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More "Cursory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every moment at Paris likewise strike even a cursory observer,—a countess in a morning, her hair dressed, with diamonds too perhaps, a dirty black handkerchief about her neck, and a flat silver ring on her finger, like our ale-wives; a femme publique, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... from one to another of those who lay slain; in turn stooping over each corpse, and scrutinising it—to some giving but a cursory glance, to others more careful examination—then leaving each with an air of disappointment, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... cigar and gossip, the sergeant vouchsafed but a careless and cursory glance to this party, and they were passing on without hindrance, when, from a window of the guard-house, a voice called to ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... they be matrices or feed-baggs of any kind of Fishes, or some kind of watry Insect; or whether they are at any times more soft and tender, or of another nature and texture, which things, if I knew how, I should much desire to be informed of: but from a cursory view that I at first made with my Microscope, and some other trials, I supposed it to be some Animal substance cast out, and fastned upon the Rocks in the form of a froth, or congeries of bubbles, like that which I have often observ'd on Rosemary, and other Plants (wherein is included a little ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... perhaps, in this state alone. The state spends its money for the above institution, and, therefore, has a right to know what it is; a knowledge which can never be obtained from the reports of the authorities, the cursory observations of visitors, or the statements ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals, that their maxims have a plausible air: and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... most necessary," stated a Manchester economics expert last week, "that the Government should release more beef for civilian needs." Yet a cursory view of the work done by the military tribunals seems to indicate that they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... in the air. This practice is of such venerable antiquity, and so universal, that it would be vain to impugn it. The pleasure, too, which most children evince under it, seems to show that it cannot be so objectionable as a cursory observer would be disposed to consider it. Still there are hazards which ought not to be overlooked. The risk of accident is one of some amount: children have slipped from the hands, and sustained serious injury. Some people are so energetic as to throw up children and catch them in ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... and couldn't the least understand, a sudden blank expression cross Robert's face. For the moment he looked as if he were dead but had been beautifully stuffed. But Georgie gave but a cursory thought to that, for the amazing supposition dawned on him that Lucia had not been polemical at all, but was burying instead of chopping with the hatchet. It was instantly confirmed, for Lucia took her elbow off the table, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... flying French colours. In such cases it was not Captain Brownrigg's custom to board, but only to go alongside to see that the papers were correct. He therefore ordered the boat's crew to be careful not to board without direct orders, intending a mere cursory examination, and no detention whatever, as he did not arm the boat's crew, and directed the time alongside to ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... into this case, heart and soul. Money, Justice, Law, Morality, are all concerned—One moment, my dear sir! If you must really go back to London, oblige me at any rate, with your address, and just state in a cursory way, whether you were christened or not at Dibbledean church. I want nothing more to begin with—absolutely nothing more, on my word of honor as ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... that Bush had acquired most of his knowledge of sea terms from a cursory perusal of Bowditch's Navigator, which I had seen lying on the office table, and I privately resolved to procure a compact edition of Marryat's sea tales as soon as I should go ashore, and overwhelm him next time with such accumulated stores of nautical erudition that he would hide ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... machine giving it a cursory looking over, but could find nothing out of the way, and every one of ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... himself that he was a past master of the art of measuring the depth of a hidden purse. He recalled the brilliant Casimir Wieniawski of eight years past—the curled darling of the hot-hearted ladies of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay and Singapore. In a glance of cursory inspection Alan Hawke had noted the doubtful gloss of the dress suit; it was the polish of long wear, not the velvety glow of newness. There was a growing bald spot, scarcely hidden by the Hyperion ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... quick to last; it died a natural death in 1819, from the paralyzed state of its members. The house was then taken by a set of blacklegs, who instituted a common bank of gambling. To form an idea of the ruin produced by this short-lived establishment among men whom I have so intimately known, a cursory glance to the past suggests the following melancholy list, which only forms a part of its deplorable results: none of the dead reached the average age of man.' Among the members were Beau ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of the Law which thus gradually took form, a distinction may easily be traced even by the cursory reader. The earlier code, Deuteronomy, is full of a generous and lofty temper. It is one of the most impressive documents of the Jewish scriptures. Here is that which Jesus named as the first and great commandment: "Thou shalt love the ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... perhaps a trifle chagrined at the profusion, as Nina gave a cursory glance at the cards that Celeste had affixed to each opened box. But with a curious little smile—one that had real sweetness in it—Nina picked up a particular bunch of violets, and looked at Derby over their clustered ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... know not whose turn it is to write; though a suspicion has long attended me that it was yours, and above all an indisputable wish that you would do it: but this present is a cursory line, all on business,—and as usual all on business ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... forty years, in fact, counting in every chance cursory acquaintanceship, we may well say that we have been intimate with two or three ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and material details of 1Kings vi., vii. are reproduced only in an imperfect and cursory manner, the act of consecration on the other hand, and the discourse delivered by Solomon on the occasion, is accurately and fully given (v. 2-vii. 10) in accordance with 1Kings viii.; such additions and omissions as occur are all deliberate. In 1Kings viii. the priests ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... himself across his wheel, gave a cursory glance at the landscape, took a running slide over the tracks with a swift pedal or two and slumped in a heap, lying motionless as the dead. He couldn't have done it more effectively if he had practised for a week. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... maids Caius was obliged to relate wherefore he had come and whither he was bound. He told his story with a feeling of self-conscious awkwardness, because, put it in as cursory a manner as he would, he felt the heroism of his errand must appear; nor was he with this present audience mistaken. The wrinkled maidens, with their warm Irish hearts, were overcome with the thought that so much youth and ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... Spalding was the originator of the trip, the master spirit of the remarkable enterprise, and the leader of the band of base ball missionaries to the antipodes. Of course, in recording the Australian trip in the GUIDE for 1889, only a cursory glance can be taken of the trip, as it would require a volume of itself to do the tour justice. Suffice it to say that the pluck, energy and business enterprise which characterized the unequaled event reflected the highest credit not only ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... the greater part of what we had to say has been already said, in speaking of his works. The most cursory perusal of these will satisfy us that he had a mind of the highest order; grand by nature, and cultivated by the assiduous study of a lifetime. It is not the predominating force of any one faculty ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... what kind of a treasure is this that we propose to bequeath to posterity? What is the real value of this system of metaphysics, purified by criticism, and thereby reduced to a permanent condition? A cursory view of the present work will lead to the supposition that its use is merely negative, that it only serves to warn us against venturing, with speculative reason, beyond the limits of experience. This is, in fact, its primary use. But this, at once, assumes a positive value, when we observe ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... more frequent use than any other intellectual quality; it is exerted on slight occasions, and called into act by the cursory business of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... fact, that they considered wisdom as synonymous with sleepless and unscrupulous cunning! Schiller declares that 'man depicts himself in his gods'; and even a cursory inspection of the classics proves that all the abhorred and hideous ideas of the ancients were personified by woman. Pluto was affable, and beneficent, and gentlemanly, in comparison with Brimo; ditto might be said of Loke and Hela, and the most appalling idea that ever attacked the brain of mankind, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... V. be transient &c. adj.; flit, pass away, fly, gallop, vanish, fade, evaporate; pass away like a cloud, pass away like a summer cloud, pass away like a shadow, pass away like a dream. Adj. transient, transitory, transitive; passing, evanescent, fleeting, cursory, short-lived, ephemeral; flying &c. v.; fugacious, fugitive; shifting, slippery; spasmodic; instantaneous, momentaneous[obs3]. temporal, temporary; provisional, provisory; deciduous; perishable, mortal, precarious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of the Inter-Mountain one of the men at the table in the private dining-room had registered from Chicago. The name was illegible to the cursory eye, but since it was the signature of a notable empire-builder, it was sufficiently well known in all the vast region served by the Transcontinental Railway System. The owner of the name had finished his ice, and was sitting back to clip the end from a very long and very black cigar. He was a man ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... here unnecessarily alarmed. On that terrible slave question, over which wiser brains have puzzled, till they became lost in a labyrinth of self-contradiction, I purpose to speak only a few cursory words. It is beyond dispute that a vast extent of the richest land in the South can only be kept in cultivation by the Africans, who can thrive and fatten where the white man withers helplessly. No one that has realized the present state of our own West Indian colonies, will ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... his enthusiasm was once more alight in my father when I got back to our camp that morning; and one might have supposed it nourished him, if one had judged from the cursory manner in which his share of our simple breakfast was dispatched. Then, carrying with him a tomahawk, I remember, he led us down across the sand to where the ship lay, so deeply bedded that one stepped over her rail as it might have been the coaming of a hatch. Her deck, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... a good boy, has no objection to his praying, and hopes a good master will buy him. He will do all he can to further his interests, having heard a deal about his talents. He says this with good-natured measure, and proceeds to take a cursory view of the felons. While he is thus proceeding, the gentlemen of trade who accompanied him are putting "the property" through a series ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... awed at the imposing doorway, but Andrea, boylike, marched in unabashed, and, after a cursory glance in various directions, declared himself ready to leave. He would far rather be outdoors and could scarcely wait to get on ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... sight appear from what has been said that the literature of the sexual life of the child was extremely voluminous, but this is not in reality the case. Almost always, this important question is handled in a casual or cursory manner. A thorough presentation of the subject has not, as far as my knowledge extends, hitherto been