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Garrulity

noun
1.
The quality of being wordy and talkative.  Synonyms: garrulousness, loquaciousness, loquacity, talkativeness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Garrulity" Quotes from Famous Books



... sense of justice of the British bystanders, who are always ready to resist an insult offered to a foreigner in this country? If it was an insult, why not resent it, as became high-spirited Americans? But no; the chivalry of the South tamely allowed itself to be plucked by the beard; the garrulity of the North permitted itself to be silenced by three fugitive slaves.... We promenaded the Exhibition between six and seven hours, and visited nearly every portion of the vast edifice. Among the thousands whom we met in our perambulations, who dreamed of any impropriety in ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... said, "that was a bit of a grind." And then, becoming garrulous with the weak and fatuous garrulity of those who have recently swooned, "Couldn't have done it without you, Nan. I'd given myself up for lost. All my past life went by me in a flash.... I really did think it was U.P. with me, you know. And it jolly nearly was, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... and exactly as it approaches to the character of vulgarism, disturbing all approaches to elegance in conversation, and disorganizing it as a thing capable of unity or of progress? These vices are, first, disputation; secondly, garrulity; thirdly, the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... woman kindly delivered a lecture on the most approved method of making a ptisan from the flowers of the lime-tree, and on the many medicinal properties of that decoction, to which she attributed her good health at so advanced an age. I silently supplemented her peroration by attributing her garrulity to ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... where I found the res domi in a peculiar position. There were few inmates in the large old house. Besides the invalid herself, there was an old cook and a butler, by name Francis, who had been in the family for many years, and whose garrulity was supplied from an inexhaustible fountain—the fate and fortunes of the Bernards. My patient was a lovely woman in body—a maniac in mind. Her affliction had suddenly shot up into her brain, and left untouched the lineaments of her beauty, excepting the expression of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... if further garrulity about myself can be pardoned, I may state that every year, as Christmas approaches, I begin to grow young again. At least I judge so from the fact that a strange, mysterious pleasure, well known to me by this time, though little understood and very varied, begins to glow in my ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... other of pirates. And if science produces no better fruits than tyranny, murder, rapine, and destitution of national morality, I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest, and estimable, as our neighboring savages are. But whither is senile garrulity leading me? Into politics, of which I have taken final leave. I think little of them, and say less. I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid, and I find myself much the happier. Sometimes, indeed, I look back to former occurrences, in remembrance ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... representative of a class,—just as in describing one larch tree, you generalise a grove of them,—so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalisation is done to the poet's hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother's affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... putting two and two together, calculated that the writer could not be less than eighty years old; while another, like Mrs. Prig, "didn't believe there was no sich a person," and acutely divined that the book was a journalistic squib directed against my amiable garrulity. The most pleasing notice was that of Jean La Frette, some extracts from which I venture to append. It is true that competent judges have questioned the accuracy of M. La Frette's idiom, but his sentiments are unimpeachable. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... you please, gaining in time a more composed view of nature, and overcome by her habits of garrulity, arrived at a frame of mind in which she found it almost necessary to tell me all about it—nothing less than that. She said that her situation was too unbearable with regard ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... I do rattle on—but you know my moods and will make due allowance for what might strike the cold, unfeeling world as being garrulity. ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... how are the boys?" (with a playful smile of recollection at what used to be my one subject, the one theme on which I was wont to wax illimitably diffuse). But now, at the magic name no pleasant garrulity overcomes me; only the remembrance of my worries; of all those troubles that I mean now to transfer from my own to Roger's broad shoulders, swoop ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... saying little in reply to Gille's garrulity, he set off with him to the old noble's attic. A voice, broken by asthma, feebly called upon them to enter, and Germain's eyes fell upon, lying on a tattered mattress by the window, the last wreck of a gentleman, with whom he instantly felt the greatest sympathy. The rotten ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... and "bookseller's, drudge" should have written such a poem. On the evening of its announcement to them Goldsmith had gone away early, after "rattling away as usual," and they knew not how to reconcile his heedless garrulity with the serene beauty, the easy grace, the sound good sense, and the occasional elevation of his poetry. They could scarcely believe that such magic numbers had flowed from a man to whom in general, says ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... were interpreted by some of his political enemies as a sign both of personal cowardice and of official self-glorification,—as is indicated by a letter written by the aged Landon Carter to General Washington, on the 31st of October, and filled with all manner of caustic garrulity and insinuation,—a letter from which it may be profitable for us to quote a few sentences, as qualifying somewhat that stream of honeyed testimony respecting Patrick Henry which commonly flows down upon us so copiously from ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... in one of his lightning-flashes of candid garrulity, "Friendship is but a name. I love no one—not even my brothers; Joseph perhaps a little. Still, if I do love him, it is from habit, because he is the eldest of us. Duroc? Ay, him, if any one, I love in a sort—but why? He suits me; he is ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... this capacity it was exceedingly useful; but, through some defect in the machinery, it chattered much more than was agreeable to either philosopher. Various remedies were tried to cure it of its garrulity, but in vain; and one day Thomas Aquinas was so enraged at the noise it made, when he was in the midst of a mathematical problem, that he seized a ponderous hammer and smashed it to pieces. [Naude, "Apologie des Grands Hommes accuses de Magie ;" chap. xviii.] He was sorry afterwards ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... arrangements and preparations for a great classical concert, for which I also was to compose something. These meetings were enlivened solely by Gounod's pedantic zeal, who with unflagging and nauseating garrulity executed his duties as secretary, while Auber continually interrupted, rather than assisted the proceedings, with trifling and not always very delicate anecdotes and puns, all evidently intended to urge us to end the discussions. Even after the decisive failure of Tannhauser I received ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... with a Minister, obtained more or less full knowledge of what the Queen's Speech would contain. But he was bound in honour to preserve his informant from possibly inconvenient consequences of his garrulity, and so the oracular style was adopted. When other papers, put on the track, obtained information in the same way they adopted the same quaint practice, till now it has become deeply ingrained in journalism. To-day, whilst there is no secret of the sources of information very properly ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... evening I directed my steps, under the guidance of the said Miss SPINK, to a certain imposing stucco residence hard by, wherein were an assortment of female women conversing with vivacious garrulity, in a delicious atmosphere of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... "But excuse my garrulity. I always have so much to say to you! I will spare you any more for the present, however; only do tell me all about yourself and your own lovely children. And how is Mr. Hamilton-Wells? Remember that you are to come to us, twins ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... a wit or a talker merely, though the brilliant scintillations of the former, or the garrulity of the latter, may amuse or delight you for the time being, yet you will derive no permanent satisfaction from these qualities, for there will be no common bond of kindred feeling to assimilate your souls and hold ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... patients had died because the nurse, contrary to orders, had at a critical period washed her with cold water. I have known one who, by stealth, quieted a fretful child with laudanum, and of others who exhausted the sick by incessant talking. One lady said that when, to escape this distressing garrulity, she closed her eyes, the nurse exclaimed aloud, 'Why, she is going to sleep while I ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... came an emancipation of mind and speech from schoolgirl habits. A defensive assumption of impertinent reserve, varied by fits of superficial garrulity, gave way to real thoughtfulness, to natural amiability. Then came, too, an emboldenment of the facial outline, a constancy to the colour of the cheeks, a certainty of gait, and the first perceptible roundness of contour ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... had, however, unsuspected reserves of vitality. He crept out into the sunshine again, basking in the vernal warmth with a sense of luxury, and entering into the gossip of the ditchers with an unwonted mental activity and garrulity. ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... lose the historian in the man, nor suffer the doting recollections of age to overcome me, while dwelling with fond garrulity on the virtuous days of the patriarchs—on those sweet days of simplicity and ease, which never more will dawn on the lovely ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... laugh overmuch, and even, perhaps, desire to move about the boat a good deal. But he quite forgot his fears; he sat smiling, with his eyes upon her face, while, without moving from her place, she delivered herself of a great number of original reflections. It was the most charming garrulity he had ever heard. He had assented to the idea that she was "common"; but was she so, after all, or was he simply getting used to her commonness? Her conversation was chiefly of what metaphysicians term the objective cast, but every now and then ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James

