because her heart does not beat faster at these letters which she does not understand, and which strike her as unnecessarily prolix and prosy? Why should John insist on telling her his feelings and opinions on a vast variety of subjects that she does not care a button for? She doesn't know any thing about ritualism and anti-ritualism; and, what's more, she doesn't care. She hates to hear so much about ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... how I wish we were rich!" exclaimed Virginia Conly when she heard of it the next morning at breakfast, from Cal, who had spent the evening at Ion. "I'd like nothing better than to go North for the summer; not to a dull, prosy life in a cottage though, but to some of the grand hotels where people dress splendidly and have hops and all sorts of gay times. If I had the means I'd go to the seashore for a few weeks, and then off to Saratoga for the rest of the season, Mamma, couldn't ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... universal-suffrage republic—coolly tolerate, nay, they admire and vindicate, this atrocious system of personal restraint and espionage, are totally unfit for the enjoyment of civil liberty. In conclusion, we can hardly recommend the book before us, further than to say, that its gossip, though often prosy to the verge of twaddle, is also sometimes droll and amusing from its ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... years of his life had old Isaac Mole led a wandering career, that he found it exceedingly difficult, not to say irksome, to settle down to the prosy existence which they had all ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... a dull, prosy day," yawned Phil, stretching herself idly on the sofa, having previously dispossessed two exceedingly ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... trying task. If she read an account of anything unpleasant she was peremptorily stopped; if the news was dry or prosy, that was ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... a Virginian who has written some interesting stories, and who steadily improves upon himself.... This is a thoughtful, semi-philosophical story. There is much discussion in it, but none of it is prosy."—New York Herald. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... time when mountain-scenery, instead of being sought, was shunned,—when princes possessing the most beautiful lands among the Rhine hills should, with great trouble and expense, have transported their seats to some flat, uninviting locality,—when, for instance, the dull, flat, prosy, wearisome gardens of Schwetzingen should have been deemed more beautiful than the immediate environs of Heidelberg. Yet such were the sentiments that prevailed in Switzerland until a comparatively late date. It is only since the days of Scheuchzer that Swiss scenery has been appreciated, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... length absolutely hungers for some grand, ecclesiastical building, some glorious vestige of early ages; so when we have once grown familiar with mediaeval towns and outlines, it becomes an absolute necessity occasionally to run away from our prosy nineteenth century habitations, and refresh our spirit, and absorb into our inmost nature all these refining old-world charms. It is an influence more easily felt than described; also, it does not appeal to all natures. We can only understand Shakespeare ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... Baedeker. To his inward rage and chagrin, Giovanni realized his mistake in having attempted to hurry her, and now changed his tactics. Although his every nerve was strained to catch the sound of Nina's approaching footfall, he went into a long, prosy dissertation upon the history of the ceiling, dwelling purposely upon the dullest facts he could think of, until his tormentor was glad enough ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... worked even better than Drusilla had hoped. Under Miss Lee's very evident admiration, the Reverend Algernon seemed to grow at least three inches in height, and his rather prosy compliments did not fall upon too critical nor blase' ears. Sarah blushed and fluttered and stammered as would any young girl with her first sweetheart. She even grew pretty; took to arranging her hair ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... been a very practical letter. I warned you in my last that the lack of money to do the things one wants to makes one quite prosy and domestic, but there is still plenty for everything if we are not too extravagant. Take care of yourself, my dear boy, and do try to write at least once a week, because I imagine all sorts of horrible things if I don't hear from you. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of Hamlet is no mean test of a translator's ability—this quick, tense scene, one of the finest in dramatic literature. Foersom did it with conspicuous success. Blom has reduced it to the following prosy stuff: ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... prosy and practical enough and now have used my allotted time and space. It may not be wholly out of place to further tax your time and patience, and ask you to lift your eyes from taking a critical view of defective drains, muddy ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... prosy usage, was resplendent in a winding robe of bunting and on its railing where cans of white lead and linseed oil had disported hung lanterns of every color in the rainbow. To this enchanted isle would stroll dance-weary couples and famishing ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... said, may perhaps have no moral; at least, they are not so prosy in telling it as I am; but those who have no moral, no idea, are not usually the persons who paint them. But I see I have been going out of my province; for a picture, whatever else it may be, should be intelligible, and the painter's account of himself ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... not a thought beyond the nursery! One wondered what she could have talked of before she had children. Good Mrs. Norris, such was she. Good Mr. Norris was, for all purposes of neighbourhood, worse still. He was gapy and fidgetty, and prosy and dosy, kept a tool chest and a medicine chest, weighed out manna and magnesia, constructed fishing-flies, and nets for fruit-trees, turned nutmeg-graters, lined his wife's work-box, and dressed his little daughter's doll; and had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... was now owned by a storekeeper of Tahiti, prosy and disliked, who had fattened by ability to outwit the natives; but the glory had departed, and the place languished, ruins and jungle, the prey of guava and lantana. The neighborhood was known as Ati-Maono, "The Clan ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... with her, Lizzie Dangler's prosy platitudes, which some deemed wit—Horner, par exemple—sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake, one of the "gushing" order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling—her inane "yes's" and lisping "no's" having an opportunity of being "weighed in the balance," and ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... I've done, thank'God, with the long yarns Of the most prosy of ApostlesPaul,1 And now advance, sweet heathen of Monkbarns, Step out, old quizz, as fast as ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... poorly nurtured body. There are "shut in" spirits, to be sure, captives from birth to pain, the record of whose patient endurance of suffering sweetens the world in which they live, as a rose shut within a dull and prosy book imparts to its pages a fragrance born of summer and heaven; but such lives are the exception. The true destiny of the sons and daughters of earth is to grow within the garden of life as a sapling rather than as a sickly weed, developing timber rather than pith, and yielding finally ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... the end of his speech; I am, therefore, unable to say whether his proposal was carried. The Club de la Delivrance is by far the most reputable public assembly in Paris. Those who take part in its proceedings are intensely respectable, and as intensely dull and prosy. The suppression of gas has been a heavy blow to the clubs. The Parisians like gas as much as lazzaroni like sunshine. The grandest bursts of patriotic eloquence find no response from an audience ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... where Severance got precisely his combination of qualities. His father was simply what is called a handsome man, with stately figure and curly black hair, not without a certain dignity of manner, but with a face so shallow that it did not even seem to ripple, and with a voice so prosy that, when he spoke of the sky, you wished there were no such thing. His mother was a fair, little, pallid creature,—wash-blond, as they say of lace,—patient, meek, and always fatigued and fatiguing. But Severance, as I first knew him, was the soul of activity. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... daintiest overmantel's ledge She sets enshrined your prosy platter; Your salt-cellars she stocks with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... but I speedily declared that I was not when I saw that his daughter was bent upon hearing the story. So he started upon a prosy description as to how the fresh air had sent him to sleep, not saying a word about the port, and I ceased to listen to him, preferring to devote the whole of my attention to his daughter, who had seated herself upon a footstool at his feet, and was looking up into his face with ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... had made no converts. Those who had met him outside and had only heard him say a few telling words, expected great things from him; but when he tried to deliver a lengthy address he became heavy, prosy, and tiresome. ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... that the less attention the minister pays to creeds, the less dogmatism he indulges in, the more popular he becomes with the people, the more eagerly they flock to hear him. The world does not care to listen to prosy lectures on foreordination and the terrors of Tartarus, because its reason rejects such cruel creeds; it takes little interest in the question whether Christ was dipped or sprinkled by the gentleman in the camel's-hair cutaway, because it cannot, for the life of it, see that ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... flowers, holding in his lap a multitude of blossoms, and wearing on his head a wreath. The conception of this statue provokes comparison with the Flora of the Neapolitan Museum. I should like to recognise in it a Dionysus Antheus, rather than one of the more prosy Roman gods of horticulture. Not unworthy to rank with these first-rate portraits of Antinous is a Ganymede, engraved by the Dilettante Society, which represents him standing alert, in one hand holding the wine-jug and in the other lifting a cup aloft. It will be seen from even this brief ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... give such perfect little dinner-parties as Aunt Marjorie. She had a knack of finding out each of her guests' particular weaknesses with regard to the dinner-table. She was no diplomatist, and her conversation was considered prosy; but with Mr. Merton to act the perfect host and to lead the conversation into the newest intellectual channels, with Hilda to look sweet and gracious and beautiful, and with Aunt Marjorie to provide the dinner, nothing could have been a greater success than the little ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... laughed Fink; "we have changed parts since our separation. When I left you a few years ago, I was like the wild ass in the desert, who scents a far-off fountain. I hoped to emerge out my prosy life with you into green pastures, and all I found was a nasty swamp. And now I come back to you wearied out, and find you playing a bold game with fate. You have more life about you than you had. I can't say that of myself. Perhaps the reason may ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... cannot be, because he has so little personal contact with it. For that reason West Pointers should never aspire to public office. It does not suit them, and they seldom succeed in it. But here, I'm becoming a prosy old bore. Come into the house, lad. The boys are growing sentimental. Listen to their song. It's the same, isn't it, that some of our bands played at ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sacrifice worth his while? This was the question which he asked himself in those melancholy moments; while he was lying in bed, for instance, awake in the morning, when he was shaving himself, and sometimes also when the squire was prosy after dinner. At such times as these, while he would be listening to Mr Dale, his self-reproaches would sometimes be very bitter. Why should he undergo this, he, Crosbie of Sebright's, Crosbie of the General Committee Office, Crosbie who would allow no one to bore him between Charing ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... feebleness &c adj.. Adj. feeble, bald, tame, meager, jejune, vapid, bland, trashy, lukewarm, cold, frigid, poor, dull, dry, languid; colorless, enervated; proposing, prosy, prosaic; unvaried, monotonous, weak, washy, wishy- washy; sketchy, slight. careless, slovenly, loose, lax (negligent) 460; slipshod, slipslop^; inexact; puerile, childish; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... know