attempted. Freud rightly insists that even in all, or nearly all, the works on the psychology ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... vain for him to attempt, in a cursory address, to fan the fervour of his hearers' zeal, or throw light on subjects which they were in the habit ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... painter who has "come on" visibly since the war. He has drawn right away from "the field" to join those leaders—Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Bonnard, shall we say, with one or two more in close attendance—a cursory glance at whom, as they flash by, provokes this not unprofitable exclamation: "How different they are!" Apparently, amongst the chiefs, that famous movement no longer counts for much. Look at them; to an eye at all practised these artists ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... mentioned this circumstance in the cursory tone of an ordinary remark, but he could not conceal the pride he felt in the rank and condition of his guest. As for Gorman, perhaps it was his foreign breeding, perhaps his ignorance of all home matters generally, but he simply assented to the force of the caution, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... carried before the commons, who voted him insane, and ordered his dismissal. The court of king's bench, however, committed Dun to prison for want of bail and securities, and looking upon facts only in a cursory light, the people believed that the government was determined to make away with the defender of their liberties. All this tended to render the cabinet so obnoxious, that Horace Walpole was apprehensive that there would have been some ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... consisted of some two-score structures, and only a cursory glance was needed to ascertain that it was the source of supplies and rendez-vous for entertainment of the several mines and all the miners and prospectors in the neighboring hills. Several fairly good roads and many trails led into it, and from it there ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... dismiss him out of her life with a cursory word of pardon and a half-expressed promise of oblivion: on that understanding and that only she was ready to let her hand rest for the space of one second ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... was essentially a man of the intellect. No other author of modern times, perhaps no other English author of any time, appeals so directly as he to the educated classes. Even a cursory reading of his pages, prose or verse, reveals the scholar and the critic. He is always thinking, always brilliant, never lacks for a word or phrase; and on the whole, his judgments are good. Between his prose and verse, however, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... On a cursory inspection of the great works of art—the steam-engine, the printing-press, the power-loom, the mill, the iron foundery, the ship, the telescope, etc., etc.—we are apt to look upon them as having sprung into sudden existence, and reached their present state of perfection by one, or, at most, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... along with the current into far distant seas and strange climes. To this cause the occasional discovery of foreigners upon British coasts has been ascribed. With regard to the name of the cat-fish, one must not be quite so particular. There is, on a cursory glance, enough of the appearance of pussy about the head of this curious animal to explain how the title came to be applied to it. It strikes one as being rather a morose and surly creature, an ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... must be afforded protection. These were traversed with care, and seen with as much thoroughness as possible. More of the reserves might easily have been visited in other States, had I been content to do this in a sketchy and cursory manner, but my idea was to derive the greatest possible amount of instruction for a definite specific purpose, and it seemed to me for the accomplishment of this end to be essential that one should spend a sufficiently long time in each forest to receive ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... would here mention Rogers's Italy, if such a cursory notice could convey our high opinion ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... an aid in the compilation, we might almost say, as a framework to fill up. This is the itinerary of the German knight William of Boldensele, written in 1336 at the desire of Cardinal Talleyrand de Perigord. A cursory comparison of this with Mandeville leaves no doubt of the fact that the latter has followed its thread, using its suggestions, and on many subjects its expressions, though digressing and expanding on ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the main deck and prowled aft. On the port side of her house he found two more dead men, and a cursory inspection of the bodies told him they had died of scurvy. He circled the ship, came back to the fo'castle, entered, and found four men alive in their berths, but too far gone to leave them. "I'll have you ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now—eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... theory of the visible Church and her fellowship, not only hostile to the Church of England and fraught with absurdity, but propounded under the alluring guise of Christian charity; a charity which has won for him the applause of the professors of modern liberalism, because, on a cursory glance, it appears to embrace all sects and denominations of Christians. It is proper, therefore, to set the matter in a true light, by showing that this liberality of sentiment is more specious than real; that Mr. Noel is throwing out false colours, and that while, in no measured ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... the study of the ancient geometry in Lancashire; for during the latter half of the last century, and almost up to the present date, it has numbered amongst its members several of the most distinguished geometers of modern times. A cursory glance at some of the mathematical periodicals of that date will readily furnish the names of Ainsworth, whose elegant productions in pure geometry adorn the pages of the Gentleman's and Burrow's Diaries; Taylor, the distinguished tutor of Wolfenden; Fletcher, whose investigations ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... hear; and the immense balance may be so far against the foregoing inferences that it is the part of mere prudence to declare that they are not my opinions or conclusions, but are only impressions, vague and hurried, guesses from cursory observations, deductions from slight casual incidents. They are mere gleams from social facets, sparks struck out by chance encounter, and never glancing lights from the rarefied atmosphere in which the two nations have their formal reciprocities. For all that I have really the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... was more elevated, no doubt overlooking cultivated fields beyond the confines of the ruin. No kivas were discovered, but if such exist they ought to be found in the mass of houses at the southern end. I thought we had found circular rooms in that region, but cursory excavations did not demonstrate their existence. As there is no reason to suspect the existence of circular kivas in ancient Tusayan, it would be difficult to decide whether or not any one of the large rectangular rooms was used for ceremonial ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... cursory acquaintance we had judged the French a sociable nation. Our stay at Versailles speedily convinced us of the fallacy of that belief. Nothing could have impressed us so forcibly as did the frigid silence that characterised the ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... in her little black book and checked off when the owners testified that the said garments had been made whole. So remembering the immaculate clothes which awaited her each week in Genevieve's room, she made a cursory examination of the dainty undies and checked O.K. opposite ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... this conclusion is supported is too subtle and complicated to be properly dealt with in a public lecture, and you will thank me for not inviting you to consider it at all.[13] I feel the more free to pass it by now as I think that the cursory account of the absolutistic attitude which I have already given is sufficient for our present purpose, and that my own verdict on the philosophy of the absolute as 'not proven'—please observe that I go no farther now—need not ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... three days after Christmas John was sitting in his room in the evening when there came a knock at the door, and to his "Come in" there entered Mr. Harum, who was warmly welcomed and entreated to take the big chair, which, after a cursory survey of the apartment and its furnishings, he did, saying, "Wa'al, I thought I'd come in an' see how Polly'd got you fixed; whether the baskit [casket?] was worthy of the jew'l, as I heard a feller say in ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... zealously that he had been absent last time and unable to assist. At every vacant minute he hastened to gather furze-stumps, thorn-tree roots, and other solid materials from the adjacent slopes, hiding them from cursory view. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... papers coming in between these two series, and covering the period extending from 1776 to 1789, have never been published, and in great part have either never been examined or else have been examined in the most cursory manner. The original documents are all in the Department of State at Washington, and for convenience will be referred to as "State Department MSS." They are bound in two or three hundred large volumes; exactly ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... are generally supposed to be Works of mere Amusement; or modest to direct its Judgment, in what is offered for its Entertainment; I would beg leave to introduce the following Sheets with a few cursory Remarks, that may lead the common Reader into some tolerable conception of the nature of this Work, and the ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... from the press. The leaves may all be cut, and the tops trimmed, and even gilded, without striking terror to the heart of the bibliomaniac. Dibdin, indeed, treats this last mentioned symptom in merely a superficial way and dismisses it with a few cursory remarks, viz: "It may be defined a passion to possess books of which the edges have never been sheared by the binder's tools." This definition is vague and unsatisfactory. Mr. Adrian H. Joline (Diversions of a Booklover, Harper & Bros., New ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... first sight it appeared to be as unblemished in every part of it as Nature's choicest and most perfect handiwork could be. So little did a mere cursory view suggest the possibility that life would have been destroyed by any external violence, that the Professor was about to take the necessary steps for ascertaining what light could be thrown on the manner of her death by the internal condition of the different portions of the organism, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... needs but a cursory view of history to realize—though all knowledge of history confirms the generalization—that this arena is not a confused and aimless conflict of individuals. Looked at too closely it may seem to be that—a formless web of individual hates ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... even in a cursory way, with the history of Europe will be able to recall numerous such instances; and it must in fairness be admitted that in some of them the ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... A cursory reading will suggest to any young person that the paragraph says Ailie is going to die, and that she does not fear death; but how much more it means to him who can understand it all. The end was drawing on—Ailie was going to her ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... the yard, though this exit was evidently never used, for the door was fixed by screws. The contents were a couple of broken chairs, and some coats and rugs hung upon hooks upon the walls, together with a miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends upon a shelf. I gave merely a cursory glance at the contents of this apartment, for my attention had been attracted by a plant of machinery, which occupied the far end of the large room. As it happened, I had once had an opportunity of inspecting the laboratory of the Royal Institution, and I recognized at once ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... Cursory and incomprehensible, but conclusive; and Lance, who minded enough to have lost sleep and gained a headache, marvelled over young men's lightness and buoyancy. He had seen Dr. Brownlow, and arranged that there should be a call, ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now worked with new zest for his employer and friend; while in every free moment he read law, feeling that, as almost all his forbears had been lawyers, he might perhaps be destined for the bar. This acquaintance with the fundamental basis of