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FIFTEEN THOUSAND USEFUL PHRASES BY GRENVILLE KLEISER- SECTION XI MISCELLANEOUS PHRASES- PART -1

SECTION XI


MISCELLANEOUS PHRASES



A


A bewildering labyrinth of facts


A blank absence of interest or sympathy


A bloodless diplomatist


A breach of confidence


A brilliant and paradoxical talker


A burning sense of shame and horror


A century of disillusionment


A certain catholicity of taste        [catholicity = universality]


A cheap and coarse cynicism


A civilizing agency of conspicuous value


A cleanness and probity of life   [probity = integrity; uprightness]


A commendable restraint


A condescending and patronizing spirit


A confused and troublesome time


A conscientious anxiety to do the right thing


A conspicuous and crowning service


A constant source of surprise and delight


A contemptible species of mockery


A convenient makeshift


A copious torrent of pleasantry


A course of arrogant obstinacy


A crumb of consolation


A crystallized embodiment of the age


A cynical and selfish hedonist


A dangerous varnish of refinement


A dead theological dogma


A decorous and well-intentioned person


A deep and most impressive solemnity


A deep and strange suggestiveness


A deep authentic impression of disinterestedness


A dereliction of duty


A disaster of the first magnitude


A distorted and pessimistic view of life


A dogmatic and self-righteous spirit


A duel of brains


A dull collocation of words


A fastidious sense of fitness


A fatal moral hollowness


A feeling of lofty remoteness


A feminine excess of inconsequence


A final and irrevocable settlement


A firmness tempered by the most scrupulous courtesy


A fitting interval for penitence


A flippant rejoinder


A flood of external impressions


A flourish of rhetoric


A fund of curious information


A furtive groping after knowledge


A gambler's desperate chance


A ghastly mixture of defiance and conceit


A glaring example of rapacity            [rapacity = plundering]


A graceful nonentity


A great and many-sided personality


A great capacity for generous indignation


A great source of confusion


A gross piece of stupidity


A habit of riding a theory too hard


A habit of rigorous definition


A happy and compensating experience


A haughty self-assertion of equality


A hideous absurdity


A hideous orgy of massacre and outrage


A high pitch of eloquence


A homelike and festive aspect


A hopeless enigma


A hotbed of disturbance


A hushed rustle of applause testified to a widespread approbation

                                   [approbation = warm approval; praise]


A keenly receptive and intensely sensitive temperament


A kind of fantastic patchwork


A kind of surly reluctance


A laudable stimulus


A law of retributive justice


A less revolutionary innovation


A life of studious contemplation


A limpidity and lucidity of style

                  [limpidity = transparent clearity; easily intelligible]


A lingering tinge of admiration


A lively sense of what is dishonorable


A long accumulating store of discontent and unrest


A long tangle of unavoidable detail


A look threatening and peremptory

                               [peremptory = ending all debate or action]


A many-sided and far-reaching enthusiasm


A marvelous sharpener of the faculties


A melancholy preponderance of mischief


A memory-haunting phrase


A mercenary marriage


A mere conjectural estimate


A microscopic care in the search of words


A misconception which is singularly prevalent


A mixture of malignancy and madness


A modicum of truth


A monstrous travesty


A mood of hard skepticism


A more than ordinary share of baseness and depravity


A most laudable zeal


A most repulsive and incomprehensible idiom


A most unseasonable piece of impertinence


A multitude of groundless alarms


A murderous tenacity about trifles


A mysterious and an intractable pestilence


A mysterious and inscrutable power


A narrow and superficial survey


A nature somewhat frivolous and irresolute


A needlessly offensive manner


A nimble interchange of uninteresting gossip


A noble and puissant nation        [puissant = with power, might]


A novel and perplexing course


A numerous company


A painful and disconcerting deformity


A partial disenchantment


A passage of extraordinary daring


A patchwork of compromises


A permanent and habitual state of mind


A pernicious and growing tendency


A perversion of judgment


A phantom of the brain


A piece of grotesque stupidity


A pleasant flow of appropriate language


A pompous failure


A potential menace to life


A powerful and persuasive orator


A prevalent characteristic of her nature


A prey to the tongue of the public


A pristine vigor of style


A profusion of compliments


A proposition inherently vicious


A puerile illusion                 [puerile = immature; childish]


A quenchless thirst for expression


A rage akin to frenzy


A rare precision of insight


A rather desperate procedure


A reckless fashion


A recrudescence of superstition

                          [recrudescence = recurrence of a pathological

                           symptoms after a period of improvement]


A relish for the sublime


A reversion to the boldest paganism


A rigid avoidance of extravagance and excess


A ripple of applause


A restraining and conservative force


A robust and consistent application


A sacred and indissoluble union


A sane philosophy of life


A secluded dreamer of dreams


A secret and wistful charm


A sense of deepening discouragement


A sense of indescribable reverence


A series of brief and irritating hopes


A settled conviction of success


A sharp difference of opinion


A sharp pang of regretful surprise


A shrewd eye to the main chance


A signal deed of justice


A skeptical suspension of judgment


A slight and superficial tribute


A slowly subsiding frenzy


A snare and a delusion


A somewhat complicated and abstruse calculation

                                     [abstruse = difficult to understand]


A sordid and detestable motive


A sort of incredulous stupefaction


A source of unfailing delight and wonder


A species of moral usurpation


A spirit inimical to learning


A spirit of complacent pessimism


A startling and unfortunate digression


A state of scarcely veiled insurrection


A state of urgent necessity


A stern decree of fate


A stern foe of snobbishness


A storm of public indignation


A strange mixture of carelessness, generosity, and caprice


A strangely perverse and poverty stricken imagination


A strong assumption of superiority


A subjugated and sullen population


A sudden revulsion


A supposed ground of affinity


A synonym for retrogression


A taunting accusation of falsehood


A tedious and needless drudgery


A temper which brooked no resistance


A temporary expedient


A tender tone of remonstrance


A theme of endless meditation


A thing of moods and moments


A thoroughly sincere and unaffected effort


A thousand mangled delusions


A tissue of dull excuses


A tone of exaggerated solicitude


A touch of exquisite pathos


A trace of obvious sarcasm


A transcript of the common conscience


A trifle prim and puritanic


A truth begirt with fire


A unique and overwhelming charm


A vague aversion


A variety of conflicting and profound emotions


A variety of enfeebling amendments


A vast multitude of facts


A vastly extended vision of opportunity


A vehement and direct attack


A very elusive and delicate thought


A very formidable problem


A vigilant reserve


A violent and base calumniator

          [calumniator = makes malicious or knowingly false statements]


A voice of matchless compass and eloquence


A warmth of seemingly generous indignations


A wealth of resource that seemed inexhaustible


A welcome release from besetting difficulties


A whole catalog of disastrous blunders


A whole whirlpool of various emotions


Abounding bodily vigor


Above and beyond and before all else


Absurd and inconsequential career


Abundant and congenial employment


Accidental rather than intentional


Accustomed to ascribe to chance


Acquired sentiments of propriety


Activities of the discursive intellect


Actuated by an unduly anxious desire


Acute sensibility coupled with quickness of intellect


Adhere too tenaciously to forms and modes


Admirable mastery of technique


Admit the soft impeachment


Admitted with a childlike cheerfulness


Advance by leaps and bounds


Advancing to dignity and honor


Adventitious aids to memory

                      [adventitious = Not inherent; added extrinsically]


Affectation and superfluous ornament


Aggravated to an unspeakable degree


Agitated and perplexed by a dozen cross-currents of conflicting tendency


Agreeable and humanizing intercourse


Aided by strong mental endowments


Airy swiftness of treatment


Alien to the purpose


All sorts of petty tyrannies


All the resources of a burnished rhetoric


Allied by taste and circumstances


Allied with a marked imperiousness   [imperious = arrogantly overbearing]


