"Terse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to sign a cheque for $10,000 and throw it out of the window, and then went on, speaking still with the terse brevity of a ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... you've 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
... share in producing his recall from banishment. They crowded around him as the people did around Chrysostom in Antioch. He amused like an actor, and instructed like a sage. His sentences are not short, terse, epigrammatic, and direct, but elaborate and artificial. Yet with all his arts of eloquence his soul, fired with great sentiments, rose in its inspired fervor above even the melody of voice, the rhythm of language, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... so prolific that it is said most of the Princes of New England are descended from it. I have heard a story of him which may illustrate the freedom of the time in matters of legal proceedings before a magistrate's court. At that time a party in a suit could not be a witness. In the terse language of the common people, "no man could swear money into his own pocket." The plaintiff in the case advised the magistrate in advance that he had no legal proof of the debt, but that defendant freely acknowledged it ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... long parenthetic expressions within a sentence is also a frequent cause of lack of clearness. In general, sentences within parentheses should be avoided in news articles. Two short terse sentences are clearer—hence far more effective—than one long one containing a doubtfully clear parenthetic phrase or clause. The prime fault with the following sentence, for instance, is the inclusion of the two parenthetic clauses, necessitating ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... taking precedence of all others, to which my remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended. In the New Testament there is the most beautiful and affecting history conceivable by man, and there are the terse models for all prayer and for all preaching. As to the models, imitate them, Sunday preachers—else why are they there, consider? As to the history, tell it. Some people cannot read, some people will not read, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... to the office, the oldest was usually chosen Doge,) and each had its complimentary inscription attached—till you came to the place that should have had Marino Faliero's picture in it, and that was blank and black—blank, except that it bore a terse inscription, saying that the conspirator had died for his crime. It seemed cruel to keep that pitiless inscription still staring from the walls after the unhappy wretch had been in his grave ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shape the "Mahabharata" contains some two hundred thousand verses. The style is forcible, often terse and nervous: the action is well sustained, and the whole effect produced is that of a poem written in commemoration of actual conflict between members of rival clans who lived somewhere southeast of the Punjab. In portrayal of character the Hindoo poem somewhat resembles its Grecian counterpart—the ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... was his 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 ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... first meaning of the words He Himself used that means "not to be served but to serve." In Mark the air is tense with rapid action. The quick executive movement of a capable servant is felt in the terse words short sentences and swift ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... in her a quite ordinary, frightened woman, aging now, but still very handsome in these black and shimmering gold robes; but all his other faculties found her desirable: and with a contained hatred he had perceived, as if by the terse illumination of a thunderbolt, that he could never love any woman save the woman whom he ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... not recall the matter 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 in search as one might hope to find in those ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... traits of the people. "Poor Richard" was the revered and popular schoolmaster of a young nation during its period of tutelage. His teachings are among the powerful forces which have gone to shaping the habits of Americans. His terse and picturesque bits of the wisdom and the virtue of this world are familiar in our mouths to-day; they moulded our great-grandparents and their children; they have informed our popular traditions; they still influence our actions, guide our ways of thinking, and ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... to introduce the recollections of a very fluent old lady, who had been brought up in the same village, but these Katharine decided must go. It might be advisable to introduce here a sketch of contemporary poetry contributed by Mr. Hilbery, and thus terse and learned and altogether out of keeping with the rest, but Mrs. Hilbery was of opinion that it was too bare, and made one feel altogether like a good little girl in a lecture-room, which was not at all in keeping with her father. It was put on one side. Now came the period of his ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... it had neither the historic range and brilliance of Dean Stanley's, nor the fascinating subtlety—the elevation and the depth combined—of that of the late F.D. Maurice. But it was clear as crystal, and calm as well as clear. It was terse and exact, precise and luminous. Not a word was wasted and every phrase was suggestive. Tennyson did not monopolize conversation. He wished to know what other people thought, and therefore to hear them state it, that ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... writer Marvell has many merits and one great fault. He has fire and fancy and was the owner and master of a precise vocabulary well fitted to clothe and set forth a well-reasoned and lofty argument. He knew how to be both terse and diffuse, and can compress himself into a line or expand over a paragraph. He has touches of a grave irony as well as of a boisterous humour. He can tell an anecdote and elaborate a parable. Swift, we know, had not only Butler's Hudibras by heart, but was also (we ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... qualities in the use of English are the simple, plain, exact, lucid, concise, trenchant, vigorous, impressive, lively, figurative, polished, graceful, fluent, rhythmical, copious, elevated, flexible, smooth, dignified, terse, epigrammatic, felicitous, euphonious, elegant, and lofty. Undesirable qualities are the diffuse, verbose, redundant, inflated, prolix, ambiguous, feeble, monotonous, loose, slip-shod, dry, flowery, pedantic, pompous, rhetorical, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... and hallooed forward. A man who was sitting on the sunny deck, abaft the galley, arose and came aft in obedience to the hail. Martin saw the fellow carried one of the Cohasset's rifles. He paused while Ichi gave him some terse directions, then he passed Martin and entered the cabin. Ichi and Asoki then proceeded to inspect the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... 