"Harping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Harping on suicide, Coulton quotes Scott's statement in 'Letters on Demonology:' 'Of late it has been said, and PUBLISHED, that the unfortunate nobleman had determined to take poison.' Sir Walter gives no authority, and Coulton admits that he knows of none. Gloomy but commonplace reflections ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... they are looking very well. Don't keep harping on that! I remember when we first began going to dinners, I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. I don't mean when I was a girl; a girl only goes to a dinner because it comes before a dance. I mean when we were young married people; ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... understand so well what to do for themselves, ought to be able to sing and play so that one could comprehend what they meant. Yet they kept harping all the while on the same strain. He grew drowsy listening to them, and stretched himself flat on the smooth, fine gravel to take a ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... Ford. Don't go harping on that. You are pure New England stock. Joe Garland is half Kanaka. Your blood is thin. His is warm. Life is one thing to you, another thing to him. He laughs and sings and dances through life, genial, unselfish, childlike, everybody's friend. You go through life like a perambulating ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... He promised he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in Jim's coffee-pot, in the morning. Jim said he would "jis' 's soon have tobacker in his coffee;" and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising the mullen, and jews-harping the rats, and petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do on pens, and inscriptions, and journals, and things, which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... exultation commit some sacrilegious deed of plunder, forgetting that they have only reached the goal, and have the return to make! If they should, the curse of those who have perished might still awake against them [Cl. thus darkly harping upon her secret hope that vengeance may still overtake them for the sacrifice of ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... feeling, of a sudden, that her question had suggested something she did not intend. "Don't think I am. I was wondering over something else." She laughed a little uncertainly. "It's Seth. He's always harping on my going away. Always thinking of the time when my people are to be found. And I just wondered if he thought I was tired of the farm and wanted to be away. He's so kind and good to me, and I thought he might, in a mistaken way, believe I'd be happier in—well, with those people ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the sight begets a sort of coarse sympathy, such as the convict feels for his fellow; an emotion due to the freemasonry of crime. Jupiter takes care to strengthen it, by harping on the cruelty of his master—more than hinting that he would like to leave him, if any other would but buy him. Indeed he'd be willing to run away, if he saw ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... right, mama, as up to date as any of them, but how do you think a girl feels, with gramaw always harping right in front of everybody the way granpa was a revolutionist and was hustled off barefooted to Siberia like a tramp? And the way she was cooking black beans when my uncle died. Other girls' grandmothers don't tell everything they know. Alma Yawitz's ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... coming between the ships and the galleons, threw water by whole tuns upon them, as if it had been the cataracts of the Nile in Ethiopia. On the other side, arrows, darts, gleaves, javelins, spears, harping-irons, and partizans, flew upon it like hail. Friar John did not spare himself in it. Panurge was half dead for fear. The artillery roared and thundered like mad, and seemed to gall it in good earnest, but did but little good; for the great iron and brass cannon-shot ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... harping irons, speares, cordes, axes, hatchets, kniues, and other implements for the fishing, and what ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... transcendental points of reference, primordial reality, and the self to which everything appears, though at first it might pass for spiritual insight, is in the end nothing but pedantry and impotence, so to be always harping on nationality is to convert what should be a recognition of natural conditions into a ridiculous pride in one's own oddities. Nature has hidden the roots of things, and though botany must now and then dig them up for the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... also winding the cornets and hautboys, and in the end of their jollity, left with the battle and ringing of doleful knells. Towards the evening also we caught in the Golden Hind a very mighty porpoise with harping iron, having first stricken divers of them, and brought away part of their flesh sticking upon the iron, but could recover only that one. These also, passing through the ocean in herds, did portend storm. I omit to recite frivolous report by them in the frigate, ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... a delight to soul and sense; it looked so like a big grey seashell stranded on the shore. Between it and the harbour was only a narrow strip of shingle, and behind it was a gnarled and battered fir wood where the winds were in the habit of harping all sorts of weird and haunting music. Inside, it was to prove even yet more quaint and delightful, with its low, dark-beamed ceilings and square, deep-set windows by which, whether open or shut, sea breezes entered at their own sweet will. The view from our door was ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for me." It is hard to imagine any more depressing talk for a poor landsman on a dirty night; it is hard to imagine anything less sailor-like (as sailors are supposed to be, and generally are) than this persistent harping on the minor. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forward to it might be read in the invariable eagerness of his welcome; and this was even harder to explain, because the Elder never failed to harp—seldom, indeed, relaxed harping—on old misdeeds and the lost insurance money. Nay, perhaps in scorn of his own weakness, he insisted on this more and more offensively; rehearsing each day, as he climbed the hill, speeches calculated to offend or hurt. But in the intervals he would betray—as he could ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it would have been better to fight ten battles than to give up one of them, still a set of flatterers harassed our pusillanimous emperor with harping on the dreaded name of Procopius, and affirmed that unless we quickly recrossed the river, that chieftain, as soon as he heard of the death of Julian, would easily bring about a revolution which ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... for five minutes without drawing breath, it seems to me, harping on our best chances, on the ferocity of Montero, whom I made out to be as great a beast as I have no doubt he would like to be if he had intelligence enough to conceive a systematic reign of terror. And then for another five minutes or more I poured out an impassioned appeal to their ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... harping on her?" said Wilson. "Well, she doesn't hate him, I suppose, or she would ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... over the number of his name."(1121) With the Lamb upon Mount Zion, "having the harps of God," they stand, the hundred and forty and four thousand that were redeemed from among men; and there is heard, as the sound of many waters, and as the sound of a great thunder, "the voice of harpers harping with their harps."