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More "Terse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he paced up and down his room, and gave way to his feelings. His best friends, who had been privileged to hear George's vocabulary when he was rather angry, admitted that the young man had a fluency of expression which was very more terse than proper. When the real significance of the despatch became apparent to him, George outdid himself in this particular line. Then he realized that, however consolatory such language is to a very angry man, it does little good in any practical way. He paced silently up and down ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me—a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating. My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative character, nor one on the recesses of whose mind and feelings even ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... last club was more congenial? M. de Talleyrand insists on conveying this letter for you. He has been on a visit here, and returns again on Wednesday. He is a man of admirable conversation, quick, terse, fin, and yet deep, to the extreme of those four words. They are a marvellous set for excess ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... 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 ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Allison, letting 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 ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... She preserved to posterity the profane learnings of Old Greece and Rome; copied it, multiplied it, and spread it. She recorded to after generations in plain, simple language, the ecclesiastical and civil events of the past, for it is from the terse chronicles of the monkish churchmen that we learn now the history of what happened then. Much as we may dislike the monastic system, the cold, heartless, gloomy ascetic atmosphere of the cloister, and ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... I called various officers and gave terse orders. Double crews on duty in the generator compartment, the ray projectors, the atomic bomb magazines, and release tubes. Observers at all observation posts, operators at the two smaller television instruments to comb the terrain and report instantly any object of interest. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... what seemed a secure place in poetry. Narrative, lyric and dramatic poetry had all opened their portals to him, and made his life and aims their theme. Side by side with the courtly verse romances, which were read in the bowers of highborn ladies, were the terse and popular ballads, which were chanted by minstrels, wandering from town to town and from village to village. Among the heroes of these ballads we find that "wight yeoman," Robin Hood, who wages war against mediaeval capitalism, as embodied in the persons of the abbot-landholders, ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... country parson like myself had in the smallest degree inveigled a young man of the highest prospects into a match—there is nothing of the matchmaker about me; but Maud is in a degree well-connected; and, as you know, she will be what the country people here call 'well-left'—a terse phrase, but expressive! I do not see that she would be in any way unworthy of the position—and I feel that her life here is a little secluded—I should like her to have a little richer material, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... splendid motive against all errors and vices that weaken or corrupt the body. It is a wholesome vent for the reckless courage that would otherwise go to disorder or riotous excess. It supplies new and advantageous topics for compositions and for terse, vigorous, and idiomatic theme-writing, is a great aid to discipline, teaches respect for deeds rather than words or promises, lays instructors under the necessity of being more interesting, that their work be not jejune or dull by contrast; again the business side of managing great contests has ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... to find such lines as those in the work of an unknown author. The verses gain strength as they advance, and the diction is terse and keen. This one short extract would suffice to show that the writer was a literary craftsman of ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... this speech, congratulated his visitor upon his terse and accurate methods of expression, detailed to him the careers in which such habits of terminology are valuable, and also those in which they ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... 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 ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... something that lay upon the polished deal. One of the party, none other than the Commissioner himself, had just finished speaking, and in silence now we stood about the gruesome object which had furnished him with the text of his very terse address. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... theological polemic of the liberal Catholic school. Of a very different tone is Rochefoucauld, whose Maxims, expressed in pithy language, seek to trace all virtuous action to self-seeking. The French fondness for epigram—for terse, paradoxical statement—is exemplified even in the best writers, as, for example, Blaise Pascal. La Bruyere (1645-1696), a genial philosopher, wrote in a most attractive style a work entitled The Characters of Our ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... to deliver my information quite so abruptly, but there was no help for it now, and I repeated the statement, giving him a terse account of my two encounters with ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... minority report, the bill allowing women to practice before the Supreme Court passed the Senate[47] and received the signature of President Hayes. Senators McDonald, Hoar and Sargent made the principal speeches. We give Mr. Hoar's speech in full because of its terse and vigorous presentation of the fact that congress is a body superior to the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... curtly. When her feelings were touched she had a way of growing curt and terse, sometimes ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... service at that time was under military law, although the operators received $125 a month. Here again Edison began to invent and improve on existing apparatus, with the result of having once more to "move on." The story may be told in his own terse language: "I was not the inventor of the auto repeater, but while in Memphis I worked on one. Learning that the chief operator, who was a protege of the superintendent, was trying in some way to put New York and New Orleans together for the first time ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... a terse though rapid review of the origin of the Mexican War and the connection of the administration and General Taylor with it, from which he deduced a strong appeal to the Whigs present to do their duty in the support of General Taylor, and closed with the warmest ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Fillmore Flagg, "of course we understand that you were joking in what you said just now: that you really admire the terse, clear, and wonderfully complete description of this strange rock by Miss Fenwick, quite as much as we do." Turning to Fern Fenwick, he continued: "I believe, Miss Fenwick, that I can throw some light on the puzzling questions you have so ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... next assist the pupils to discover the main thought of the lesson. In many cases the meaning will be very vague, and the pupils will have difficulty in formulating a terse and comprehensive statement of the subject of the poem. If the question is asked in a stereotyped form, such as "What is the main thought of the poem?" the enthusiasm of the pupils is often chilled. The teacher may, if it is a narrative poem, ask for the main points in the story, and may assist ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... one more drop that was to make Bertram's cup of joy brim to overflowing. It came just one month after the Exhibition in the shape of a terse dozen words from the doctor. Bertram fairly flew home that day. He had no consciousness of any means of locomotion. He thought he was going to tell his wife at once his great good news; but when he saw her, speech suddenly fled, and all that he could do was to draw her closely to him with ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... was at once a loving husband, a kind father, a good neighbor, an honest man 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 heart ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... it soon became bitterly inimical to President Davis and the whole administration. The invective in which it indulged was not so violent as in the past, but it was even more powerful and dangerous. Every department was lashed, in those brief, terse sentences which all will remember—sentences summing up volumes in a paragraph, condensing oceans of gall into a drop of ink. Under these mortal stabs, delivered coolly and deliberately, the authors of public abuses shrank, recoiled, and sought safety in silence. They writhed, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... enough, as owners of the ship. These gentlemen did not wish to retire at so early an hour, nor did they desire to spend the intervening time in darkness. They remonstrated with Thorn, and he told them, in the terse, blunt language of a seaman, to keep quiet or he would put them in irons. In case he attempted that, they threatened to resort to firearms for protection. Finally, however, the captain allowed them a little longer use of their lights. Thus was inaugurated ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... 