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 ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... thickness of leather 1-1/2 inches in width, and never severely administered. In general fifteen to twenty lashes will be a sufficient flogging. The hands in every case must be secured by a cord. Punishment must always be given calmly, and never when angry or excited." Telfair was as usual terse: "No negro to have more than fifty lashes for any offense, no matter how great the crime." Manigault said nothing of punishments in his general instructions, but sent special directions when a case of incorrigibility was reported: "You had best think carefully respecting him, and always keep ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... 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 ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... then, that the style of our authors of a couple of hundred years ago was more terse and masculine than that of those of the present day, possessing both more of the graphic element, and more vigour, straightforwardness, and conciseness. Most readers will have anticipated me in admitting that ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... a token may we suppose That the knowledge apple no longer grows, That broke up Adam and Eve's repose And set the fashion of fig-leaf clothes; The story's simple and terse and crude, But still with a morsel of truth imbued: For of trees and trees by the multitude Are some that are evil, and ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood, which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive the radical and chasmal differences ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... all these Captain Zelotes seemed to note and appraise. But whatever the results of his scrutiny and appraisal might be he kept them entirely to himself. When he addressed his grandson directly, which was not often, his remarks were trivial commonplaces and, although pleasant enough, were terse and ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... assigned me in the programme, "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 ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... executing a gesture that matched well her look of blank resignation, her brother addressed himself to a terse summing up of the affair which, while it stressed the gravity of the adventure with the fat burglar, did not seem to extenuate Sally's offence in the least and so had the agreeable upshot of leaving the sister in a much-placated humour and regarding the girl with a far more ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... scholar to whom he expounded Dante, from the political chart of the Middle Ages, turned to an incarnation of existent patriotism. Not only by the arguments of Gioberti, the graphic pictures of Manzoni, and the terse pathos of Leopardi, did he illustrate what Italy boasts of later genius; but through his own eloquent integrity and magnetic love of her achievements and faith in her destiny. The savings of years of patient toil were sacrificed to the subsistence of his poor countrymen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... book of honest, direct, sympathetic, humorous writing about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales ... The result is a real book—a book in a hundred. His language is terse, supple, and richly idiomatic. He can tell a yarn ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... do you 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
... enmity, and which always preferred the tortuous to the straight path. He published, accordingly, the Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis. But Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great master of invective and sarcasm; he could dissect a character in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithesis; but of dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had written a lampoon on Dennis, such as that on Atticus or that on Sporus, the old grumbler would have been crushed. But Pope writing dialogue ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... attributed to Woodman's mechanical skill; and the theory has been put forward that he made this door for his own strong room, and it was afterwards moved to the church. Another story says that he was imprisoned in the church tower before being taken for trial. Warbleton has the following terse and confident epitaph upon Ann North, wife of the vicar, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... another tender and terse tribute from the same source to their only son—the request for particulars regarding their last illness, which produced the leaflet entitled "A Short Account of the Last Hours"—that has been already a rich spiritual blessing ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... and active observation conveys to us his impressions in language terse, concise, and never tedious; we listen with pleasure to his tale. Well executed pictorial illustrations considerably enhance the merits of this pleasing ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... would have to judge. Presently came the summing-up of his speech, and it was here that Mr. Bakewell justified the reputation he had won as one of the cleverest of criminal lawyers. Everything in Paul's disfavour was set before them in cold, clear, terse language. One point after another was emphasised with terrible precision, and so great was the impression made that it seemed as though both judge and jury could see only with his eyes. All the things which appeared as difficulties were apparently removed. The facts of the case ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... detective from a private inquiry agency should be installed at the castle while the house was full. Somewhat rashly, he had mentioned this to his wife, and Lady Julia's critique of the scheme had been terse ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... been 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 ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... door. A moment later the bar-room was deserted and out in the street the night air resounded with the sound of snorting, trampling horses, the metallic jangle of spurs and bit chains, the creak of saddle-leather, and the terse, quick-worded observations of men mounting in the midst of the confusion ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... 