(1122) And they sing "a new song" before the throne, a song which no man can learn save the hundred and forty and four thousand. It is the song of Moses and the Lamb,—a song of deliverance. None but ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... at the sky, declared was going to be over in a minute. But it was not over in a minute; they were soon drenched. Shelton was tired, and it annoyed him very much that his companion, who was also tired, should grow more cheerful. His thoughts kept harping upon Ferrand: "This must be something like what he described to me, tramping on and on when you're dead-beat, until you can cadge up supper and a bed." And sulkily he kept on ploughing through the mud with glances at the exasperating Crocker, who had skinned one heel and was limping horribly. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a good honest fellow. I like him much. But the silly dear's harping so continually upon one string, dying, dying, dying, is what I have no patience with. I hope all this melancholy jargon is owing entirely to the way I would have her to be in. And it being as new to her, as the Bible beauties to thee,* no wonder she knows not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... say that you are harping still on that old affair. I assure you Gilly Jillingham is unworthy of you. You are not thinking still of ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... listen to him," said Ignaty in a low voice. "When you hear this sort of thing once, you never forget it, and he keeps harping on it all ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... glorious joy was there: Harping and dancing, loud and fair, And minstrelsy that made of air Fire, so like fire its raptures were. Then the chief lady spake on high: "Knight with the two swords, one of two Must help you here or fall from you: For needs you now must have ado ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... mine, and train them well in the duties of pages, and later of squires. Take especial care with the training of Childe Horn, their chief; let him learn all thy knowledge of woodcraft and fishing, of hunting and hawking, of harping and singing; teach him how to carve before me, and to serve the cup solemnly at banquets; make him thy favourite pupil and train him to be a knight as good as thyself. His companions thou mayst put into other service, but Horn shall be my own page, and afterwards ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... Friday.—Still harping on Irish Votes. Want to dock Prince ARTHUR'S salary. SWIFT MACNEILL brought down model of battering-ram used at Falcarragh; holds it up; shows it in working order; Committee much interested; inclined to encourage this sort of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... or two ago that the present writer heard from the lips of the dead poet a mockery of death's vanity—a brave assertion of the glory of life. "Death, death! It is this harping on death I despise so much," he remarked with emphasis of gesture as well as of speech—the inclined head and body, the right hand lightly placed upon the listener's knee, the abrupt change in the inflection of the voice, all so characteristic of him—-"this idle and often cowardly as ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... eye of great quickness and vivacity, with a drollery and lurking waggery of expression that was irresistible. He was evidently the wit of the family, dealing very much in sly jokes and innuendoes with the ladies, and making infinite merriment by harping upon old themes, which, unfortunately, my ignorance of the family chronicles did not permit me to enjoy. It seemed to be his great delight during supper to keep a young girl next to him in a continual agony of stifled laughter, in ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... troublesome to the king, when they were merry together, extolling himself beyond measure, and oft putting the king in mind of the severity of fortune he had undergone, that he might, by way of ostentation, demonstrate What zeal he had showed in his service; and was continually harping upon this string, what pains he had taken for him, and much enlarged still upon that subject. The repetition of this so frequently seemed to reproach the king, insomuch that he took this ungovernable liberty of talking very ill at his hands. For the commemoration of times when ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... fellow like him, with a dagger-shaped scar clear down his arm from standing by his job that time when the whole south end of the plant exploded. A fellow that could save a whole plant and two hundred lives afraid to face a few skirts! Crazy to get married. Told Ed so. Always harping on his idea of blue eyes and yellow hair, and then, when he gets the chance, afraid ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... to talk of other things in between, but the boy with the short legs would every little while think up some new question in connection with that shriek, which he would fire at Max, and demand an answer. When Steve tried to make fun of him for harping on that old string so long, the other immediately took up arms in ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... "I believe you, gallant guests; with your long limbs and broad shoulders, we could never match you here. For we care nothing here for boxing, or for shooting with the bow; but for feasts, and songs, and harping, and dancing, and running races, to stretch our ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... are, as they pretend, the virtuous part of the people, because they are quiet; as if virtue consisted in immobility! There is a canting Scotchman in London, who publishes a paper called the 'Champion' who is everlastingly harping upon the virtues of the 'fireside,' and who inculcates the duty of quiet submission. Might we ask this Champion of the teapot and milk-jug whether Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights were won by the fireside? Whether the tyrants of the House of Stuart and of Bourbon were hurled ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... going in the midst of his fellows, hearing, he thought, the thrill of harping and the throb of heavenly drums; and, across the space, moved now the six flames, steady as if cut of steel in that stupendous poise of heaven and earth; and in their centre the silver-rayed glory and the Whiteness ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... curiosity as to the nature of the great far cause that moves them; but in grief—in the destitute bareness, the famished hunger of soul, when "one is not," how one craves for certainties! How one yearns for the solid heaven of one's childhood; the harping angels, the never-failing flowers; the pearl gates and jeweled walls of God's ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... "Pshaw, child! Still harping on the raiders? and nervous too! What ails you, daughter? I thought you never were nervous. We Wiltons are not accustomed to nervousness, you know, and ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... how we cling to this vile world! Here I, Whose dust was laid ere I began this carping, By moles and worms and such familiar fry Run through and through, am singing still and harping Of mundane matters—flatting, too, and sharping. I hate the Angel of the Sleeping Cup: So I'm ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... that north section Dave Thorne is always talking about?" suggested Bob. "He is forever harping on the subject of a fire there, and I'd ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... under the circumstances," murmured Foyle. And then, with a smile, "Your finger-prints on the dagger have been partly responsible for a lot of bother, Lady Eileen. If you had followed my advice at first—but it's no use harping on that. You have believed Mr. Grell to be the murderer, I suppose, and made your own confession to shield him. I don't know that I oughtn't to congratulate you both, for he has certainly made enormous sacrifices, and taken ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... in their inferior Heaven, Hymn to the golden harps his praise sublime, Repeating loud, "The Lord our God is great," In varied harmonies.