I never can remember poetry, Mrs. Merryweather. I shall have to take to 'Mother Goose.' I know I am terribly prosy—well, prosaic, then, Margaret; what's the difference? But I can't think ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... here that is working a revolution? And who is the bravest knight in the field? Who but our own genial Meister Karl-Mace Sloper? Isn't it glorious though, the way he rides into the lists, and with his diamond-pointed lance pricks the tender skins of the lackadaisical poetasters and lachrymose prosy-scribblers of our day! Again, O gallant leader! smite them again. And fall in, ye who wield the pen! Let the bugles sound the charge, and let our literature be cleared of Laura Matildas and Martin Firecracker ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... own idea all that night," observed the Hermit; "and then Wally wouldn't have caught any more than the rest of you this morning! And that reminds me, I promised to show you a good fishing-place. Don't you think, if you've had enough of my prosy yarning, that ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... prosy by far. I think our own feelings tell us what we need. So good-by," exclaimed the self-reliant seed, as she motioned to the wind to ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... of contents in front of this little foreword, I am quite sure that few will pause to consider my prosy effort. Nor can I blame any readers who jump over my head, when they may sit beside kind old Baucis, and drink out of her miraculous milk-pitcher, and hear noble Philemon talk; or join hands with Pandora and Epimetheus in their play before the fatal box ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... paralyzed the man in bed. Had he done this artistic bit of acting for the purpose of spending his Christmas on the flat of his back talking to a prosy old doctor? He lay still, trying to think what answer could be made to this physician who told him seriously that he had appendicitis. He ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... all sorts of fine theories, just bubbling over with enthusiasm, much the same as you are now, fresh from Normal, but somehow they have mostly flattened out, and now I find myself settling down to the prosy life of a country doctor, who feeds his own horses and blackens his own boots, and discusses politics with the retired farmers who gather in the hardware store. I catch myself at it quite often. Old Bob Johnson and I are quite decided there will be a war with ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Hugh; "these are the last strawberries of the season, and I have no inclination to discuss anything at present but their sweetness. But I will venture to assert that at six o'clock this evening I shall have imbibed more knowledge in that very hammock then any of you in your prosy chairs." ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... at whom he scoffed thus, foresaw, with his prosy common-sense, what would happen "with all those confounded striplings," as Wieland called them, "who gave themselves airs as if they were accustomed to play at blind-man's buff with Shakespeare." "In ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... get a bit prosy sometimes," said Lord John. "The young fellah meant no real harm. After all, he's an International, so if he takes half an hour to describe a game of football he has more right to ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... avowed again and again that Tyndall was the greatest teacher he ever knew or heard of, inspiring the pupil to discover for himself, to do, to become, rather than imparting prosy facts of doubtful pith and moment. But Herbert Spencer, not being eligible to join a university club himself, was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... was capable of mischief. They were right; he was as capable of villany as of nobility. But he happened to be thanking Gower Woodseer's whip for the comfortable numbness he felt at Carinthia's behaviour, while detesting her for causing him to desire it and endure it, and exonerate his prosy castigator. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... people, not with a silver vase, as our governor had been, but with a silver currycomb, in testimony of their admiration for his skill; but I confess that the poetry of rubbing down had become, as all other poetry becomes, rather prosy by frequent repetition, and with respect to the chance of deriving glory from the employment, I entertained, in the event of my determining to stay, very slight hope of ever attaining skill in the ostler art sufficient to induce sporting people to bestow upon me a silver currycomb. I was not half ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... exquisite; and Dryden, the most English of our poets, would not be so thoroughly English if he had not in him some fibre of la nation boutiquiere. Let us now see how he succeeds in attempting to infuse science (the most obstinately prosy material) with poetry. Speaking of "a more exact knowledge of the longitudes," as he explains in a ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... moment of time,' said he (he was a prosy man by nature, who rose with his subject), 'the night being light and calm, but with a grey mist upon the water that didn't seem to spread for more than two or three mile, I was walking up and down the wooden causeway next the ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... bald list of events, as prosy and commonplace as a private's or a carpenter's or a sutler's diary. However, there is more sense in this poor man's performance; he flies his true colours from the first; he has cleared the ground for some educated person who knows how to deal with history. The only fault I have to find ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... particularly fond of fables. Besides Chemnitzer, mentioned above, who is flat and prosy, Ivan Krylof, born 1768, is celebrated in this department. He may be truly called the favourite of the nation. His fables, equally popular among all classes and conditions of life, are the first book that a ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... that, as long as I did the next thing in order and did it hard and carefully, without trying to save myself any work or to sneak, the rest of things would take care of themselves. It sounds pretty prosy; but I rather think after all it may be true. It is a good deal more romantic to plan what great things we'll do when we are grown up; but I never noticed that planning helped on much. When I began on my music, I used to dream lots of dreams about the concerts I'd give; but all the good it ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray |