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 mistress ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... a terse expression of Hamlet, I have often heard that Paine was one of the unfortunates who were not treated by our government "according to their deserts." It is now conceded by students of our national history ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... ploughman and the trader of the day though coloured with the picturesque phraseology of the Bible, is in its literary use as distinctly a creation of his own as the style in which he embodied it, the terse vehement sentences, the stinging sarcasms, the hard antitheses which roused the dullest mind like a whip. Once fairly freed from the trammels of unquestioning belief, Wyclif's mind worked fast in its career of scepticism. Pardons, indulgences, absolutions, pilgrimages ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... (shortening) 201; compression &c 195; epitome &c 596; monostich^; brunch word, portmanteau word. V. be concise &c adj.; condense &c 195; abridge &c 201; abstract &c 596; come to the point. Adj. concise, brief, short, terse, close; to the point, exact; neat, compact; compressed, condensed, pointed; laconic, curt, pithy, trenchant, summary; pregnant; compendious &c (compendium) 596; succinct; elliptical, epigrammatic, quaint, crisp; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... necessary to outline in only the most terse and condensed form the political and military events which succeeded the destruction of the "Maine" and led up to the declaration of war. The news of the great disaster was received at home with horror, speedily turning to anger. The Government, rightly desiring ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... 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 ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... significance of shoals of cablegrams which lay on the desks of certain brokers was not wholly apparent until late in the evening, and was not thoroughly understood until late on Tuesday morning, when to other and greater shoals of cables came the terse price-lists from the Board of Trade in Chicago, and on top of all the wirelessed Press accounts for the sensational jump ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... speedily opened his negociation by asking in very terse and unequivocal phrase, my intentions regarding his sister-in-law. After professing the most perfect astonishment at the question, and its possible import, I replied, that she was a most charming person, with whom I intended to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... to that terse and meaty summing up. Naturally, he was as ready with his tongue as Captain Ranse Lougee or any other man alongshore. But in this case the master of the Polly was not sure of his ground. He knew that Captain Lougee had qualified as father of five. In the judgment of a mariner ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... get looking at that for?" she asked Anna-Felicitas, when she had edged through the crowd staring at the Vaterland, and got to where Anna-Felicitas stood listening abstractedly to the fireworks of American slang the young man was treating her to,—that terse, surprising, swift hitting-of-the-nail-on-the-head form of speech which she was hearing in such abundance ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... do," was Winford's terse reply. "Now when the men have gone back to the liner, order two of the remainder to bring up Jarl from the hold to the control ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat
... continued. On December 20, 1915, four French aeroplanes designed for bomb-dropping, escorted by seven machines with rapid-fire guns dropped on the fort and station at Muelhausen six shells of 155-millimeter caliber, and twenty shells of ninety-six caliber. In the terse language of the official report, "they reached their objective." The damage must be imagined as it was ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... au Tigre de la France" betrays a writer well versed in classical oratory. Some of the best of modern French critics accord to it the first rank among works of the kind belonging to the sixteenth century. They contrast its sprightliness, its terse, telling phrases with the heavy, dragging constructions that disfigure the prose of contemporary works. Without copying in a servile fashion the Catilinarian speeches of Cicero, the "Tigre" breathes their spirit and lacks none ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... different types, each of which has its prototype or parallel in the nursery tales of other nations. The animal fables of the philosophic red man are almost as terse and satisfying as those of Aesop, of whom they put us strongly in mind. A little further on we meet with brave and fortunate heroes, and beautiful princesses, and wicked old witches, and magical transformations, and all the other dear, familiar material ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... dashed with personality and obscenity. His style, Campbell observes, is 'almost a texture of slang phrases, patched with shreds of French and Latin.' His verses on Margaret Hussey, which we have quoted, are in his happiest vein. The following lines, too, on Cardinal Wolsey, are as true as they are terse:— ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the 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 ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Franklin more nearly resembles the earlier group of writers. In his first essays he was not an inferior imitator of Addison. In his numerous parables, moral allegories, and apologues he showed Bunyan's influence. But Franklin was essentially a journalist. In his swift, terse style, he is most like Defoe, who was the first great English journalist and master of the newspaper narrative. The style of both writers is marked by homely, vigorous expression, satire, burlesque, repartee. Here the comparison must ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... true that, while the lyrics which are undoubtedly the prophet's own are terse, concrete, poignant and graceful, the style of many—not of all—of the prose discourses attributed to him is copious, diffuse, and sometimes cold. But then it is verse which is most accurately gripped by the memory and firmly preserved ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... wholesome awe of his father. He was not a man to be bamboozled. On the contrary Mr. Coddington was a keen, direct person who came straight to a point in a few terse sentences; predominant in his character was an unflinching sense of justice which was, however, fortunately tempered with enough kindness to make a misdoer mortified but never afraid in his presence. Peter admired his father tremendously and ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... difficult, until the advent of Puck, to find a medium of publication for writings of this nature. I contributed a good deal to this paper, but it was only partly satisfactory, for articles which make up a comic paper must be terse and short, and I wanted to write humorous tales which should be as long as ordinary magazine stories. I had good reason for my opinion of the gravity of the situation, for the editor of a prominent magazine declined a humorous story (afterward ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... that could set brother against brother. All ceremonies were opposed to Reason. Goodness was the only true religion. Such bold conclusions sometimes affrighted himself, being alone in the world to hold them. "All evils," his note-book summed it up in his terse Latin, "come from not following Right Reason and the Law ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Richard are anticipated here, as quaint, as terse, and as sagacious in the ancient Jew as in the modern American. Our scientific teachers would replace eloquent declamation concerning vices, such as drunkenness and debauchery, by illustrated lectures ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... 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, brilliant, had been hammered into cadences. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... handwriting. Of 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 ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... It's your favourite mood. You live on sorrow," she said, pelting me with the terse, sharp sentences. Then, for I twitched at her telling me I lived on sorrow, she melted at once, and said, "Oh, Oliver, I'm so sorry. Why did you not send for me and let me nurse it better? Surely that was my right as well as ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... he did not come back; the day, and still no Sweetwater. Another day went by, enlivened only by an interchange of notes between Mr. Gryce and Miss Butterworth. Hers was read by the old detective with a smile. Perhaps because it was so terse; perhaps because it was ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... valuable essay it is, with no lack of golden grains and eke of diamond-dust in its composition. The thoughts are not given in the bullion lump, but are well refined, and having passed through the engraver's hands, they shine with the true polish, ring with the true sound. In terse, pregnant, and somewhat oracular diction, we are here instructed how to avoid the evils contingent upon bold commercial enterprise—how to guard against excesses of the accumulative instinct—how to exercise a thoroughly conscientious mode of regulating ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... Peru. He came across none of the legendary canoes from the land of gold, deep laden with the precious metal, nor sandy beaches strewn with jewels, to be had for the gathering. He puts on record what he thought of the islanders in the few terse words, that they were "black, naked and corpulent," beyond that, they do not seem ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the water's edge and built rustic seats down the sides. They even rolled boulders to the bed and set them where the water would show their markings and beat itself to foam against them. Mrs. Holt looked on in breathless amazement and privately expressed to her son her opinion of him in terse and vigorous language. He answered laconically: "Has a fish got much to say about what happens to it after you get ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... make things easier for the reader by giving him more time to master the thought while his eye is running over the verbiage. So, a little water may prevent a strong drink from burning throat and stomach. A style that is too terse is as fatiguing as one that is too diffuse. But when a passage is written a little long, with consciousness and compunction but still deliberately, as what will probably be most easy for the reader, it can hardly ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... 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. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... elaborate account of his rail journey on the Canadian Pacific, from Montreal westwards. Marie was not disappointed in the letters; they were what she would have expected. But sometimes, as she read their terse and uninteresting sentences, their stodgy bits of information, she smiled to think ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... 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 in his absorption in the man ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... friend, pausing, with more grave and important hesitation than I thanked him for, "there is not much to be said against the manner. The style is terse and intelligible, Mr. Croftangry, very intelligible; and that I consider as the first point in every thing that is intended to be understood. There are, indeed, here and there some flights and fancies, which I comprehended with difficulty; but I got to your meaning at last. There are people that ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... heavy with the pest and the smoke of the torches, yet the Roman called one of the torch-bearers to his side, and wrote the answer nearly word for word. It was terse, and comprehensive, containing at once a history, an accusation, and a prayer. No common person could have made it, and he could ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the women of the real world. Here I 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 could not for the life of me ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... claim that the increased production of ten or twenty years would alone greatly cheapen silver is flatly contradicted by all previous experience. Of many statements of the fallacy, I take a recent one from the New York Times as the most terse and catchy for popular reading, and likewise most ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... Clark Russell, whose name is now a household word, was the editor of an ill-fated society journal. I was a contributor to its little-read pages, and I came one day upon an article entitled 'Pompa Mortis.' This article was written in such astonishingly good English, so clean, so hardbitten and terse, and yet so graceful, that I could not resist the temptation to ask its author's name. My editor modestly acknowledged it for his own, and when I told him what I thought of its style he