—The glorious sounds Roll o'er the air serene—The Aolian spheres, Harping along their viewless boundaries, Catch the full note, and cry, "The Lord is great," Responding to the Seraphim. O'er all From orb to orb, to the remotest verge Of the created world, the sound is borne, Till the ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... could possibly be endeavoured, every proof has been crowded into this book in refutation of this favourite allegation of Mr. Froude's. It is only an idle waste of time to be thus harping on his colour topic. No one can deserve to govern simply because he is white, and no one is bound to be subject simply because he is black. The whole of West [191] Indian history, even after the advent of the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... dung-heaps and cesspools that are enough to make a cow-herd who blows his nose in his fingers, recoil. I grant to this age the device: 'Dirty Cleanliness.' Don't be vexed, Marius, give me permission to speak; I say no evil of the people as you see, I am always harping on your people, but do look favorably on my dealing a bit of a slap to the bourgeoisie. I belong to it. He who loves well lashes well. Thereupon, I say plainly, that now-a-days people marry, but that they no longer know how to marry. Ah! it is true, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... you old fool?" she exclaimed, indignantly. "What do you mean by referring to such a subject as that, on this day, of all others? You are always harping on those two wretched people who were guillotined, as if you thought I could have saved their lives. Were you not present when my son and I met, after the time of the Terror? Did you not hear my first words to him, when he told me of the catastrophe? ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... that it sounded awesomely at his touch. And Phoebus Apollo laughed for joy; for the sweet throb of the marvellous music went to his heart, and a soft longing took hold on his soul as he listened. Then the son of Maia, harping sweetly upon his lyre, took courage and stood at the left hand of Phoebus Apollo; and soon, while he played shrilly on his lyre, he lifted up his voice and sang, and lovely was the sound of his voice that followed. He sang the story of the deathless ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... only did not walk his body off, but harping on the same string, pertinaciously continued to ply me with alternate arguments and intreaties, until at last fairly wearied out, and more, I believe, with the hope of getting rid of the "importunate chink" of the fellow's discourse, than anything ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... "You are always harping on that one string, John. It is only four years since we were married. Have I become an old woman in ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... "Still harping, but harping your praises. Century plants are not necessarily old: they are all young at the beginning! I merely meant you'd be blooming at ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... Last Tournament, follows Malory in the story of Tristram's and Iseult's death. "That traitor, King Mark, slew the noble knight, Sir Tristram, as he sat harping before his lady, La Beale Isoud, with a trenchant glaive, for whose death was much bewailing of every knight that ever was in Arthur's days ... and La Beale Isoud died swooning upon the cross of Sir Tristram, whereof was great pity."—Malory's ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... jars,—to sail with the morning breeze. Swarthy shipmen ran up and down the planks betwixt quay and ship, balancing their heavy jars on their heads as women bear water-pots. From the tavern by the mooring came harping and the clatter of cups, while two women—the worse for wine—ran out to drag the newcomers in to their revel. Phormio slapped the slatterns aside with his staff. In the same fearful waking dream Glaucon saw Phormio ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... sounds in the presence of Healfdene's head-of-armies {16c} and harping was heard with the hero-lay as Hrothgar's singer the hall-joy woke along the mead-seats, making his song of that sudden raid on the sons of Finn. {16d} Healfdene's hero, Hnaef the Scylding, was fated to fall in the Frisian slaughter. ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... through its teeth, From the frosts that on it lie. The bright pink, in its small sky Shining like a coral star. The blithe bird that flies afar, Drest in shifting shades and blooms— Soaring cithern of plumes Harping high o'er heaven's blue bar. The white rock that cheats the sun When it tries to melt it down, What it melts is but the crown Which from winter's snow it won. The green bay that will not shun, Though the heavens are all aglow, ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... he shrugged his shoulders, and gave such a desponding look. 'Pierce,' he continued, 'will smash the democracy before he has done, by simply making it ridiculous. Thrice have I remonstrated with him in all my power of persuasion; but it has fallen harmless at his feet, for here he is, up again and harping. He singularly argues in his private despatches that Europe being in a fuzzle generally; that England having enough to do at keeping her grumbling people quiet, and fighting her old friend Russia; that Monsieur Napoleon, the very Republican Emperor, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... and must lose himself in his task if he is to transfuse his blood into the veins of boys. Above all, he must be a real man and not a manikin, and he must enjoy his boys—love them, without being quite conscious of the love, or at least without harping on it. ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... In Dr. Starbuck's collection of cases, seventy-five per cent. of the males and sixty per cent. of the females confessed to feelings of depression, anxiety, and sadness before conversion. This may be attributed partly to the harping upon a conviction of sinfulness, which in itself is wholly of an unhealthy character. It does not indicate moral health, and it is very far from indicating physiological health. The following confessions are pertinent, and will illustrate both ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... of the whale.] Heere we sawe the hunting of the Whale, (a strange pastime) certaine Indians in a Canoa, or boate following a great Whale, and with a harping Iron, which they cast forth, piercing the whals body, which yron was fastned to a long rope made of the barkes of trees, and so tied fast to their Canoa. All this while pricking and wounding the whale so much as they could, they made him ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... look after ornamental gardens and south aspics and all, I ought to have my salary raised," said James, still harping on his one grievance. ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... mind—had rapidly increased, and, after ten days of fearful struggle between life and death mortification had ensued, and hope could exist no longer At first, Perez added, he seemed to shrink from the idea of priestly aid, only harping on one theme—to get strength enough to reach Segovia, and speak to the King. They had thought him mad, but humored him; but now he was almost furious in his wild cries for a priest, not only to shrive him, but to bear his ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... "...and quit harping on whose fault it was." Malone recognized Mike Fueyo's voice. "That FBI guy was onto us, and we had to pull out; you know that. We always figured we'd have to pull out some day. So why ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... subjected her to such a mortification. I certainly am sorry to have done so. As for her ladyship's answer, it would have been to me more a subject of mirth than any other feeling. It has, however, proved the cause of much annoyance from my mother's continually harping upon it." ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... the pilot house, with Watson just returned to the wheel. Once more the colossal, hot-breathing twin chimneys, their slender iron braces holding them so uprightly together and apart, the golden globe—emblem of the Courteney fleet—hanging between them, and their far-stretched iron guys softly harping to one another in the breeze. All these again, and away out beyond the front rail, with a hundred feet depth of empty air between, the jack-staff, high as a pine and as slim for its height as a cane from the brake, its halyards whipping cheerily, the black ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... impressed everybody with the clear light in her eye and the absence of everything suggestive of gloom in her expression and language. There was the same complete loss of memory up to the time of the tragic occurrence which had desolated her home; the same harping at odd moments on Adelaide's happiness and her own prospect of seeing this dear sister very soon which had marked the opening days of her convalescence. But beyond and back of all this was some secret joy, unintelligible to the nurse, which helped rather than ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... literis, what happens in every place of the kingdom every hour in the year, and fastening always on the worst as the most palatable morsels. But she is a circumstantial old lady, communicative, scrupulous, leaving nothing to the imagination, harping on the smallest grievances, a village-oracle and critic, most veritable, most identical, bringing us acquainted with persons and things just as they chanced to exist, and giving us a local interest in all she knows and tells. Mr. Crabbe's Helicon is choked up with weeds and corruption; ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... music of the spheres, perceive the reign of everlasting Law. These impulses from the Oversoul, that create the great epochs, raising one race after another, have perfect rhythm and rhyme. God sits harping in the Cycle of Infinity, and human history is the far faint echo of the tune he plays. Why can we not listen, till we hear and apprehend the tune? Or History is the sound heard from far, of the marching hosts ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... note sounded in our days by no other poet. The words rush rattling on one another, like the clashing of spears or the ring of iron on iron in a day of old-world battle. The lines are javelins, consonanted lines full of force and fury, as if sung or played by a northern skald harping on a field of slain. There is another group of romantic ballads, containing the early Margaret's Bridal Eve, and the later Arch-duchess Anne and The Young Princess. There are also the humorous and pathetic studies in Roadside Philosophers and the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... health,—very well, I was afraid he wou'd have been harping upon my Wife in the first place—the Devil take her, she looks for't. [Makes signs to have ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... that spirit of turbulent anger, which I soon found was one of the natural and necessary equipments of an officer, he would say, "Would you like me to recite Browning's 'Prospice'?" What could the enraged Saul do on such occasions but forgive, throw down the javelin and listen to the music of the harping David? (p. 019) Stephenson was with me till I left Salisbury Plain for France. He nearly exterminated me once by setting a stone water-bottle to heat on my stove without unscrewing the stopper. I arrived in my tent quite ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... across the surface of the human pyramid before her. However, in the presence of an occasional tea-drinking husband, one or the other of them embraced convention and talked feelingly of Mrs. Brenton's virtues. As a rule, though, she confessed to herself later on that she had been insistently harping upon a non-existent entity. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... say you by that?—[Aside.] Still harping on my daughter:—yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.—What do ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... favorite object of my heart!" I strike this note again and again, insisting upon it, harping upon it; for it is the key-note of the music. It is the capacity to find such an object in the success of the people's cause, to follow it unselfishly, to serve it loyally, that distinguishes the men who stood with Washington ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... plucked at the grass again, and chewed a daisy up almost viciously. There was a supreme selfishness in the way she had of perpetually harping upon her lack of love ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... immediately pressed to know on what other score the wish might be founded. Lucy pleaded the desire to be with her father, which Lady Verner did not believe; and she pleaded nothing else. It was not satisfactory to my lady, and she kept Lucy the whole of the morning, harping ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... remarkably as to be both hated and despised, and a combination among the booksellers will soon be against him and his brother-in-law, a lawyer. These are men of the keenest avarice, and their very looks (according to what I am told) dart out harping-irons. I have ordered Mr. Noel to drop every article in my Lord's commissions when they shall be hoisted up to too high a price. Yet I desired that my Lord may have the Russian Bible, which I know full well to be a very rare and a very ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... recognize him in some of his characters, and these figures, like the banished king in Thus is Life, the secretary Hetman in Hidalla, the author Lindekuh in Musik, and others, are always the tragic moralists in an immoral world. There is something pathetic in the perseverance with which he is ever harping on the one string. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Mahabul (the scribe) says to me: "My chief here won't lend me nine shillings to buy a sheepskin coat for my old woman, therefore she must be frozen to death in the winter; my chief won't lend me anything, other people he lends." The chief said nothing for a while; but the scribe went on harping on this string, till at last the chief launched out right and left on his scribe, shouting loud enough for all the compound to hear. The scribe took it coolly, and stopped him, saying: "Enough, enough; it is past, it is past; ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... Dagonet answered, 'Ay, and when the land Was freed, and the Queen false, ye set yourself To babble about him, all to show your wit— And whether he were King by courtesy, Or King by right—and so went harping down The black king's highway, got so far, and grew So witty that ye played at ducks and drakes With Arthur's vows on the great lake of fire. Tuwhoo! do ye see it? do ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Here was even Herky-Jerky harping on Buell's situation. To me it did not appear much more serious than before. But evidently they thought Buell seemed on the verge of losing control of himself. He glared at Herky, and rammed his fists in his pockets ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... in bitter irony from his irate neighbour's lips. "What does he know of woman! Woman! Let him court a rich one and see—but that's all over and done with. No more harping on that string, and no more reading of poetry. I'll never,—" The rest was lost in his throat and was quite ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... cases in point. These men did not die prematurely. They grew strong by the toil of the brain. And to-day the quartette of our truest poets—Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, and Holmes—are with us in the hale years of a green age, never singing sweeter songs, never harping more inspiring strains. Long may our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... (what made the thing more curious) that all the time the Tyrolean harps were harping round me in the trees, and even while I looked, a green-and-yellow bird (that, I suppose, was building) began to tear the hair off the head of one of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the question at issue by leading their opponents off on a tangent. The real question, free-love, will, however, by no means be forgotten by us until the Socialists have been shown up thoroughly. Since the conspirators against family life are so fond of harping on the matter of prostitution, with a view to drawing critics away from attacking their doctrine of free-love, the reader will be shown that even prostitution, instead of decreasing in the Socialist state, would, together with immorality of every sort, become far more prevalent under ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... song, a new song in the height, Harping with harps to Him Who is Strong and True: 170 They drank new wine, their eyes saw with new light, Lo, all things were ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... Elizabeth or Victoria has reigned since: it was a pretty tired old world at that time. One might almost say that the further we go back the older and more "played out" the world appears, notwithstanding that the poets, who were generally pessimists of the present, kept harping about the youth of the world and the joyous spontaneity of human life in some golden age before their time. In fact, the world is old in spots—in Memphis and Boston and Damascus and Salem and Ephesus. Some of these places are venerable in traditions, and some of them are actually worn out and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... awake; no mistake about the situation; still harping on the Irish Land Bill; but, thank a merciful Providence, this is the last night. JOHN MORLEY, who never shrinks from call of duty, rises, and makes one of those formal, official, somewhat tiresome protests, recapitulating ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... harping on this!" retorted Hsi Jen, putting on a smile. "Why, at first, you used to coax me with a lot of endearing terms to comb your hair and to wash your face, to do this and that for you. But now that you've become a big girl, you assume the manner of a young mistress ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... spare no pains to induce Lucceius to be reconciled to you. But after doing everything that could be done, not only did I fail to renew his old feelings towards you, but I could not even succeed in eliciting the reason of his alienation. On his part, however, he keeps harping on that arbitration case of his, and the other matters which I knew very well before you left Rome were causing him offence. Still, he has certainly got something else fixed deeper in his mind; and this no letters from you, and no commissioning ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... have been here only three weeks, but I liked it better every day, and I am wretched at leaving it. What could I ever mean by thinking it was not gay, and less lively than Genoa? To-night, as I came home from riding, the shore was covered with lazaroni and throngs of people, dancing, singing, harping, fiddling—all so merry, and as if the open air and their own elastic spirits were happiness enough. I suppose I shall never come again, for when I have measured back the distance to my own foggy country, there ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... if they don't leave me alone!" she declared one night to Quin. "They act as if studying for the stage were the wickedest thing in the world. Aunt Isobel was here all morning, harping on my immortal soul until I almost hoped I didn't have one. This afternoon Aunt Flo came and warned me against getting professional notions in my head, and talked about my social position, and what a blow ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Iuly wee sawe great store of Porposes; The Master called for an harping yron, and shot twise or thrise: sometimes he missed, and at last shot one and strooke him in the side, and wound him into the ship: when we had him aboord, the Master sayd ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... that's all," she answered, trying to smile. "And I fear nothing can be done as long as our fate lies in Governor Abbott's hands. There's no use in harping on that, though. You know as well as I what we have to expect from him. Did you see the attack on ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... collect the installments. In order to insure regular payments it was necessary to keep up enthusiasm, which was prone to wane, and Charles consequently became an active and continual preacher of the propaganda of hatred. Whatever may have been his private sentiments at the outset, this constant harping on one string must eventually have had a powerful ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... of the churches were sounding the Ave Maria, filling the air with sweet and solemn vibrations, as if angels were passing to and fro overhead, harping as they went; and ever and anon the great bell of the Campanile came pulsing in with a throb of sound of a quality so different that one hushed one's breath to hear. It might be fancied to be the voice of one of those kingly archangels that one sees drawn by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... of one of the speeches of Job's friends, in which the speaker has been harping on the old theme that affliction is the consequence and evidence of sin. He has much ado to square his theory with facts, and especially with the fact which brought him to Job's dunghill. But he gets over the difficulty by the simple method of assuming that, since his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... whole peninsula into a single state. Morier, at any rate, made it clear that England would throw the whole weight of her power against such treatment of her oldest ally. But alarmist politicians were perpetually harping on this string, and Morier, in a letter written in 1876, compares them to 'children telling ghost-stories to one another who have got frightened at the sound of their own voices, and mistake the rattling of a mouse behind the wainscot for the tramping of legions ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... body are too soon exhausted; this languid and curious analysist who rends the soul aside with merciless cruelty, and puts away the quivering nerves with cold indifference, once he has seen their secrets?—this a poet? Then so was Nero harping! Accursed be the book and all the polished vileness that his verses ever palmed off on men by their mere tricks of sound. This a poet! As soon are the swine that rout the garbage, the lions of the Apocalypse ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the Curtaine, wee entered in. And there was an other suche like roome, from the second for quantitie, with discourses and reason marueilously wouen, with infinite knottes, bucklinges, tyings, and old fashioned harping Irons, or Hookes, as if they had been fastened and knit togither. In which place without any staying, the third woman came and receiued vs very gratiously, her name was Mnemosina, and shee calling vs, gaue vs free leaue to go in. Where lastly my ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... of wood or iron, seized across the upper part of the shrouds at equal distances, to which the cat-harping legs are secured. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... "Always harping upon Barbara. 'My mother had a maid called Barbara.' His Majesty has—a lady of the same melodious name. Well, I have a world of engagements between now and nine o'clock, when the play begins. I shall be at the door to lift you out of your chair. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... "There! Tommy's harping on his pet trouble," laughed Helen. "Father won't let us use the new car to go scooting about the country alone in, and Tommy thinks ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... inhabitants of this county. It is therefore by this court ordered that from and after the 20th day of March next ensuing, it shall not be lawful for any of the inhabitants of this county to take, strike, or destroy any sort of fish in the night time with fish gigs, harping irons, or any other instrument of that nature, sort or kind, within any river, creek or bay which are accounted belonging to or within the bounds or precincts of this county. And it is further ordered that if any person or persons being a freeman, shall offend against ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... was clear my plan had taken hold upon his fancy, for he kept musing to himself till we were called to dinner and the company of Mrs. Rankeillor; and that lady had scarce left us again to ourselves and a bottle of wine, ere he was back harping on my proposal. When and where was I to meet my friend Mr. Thomson; was I sure of Mr. T.'s discretion; supposing we could catch the old fox tripping, would I consent to such and such a term of an agreement—these and the like questions he kept asking at long intervals, while he thoughtfully rolled ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grand redemption. The most gifted poets, from Dante, pealing his threefold anthem from the topmost peak of Parnassus, to Shakespeare, with "his woodnotes wild"; from Milton, with his "sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies," to Tennyson, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... long that voice spake urgently— 'Open to Me.' Still harping in mine ears— 'Rise, let Me in.' Pleading with tears— 'Open to Me, that I may come to thee.' While the dew dropp'd, while the dark hours were cold— 'My feet bleed, see My Face, See My hands bleed that bring thee grace, My heart doth bleed for ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... flush; "if he wants that sort of exposure, let him come here. I don't know whether I want him to come or not. I am too young to be thinking of marrying anybody, and though I don't want to be disrespectful to you, Miss Panney, I will say that I am getting dreadfully tired of your continual harping about Ralph Haverley, and trying to make me push myself in front of him so that his lordship may look at me. If he had been at Barport, or there had been any chance of his coming there, I should have suspected that you went there for the express purpose of keeping us up to the work of becoming ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... I've been afraid to go anywhere with the idol for fear he'd waylay me and get it. One day while I was away somewhere he came here and told Ezela about me having the idol. From that time on I led a life of hell. Ezela turned on me. She said I'd desecrated the altars of her tribe, and she kept harping to me about it until I got so I couldn't bear the ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... old man said. Still harping on the hay—the hay which doesn't amount to anything and cannot be of any real help. It's sheer nonsense to think that the hay in that stack is enough to feed the flocks of a whole district. There is no use talking about it I will ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... wilderness, whose mouth holds a bucket of fish and water. Fighting is what ladies is not qualyfied for, they would not make a good figure in battle or in a duel. Alas! we females are of little use to our country. The history of all the malcontents as ever was hanged is amusing." Still harping on the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... that obey the laws, whose operations are above censure and who add immeasurably to the wealth of the country and to the prosperity of every citizen in it? With this constant presentation of depravity, this incessant harping upon the one string of human dishonesty, what wonder that our visions should be distorted or that we should exclude from our horizon almost everything but the sinister features of modern life. What wonder that the young ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... will I," said a third, "for mayhap there will be no second turn." "Ay," added a fourth, "and he may go the other way, and then where-shall we all be?" "Poh!" said Jorrocks, "did you ever know a Surrey fox not take to the hills?—If he does not, I'll eat him without mint sauce," again harping on the quarter of lamb. Facilis descensus Averni—two-thirds of the field went down, leaving Jorrocks, two horse-dealers in scarlet, three chicken-butchers, half a dozen swells in leathers, a whip, and ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... always a Great Power to frustrate these designs. Yet even after they had been flung at each other in the fratricidal days of 1885, even after their attempt in 1905 to found a Customs union had been vetoed, even after some of their so-called intelligentsia had done what injury they could by harping on the limitations from which they naturally, like the older peoples, are not exempt—nevertheless, as it was seen in 1912, when the demonstrations of delight in Belgrade and in Sofia were touching, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... scientific gentlemen who account for genius by eye-strain do not reprove the poets for their sensibility to the sound of words, the shape and cadences of the phrase? It appears that only prose-men are the culpable ones when they hear the harping of invisible harps from Ibsen steeplejacks, or recognise the colour of Zarathustra's thoughts. In reality not one but thousands sit listening in the chill galleries of Florence because of the sweet, sick, nervous ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... sight A globe of circular light That with long beams the shamefaced night array'd; The helmed Cherubim And sworded Seraphim, Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd, Harping in loud and solemn quire With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... furst found in old tyme. In the beginning of holi Chirche, it was so that the pepull cam to the Chirche with candellys brennyng and wold Wake and come with light toward nyght to the Chirch to their devocions; and afterwards they fell to lecherie and songs, daunces, harping, piping and also to glotony and sinne and so turned the holinesse to cursaydnesse; wherefore holi faders ordeined the pepull to leve that waking and to fast the Evyn. But it is called Vigilia, that is Waking in English and it is called the Evyn, for at ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... Christ, some are babes, some are young men, some are fathers, every one according to the measure of the gift of Christ." God has something in His kingdom that fits