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, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... never shown to Gale that daring side of her character which had been so suggestively defined in Belding's terse description and Ladd's encomiums, and in her own audacious speech and merry laugh and flashing eye of that never-to-be-forgotten first meeting. She might have been an entirely different girl. But Gale remembered; and when the ice had been somewhat broken between them, he was always trying ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... idea inspires the fine opening of Aiken's defense of Mrs. Surratt. It lacks the sinewy assertiveness of Adams's terse and almost defiant apology for doing his duty as a lawyer in spite of public opinion, but it justifies itself ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... villain. This is a terse version, with concrete cases, of Bolingbroke's vaguer generalities. "The laws of gravitation," he says, "must sometimes be suspended (if special Providence be admitted), and sometimes their effect must be precipitated. The tottering ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... Mayflower stock. His father, Dr. Peter Bryant of Cummington, was a sound country physician, with liberal preferences in theology, Federalist views in politics, and a library of seven hundred volumes, rich in poetry. The poet's mother records his birth in her diary in terse words which have the true Spartan tang: "Nov. 3, 1794. Stormy, wind N. E. Churned. Seven in the evening a son born." Two days later the November wind shifted. "Nov. 5, 1794. Clear, wind N. W. Made Austin a coat. Sat up all ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... anniversary of Sorosis in New York, I had half promised the persuasive president (Jennie June) that I would say something. The possibility of being called up for an after-dinner speech! Something brief, terse, sparkling, complimentary, satisfactory, and something to raise a laugh! O, you know this agony! I had nothing in particular to say; I wanted to be quiet and enjoy the treat. But between each course I tried hard, while apparently listening to my neighbour, ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... begun to pall on his fancy, when the ANTIQUITIES fell into his hands. It was like a draught of some generous southern wine, after a course of barley-water. Here was Latin worth reading; rich, sinewy, idiomatic, full of flavour, masculine. Flexible, yet terse. Latin after his own heart; ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... slapped Michaele upon the shoulder. "Brother," he said, "the moment has arrived. I have locked my enemy in my room. Come on, now is your opportunity." "March!" was the ruffian's terse reply. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... With this terse observation he turned his back on the boy, and after loitering a moment to make sure that he had nothing more to say, the lad slipped away, triumphantly bearing with him the coveted morsel of yellow pasteboard. That its import was noncommittal and even contained a tang of skepticism troubled ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... the Attorney-General to obey the Senate. This raised an issue which President Cleveland met by sending to the Senate his message of March 1, 1886, which has taken a high rank among American constitutional documents. It is strong in its logic, dignified in its tone, terse, direct, ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... Washington, D.C., June 25, 189—," he begins, and then briskly rattles away at the terse official paragraphs: "The following assignment of graduates of the United States Military Academy are hereby announced to take effect from June 14th." It begins with that highly scientific and enviable body, the Corps ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... man and his gentle wife constituted an influence, while they lived, which held the community together, and disseminated their principles more successfully than if he had been eloquent, instead of terse, and she an evangelist instead of a ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... as he turned sheet after sheet of the papers the man handed him, seeming to absorb the pages at a glance, while a running fire of quick questions, short answers, terse comments and clear-cut instructions ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... upon the sale of liquor to natives. For a number of years representations were made by the Chamber of Mines on behalf of the industry, by individuals and by public petitions, with the object of controlling the liquor trade and properly enforcing the laws which already existed. The following terse summary of the evils resulting from this sale of liquor is taken from the report of the Chamber of Mines for 1895. Unfortunately the remarks ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... fell to talking together; And nothing they said was didactic or terse; But everything spoken was told in unbroken And beautiful ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... was rapid and terse—so rapid as to create the impression that he bit off the ends of the longer words. He turned his fierce blue eyes upon the uniformed officer who stood at the end ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... and assured morality than one of your glib ink-spatterers who may know the inside of all the folios in the King's library without being the better qualified for the direction of a young gentleman's conduct; and to this letter Don Gervaso appended the terse postcript: "Your excellency is especially warned against according this or any other position of trust to the merry-andrew who calls himself the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the most interesting of British creatures. The Encyclopaedia Britannica is as terse and simple as ever about him. "Grasshoppers," it says, "are specially remarkable for their saltatory powers, due to the great development of the hind legs; and also for their stridulation, which is not always an attribute of the male only." To translate, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... under some such comprehensive name. Both had the same simple and blatant aim in life, an aim which governed all their actions and was the generator of most of their thoughts. This aim, expressed in their own terse language, was "to do themselves jolly well." Both had, so far, succeeded in their ambition. Both were, consequently, profoundly convinced of their own cleverness. Intellectual conceit—the conceit of the brain—is as nothing to physical conceit—the conceit of the body. Acute ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... bank heralded the appearance of the first scow, which was closely followed by the two others. When they had landed, Lapierre issued a few terse orders, and the scowmen leaped to his bidding. The overturned scow was righted and loaded, and the remains of the demolished whiskey-kegs burned. Lapierre himself assisted the three women to their places, and as Chloe seated herself near the bow, ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... This was Gregory's relieving thought as his eye ran over them, the women with powdered faces and extravagant clothes and the men with the oddest collars and boots and hair. "Shoddy Bohemians," was his terse definition of them; an inaccurate definition; for though, in the main, Bohemians, they were ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... question by some new term of opprobrium. Ayah's vocabulary was limited, even in the vernacular, and nothing would have induced her to return railing for railing to the children, however sorely they abused her. But Jan occasionally freed her mind, and at such times her speech was terse and incisive. Moreover, she quickly perceived her power over her niece in this respect, and traded on the baby's ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... a great success of his pictures of the rude life and primitive passions of the people of the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky. His sketches are short but graphic; he paints his scenes and his hill people in terse and simple phrases and makes them genuinely picturesque, giving us glimpses of life that are ...
— The Damsel and the Sage - A Woman's Whimsies • Elinor Glyn
... historical student. It begins with the downfall of Napoleon and is to come down to the present day. The first volume has been published; it exhibits thorough mastery of the materials, and great calmness and judgment in their use. The style is clear, terse and graphic. The author, who is a professor of the University of Heidelberg, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... not the first, nor, unless some sudden calamity undertake the place, are we likely to be the last, who have remarked how exceeding annoying the "boys" at the landing-place are. Guides they call themselves; sailors, in their excellently-terse and rotund way, call them by another name, which certainly does not commence with a "G." These wasps know just sufficient of English to make you disgusted with your mother tongue. The ordinary and generally conclusive argument of ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... and barren frontiers, to perform, I think I may say, impossibilities; that is, to protect from the cruel incursions of a crafty, savage enemy a line of inhabitants, of more than three hundred and fifty miles in extent, with a force inadequate to the task." This terse statement covers all that can be said of the next three years. It was a long struggle against a savage foe in front, and narrowness, jealousy, and stupidity behind; apparently without any chance of effecting ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Sheridan invaded the Shenandoah Valley, made famous by Jackson in the beginning of the war, and won a decisive victory at Winchester. Before the end of the month he had burned thousands of barns, slaughtered many thousands of cattle, and destroyed the newly harvested grain in all that rich region. His terse remark that a crow could not cross the Valley without taking with him his provisions received widespread applause, and showed what a desperate character the war had taken. Sherman, too, took up his ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... writer's entire production 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, higher no doubt than that he held of George Sand, to whom he accorded eminence ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... us, and explained why—at least in my belief—it is premature to say, "Now we have settled our Irish troubles and may deal in peace with questions that concern England."'] on the Irish Land Act. It states in the most terse and telling language precisely the views I have entertained for the last two years; and the conclusions it suggests are even more striking than those it expresses. The ministers of England, be they who they may, have a difficult task before them. The odd thing is that ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... in literature, Ten Brink says: "Wycliffe's literary importance lies in the fact that he extended the domain of English prose and enhanced its powers of expression. He accustomed it to terse reasoning, and perfected it as an instrument for expressing rigorous logical thought and argument; he brought it into the service of great ideas and questions of the day, and made it the medium of polemics and satire. And above all, he ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... made the biggest discovery of the year in this point of the woods," was Hyman's terse comment. "I reckon, too, the captain ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... throng press closely backward, as if awed by her mysterious presence, influenced insensibly by her terse sentence of command, each dusky face a reflex of its owner's perplexity. Drunken as most of them were, crazed with savage blood-lust and hours of remorseless torture of their victims, for the moment that sweet vision of womanly ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... terse, strong, and practical discourses on the religion of the home, the office, the work-shop, and the field. It tells how, amid the cares and annoyances of this workaday world, one may grow towards a noble ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... 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 or ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Twelve Tables consists not in any approach to symmetrical classification or even to terse clarity of expression, but in the publication of the method of procedure to be adopted, especially in civil cases, in the knowledge furnished to every Roman of high or low degree as to what were both his legal rights and his legal duties, in the political victory won by the ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous
... sentence with Biblical 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 Arabian eloquence, dull as a law document, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... colourless, and shrunken as though from long fasting, but the eyes glittered in their dull sockets like a pair of black diamonds. "Fanatic" was written large all over him. He was a monk released from his vows for the performance of special duties. His tidings were given slowly in short, terse sentences. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... signatures of famous 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, positive character. In somewhat marked ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... said the terse and epigrammatic Painter. "Made rings round them. Haven't you finished yet? Well, chuck ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... comparison is called a metaphor; it is a more terse form of expression than the simile. Take, for example, this sentence from Spenser's "Philosophy of Style": "As, in passing through the crystal, beams of white light are decomposed into the colors of the rainbow; so, in traversing the soul of ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... of the master-at-arms cannot better be concluded than by denominating him, in the vivid language of the Captain of the Fore-top, as "the two ends and middle of the thrice-laid strand of a bloody rascal," which was intended for a terse, well-knit, and all-comprehensive assertion, without omission or reservation. It was also asserted that, had Tophet itself been raked with a fine-tooth comb, such another ineffable villain could not by any possibility have ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... 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 a yarn with ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... 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 separate series of Senior's Journals, we have the best, latest, and wisest, of De Tocqueville's thoughts; none the less valuable, and to English readers all the more intelligible and impressive, that we have them in undress; put into the terse, pithy, concentrated style of summarized oral conversation by the recorder, instead of being elaborately tricked out in all the formal grace of French literary diction by one of the most fastidious of French writers. Senior, who habitually ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... together Ravenscroft's terse old tune On Sundays or on weekdays, In sharp or summer weather, At ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... When in tolerable spirits, he was an entertaining, though never a frank nor a communicative companion. His conversation then was lively, yet without wit, and sarcastic, though without bitterness. It abounded also in philosophical reflections and terse maxims, which always brought improvement, or, at the worst, allowed discussion. He was a man of even vast powers—of deep thought—of luxuriant, though dark imagination, and of great miscellaneous, though, perhaps, ill arranged erudition. He was fond of paradoxes in reasoning, and supported ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... named William Calk, who jotted down in his diary the events of each day.[10] It is a short record, but as amusing as it is instructive; for the writer's mind was evidently as vigorous as his language was terse and untrammelled. He was with a small party, who were going out as partners; and his journal is a faithful record of all things, great or small, that at the time impressed him. The opening entry contains the information that "Abram's dog's leg got broke by Drake's dog." The ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... rule that is true," assented the girl, "but I have a most important piece of information for you that wouldn't wait, and in half an hour from now you will be writing your to-morrow's leader, showing forth in terse and forcible language the many iniquities of the Board ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... Great; I am not now astonished that Carlyle calls him Great, neither that this work of his should have had such a sad effect upon him in producing it, when I see the number of volumes he must have had to wade through to produce such a clear terse set of utterances; and yet I do not feel the work as a book likely to do a reader of it the good that some of his other books will do. It is truly awful to read these battles after battles, lies after lies, ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... whisper, quick and low; The 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... grasp; while your ponderous Johnsonian phraseology distends and exaggerates, and never peels the chaff from the wheat. Johnson's periods act like a lever of the third kind,—the power applied always exceeds the weight raised; while the terse, laconic style of later writers is eminently a lever on the first principle, and gives the mind the utmost purchase on ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... a 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 ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
... delight in these tales, reading beneath the terse lines of Haney's slang something epic, detecting a perfect willingness to take any chance. The fact that his bravery led to nothing conventionally noble or moral did not detract from the inherent interest of the tale; on the contrary, the young fellow, ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... agitated broker, smilingly said: 'I see that you are disturbed by the noise made by your neighbors in the conduct of their affairs; pardon me if I leave with you an infallible recipe for peace in the midst of commotion: Hear only what you will to hear.' With this terse counsel he quietly bade the astonished listener adieu. After his visitor had departed, the nervous man felt unaccountably calm, and was constrained to meditate upon his friend's advice, and no sooner did he seek to put it into practical use than ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... his mind's eye a sharply etched picture of the rise and progress of a village magnate cleanly struck out in the two terse sentences, and his respect for his companion in the wide window-seat increased in just proportion. Verily, ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... was in Latin, written mostly by paid helpers from short English abstracts. He regarded Latin as the only language worthy of a great work; but the world neglected his Latin to seize upon his English,—marvelous English, terse, pithy, packed with thought, in an age that used endless circumlocutions. The first ten essays, published in 1597, were brief notebook jottings of Bacon's observations. Their success astonished the author, but not till fifteen years later ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... 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 ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... that there was something wrong, and his hearty greeting lapsed into terse questioning. Sundown pointed toward the ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... 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 of the hunter, albeit in the hour of chase he only hunted ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... word, he bespoke me a job with Flood the next time he met him, and a week later a letter from Flood reached me, terse and pointed, engaging my services as a trail hand for the coming summer. The outfit would pass near our home on its way to receive the cattle which were to make up the trail herd. Time and place were appointed ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... collision-mat in place, and the welding of it nearly completed. A few feathery trickles of water still seeped through on each side, but under his terse directions the pumps were soon draining it out. The weird figures of the crew in their sea-suits looked like creatures from another planet as they rapidly finished ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... 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 the walk to ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... Deerfoot, beside the rifle; powder-horn, and bullet pouch, doubtless owned by the moist fisherman. The latter looked at his property as if he could not believe any one would dare molest that; but Deerfoot settled the question in his terse fashion. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... nearly twice as strong, and the Monarchists were more than twice as strong in Marseilles as the Opportunist Republicans. The Boulangists threw there 13,123, and the Monarchists 14,445 votes. The strength of the Boulangists gives zest to a terse verdict upon the 'brav' general' which I heard delivered by a cocher in Marseilles on the eve of the famous January elections in Paris. Passing through one of the squares of the Mediterranean city, I observed two cochers engaged in an animated debate. One of them ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... and roast turkey go?" Dan called, finding himself confronted with the great slabs of cabbage; and the traveller, thinking it was supposed to be a joke, favoured us with another nervous grin and a terse "Thanks!" Then Dan reappeared, laden, and the man's eyes glistened as he forgot his first surprise in his second. "Real cabbage!" he cried. "Gosh! ain't tasted cabbage for five years"; and the Maluka telling him to "sit right down ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... very bitterly towards Ray, claiming that there was no officer in the regiment whom he had treated with such marked courtesy, and to this, when he heard it, Ray made response in his characteristic way. He would have no middleman. He went straight to Canker and said his say in few terse words: "You consider me unjustified in refusing to treat you as a friend, Captain Canker; now let us have no misunderstanding whatever. Your conduct towards my best friend, Captain Truscott, and towards—towards another good friend of mine at Sandy, was an outrage in my opinion, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... nominal duty was to explore the Continental newspapers for matter interesting to the American government, and to furnish the Secretary of State, when called upon, with opinions upon diplomatic questions. As he once stated it to me in his terse way, it was "to read the German newspapers, and keep Seward from making a fool of himself." The first part of this duty, he said, was easy enough, but the latter part rather difficult. He kept the office longer than I expected, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... fellow does when he knows he's really got to," was the young skipper's terse advice ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... to battle fearlessly, 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 ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... only by the swollen stream—the other hindrances are of Schiller's invention. The subject, like "The Ring of Polycrates," does not admit of that rich poetry of description with which our author usually adorns some single passage in his narratives. The poetic spirit is rather shown in the terse brevity with which picture after picture is not only sketched but finished—and in the great thought at the close. Still it is not one of Schiller's best ballads. His additions to the original story ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... would clearly not do to commence with the extravagant and absurd theories to which it was intended that the reader should gradually be led. The scientific portion of the work was therefore given first, and was made as grave and terse and unobjectionable as possible; and merely urged, by arguments drawn from science and history, that the blending of the different races of men resulted in a better progeny. As the work progressed, they continued to "pile on the agony," ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... had taken the action to mean that she loved him; he had never wavered from that belief since. He possessed every spare minute of her days, he kissed her whenever he could, and Joan never objected. Only oddly, at moments such as this, her mind would suddenly push forward the terse argument: ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... unrestricted right of amendment and 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 ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... into themselves it rules and governs. The joke of the inebriate man that when he had taken his potation he was quite another man and that then he felt it his duty to treat that other man, is literally true, a terse and faithful expression of a natural fact. The man or woman born and bred under the influence of alcohol is of the race of alcohol, and as distinct a person as any racial peculiarity can supply. The reason, the judgment, the temper, the senses are attuned by it. It is ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... while under the tutelage of Doctor Johnson that Jay began to acquire the ability to turn a terse sentence; and this gained him admittance into the world of New York letters, whose special guardians were Dickinson and ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Quarterly Journal of Science, Jan. 1806.] Hence it has been remarked of the Guanches that, after a century of fighting, nothing remained of them but their mummies. The sharp saying is rather terse ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... if 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 she likes ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... le sais.” These answers of mine, as given above, are not meant as specimens of mere French, but of that fine, terse, nervous, Continental English with which I and my compatriots make our way through Europe. This language, by-the-bye, is one possessing great force and energy, and is not without its literature, a literature of the very highest order. Where will you ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... appreciate modern knighthood; and the 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... chapter xv. runs thus: 'Concerning Snakes in Iceland' and the chapter itself thus: 'There are no snakes in Iceland.' Accordingly, were they to have the composition of this article, they would abbreviate it to the one terse sentence: 'Robert Southey had no humour.' Now, we have no inclination to claim for the Keswick bard any prodigious or pre-eminent powers of fun, or to give him place beside the rollicking jesters and genial merry-makers, whose humour gives English literature a distinctive character among ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... I'll go." Derek spoke with the terse command of subdued excitement, almost pushing Diane back, as she, too, attempted to go to Marion's assistance. She sank obediently into one of the great chairs, too dazed even for curiosity as to what was passing in the hail. Derek closed the door behind him, and, though confused sounds ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... It was hard to leave his brother at a moment when he must be more than himself—become general of an army, with a battle imminent; but he was under dire necessity, and forced himself to listen to and gather the import of the few terse orders and directions that Henry, breathless as he was, rendered clear and ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... present age. It is the language of Shakspeare and Bacon, without the measure of the one, or the involution of the other—that language which has ever been the vernacular of the people of this country, and to which our best writers are coming back—clear, terse, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... to her an open book; yet Prince caught the appreciative twinkle in her eye as she read the Rules of the Camp. These rules had been fathered by the Unquenchable Bettles at a time when his blood ran high, and were remarkable for the terse simplicity of ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... Leipsic, and have been republished since. One of his achievements is that he helped to create a public of Hebrew readers. It must be admitted that the great mass of the people were at first somewhat repelled by his realism and by his terse and accurate way of writing. Their taste was not sufficiently refined to appreciate these qualities, and their primitive sensibilities could not derive pleasure from a description of things as they actually are. This is the difficulty which ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... of the diseases cured. What, after all, if there was something in this stuff which she had never tried to understand, had always dismissed, according to her habit, with a single label? "Labels don't help. Labels get you nowhere." How often the children had told her that, finding her terse terminology that of a shallow mind, endowed with inadequate machinery for acquiring and retaining knowledge, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... shall ever remember is the one who closed a rambling speech with the following terse remarks: "You have all heard of the speaker, you have seen his name in our papers; he has a national reputation. I will now call upon him ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... thousand delicate shades of expression, and never pronounced an opinion without all sorts of reservations. These conversational habits, natural to a finely trained mind, used greatly to irritate the dry, terse old aristocrat, who was never in the least disarmed by the moderation of an adversary—quite the contrary! I always foresaw one danger. That danger was Bonaparte. My father had not himself retained an particular affection for his memory; but, having worked under his direction, ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... waste of adjectives," was Jerry's terse reception of this extravagant tribute to herself. "Here comes the train." Despite her lack of sentiment, she flashed Helen ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... earn?' asked Ancrum. His manner was a curious mixture of melancholy gentleness and of that terse sharpness in practical things which the south country resents and the north country takes ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unsuited to the times. The book is no romance, but a domestic history compiled from tradition about two hundred years after the events which it narrates had taken place. Of its style, which is wonderfully terse, the following translated account of Nial and his family will ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... post of Master Shipwright became almost hereditary, is reported to have been glad to gather hints from him. His communications with the Prince about the ship drew his thoughts back to maritime questions. Beside a letter, admirably terse and critical, to Prince Henry, he composed a treatise minutely practical, called a Discourse of the Invention of Ships, and also Observations concerning the Royal Navy and Sea Service. Both probably were intended for parts of an elaborate work on ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... as I am able to understand the subject, the tendency of all Japanese poetry is to terse expression. Were it not well therefore to consider at least the possible result of a totally opposite tendency,—expansion of fancy, luxuriance of expression? Terseness of expression, pithiness, condensation, ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... questioner an early edition of an evening paper, and with a terse "Good morning," left ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... syndicated in over two hundred newspapers, and is believed to have the largest audience of any living writer. Among his books are "Rhymes of the Range," "Uncle Walt," "Walt Mason's Business Prose Poems," "Rippling Rhymes," "Horse Sense," "Terse Verse," and "Walt Mason, His Book." Lions and Ants; The Has-Beens; ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... represented, on various occasions during his long career, to have been so much moved by some event, or speech, or action, that he gave vent, as it were, to his pent-up feelings in a short, ecstatic utterance, couched, for the most part, in one or two lines of poetry. These outbursts, very terse and enigmatic, are charged with religious emotion, and turn often on some subtle point of Arahatship, that is, of the Buddhist ideal of life. The original text has been published by the P[a]li Text Society. The little ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... historian ruthlessly dismisses the story that the Pole presented himself to Washington with the one request that he might fight for American independence, and that in reply to Washington's query, "What can I do for you?" his terse reply was, "Try me." As a matter of fact he applied to the Board of War, and his first employment was in the old Quaker city of Philadelphia where, in company with another foreign engineer, a Frenchman, he was put to work fortifying the town against ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... 