law, cursory as it was, became like a gospel to Edward Bok. In later years, he was taught its value by repeated experience in his contact with corporate laws, contracts, property leases, and other matters; and he determined that, whatever the direction of activity ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... to estimate a book or an article on a cursory inspection is of great practical value. The table of contents in a book, and sometimes the index, will give a good idea of its scope; and samples of a few pages at a time, especially on critical points, which can be chosen by means of the index, will ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... possessed some science of graciousness and attraction which books had not taught, and of which neither I nor my father had any knowledge; that he had the power of obliging those whom he did not benefit; that he diffused, upon his cursory behaviour and most trifling actions, a gloss of softness and delicacy by which every one was dazzled; and that, by some occult method of captivation, he animated the timorous, softened the supercilious, and opened the reserved. I could not but repine at the inelegance of my own manners, which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... some helpful Hand had contrived to bring out, under the pretended date "Potsdam," a cheap edition of that interesting Work. ["OEuvres du Philosophe de Sans-Souci:" 1 vol. 12 mo, "Potsdam [PARIS, in truth], 1760."] Merely in the way of theft, as appeared to cursory readers, to D'Argens, for example: [His Letter to the King, OEuvres de Frederic, xix. 138.] but, in deeper fact, for the purpose of apprising certain Crowned Heads, friendly and hostile,—Czarish Majesty ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... young Somerset's brain-work for the last six weeks lay under their eyes. To Dare, who was too cursory to trouble himself by entering into such details, it had very little meaning; but the design shone into Havill's head like a light into a dark place. It was original; and it was fascinating. Its originality lay partly in the circumstance that Somerset had not attempted to adapt an old ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Duties of a more stirring character, were, however, awaiting them, and as these are intimately associated with the career of the subject of this biography, the delineation of whose life is the purpose of the writer, we will give them something more than a cursory notice. ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... spoke, and after a cursory examination of the tall stool in front of the desk the officer picked up a thick silver-mounted rattan cane thrust in a stand by the side of the desk in company with ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... proceeded to scan the sky, roving from planet to star, from single stars to double stars, from double to coloured stars, in the cursory manner of the merely curious. They plunged down to that at other times invisible multitude in the back rows of the celestial theatre: remote layers of constellations whose shapes were new and singular; pretty twinklers which for infinite ages had spent their beams without calling ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... state the question, you must solve it; I can leave you only some cursory ideas, which I am satisfied are just, and upon which you may meditate at your leisure. Only for fools or the weak does materialism become a debasing dogma; assuredly, in its code there are none of those precepts of ordinary morals which our fathers ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... more they will be astonished. If we may judge by what has already taken place, we are entitled to predict that in a very few years more no European banner will be seen to float in any part of the new world. Let us take a cursory view ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... danger increasing with the fever, and therewith his horror of his father's knowing. It was of no use for his mother to hang over him, hold his hands, and assure him that she knew (as, in fact, she did, for Bernard had been obliged to make a cursory explanation), and that nothing could hinder her loving him still; he forgot it in the next interruption, and turned from her with terror and dismay, and once he nearly flung himself out of bed, fancying that ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... fortune!" I cried, gazing about me at the splendors of the room, which even to a cursory inspection revealed themselves as of priceless value. "That cloisonne jar over by the fireplace is worth two ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... many optional civilities in life which add very much to its charm if observed, but which cannot be called indispensable. To those which are harmless and graceful we shall give a cursory glance, and to those which are doubtful and perhaps harmful we shall also briefly allude, leaving it to the common-sense of the reader as to whether he will hereafter observe in his own manners these ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... errand, and when Grace came back she alighted from Mr. Libby's buggy with an expression of thanks that gave no clew as to the direction or purpose of it. He touched his hat to her with equal succinctness, and drove away, including all the ladies on the piazza in a cursory obeisance. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in the present Lecture go back to the age of Queen Anne, and endeavour to give a cursory account of the most eminent of our poets, of whom I have not already spoken, from ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... After a cursory glance around, they went forth again out upon the landing in order to await the arrival of two other plain-clothes officers who had come round on foot, one of them the sergeant of the Criminal Investigation Department attached to the Kew station. Then, after giving orders to the constable ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... precise nature of his malady was not known, since with quiet hopelessness he had refused to take medical advice. His friend Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was the only physician who had an opportunity to take even a cursory view of his case, which he did in the course of a brief walk and conversation in Boston before Hawthorne started with Mr. Pierce; but he was unable, with that slight opportunity, to reach any definite conclusion. Dr. Holmes prescribed and had put up for him a remedy to palliate some ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a matter to be dealt with as any one pleases—for the sake of sense, of more sense, of better sense, as much as if the text were a Greek manuscript without any division of words. This position I need not argue with anyone who has given but a cursory glance to the original page, or knows anything of printers' pointing. I hold hard by the word, for that is, or may be, grain: the pointing as we have it is merest chaff, and more likely to be wrong than right. Here also, however, I change ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... disclose the reasons of Professor Sloane for indulging in this prodigious Napoleonic dream and for delineating it in what is likely to be regarded as the best product of his intellectual career. We can only take what he has produced and give it such cursory notice as our space ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... by his papers, and by the presence on board of several gaunt, sickly-looking figures, who had all the appearance of being military invalids. There were no visible signs of any cargo; and after a somewhat cursory examination, the lieutenant returned to his ship, after telling the skipper, more for the sake of annoyance than from any expectation of its being realised, 'that Captain Long would ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... this occasion has inspired much censure and surprise when contrasted with his conspicuous respect for virtue in all other cases. But the history of the time requires intelligent expansion. Cursory reading suggests that Umako's resolve to kill Sushun was taken suddenly in consequence of discovering the latter's angry mood. The truth seems to be that Sushun was doomed from the moment of his accession. His elder brother had perished at the hands of Umako's troops, and if he himself ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... they were particularly jealous of any inspection at Oppau, the site of the wonderful Haber synthetic ammonia plant. Lieut. McConnel, of the U.S. Navy, tells us:[1] "Upon arrival at the plant the Germans displayed a polite but sullen attitude. They seemed willing to afford the opportunity of a cursory inspection, but strongly objected to a detailed examination. On the third day of the visit the writer was informed that his presence had become a source of serious objection and that if his examination were prolonged ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... fuss for nothing!" Pao-ch'ai interposed. "I merely passed a cursory remark, and there you want to go immediately and ask for things. Do wait until we arrive at some decision in our deliberations, and then you can go! But let's consider now what would be best to use to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... light at once the termination of that period and the beginning of a phase of my youth which was full of the charm of poetry. Therefore, I will not pursue my recollections from hour to hour, but only throw a cursory glance at the most prominent of them, from the time to which I have now carried my tale to the moment of my first contact with the exceptional personality that was fated to exercise such a decisive influence ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... these two occasions, I had no opportunity of making any observations on the manners and customs of our neighbours. Occasionally Mrs. Tod mentioned them in her social chatter, while laying the cloth; but it was always in the most cursory and trivial way, such as "Miss March having begged that the children might be kept quiet—Mrs. Tod hoped their noise didn't disturb ME? but Mr. March was such a very fidgety gentleman—so particular in his dress, too—Why, Miss March had to iron his cravats with ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... electric sign—"Lustgarten." Even a cursory glance told them that it included a saloon on the first floor, with a sort of dance hall and second-rate cabaret. Above that was a hotel. The windows were darkened, with awnings pulled down, even on what must have been in the daytime ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... all law, seeing that they could either manufacture it, or its interpretation, at will. Among the conspicuous, audacious capitalists the fraud of a few paltry millions shrank to the modesty of a small, cursory, off-hand operation. Yet, in the aggregate, these petty frauds constituted great results, and for that ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... prominent Americans are shamefully meagre, I was inclined to regard Rector Reed's sermon as a historical document of inestimable value. Being prone, however, to act upon the advice of St. Paul and "prove all things," I began a cursory investigation. Rector Reed neglected to give the source of his information, and to save me I could find but seven presidents, including Washington, who were Episcopalians, and now Col. Patrick Ford, of the Irish World calls my attention to Jared Spark's statement that the Father of his ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... essence of the tale to consist in the conception of an external soul or "life- index," and they both trace in this a "survival" of savage philosophy, which they consider occurs among all men at a certain stage of culture. But the most cursory examination of the sets of tales containing these incidents in Mr. Frazer's analyses shows that many, indeed the majority, of these tales cannot be independent of one another; for they contain not alone the incident of an external materialised soul, but the further point that this is contained ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... to content himself with a cursory examination of the forage and baggage wagon and presently came slouching back to the fire again. He had some scrap of harness in his hand and Pike longed to know what, but it was too far from his post of observation. He decided to remain where he was. ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... catch a moment's rest and sleep on the stone steps and in the corners of the lobby. I have no legal proof of the truth of the statement, or I should name the firm. The Report of the Children's Employment Commission is very cursory upon this subject, stating merely that in England, at least, the children are mostly pretty well clothed and fed (relatively, according to the wages of the parents), that they receive no education whatsoever, and are ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... in a necessarily cursory manner with volcanoes of distant parts of the globe, we may proceed to the consideration of the group of active volcanoes which still survive in Europe, as they possess a special interest, not only from their proximity and facility of access, at least ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... would involve a great deal of unnecessary repetition. In their buildings, their customs, their worship, their religious faith, their extreme cleanliness, their costume, and in many other particulars, they are all nearly alike; and the Shaker of Kentucky does not to the cursory view differ from his brother of Maine. But I have thought it necessary, to a complete view of the order, to present some particulars of each society, as to its location, numbers, the quantity of land it owns, its industries, and ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... suggestion of strength, of a mastery of facts, of a fund of knowledge, that speaks well for future production. . . . To be thoroughly enjoyed, however, this book must be read, as no mere cursory notice can give an adequate idea of its many interesting points and excellences, for without a doubt 'Dr. Claudius' is the most interesting book that has been published for many months, and richly deserves a high place in the public ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... clearly its defects, and are laboring most assiduously to correct them. Grave obstacles have been encountered in their endeavors to perfect the system. Those who have written upon the subject in the public press have been largely such as have given it but a cursory study, or such as have been totally unfit to discuss it from an impartial standpoint by reason of preconceived notions or prejudices in favor of the level premium system of insurance, if, indeed, they have not been retained for a consideration by ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... infinitely extended. Considering these circumstances, Cook's exploration of the coast was wonderful, and the charts attached to this book attest the skill and unwearied pains taken in mapping it from such a cursory glance. He only stopped at four places: Botany Bay, Bustard Bay, Thirsty Sound, and the Endeavour River; and from the neighbourhood of these, with the view obtained as he coasted along, he had to form his opinion of the country—an ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... obviously impossible to treat a subject so vast and so profoundly interesting as this within the limits of a Parish Paper, except in the most cursory and superficial manner. Yet I am induced to make the attempt, in order, if possible, to impress my readers with such ideas of our life in heaven as are more in accordance with the nature of man and the Word of God, than, I am inclined to think, obtain among many sincere ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... by screws. The contents were a couple of broken chairs, and some coats and rugs hung upon hooks upon the walls, together with a miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends upon a shelf. I gave merely a cursory glance at the contents of this apartment, for my attention had been attracted by a plant of machinery, which occupied the far end of the large room. As it happened, I had once had an opportunity of inspecting the laboratory of the Royal Institution, and I recognized at ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... and young Somerset's brain-work for the last six weeks lay under their eyes. To Dare, who was too cursory to trouble himself by entering into such details, it had very little meaning; but the design shone into Havill's head like a light into a dark place. It was original; and it was fascinating. Its originality lay partly in the circumstance that Somerset ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... took up his course along the more dimly lighted footway on the further side. At this hour the park row in which he found himself was almost deserted; now and again single pedestrians went by, and as he received from none of these more than a cursory and inattentive glance, his sense of incognito increased, and he stepped out more confidently to the task ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... it is, of Mather's characteristic style of appearing, to a cursory, careless reader, to say one thing, when he is really aiming to enforce another, while it has deceived the Reviewer, and led him to his quixotic attempt to revolutionize history, cannot be so ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... not our province in the present work to detail any thing not directly connected with our story; and therefore we shall pass on, after a cursory glance at the main facts in question. Sometime in March, a party of Wyandots made a descent upon Estill's station, which stood near the present site of Richmond; and having killed and scalped a young lady, and captured a Negro slave, were induced, by the exaggerated account which ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... of the state suggests at once the probability of deposits of ores of the precious metals, and the cursory prospecting already done justifies the outlook. Practically the entire mountain regions are enticing fields for the prospector. Substantial rewards have already been realized by many who have chanced the hardships, and there are now in operation many mining enterprises ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... to forty years, in fact, counting in every chance cursory acquaintanceship, we may well say that we have been intimate with two or three ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... fertility of soil and warmth of temperature. In the lower division of the province you feel that the industry of the inhabitants is forcing a churlish soil for bread; while in the upper, the land seems willing to yield her increase to a moderate exertion. Remember, these are merely the cursory remarks of a passing traveller, and founded on ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... left my gun at home. I've said so many times when a chairman has distressed me with just such compliments that the next time such a thing occurs I will certainly use a gun on that chairman. It is my privilege to compliment him in return. You behold before you a very, very old man. A cursory glance at him would deceive the most penetrating. His features seem to reveal a person dead to all honorable instincts—they seem to bear the traces of all the known crimes, instead of the marks of a life spent for the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ridge-pole of the poorer houses is so low that a man of even small stature could not stand up under it. The well-to-do have better houses, not only larger, but having a sort of second story; these are soot-black, too. We made no examination of these, not even a cursory one. The pig-sty is usually next to the house, and is nothing but a rock-lined pit, open to the sky, except where the house is built directly ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... their way to the piazza steps and entered by the front door. The house was an ordinary framework one of moderate size, in poor repair, and showing signs of great neglect. The rooms were barely furnished, and their first cursory search revealed no traces of habitation. There was still the broken skylight in the room which Lenora had occupied, and the bed upon which she had slept was still crumpled. French, who had been tapping the walls downstairs, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and touching letters give but an incomplete picture; and that, while writing them, Balzac was throwing much energy into schemes, which he either does not mention to his correspondent, or touches on in the most cursory fashion. Therefore the perspective of his life is difficult to arrange, and ordinary rules for gauging character are at fault. We find it impossible to follow the principle, that because Balzac possessed one characteristic, he could not also show a diametrically opposite quality—that, for instance, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... part of the road offers considerable obstacles to the progress of an army, from its numerous ravines and steep though short ascents and descents, which would be very difficult for artillery; I should, from a cursory glance at the country, imagine that these steep pitches might be avoided by a more circuitous route, though the one we pursued was the beaten track for the caravans, and they generally find out the most convenient passage. The ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... I've been running madly up and down for you!" cried Lady Flora, suddenly descending on them, and carrying off her charge with a cursory nod to the Guardsman, marking the difference between a detrimental and even the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is all that can be here accomplished. A careful study of his Latin History, as the great literary monument of the Anglo-Saxon period, will disclose many important truths which lie beneath the surface, and thus escape the cursory reader. Wars and politics, of which the Anglo-Saxon chronicle is full, find comparatively little place in his pages. The Church was then peaceful, and not polemic; the monasteries were sanctuaries in which quiet, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the road, turned the corner, and a minute later was approaching the house she had designated. It was one of a row. His pace slowed to a nonchalant stroll again. It was still quite light, and he was by no means the only pedestrian on the street; a moment's preliminary, even if cursory, examination of the exterior would not be amiss! Counting the numbers ahead of him, he had already located the house. He frowned a little. A light burned in the upstairs front room. There was a ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... found cursory mention of that. But I doubt if the group of My Lord Howe's gay young blades who were sent north to capture Major Atwood ever reported exactly what happened to them. The old Dutch ferryman divulged that he had been hired to ferry the homecoming major; this, too, is recorded. But Tony ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... considerable food for speculation, since if I were right in the conclusion induced by the cursory glimpse I had had of the spy, then Matai Shang and Thurid must suspect my identity, and if that were true not even the service I had rendered Kulan Tith could save ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... construction in the face." But, then, in every species of reading, so much depends upon the eyes of the reader; if they are blear, or apt to dazzle, or inattentive, or strained with too much attention, the optic power will infallibly bring home false reports of what it reads. How often do we say, upon a cursory glance at a stranger, "What a fine open countenance he has!" who, upon second inspection, proves to have the exact features of a knave? Nay, in much more intimate acquaintances, how a delusion of this kind shall continue for months, years, and then ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... History, properly so called, can hardly be said to exist previous to A.D. 500. (A cursory examination leads me to think that the annals of the sixth century must also be received ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... will it effectually coalesce with the patriotic aspiration. To give the fullest practical effect to the patriotic fervor that animates any modern nation, and so turn it to use in the most effective way, it is necessary to show that the demands of equity are involved in the case. Any cursory survey of modern historical events bearing on this point, among the civilised peoples, will bring out the fact that no concerted and sustained movement of the national spirit can be had without enlisting the community's ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... me that in the art of pronunciation he was far inferior to Dr. Watts. Such was his flow of thoughts, and such his promptitude of language, that in the latter part of his life he did not precompose his cursory sermons, but, having adjusted the heads and sketched out some particulars, trusted for success to his extemporary powers. He did not endeavour to assist his eloquence by any gesticulations; for, as no corporeal actions ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... here given of the Deity, monstrous and blasphemous as it may appear, is exactly and literally that which the Koran conveys, or intends to convey, I at present take for granted. But that it indeed is so, no one who has attentively perused and thought over the Arabic text (for mere cursory reading, especially in a translation, will not suffice) can hesitate to allow. In fact, every phrase of the preceding sentences, every touch in this odious portrait, has been taken, to the best of my ability, word for word, or at least ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... best of my ability, the beetles on the floor, I proceeded to expend my curiosity—and occupy my thoughts —in an examination of the bed. It only needed a very cursory examination, however, to show that the seeming bed was, in reality, none at all,—or if it was a bed after the manner of the Easterns it certainly was not after the fashion of the Britons. There was no framework,—nothing to represent the bedstead. It was simply a heap of rugs piled apparently ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... curious light upon the literary feelings and ways which have become habitual to ourselves. Perhaps the most striking difference between the critical methods of the eighteenth century and those of the present day, is the difference in sympathy. The most cursory glance at Johnson's book is enough to show that he judged authors as if they were criminals in the dock, answerable for every infraction of the rules and regulations laid down by the laws of art, which it was his business to administer without fear or favour. Johnson never inquired what ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... at resisting a change which we may safely take to be at some period or other inevitable, let us cast a cursory glance at some of the results of the general ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... his voice tense in his anxiety to prove his reliability, "I find that in the past I have taken only a cursory view of conditions. I see clearly that what you have outlined is a high order of statesmanship. You are constructive: I have been on the side of those who would tear down. I will gladly join hands with you and build up, so that the wealth and power of this country shall come to equal ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... suppose that He went expecting to find Figs; far less, that in a moment of disappointed hope, He ventured on a capricious exercise of His power, uttered a hasty malediction, and condemned the insensate boughs to barrenness and decay. The first cursory reading of the narrative may suggest some such unworthy impression. But we dismiss it at once, as strangely at variance with the Saviour's character, and strangely unlike His wonted actings. We feel assured that He literally, as well as ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... it—the mouth is exactly what the gullet (oesophagus) would be in a man whose head had been cut off; that is, a truncated tube. Then comes the stomach, situated in the very midst of the liver; which latter may easily be distinguished, even by the most cursory glance at luncheon, from its dark color. The intestine also goes right through the liver, doubling backwards and forwards several times: and thus the digestive tube supplies itself with bile from the cask (to borrow a commercial expression); ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... it appeared to be as unblemished in every part of it as Nature's choicest and most perfect handiwork could be. So little did a mere cursory view suggest the possibility that life would have been destroyed by any external violence, that the Professor was about to take the necessary steps for ascertaining what light could be thrown on the manner of her death by the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the Law which thus gradually took form, a distinction may easily be traced even by the cursory reader. The earlier code, Deuteronomy, is full of a generous and lofty temper. It is one of the most impressive documents of the Jewish scriptures. Here is that which Jesus named as the first and great commandment: ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... in the whole apparatus, means, machinery, and dependences of that system—a revolution begun, carried through, and perfected within the period of my own personal experience—merits a word or two of illustration in the most cursory memoirs that profess any attention at all to the shifting scenery and moving forces of the age, whether manifested in great effects or in little. And these particular effects, though little, when regarded in their separate details, are not little in their final amount. On the contrary, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... ready to inform him, that the event of a poem was uncertain, that an author ought to employ much time in the consideration of his plan, and not presume to sit down to write in confidence of a few cursory ideas, and a superficial knowledge; difficulties were started on all sides, and he was no longer qualified for any performance but the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... was produced, and some of the later patrol boats were converted and called "P Q's." These vessels had the appearance of small merchant ships at a cursory glance. They would not, however, stand close examination owing, again, to their fine lines, but being better sea boats than the "P's," by reason of their greater freeboard, the design was continued, and they met with considerable success against submarines (especially in the Irish ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... cannot say, but those of his involuntary guest were strange enough. His uncle dead, and the fortune not alienated, as, with the exception of a very small portion, he had always understood his predecessor had already done—his life at this moment in jeopardy; for a cursory glance at the tall figure of the marauder, as he had entered, had sufficed to show that the object of his search was before him—and too well he knew the unscrupulous villany of the man to doubt for a moment what his conduct ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... we shall change a decided opinion upon the merits of a work of art; yet one of these two suppositions seems certainly to be implied. I do not say that it is impossible to conceive of either, only that such cursory reference to such conceptions is extremely strange. Again, if work by Jacopo de' Barbari is referred to, it might very well have been seen elsewhere than at Venice eleven years ago; and indeed the last sentence in the passage might ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... to strike an average mind is that, with such a caseful of volumes as my cursory and incomplete inventory represents and enumerates, how much, or perhaps rather how little, remains behind of solid, intrinsic worth, and what a preponderance of the unnamed printed matter resolves itself into bric-a-brac, unless it amounts to such publications, past and present, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... served with tobacco and brandy, had lighted their pipes and provided themselves, each man, with a stiff rummer of grog. A cursory observer would possibly have thought the scene grotesque; but the four men ranged at the foot of the table speedily detected in the countenances of their self-constituted judges, an expression of stern determination which caused their hearts to sink and their ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... Only a cursory glance did he bestow upon these inanimate things, for his attention was immediately wrapped up in the lone figure sitting back of the big desk, the factor of the whole region, Alexander Gregory, the mysterious man whose past ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... be getting along, I misinterpret a gleam of illusory sunshine at noon on the third day of the rain-storm and pull out, taking a cursory glance at the Memorial Church as I go. A drenching shower overtakes me in the native military lines, compelling me to seek shelter for an hour beneath the portico of their barracks. The road is perfectly level and smooth, and well rounded, so that the water drains off and leaves it better ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... he can cover up his postponements and neglect for a measurable time without censure. He can fail to set the house of his mind in order; he can sweep the dust of unfinished investigation into obscure nooks and corners; he can make fair the outside of the cup and the platter for cursory inspection. Herein lies his peculiar temptation. The public is prone to take his scientific spirit for granted, and is a long time in opening its eyes. Meanwhile he lives a life of delightful leisure, teaching as many hours a week as a business man labours ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... rights respected. I intend to throw myself into this case, heart and soul. Money, Justice, Law, Morality, are all concerned—One moment, my dear sir! If you must really go back to London, oblige me at any rate, with your address, and just state in a cursory way, whether you were christened or not at Dibbledean church. I want nothing more to begin with—absolutely nothing more, on my word of honor as a ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... lawyers in Leauvite, one of whom was the district attorney himself, were strangers to him. Twice he sent messages to the Elder after his return, begging him to come to him, never dreaming that they could be unheeded, but to the second only was any reply sent, and then it was but a cursory line. "Legal steps will be taken to secure justice for ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... exciting or belligerent than picket duty. Duties of a more stirring character, were, however, awaiting them, and as these are intimately associated with the career of the subject of this biography, the delineation of whose life is the purpose of the writer, we will give them something more than a cursory notice. ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... experience, there are distinct traces that another work has been made use of, more or less, as an aid in the compilation, we might almost say, as a framework to fill up. This is the itinerary of the German knight William of Boldensele, written in 1336 at the desire of Cardinal Talleyrand de Perigord. A cursory comparison of this with Mandeville leaves no doubt of the fact that the latter has followed its thread, using its suggestions, and on many subjects its expressions, though digressing and expanding on every side, and too often eliminating the singular good sense of the German traveller. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... his secret preparations for a cheerful surprise, the more zealously that he had been absent last time and unable to assist. At every vacant minute he hastened to gather furze-stumps, thorn-tree roots, and other solid materials from the adjacent slopes, hiding them from cursory view. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... circumstances, have troubled himself with so trivial a case. But the speech Cicero delivered is one of the permanent glories of Latin literature. The matter immediately at issue is summarily dealt with in a few pages of cursory and rather careless argument; then the scholar lets himself go. Among the many praises of literature which great men of letters have delivered, there is none, ancient or modern, more perfect than this; some of the sentences have remained ever ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... the mind of the layman who makes even a cursory study of the sculptors and their works at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition is the fine, inspiring sincerity and uplift that each man brings to his work. One cannot be a ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... great joy, he came across, in the wall of the tell, a large inscribed mass of brickwork, weighing, perhaps, half-a-ton, which, from the cursory inspection he was able to make of it in the semi-darkness, he believed might prove sufficiently valuable to compensate all the disappointments of the weary months. In his enthusiasm he had no more thought of his caravan, and though a terrific thunderstorm burst over the place ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... sanctions or disapproves of the decision of the officer, as he pleases. Frequently the captain himself goes along the divisions, to look at the men's clothing; but the glance which he takes is necessarily of a more cursory nature; his object is, to let the men feel that he is ready to interfere, if need be, but also to show, that, unless there is any special call for the interposition of his authority, he confides ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... to the other of her party with a graceful deprecating movement of her head, a head which people were unanimous in calling more than merely pretty and more than ordinarily refined. That was the cursory verdict, the superficial thing to see and say; it will do to go on with. From the way Lindsay looked at her as she spoke, he might have been suspected of other discoveries, possible only to the somewhat privileged in ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... Bougainville passes over the circumstance of meeting with the Swallow in a very cursory manner: "The 28th we perceived a ship to windward, and a-head of us; we kept sight of her during the night, and joined her the next morning; it was the Swallow. I offered Capt. C. all the services that one may render to another at sea. He wanted nothing; but upon his telling me that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... far spoken of the manners and customs of the Rejangs more especially, and adverted, as occasion served, to those of the Passummah people, who nearly resemble them, I shall now present a cursory view of those circumstances in which their southern neighbours, the inhabitants of the Lampong country, differ from them, though this dissimilitude is not very considerable; and shall add such information as I have been enabled to obtain respecting the people of Korinchi and other ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... disgorged three occupants, one of who, a young officer, slender of form and gracefully alert of movement, wore the dark-blue uniform of the French Flying Corps. I knew him only too well. It was Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier. But the glance I gave him was most cursory; my attention was focused hungrily on the two ladies in the tonneau. They had risen and were divesting themselves in leisurely fashion of a most complicated arrangement ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Tafel viii. (p. 387), he has added some cursory notes on the Sepulcral-Monumente in dem ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Miss Dodge," he said, "but a matter has just come up which necessitated merely a cursory examination of some purely formal letters which might have an important bearing on the discovery of the Clutching Hand. Your Aunt had no idea where you were, nor of when you might return, and the absolute necessity for haste in such an important ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... further accession of population, but lost to some extent by a portion of the Bear people moving across to Walpi. No important event seems to have occurred among them for a long period after the destruction of Sikytki, in which they bore some part, and only cursory mention is made of the ingress of "enemies from the north;" but their village, ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... are no appliances here to administer an anaesthetic or do anything else properly," answered Morris impatiently, "and no one can tell from a cursory examination whether or not there are other injuries, to say nothing of the danger from septicaemia if the work is done in ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men's ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... specimens I have given are sufficient to convey to my readers the general idea I have in view, when I speak of studying the Bible, in contradistinction from the mere cursory reading of it, which is so common ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... gateway at one point. The opposite row was more elevated, no doubt overlooking cultivated fields beyond the confines of the ruin. No kivas were discovered, but if such exist they ought to be found in the mass of houses at the southern end. I thought we had found circular rooms in that region, but cursory excavations did not demonstrate their existence. As there is no reason to suspect the existence of circular kivas in ancient Tusayan, it would be difficult to decide whether or not any one of the large ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... necessity of angelic visits be superseded, we ought nevertheless to record the goodness of a superintending Providence. He who forms a just estimate of his mercies, may surely fill the diary of every day with grateful notices, and cannot take even a cursory retrospect of the years of past existence, without recollecting some striking interpositions which should often renew his praise and thanksgiving. Have we not been sustained in weakness, guided in perplexity, healed ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... clergy, the bulk of Oxford residents, Heads of houses, Fellows of Colleges (with all their good points, which I am not the man to deny), have ever sought the truth. They have taken what they found, and have used no private judgment at all. Or if they have judged, it has been in the vaguest, most cursory way possible; or they have looked into Scripture only to find proofs for what they were bound to subscribe, as undergraduates getting up the Articles. Then they sit over their wine, and talk about this or that friend who has ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... to tell you their story; as you always may, if you will cross-examine them long enough; and will lead you into many subjects beside mere botany or entomology. So various, indeed, are the subjects which you will thus start, that I can only hint at them now in the most cursory fashion. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... and can pay her own fare. Very peculiar—but we read, you know, in that New England book, that that was just the independent way they felt about it. They can only induce slaves to be servants there, I believe." She gave this cursory view of the condition of affairs in the neighbouring States in an abstracted voice, and summed up her remarks by speaking out her decision in a more lively tone. "Well, we must have some one to help with the work. This girl looks ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... and, at the sight, went in quest of the dreaming operator without so much as embarrassing Miss Carmichael with an offer of his services. And presently the operator, whose official day did not begin for some two hours yet, appeared, much dishevelled from running and the cursory nature of his toilet, prepared to receive a ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... point! When you left the room I was determined to be trifled with no longer, and I asked him, in a firm voice and very marked manner, whether I might command his immediate attention to important business. He professed to be at my service. I opened the affair by taking a cursory, yet definite, review of the principles in which my political conduct had originated, and on which it was founded. I flattered myself that I had produced an impression. Sometimes we are in a better cue for these expositions than at others, and to-day ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... any one pleases—for the sake of sense, of more sense, of better sense, as much as if the text were a Greek manuscript without any division of words. This position I need not argue with anyone who has given but a cursory glance to the original page, or knows anything of printers' pointing. I hold hard by the word, for that is, or may be, grain: the pointing as we have it is merest chaff, and more likely to be wrong than right. Here also, however, I change nothing in ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... were not floored in the middle of the building. The aspect of this place was not at all hopeful; for there were none of those convenient "cubby holes," which most houses contain, wherein he could bestow his body with any hope of escaping even a cursory ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... hostile to the Church of England and fraught with absurdity, but propounded under the alluring guise of Christian charity; a charity which has won for him the applause of the professors of modern liberalism, because, on a cursory glance, it appears to embrace all sects and denominations of Christians. It is proper, therefore, to set the matter in a true light, by showing that this liberality of sentiment is more specious than real; that Mr. Noel is throwing out false colours, and that while, in no ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... had not mistaken her previous interrogating look. Nor was it his only disturbing query; he was conscious of the same disappointment now that he could examine her face more attentively, as in his first cursory glance. She was certainly handsome; if there was no longer the freshness of youth, there was still the indefinable charm of the woman of thirty, and with it the delicate curves of matured muliebrity and repose. There were lines, particularly around the mouth and fringed ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... four of these, finding them of pleasing savor, and then consumed another double-chocolate jigger before ease descended upon him. After a cursory inspection of the pillow-cases, leather pennants, and Gibson Girls that lined the walls, he left, and continued along Nassau Street with his hands in his pockets. Gradually he was learning to distinguish between upper classmen and entering men, even though the freshman cap would not appear ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to disclose the reasons of Professor Sloane for indulging in this prodigious Napoleonic dream and for delineating it in what is likely to be regarded as the best product of his intellectual career. We can only take what he has produced and give it such cursory notice as our space ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... a bank-note, and handed it to Chekalinsky, who, after examining it in a cursory manner, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... reasonable to criticise the Public Taste, in what are generally supposed to be Works of mere Amusement; or modest to direct its Judgment, in what is offered for its Entertainment; I would beg leave to introduce the following Sheets with a few cursory Remarks, that may lead the common Reader into some tolerable conception of the nature of this Work, and the design ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... my study table a number of books and papers, placed there with such evident intention that I took cognizance of them, judging them to be the accounts rendered by the Vicomte's various estates. So far as a cursory examination could prove it, I judged that we had to deal with but clumsy scoundrels, and in France in those days scoundrels were of fine fleur, I can tell you, while every sort of ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... his infrequent experiences, had never been at ease in the presence of pretty girls, even when their notice of him was merely cursory. In the region where he had toiled there were few females, and those were spouses and helpers of woods ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... inorganic. The ordinary eye may fail to detect the difference, and innumerable forms are assigned by the popular judgment to the inorganic world which are nevertheless undoubtedly alive. And it is the same in the spiritual world. To a cursory glance these rudimentary spiritual forms may not seem to exhibit the phenomena of Life, and therefore the living and the dead may be often classed as one. But let the appropriate scientific tests be applied. In the almost amorphous organism, the physiologist ought ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the presumption to imagine that in a cursory view, during a slight tour, and a residence of four or five months at Paris, he could become thoroughly acquainted with France. Besides, his living chiefly with the select society which I have described precluded the possibility of ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... labours in this matter may have carried him no further than Josephus and the worthy, but somewhat antique, episcopal and other authorities to whom he refers; that even his reading of Josephus may have been of the most cursory nature, directed not to the understanding of his author, but to the discovery of useful controversial matter; and that, in view of the not inconsiderable misrepresentation of my statements to which I have drawn attention, it might be that Mr. Gladstone's exposition of the evidence of Josephus ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Von Sendlingen, was not so blessed. After a cursory treatment in the cemetery gate-keeper's lodge, he was removed, wrapped in blankets, to his quarters in the great barracks; the iron constitution, of which Daniels spoke, bore him up, and before Claudius was on foot again, the officer was outdoors—a little pale, but seemingly ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... more or less cursory attention may be given individual patents; but when an arrangement of subclasses shall have been tentatively adopted it will be necessary to consider each patent carefully to ascertain whether ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... Westray could not disguise from himself that delay might prove dangerous in other directions, and he drew Sir George Farquhar's attention to more than one weak spot which had escaped the great architect's cursory inspection. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... symbols, these masks, all that tradition and atavism have jumbled together in the Japanese brain, proceed from sources utterly dark and unknown to us; even the oldest records fail to explain them to us in anything but a superficial and cursory manner, simply because we have absolutely nothing in common with this people. We pass in the midst of their mirth and their laughter without understanding the wherefore, so totally does it differ ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... almost wholly, from papers in the offices of registry, and from judicial files of the County, to which references would be of little use, and serve only to cumber and deform the pages. Everything can be verified by inspection of the originals, and not otherwise. The Second Part is a cursory, general, abbreviated sketch or survey of the history of opinions, not designed as an authoritative treatise for special students, but to prepare the reader for the Third Part, the authorities for which are, almost ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... thus briefly hinted above, may suffice to afford some cursory view of the rise and progress of religion and reformation in these lands, especially in Scotland; until, as a church and nation, our kingdom became the Lord's, by the strictest and most intimate federal alliance, and the name almost of every city, was, the Lord is there: ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... other faculties and potencies were restless at night. This man who could grind a lens so that a line from the center of the earth to the center of the sun would pass through it without chromatic aberration, was more shocked than the other three by the cursory killing of the days, his imagination intoxicated and sleep perverted. His companion who imagined himself of coarser and heavier texture often placed his hand upon the dreaming one. Spenski would start, open his eyes and say, ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... top—which is as bright a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of flour from Heidelberg to Paris by way of Strasburg steeple; when he gets up there he finds that that is not the place; takes a cursory glance at the scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down, and starts off once more—as usual, in a new direction. At the end of half an hour, he fetches up within six inches of the place he started from and lays his burden down; meantime he has been over ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... what would you say as to the shoes from a cursory examination, without the instruments?" he inquired ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... is blundering, farcical, futile, incorrect. To suppose you have learned a word by so cursory a glance at its resources is like supposing you have learned a man through having had him render you some temporary and trivial service, as lending you a match or telling you the time of day. To acquaint yourself thoroughly with a word—or a man— involves effort, application. You must ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... impress of him there; even as full as we have of many men. His works are so many windows, through which we see a glimpse of the world that was in him. All his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect, written under cramping circumstances; giving only here and there a note of the full utterance of the man. Passages there are that come upon you like splendour out of Heaven; bursts of radiance, illuminating the very heart of the thing: ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... colleagues in the Odyssey are not to be easily distinguished by internal evidence. On trying the experiment by a cursory reading I confess (though a critic does not willingly admit his fallibility) that I took some of Broome's work for Pope's, and, though closer study or an acuter perception might discriminate more accurately, I ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... divert from the exiles the sympathies of Europe, King James issued a proclamation bearing date the 5th of November, 1608, giving to the world the English version of the flight of the Earls. The whole of Ulster was then surveyed in a cursory manner by a staff over which presided Sir William Parsons as Surveyor-General. The surveys being completed early in 1609, a royal commission was issued to Chichester, Lambert, St. John, Ridgeway, Moore, Davis, and Parsons, with the Archbishop of Armagh, and the Bishop of Derry, to inquire into ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... and servants there, and soldiers too, who saluted Butzow, according the old shopkeeper and the smooth-faced young stranger only cursory glances. It was evident that without his beard it was not likely that Barney would be again ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... known of the English Sentimental Journeys was the work of Samuel Paterson, entitled, "Another Traveller: or Cursory Remarks and Critical Observations made upon a Journey through Part of the Netherlands,—by Coriat Junior," London, 1768, two volumes. The author protested in a pamphlet published a little later that ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... Reservation—and if you are taking even the most cursory glimpse of Milton you must include some portion of this park—you will pass the open space where in the early days, when Milton country life was modeled upon English country life more closely than now, Malcolm ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... very nicely," Miss Merivale said, after giving the typewritten programmes a cursory glance and pushing them from her. Her eyes went back to Rhoda's face. She saw now that the fleeting glimpse she had got of her on the staircase had somewhat deceived her. Rhoda was not as pretty as she had ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... used the "juice of the grape," and that almost as a common drink, has never been doubted by the most cursory reader of history; the knowledge of this liquor being nearly coeval with the first formation of society. In the Book of Genesis we read that Noah after the flood planted a vineyard, "manufactured" wine, and got intoxicated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... progress of Egyptian art from the fourth millennium B.C. to its climax in the eighteenth dynasty, and throughout the period of its decline; and this applies not merely to the pictures proper, but to the forms of the hieroglyphic letters themselves, for it requires but the most cursory inspection to show that these give opportunity for no ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... up of complex conceptions out of simpler constituents of thought. As the physiologist inquires into the way in which the so-called "functions" of the body are performed, so the psychologist studies the so-called "faculties" of the mind. Even a cursory attention to the ways and works of the lower animals suggests a comparative anatomy and physiology of the mind; and the doctrine of evolution presses for application as much in the one field as ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... door slightly ajar, he crossed to the case and secured one of the weapons. For a moment he studied it. There was nothing complex about the mechanism; a cursory examination sufficed to reveal how it was operated. Pressure on a little knob at the back of the handle released the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... of our cursory acquaintance we had judged the French a sociable nation. Our stay at Versailles speedily convinced us of the fallacy of that belief. Nothing could have impressed us so forcibly as did the frigid silence that characterised the company. Many of them had fed there daily ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... and you gentlemen of the jury,—After having thus gone through the evidence and considered it as applicatory to all and every one of the prisoners, let us take once more a brief and cursory survey of matters supported by the evidence. And here let me ask in sober reason, what language more opprobrious, what actions more exasperating, than those used on this occasion? Words, I am sensible, are no justification of blows, but they serve as the ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Emilius was translated as soon as it appeared, and must have been widely read, for a second version of the translation was called for in a very short time. So far as a cursory survey gives one a right to speak, its influence here in the field of education is not very perceptible. That subject did not yet, nor for some time to come, excite much active thought in England. Rousseau's speculations on ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... quite close to me I obtained an excellent view of him, and though I was later to become better acquainted with his kind, I may say that that single cursory examination of this awful travesty on Nature would have proved quite sufficient to my desires had I been a free agent. The fastest flier of the Heliumetic Navy could not quickly enough have carried me far ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... early and bitterly cold, while everyone was too intent on his own business to do more than bestow a cursory glance on passers-by, so that our little caravan, freed from importuning curiosity, made ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... Boies Penrose is not all as he is pictured. At a cursory glance he might appear to be a physiological, psychological, and political anachronism. At least he is sufficiently different from his colleagues to be, if not actually mysterious, not easily understandable. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... that this intellectual training should be efficient, the most cursory perusal of this article will show how far he placed the moral training above the intellectual, which, by itself, would only turn the gutter-child into] "the subtlest of all the beasts of the field," [and how wide of the mark is the cartoon at this period representing him as the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... adversity himself that he was a past master of the art of measuring the depth of a hidden purse. He recalled the brilliant Casimir Wieniawski of eight years past—the curled darling of the hot-hearted ladies of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay and Singapore. In a glance of cursory inspection Alan Hawke had noted the doubtful gloss of the dress suit; it was the polish of long wear, not the velvety glow of newness. There was a growing bald spot, scarcely hidden by the Hyperion ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... them exclusively. The inordinately rich were beyond all law, seeing that they could either manufacture it, or its interpretation, at will. Among the conspicuous, audacious capitalists the fraud of a few paltry millions shrank to the modesty of a small, cursory, off-hand operation. Yet, in the aggregate, these petty frauds constituted great results, and for that ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... which they make on the various points of Vedantic doctrine. But to the European scholar, or in fact to any one whose mind is not bound by the doctrine of /S/ruti, it will certainly appear that all such attempts stand self-condemned. If anything is evident even on a cursory review of the Upanishads—and the impression so created is only strengthened by a more careful investigation—it is that they do not constitute a systematic whole. They themselves, especially the older ones, give the most unmistakable indications on that point. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... who have shared their bed with death know when the call is sounded. Mason was terribly crushed. The most cursory ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... things for a million of subscribers and probably for three millions of readers.—Of course, out of a hundred visitors, ninety of them are not capable of comprehending the sense of the picture; they give it only a cursory glance; moreover, their eyes are not properly educated for it, and they are unable to grasp masses and seize proportions. Their attention is generally arrested by a detail which they interpret in a wrong way, and the mental image they ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... who is familiar, even in a cursory way, with the history of Europe will be able to recall numerous such instances; and it must in fairness be admitted that in some of them the result has ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... he, and seating himself at the desk, proceeded to an examination of his newly acquired property. The newspapers in the scrap basket, mainly copies of the Evening Register, seemed to contain, upon cursory examination, nothing germane to the issue. But, scattered among them, the searcher found a number of fibrous chips. They were short and thick; such chips as might be made by cutting a bamboo pole into cross lengths, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Republican Principles which have been admired by some of the greatest Characters, whom (if he is an Englishman) his Country can boast of. You & I, among others, have had the Honor of being abusd by Rivingtons Press. A labord Performance has lately crept out, called the Times. I have had a cursory reading of it. It appears to me so much like the Productions of certain Geniuses who figurd in Mr Popes Time, that had the Author been cotemporary with them, a Page might have been added to the Dunciad, to immortalize ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... Mr. Birks, in which the evolution doctrine was declared to be "flatly opposed to the fundamental doctrine of creation." Even the London Times admitted a review stigmatizing Darwin's Descent of Man as an "utterly unsupported hypothesis," full of "unsubstantiated premises, cursory investigations, and disintegrating speculations," and Darwin ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... with a democratic nicker and went forward briskly. And the rider turned his head, eyed the girl sharply as she came up, and nodded a cursory greeting. His horse lifted its head to look, decided that it wanted another swallow or two, and lowered its muzzle ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... practice is of such venerable antiquity, and so universal, that it would be vain to impugn it. The pleasure, too, which most children evince under it, seems to show that it cannot be so objectionable as a cursory observer would be disposed to consider it. Still there are hazards which ought not to be overlooked. The risk of accident is one of some amount: children have slipped from the hands, and sustained serious injury. Some people are so energetic as to throw up children and ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... the house of Watkins, and told him that the package I had given him was of no value to any person but myself; that it was made up of various articles of writing, containing hundreds of names, many of which were familiar to me. He looked them over in a cursory manner, ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... doubt that the general was defeated, whether his army was or not. The most cursory study of the map showed that the only practicable road by which the army could be supplied was along the river from Bridgeport. Lookout Mountain commanded this; and not to hold Lookout was practically to announce a purpose to retreat into middle Tennessee. Dana informed the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... nature suggests to a man in pain. Having need, however, of some help, Bates showed now, as before, an evident preference for Alec as an attendant, a preference due probably to the fact that Alec never did anything for him that was not absolutely necessary, and did that only in the most cursory way. When Alec entered his room that night to see, as he cheerfully remarked, whether he was alive or not, Bates turned his ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... work—embracing, as it does, the whole field of literature—imposes other and more difficult conditions. Originality, in any primary sense, was of course an impossibility; a single lifetime would not suffice even for the most cursory examination of original materials on so grand a scale. It was necessary, therefore, to select and make use of the best authorities, critical and historical, those whose researches have been most valuable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... and leaving them to rest solely on his own unsupported assertion—without citing or referring to any of the facts which he declares exist—is highly censurable. We have found no evidence of the truth of his charges in a cursory examination of a considerable part of both works; and a friend upon whose judgment we place full reliance, and who has carefully compared the labors of the two editors, assures us that there is nothing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... their varying mode of life they assume very different habits to the sheep of an inland country, while those of the shepherds' dogs are no less conspicuous. The excellency of these animals renders sheep-pens in a great degree unnecessary. If a shepherd wishes to inspect his flock in a cursory way, he places himself in the middle of the field, or the piece of ground they are depasturing, and giving a whistle or a shout, the dogs and the sheep are equally obedient to the sound, and draw towards the shepherd, and are kept within reach by one or more dogs, until the business which ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... The superb set in the Cluny Museum in Paris, The Lady and the Unicorn, than which nothing could be lovelier in poetic feeling as well as in technique, is accorded to French looms. But as it is impossible in a cursory survey to mention all, the two most important cities are dwelt upon because it is from them that the greatest amount of the best ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... he ordered his housekeeper to furnish every thing needful for them as often as they wanted it, and to take care they were well used by the women with whom he had placed them; and delivered these commands not in a cursory or negligent manner, but in such terms as terrified any failure of obedience in this point ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... reader be here unnecessarily alarmed. On that terrible slave question, over which wiser brains have puzzled, till they became lost in a labyrinth of self-contradiction, I purpose to speak only a few cursory words. It is beyond dispute that a vast extent of the richest land in the South can only be kept in cultivation by the Africans, who can thrive and fatten where the white man withers helplessly. No one that has realized the present state of our own West Indian ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... misstatement that Burton was born at Elstree, she makes scarcely any reference to his most intimate friends and even spells their names wrongly. [14] Her remarks on the Kasidah are stultified by the most cursory glance at that poem; while the whole of her account of the translating of The Arabian Nights is at variance with Burton's own letters and conversations. I am assured by several who knew Burton intimately that the untrustworthiness of the latter part of Lady Burton's "Life" of her husband ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... has added a few remarkable sentences and passages from the dispatches of the Duke; with a cursory memoir of his life, which becomes more elaborate from the commencement of his political career; and has also attempted to portray some of his characteristics, as a soldier ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... had, not only to the more obvious characteristics, but also to such hereditary traits and tendencies as may be hidden from cursory observation and demand careful and ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... mother comes forward out of the house, evidently pleased with our notice of the children, and shows us the baby in her arms. At once we are on good terms with the whole family. The woman sees that there is nothing impertinent in our cursory inquiry into her domestic concerns, but, I fancy, knows that we are genial travelers, with human sympathies. So the people universally are not quick to suspect any imposition, and meet frankness with frankness, and good-nature with good-nature, in a simple-hearted, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... although, had the possibility of so enormous a sin been admitted, it was not likely to escape the warning censure of the Divine Person who came to take away the sins of the world. Saint Paul, indeed, mentions the sin of witchcraft, in a cursory manner, as superior in guilt to that of ingratitude; and in the offences of the flesh it is ranked immediately after idolatry, which juxtaposition inclines us to believe that the witchcraft mentioned by the Apostle must have been analogous to that of ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... a moment in the chair which Rowland had placed for her, had given but a cursory glance at the statues, and then, leaving her place, had begun to wander round the room—looking at herself in the mirror, touching the ornaments and curiosities, glancing at the books and prints. Rowland's sitting-room was encumbered with bric-a-brac, and she found plenty of occupation. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... rather to relate, firstly, the origin and sources of our chivalry; secondly, its character and teaching; thirdly, its influence among the masses; and, fourthly, the continuity and permanence of its influence. Of these several points, the first will be only brief and cursory, or else I should have to take my readers into the devious paths of our national history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative Ethology in our ways ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... collecting and epitomizing the many notices to be found in German, French, and English authors, on what has been considered among us, at least in this century, as merely a secondary art, and therefore, as such, of little importance. Cursory notices of needlework are scattered through almost every book on art; and under the head of textiles it is usual to find embroidery acknowledged as being worthy of notice, though not to be named in company with sculpture, architecture, or painting, however beautifully or thoughtfully its works ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Boss City hereaway on this end of the lake," said the captain of the little boat; and though he spoke with much labour of imprecation, both needless then and now, taking what might be termed a cursory view of the situation, he summed up the prospects of ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... preceding ages have been forced to acknowledge, that their tastes were elegant, sublime, and well-formed, with respect to works of sculpture, statuary, and architecture. As a proof of this, in behalf of the ancients, 'tis only requisite we should take a cursory view of those noble and magnificent productions of art, commonly called THE SEVEN WONDERS OF ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... wearily and gave his coat and typewriter a cursory check, then motioned him on. He strode across the wet field, scowling at the fog, ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... seem to be. Although I have a general idea of your situation, I am very desirous to know precisely how your affairs and those of your dear ones really stand. I feel aggrieved because you touch upon them always in a very cursory manner. From all I can make out, I must fear that the Princess has been cut off from her estate permanently and completely, and I must own that such losses are well adapted to upset one's equanimity. I also understand that you look into the future with a heavy heart, as the fate ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the circulation and redemption thereof." This bill took the usual course, was referred to the committee on finance, was reported favorably with a number of amendments, and was fully debated in the Senate. On the 9th of February, 1863, a cursory debate occurred between Mr. Collamer, of Vermont, and myself, which indicated a very strong opposition to the passage of the banking bill. Various amendments were proposed and some adopted. I became satisfied that if a strong effort was not made the bill would either be defeated or postponed. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... you don't understand me. Do you think I'm a sneak? Do you suppose I'd ask you to act as a go-between? Nonsense! I merely ask you to go as a cursory visitor. I don't want you to breathe my name, or even think of ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... sent by the Spanish viceroy of Mexico to explore the regions to the north. Those mountain-peaks, dim and shadowy in the distance and seeming to recede as they were approached, had ever been an alluring sight to the gold-seeking Spaniards. But the coveted treasure did not reveal itself to their cursory search; and though they doubtless pushed as far north as the Arkansas River, they returned to the capital from what they considered an unsuccessful expedition. The way was opened, however, and in 1595 the Spaniards came ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... Their purpose is not more startling than is the defiance with which they have hurled it from the housetops. This purpose they claim to have accomplished by taking advantage of the ignorance and poverty of the Negro; but the most cursory glance at these enactments will convince any one that neither intelligence nor wealth constitutes the basis of electoral qualification under them, while the confessions of the framers of them as well as their operation proves that neither ignorance ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... fly, gallop, vanish, fade, evaporate; pass away like a cloud, pass away like a summer cloud, pass away like a shadow, pass away like a dream. Adj. transient, transitory, transitive; passing, evanescent, fleeting, cursory, short-lived, ephemeral; flying &c v.; fugacious, fugitive; shifting, slippery; spasmodic; instantaneous, momentaneous^. temporal, temporary; provisional, provisory; deciduous; perishable, mortal, precarious, unstable, insecure; impermanent. brief, quick, brisk, extemporaneous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... discovered a natural cave not far from the House Range of mountains, the entrance to which resembled the shaft of a mine. In this the Gosi-Ute Indians had deposited their dead, surrounded with different articles, until it was quite filled up; at least it so appeared from the cursory examination made, limited time preventing a careful exploration. In the fall of the same year another cave was heard of, from an Indian guide, near the Nevada border, in the same Territory, and an attempt made to explore it, ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... was their delight when, after some days of waiting, on the night of the 5th of December, they saw the vehicle which was bearing their friends into space! To this delight succeeded a great deception, when, trusting to a cursory observation, they launched their first telegram to the world, erroneously affirming that the projectile had become a satellite of the moon, gravitating in an ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... religious processions through the city the heralds went first to bid the people cease their work, and attend to the ceremony; for just as the Pythagoreans are said to forbid the worship of the gods in a cursory manner, and to insist that men shall set out from their homes with this purpose and none other in their minds, so Numa thought it wrong that the citizens should see or hear any religious ceremony in a careless, half-hearted manner, and made them ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
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