... has attracted Jupiter, transforms her into a Bear. Her son, Arcas, not recognizing his mother in that shape, is about to kill her; but Jupiter removes them both to the skies, where they form the Constellations of the Great and the Little Bear. The raven, as a punishment for his garrulity, is changed from ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... an appetite only partly satisfied. The boy, Uriel, also was the guardsman of the household, old-faced as if with the responsibility of taking care of two women. Indeed, the children of the landlady were so well behaved and prepossessing that, compared with Mrs. Basil's shabby hauteur and garrulity, the legend of the Judge seemed to require no other foundation than offspring of such ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... Dostoevski did not learn from his first little masterpiece the great virtue of compression. This story is short, but it is long enough; the whole history of two lives, so far as their spiritual aspect is concerned, is fully given in these few pages. The besetting sin of Dostoevski is endless garrulity with its accompanying demon of incoherence: in later years he yielded to that, as he did to other temptations, and it finally mastered him. He was never to write again a work of art ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... late!" he cried, with an easy garrulity rather amusing under the circumstances. "Two more trains came in as I left the depot. If old Phil was on hand with his waggon, several more members of this interesting family may be here before the clock strikes; if not, the assemblage is like to be small. Too ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... same reason he abounds in anecdote, and in the personal detail which, though it may easily be overdone, is undoubtedly now and then precious for the purpose of enabling us to conjure up the things and men of old time more fully and correctly. And there is a Pepysian garrulity as well as a Pepysian shrewdness about Joinville; so that, on the whole, he fills the position of ancestor in the second group of historians, the group of lively raconteurs, as well as Villehardouin ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... some uncomfortable oubliette from whence he threatened with feeble insistence to pop up at any moment like a strange question or a sudden shame. She hid him in a rosy flush which a breath could have made flame unbearably, and she hid from him behind the light garrulity of Mrs. Cafferty, through which now and again, as through a veil, she saw the spike of his helmet, a wiry bristling moustache, a surge of great shoulders. On these ghostly indications she heaped a tornado of words which swamped the ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... Gillian managed to stem the torrent of garrulity and interposed a question concerning the telegram ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... busy making plans and tearing them up to follow his monotonous garrulity except in a general way. He waited in vain for her to defend ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... Cherry's devour her lunch and the garrulity of their mother consumed so much time for Arethusa, that almost before she knew it the little wave of excitement denoting the nearing of a journey's end swept through the car. The conductor passed by and gathered the little slips of stiff paper from the men's hats; every passenger ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... traditions (continues Mr. Hershon) inform us that Eve was made from the thirteenth rib of the right side, and that she was not drawn out by the head, lest she should be vain; nor by the eyes, lest she should be wanton; nor by the mouth, lest she should be given to garrulity; nor by the ears, lest she should be an eavesdropper; nor by the hands, lest she should be intermeddling; nor by the feet, lest she should be a gadder; nor by the heart, lest she should be jealous;—but she was taken out from the side: yet, in spite of all ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... although they now surveyed Eric with an unconcealed hostility. Her figure, in its merciless dress, was very angular; yet there was about her a dignity of carriage and manner which Eric liked. In any case, he preferred her unsmiling dourness to vulgar garrulity. ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... agree with you. Cetoxa, though a gambler and a rake, is a nobleman of birth and high repute for courage and honour. Besides, this stranger, with his noble presence and lofty air,—so calm, so unobtrusive,—has nothing in common with the forward garrulity of an imposter." ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... broke in somewhat more sternly, as the woman's garrulity was getting on his nerves. "As you say, I know the Leridans' house. I have had cause to send children there myself. Children of aristos or of fat bourgeois, whom it was our duty to turn into good citizens. They are not pampered there, I imagine," he went on ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... lay stress on this. No one probably, through a career of half a score of years, knew more about the Wolf and the Wolf's doings than did the Spider. Rightly or wrongly, the word was out that the old man, in his garrulity, was not safe—and the Wolf was inviting no chances where the electric chair was concerned, that was all! The old man would henceforth be perfectly safe, as far as any talking went! It was brutal, hideous—but it was ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... would be desolate, mourning their children, and refusing comfort. The system would act like a proscription. People would give up their friends that they might purchase aid against their enemies. Clubs are more endurable as they are, though members do suffer grievously from the garrulity, the coughs, the slumbrous tendencies, and ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... short the old man's garrulity; and went on up the stairs, now a little wearily, of a sudden newly conscious of his vast ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... — N. loquacity, loquaciousness; talkativeness &c adj.; garrulity; multiloquence^, much speaking. jaw; gabble; jabber, chatter; prate, prattle, cackle, clack; twaddle, twattle, rattle; caquet^, caquetterie [Fr.]; blabber, bavardage^, bibble-babble^, gibble-gabble^; small talk &c (converse) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... observed, that the greatest events may be often traced back to slender causes. Petty competition or casual friendship, the prudence of a slave, or the garrulity of a woman, have hindered or promoted the most important schemes, and hastened or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... with Adam. Not that I ever blamed him for his weakness in the apple incident; but I do blame him for his garrulity, and his paltry cowardice in exposing Eve. Eve was an instinctive agnostic—and she didn't purpose to be anybody's slave. If Adam decided to keep up with the procession, as he at first did decide to do, he had no business to whine over the outcome. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... stay where I am," said Mrs. Bradford. "There is nothing for two to do, is there? And you know my legs, of course——" She did not trouble to be more explicit, because her unusual garrulity was dying down now Miss Panton and Laura had gone, and she knew Ethel would be reasonable enough to understand that the legs of a married lady could not be expected to go up and down stairs as easily as those ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... removed in autumn the disappointment is the same; because a tall quick-set hedge, nurtured up for the purpose of shelter to the hop ground, entirely interrupts the impulse and repercussion of the voice; so that till those obstructions are removed no more of its garrulity can be expected. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... to proceed. He could only wait for some word from his new ally, Vittoria Fabrizi. It might be that she would find a clue, and he feared to complicate matters by any premature or ill-judged action. Meanwhile, he encountered the results of Bernie Dreux's garrulity. He found himself generally regarded as Myra Nell's accepted suitor, and, of course, could make no denial. But when he telephoned to the girl herself and asked when he might call he was surprised to ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... musing for a little, and then started and said: "Are there any more questions, dear guest? The morning is waning fast amidst my garrulity?" ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... most ridiculous weaknesses seemed to meet in the wretched Solomon of Whitehall, pedantry, buffoonery, garrulity, low curiosity, the most contemptible personal cowardice. Nature and education had done their best to produce a finished specimen of all that a king ought not to be. His awkward figure, his rolling eye, his rickety walk, his nervous tremblings, his slobbering mouth, his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... indefinable product, and is apt to strike the traveller who observes for himself as very wide of the mark. The English, who have for ages been described (mainly by the French) as the dumb stiff, unapproachable race, present to-day a remarkable appearance of good-humour and garrulity and are distinguished by their facility of intercourse. On the other hand, any one who has seen half-a-dozen Frenchmen pass a whole day together in a railway-carriage without breaking silence is forced to believe that the traditional ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... find myself inspired to make a second legend of Creative Evolution without distractions and embellishments. My sands are running out; the exuberance of 1901 has aged into the garrulity of 1930; and the war has been a stern intimation that the matter is not one to be trifled with. I abandon the legend of Don Juan with its erotic associations, and go back to the legend of the Garden of Eden. I exploit the eternal interest of the philosopher's stone which ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... lives, felt, suffered, rejoiced, and perhaps grown a little tolerant, a little apathetic. The young people call it cynical; yet it is not cynicism—only a large charity for the failings, the shortcomings of others. So what I am about to say in this letter must not be set down as either garrulity or senile cynicism. It is the result of a half-century of