Almost incredible obtuseness


Altogether monstrous and unnatural


Always observant and discriminating


Amaze and confound the imagination


Amiable and indulgent hostess


Amid many and pressing avocations


Amid the homeliest details of daily life


Amid the rush and roar of life


Ample scope for the exercise of his astonishing gifts


An abandoned and exaggerated grief


An accidental encounter


An act of folly amounting to wickedness


An afternoon of painfully constrained behavior


An agreeable image of serene dignity


An air of artificial constraint


An air of round-eyed profundity


An alarmed sense of strange responsibilities


An almost excessive exactness


An almost sepulchral regularity and seclusion


An ample and imposing structure


An apostle of unworldly ardor


An appreciable menace


An ardent and gifted youth


An arid dictum


An artful and malignant enemy


An assumption entirely gratuitous


An assumption which proved erroneous


An atmosphere of sunny gaiety


An attitude of passive impartiality


An authoritative and conclusive inquiry


An egregious assumption       [egregious = outrageously reprehensible]


An elaborate assumption of indifference


An endless field for discussion


An enervating and emasculating form of indulgence


An ennobling and invigorating influence


An entirely negligible quantity


An essentially grotesque and commonplace thing


An eternal and imperishable example


An exalted and chimerical sense of honor

                                        [chimerical = highly improbable]


An excess of unadulterated praise


An excessive refinement of feeling


An expression at once confident and appealing


An extensive and populous country


An habitual steadiness and coolness of reflection


An honest and unquestioning pride


An icy indifference


An idle and unworthy action


An ill-assorted vocabulary


An immeasurable advantage


An imminent and overmastering peril


An imperturbable demeanor and steadiness of mind


An implacable foe


An inborn and irresistible impulse


An incongruous spectacle


An incredible mental agility


An indefinable taint of priggishness

                                  [priggishness = exaggerated propriety]


An indescribable frankness and simplicity of character


An indolent surrender to mere sensuous experience


An indomitable and unselfish soul


An ineradicable love of fun and mystification


An inevitable factor of human conduct


An inexhaustible copiousness and readiness of speech


An insatiable appetite for trifles


An insatiable voracity


An inscrutable mystery


An intentional breach of politeness


An interchange of civilities


An intolerable deal of guesswork


An involuntary gesture of remonstrance


An irrelevant bit of magniloquence

                                [magniloquence = extravagant in speech]


An irrepressible and impassioned hopefulness


An irritating and dangerous treatment


An itching propensity for argument


An object of indestructible interest


An obnoxious member of society


An ominous lull and silence


An open and violent rupture


An outburst of impassioned eloquence


An unaccountable feeling of antipathy


An unbecoming vehemence


An undisciplined state of feeling


An unerring sense of humor


An unparalleled and almost miraculous growth


An unparalleled atrocity


An unpatriotic and ignoble act


An unreasoning form of coercion


An utterly vile and detestable spirit


And now I address myself to my task


And the like


Announced in a tone of pious satisfaction


Another thought importuned him

                           [importuned = insistent or repeated requests]


Anticipated with lively expectation


Apparent rather than real


Appeal to a tardy justice


Appreciably above the level of mediocrity


Arbitrary assumption of power


Ardently and enthusiastically convinced


Argued with immense force and feeling


Arrayed with scrupulous neatness


Arrogance and untutored haughtiness


As an impartial bystander


As belated as they are fallacious


As by a secret of freemasonry


As odious as it is absurd


As ridiculous as it was unnecessary


As we scan the vague unknown


Assailed by poignant doubts


Assume a menacing attitude


Assumed almost heroic proportions


At once epigrammatic and arresting      [epigrammatic = terse and witty]


At once misleading and infelicitous


At the mercy of small prejudices


Attained by rigorous self-restraint


Attended by insuperable difficulties


Averted by some happy stroke of fortune


Await the sentence of impartial posterity


Awaited with feverish anxiety



B


Bandied to and fro


Based on a fundamental error


Beguile the tedium of the journey


Bemoaning and bewailing his sad fortune


Beset with external dangers


Betrayed into deplorable error


Bewildering multiplication of details


Beyond the dreams of avarice


Blended with courage and devotion


Blind leaders of the blind


Blunt the finer sensibilities


Blustering desire for publicity


Bound up with impossibilities and absurdities


Breathed an almost exaggerated humility


Bred in the tepid reticence of propriety


Brief ventures of kindliness


Brilliant display of ingenious argument


Bring odium upon the individual


Brisk directness of speech


Brutal recognition of failure


Bursts of unpremeditated frankness


But delusions and phantasmagoria


But that is beside the mark


But this is a digression


By a curious perversity of fate


By a happy turn of thinking


By a whimsical diversion


By common consent


By means of crafty insinuations


By no means inconsolable


By temperament incompatible


By the common judgment of the thinking world


By the sheer centripetal force of sympathy


By virtue of a common understanding


By way of rejoinder



C


Calculated to create disgust


Calm strength and constancy


Capable of a severe scientific treatment


Capacity for urbanity and moderation


Carried into port by fair winds


Caught unawares by a base impulse


Ceaseless tramp of humanity


Censured for his negligence


Championing the cause of religious education


Chastened and refined by experience


Checked by the voice of authority


Cherished the amiable illusion


Cherishing a huge fallacy


Childishly inaccurate and absurd


Chivalrous loyalty and high forbearance


Clever and captivating eloquence


Coarse and glittering ostentation


Coherent and continuous trend of thought


Commended by perfect suavity


Common ground of agreement


Complicated and infinitely embittered


Conceded from a sense of justice


Conceived with imperfect knowledge


Concentrated and implacable resolve


Conditions of unspeakable humiliation


Conducive to well-being and efficiency


Confused rumblings presaging a different epoch


Constrained by the sober exercise of judgment


Consumed by a demon of activity


Continuous and stubborn disregard


Contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment


Couched in terms of feigned devotion


Credulous and emotionally extravagant


Creed of incredulity and derision


Criticized with unsparing vigor


Crude undigested masses of suggestion


Cruel and baseless calumnies

                     [calumnies = maliciously false statements; slander]


Cynically repudiate all obligations



D


Daily usages and modes of thinking


Dangerously near snobbery


Darkly insinuating what may possibly happen


Dazzled by their novelty and brilliance


Debased by common use


Deep essentials of moral grandeur


Deeply engrossed in congenial work


Deeply moved as well as keenly stung


Deeply rooted in the heart of humanity


Defiant of analysis and rule


Degenerate into comparative feebleness


Degenerated into deadness and formality


Degrading and debasing curiosity


Deliberate and cautious reflection


Delicacy of perception and quick tact


Delude many minds into acquiescence


Dense to the point of stupidity


Descanting on them cursorily      [descanting = discussion or discourse]


Devices generally held to be discreditable


Devious and perilous ways


Devoid of hysteria and extravagance


Dexterous modes of concealment


Dictated by an overweening partiality


Differ in degree only and not in kind


Difficult and abstruse questions      [abstruse = incomprehensible ]


Diffidence overwhelmed him


Diffusing beneficent results


Dignified by deliberation and privacy


Dimly implying some sort of jest


Discreditable and insincere support


Disdaining the guidance of reason


Disenchanting effect of time and experience


Disfigured by glaring faults


Disguised in sentimental frippery


Dispel all anxious concern


Displayed enormous power and splendor


Distinguish themselves by their eccentricities


Distracted by contending desires


Diversity of mind and temperament


Divested of all personal feelings


Dogged and shameless beyond all precedent


Dominated by no prevailing taste or fashion


Doomed by inexorable fate


Doomed to impermanence and transiency


Draw back in distrust and misgiving


Dreaded and detested rival


Driven towards disaffection and violence


Due to historical perspective


Dull and trite commonplaces


Dwindled to alarmingly small dimensions



E


Easy-going to the point of lethargy


Elementary principles of right and wrong


Embittered and fanatical agitation


Encrusted with pedantry and prejudice    [pedantry = attention to detail]


Endless and intricate technicalities


Endowed with undreamed-of powers


Enforced by coercive measures


Enormities of crime and anomalies of law


Entangled in theological controversy


Entirely futile and negligible


Erroneous assumptions and sophistries


Espoused with extraordinary ardor


Essentially one-sided and incomplete


Eternally fruitful and stimulating


Evidently malicious and adroit


Evinces a hardened conscience and an insensibility to shame


Exact and resolute allegiance


Examples of terrific and explosive energy


Exasperating to the last degree


Excruciating cruelty and injustice


Exposed to damaging criticism


Exposing his arrogance and folly to merited contempt


Expressions of unrestrained grief


Exquisite lucidity of statement


Extraordinarily subtle and penetrating analysis


Exuberant rush of words



F


Facile and fertile literary brains


Faithfully and religiously eschewed        [eschew = avoid; shun]


Fallen into the convenient oblivion of the waste-basket


Fanatical and dangerous excesses


Far off and incredibly remote


Fastidious correctness of form


Fate had turned and twisted a thousand ways


Fed by many currents from the long stream of human experience


Feigning a virtuous indignation


Fertility of argumentative resource


Fictitious and adventitious aid


Finely touched to the fine issues


Fit to stand the gaze of millions


Fits and starts of generosity


Fixed convictions of mankind


Flouted as unpractical


Foolish and inflexible superstition


Fostering and preserving order


Free from all controversial pettifogging

                   [pettifogging = quibbling over insignificant details]


Freighted with the most precious cargoes


Frequently recurring forms of awkwardness


Fresh and unsuspected loveliness


From the standpoint of expediency and effectiveness


Full and tuneful diction


Full of ardent affection and gratitude


Full of presentiments of some evil


Full of singular freshness, insight and power


Full of speculation and a deep restrained excitement


Fumble and stumble in helpless incapacity



G


Gain the applause of future ages


Generous to a pathetic and touching degree


Give vent to his indignation


Giving an ear to a little neighborly gossip


Glances and smiles of tacit contempt


Gnawing at the vitals of society


Grace and gentleness of manner


Graceful succession of sentences


Gratuitous and arbitrary meddling


Greeted with unalloyed satisfaction


Grooves of intellectual habit


Growing sense of bewilderment and dismay


Guilty and baffled antagonists



H


Habits of unintelligent routine


Habitual self-possession and self-respect


Happy and gracious willingness


Hard-souled and joyously joyous


Haunted by blank misgivings


He affected neither pomp nor grandeur


He became more blandly garrulous   [garrulous = excessive and trivial talk]


He declined the proffered hospitality


He dropped into an eloquent silence


He eludes analysis and baffles description


He glanced at her indulgently


He had the habit of self-engrossed silences


He harbored his misgivings in silence


He poured bitter and biting ridicule on his discomfited opponents


He spoke with sledgehammer directness


He suffers nothing to draw him aside


He took his courage in both hands


He turned on me a glance of stored intelligence


He was disheveled and untidy


He was inexhaustibly voluble


Heavily freighted with erudition     [erudition = extensive learning]


Heights of serene contemplation


Her voice had a wooden resonance and a ghost of a lisp


Hidebound in official pedantry       [pedantry = attention to detail]


High and undiscouraged hope


High-handed indifference to all restraint


His chin had too vanishing an aspect


His first zeal was flagging


His general attitude suggested an idea that he had an oration for you


His gestures and his gait were untidy


His mood was one of pure exaltation


His plea was irresistible


His tone verged on the ironical


His work was ludicrously perfunctory


Hopelessly belated in its appearance


 

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