29 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 Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... But all that I know of you indicates a predominance of reflective intellect—a habit of mind quite foreign from the lyrical. I think it may be very good practice to compose in verse, as it exercises you in terse and rhythmical expression; but I question whether your vocation lies ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... of that terse announcement which she had read, the obituary notice of the notorious thief known in Paris as "The American"—the man whom she loved and who was ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... makers of new knowledge were more willing to expound their discoveries in ways that could be "understanded of the people." No one objects very much to technicalities in a game or on board a yacht, and they are clearly necessary for terse and precise scientific description. It is certain, however, that they can be reduced to a minimum without sacrificing accuracy, when the object in view is to explain "the gist of the matter." So this ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... a mass of warm world-wide testimonials, by able critics, authors, professors, editors, magazines, reviews, governors of states, and rulers of nations. "Unanswerable;" "an absolute demonstration;" "masterful;" "true to title;" "clear and convincing;" "scholarly and logical;" "timely;" "terse;" "interesting;" "best I ever read;" "costs $1, worth $5;" "fully ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... himself to himself, just to refute the feeling that he was not really here, not really alive. But his mind was too orderly, and the description would come out so cold and terse—"Algernon James Weaver (1942- ) historian, civic leader, poet, teacher, philosopher. Author of Development of the School System in Schenectady and Scoharie Counties, New York (pamphlet, 1975); ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... that moment comes, through the medium of an extraordinarily terse and unspoiled language, a language that has not lost its earthy freshness by mauling and softening at the hands of literary generations, what a lilting crystal-bright vision of things. It is as if the air of the Mediterranean itself, thin, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... publication, so-called because Col. Hunter gets right down to "brass tacks" in advancing pointed optimisms, level-headed truths, driven-home common sense. It is a book of vital paragraphs and concrete ideas dealing with the life issues of every day. A suggestive, terse guide to right thinking along the highway of humor ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... private buffoon is a light-hearted loon, If you listen to popular rumour; From morning to night he's so joyous and bright, And he bubbles with wit and good humour! He's so quaint and so terse, both in prose and in verse; Yet though people forgive his transgression, There are one or two rules that all Family Fools Must observe, if they love their profession. There are one or two rules, Half-a-dozen, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the throne), Archie of Ca'field, Hobbie Noble, Dickie of Dryhope, the Laird's Jock, John o' the Side, and other 'rank reivers,' whose title to the gallows is summed up in Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington's terse verse on the Liddesdale thieves; and their match in spulzying and fighting was to be found on the other side of ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... he was, wretched, desperately endangered there under the car the Senior Surgeon could almost have grinned at the girl's terse, unconscious mimicry of his ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... which aroused intense indignation in Germany. Much was made of the fact that Heine accepted an annual pension of 4,800 francs from the government of Louis Philippe. On the other hand, Heine made the terse observation that whenever he was treated with rude discourtesy he could be sure that he had met a German. In Paris, the poet was captivated by the charm of young Matilde Mirat, his "lotos flower," as ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... writes out of the fullness of his heart, and with abundant love and charity. His works make the world wiser, happier, and better. These "Thoughts and Theories" are couched in polished English, in sentences terse and full of meaning; few living writers command ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... Fitts to take a few picked men with him up into the woods to bring down the captive, there were mutterings but no move on the part of the crowd either to anticipate or to follow the detachment. A few terse words to Buck Chizler sent that active young man after Fitts, the bearer of instructions. Sancho Mendez was to be brought in alive. His guards were not to be given a chance to kill him when they realized that the scheme had failed and he would be ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... gentleness, and Bertha's quick eyes detected his intellect. He stood an excellent examination from her and Miss Fennimore upon the worn channel of Niagara, which had so often been used as a knockdown argument against Miss Charlecote's cosmogony; and his bright terse powers of description gave them, as they agreed, a better idea of his woods than any ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... escape from this wide- spread disease, with more or less success. Haller and Ramler were inclined to compression by nature: Lessing and Wieland were led to it by reflection. The former became by degrees quite epigrammatical in his poems, terse in "Minna," laconic in "Emilia Galotti,"—it was not till afterwards that he returned to that serene /naivete/ which becomes him so well in "Nathan." "Wieland, who had been occasionally prolix in "Agathon," "Don Sylvio," and the "Comic Tales," becomes condensed and precise to a ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... an hour we slipped and stumbled through the endless cutting. At one spot the parapet, soaked by water, had caved in. In the breach thus made had been planted a neatly lettered sign. It was terse and to the point: "The Hun sees you here. Go away." And we did. The trench had gradually been growing narrower and shallower and more tortuous until we were walking half doubled over so as not to show our ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... old profession, and never having troubled herself to read anything but a libretto and the pious books commended to her by her confessor, the artless babble of her talk every now and then flashed out with a quaint humour, lighting up terse fragments of the old Italian wisdom which had mysteriously embedded themselves in ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... writer was Lactantius, to whom has been attributed that poem of the Phoenix, which most likely served as pattern to the Anglo-Saxon poet.[4] It consists of 170 lines, hexameters and pentameters; terse, poetical, classical. This old Oriental fable, as told by Ovid, was short and simple: "There is a bird that restores and reproduces itself; the Assyrians call it Phoenix. It feeds on no common food, but on the choicest of gums and spices; and after a life of secular length, it builds in ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... Athanasius' curse, Which doth your true believer so much please: I doubt if any now could make it worse O'er his worst enemy when at his knees, 'Tis so sententious, positive, and terse, And decorates the book of Common Prayer, As doth a rainbow the just ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... township with its coterie of highly-paid, useless officials, who for six years past have battened on the public revenues. It was the misfortune of a representative of this journal to be obliged to spend two weeks in Port Denison not long since, and his terse description of the spot and its inhabitants deserves a place in the guide book of the colony which has yet to be written. Bowen is a delightfully laid-out town on the shores of Port Denison. It is inhabited by some six hundred people—mostly official loafers and spongers of ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... Norman chroniclers describe the preparations of William on his landing with a graphic vigor, which would be wholly lost by transfusing their racy Norman couplets and terse Latin prose into the current style of modern history. It is best to follow them closely, though at the expense of much quaintness and occasional uncouthness of expression. They tell us how Duke William's own ship was the first of the Norman fleet. It was called the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... feeling so sick and miserable and down-hearted. He opened the yellow paper slowly, and then sprang up with a cry that made the boy stop in the hall and listen. Roderick stood in the middle of the room reading the terse message again and again: ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... student. It begins with the downfall of Napoleon and is to come down to the present day. The first volume has been published; it exhibits thorough mastery of the materials, and great calmness and judgment in their use. The style is clear, terse and graphic. The author, who is a professor of the University of Heidelberg, is a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... The terse directness, a part of the girl's nature and training, was embarrassing to the man of ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... summa felicitate componitur quod ab aliis sub longa deliberatione componitur.' 'Ab aliis' probably refers to Cassiodorus himself. The contrast between his elaborate and diffuse rhetoric, and the few, terse, soon-moulded sentences of his ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... chord was at the tightest, just as the feathers quivered, and the barb thrilled, about to leap from the terse string, the tall form of the soldier sprang up into the clear moonlight from the underwood, and crying "Hold! hold!" mastered her bowhand, with the speed of light, and dragged ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... pre-judged: that which he claimed, was the task of a philosopher, scanning facts patent to every eye—even more striking when first seen. His conclusions he attributed to the inevitable process by which facts are generalised, and demonstrate systems. His style, when deliberate, is terse and explicit: his ideas he expressed with the utmost freedom; or, as it then seemed, audacity. The colonists he treated as an operator, who indeed pities the sufferings of his patient, but disregards a natural outcry, while expounding ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... for 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 to ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... very last charm. His skin was pink, albeit the years of Arizona sun had heightened it to a dangerous red; his mustache was yellow and ideally military; while his pure Virginia accent, fired in terse and jerky form at friend and enemy alike, relieved his natural force of character by a shade of humor. He was thumped and bucked and pounded into what was in the seventies considered a proper frontier soldier, for in those days the nursery idea had not been lugged into the army. ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... occurs in Ovid. Query whether it is not a thought naturally presenting itself to the mind, reflected by memory, confirmed by experience, and which some Mimic author has made proverbial by his terse, gnomic form of expression. ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... Will 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
... policeman, one of the permanent garrison of the quarter, who seeing one of her Majesty's carriages in trouble thought he must interfere. "Hilloa," he said, "what's all this?" And the cabman, who was a good fellow though in too much trouble to aid Sybil, explained in the terse and picturesque language of Cockaigne, doing full justice to his ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Essays of "Elia," [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, his fancies (his ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... the one for the defence—Dr. Carson. I have before me an authentic "Report of the Trial," "A Vindication of their Opinions," published by those witnesses, and Dr. Carson's "Remarks" on that publication, in which he exposes their shortcomings with a master's hand, in a style as terse as it is bold, and as elegant as it is severe; never were the weapons of irony, satire, and invective more effectively used; his impeachment is as withering as his victory at the trial was complete. The authors of the "Vindications" had ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... while Mrs. Verrier, in a 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 ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the office, and noticing the agitated broker, smilingly said: 'I see that you are disturbed by the noise made by your neighbors in the conduct of their affairs; pardon me if I leave with you an infallible recipe for peace in the midst of commotion: Hear only what you will to hear.' With this terse counsel he quietly bade the astonished listener adieu. After his visitor had departed, the nervous man felt unaccountably calm, and was constrained to meditate upon his friend's advice, and no sooner did he seek to ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... no doubt but that Secretary Stanton made many critics by his brusque manner. One did not need to waste words with him, but if a communication was couched in terse language it pleased him. He disliked a cringing interviewer. I did not dislike to have business with him, nor have I ever ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... trio! we 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 ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... noble, and magnificent vein of eloquence." And 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 ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... play, nonetheless, has an obvious right to existence, as much as the short story, and there are plentiful proofs that it can be as terse, vivid, and significant. Most novelists don't tack on a short story at the end of their books for full measure, but issue their contes either in collections or in the pages of the magazines. What similar chances are there, or can there ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... amazement, as he read chapter after chapter, to find his poverty transmuted into riches by the cunning of the pen, and the devotion of the unknown great men, his friends of the brotherhood. Dialogue, closely packed, nervous, pregnant, terse, and full of the spirit of the age, replaced his conversations, which seemed poor and pointless prattle in comparison. His characters, a little uncertain in the drawing, now stood out in vigorous contrast of color and relief; physiological observations, due no doubt to Horace Bianchon, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... yet 'so as to keep the substance and language of discourse?' How far did he Johnsonize the form or matter? The remark by Burke to Mackintosh, that Johnson was greater in Boswell's books than in his own, the absence of the terse and artistic touch to the sayings of the Rambler in the pages of Hawkins, Thrale, Murphy and others, suggest inevitably that they have been touched up by their reporter. The Boswelliana supplies here some slight confirmation of this, for ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... daring of the youth. Within the canoe lay the blanket of Deerfoot, beside the rifle; powder-horn, and bullet pouch, doubtless owned by the moist fisherman. The latter looked at his property as if he could not believe any one would dare molest that; but Deerfoot settled the question in his terse fashion. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... added, much rejected, and some 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 by a man ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the case for the crown, and Mr. Crean, counsel for Mr. Lalor, rose to address the jury on behalf of his client. His speech was argumentative, terse, forcible, and eloquent; and seemed to please and astonish not only the auditors but the judges themselves, who evidently had not looked for so much ability and vigour in the young advocate before them. Although the speeches of professional advocates ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... the whole integer of life, constituted of the many individual lives, is shattered. If everything else written by Shelley were to perish, and only this consummate image to remain—so vast in purport, so terse in form—he would still rank as a poet of ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... 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 ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... the biggest audience of the year, and the programme took on a special interest from the fact that it included Mrs. Bryan's debut as a speaker for suffrage. She is a tall and attractive woman with an extremely pleasant voice, and she made an admirable speech—clear, terse, and much to the point, putting herself on record as a strong supporter of the woman-suffrage movement. There was also an amusing aftermath of this occasion, which Secretary Bryan himself confided to me several ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... situation of N.C.Os. not being able to describe the movements required. This was brought about by the promotion on the Peninsula of men who fulfilled the requirements there and got things done by giving orders in a few terse phrases of their own coining, but had never handled a section on parade or seen inside the cover of a text-book. The position was aggravated by many of the officers being "rusty" themselves and not having books of reference handy. However, the difficulty was got over by forming ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... is the variety of the prayers, of which we have already had several proofs. There are still two prayers to be considered in the second Epistle, very terse petitions, yet full of suggestiveness and importance. It will be convenient to consider these two together, not only because of their brevity, but also because of ...
— The Prayers of St. Paul • W. H. Griffith Thomas
... angry at my, writing it— But I've been used, since childhood's happy day, When I have thought of something, to inditing it; I seldom think of things; and, by the way, Although this meter may not be exciting, it Enables one to be extremely terse, Which is not what ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... at her 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, ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... depression as one of the diseases cured. What, after all, if there was something in this stuff which she had never tried to understand, had always dismissed, according to her habit, with a single label? "Labels don't help. Labels get you nowhere." How often the children had told her that, finding her terse terminology that of a shallow mind, endowed with inadequate machinery for acquiring and retaining knowledge, as ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... and farm do not develop in a straightforward, matter-of-fact way, why should I write about them after the formal and terse fashion of a manual or scientific treatise? The most productive varieties of fruit blossom and have some foliage which may not be very beautiful, any more than the departures from practical prose in this book are interesting; but, as a leafless ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... Michaele upon the shoulder. "Brother," he said, "the moment has arrived. I have locked my enemy in my room. Come on, now is your opportunity." "March!" was the ruffian's terse reply. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... ago, at an anniversary of Sorosis in New York, I had half promised the persuasive president (Jennie June) that I would say something. The possibility of being called up for an after-dinner speech! Something brief, terse, sparkling, complimentary, satisfactory, and something to raise a laugh! O, you know this agony! I had nothing in particular to say; I wanted to be quiet and enjoy the treat. But between each course I tried hard, while apparently ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... him 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 sum of money, build it. ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... 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 hulled the ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... re-election in 1840, preferring to study law and prepare for his future. "Honest Abe" he has been called, and throughout Illinois that characteristic was the prominent one known of him. From this time his rise was rapid. Sent to the Congress of the nation, he seldom spoke, but when he did his terse though simple expression always won him a hearing. His simplicity and frankness was deceptive to the political leaders, and from its very fearlessness ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... innocent merchants in London and Glasgow was to argue as if two wrongs could make a right. The strong sense of John Adams struck at once to the root of the matter. He declared "he had no notion of cheating anybody. The questions of paying debts and compensating Tories were two." This terse statement carried the day, and it was finally decided that all private debts on either side, whether incurred before or after 1775, remained still binding, and must be discharged at their full value in ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... of terse, strong, and practical discourses on the religion of the home, the office, the work-shop, and the field. It tells how, amid the cares and annoyances of this workaday world, one may grow towards a noble and peaceful life. It will be an invaluable companion, an indispensable "guide, philosopher, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... pasty, colourless, and shrunken as though from long fasting, but the eyes glittered in their dull sockets like a pair of black diamonds. "Fanatic" was written large all over him. He was a monk released from his vows for the performance of special duties. His tidings were given slowly in short, terse sentences. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... else. The chapel was not well lighted, but the pulpit lamps shone upon him. He had a smooth, strong face; his complexion was healthy and weather-beaten; his dark eyes flashed brightly under bushy brows. His manner was calm; his style, even in prayer, was that of keen, terse argument; he spoke and behaved like a man who, having spent the emotional side of his nature in some private gust of passionate prayer, had come forth nerved to cool ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... had just begun to pall on his fancy, when the ANTIQUITIES fell into his hands. It was like a draught of some generous southern wine, after a course of barley-water. Here was Latin worth reading; rich, sinewy, idiomatic, full of flavour, masculine. Flexible, yet terse. Latin after his own heart; a cry ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... come to you for my seat," was her terse statement, as she paused squarely before Miss ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Cleland, speaking of Lamarck as a scientific observer, "were width of scope, fertility of ideas, and a preeminent faculty of precise description, arising not only from a singularly terse style, but from a clear insight into both the distinctive features and the resemblance of ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... State Department created for the occasion. His nominal duty was to explore the Continental newspapers for matter interesting to the American government, and to furnish the Secretary of State, when called upon, with opinions upon diplomatic questions. As he once stated it to me in his terse way, it was "to read the German newspapers, and keep Seward from making a fool of himself." The first part of this duty, he said, was easy enough, but the latter part rather difficult. He kept the office longer than I expected, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... was Mr Roebuck's reply, which was one of the most apt, terse, and telling I well remember, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... observational methods, but it cannot replace observation in field or laboratory; it offers certain exercises, but space cannot be taken to make it a laboratory manual as well as a book for study; it explains many problems, but its statements are necessarily more terse than the illustrative descriptions that a good and experienced teacher should supply. Frequent use is made of induction and inference in order that the student may come to see how reasonable a science is geology, and that ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... consistently insulted each other on all possible occasions. Now, however, there was a certain purposeful ring in Benton's voice which told the other this was quite different from the time-honored affectation of slander. Consequently his demand for further enlightenment came with terse directness. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Ireland in the Nineteenth Century." For what he admits to be the ruinous results of British Government in the past, the author in the last few pages of a lengthy volume has no better cure to suggest than a continuance of British government, and he defends this course by a terse enumeration of the very phenomena which in Durham's opinion rendered the grant of Home Rule to Canada imperative, concluding with a paragraph which, with the substitution of "Canada" for "Ireland," constitutes an admirably ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... a keen observer, possessed an excellent but not lofty imagination, and never asserted a philosophy of life. His writings are all interesting, terse, precise, and truthful, but lack the glow that comes with a sympathetic and spiritual outlook on life. Zola says of him: ".... a Latin of good, clear, solid head, a maker of beautiful sentences shining like gold...." He chooses a single incident, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... for the next foe to present himself. But none came; only Manners and Nicholls now appeared upon the scene with their rifles in their hands, and eager questions in their eyes and on their lips for an explanation of the sudden and tragic turn of affairs. To them in a few terse words Henderson stated what had already taken place, adding an expression of his apprehension that Gaunt and little Percy had fallen into the hands of the enemy, and finally directing the two men to advance with caution as far as possible with the view of ascertaining the whereabouts ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... after reading Athanasius' curse, Which doth your true believer so much please: I doubt if any now could make it worse O'er his worst enemy when at his knees, 'Tis so sententious, positive, and terse, And decorates the book of Common Prayer, As doth a ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... kind 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... vici—(Latin) Julius Caesar's terse message to the Senate announcing his victory over King Pharnaces II of Pontus in 47 B.C.: "I came, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... attitude—which is entirely gratuitous—you will compel him to assume it. My sentiment as regards brotherly love is brief and terse, 'Let George do it!'" Mr. Horton was complacently consuming his breakfast with an excellent appetite, to which the prospect of six weeks among Bermuda lilies with Adrienne lent ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me—a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... had the advantage of my brother. Into his life a single woman had come from the real world. She was different from the women of our valley. I had known that the moment our eyes met, and by the way Tim smoked now, and by the tone of his terse inquiry, I knew that he had met a woman who had said "Fair Sir" to him, and I feared for him. It was disturbing. I felt a twinge of jealousy, but whether for the tall, strong young fellow before me, to whom I had been all, or for the fair-faced girl, I ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... read them day and night! "Well! but our fathers Plautus lov'd to praise, Admir'd his humour, and approv'd his lays." Yes; they saw both with a too partial eye, Fond e'en to folly sure, if you and I Know ribaldry from humour, chaste and terse, Or can but scan, and ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... either of the other two. Of the stories of the old masters, "Mona Lisa's Picture," "The Duke's Commission" and "Woman's Art" are perhaps the best, and the last poem especially is very spirited and terse. Mrs. Preston's style has the rare merit in these days of uniting conciseness and directness to grace and beauty of expression. Her greatest failing is a lack of the sense of climax. There are several of these poems, like the two on the Venerable Bede ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... was given in a number of sharp, terse, letters, sent to the Liberator from various places where the sisters stopped while lecturing. A few passages will convey some idea of the spirit and style of these letters, thirteen in number. In the latter part of the second ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... forbearing is the All-Loving One, that He should, as it were, with such extreme affection show us a way by which to travel through darkness unto light. To those who cannot see this perfection of goodness depicted in Christ's own words, I would say in the terse ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... of Bacon and of Hobbes of Malmesbury; and I have brought with me that famous work which is now so little known, greatly as it deserves to be studied, "The Leviathan," in order that I may put to you in the wonderfully terse and clear language of Thomas Hobbes, what was his view of the matter. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... John, who took a wide and intelligent interest in all the passing affairs of the day, and from his position was able to learn much of what went on in the world, sat beside his uncle at the hastily-spread board, and told all the leading facts of the brief and triumphant campaign in terse ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... from the agitating spectacle, and his troubled glance meeting that of Mr. Sharpe, seemed to ask why proceedings, which could only have one termination, were delayed. He had not long to wait. The jury were sworn, and Mr. Gurney rose to address them for the crown. Clear, terse, logical, powerful without the slightest pretence to what is called eloquence, his speech produced a tremendous impression upon all who heard it; and few persons mentally withheld their assent to his assertion, as he concluded what was evidently a painful task, "that should he produce ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... one-act play appearing in this volume, is the generally recognized masterpiece of all the short one-act plays. The dialogue is so concentrated that it seems as if not one line could be cut without the whole structure falling to pieces, and in these terse speeches a genius is revealed that, with something of the divine touch, sounds the depths of the human heart and reveals its inmost thoughts. "Pariah" was published in 1890 and "Facing Death" ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... tree (xviii.) and the majestic, transcendent, invisible Being at whose word the worlds are born (i.). The style, too, differs as the theological conceptions do: it is impossible not to feel the difference between the diffuse, precise, and formal style of ix. 1-17, and the terse, pictorial and poetic manner of the immediately succeeding section, ix. 18-27. Further, different accounts are given of the origin of particular names or facts: Beersheba is connected, e.g. with a treaty made, in one case, ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... to a stumpy BB pencil; you get less polish and broader effects, but you are still doing good literature. Sometimes the work is close—Mr. George Meredith, for instance, is suspected of a soft pencil—and always it is blunter than quill work and more terse. With a hard pencil no man can write anything but a graceless style—a kind of east wind air it gives—and smile you cannot. So that it is often used for serious ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... still more graphic and terse in statement, which has the unusual merit of painting both confessor and penitent ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... a short scrutiny declared the path practicable. Garey believed he could easily go up; and Rube in his terse way said, that his "jeints wa'nt so stiff yit;" only a month ago he had "clomd a wuss-lukin ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... until I recounted the story, and then only in the vaguest way. Yet when my friend the former chief-justice kindly took down from his shelves and beat free of dust the right volume of supreme court decisions, there was the terse, cold record, No. 5623. I went to the old newspaper files under the roof of the city hall, and had the pleasure speedily to find, under the dates of 1818 and 1844, such passing allusions to the strange facts of which I was ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... was 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 at the town library. Dan ceased, after a time, to follow the narrative ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... 