close observation, and, young folks, let me tell you that in fifty years much music has gone through the orifices of my ears; many artistic reputations made ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... pleasure I had experienced by giving me an account—two hours long, and with equal unction—of a tremendous controversy then raging as to the proper form of electing the sub-patriarch of Cairo. It would have been ungrateful to interrupt him, although there seemed no end to his garrulity. Fortunately, two or three people at length came in; I compromised my dignity as a heretic by kissing his hand, and escaped, to turn over this curious story in my mind. Next day I went to the Greek church, and saw a melancholy-looking face through the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... slow understanding. How consistently prudent is Ulysses, thro' the whole of his character; we never see him err thro' rashness, but rather commit faults, thro' an over caution. How wonderfully are we reconciled to the great garrulity of the venerable Nestor, which would be inexcusable, did we not reflect, at the same time, on his extreme old age, of which the poet never fails to remind us? How readily do we excuse the ferocity of Achilles, when ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... and Philip, on whom the vehement remonstrances of the Pope were now taking effect—in view of the threatened alliance between England and France. The agent was one Ridolfi, who combined cleverness sufficient to deceive even Walsingham for a time with a garrulity and carelessness which proved ruinous in the long run. It was fortunate for Elizabeth that of the two necessary figure-heads for any conspiracy, Mary and Norfolk, one was more than half-believed even by her ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... "Music and Manners in the Classical Period." This captivating work contains also a note-book which Haydn kept in London; it is filled with amusing blunders in English and vivid pictures of London life of the time, pictures as delectable in their way as the immortal garrulity of Pepys. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... whenever he accidentally came too close to the fierce-looking riders of the dromedaries he shrunk his shoulders as if he expected a blow or a push, while he poured out question and answer to the Merchant Haschim, the owner of the caravan, without timidity and with the voluble garrulity of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... garrulity was as dust in the balance when weighed against twenty years of faithful service, shuffled out of ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... accrew to the sick with their estimation and greater glory to themselves. But since Labour is tedious to them they commit the matter to chance, and being secure of their Honour, and content with their Fame, they (like Brawlers) defend themselves with a certain garrulity, without any respect had ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... into the wood to a labourer she would find there. Without hesitation the good woman carried some eggs, bread, butter, and milk towards the spot indicated to her. On seeing her the king was much alarmed fearing recognition and dreading her garrulity; wherefore he said to her: "Can you be true to anyone who hath served the king?" Upon which she readily made answer: "Yes, sir; I'd die sooner than betray you." Being reassured ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... on, dame!" Caroline, depressed as she was, felt the dame's garrulity like a pinch on her impatience. "What said the Intendant to you, on ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... remove it from the senses, purify the intellect from the irrational forms of life with which it is surrounded, and lead it to the incorporeal perception of ideas. For if these sciences receive the soul replete with images, and knowing nothing subtile and unattended with material garrulity; and if they elucidate reasons possessing an irrefragable necessity of demonstration, and forms full of all certainty and immateriality, and which by no means call to their aid the inaccuracy of sensibles, do they not evidently purify our intellectual ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... Devereux was an ungallant man. On the contrary, never did the beau sexe have a humbler or more devoted servant. As nothing in his estimation was less becoming to a wise man than matrimony, so nothing was more ornamental than flirtation. He had the old man's weakness, garrulity, and he told the wittiest stories in the world, without omitting any thing in them but the point. This omission did not arise from the want either of memory or of humour, but solely from a deficiency in the malice natural to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various

... least she lacked nothing which grace and good taste could teach her. She was always anxious, too, to hear everything concerning Mr. Floyd—his friends abroad, his habits, his vie intime at certain houses which had been his favorite lounge for years while he was minister at ——. Garrulity was by no means my habit in those days, but I had talked to her very freely: indeed, she could do with me what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... village which has not its factories of this description driven by milk-and-water power. I cannot conceive the confusion of tongues to have been the curse of Babel, since I esteem my ignorance of other languages as a kind of Martello-tower, in which I am safe from the furious bombardments of foreign garrulity. For this reason I have ever preferred the study of the dead languages, those primitive formations being Ararats upon whose silent peaks I sit secure and watch this new deluge without fear, though it rain figures (simulacra, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... hadn't heard of any recent battle; for his part, he had never been a politician; but thought that both parties were a little wrong; and wished that peace would return: for he was a very old man, and was sorry that folks couldn't let quiet folks' property alone. How far his garrulity might have betrayed him, could be conjectured only by one of the girls taking his hand and leading him submissively into ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... Thessalian art, she hoped by that handle to work out some method of release. These doubts occupied her mind during the rest of the day and the long hours of night; and, accordingly, when Sosia visited her the following morning, she hastened to divert his garrulity into that channel in which it had before evinced a natural ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... of one of the languages resulting from "the confusion." He makes man the inventor of speech, and resorts to raillery: speaking against his opponent Eunomius, he says that, "passing in silence his base and abject garrulity," he will "note a few things which are thrown into the midst of his useless or wordy discourse, where he represents God teaching words and names to our first parents, sitting before them like some pedagogue or ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... countries they might discover. Early in May, 1497, John Cabot sailed from Bristol in "The Matthew," manned by English sailors. In all probability he was accompanied by Sebastian, then about 21 years of age, who, in later times, through the credulity of his friends and his own garrulity and vanity, took that place in the estimation of the world which his father now rightly fills. Some time toward the end of June, they made a land-fall on the north-eastern coast of North America. The actual ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... eye-witnesses. One gave a narrative of a feast of which he had partaken, another had danced at my grandfather's wedding, a third had nursed my father, and all of them were past their prime when I was born. To listen to their garrulity, and to witness the pleasure they felt in describing and recalling to each other's recollection, the scenes of years long gone by, and their opinion respecting the alteration in the times, was to me a source of indescribable ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... the barber and haircutting line is a safe and honourable employment?—I do not know when I might get to the end of my tether; and the interest which every reasonable man must take in the extraordinary adventures of my early years, might be grievously marred and broken in upon through the garrulity of old age. ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... "is the only case of golfing garrulity I have ever known where a permanent cure was affected. If you would care ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... a softer spot in my heart for the inhabitants of Mars than for any other alien people. They have always impressed me as more unassuming than the English, fonder of outdoor exercise than the Germans, and less addicted to garrulity than the French. They lead simple, laborious lives, digging away at their canals every morning, and filling them up every night, for reasons best known to themselves and certain professors at Harvard. I am attracted by their quaint appearance. ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... not take herself away from among the guns and rocks of her pursuers; none for those poor children; none, indeed, for the father of the family, upon whom the ten would come in his lair. If his wife had threatened to tell, he must pay for his wife's garrulity. Pat Gilligan had suffered for some such offence, and it was but just that she and he and they should suffer also. But the three might have to suffer, also, in their turns, if they consented to subject themselves to so bloody an aristocracy. And therefore they stalked ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... to whom he was already so largely indebted. With an effort, therefore, not so much of mind as of mood, he broke the ice which his own indifference had suffered to close, and by giving a legitimate excuse for the garrulity of his companion, unlocked once more the treasurehouse of his ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... gallery, which presented to the eye a long series of men and women, each marked by some strong peculiar feature. There were avarice and prodigality, the pride of blood and the pride of money, morbid restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous garrulity, supercilious silence, a Democritus to laugh at everything and a Heraclitus to lament over everything. The work proceeded fast, and in twelve months ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... and took his leave. Babcock escorted him to the front door and full of his subject delayed him on the porch to touch once more on the greatness of Benham. There was a clumsy method too in this optimistic garrulity, for at the close he referred with some pride to his own business career, and made a tender of his business card, "Lewis Babcock & Company, Varnishes," with a flourish. "If you do anything in my line, pleased ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... apparent confidence, said, "I am sure it is an Irish dog."—"How do you know that?" exclaimed the astonished young man with eagerness.—"I know it, sir," (replied the divine,) "by its impudence and its howl." This seasonable retort cured the garrulity of the patient, and gave him a locked-jaw till the stage arrived ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... their bosoms trying with rais'd arms, "In air suspended, on those arms they move; "The new-shap'd birds the sylvan tribes increase: "Magpies, the scandal of the grove. Thus chang'd, "Their former eloquence they still maintain, "In hoarse garrulity, and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... interpretation which they bear, and the conclusion to which they lead, are triumphant and irresistible. The old lady, naturally strong-minded, was nevertheless frail and fading; she was notoriously subject to that confusion of ideas, or, to say the least, of speech, to which age and garrulity are liable. The slight, the very slight, confusion apparent in these expressions is manifest, and is ludicrously easy of correction. 'Aye, aye,' quoth she, and it will be observed that no emendation whatever is necessary to be made in these two initiative remarks, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... fool, but the die is cast. I will sow in sorrow, and may I reap a harvest in joy. I feel,' thought I (and I did feel), 'I feel a delightful conviction, that we shall meet again, and all this misery of parting will be but a subject of future garrulity.' "Yes, Tim," said I, in a ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... a very considerable portion of the book, and, as usual, its value is diminished in an exactly equivalent degree; for the biographies of Western pioneers are fully as tedious and valueless as the catalogue of ships in the second book of Homer. And, oh! the garrulity of the biographers, the minuteness of detail, the petty incidents, the host of dates! With these we are inflicted because some adventurous Yankee happened, by sheer luck, to build the first shanty on what became the site of a great city, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... pass; the unconcern of their every-day existence is strikingly contrasted with the dark and fateful purposes of Tell. The shallow innocent garrulity of Stuessi the Forester, the maternal vehemence of Armgart's Wife, the hard-hearted haughtiness of Gessler, successively presented to us, give an air of truth to the delineation, and deepen the impressiveness of ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... the hallway, had half risen. It really was time to check the old servant's vulgar garrulity. But the silence that followed the last remark checked her impulse. After all, what did it matter? No one could understand or needed ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... Notwithstanding his garrulity, Pope was noticeably ill at ease. He was conscious of Miss Demorest's hostile eyes, and the pointed manner in which she ignored his presence was disquieting. He had the feeling that she was carefully measuring him and preparing herself to take revenge in some characteristic feminine manner. Knowing ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... old age; I was an old, bearded, heavy-going, wrinkled tramp, leaning on a stout stick; my grey hairs blew about my old red ears in wisps. I stopped all passers-by upon the road, and chuckled over old jokes or detained them with garrulity. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... Pickering, or between a folio and an octavo, Alice was very proud of our little library, and I recall now with real delight the times I used to hear her showing off those precious books to her lady callers. Alice made up for certain inaccuracies of information with a distinct enthusiasm and garrulity that never failed to impress her callers deeply. I was mighty proud of Alice; I was prepared to say, paraphrasing Sam Johnson's remark about the Scotchman, "A wife can be made much ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... been pestered with the scamp's presence and garrulity a good deal longer; but Montrose came up at that moment and took us aside with a friendly ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... uttered no word, for she was by nature given to profound silences, almost unbroken for days. Perhaps, she believed the garrulity of her husband ample for the entire family. Nevertheless, in this critical moment, Mrs. Schmidt opened her mouth repeatedly, like a fish out of water, as if she were striving her ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... with a deep sigh of satisfaction; "thanks to your friend Red Hand's garrulity in his cups, Mr Fortescue, we shall now know how to deal with that precious craft. We go to sea to-morrow, and it shall be our business, gentlemen, to bring her to book; and a fine feather in our caps it will be if ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... she answered in a slightly unsteady voice; "let me speak to them all." He yielded, but cut short the garrulity of some who would have liked to mingle reminiscences of her baby-hood with their rejoicing over her return, telling them they must reserve such communication for a more suitable time, as their young mistress was faint and ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... Neither shall I emulate the grandiose volubility and self-complacent posing of Metternich and Talleyrand, whose pretentious volumes rest for the most part unopened upon dusty shelves. I aspire to none of the honors of the historian. It shall be my aim as far as may be to avoid the garrulity of the raconteur and to restrain the exaggerations of the ego. But neither fear of the charge of self-exploitation nor the specter of a modesty oft too obtrusive to be real shall deter me from a proper freedom of narration, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... from a momentary absence, and had it not been for his garrulity the little group would have been a rather silent one. Both young men sought to supply Lottie with the sprays of green that she was twining. She took the evergreens chiefly from De Forrest's hands, but gave her thoughts and eyes to Hemstead. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... specific periods in the one case as in the other. Without difficulty we affirm of a given act that it appertains to a given period. We recognize the noisy sports of boyhood, the business application of maturity, the feeble garrulity of old age. We express our surprise when we witness actions unsuitable to the epoch of life. As it is in this respect in the individual, so it is in the nation. The march of individual existence shadows forth the march of race ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... brayings, all their voice being for their belly and the pleasure of their flesh, which they embrace and rejoice in either present or future; unless it be perhaps some animal which naturally takes delight in chattering and garrulity. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... and experienced a sudden check, remembering his resolve to fight this man with his own weapons, while here he was only an hour later behaving like a wild boy on his first escapade. He passed at once from garrulity to silence, and the contrast was so marked that the glances ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... book-rack," she continued, with the garrulity of the invalid when discoursing of his own affairs, "were Hesden's notions, as were many other things in the room. The flowers I had brought in, one by one, to satisfy my hunger for the world without. In the winter I have many more. Hesden makes the room a perfect ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... up by happy men to express the worth of truly worthy things, of brotherhood and garrulity, and the brief and kindly leisure of the poor. Of course, the great part of the more stolid reproaches directed against the Omarite morality are as false and babyish as such reproaches usually ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... lean, hollow-eyed, old, beetle-browed women (saith he) are the most infectious.'[44] Why old women are selected as the most proper means of doing the devil's will may be discovered in their peculiar characteristics. The repulsive features, moroseness, avarice, malice, garrulity of his hags are said to be appropriate instruments. Scot informs us, 'One sort of such as are said to be witches are women which be commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles, poor, sullen, superstitious, and papists, ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... now entering on a more ample field of society and study, I can only hope to avoid a vain and prolix garrulity, by overlooking the vulgar crowd of my acquaintance, and confining myself to such intimate friends among books and men, as are best entitled to my notice by their own merit and reputation, or by the deep impression which ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... pleasure little courtesies like this give to poverty and old age! The old man's face brightened when he heard that he was known at such a distance by such a gentleman as this, and he answered Mr. Brandon's inquiries as to his health and his hearing with eager garrulity. ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... of the upper powers, a fresh piece of coin would be forthcoming every month! In vain Philammon demanded to know who was his benefactor. Eudaimon resolutely kept the secret and imprecated a whole Tartarus of unnecessary curses on his wife if she allowed her female garrulity—though the poor creature seemed never to open her lips from morning till night—to betray so ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... voice high, as if it could not otherwise be heard at a distance. The Reverie, a speculation on the time when Power will show itself fully and therefore be known as love, has some of that vigorous intellectual garrulity which had grown on Browning during the years when unhappily for his poetry he came to be regarded chiefly as a prophet and a sage. An old man rightly values the truths which experience has made real for him; he repeats them again and again, for they constitute ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... about our projects, greatly exalting and exaggerating their importance; indeed, he could scarcely have said more if we had been traveling as accredited agents between two belligerent powers. Such vainglorious garrulity was not only intensely provoking, but involved real peril to all parties concerned. I thought the Irishman was perfectly right in taking that blundering bull by the horns, and acting decisively on his own responsibility, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence



Words linked to "Garrulity" :   communicativeness, leresis, garrulous



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