confessed to a close ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... she gave a few terse orders, and when the Indian had received them, he wheeled his horse and headed him for the village. Glen at once hurried back into the house, went to her own room, and in a short time reappeared, clad in her riding-suit. She met Nannie at the ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... fine, clear handwriting was obviously feminine. He didn't have to rub the paper between his thumb and forefinger to mark its rich, heavy quality and its beauty,—the stationery of an aristocrat. The message was singularly terse: ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... your 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 ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... the headquarters of the Roman "Count of the Saxon Shore" and one of the last strongholds of Rome in Britain. The melancholy tale of the overthrow of ancient civilization in this corner of England by the barbarous Saxon invaders is summed up in the terse words of their own chronicle—"They slew all that dwelt therein, nor was there henceforth one Briton left." The name "Andredes Weald" is derived from the British—An tred—"No houses," and it correctly described the surrounding country at the time of the Roman occupation. ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... conceded that because the new testament contains, in many passages, a lofty and terse expression of love as the highest duty of man, Christianity must have a tendency to ennoble his nature. But Christianity is like sweetened whisky and water—it perverts and destroys that which ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Professor Millar, of the Edinburgh University, Sir William Gowers, F.R.S., have all answered the above question in the strongest affirmative. "Chastity does no harm to body or mind; its discipline is excellent; marriage may safely be waited for," are Sir James Paget's terse and emphatic words[4]. Still more emphatic are the words of Sir William Gowers, the great men's specialist, who counts as an authority on the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... T, Haviland Hicks, Jr. turned as a hand rested grippingly on his shoulder. Head Coach Patrick Henry Corridan, his face grim, had come to him, and in quick, terse sentences, he ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... absorbed in his story to limit himself to the page that he has before him. Given a dramatic situation, the actors become living personalities to him, and he hears impassioned words falling from their lips in terse phrases such as he never found in the lines of Wace. Uther Pendragon, in a deadly battle against the Irish invaders under Gillomar and Pascent, slays Gillomar, ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... sons of song Oft find 'tis fancied right that leads us wrong. I prove obscure in trying to be terse; Attempts at ease emasculate my verse; Who aims at grandeur into bombast falls; Who fears to stretch his pinions creeps and crawls; Who hopes by strange variety to please Puts dolphins among forests, boars in seas. Thus zeal to ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... available for the private reader and public teacher. Mr. Moody's idiom has been strictly preserved. He tells the story. "Gold" will be found scattered through the volume, which includes Mr. Moody's terse declarations of many precious ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... speak except for a few terse words among themselves and a barked order to march, delivered to the prisoners. Very shortly they were in the entrance hall facing the wreckage of the crawler and doors through which a ragged gap had been burned. Ali viewed the scene with ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... watch!" was the terse response. Nayland Smith was sitting in the dark at the open window and peering out across the common. Even as I saw him, a dim silhouette, I could detect that tensity in his attitude which told ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... appeared to shrink from his task, commenced awkwardly, but he gained coherence and force of expression as he proceeded. At least, he made them understand something of the grim resolution which had animated Wyllard. He pictured, in terse seaman's words, the little schooner plunging to windward over long phalanxes of icy seas, or crawling white with snow through the blinding fog. His companions saw the big combers tumbling ready to break ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the other speakers is that they adapt their constructive work to that of their colleagues, and deploy their refutation so as to hammer the principal positions of their opponents. Each debater may or may not begin his speech with refutation, but he should always begin his main argument with a terse, clear summary of what has been said on his side, and in closing he should not only summarize his own arguments, but he should also give again, in very brief form, the gist of what has been proved by his colleagues. ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... hand, it has few or none of those grand passages which redeem the scurrility of his political pamphlets. The passage in which Milton's visit to Galileo "grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition," is mentioned, is often quoted for its biographical interest; and the terse dictum, "as good almost kill a man as kill a good book," has passed into a current axiom. A paragraph at the close, where he hints that the time may be come to suppress the suppressors, intimates, but so obscurely ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... still two days 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
... years old; and that they owned 520 acres of land without any mortgage hanging over their heads. He had himself done well, and his views as to why many of his neighbors had done less well are entitled to consideration. These views are expressed in terse and vigorous English; they cannot always be quoted in full. He states that the farm homes in his neighborhood are not as good as they should be because too many of them are encumbered by mortgages; that the schools do not ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Denounce. I shall be very terse about Tuppy, giving it as my opinion that in all essentials he is more like a wart hog than an ex-member of a fine old English public school. What will ensue? Hearing him attacked, my Cousin Angela's womanly heart will be as sick as ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the papacy never prevented Gregory from what he considered the chiefest duty of his office, that of preaching. His sermons, which were as famous as those of Chrysostom in Constantinople, were {65} direct in their appeal, vivid in their illustration, terse and epigrammatic in their expression. Paul the Deacon sums up his work by saying that he was entirely engrossed ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... heard about the "mysterious craft" that the Soviet claimed to have shot down, except a terse report that said it had "probably been destroyed." It was impossible to know whether or not they had deduced what had happened, or whether they realized that the new craft was as maneuverable over the surface of the moon as a helicopter was over ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a terse report of their experience to the task-force commander and in turn was told that none of the naval craft had either sighted or picked up any ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... have thoughts, and can't express them, Gibbon shall teach me how to dress them, In terms select and terse; Jones teach me modesty and Greek, Smith how to think, Burke how to speak, And Beauclerk to converse. Let Johnson teach me how to place In fairest light, each borrow'd grace, From him I'll learn to write; Copy his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... In writing or speaking about the country and its inhabitants, if we would express ourselves as concisely as we possibly can, we are bound to quote the "Elegy"; it is invariably the shortest road to a terse expression of our meaning. Who can improve on "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife," or "The short and simple annals of the poor"? If Gray's "Elegy" is but "a mosaic of the felicities" of those who went before, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... and transparency to his diction? Who that reads the concentrated sense and melodious versification of Dryden and Pope, does not perceive in them the disciples of the old school, whose genius was inflamed by the heroic verse, the terse satire, and the playful wit of antiquity? Who that meditates over the strains of Milton does not feel that he drank ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... had, as it were, paused for a moment to have compassion on hungry women and crying babies and folk whose petty confused affairs could have seemed of no consequence to anyone in the drama of the world. And then, with a few terse sentences, the preacher swung from that instance to the world drama of to-day. Did they realise, he asked, that peaceful bright Sunday morning, that millions of simple men were at that moment being hurled at each other to maim and kill? ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... Dervish raved; Mustapha stormed; Francois broke out in a frightful eruption of Greek and Turkish oaths, and the two travellers, though not (as I hope and believe) profanely inclined, could not avoid using a few terse Saxon expressions. When the general indignation had found vent, the men went to work, and by taking each animal separately, succeeded, at imminent hazard, in getting them all over the snow. We then ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... the letter O. The fables are written in choliambic, i.e. limping or imperfect iambic verse, having a spondee as the last foot, a metre originally appropriated to satire. The style is extremely good, the expression being terse and pointed, the versification correct and elegant, and the construction of the stories is fully equal to that in the prose versions. The genuineness of this collection of the fables was generally admitted by scholars. In 1857 Minas ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... the same 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
... Could they see anything now? Their "No" answers didn't hold for long because seconds later their terse reports began to come into the CIC. A "brilliant light, like a planet" was streaking across the northwest sky about 30 degrees above the horizon. Unfortunately the radar had lost contact for a moment when the visual report ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... Howland wrote a pretty strong letter to his son, in which he set forth in terse language the facts he had heard, and demanded as a right, that ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... is highly terse. The words are grammatically unconnected with one another. Only a few substantives have been used. These represent the heads of the different arguments urged by sceptics for showing the non-existence of anything besides the body which is seen and felt. I have, of course, followed the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... delight! Night and day read them, 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 have ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... Rev. Increase Grace? But here let me remark parenthetically, the habit of dealing in parentheses being one I especially dislike, only necessity compelling me thereto, and before I proceed further, that the word "confugium," which, both on account of its terse expressiveness, as well as its curiosa felicitas in the present application, I have chosen in order to define my den, has not, I hope, escaped the notice of the discriminating scholar. Moreover, I trust ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... relates to us his own experience: "My father introduced me to the Augur Scaevola; and the result was that, as far as possible and permissible, I never left the old man's side. Thus I committed to memory many a learned argument of his, many a terse and clever maxim, while I sought to add to my own knowledge from his stores of special learning. When the Augur died I betook myself to the Pontiff of the same name and family." Elsewhere we have a picture of this second Scaevola and his pupils. "Though he did not undertake to ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... new brand of food product, always includes in his letter a post card with a full tinted picture of the article. For instance, with a new brand of olives he encloses a picture of the bottled olives, tinted to exactly represent the actual bottle and its contents, and underneath he prints the terse statement "Delicious, Tempting, Nutricious." If his letter has not persuaded the housewife to try a bottle of the olives, the picture on the enclosure is apt to create the desire in her mind and lead to ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... the old proverb, [Footnote: What this proverb may have been we cannot determine with precision from its opposite; but the caution based upon it might remind one of our proverb about shutting the barn door after the horse is stolen. The words, acta agimus, so terse that they can be translated only by a paraphrase, are probably the converse of the proverb, which may have been something like non agenda sunt acta.] take counsel after acting, and attempt to do over again what we have done; for after having become closely connected by long habit and even ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... the author of the Ottimo Comento says: "I the writer saw followers of his [Fra Dolcino] burned at Padua to the number of twenty-two together."[233] Clearly, in such a time as this, one must not make "the veil of the mysterious Terse" too thin.[234] ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... delight, Mr. Tresayle took Mr. Mortmain's view of the case. Nothing could be more terse, perspicuous, and conclusive than the great man's opinion. Mr. Quirk was in raptures, and that very day sent to procure an engraving of Mr. Tresayle, which had lately come out, for which he paid 5s., and ordered it to be framed and hung up in his own room, where already grinned a quaint ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... every pause Of thy wise and learned saws, Through the cracked and crazy wall Came the cradle-rock and squall, And the goodman's voice, at strife With his shrill and tipsy wife, Luring us by stories old, With a comic unction told, More than by the eloquence Of terse birchen arguments (Doubtful gain, I fear), to look With complacence on a book!— Where the genial pedagogue Half forgot his rogues to flog, Citing tale or apologue, Wise and merry in its drift As was Phaedrus' twofold gift, Had the little rebels known it, Risum et ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... imprisoned—referring to Buckingham. And not only did she ask his liberty, but the restitution of his places. No wonder there was discontent when such things were done, and public affairs were in such a state. We must again quote the graphic, terse language of Pepys:—'It was computed that the Parliament had given the king for this war only, besides all prizes, and besides the L200,000 which he was to spend of his own revenue, to guard the sea, above L5,000,000, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... faces. He was speaking to this meadow, his theme being "Education and the Rise of the Masses," and the people, displaying an enthusiasm rare at lectures upon such topics, roared their approval as he shot at them great terse truths, the essence of wide reading and profound wisdom put up in pellets of pungent epigram. He rose at a long dinner-table, so placed that as he stood his eye swept down rows upon rows of other long tables, where the diners had all pushed back their chairs to turn and look at him. His words ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... venture into the field of letters. He had no confidence in his ability to write. He did not realize that the man who had written "I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," and, later, "Let us have peace," was capable of English as terse and forceful as the Latin ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... reputation for high standards of sportsmanship. Their spirit may be judged by the story of a football player who waxed into colorful profanity in the heat of a game and was bawled out by a Roman Catholic teammate in terse words: "Don't you know who you represent?" During an interim when another parish house was being built, Christ Church basketball teams used the Holy Cross Monastery Hall for an entire year, with the full approval of the ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... the writing. If the characters did not speak in a terse and homely way, their idea and language would be inconsistent with their dress and station, and they would lose, as characters, before the audience. The dialogue seems to be exactly what is wanted. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... 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
... say, with which the patron gradually breaks the spirit of his dependants. I know myself of an orator, a very free speaker, who was actually ordered to stand up and deliver a speech at table; and a masterly speech it was, trenchant and terse. He received the congratulations of the company on being timed by a wine—instead of a water-clock; and this affront, it is said, he was content to put up, for the consideration of 8 pounds. But what of that? Wait till you ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... impossible to procure legal evidence against him. Some imagined that they recognised the sentiments and diction of Temple. [245] But in truth that amplitude and acuteness of intellect, that vivacity of fancy, that terse and energetic style, that placid dignity, half courtly half philosophical, which the utmost excitement of conflict could not for a moment derange, belonged to Halifax, and to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... order. Over the heads of Dysmas and of Stegas the sanis were affixed, wooden tablets smeared with gypsum, bearing the name of the crucified and with it the offence. They were simple and terse; but above the Christ appeared a legend in three tongues, in Aramaic, in ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... 1846, came the formation of the "Irish Confederation" by the seceders. In the proceedings of the new Society Mr. Mitchel took a more prominent part than he had taken in the business of the Repeal Association. And he continued to write in his own terse and forcible style in the Nation. But his mind travelled too fast in the direction of war for either the journal or the society with which he was connected. The desperate condition of the country, now a prey to all the ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... Bill Hayes gave a terse account of his stewardship during Hollister's absence. So many cords of bolts cut and boomed and delivered to the mill. Hollister's profits were accelerating, the fruit of an insatiable market, of inflated prices. As he trudged down the hill, he reflected ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... go into needless minutiae. Some details identify a thing with its class, while other details differentiate it from its class. Choose only the significant, suggestive characteristics and bring those out with terse vividness. Learn a lesson from the few strokes used ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... to him with all the terse and colloquial confidence of a comradeship founded upon respect for mutual fallibility. No instruction, no admonition, no blame, no reproach—only an affectionately logical review of matters as they stood—and as they threatened ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... the wires of the United States were alive with the terse, pregnant message, and under the ocean in the dark depths of the Atlantic ooze, vivid narratives of the coming of the miracle went flashing to a hundred newspaper offices in England and on the Continent. The New York correspondent of the London Daily Express added the following paragraph to his ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... monopoly is the inevitable final result. Last, the enormous capital required for the establishment and maintenance of new competing units tends to fortify the monopoly in its position and render the escape of the public from its grasp practically impossible. These terse statements contain exactly the kernel of potent truth for which we are seeking; MONOPOLIES OF EVERY SORT ARE AN INEVITABLE RESULT FROM CERTAIN CONDITIONS OF ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... sit there quietly, savouring the scene. But Mrs. Yaverland said in her terse voice: "I've taken rooms at the Hapsburg for to-night. I thought you'd like it. I do myself, because it's near the river. You know, we're near the river at Roothing." Ellen could not longer turn her attention to the spectacle ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... said 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 that ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... a later epistle, still more graphic and terse in statement, which has the unusual merit of painting both confessor and penitent to ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... level with each other. Authors had already tried to 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 ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the first to die at Prosser Creek. He expired while sitting at the table in his tent, with his head bowed upon his hands, as if in deep meditation. The following terse account is from the gifted pen of Mrs. S. O. Houghton (Eliza P. Donner), of San Jose: "Jacob Donner was a slight man, of delicate constitution, and was in poor health when we left Springfield, Illinois. The trials of the journey reduced his strength ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... genius. He was a brilliant novelist and a famous statesman; but the best things I know of him are the tender love and manly gratitude he always testified towards his devoted wife, and his pathetic mourning for her loss. He might have adopted for her tombstone the quaint, terse epitaph of an American husband—"Think what a wife should be, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... of the 'essence of devil' packed into such a tiny compass," said another set; "and this, to be sure, is England's great poet!" Besides these personal objections, there were others of a more solid character. While all admitted the exquisite polish and terse language of Pope's compositions, many felt that they were too artificial—that they were often imitative—that they seldom displayed those qualities of original thought and sublime enthusiasm which had formed ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... 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 accompanied ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... a will, far-sighted business woman that she was. It was a terse, clear-headed document, that gave "to Fanny Brandeis, my daughter," the six-thousand-dollar insurance, the stock, good-will and fixtures of Brandeis' Bazaar, the house furnishings, the few pieces of jewelry in their old-fashioned setting. To Theodore was left the ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... been tasted and described by Dampier in the seventeenth century. His description of it has all the terse directness peculiar to the writing of the inquisitive buccaneer, with a touch of quaintness that makes the passage desirable to quote:* (* Dampier's Voyages edition ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... 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
... more than made good by the far higher value and stronger attraction of the book as the portraiture of a striking character and a remarkable career. In this view the Diaries are not inferior in interest to the expanded narrative that precedes them. Indeed, terse and concise as they generally are, they have the advantage of presenting freshly and vividly the impressions and reflections of the moment, and thus exhibiting the writer's mind both in its habitual and exceptional states without reservation or deliberate purpose. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... in spirit and in rough, grotesque humor are Caucasian anecdotes, of which I have space for only a few characteristic specimens. They are almost invariably short, terse and pithy, and would prove, even in the absence of all other evidence, that these fierce, stern, unyielding mountaineers have the keenest possible appreciation of humor, and that in the quick perception and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... That terse, positive, peremptory, dynamic pen-name was first used by an old pilot named Isaiah Sellers—a sort of "oldest inhabitant" of the river, who made the other pilots weary with the scope and antiquity of his reminiscent knowledge. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... hours; and, when they returned, Dorothy at once wrote her two letters. They were very simple, and very short. She told Brooke, whom she now addressed as "Dear Mr. Burgess," that it could not be as he would have it; and she told her aunt,—with some terse independence of expression, which Miss Stanbury quite understood,—that she had considered the matter, and had thought it right to refuse ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Incidentally she talked of herself, though always without giving him a clew as to who she was and where she came from. Several times, as a face in the passing throng caught her interest, she outlined for him in a few terse words the character of its possessor. He was interested, but he must have unconsciously suggested a certain unbelief in her intuition, for once she stopped speaking and ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... 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
... accustomed to shoot deer and foxes from distances greater than this. The first two ranks of the soldiers fell as if they had been cut down with scythes. Not one of them was hit above the knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it had begun. The hill men had given a terse, emphatic warning. It was as though they had marked a dead line beyond which there must be ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... terse sentence, sums up the conditions which fettered all Canadian trade and industry, "A system of authority, monopoly and exclusion in which the government, and not the individual, acted always the foremost part." Whether it was a question of ship-building, of a brewery or a tannery, of iron ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot |
