"Terse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that they were cut off by Indians, and that the only hope of escape lay in a rapid flank movement, Custer's reply was a terse: ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... they adapt their constructive work to that of their colleagues, and deploy their refutation so as to hammer the principal positions of their opponents. Each debater may or may not begin his speech with refutation, but he should always begin his main argument with a terse, clear summary of what has been said on his side, and in closing he should not only summarize his own arguments, but he should also give again, in very brief form, the gist of what has been proved by his colleagues. In addition, any ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... ought to know," Westerling proceeded, referring very insistently to a secret of the Browns which had baffled Bouchard. "Try a woman," he went on with that terse, hard directness which reflected one of his sides. "There is nobody like a woman for that sort of thing. Spend enough to get ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... peculiar charm to our ancestors; in this instance the shields bear the sacred monograms—a purpose to which they were very commonly devoted in the church; sometimes being further enriched with religious emblems, as terse and striking as the heraldic ones we have given in ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... at the shore, directing the movements of the men; he was once more the drive master, his cant dog in his hand, terse in his commands, obeyed in ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... to ensure the future greatness of the empire?" inquired Madame Campan of the great Napoleon. "Mothers!" was the terse and suggestive reply. Ralph Waldo Emerson says, "Men are what their mothers made them." But I say, to hold mothers responsible for the character of their sons while you deny them any control over the surroundings of their lives, is worse than mockery, it is cruelty! ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... her what had happened before he entered her room, not omitting a terse word as to the character of the men ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... he first made known its power. In the best sense of the phrase, "Gebir" was written in classical English, not with a search for pompous words of classical origin to give false dignity to style, but with strict endeavour to form terse English lines of apt words well compacted. Many passages appear to have been half thought out in Greek or Latin, some, as that on the sea-shell (on page 19), were first written in Latin, and Landor re-issued "Gebir" with a translation into Latin ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... the position of teacher in the Kedarville school." Then followed terse directions as to the best way of reaching Kedarville, and, finally: "Mrs. Philander Keeler will board you for two Dollars ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... burst of stifled love, the wail of grief, And tones of high command, full, solemn, brief; The change of voice, and emphasis that threw Light on obscurity, and brought to view Distinctions nice, when grave or comic mood, Or mingled humors, terse and new, elude Common perception, as earth's smallest things To size and form the vesting hoar-frost brings, That seemed as if some secret voice, to clear The raveled meaning, whispered in thine ear, And thou hadst e'en ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... prepared to ask questions, following a routine he had employed with other subjects, but Bassett began to talk on his own initiative—of the town, the county, the district. He expressed himself well, in terse words and phrases. Harwood did not attempt to direct or lead: Bassett had taken the interview into his own hands, and was imparting information that might have been derived from a local history ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... trifle with approbation. 'Terse,' he reflected. 'Something to his advantage is not strictly true; but it's taking and original, and a man is not on oath in an advertisement. All that I require now is the ready cash for my own meals and for the advertisement, and—no, I can't lavish money upon John, but I'll give him some ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... instructs also, and shows the fools the way to the land of wisdom; and so far is he from assuming the arrogant air of the commonplace moralist, that he reckons himself among the number of fools. The style of the poem is lively, bold, and simple, and often remarkably terse, especially in his moral sayings, and renders it apparent that the author was a classical scholar, without however losing anything of ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... an extensive catalogue; Mostly, however, books of our own; As Gariopontus' Passionarius, And the writings of Matthew Platearius; And a volume universally known As the Regimen of the School of Salern, For Robert of Normandy written in terse And very elegant Latin verse. Each of these writings has its turn. And when at length we have finished these, Then comes the struggle for degrees, With all the oldest and ablest critics; The public thesis and disputation, Question, and answer, and explanation ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Miniature Bulldog scale of points is quite unnecessary, as it is simply that of the big ones writ small. In other words, "the general appearance of the Miniature Bulldog must as nearly as possible resemble that of the Big Bulldog"—a terse sentence which comprises in itself all that can ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... this sort of writing came naturally to me, it was difficult, until the advent of Puck, to find a medium of publication for writings of this nature. I contributed a good deal to this paper, but it was only partly satisfactory, for articles which make up a comic paper must be terse and short, and I wanted to write humorous tales which should be as long as ordinary magazine stories. I had good reason for my opinion of the gravity of the situation, for the editor of a prominent magazine declined a humorous story (afterward ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... quosdam ita deditos sibi adhuc habet imitatores, ut eum non ejusdem modo operis, sed omnibus poetis praeferre non dubitent. Lib. x. cap. 1. The great critic, however, pronounces judgement in favour of Horace, who, he says, is more terse and pure; a more acute