each spiritual stature, something suited to each intellectual capacity. He does not want one and the same note struck by all—"harping blindly on one string." He does not want men to be "tyed to one forme and kept forever to one lesson, unable to top up their work"—He wants men to "go from strength to strength, from faith to faith ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... his leg, the which I found very angry and inflamed. This done I bade him be of good comfort and yield himself to slumber. But this he could no way accomplish, being restless and fevered and his mind harping continually on the strange fate had set him thus in Joanna's power and the sure belief that he must die, soon or late, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... slow decay; the stucco peeled off in great patches, the stable roofs sagging, the windmill wheelless, the fences following the line of a drunken man's walk, the trees storm-torn, and the mournful cedars harping with every passing wind a requiem for the glory that was gone. As he looked, the memory of the old man's funeral came to Burnham: the white old face in the coffin—haughty, noble, proud, and the spirit of it unconquered even by death; the long procession of carriages, the slow way ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... on the first assault did go, Struck with a harping-iron the younger foe; Who, when he felt his side so rudely gored, Loud as the sea that nourished him he roar'd. As a broad bream, to please some curious taste, While yet alive, in boiling water cast, Vex'd with unwonted heat he flings about The scorching brass, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... a tale somewhat like the preceding one told in connection with a place called Llyn-y-Ffynonau. There was there racing and dancing, and harping and furious fiddling, and the servant man of Gelli Ffrydau with his two dogs in their midst jumping and dancing like mad. There they were for three days and three nights without a break dancing as if for very life, and were it not ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... side of the Philippa had stood motionless waiting for their orders, but now there was a sharp shout from their leader, and every string twanged together. The air was full of their harping, together with the swish of the arrows, the long-drawn keening of the bowmen and the short deep bark of the under-officers. "Steady, steady! Loose steady! Shoot wholly together! Twelve score paces! Ten score! ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her with uneasiness to find him harping on this string, but all that she could do, was to lead him quickly to some other subject, and to dismiss it from his brain. To caution him against their visitor, to show any fear or suspicion in reference to him, would ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... infinite flat plain called the Earth, there was joined also the belief in a flat roof above called Heaven, on which (seen at times in visions through clouds and stars) sat saints, angels, and archangels, forevermore harping on their golden harps, and knowing neither vanity nor vexation of spirit, lust nor pride, murder nor war;—and underneath a floor, the name whereof was Hell; the mouths whereof (as all men knew) might be seen on Hecla and Aetna and Stromboli; and the fiends heard within, tormenting, amid fire, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... side of the road. "It's all right now. I've changed those follies for others. But while I had them I began to write, and even now I keep on writing, though I know better. I've got quite a pile of little stories, all harping on this ridiculous idea of ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... injustice—but even as he recalled it, he knew that flight meant the worst of all—a half-confession! But she had escaped! Thank God for that! Again and again in his hopeless perplexity this comfort returned to him,—he had saved her; he had done his duty. And harping upon this in his strange fatalism, it at last seemed to him that this was for what he had lived—for what he had suffered—for what he had fitly ended his career. Perhaps it was left for him now to pass his remaining years in forgotten exile—even as his father had—his ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... him and pass it off, but it was of no use. He took it regularly to heart, harping constantly upon Gunson's ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... aimless times that thought becomes distorted. Willard felt his mind wandering through bleak dreams and tortured fancies, always to find himself harping on his early argument with Pierre: "It's the mind that counts." Later he roused to the fact that his knees, where they pressed against the bag, were frozen; also his feet were numb and senseless. In his acquired consciousness he knew that along the course of his previous mental ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... express entire facility we say that an act is done as naturally as a bird sings. Not less naturally does Cecilia play. You listen, and the song which you knew seems to sing itself, but enveloped with a richness and fulness of flowing accompaniment which is like the harping of aerial choirs. Then with others she plays the great music, concerted Bach or Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, or Wagner, Weber or Mendelssohn; now an old gavotte, now a quaint fantasia, and why not a toccata of Galuppi Baldassero? It is more than ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... and a view of the valley with trees, blue in the distance, at the furthest visible point. "Do you see them trees?" he said. "That's where Harping is; 'tis two miles or, perhaps, a little more from Thorpe. There's a church tower among them trees, but you can't see it because 'tis hid. You go by the road till you comes to the church, then you go on by the water, maybe a quarter of a mile, and you comes ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... states of Asia in common. When Servius, in the company of some Latin nobles with whom he had purposely formed ties of hospitality and friendship, both in public and private, extolled in high terms such harmony and association of their gods, by frequently harping upon the same subject, he at length prevailed so far that the Latin states agreed to build a temple of Diana at Rome[45] in conjunction with the Roman people. This was an acknowledgment that the headship of affairs, concerning ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... and I have never seen him since. Where he is now, I know not. I trust I may meet him on Mount Sion, with the harpers harping with their harps, and singing, as it were, a new song ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... do marry, Christopher," she went on, harping fitfully on her favourite string, "remember that keeping in love is as much the profession for a man as it is the art for a woman, and that love feeds on little delicacies rather than on meat and drink. Don't forget the little things, dear, and ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... namely, her wholesome influence on the English novel. In Northanger Abbey and in Sense and Sensibility she satirizes the popular romances of the period, with their Byronic heroes, melodramatic horrors and perpetual harping on some pale heroine's sensibilities. Her satire is perhaps the best that has been written on the subject, so delicate, so flashing, so keen, that a critic compares it to the exploit of Saladin (in The Talisman) who could not with his sword hack through an iron mace, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... talked "soldiering" all the evening; and the next morning, when breakfast was nearly over, and Helen ran upstairs to inquire if they meant to lie on till dinner-time, they were still harping away on the same subject. The door was standing ajar, and ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... valuable. His strength as a critic lay in his artistic temperament and in the incisive intellect that enabled him to analyze the effects produced in his own creations and in those of others. His weaknesses were extravagance; a mania for harping on plagiarism; lack of spiritual insight, broad sympathies, and profound scholarship; and, in general, the narrow range of his genius, which has already been made sufficiently clear. His severity has been exaggerated, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... deemed necessary to retaliate upon the Confederate agents who fill Europe with their tale of woe, by retorting upon them a reference to the unchristian practices of their soldiery. There has been no appeal to the moral sympathies of the Old World, by harping upon the enormities of slavery, and by announcing a crusade against it. Foreign communities have been left to the ordinary modes of information, to the press and the accounts of American and European orators, for the events which have been passing. It has contented ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Under such a change, while the Quakers might still have an influence in the Legislature, the Crown would probably give the executive offices to Churchmen. They therefore labored hard to discredit the Quakers. They kept harping on the absurdity of a set of fanatics attempting to govern a colony without a militia and without administering oaths of office or using oaths in judicial proceedings. How could any one's life be safe from foreign enemies without soldiers, and what safeguard was there ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... this Battle of Buffalo stuff? That's easy. All the radio commentators have been harping on the horrors of World War III, and you couldn't have avoided hearing some of it. You just have an undigested chunk of H. V. Kaltenborn raising hell in ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... protecting element; and with the religious painters, it is a baptism with fire, an under-song of holy Litanies. Is it in sensuality that the fair flush opens upon the cheek of Francia's chanting angel,[8] until we think it comes, and fades, and returns, as his voice and his harping are louder or lower—or that the silver light rises upon wave after wave of his lifted hair; or that the burning of the blood is seen on the unclouded brows of the three angels of the Campo Santo, and of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... matter of that—and then it would be asked, Why did that there honest Deputy Lock, let her go, instead of putting her safe with the Parish? That's what a man of his character ought to have done, it would be argueyfied,' said the Deputy Lock, cunningly harping on the strong string of her terror; 'he ought to have handed her over safe to the Parish. That was to be expected of a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Classical. You will think me a perfectly Aristophanic Old Man when I tell you how many of Omar I could not help running into such bad Latin. I should not confide such follies but to you who won't think them so, and who will be pleased at least with my still harping on our old Studies. You would be sorry, too, to think that Omar breathes a sort of Consolation to me! Poor Fellow; I think of him, and Oliver Basselin, and Anacreon; lighter Shadows among the Shades, perhaps, over which Lucretius presides so grimly. Thursday, June 11. Your letter of April is come ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... one, and it is feared the present winter will be a hard time for many homes. Numbers talk of emigrating, and some have taken the first step, and will sell their furniture and leave a land where neither farmer nor labourer has any hope. One middle-aged cottage woman, married, kept harping upon the holiday they should have during the voyage to America. That seemed to her the great beauty of emigration, the great temptation. For ten days, while the voyage lasted, she would have nothing to do, but could rest! She had never ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... political quarrel. It is noteworthy that while many addresses to Lincoln were forwarded by him and many were printed in the annual publication of diplomatic correspondence, those that thus appeared dealt almost exclusively with emancipation. Yet Adams was also forwarding addresses and speeches harping on American democracy. A meeting at Edinburgh, February 19, found place, in its emancipation aspect in the United States documents[1365], but the burden of that meeting, democracy, did not. It was there proclaimed that the British press misrepresented conditions in America, "because the future ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... the desert, hail! That lovest the harping of the Gael, Through fair and fertile regions borne, Where never ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and tugged at his beard savagely. "Go on, go on, then. Don't keep harping on the ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... "What be 'ee harping on about him for?" asked George, suspiciously. "I knows what I knows about un, but that's no business ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the night soon pass?' yet, ere the close, all discords are reconciled, and at last, with assurance firmer for the experience of passing sorrows, loud as the voice of many waters and sweet as harpers harping with their harps, the joyful invocation peals forth again, and all ends, as it does in a Christian man's life, and as it does in this book, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Tarba, and then it made away over the plain of Ai, and through a lake. And Niall and his hound were drowned in following it through the lake. And the Dagda gave Corann a great tract of land for doing his harping ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... whole way, they dipped into large bowls and jars, and drank healths to one another, some seating themselves to it, others as they went along. All places resounded with music of pipes and flutes, with harping and singing, and women dancing as in the rites of Bacchus. For this disorderly, wandering march, besides the drinking part of it, was accompanied with all the sportiveness and insolence of bacchanals, as much as if the god himself had been there to countenance and lead the procession. As soon ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to the effect, that so long as they were theoretically perfect, practical peccadilloes—or even peccadaccios, if there is such a word, were of less importance. He was restless, as though wanting to approach a subject which he did not quite venture to touch upon, and kept harping (he did this about every third day) on the wretched lack of definition concerning the limits of vice and virtue, and the way in which half the vices wanted regulating rather than prohibiting. He dwelt also on the advantages of complete unreserve, and hinted that there were mysteries ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... constant attempt to return to Earth as highly suspicious in view of this recurrent sabotage of the expedition. Someone here is apparently either a complete madman or so determined to get back that he'll resort to anything to accomplish his end. And you have been harping on ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... with your wild train, Harping its shrillest, searching tone, Or wailing deep its ancient moan, And learn how impotent ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... him have the last word; did not seek to develop his views. But his contentious harping shadowed ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin |
