Of a very different tone is Rochefoucauld, whose Maxims, expressed in pithy language, seek to trace all virtuous action to self-seeking.
Examples of didactic poetry are the Book of Job, and books like the Proverbs, composed mainly of pithy sayings or gnomes.
Frohman had a great fund of pithy sayings, remarkable for their brevity.
Frohman could always reach the heart of a situation with a pithy phrase or reply.
Pithy paragraphs on a wide range of subjects, not one of which but will be found to contain some terse, sparkling truth worthy of thought and attention.
The three worlds are as the fatty bulb of that pithy intelligence; for know thou righteous soul!
Tell me what is that pithy particle in bodies, which is enveloped under a hundred folds or sheaths, which are laid over and under one another, like the coats or lamina of a plantain tree.
Obviously, it was desirable to apply the universal test to religious belief, and this very pithy and condensed statement shows the result.
He instinctively hit upon the only subject each week that was before the eye of Oxford, and in straightforward, pithy language wrote it down, laughed at it, or cried over it.
In a short and pithy editorial, however, he assured his readers that his own political views did not count--he was merely running the paper.
Trees or shrubs, with stellate pubescence, slender terete pithy branchlets, without a terminal bud, axillary buds with imbricated accrescent scales, and fibrous roots.
Aromatic spiny trees and shrubs, with stout pithy branchlets, and thick fleshy roots, or bristly or glabrous perennial herbs.
The largepithy shoots of Sambucus furnish children with pop-guns, pipes, and whistles; and the fruit of some of the species is cooked and eaten.
A tree, with scaly bark, terete pithy branchlets, and naked buds.
Trees or shrubs, with teretepithy branchlets, resinous juice, and alternate simple or pinnate leaves, without stipules, and scaly or naked buds.
Trees, with watery juice, thick deeply furrowed scaly bark exfoliating from the branches and young trunks in large thin plates, terete zigzag pithy branchlets prolonged by an upper axillary bud, and fibrous roots.
Trees or shrubs, withpithy branchlets, fleshy roots, and milky sometimes caustic or watery juice.
Sir Albert Howard had a unique and pithy way of expressing this reality.
A warmly human back-to-the-lander whose pithy critique of industrial civilization still hits home.
Spartan brevity was a proverb, whence our word laconic (from Laconia), implying a concise and pithy mode of expression.
Most of them accompanied their gift by a few words of prayer, or by some pithy text anent the treasure which rusteth not, or the lending to the Lord.
His striking appearance, the pithyterseness of his speech, and a certain naïve self-assertion and impatience of social restraints made him a notable figure in the polite and somewhat effeminate society of the Danish capital.
The sterner and hardier folk at Granliden (Pine Glen) have a rugged honesty and straightforwardness which, in connection with their pithy and laconic speech, makes them less genial, but no less typically Norse.
He spoke with a quiet self-possession and a pithy incisiveness which were altogether phenomenal.
Whatever novelty there is in the play must be sought, not in the situations, but in the pithy and laconic dialogue, which has a distinct national coloring.
On opening the trench I stripped away the pithy outer stalks and found in almost all of them large sound hearts.
Last week I opened another silo--I mean trench--of celery, and was surprised to find that I was altogether too hasty in complaining about the pithy growth of the plants.
When trenching the celery I found that part of it had grown very rank, and was sopithy that it is practically useless.
When the work of trenching the celery was being completed we trenched the pithy stuff on general principles, and because we had noticed a few good hearts in the huge bundles of stalks.
Each hair is normally composed of an inner cellular pithy portion containing much air, and an outer denser cortical portion of a horny nature.
Sometimes, as in Deer, the hair is mainly formed of the pithy portion, and is then easily broken.
The compliments which passed between the host and hostess were pithy and violent, though scarcely heard through the din, excepting by those who happened to be seated close to them.
Apophthegmatic Manuel winds up in this pithy way: "A Minister must perish!
This is the determination of the royal breast: pithy and clear.
Again, the division into many small cells is often connected with a large and pithy placenta and unevenness in maturity and coloring, which faults often more than overbalance any advantage from small cells and thick flesh.
Of his social philosophy otherwise he gave me in the days of my youth many pithy expositions, with hints as to what I should do when I entered the world myself.
That brother, moreover, took this view strongly and wrote to him, saying in brief and pithy terms that, should he become a Catholic, he would never see him again.
Sure the Devil rides him,"[186] was the pithy comment of one of his acquaintance, John Ashburnham.
Francis de Sales, who wrote her the following short and pithy note: "My daughter, enter religion immediately, notwithstanding all the oppositions of nature.
And this same painter, who filled these huge spaces of wall, lightly dallying with subjects from the world of fable, seems another man when he grasps fragments from the life of our own age in pithy inspirations sure in achievement.
To imitate the manner of the Laconians, especially in brief, pithy speech, or in frugality and austerity.