observer of life, and qualified by nature to touch the ridicule of the manners with the nicest hand. Multo est tersior, ac purus magis Horatius, et ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... Walk, Bunhill Fields, but the visitor to that spot finds it covered by the Artillery barracks. Walking through King Street, Westminster, you will not forget the great poet Edmund Spenser, who, a victim to barbarity, died there, in destitution and grief. Ben Jonson's terse record of that calamity says: "The Irish having robbed Spenser's goods and burnt his house and a little child new-born, he and his wife escaped, and after he died, for lack of bread, in King Street." Ben Jonson is closely associated with places that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... military men. The autograph of General Grant is plain and simple in its construction, not an unnecessary movement or mark in it—a signature as bare of superfluity and ostentation as was the silent soldier and hero of Appomattox. In the autograph of R.E. Lee we have the same terse, brief manner of construction as in Grant's. It is more antiquated and formal in its style, more stiff and what might be called aristocratic. Its firm upright strokes, with angular horizontal terminal lines, indicate a determined, ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... harmony and melody. And it must be said that it is just in the passages where Mr. Smith is not copying, where he forgets for awhile Shelley, Keats, and the rest, and is content to be simply himself, that he is best; terse, vivid, sound, manly, simple. May he turn round some day, and deliberately pulling out all borrowed feathers, look at himself honestly and boldly in the glass, and we will warrant him, on the strength of the least gaudy, and as yet unpraised passages ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Duroc, he first signified his disapprobation by a chilling silence, and afterwards by terse replies, reference to accurate reports, and brief remarks. To him the emperor replied, "that he saw clearly enough that the Russians wanted to draw him on; but that, nevertheless, he must proceed as far as Smolensk; that there he ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Watson has no rival in Victorian or in contemporary verse. The epigram is a quite definite form of art, especially cultivated by the poets in the first half of the seventeenth century. Their formula the terse expression of obscene thoughts. Mr. Watson excels the best of them in wit, concision, and grace; it is needless to say he makes no attempt to rival them as a garbage-collector. Of the large number of epigrams that he has contributed to English literature, I find the majority not only ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... youths standing at the corner of Halsted and Sixty-third, spitting languidly and handling their limp cigarettes with an amazing labial dexterity. Their conversation was low-voiced, sinister, and terse, and their eyes narrowed as they watched the overdressed, scarlet-lipped girls go by. A great fear clutched at ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... thoughts, and can't express them, Gibbon shall teach me how to dress them, In terms select and terse; Jones teach me modesty and Greek, Smith how to think, Burke how to speak, And Beauclerk to converse. Let Johnson teach me how to place In fairest light, each borrow'd grace, From him I'll learn to write; Copy his clear, familiar style, And from the roughness of his file ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... and Professor each spoke at some length, giving the history of the expedition and the importance of it to the scientific world. The Doctor told them of the planting of the aluminum flagstaff in terse, graphic language, ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... come to you for my seat," was her terse statement, as she paused squarely before Miss ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... and respected. Tilling a small farm and mingling with that more or less attention to his trade of a builder, he earned a good livelihood. A reader of the best books and a thinker as well, he was firm in his convictions, terse in his criticism, and yet charitable toward all. His daughter inherited her father's keen intellect and her mother's fair face and complexion, it is needless to say, was the pride of his ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... hopping-sallows are in greatest esteem, being of a clearer terse grain, and requiring a more succulent soil; best planted a foot deep, and a foot and half above ground (though some will allow but a foot) for then every branch will prove excellent for future setlings. After three years growth (being cropped the second and third) the first years ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... the constant factor is usually his style, while subject and treatment vary. Balzac, however, is an exception in this respect as in most others. He attains terse vigour in not a few of his books, but in not a few also he disfigures page after page with loose, sprawling ruggedness, not to say pretentious obscurity. His opinion of himself as a stylist was high, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... eventful four months, and in making himself master of the situation. His first act is to transmit to all the (Buchanan) subordinates abroad copies of the President's Message, accompanying it with a score of terse and sparkling paragraphs regarding the rebellion; yet, in those few paragraphs, demonstrating the illusory and ephemeral advantages which foreign nations would derive from any connection they might form with any 'dissatisfied or discontented portion, State, or section of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... disturb his indigenous repose. It was a dignified serenity, quite natural, and quite compatible with easy and even cordial manners, and an address always considerate even when not sympathetic. He was not a loud or a long talker, but his terse remarks were full of taste and a just appreciation of things. If they were sometimes trenchant, the blade was of fine temper. Old Mr. Ferrars was there and the Viscountess Edgware. His hair had become quite ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... that, while the lyrics which are undoubtedly the prophet's own are terse, concrete, poignant and graceful, the style of many—not of all—of the prose discourses attributed to him is copious, diffuse, and sometimes cold. But then it is verse which is most accurately gripped by the memory and firmly preserved in tradition; it is verse, too, which best guards the original ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... is of unknown depth. This rock, which is always dark and bare, is, as you will remember, of conical shape, sharp pointed at the top, and stands up about the size of a small hay-stack, in the midst of the waters. Do you remember the account that somebody gives in a ragged but terse kind of verse, of the 'gentleman in black,' ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... [1] written originally for the London Magazine, I feel it difficult to speak. They are the best amongst the good—his best. I see that they are genial, delicate, terse, full of thought and full of humor; that they are delightfully personal; and when he speaks of himself you cannot hear too much; that they are not imitations, but adoptions. We encounter his likings and fears, ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... it does?" replied Hobart, coolly. "I often find the Bowery both terse and truthful. And in this case the expression fits Miss Morgan. She's the real article—no fuss and frills, just a daughter of the West, never pretending that she is what she isn't. I heard her speak of you, Harley, and I don't think ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... first editions. The little book is the only known incursion of its author into literature, if we except the brief articles he has written for technical papers and for the magazines. It contained what was at once a full, elaborate, and terse explanation of a complete isolated plant, with diagrams of various methods of connection and operation, and a carefully detailed description of every individual part, its functions and its characteristics. The remarkable success ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... solicitude—then, just at that moment, the doors of my heart would shake, bolt and bar would yield, Reason would leap in vigorous and revengeful, snatch the full sheets, read, sneer, erase, tear up, re-write, fold, seal, direct, and send a terse, curt missive of a page. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... elaborate account of his rail journey on the Canadian Pacific, from Montreal westwards. Marie was not disappointed in the letters; they were what she would have expected. But sometimes, as she read their terse and uninteresting sentences, their stodgy bits of information, she smiled to think how ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... Thou Shalt Not commandments pretty well," was Aunt Abby's terse response. "I guess he don't put nothin' into the plate, but I s'pose we'd ought to be thankful he don't take nothin' out. The Baptists are gettin' ahead faster than they'd ought to, up to the Mills. Our minister ain't no kind ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the delight of his life. He had his agents throughout the country. The churches might be many, but the cause was one. Ever watchful, ever active, he spoke of his measures and his plans in just such terse, homely phrase as any house-carpenter would use. Doubtless the fragile reverence of many a clerical cumberer of the ground was shocked by his familiar use of their sacred edge-tools. One can imagine the thrill of horror with which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... that old-fashioned instrument, a conscience. Give me credit here for great self-control. This is the place for some preaching of the most powerful kind, but I refrain, knowing you are too much engrossed with the finishing of your house to heed it. Do you remember how it is recorded in terse Scripture phrase that "Solomon builded a house and finished it"? Evidently the finishing was then quite as important and onerous a matter as the building. I think it is a great deal more so. The carpenters and masons, to whom you pay a certain ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... the testimony of three or two witnesses. They have but few laws, and these short and plain, and written upon a flat table, and hanging to the doors of the temple, that is between the columns. And on single columns can be seen the essences of things described in the very terse style of Metaphysics—viz., the essences of God, of the angels, of the world, of the stars, of man, of fate, of virtue, all done with great wisdom. The definitions of all the virtues are also delineated here, and here is the tribunal, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the United States, and the fine, clear handwriting was obviously feminine. He didn't have to rub the paper between his thumb and forefinger to mark its rich, heavy quality and its beauty,—the stationery of an aristocrat. The message was singularly terse: ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... sadly; "what you hear from me is nothing but words.... I wish I could have shown you one of those great houses with information pouring in as rapid, as light, and as clear, from every hidden corner of the world, digested by master brains into the most lucid and terse presentment of it possible, and then whirled out on great wheels to be distributed by the thousand and the hundred thousand, to the hungry intelligence of Europe. There was nothing escaped it—nothing. In every capital were crowds of men dispatched ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... that's all we'll get," was the terse reply. "When some folks start to kick a brick wall, luck drops a feather pillow between. Other people stub their toes. I ain't crying bad luck, because I never had any; I'm just saying we'll stub our toes, if we kick the wall. We don't have ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... English, the noblest and most perfect specimen of our prose, the stiff and bald, the vapid and turgid manner of the Orientalist who "commences" and "concludes"—never begins and ends, who never uses a short word if he can find a long word, who systematically rejects terse and idiomatic Anglo-Saxon when a Latinism is to be employed and whose pompous stilted periods are the very triumph of the "Deadly-lively"! By arts precisely similar the learned George Sale made the Koran, that pure and unstudied inspiration of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verses. I looked it over, and then something more than surprise seized me—a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, not at all like the poetry a woman generally writes. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating. I took hours to reconcile my sister to the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems merited publication. Meantime, my younger sister ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... with a full broadside. The Drake replied with the same, and the two ships ran along together at close quarters, pouring in broadsides for more than an hour, when the enemy called for quarter. The action had been, as Jones said in his terse official report, "warm, close, and obstinate." There was little manoeuvring, just straight fighting, the victory being due, according to Jones, to the superior gunnery of the Americans. At first Jones's gunners ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... del Santo Evangelio de Mexico and the Menologio Franciscano, are of the highest value to the history of the Rio Grande Pueblos and of New Mexico generally. Although printed eighteen years after the New Mexican missions had been destroyed by the Pueblo Indians, the Cronica contains a terse description of the missions and Indian villages as they had been previous to 1680, and gives data in regard to the population that are commendable in their sobriety and probability. The work of Vetancurt is in this respect a great improvement upon Benavides, and it is interesting to ...
— Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier
... abutting on the quay. Here he marched into the parlor, and stamped about, till a merry-looking landlord came to him. "Have a glass of hot, sir; how blue your nose is!" the genial master said to him. The reply of the factor can not be written down in these days of noble language. Enough that it was a terse malediction of the landlord, the glass of hot, and even his own nose. Boniface was no Yorkshireman, else would he have given as much as he got, at least in lingual currency. As it was, he considered it no affair of his if a guest expressed his nationality. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the style of our authors of a couple of hundred years ago was more terse and masculine than that of those of the present day, possessing both more of the graphic element, and more vigour, straightforwardness, and conciseness. Most readers will have anticipated me in admitting ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... seemed that this adorable person knew the value of time. She was not going to waste words either. As it was impossible to associate her with the ordinary business of the place, he was prepared for her terse and lucid statement of somebody else's case. He said he would look round early in the morning (Miss Vivian looked dissatisfied); or perhaps that evening (Miss Vivian was dubious); or possibly at once (Miss Vivian smiled in hurried approval). She was eager to be gone. ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... idea of Washington's activity as a planter can be had than from his brief and terse journals as an agriculturist. He sets down day by day what he did and what his slaves and the free employees did on all parts of his estate. We see him as a regular and punctual man. He had a moral repugnance to idleness. He himself worked steadily and ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... brains (tho' apt to hash ill, Being scant) of Lord Mountcashel, With that malty stuff which Chandos Drivels as no other man does. Catch (i. e. if catch you can) One idea, spick and span, From my Lord of Salisbury,— One idea, tho' it be Smaller than the "happy flea" Which his sire in sonnet terse Wedded to immortal verse.[1] Tho' to rob the son is sin, Put his one idea in; And, to keep it company, Let that conjuror Winchelsea Drop but half another there, If he hath so much to spare. Dreams of murders and of arsons, Hatched in heads ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... refreshment. Its tone is quietistic, as might readily be conjectured, but it is the calm of serene reflection, not of indifference. No work which Rueckert ever wrote so strongly illustrates the incessant activity of his mind. Half of these six thousand couplets are terse and pithy enough for proverbs, and their construction would have sufficed for the lifetime of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... The Limit! Since then we have made the acquaintance of the military field-telephone, and we feel distinctly softened towards the young woman at home who, from her dug-out in "Gerrard," or "Vic.," or "Hop.," used to goad us to impotent frenzy. She was at least terse and decided. If you rang her up and asked for a number, she ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... moves along with a cadenced majesty, speaks to the imagination, perfects its images, and leads it at will through unknown paths, beguiling with its harmony and beauty." "There is another poetry, natural, rapid, terse, which springs from the soul as an electric spark, which strikes our feelings with a word, and flees away. Bare of artificiality, free within a free form, it awakens by the aid of one kindred idea the thousand others that sleep in the bottomless ocean of fancy. The first ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... first time in my life I understood the old Mons Ribbon men who used to annihilate the recruit with the terse phrase: ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... "sayings of the wise" which he learned in his early years, and has cause to regret, as well as wonder, that he had not all along followed their wholesome teaching. For it is to the young, who are about to cross the threshold of active life, that such terse convincing sentences are more especially addressed, and, spite of the proverbial heedlessness of youth, there will be found many who are not deaf to this kind of instruction, if their moral environment be favourable. But, even ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood, which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive the radical and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... lengthy, and contained some telling phrases such as Mr. Churchill has always been skilful in coining; but the "turgid homily—a mixture of sophistry, insult, and menace," as The Times not unfairly described it, was less effective than the terse and simple rejoinder in which Mr. Bonar Law pointed out that Mr. Churchill's onslaught wounded his father's memory more deeply than it touched his living opponents, since Lord Randolph's "incitement" of Ulster was at a time when Ulster could not be cast out from ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... my work upon the stage with the outlay indispensable to a brilliant effect? On this point W——writes me: 'The general management will leave nothing undone to equip your opera in a suitable manner.' You will understand how terribly terse this seems to me! I am not greatly surprised at receiving no letter from Reissiger since last March: he has worked for me—that is the best and most honourable answer; besides, it would be foolish on my part to expect that Reissiger, now that his own opera must be fairly ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... and his terse pen dealt stinging blows straight in the face of the opponent. Indeed, as an editor he has been rarely equaled. While Greeley would devote a column to an article, he would take the same subject and in a few words put the argument in such shape as to carry far more conviction. His two terms in ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... said Buttons, "I must write a letter which will have weight with the old gentleman. He likes the terse business style. I think that little hint about her fortune is well managed too. That's a great deal better than boring him with the state of my ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... the limits of "winking," to use his own term. Mr. Frederick Swanwick, who officiated as his secretary, after the appointment of Mr. Gooch as Resident Engineer to the Bolton and Leigh Railway, has informed us that he then remarked—what in after years he could better appreciate—the clear, terse, and vigorous style of Mr. Stephenson's dictation. There was nothing superfluous in it; but it was close, direct, and to the point,—in short, thoroughly businesslike. And if, in passing through the pen of the amanuensis, his meaning happened in any way to be distorted ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... the car ride out under full power over the smooth country road. But, though Julia Cloud questioned several times, she could get no explanation except Allison's terse "Too provincial," whatever he meant by that. She doubted whether he knew himself. She wondered whether it were that they each felt the same homesick feeling that she ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... whispered Mrs. Wilson to me; and while I hesitated, seeking to frame an answer both terse and true, she continued, although he was at that moment impressing the Senate with his great ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... The pictures! the remarkable pictures! All that is meant by culture! The brown photographs! Oh! Lector, indeed I have done you a wrong!), and I would certainly not have the bad taste to say anything upon religion. Above all, I would be terse. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... poor sons of song Oft find 'tis fancied right that leads us wrong. I prove obscure in trying to be terse; Attempts at ease emasculate my verse; Who aims at grandeur into bombast falls; Who fears to stretch his pinions creeps and crawls; Who hopes by strange variety to please Puts dolphins among forests, boars in seas. Thus zeal to 'scape from error, if unchecked ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... incarnate Mind set on the working out of immense and agelong plans, had, as it were, paused for a moment to have compassion on hungry women and crying babies and folk whose petty confused affairs could have seemed of no consequence to anyone in the drama of the world. And then, with a few terse sentences, the preacher swung from that instance to the world drama of to-day. Did they realise, he asked, that peaceful bright Sunday morning, that millions of simple men were at that moment being hurled at each other to maim and kill? At ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... on the constitution and by-laws for the new club met the very next evening and drew up a terse little document setting forth their object in banding themselves together. Grace had already made note of the few rules she wished the girls to observe, but, so far as possible, she wished the committee to draw up their own ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... land without any mortgage hanging over their heads. He had himself done well, and his views as to why many of his neighbors had done less well are entitled to consideration. These views are expressed in terse and vigorous English; they cannot always be quoted in full. He states that the farm homes in his neighborhood are not as good as they should be because too many of them are encumbered by mortgages; that the schools do not train boys and girls satisfactorily ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... regard to the intervals of the tones composing them, i.e., the up and down relationship in pitch, the duration of the tones and their grouping into metric schemes. But a real motive is always terse, concise, characteristic and pregnant with unrevealed meaning. The chief glory of such creative tone-poets as Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms and Franck is that their imaginations could give birth to musical offspring ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Breck. G. P. Putnam's Sons, $1.75 net. Simple, terse, free from technical terms, and calculated to give the novice a mass of information. Written for Northeastern United States and Canada, but of ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... been tasted and described by Dampier in the seventeenth century. His description of it has all the terse directness peculiar to the writing of the inquisitive buccaneer, with a touch of quaintness that makes the passage desirable to quote:* (* Dampier's Voyages edition of 1729 1 ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... once from the habitual classicism of his phraseology, described The Patriot of Severance's production in two terse ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... respectable run, in spite of its colliding with the Half-Price Riots, but contemporary accounts appear to indicate that it was not highly thought of by the judicious. I extract the following terse criticism from a letter in the St. James's Chronicle for 20 January, the day after the ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
... is. The title (as indeed the principal subject of the eclogue) was in consequence altered from 'Lansdown' to 'Jekyll.' The poetry and satire are certainly enriched by Tickle's touches; but I question whether the humour was not more terse and classical, and the subject more just, as the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... smeared rather than fastened with very much salivated wafers. His writing too was very slow, and his choice of language not extensive; a letter on such a subject from a brother to a sister should be well turned, impressive, terse, sententious: that scheme would ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... things," as the boy put it, which he recalled and quoted years afterward. Incidentally she talked of herself, though always without giving him a clew as to who she was and where she came from. Several times, as a face in the passing throng caught her interest, she outlined for him in a few terse words the character of its possessor. He was interested, but he must have unconsciously suggested a certain unbelief in her intuition, for once she stopped speaking and looked ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... conversation mostly consists of disjointed chatter, long-winded repetitions, or a commonplace remark, and—silence. But Alison Gwynne had none of these feminine peculiarities. To listen to her was like reading a pleasant book. Her terse, well-chosen sentences had all the grace of easy chat, and yet were so unaffected that not until you paused to think them over, did you discover that you might have "put them all down in a book;" and made ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Could they see anything now? Their "No" answers didn't hold for long because seconds later their terse reports began to come into the CIC. A "brilliant light, like a planet" was streaking across the northwest sky about 30 degrees above the horizon. Unfortunately the radar had lost contact for a moment when ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... his self-forgetfulness into the terse language of his everyday life and thought, "what on earth have you been ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... what he hoped might be the character of the person whose health he proposed. Every one intuitively felt the resemblance was just, and even complete, and Lothair confirmed their kind and sanguine anticipations by his terse and well-considered reply. His proposition of the ladies' healths was a signal that the carriages were ready to take them, as arranged, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... scholar to whom he expounded Dante, from the political chart of the Middle Ages, turned to an incarnation of existent patriotism. Not only by the arguments of Gioberti, the graphic pictures of Manzoni, and the terse pathos of Leopardi, did he illustrate what Italy boasts of later genius; but through his own eloquent integrity and magnetic love of her achievements and faith in her destiny. The savings of years of patient toil were sacrificed to the subsistence of his poor countrymen who came hither ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Private Mucklewame literary composition presents no difficulties. Here is a single example of his terse and masterly style:— ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... a terse report of their experience to the task-force commander and in turn was told that none of the naval craft had either sighted or picked up any ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... a certain style in Esperanto itself in the hands of a good writer, of which the dominant notes are simplicity and directness—two qualities not at all to be despised. Further, the unlimited power of word-building and of forming terse compounds gives the language an individuality of its own. It contains many expressive self-explanatory words whose meaning can only be conveyed by a periphrasis in most languages,[1] and this causes it to take on the manner and feel of a living tongue, and makes it something ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... how it had been conducted; and he did so with admirable simplicity and truth. He thought the North were right about the war; and as I thought so also, I was not called upon to disagree with him. He was terse and perspicuous in his sentences, practical in his advice, and, above all things, true in what he said to his audience of themselves. They who know America will understand how hard it is for a public man in the States ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... can do for him yet?" Kathryn inquired, with an abrupt letting down of her terse dignity. "It does seem a shame I can't do something to help the poor fellow along, especially when it is so many years that I have known him. It's not as if he were a mere acquaintance, of course, and I ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... gives some extracts from his letter to one Aristides, reconciling the apparent discrepancy between Matthew and Luke in the genealogy of Christ by a reference to the Jewish law, which compelled a man to marry the widow of his deceased brother, if the latter died without issue. His terse and pertinent letter to Origen, impugning the authority of the apocryphal book of Susanna, and Origen's wordy and uncritical answer, are both extant. The ascription to Africanus of an encyclopaedic work entitled ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of Thomson thus to seek To mitigate my gloom, But why did he proceed to speak Of how he'd reared each bloom, Telling in language far from terse On what his blossoms fed And how he made the greenfly curse The day that it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... Tacitus; ellipsis; syncope; abridgment &c. (shortening) 201; compression &c. 195; epitome &c. 596; monostich[obs3]; brunch word, portmanteau word. V. be concise &c. adj.; condense &c. 195; abridge &c. 201; abstract &c. 596; come to the point. Adj. concise, brief, short, terse,close; to the point, exact; neat, compact; compressed, condensed, pointed; laconic, curt, pithy, trenchant, summary; pregnant; compendious &c. (compendium) 596; succinct; elliptical, epigrammatic, quaint, crisp; sententious. Adv. concisely &c. adj.; briefly, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... corner of the carriage, shut her hollow eyes, and laid her thin hands one over the other, and in her purple draperies made a picture a la Melisande which was not lost upon her companions. Boyson's mind registered a good many grim or terse comments, as occasionally he found himself watching this lady. Scarcely a year since that hideous business at Niagara, and here she was in that extravagant dress! He wished his sister would not make a friend of her, and that Daphne Floyd saw less of her. Miss ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... speedily opened his negociation by asking in very terse and unequivocal phrase, my intentions regarding his sister-in-law. After professing the most perfect astonishment at the question, and its possible import, I replied, that she was a most charming person, with whom I intended to have nothing whatever ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... of debate, maintaining intact the time-honored parliamentary methods and amenities which unfailingly secure action after deliberation, possesses in our scheme of government a value which can not be measured by words. The Senate is a perpetual body. In the terse words of an eminent Senator now present: 'The men who framed the Constitution had studied thoroughly all former attempts at Republican government. History was strewn with the wrecks of unsuccessful democracies. Sometimes the usurpation of the executive power, sometimes the fickleness ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... the biggest discovery of the year in this point of the woods," was Hyman's terse comment. "I reckon, too, the captain will see ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... the passage declaring the slave trade 'piratical warfare against human nature itself,' was deeply regretted by many of that generation. Other alterations were for the better, making the paper more dispassionate and terse, and—what was no small improvement—more brief and exact. On the evening of the 4th the Committee rose, when Harrison reported the Declaration as having been agreed upon. It was then adopted by twelve States, unanimously." [That is, by the majority of the delegates ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... did not even throw a little additional warmth into his utterance of the general thanksgiving, as he might have done had he been a more effusive man; but, on the contrary, read it with a more than ordinary calmness, and preached to the excited people one of those terse little unimpassioned sermons of his, from which it was utterly impossible to divine whether he was in the depths of despair or at the summit and crown of happiness. People who had been used to discover a great many of old Mr Bury's personal peculiarities in his sermons, and who, of ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... compiled under appropriate headings, alphabetically arranged, making the many stories easily available for the private reader and public teacher. Mr. Moody's idiom has been strictly preserved. He tells the story. "Gold" will be found scattered through the volume, which includes Mr. Moody's terse declarations of many precious and ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... estimate of Judge Hunt's verdict in her diary in one terse sentence, "The greatest outrage ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... was as a measure of propitiation that she selected three of the roses for Amelie as she went into the bedroom. Amelie, who was kneeling before one of the larger boxes and carefully lifting skirts from its trays, paused to sniff at the flowers, and to express a terse thanks and admiration. 'Ah, bien merci, mademoiselle,' she said, laying her share on the ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... occasion when a gawsterer was gloppened sorely. There was an ancient mansion, wainscoted and floored with shining oak, glib—I have not heard that apposite, terse little monosyllable since I went slurring with the village boys—glib as glass; and in that ancient mansion there was a banquet; and to that banquet came, with other guests, "a fop in a gay coat," a coxcomb wearing the bright vestment ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... December 20, 1915, four French aeroplanes designed for bomb-dropping, escorted by seven machines with rapid-fire guns dropped on the fort and station at Muelhausen six shells of 155-millimeter caliber, and twenty shells of ninety-six caliber. In the terse language of the official report, "they reached their objective." The damage must be imagined ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... one thing or the other. Yet it might be neither. There was a disquieting alternative. No doubt the message disposed of the delicate affair for good and all in ten terse words. The maid had made up her mind; she had disclosed it in haste: that was all. It might be, however, that the dispatch conveyed news of a more urgent content. It might be that the maid lay ill—that she called for help and ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... deliberately rewritten. Now, there is hardly anything in it that is not beautiful and perfect in form. The whole range of noble emotions finds expression there, and all the guiding ideas of our Modern State. We have recently admitted some terse criticism of its contents ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... a live coal from the altar of God, his eloquence was seraphic. In one of his impassionate outbursts he had said, "The Church in all ages has been persecuted by a Pharaoh on the throne, a Haman in the state, and a Judas in the Church." Archbishop Sharp heard of the terse statement. The lightning had struck the mark. Sharp appropriated the caricature, and saw Judas personified in his own character. He ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... sit there quietly, savouring the scene. But Mrs. Yaverland said in her terse voice: "I've taken rooms at the Hapsburg for to-night. I thought you'd like it. I do myself, because it's near the river. You know, we're near the river at Roothing." Ellen could not longer turn her ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... traveller, including the honest missionary, disagrees with the terse sentence of the great Wallace in The Malay Archipelago: "We may safely affirm that the better specimens of savages are much superior to the lower examples of civilised peoples." Revolting customs are found, to be sure, among native races, but there are also redeeming ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... "Be terse in style, vigorous of phrase, apt, concretely apt, in similitude. Avoid platitudes and commonplaces. Exercise selection. Seize upon things salient, eliminate the rest, and you have pictures. Paint those pictures in words and the Intelligencer will have you. Get hold of a few back numbers, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... Standish assumed control of the occasion and showed himself in his most becoming attitude. His quick eyes and ready hands were everywhere, and the somewhat sharp and terse military orders that sometimes had seemed a thought arbitrary now carried assurance in their tone, and strengthened the hearts of some and supported the determination of others, who left to themselves would have scattered like sheep without ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... is highly terse. The words are grammatically unconnected with one another. Only a few substantives have been used. These represent the heads of the different arguments urged by sceptics for showing the non-existence of anything besides the body which is seen and felt. I have, of course, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of honest, direct, sympathetic, humorous writing about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales ... The result is a real book—a book in a hundred. His language is terse, supple, and richly idiomatic. He can tell ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... snowfield above the plain of waves. Then at other times it would be the simple frolic and fancy of fiction—fairy tale and legend, Greek myth or Icelandic saga, episodes from Walter Scott, from Cooper, from Dumas; to be followed perhaps on the next evening by the terse and vigorous biography of some man of the people—of Stephenson or Cobden, of Thomas Cooper or John Bright, or ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... practically none; his rise to be qualified master and actual mate—no "t'penny-ha'penny" position in his eyes evidently; his anticipation of the "master extra" and the pass in steam, which might lead to anything—the whole tale was told her in terse, straightforward fashion, but with an art new to the modest sailor-man, who hated brag as much as cowardice. He bragged in self-defence, in challenge of the formidable equipment of his rival. And how interested she was! How ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... ancient house of Este read this terse despatch he must have smiled; its candor was so undiplomatic that it bordered on irony. The doughty ambassadors, however, apparently did not go to the right sources, for if they had applied to the courtiers ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... if nothing but the ordinary business had occurred, Jasper sat down and went carefully over every detail of the commission he had been sent on, heard Mr. Marlowe's terse, "That's good, Jasper; you've done it all well," and passed out for the last time, from the private office, and joined his father in silence, for ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... in a strange way, as if he liked her terse creed, and would fain have heard it a second time. Then suddenly he leant back with his head against a corner of the piano. The fronds of a maidenhair fern hanging in delicate profusion almost hid his face. He was essentially muscular in his thoughts, and did not make the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... must rest with the police. The case is in their keeping now," was his employer's terse reply. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... research and active observation conveys to us his impressions in language terse, concise, and never tedious; we listen with pleasure to his tale. Well executed pictorial illustrations considerably enhance the merits ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... he is as rapid and decided as, in the giving of instructions, he is clear and terse. In debate or argument his speech is often loud and accompanied by vigorous and decided gestures; but in conversation his manner is constrained and his voice quiet and clear with a strong power of appeal which is enhanced by a slight French lisp. ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... could learn about them some two centuries or more after the Conquest, the antiquary Boturini classified all the ancient songs under two general heads, the one treating mainly of historical themes, while the other was devoted to purely fictitious, emotional or imaginative subjects.[10] His terse classification is expanded by the Abbe Clavigero, who states that the themes of the ancient poets were various, some chanting the praises of the gods or petitioning them for favors, others recalled the history of former generations, others were didactic ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... did not come back; the day, and still no Sweetwater. Another day went by, enlivened only by an interchange of notes between Mr. Gryce and Miss Butterworth. Hers was read by the old detective with a smile. Perhaps because it was so terse; perhaps because ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... subjects to be imprisoned—referring to Buckingham. And not only did she ask his liberty, but the restitution of his places. No wonder there was discontent when such things were done, and public affairs were in such a state. We must again quote the graphic, terse language of Pepys:—'It was computed that the Parliament had given the king for this war only, besides all prizes, and besides the L200,000 which he was to spend of his own revenue, to guard the sea, above L5,000,000, and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... in the use of English are the simple, plain, exact, lucid, concise, trenchant, vigorous, impressive, lively, figurative, polished, graceful, fluent, rhythmical, copious, elevated, flexible, smooth, dignified, terse, epigrammatic, felicitous, euphonious, elegant, and lofty. Undesirable qualities are the diffuse, verbose, redundant, inflated, prolix, ambiguous, feeble, monotonous, loose, slip-shod, dry, flowery, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... Christ, under a single sermon, anticipated the question of those who, with an eye upon the mere human accessories of his sermon, might ask after the secret of his power; and he unfolds that secret in a single terse sentence: "With the Holy Ghost sent down ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... corner wondering what it was all about. But in that last three-quarters of an hour he had achieved something at least, a terse sentence that must, it seems, epitomize the sentiments of every idol who ever shared his predicament, every king who ever ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... in a letter to Cornelius Nepos, he writes of him in the following terms: "What! Of all the orators, who, during the whole course of their lives, have done nothing else, which can you prefer to him? Which of them is more pointed or terse in his periods, or employs more polished and elegant language?" In his youth, he seems to have chosen Strabo Caesar for his model; from whose oration in behalf of the Sardinians he has transcribed some passages literally into his Divination. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus |