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 ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... quite different lips) "I want you," might incapacitate him from prosecuting his enterprise (he expressed this idea in more homely idiom—less Latinized was his language, metaphorical indeed, yet terse); finally he had that healthy distrust of his accomplices which is essential to success in a career of crime; he thought that Sergeant Hooper might not deliver ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... ancient and modern, who have held different views from those of Mr. Mahaffy being sharply reprehended—and the final sections of some of the chapters are devoted to bibliography, including modern imitations and translations. Although Mr. Mahaffy is never otherwise than terse—or, more properly speaking, curt—he sometimes condescends to repetition. Thus he tells us in three or four different places that Sophocles and Thucydides "play at hide-and-seek with the reader." These two authors, thus happily classed together, represent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... oratory, it seemed quite proper that every one else should also be elated. So he thought nothing of it and hurried Mead out to the waiting crowd, where everybody, Democrats and Republicans alike, gathered about him and shook hands and made terse, complimentary remarks, until Jim Halliday presently took him away to his ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... her what had happened before I entered her room, not omitting a terse word as to the character of the men I ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... American, then edited by Charles King, signing his articles R. M. T. H.—Regular Member Third House. Dr. Bacon wielded a powerful pen, and when he chose so to do could condense a column of denunciation, satire, and sarcasm in to a single paragraph. He was a fine scholar, fearless censor, and terse writer, giving his many readers a clear idea of what was transpiring ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... before he was allowed to talk to his own satisfaction. Then, one afternoon in her rest hour, Alice Mellen let him have his way and, seated by his cot, she answered tersely to a raking fire of terse questions. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... 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 or modified, it ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... helping those he loved, but only twice had any word come back from that far city where he had left them. In answer to the letter which the doctor had translated to them, there had come a brief laborious epistle, terse and to the point, written with a stub of pencil on the corner of a piece of wrapping paper, and addressed by a kindly clerk at the post office where Buck bought the stamped envelope. It was the same clerk who usually paid to the urchin his ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... two (leaving many points of interest untouched) upon the manner in which Mrs. Fremont has treated her subject. It is novel, but not ineffective. Zagonyi tells much of the story in his own words; and we are sure that it loses nothing of vividness from his terse and vigorous, though not always strictly grammatical language. "Zagonyi's English," says some one who has heard it, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... author deals with the facts of science he interests and instructs, but when he speculates he only amuses or perplexes, without advancing knowledge. His terse and luminous description of the astral firmament deeply impresses with the might and the magnitude of the vast design; but when he attempts to account for the elimination of suns and worlds, their formation and arrangement, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... mile and a half from Minstead church, is the spot where William Rufus was killed by that mysterious arrow which by accident or design, relieved England of a tyrannical and wicked king. The "Rufus Stone," as the iron memorial is called, with its terse and non-committal inscription was placed here by a former Lord de la Warr. The body was conveyed to Winchester in the cart of a charcoal-burner named Purkiss, and descendants of this man, still following his occupation, were living within bow-shot ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... with the first signs of the reaction against the influence of France, agreeably portraying the awakening of Swiss consciousness, and the gradual development of the enlightened patriotism that impelled Swiss writers to lay aside mere courtly elegance of diction for their own more terse and vigorous idiom. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... of Holland. It was decreed by the States-General in A.D. 1695. But though no other nation has ever had any written whaling law, yet the American fishermen have been their own legislators and lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's Business. Yes; these laws might be engraven on a Queen Anne's forthing, or the barb of a harpoon, and worn ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... philosopher of statesmen, and his style accords with this description. "His eloquence was part of his intellectual character. It was plain, strong, terse, condensed, concise; sometimes impassioned, still always severe. Rejecting ornament, not often seeking far for illustration, his power consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the closeness of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... 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 it was ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... the bank heralded the appearance of the first scow, which was closely followed by the two others. When they had landed, Lapierre issued a few terse orders, and the scowmen leaped to his bidding. The overturned scow was righted and loaded, and the remains of the demolished whiskey-kegs burned. Lapierre himself assisted the three women to their places, and as Chloe seated herself near the bow, ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... an air of probability about this terse statement of the case, that it has satisfied the insatiable curiosity of infantile minds for long ages. Little girls never doubt it, and little boys never contradict it. If Paterfamilias has any thoughts upon the subject, he probably thinks this expenditure ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... his ideas were terse and decided. He was strongly attached to the present, heedless of the future, and the socialists troubled him little. Without caring whether the sun and capital should be extinguished some day, he enjoyed them. According ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... however trivial or ordinary it may seem to you, must be slighted. The preservation of the balance of the story is not wholly a matter of the number of words involved: often a page of idle chatter by the characters makes less impression on the reader than a single terse direct sentence by the author himself; but in general the practice is to value the various parts of the story by the word space accorded them. This rule will not, however, hold good in the case of the climax, which is estimated both by its position and by the manner in which it is worked ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... remarked Smith, casting an aggrieved look at the last speaker, "is lamentably terse. But let us join Mrs. Mackintosh. She will support my remarks, not perhaps ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... fearlessly, 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 ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... far the other way? Could there be truth in our Oriental friend's terse commentary? The eternal feminine! The Western world has been handed over to her. The stranger from Mars or Jupiter would describe us as a hive of women, the sober-clad male being retained apparently ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... "Why are we New Englanders so unpopular?" Why those phrases, always kept in stock by provincial orators and editors, "the mean Yankees," "the stingy Yankees," "the close-fisted Yankees," "the tin-peddling Yankees," and, above all, the terse and condensed collocation, "those d——d—those blessed Yankees," the blessing being comprised between two d's, as though conferred by a benevolent doctor of divinity. [Laughter.] I remember in the olden time, in the years beyond the flood, when the Presidential office ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... like "The Ring of Polycrates," does not admit of that rich poetry of description with which our author usually adorns some single passage in his narratives. The poetic spirit is rather shown in the terse brevity with which picture after picture is not only sketched but finished—and in the great thought at the close. Still it is not one of Schiller's best ballads. His additions to the original story are not happy. The incident of the robbers is commonplace ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... too should have followed the example of the old Chippeway chief, not because of any wonders I have looked upon; but rather because of that well-known prejudice against travellers tales, and of that terribly terse adjuration-".O that mine enemy might write a book!" Be that as it may, the book has been written; and it only remains to say a few words about its ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... these debates says: "Lincoln loved truth for its own sake. He had a deep, true, living conscience; honesty was his polar star. He never acted for stage effect. He was cool, spirited, reflective, self-possessed, and self-reliant. His style was clear, terse, compact ... He became tremendous in the directness of his utterance when, as his soul was inspired with the thought of human right and Divine justice, he rose to impassioned eloquence, and at such times he was, in my judgment, unsurpassed by ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
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