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More "Devoid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like a little heaven below," if his stipend was raised to that figure. There is nothing very extraordinary in the preaching style of Mr. O'Dell. It lacks the cunning of that rare old Baptist bird, who once went by the name of Birney, and it is devoid of that learned and masterly eloquence so finely worked by the last minister of the chapel, who used to read some of his sermons over to the deacons, before trying them upon the other sinners in the chapel; still it is sincere, straight- forward, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... excellence of Folly, cautioning them against the infectiousness of wisdom, by the several examples he proposes them to imitate, such as children, lilies, sparrows, mustard, and such like beings, which are either wholly inanimate, or at least devoid of reason and ingenuity, guided by no other conduct than that of instinct, without care, trouble, or contrivance. To the same intent the disciples were warned by their lord and master, that when they should be brought unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates and powers, they shall take no thought ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... to his own he refers, with instantaneous and ingenuous dogmatism, to folly or wickedness. "I think," he says, in one of his sermons, "I have none here so profoundly stupid as to be Puseyites. I can scarcely believe that I have been the means of attracting one person here so utterly devoid of one remnant of brain as to believe the doctrine of baptismal regeneration." The doctrine, indeed, is so nonsensical to him, that, after some caricatures of it, he asserts that it would discredit Scripture with all sensible men, if it were taught in Scripture. God himself could not make Mr. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... mingle in thought with those Parisians of the fifteenth century, and to enter with them, jostled, elbowed, pulled about, into that immense hall of the palace, which was so cramped on that sixth of January, 1482, the spectacle would not be devoid of either interest or charm, and we should have about us only things that were so old that they ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the first confronted with a difficult task, yet he entered upon it with a certain grave seriousness, characteristic of the man, anxious to arrive at and to comprehend the true meaning of what in its first crude presentation to his senses seemed wholly devoid ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the sky above, the material sunshine of the goodly wheat ricks, and the physical sunshine of personal health and vigour. His walk was the walk of a strong, prosperous man—each step long, steady, and firm, but quite devoid of haste. He was, perhaps, forty years of age, in the very prime of life, and though stooping a little, like so many countrymen, very tall, and built proportionately broad across the shoulders and chest. His features were handsome—perhaps ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... line five year ago, on account of the railroad cuttin' in on them. Ye couldn't make it wid'out ye took a camp outfit. There's ne'er a station left, and when ye come to it, it's ruins ye'll find. A chimbly and a few rails, if the mule-skinners hasn't burned them. 'Tis a country very devoid of fuel; sagebrush and grease-wood, and a wind, bedad! that blows the grass-seeds ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... in a tower constructed of vermilion stone quarried on the upper waters of the great river Euphrates. There my poor brother is to stay until he can invent a new stock of stories, but being utterly devoid of invention, only death or relenting upon the part of the imam could release him. Hearing of his plight, I went to the imam with the proposition that I seek out some other story-teller and that upon bringing him to Muscat, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... resurrection— loveliness is clouded, when we turn to gloomy, stifling courts and lanes in the crowded cities, where gleams of sunshine scarce ever penetrate; the lives of whose miserable inhabitants are yet more utterly devoid of brightness; to whom the voice of spring is an unmeaning sound; to sick ones in these courts, who have no easier couch for the pain-filled limbs than a heap of shavings on the hard floor of a room filled with noisy children, ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... main; they are lathed and plastered within, handsomely painted and boarded without; each has a cellar underneath, built with stones fetched also from the main: they are all of a similar construction and appearance; plain, and entirely devoid of exterior or interior ornament. I observed but one which was built of bricks, belonging to Mr.——, but like the rest it is unadorned. The town stands on a rising sandbank, on the west side of the harbour, which is very safe from all winds. There are two places of worship, one for the ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... having done so, he was directed to attire himself in a robe, somewhat like that worn by Armenians, having his long hair combed down on his shoulders, and his neck, hands, and feet bare. In this guise he was conducted into a remote chamber totally devoid of furniture, excepting a lamp, a chair, and a table, on which lay a Bible. "Here," said the astrologer, "I must leave you alone, to pass the most critical period of your life. If you can, by recollection of the great ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... very much of the doggerel style which was prevalent before Spenser; and the prose, though showing considerable faculty, if not of invention, yet of adroit imitation of previously invented styles, is devoid of distinction and point. There are, however, exercises after Breton's own fashion in almost every popular style of the time—euphuist romances, moral treatises, packets of letters, collections of jests and ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... VII. was neither overbearing nor devoid of tact, and from the doubtful character of his title to the throne he was obliged to be circumspect in his dealings with the nation. It was not so, however, with Henry VIII. He was a young, impulsive, self-willed ruler, freed from nearly ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... soldier in barracks contrives to obtain drink of a morning. The canteen is rigorously closed. No one is allowed to go out of barracks and no drink is allowed to come in. A teetotallers' meeting-hall could not appear more rigidly devoid of opportunities for indulgence than does a barrack during the morning. Yet I will venture to say, if you go into any barrack in the three kingdoms, accost any soldier who is not a raw recruit, and offer to pay for a pot of beer, that you will have an instant ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... forced to go. When he showed the photograph, Mrs. Pritchard-Wallace looked at it with a curious expression. It was the work of a country photographer, awkward and ungainly, with the head stiffly poised, and the eyes hard and fixed; the general impression was ungraceful and devoid of charm, Mrs. Wallace noticed the ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... were mates on a ship training school, which sailed from New York one year before. A terrific explosion at sea cast them adrift in mid-Pacific Ocean, and after five days of suffering they were cast ashore on an apparently uncharted island, without any food, and entirely devoid of any ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... the people, were yet so insignificant in comparison with the real pomp of France, that they were in many instances the laughingstock of Europe. Beneath an external gloss of refinement, these princes were, as a class, coarse and selfish, and devoid of any compensating virtues. Neither the common people, whom they had impoverished, nor the Church, which they had robbed, was now strong enough to resist the growing absolutism and selfishness ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... life, who could have loved sincerely, and inspired me with a mutual flame, I would have asked no more of fate. Interest and ambition have no share in my composition; love, which is pleasure, or pleasure, which is love, makes up the whole. A heart so disposed cannot be devoid of other good qualities; it must be subject to the impressions of humanity and benevolence, and enemy to nothing but itself. This you will give me leave to affirm, in justice to myself, as I have frankly owned my ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... dregs. He gives dinners, plays at dice, he keeps women, but his heart remains cold and empty, he disbelieves in love, and only cares for absolute freedom in all his actions, but withal his life seems shallow and devoid of interest. Every month he engages a new female slave, with whom he idles away his days, but at the end of this time she is discarded. His antipathy for love partly arises from the knowledge of ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... parents do not wish to explain the mystery. Curiosity is aroused, for the desire to know is natural and quite legitimate, and the sad thing is that the explanation is generally left to companions and servants who are devoid of delicacy ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... internal and external conditions have hindered them from attaining to such permanent developments in the domain of culture as form the mark of the true civilized races and the guaranties of progress. Yet we should not venture to call any of them cultureless, so long as none of them is devoid of the primitive means by which the ascent to higher stages can be made—language, religion, fire, weapons, implements; while the very possession of these means, and many others, such as domestic animals and cultivated plants, testifies to varied and numerous dealings with those races ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... remained in undisputed possession of the place until three years ago, one more adventurous than the rest, succeeded in ascending to Mo, when his capture resulted in the cavern with its great wonderful image being re-discovered. Since that time the place has never been devoid of votaries, and the great fire has constantly been fed by those anxious to immolate ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... such subjects at the best, her brain was devoid of force even to reason out her own conjectures, or to decide what must be impossible. She felt compelled to keep all to herself; to alarm her mother was out of the question, when Mrs. Curtis was distressed and shaken enough already, and ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little can be said. Many country houses are pleasing from their complete simplicity; plastered, and washed pink, yellow, or white, they are devoid of all architectural pretension, and their low roofs of red pantiles look much more natural than do the steep slated roofs of some ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... sister was established solely, I think, by one big braid down her back. Neither was it because she was the plainest, for the beauty of the Piper girls was a recognized general distinction, and the youngest Miss Piper was not entirely devoid of the family charms. Nor was it from any lack of intelligence, nor from any defective social quality; for her precocity was astounding, and her good-humored frankness alarming. Neither do I think it could be said that a slight deafness, which might impart an embarrassing ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... ought. It is most necessary," replied Gervase, and his face was absolutely devoid of expression. Whether he was disappointed or pleased, annoyed or elated, it was impossible to guess, but he turned aside without another word and followed Lilias down ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... For surely it is for my discharge afore God, being in the room that I am in; and secondly for the great zeal I bear unto you." Henry possessed in the highest degree not a few of the best of kingly attributes. His words are not the words of a hypocrite without conscience, devoid of the fear of God and man. For all the strange and violent things that he did, he obtained the sanction of his conscience, but his imperious egotism made conscience his humble slave, and blinded to his own sins a judgment so keen to detect and ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... touches of Mr. Squire's fancy, contains chapters on Keats, Jane Austen, Anatole France, Walt Whitman, Pope and Rabelais of that more considered character one expects from the editor of the London Mercury. This is not to say that these studies are devoid of humour; and those chapters in the volume which are in the nature of interludes are among the best Mr. Squire has written. Unfortunately I have left myself no room to quote the incomparable panegyric (in the chapter on "Initials") to the ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... the untamed, and sometimes extravagant exuberance of his style might well subject his narrative to suspicion. Of the "Sketch" by the Hon. Judge James, we are more secure, though, as a literary performance, it is quite as devoid of merit as pretension. Besides, the narrative is not thorough. It dwells somewhat too minutely upon one class of facts, to the neglect or the exclusion of others. I have made both of these works tributary to my own whenever ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... London with me in my coach. Sorry you and the lady won't take the other two seats. Well, au revoir. Hope you'll be quite fit when you come up for the next round." And waving a hand airily at me he went limping down the stairs, devoid of grace yet every motion eloquent of it, to me ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... withdrawn from the ground so as to be no longer functional; this animal seems to have proceeded further along the same line taken by the hippopotamus. A deer, with still smaller rudiments at the sides of its double foot, leads in the comparative series to the camel with a cloven hoof devoid ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... closed door of the mysteries of the human soul should be pitched in the same key as the inquiry. Disappointment is not uncommon. I have taken part in seances of every kind, with cautious investigators devoid of all spiritualistic bias, with unsophisticated believers in a supernatural source of all psychic phenomena, with scoffers convinced that every medium is an impostor, and that nothing but a little common sense is ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Dionings to men whose sexual appetite is normal, i.e., directed toward women. Such a pretension appears necessarily ridiculous to every man whose sexual sense is normal, and it is obviously absurd to apply the term "normal" to a sexual appetite absolutely devoid of its natural object, procreation. But this is quite characteristic ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... William Gerard Hamilton (1759), now only remembered by the nickname "single-speech," derived from the circumstance of his having made a single brilliant speech in the House of Commons, which was followed by years of almost unbroken silence. Hamilton was by no means devoid of sense and acuteness, but in character he was one of the most despicable men then alive. There is not a word too many nor too strong in the description of him by one of Burke's friends, as "a sullen, vain, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... by Charles V., in allusion to the Spanish discoveries and conquests in America, and still to be seen on the coin of that nation, was, by the connoisseurs, termed a mere conceit. The scholar's two pens, with His ad aethera (By these fame), being also devoid of comparison, was equally inferior. Not more than three figures were permissible in the emblem, unless the greater number were of the same species. A device portraying an elephant, with a flock of sheep grazing quietly around, the motto, Infestus infestis (Hostile ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... was in a very sensitive mood; the world seemed for the moment devoid of human sympathy, and the savageness and turmoil played upon his bare nerves. The artist himself shrank from contact with this overpowering display, and said that he could not endure more than a day ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... respectfully to observe, that they hope their examples may not be altogether devoid of indirect instruction; and lest it should be supposed that they lived without object, aim, or principle, they would observe that the maxim which has influenced the delineation of the different Scenes and Characters ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said this in a tone that suggested that it was particularly agreeable and flattering to him that he was so insignificant. How absolutely devoid of talent and imagination he was! Sad to say, he was the only architect in the town, and in the fifteen to twenty years that I could remember not one single decent house had been built in it. When any one asked him to plan a house, he usually drew first the reception hall and drawing-room: just as ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Island uncovered by spruce and the barren lands of the mainland, are not absolutely devoid of trees or bushes. Often there is a considerable growth of cottonwood trees along the bottom lands of the streams, and large patches of alder bushes are common, so that when the leaves are well out, one's view of the bottoms and lower hillsides is much obscured. The snowfall must be ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... the sport produced, if he has the good luck to sit in a sunbeam, from making a tournament of "Jack-o'-lanthorns" on the ceiling. His locker in the lobby of the dissecting-room has long since been devoid of apron, sleeves, scalpels, or forceps; but still it is not empty. Its contents are composed of three bellpull-handles, a valuable series of shutter-fastenings, two or three broken pipes, a pewter "go" (which, if everybody had their own, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... portrait-painting. He would dwell upon his subject lovingly, describing it in minute detail, and then forget all about it, while some one else went and painted it, and won money and fame thereby. Being of an easy temper, and entirely devoid of ambition, Mr. Clair was unable to sympathise with Eddie's impatience; but though not enthusiastic about art, he had a thorough knowledge of its technicalities, and Eddie might have learned much from him if he would. Meantime, ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... this point, so fundamental in his thought, Bergson turns to music. "Let us listen," he says, "to a melody, letting ourselves be swayed by it; do we not have the clear perception of a movement which is not attached to any mobility—of a change devoid of anything which changes? The change is self-sufficient, it is the thing itself. It avails nothing to say that it takes time, for it is indivisible; if the melody were to stop sooner, it would not be any longer the ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... that most of the many stories related by the Swiss of the cruelty and extortion of the Austrian bailies are wholly or in great part devoid of a historical basis of truth, as are the dates given for their occurrence. They doubtless sprang from the very natural feelings of hatred the mountaineers of the Forest State felt against a foreign master, who was probably only too ready to punish them for the part they took against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and may even be dismissed. The object indeed of the whole system is to reform and amend the criminal. He is therefore forbidden to speak or to communicate in any way with human beings, and is segregated in a very small room devoid of all ornament, with the exception of one hour a day, during which he is compelled to walk round and round a deep, walled courtyard designed for the purpose of such an exercise. If (as is often the case) after some years of this treatment the criminal shows ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... similar theories are completely disproved by the fact that every tone which the human voice is capable of producing can be produced by inspiration as well as by expiration. The tones sung by inspiration are, as might be expected, wholly devoid of beauty, because the vocal apparatus is, as it were, put upside down, and the position of bellows and resonator reversed. But that does not alter the question. The fact remains, and clearly proves that the pockets have no more to do with the falsetto than with ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... Sampson say, "The historian must pen things not as they ought to have been but as they really were, without adding to or diminishing aught from the truth." The lives of literary men are not always devoid of stirring incidents. M. Viardot says of him: "Cervantes was an illustrious man before he became an illustrious author; the doer of great deeds before he produced an immortal book." Don Lope de Figueras then commanded a regiment ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... generous tribute to an eminent rival Cold and stately composure Fiery and passionate enthusiasm Extraordinary violence of nature A brilliant and delightful play Rare and striking combination Preeminently qualified for the part Moderate and cautious conservatism Daring perversions of justice Devoid of rhetorical device As a great thinker has observed Almost morbid sensitiveness Discreetly stifled yawn He was dumb with wonder Scarcely less familiar Delightfully characteristic It was a profound conviction Greatly conceived and expressed ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... that a hotel proprietor who would make such a distinction could have no soul, but when we reflect that the proprietor is catering to the pleasure of a majority of his guests, then we conclude that the guests are devoid of souls. ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... subject of Soil Fertility. Professor Vivian's experience as a teacher in the short winter courses has admirably fitted him to present this matter in a popular style. In this little book he has given the gist of the subject in plain language, practically devoid of technical and scientific terms. It is pre-eminently a "First Book," and will be found especially valuable to those who desire an introduction to the subject, and who intend to do subsequent reading. Illustrated. ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... warned that my time is short and that I have wasted much of it over 'the attractive Charles.' What I have done I have done with a purpose, and it must be a storyteller devoid of the rudiments of his art who can complain of my dwelling on Charles Dump, for the world to have a pause and pin its faith to him, which it would not do to a grander person—that is, as a peg. Wonderful events, however true ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is said that he deceived them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he did. Each reformation in the past three centuries was begun by holy men, upon whom God sent the holy fire; but others rising up subsequently, who were devoid of spirituality, built upon their foundation, and now deceive the people in making them believe that they and their sect institutions are of God because God manifested himself to their predecessors. In this verse we also learn that an image was ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... which is pleasing to Him. If it is the former, it will be the latter. I prefer to suppose that it is the former—that is, sorrow which has reference to God. And then, there is another kind of sorrow, which the Apostle calls the 'sorrow of the world,' which is devoid of that reference to God. Here we have the characteristic difference between the Christian way of looking at our own faults and shortcomings, and the sorrow of the world, which has got no blessing in it, and will never ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... headache, the swollen legs and all of the discomforts and diseases from which civilized woman suffers during this period are mostly due to improper eating. Pregnancy and childbirth are physiologic and are devoid of any great amount of discomfort, pain or danger ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... coolness of the evening, our animal spirits revived; and it was only during that part of the day, and in the early morning before sunrise, that I felt inclined to attend to any business that required much bodily exertion. It was a great enjoyment indeed to lie devoid of any covering on our couch, and watch the fading tints of sunset. The usual, and therefore expected, night breeze did not set in; but, about half-past 10 o'clock P.M., there was a slight stir in the atmosphere, accompanied with a sense of moisture, as if a distant thunder-storm had ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... more of them, nor of your suspicions, which I do not refute one by one, because they are all equally devoid of probability. And to make amends for the unpleasant commencement of this letter, I will tell you something which I know ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... sizes and ages were Weschcke shagbark (C. ovata)[33] scions and other hickory scions, such as Siers, Bridgewater, Deveaux, Beaver, and Fairbanks have been grafted on the same tree to act as pollinators for the Weschcke, which is devoid of pollen.[33] This year particularly, the difference in rate of growth between two varieties grafted on the same stock was very apparent; in every case all other varieties greatly exceeded the growth of the Weschcke hickory, but in many cases, only the Weschcke hickory ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... talk much. It was not because my mind was devoid of ideas, but rather because I was feeling that I had a prodigious, incalculable amount to think about. Perhaps it was the freedom from anxiety that made thinking easier, for there is little doubt that anxiety, however masked, deflects and disturbs the ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... excavated, at a suitable depth, in the very substance of the loamy bank, without any manufactured part save the thick lid that closes the orifice. Thus protected by the prudent industry of their mother, well out of reach in their distant, solid retreats, the Anthophora's larvae are devoid of the glandular apparatus designed for secreting silk. They therefore never spin a cocoon, but lie naked in their cells, whose inner surface has the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Drama opens, if Cousin Betty would have allowed herself to be dressed like other people; if, like the women of Paris, she had been accustomed to wear each fashion in its turn, she would have been presentable and acceptable, but she preserved the stiffness of a stick. Now a woman devoid of all the graces, in Paris simply does not exist. The fine but hard eyes, the severe features, the Calabrian fixity of complexion which made Lisbeth like a figure by Giotto, and of which a true Parisian would have taken advantage, above ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... part of the day was altogether devoid of interest or event. Overhead, the sun blazing wastefully and thanklessly through a rarefied atmosphere; underfoot the hot, black clay, thirsting for spring rain, and bare except for inedible roley-poleys, coarse tussocks, and the woody stubble of close-eaten ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... systematically established; the law of hostages struck a blow at personal liberty, and forced loans menaced every man's property. The generality of the citizens had declared themselves against a pentarchy devoid of power, justice, and morality, and which had become the sport of faction and intrigue. Disorder was general; but in the provinces abuses were felt more sensibly than elsewhere. In great cities it was found more easy to elude the hand of despotism ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... compassionate tone of her voice, with her gentle and caressing manner, soon set me at ease with myself; I saw my endeavors to please were crowned with success, and this assurance made me succeed the more. Though an Italian, and too pretty to be entirely devoid of coquetry, she had so much modesty, and I so great a share of timidity, that our adventure was not likely to be brought to a very speedy conclusion, nor did they give us time to make any good of it. I cannot recall the few short moments I ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Administration, charging that disasters had brought bankruptcy, that ill-advised acts of subordinates had sapped the liberties of the people, and that base motives inspired the policy of the Government. He denounced the Radicals as craven Americans, devoid of patriotic feeling, who were trying to make the humiliation and degradation of their country a stepping-stone to continued power. "They say we must fight until slavery is extinguished. We are to upturn the foundations of our Constitution. At this very moment, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... The ground was devoid of cover and so water-logged that a rapid advance was impossible, the men sinking deep in the mud at ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... might be. The little girls, as their father always called them, had their tea with the nurses and were given few toys and never allowed to accept presents. No fuss was made over the little accidents inevitable to childhood and in every way life was kept devoid of state formality, or anything that would breed a sense of childish self-importance. When the Prince and Princess were away from home, as they frequently had to be, letters were daily exchanged with the head nurse. The result ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... interesting chases, the runner to take unexpected turns and dodges, making capture difficult. The shortest distance between two points for a chase often makes a dull game, devoid of sport. ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... lantern aloft, seeking the possibilities of a climb, but everywhere it was sheer, without a ledge or protuberance of any kind to take advantage of, and it was utterly devoid of vegetation—not a sign of a friendly shrub or root to ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... and as they walked beneath the snow-clad pines they drew up a scheme of life which was astonishingly unlike the dreams and aspirations of most lovers. For it was devoid of selfishness, and they looked for happiness—not in an immediate gratification of all their desires and an instant fulfilment of their hopes, but in a mutual faith that should survive all separation and bridge the longest span of years. Loyalty was to be their watchword. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... more thereto, for he was a golden talker, and he sat in the midst of hero-worship devoid of all taint of self-interest. The boys asked him of the birth of his book, and whether it was hard to write, and how his notions came to him; and he answered with the same absolute simplicity as he was questioned. His big eyes twinkled, he dug his long thin hands into ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... to come across him," said Nick, full of enthusiasm for the man he admired, and devoid of small jealousy. "Falconer was one of the grandest lawyers California ever had; and in a way he made himself, though he came of the best blood we've got." (Nick would not have dreamed of mentioning ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... conducting substance, enabling the surface to receive and part with the electric charge readily. Without such a coating the charge and discharge would be very slow, and would operate by degrees only, as one part of a non-conducting surface might be densely charged and another part be quite devoid ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... general and every one who could possibly reach the place in a day's journey came. The women wore for the most part calico dresses, bright in colour and generous in volume, heavily starched and absolutely devoid of fit. Their brown faces were heavily powdered, producing in some of the darker ones a purplish tint, which was ghastly in the light of the oil lamps. Some of the younger girls were comely despite their crude toilets, with soft skins, ripe breasts, mild dark heifer-like eyes, ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... dressing-case. She roamed about her rooms, gathering together drawing-materials, music-books, needle-work, hair-brushes, jewelry, and perfume-bottles, very much as she might have done had she been about to sail for some savage country, devoid of all civilized resources. She was thinking all the time of her father's unknown grief, and perhaps a little of the serious face and earnest voice which had that night revealed her Cousin Robert to her in ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... to maintain that a something as devoid of parts as is a mathematical point should yet appear to have parts and to be extended. On the other hand, if we allow the image to be extended, how can we refer it to ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... however, though naturally the effect of a mind devoid of all genuine resources, was dignified by herself with the appellation of sorrow: nor was this merely a screen to the world; unused to investigate her feelings or examine her heart, the general compassion she met for the loss of her husband, persuaded her that indeed she lamented his destiny; ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... into M. Vulfran's office after he had given his orders to his principal employes, was such a severe expression on his face that she was thoroughly disconcerted; although the eyes that turned towards her as she entered his room were devoid of look, she could not mistake the expression on this face that she ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... first glance was towards the creek opposite the island. There was nothing there to arrest attention. His eyes travelled further without any light of expectation in them. Creek by creek, bay by bay, he followed the shore line, then, in a second, his gaze grew fixed. The lake was no longer devoid of life. Far-off, at least ten miles, as he swiftly calculated, a blur of black dots showed on the surface of the snow. Instantly he knew it for what it was—a team of sled dogs. His heart leaped ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... was a typical Tenderloin grafter. A woman absolutely devoid of moral conscience, she styled herself an actress, yet was one only by courtesy. By dint of pulling all kinds of wires she contrived from time to time to get a part to play, but her stage activities were really only a blind ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... presbyterian Fairfax and the dissolute Charles; when he alike ridiculed that witty king and his solemn chancellor: when he plotted the ruin of his country with a cabal of bad ministers, or, equally unprincipled, supported its cause with bad patriots,—one laments that such parts should have been devoid of every virtue: but when Alcibiades turns chemist; when he is a real bubble and a visionary miser; when ambition is but a frolic; when the worst designs are for the foolishest ends,—contempt extinguishes ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... stains, but they remain with him eternally. However bright and clear he shines, his light cannot dispel the shadows which he bears, nor pierce through the black covering on his back. When he sometimes turns his back to us, we see him only as a dull opaque creature, devoid of light and lustre. But he cannot bear to show us his dark side long. He soon turns his shining face to the earth again, and sheds down his bright silvery light from above; but the more he waxes, the more distinct becomes the form of his spoiler, and reminds ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... our age is altogether unlearned and devoid of writers in any kind, seems to be an assertion so bold and so false, that I have been sometimes thinking the contrary may almost be proved by uncontrollable demonstration. It is true, indeed, that ...
— English Satires • Various
... his hand, entered the wigwam for the purpose of cooking them, while Hans Vanderbum himself went lounging on through the village, it being his purpose not to seem too anxious and hurried in his effort to gain his news regarding the captive. He was, despite his stupidity, not devoid ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... holds out before him certain sacred emblems. So powerful are these that at the sight the unlawful demon confesses itself vanquished, and although its whole body trembles with ill-contained rage, and the air around is poisoned by its discreditable exhalation, it is devoid of further resistance. Those in the chariot are thereupon commanded to dismiss it, and being bound in chains they are led into the presence of certain lesser mandarins who administer justice ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... a wife. It is true that the upper classes of impersonal France practise this method of marital selection, their conseils de famille furnishing in some sort a parallel. But, as is well known, matrimony among these same upper classes is largely form devoid of substance. It begins impressively with a dual ceremony, the civil contract, which amounts to a contract of civility between the parties, and a religious rite to render the same perpetual, and there it is too apt ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... had a covenanting childhood. In the mid-Victorian era, a stricter discipline reigned over nurseries in Scotland's capital than now. "The serviceable pause" in the week's work on Sunday was not without real benefits, for the children of these times, if sermons were long and the Sabbath devoid of toys, learned to sit still and to endure, and very useful lessons they were to R. L. S. and others. Despite being an extra model little soul, "eminently religious," he says, he was much like other children. His nurse tells how, during one of the many feverish, wakeful nights he suffered ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... midst of idle pleasures and luxurious indulgence, have found a remedy in marriage, and felt themselves cured the moment they became fathers.' A sentence this full of sound instruction. It is not, then, because life is devoid of pleasure, that men are the prey of melancholy. That demon pierced, it is true, like a gnawing worm, through all the luxuries of the Roman world; there was no resource against it, either in beautiful slaves, or Ionian dances, or magnificent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... observed that 'few very clever men enjoyed worldly happiness and long life'; perhaps because ability and knowledge are too highly valued in the world to admit of other blessings. True it is, that even a man whose high birth assures him a certain success in life, ought not to be devoid of learning, but I advise you to moderate your exertions. After this time, he took more pains in instructing me in the ways and manners of men of high position than in the minute details of science. For these reasons, though on the one hand I was not ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... after which there would be a few needful repairs. The delay was not a great grievance to any of us except little Martyn. We were much more Cockney than almost any one is in these days of railways. We were unusually devoid of kindred on both sides, my father's holidays were short, I was not a very movable commodity, and economy forbade long journeys, so that we had never gone farther than Ramsgate, where we claimed a certain lodging-house as a sort of ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... service; the fields in the Soudan were cultivated by slaves; the women in the harems of both rich and middle class were attended by slaves; the poorer Arab woman's ambition was to possess a slave; in fact, Egyptian society without slaves would be like a carriage devoid of wheels—it could ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... in the steamer John Aull for New Orleans. As we passed Cairo the snow was falling, and the country was wintery and devoid of verdure. Gradually, however, as we proceeded south, the green color came; grass and trees showed the change of latitude, and when in the course of a week we had reached New Orleans, the roses were in full ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... open country, like an unrolled map, simple in all its lines, with little variety in its scenery, devoid of sharp contrasts and sudden changes and hence lacking in the element of the picturesque which comes from these things. It is a part of the earth's surface that has never been subject to convulsion and upheaval. The stratified rock lies horizontally just as it was laid down in the bottom of the ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... review in question are first, its unfaithfulness to its own announced and excellent plan, by subjecting to criticism works neither indecent nor immoral, yet of such trifling importance even in point of size and, according to the critic's own verdict, so devoid of all merit, as must excite in the most candid mind the suspicion, either that dislike or vindictive feelings were at work; or that there was a cold prudential pre-determination to increase the sale of the review by flattering the malignant passions ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... cadences? Few will be so irrational as to think this. Is it, then, that the meanings of these special combinations are conventional only?—that we learn their implications, as we do those of words, by observing how others understand them? This is an hypothesis not only devoid of evidence, but directly opposed to the experience of every one. How, then, are musical effects to be explained? If the theory above set forth be accepted, the difficulty disappears. If music, taking for its raw material the various modifications of voice which are ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the charms of some ancient beauty; which, with the dilapidated window-curtains, the obsolete sideboard, the wooden effigy of a red-faced man with a spyglass under his arm, and the cracked alabaster clock-case on the mantel, all bespoke an impoverished establishment, so devoid of taste that the beautiful and artistic portrait seemed to have found its way there by a miracle. It represented a young and spirituelle woman, in the costume, so elegant in material and formal in mode, which Copley has immortalized; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... westward a tiresome affair. His was a soul devoid of enthusiasm over Nature's wealth or magnitude, and the view of the endless prairie excited in him no emotion other than a certain vague covetousness. It was his first long rail journey in over twenty years, but his thoughts were on the cost of travel rather than on the wonderful ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... ornament a far fairer land than Canada, her too enthusiastic nature would have been infinitely better developed in another world, but it is useless to sit down and mourn over the "might have beens" that are always such a loss to us, because we see them, devoid of all the disadvantages realization brings to bear ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Gluttony! O let me eat Immensely at thy awful board, On which to serve the stomach meet, What art and nature can afford. I'll furious cram, devoid of fear, Let but the roast and boil'd appear; Let me but see a smoking dish, I care not whether fowl or fish; Then rush ye floods of ale adown my throat, And in my ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... every day in our domestic legislation. It is solely with regard to this matter of imports that the Radical party still cling to the Cobdenite doctrine, and the consequence is that their policy has become a mass of inconsistencies. It is devoid of ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... succeeded by his son Cambyses, who though not devoid of fine qualities was jealous and tyrannical. He caused his own brother Smerdis to be put to death. He completed the conquests of his father by adding Egypt to his empire. In a fit of remorse for the murder of his brother he committed suicide, and the empire was usurped by a Magian impostor, called ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... so devoid of guile, his winning smile never so cherubic as when he remarked that he would "jes' run froo the front gate a minyit," and the next instant he was out of sight. Far afield his roving spirit led him, and much scurrying ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... one widely-credited myth about the moon which must be regarded as devoid of foundation. The idea that our satellite and the weather bear some relation has no doubt been entertained by high authority, and appears to be an article in the belief of many an excellent mariner. Careful comparison between the state of ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... of devotion to my father, to forfeit God. So, prithee, trouble not thyself, nor me: but be persuaded, and let us both serve the true and living God, for the objects of thy present worship are idols, the works of men's hands, devoid of breath, and deaf, and give nought but destruction and eternal ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... I understand you, Melvil! Here is no priest, no church, no sacrament; But the Redeemer says, "When two or three Are in my name assembled, I am with them," What consecrates the priest? Say, what ordains him To be the Lord's interpreter? a heart Devoid of guile, and a reproachless conduct. Well, then, though unordained, be you my priest; To you will I confide my last confession, And take my absolution from ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... bliss afforded by existence in the companionship of a being able to awaken the transports he now experienced. A new world seemed suddenly opened to him, full of love, hope, sunshine, of which he and Aveline were the sole inhabitants. Hitherto his life had been devoid of any great emotion. The one feeling latterly pervading it had been a sense of deep wrong, coupled with the thirst of vengeance. No tenderer influence had softened his almost rugged nature; and his breast ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... recollections to my mind. I have passed a good deal of time there at several periods, and as the writer of the description accompanying the vignette has been led into an error or two, perhaps a few desultory notes by way of pendant to his paper, may not be entirely devoid of interest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... complacency, which a sweet temper seldom fails to inspire; in the comforts of the domestic or social circle; in the pleasure which from the constitution of our nature accompanies pursuit and action. They are always beloved in private, and generally respected in public life. But when devoid of Religion, if the word of God be not a fable, "they cannot enter into the kingdom of Heaven." True practical Christianity (never let it be forgotten) consists in devoting the heart and life to God; in being supremely ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... candle and took me to a bedroom at the end of the hall. It was a little room, very clean, but devoid of all ornament, save a picture of the Madonna and her Babe, that hung over the head of the little iron bedstead. It was a painting—not very good. I think Father Francis painted it himself; the face of the Holy Mother was very human—divinely ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... that the little thing he said, which was not so many things, must then have been something peculiarly tactless! This girl was not, like some of us, devoid of humour—that much is clear: laughter lived in her as in its home. What had he said? Whatever it was, he "did not mean it." But that is frequently the sting of stings. Spontaneity which hurts us hurts far more than malice can—for it is more evidently sincere in what ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... me! the veriest noodle is careful to hide a thing of that kind, and do you suppose that an ambassador will tell you about it? Really, Crottat, I have never known you so utterly devoid of common-sense." ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... else to shoot at, then the swallows are slaughtered. Some have even taken to shooting at the rooks in the trees or fields by the river with small-bore rifles—a most dangerous thing to do. The result is that the osier-beds on the eyots and by the backwaters—the copses of the river—are almost devoid of life. A few moorhens creep under the aquatic grasses and conceal themselves beneath the bushes, water-voles hide among the flags, but the once extensive host of waterfowl and river life has been reduced to the smallest limits. Water-fowl cannot breed because they are shot on the nest, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... to have an even more moderate climate. A tributary of the Tchirtchick river forms the line of demarcation between the native and the European portions of the city, although the population of the latter is by no means devoid of a native element. Both together cover an area as extensive as Paris, though the population is only 120,000, of which 100,000 are congregated in the native, or Sart, quarter. There is a floating element of Kashgarians, Bokhariots, Persians, and Afghans, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... he rushed on, giving her no opportunity. "Senorita, I am not a man devoid of culture. I am not a sailor or a trapper like those ruffians below. Nor a keeper of shops. Senorita, I will give up gambling and become a ranchero. If—" he ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... charming than grand, pale than flushed; his nose—if a sketch of his features be de rigueur for a person of his pretensions—was artistically beautiful enough to have been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hence devoid of those knotty irregularities which often mean power; while the double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth was not without a looseness in its close. Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative mien, or his reflective manner, or the instinct towards profound things which was ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... roots, would not grow if planted in the earth—they are mere holdfasts, and the plant does not receive any portion of its nourishment through them. The upper part of the plant, where it has mounted above the wall and become arborescent, is wholly devoid of such fibres, which never appear but when they have some ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... came, he saw a young girl, in the dress worn by the children of the fishermen, holding on to a wet, seaweed-covered rock, on which she had fallen to save herself from slipping off into the water. He was not so devoid of good feeling as not to wish to help her, so he ran on, and taking one of her hands, he dragged her up and enabled her to reach a spot where the ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... worlds than ours there are great riches. These we shall take. If there is resistance, we have a new and a terrible death to deal. A death that your great scientists will be helpless against; a horrible and irresistable death that will make desolate and devoid of intelligent life any world where we are forced to sow the seeds ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... sunshine; the grass is already withered to hay. Drenched in light and heat, this Sahara-like enclosure is altogether devoid of life save for the cats. The majority are dozing in a kind of torpor, or moribund, or dead. My experiences in the hospital half an hour ago dispose me, perhaps, to regard this menagerie in a more morbid fashion than usual. To-day, in particular, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... was silent for a little while, but after that he got heavily to his feet. "I think you must be quite mad," said he, as before, in a voice altogether devoid of expression. "I cannot talk with madmen." He beckoned to the old Michel, who stood near-by, leaning upon his carbine, and when the gardener had approached he said, "Take this—prisoner ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... or very seldom possible, to serious poetry: and in any case the mere tricks with language which the parodist has to play, familiarise him with the use of it. Even in these days of multifarious writing, it is not absolutely uncommon to find men of education and not devoid of talent who confess that they have no notion how to put things, that they cannot express themselves. We can see this tying of the tongue, this inability to use words, far more reasonably prevalent in the infancy of the vernacular tongues; as, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... wild blackberry," Diane replied briefly. "But the trees were quite as devoid of new birds as Johnny's detective trip ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... volcanoes, forbidding as is its aspect, does not refuse nutriment to the woods. The refractory lava of Etna, it is true, remains long barren, and that of the great eruption of 1669 is still almost wholly devoid ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... Nancy's breast as if her heart had suddenly got up and sat down again. Betty bore no remotest resemblance to the pale kind girl, practically devoid of feminine allure, that Nancy had visualized as the mate for Dick, and frequently exhorted him to go in ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... law as they found it was reasonable. Gaius said that it was unjust that the fault of children or slaves should be a source of loss to their parents or owners beyond their own bodies, and Ulpian reasoned that a fortiori this was true of things devoid of life, and therefore incapable of fault. /1/ This way of approaching the question seems to deal with the right of surrender as if it were a limitation of a liability incurred by a parent or owner, which would naturally ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... hills, between whose tops the summits of some distant blue mountains appeared. Our reliance on the information of the guides, which had been for some time shaken, was now quite at an end, and we feared that the sea was still far distant. The flat country here is covered with grass and is devoid of the large stones so frequent in the barren grounds, but the ranges of trap hills which seem to intersect it at regular distances are quite barren. A few decayed stunted pines were standing on the borders of the river. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... Here was a man whom she had mistaken for the finest image of manly strength and beauty in the world; and he was so devoid of artistic culture that he held a statue to be a distasteful ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... between the eyes, it is clear that supposing the central point had been rightly selected, the distance between the cameras was only double what might have been taken an extreme distance. It is scarcely necessary to suggest what a person devoid of taste (in which category I am no doubt included) might do in producing monstrosities by adopting the radial method, as such an one is not very likely to produce good ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... general information; who are branded as intolerants and bigots, from whom ministers had happily escaped; and, what was still more painful to generous minds, who were ranked among those that were as devoid of true liberality and benevolence, as of reason and intelligence. He continued: "All these things, however, move us not. In a cause like that of the Protestant constitution of England, now placed for the first time since its existence in a situation of imminent peril, an humble part in its ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... my simple board, Then let thy blameless hand call forth The music of the Teian chord. Or if invoked at softer hours, Oh! seek with me the happy bowers That hear Olympia's gentle tongue; To beauty link'd with virtue's train, To love devoid of jealous pain, There let the Sapphic lute ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... Grimaldi the clown, and taking lessons from Mr. Jackson, the distinguished professor of pugilism, to whom he afterwards affectionately refers as his "old friend and corporeal pastor and master." There is no inducement to dwell on amours devoid of romance, further than to remember that they never trenched on what the common code of the fashionable world terms dishonour. We may believe the poet's later assertion, backed by want of evidence to the contrary, that he had never been the first means ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... century onwards the once wide empire of the Turks has been gradually dwindling away. The Turks are essentially a warlike race, and commerce and art have not flourished with them. Their literature is generally lacking in virility, and is mostly imitative and devoid ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of it; and it seems to me as if I could never venture to open a window or go out of a door any more. I have the dimmest sort of diabolical pleasure in thinking how miserable I shall make Susie by telling her all this; but in other respects I seem entirely devoid of all moral sentiments. I have arrived at this state of things, first by catching cold, and since by trying to "amuse myself" for three days. I tried to read "Pickwick," but found that vulgar,[24] and, besides, I know it all by heart. I sent from town for some chivalric ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... life of Grace Carden for many days; devoid of striking incident, yet well worthy of study by those who care to pierce below the surface, and see what passes in the hearts of the unhappy, and to learn how things come gradually about that sound incredible when not so traced, yet are natural and almost inevitable ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... man had departed, the Trefethens indulged in many speculations as to what he intended to do for their guest; nor was Peveril himself devoid of a hopeful curiosity in ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... nearly blind, was looping and writhing itself between the clock and the candlesticks. That stopped all investigations or doubtings. Here was the manifestation in the flesh. It was, so far as could be seen, devoid of purpose, but it was a manifestation ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... have received distinctive names; seventeen of them are wholly, or in great part, confined to the northern, and to the south-eastern quarter of the southern hemisphere—the south-western quadrant being to a great extent devoid of them. By far the largest is the vast Oceanus Procellarum, extending from a high northern latitude to beyond latitude 10 deg. in the south-eastern quadrant, and, according to Schmidt, with its bays and inflections, occupying an area of nearly two million square miles, or more ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... and these scarce commodities stand out in bold relief against the white-washed walls and bare flooring. The chairs and sofas are all cane-backed and cane-bottomed. Tables are not plentiful, and curtains are employed as adornments for some of the doors instead of the windows, which are also devoid of glass. An elegant gas chandelier is suspended from one of the cross-beams of the sloping roof, and a couple of unserviceable console tables, with their corresponding pier-glasses, complete ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... me at this time, and in this place, to take on myself to flutter before you the well-thumbed pages of Mr. Thackeray's books, and to tell you to observe how full they are of wit and wisdom, how out-speaking, and how devoid of fear or favour; but I will take leave to remark, in paying my due homage and respect to them, that it is fitting that such a writer and such an institution should be brought together. Every writer of fiction, although he may not adopt the dramatic form, writes in effect for the stage. ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... from attaining to such permanent developments in the domain of culture as form the mark of the true civilized races and the guaranties of progress. Yet we should not venture to call any of them cultureless, so long as none of them is devoid of the primitive means by which the ascent to higher stages can be made—language, religion, fire, weapons, implements; while the very possession of these means, and many others, such as domestic animals and cultivated plants, testifies to varied and numerous dealings with those races ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Joshua Barnes seemed on the verge of apoplexy, but he came around quickly, and moreover with a twinkle in his eye. Even a life devoted to mustard has its brighter side and Old Grim Barnes was not entirely devoid of a sense of humor. He was his grim old self ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... sung of old and young, That I should be to blame, Theirs be the charge that speak so large In hurting of my name: For I will prove, that faithful love It is devoid of shame In your distress and heaviness To part with you the same: And sure all tho that do not so, True lovers are they none: For, in my mind, of all mankind I ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... it was evident her young mistress was more occupied with Donal Grant than with the pain she was suffering! In her delirium she was constantly desiring his presence. "I know he can help me," she would say; "he is a shepherd, like the Lord himself!" And mistress Brookes, though by no means devoid of the prejudices of the rank with which her life had been so much associated, could not but allow that a nobler life must be possible with one like Donal Grant than with one ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... a dozen firms were offering their services as salesmen. There was a lack of actual buyers, at least among my acquaintances, and the railroads had adjusted their rates, while a largely increased drive was predicted. The spring had been a wet one, the grass was washy and devoid of nutriment, and there was nothing in the outlook of an encouraging nature. Yet the majority of the drovers were very optimistic of the future, freely predicting better prices than ever before, while many declared their intention of wintering in case their hopes were not realized. ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... encourage interesting chases, the runner to take unexpected turns and dodges, making capture difficult. The shortest distance between two points for a chase often makes a dull game, devoid of sport. ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... which would justify a Government, circumstanced and supported as we are, in abandoning prematurely the trust confided to us by the country. When a Government is impotent, when it is destitute of ideas and devoid of the power to give effect to them, when it is brought to a complete arrest upon the vital and essential lines of its policy, then I entirely agree that the sooner it divests itself of responsibilities which it cannot discharge, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... inquired anxiously who had been in the room, and was assured nobody but Voltaire, who had remained there till she returned home. As Voltaire was destitute of all religious principles it is not wonderful that he was equally devoid of all moral delicacy. A severe account of his conduct towards the great King of Prussia, while he was at the court of that monarch, is given in "The Reverie," a work ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... however, he supposed I meant Munich, and said, with a merry laugh, "So you are to stay here after all?" I replied, "No! to tell you the truth, I should like to have stayed, if the Elector had favored me with a small sum, so that I might then have offered my compositions to your Excellency devoid of all interested motives. It would have been a pleasure to me to do this." At these words he half ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... Clarkson's alternate in the box, was also one of the best men in his line that ever sent a ball whizzing across the plate. He was a great big fellow with a florid complexion and blue eyes, and was utterly devoid of fear, nothing that came in his direction being too hot for him to handle. He was a remarkable fielder and a good batsman for a pitcher, men who play that position being poor wielders of the ash, as a rule, for the reason, as I have always thought, that they paid ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... not talk much. It was not because my mind was devoid of ideas, but rather because I was feeling that I had a prodigious, incalculable amount to think about. Perhaps it was the freedom from anxiety that made thinking easier, for there is little doubt that anxiety, however masked, deflects and disturbs ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... hundred and fifty a year. Himself a small and slow person, he had every reason to be satisfied with this progress, and hoped for no further advance. He was of eminently sober mind, profoundly conscientious, and quite devoid of social ambition,—points of character which explained the long intimacy between him and Stephen Lord. Yet one habit he possessed which foreshadowed the intellectual composition of his son,—he loved to write letters to the ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... is true, devoid of men of talent or principle, and discontent and distress prevailed in the country. In the City of London, the Jacobite party was very strong; its member was Alderman Heathcote, who, with Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, had announced to Lord Temple his determination to rise immediately upon ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... had colored much earlier in reaction to the frost and was as brightly tinted as the wild hazel and Winkler plants except that, like the wild hazel, it had already lost much of its foliage. Some of the wild hazels were entirely devoid of leaves at this time. Hazilbert No. 5 showed the best color effects with No. 4 ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... about his low extraction are alike devoid of foundation. His family was poor, and he was educated at the public expense, an advantage of which many honourable families availed themselves. A memorial addressed by his father, Charles Buonaparte, to the Minister of War states that ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... must protest against any such idea. A superior performer!—very far from it, I assure you. Consider from how partial a quarter your information came. I am doatingly fond of music—passionately fond;—and my friends say I am not entirely devoid of taste; but as to any thing else, upon my honour my performance is mediocre to the last degree. You, Miss Woodhouse, I well know, play delightfully. I assure you it has been the greatest satisfaction, comfort, and delight to me, to hear ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... argument aside then, as inconsistent with the practice of those who employ it, as devoid of any justification in theory, and as utterly mischievous if its logical consequences were carried out, let us turn to the other class of objectors. To these opponents, the Education Act is only one of a number of pieces of legislation to which ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... heated to redness in the fire without being in anywise altered or rendered less transparent; but a very violent fire calcines it nevertheless. Its transparency is scarcely less than that of water or of Rock Crystal, and devoid of colour. But rays of light pass through it in another fashion and produce those marvellous refractions the causes of which I am now going to try to explain; reserving for the end of this Treatise the statement ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... turn the king's thoughts in another direction, and prevent him from being influenced by the good advice which had been given. This man had many accomplishments; he was skilled in dancing, music, and singing; quick at repartee; a good story-teller; full of fun and jokes; but devoid of honour and honesty; false, slanderous, a receiver of bribes, a bad man in every way; yet, from his wit and humour, very acceptable to the king, whom he now thus addressed: 'Wherever there is ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... were good enough to buy, though it only consisted of French exercises and translations. The consecration took place on the 30th of July 1838, and immediately after daily matins were commenced. So that the Church of St. Matthew has never in sixty years been devoid of the voice of praise, except during casual absences. Most of the trees in the churchyard were planted by Mr. Bigg Wither, especially the great Sequoia, and the holly hedge around was grown by him from the berries of the first Christmas decoration, which he sowed in a row under the wall of the boys' ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... peace, so that he may hear me and be confounded. He asks what goodness is, because goodness is not in him and he is devoid of virtue. I answer him, 'The knowledge of goodness resides in virtuous men; and good citizens carry within them a proper respect for the laws. They approve what has been done in the city to insure to each man enjoyment of the riches he may have acquired. They ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... awe, as he had been directed by the admiral, quartered them among the towns in the Royal Plain, where they lived at free quarters, to the utter ruin of the Indians, one of them eating more in a day than would suffice an Indian for a month. They besides lived in a most disorderly manner, devoid of discipline, and gave infinite offence to the natives by their licentiousness. The council to which the admiral had confided the government in his absence, reproved Margarite for allowing his troops to live in this disorderly manner, and endeavoured to prevail upon him ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... morning as you will quickly hear, Our logs were piled up mountain high, we could not keep them clear. Our foreman said, "Come on, brave boys, with hearts devoid of fear, We'll break the jam on Gerry's Rock ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... Hsiang Ling smiled, "the beauty of poetry lies in certain ideas, which though not quite expressible in words are, nevertheless, found, on reflection, to be absolutely correct. Some may have the semblance of being totally devoid of sense, but, on second thought, they'll truly be seen to be full of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... had it from a scientific source that my heart was going wrong. I could tell by the way I felt. My room-mate noticed me. He was another Western bovine-chaser, a good fellow in his way, but according to my standard, devoid of all the finer qualities that go ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... frequently remarked that the Americans, who generally treat of business in clear, plain language, devoid of all ornament, and so extremely simple as to be often coarse, are apt to become inflated as soon as they attempt a more poetical diction. They then vent their pomposity from one end of a harangue to the other; and to hear them lavish imagery on every occasion, one might ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... desert, for scarcely amongst the hills of Norway would you find figures and faces more essentially Gothic than those of the Maragatos. They are strong athletic men, but loutish and heavy, and their features, though for the most part well formed, are vacant and devoid of expression. They are slow and plain of speech, and those eloquent and imaginative sallies so common in the conversation of other Spaniards, seldom or never escape them; they have, moreover, a coarse thick pronunciation, and when ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... its feet, both below and above, are protected with a thick covering of hair. Its flesh, though esteemed by the Romans, was forbidden by the Druids and by the earlier Britons. It is now, though very dark and dry, and devoid of fat, much esteemed by Europeans, on account of the peculiarity of its flavour. In purchasing this animal, it ought to be remembered that both hares and rabbits, when old, have their claws rugged and blunt, their haunches thick, and their ears dry and tough. The ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Kenneth had come—my son, you know. Something has detained him. I certainly would have liked him to hear that promise of a step-father. Our Southern men are not devoid of jealousy—even of ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... that blow From every region, to and fro, Devoid of heart, she cannot know The suffering ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... on low, jut out rather straight, then turn downwards, the end pointing horizontally. It should be quite round in its whole length, smooth and devoid of fringe or coarse hair. It should be moderate in length, rather short than long, thick at the root, and taper quickly to a fine point. It should have a downward carriage, and the dog should not be able to raise it above the level of the backbone. The tail should not curve ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... she answered in a hard voice, devoid of pity for him; how should she pity him? "I sent no message, save that I would sooner die than see ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... penny-in-the-pound rate is to supply women old and young with outmoded, viciously respectable, viciously sentimental fiction. A few new novels get into the Library every year. They must, however, be "innocuous," that is to say, devoid of original ideas. This, of course, is inevitable in an institution presided over by a committee which has infinitely less personal interest in books than in politics or the price of coal. No Municipal ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... wing of the college in which the dissection was to take place was guarded by some forty sentinels, armed with the spear and lightning gun. But as we came close to them, I observed that each stood motionless as a statue, with eyes open, but utterly devoid of sight. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... which the water contains. So necessary is the atmospheric air to the vitality of the blood in all animals, that the want of it inevitably proves fatal. A fish can no more live in water deprived of air, than a man could in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen, which is the element that unites with the blood ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... I met him in the Champs Elysees. He was on horseback. Well, at one minute he was galloping as hard as he could tear, and then pulled up to a walk. I said to myself at that moment, 'There is a man devoid of judgment!'" ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... prolonging my stay in Paris: "On the 'Latini Juniani.'" Yes, gentle reader, a new subject, almost incapable of elucidation, having no connection—not the remotest—with the exercise of any profession whatsoever, entirely devoid of practical utility. The trouble it ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... of public opinion astonished that experienced writer, Mallet du Pan, who, on coming from the Continent to England, described the change of spirit as astounding. There the monarchical States, utterly devoid of dignity and patriotism, were squabbling over the details of a shameful peace. "Here," he writes in May 1798, "we are in the full tide of war, crushed by taxation, and exposed to the fury of the most desperate of enemies, but nevertheless security, abundance, and energy reign supreme, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... "Witless and devoid of sense art thou," answered Laeg, "for who but an idiot would think of sweet sleep and agreeable repose in a hostile territory, much more in full view of those who look out from a foeman's dun, and ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... making things pleasant. Your conventional catastrophe is a mistake in art, as it is a misrepresentation of facts. Tartufe has a good time of it in Balzac: instead of meeting with an appropriate punishment, he flourishes and thrives, and we look on with a smile not altogether devoid of complacency. Shall we not take the world as it is, and be amused at the 'Comedie Humaine,' rather than fruitlessly rage against it? It will be played out whether we like it or not, and we may as well adapt our tastes ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the strange, new country, in which he felt the proprietorship of early discovery. He drew in deep breaths of an air delightfully fresh, squaring his shoulders and throwing up his head instinctively as he strode forward. The sky was faultlessly clear. The prospect all about him, devoid as it was of variety, was none the less abundantly filling to the eye. Far as the eye could reach rolled an illimitable, tawny sea. The short, harsh grass near at hand he discovered to be dotted here and there with small, gay flowers. Back of him, as he turned his head, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... But when it is applied to Matter as above described, it can be taken in neither of those senses; for Matter is said to be passive and inert, and so cannot be an agent or efficient cause. It is also unperceivable, as being devoid of all sensible qualities, and so cannot be the occasion of our perceptions in the latter sense: as when the burning my finger is said to be the occasion of the pain that attends it. What therefore can be meant by calling matter an occasion? The ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... we lay aside, so far as our search for Jeremiah himself and his doctrine is concerned, and we do so the more easily that they are largely devoid of the style and the spiritual value of his undoubted Oracles and Discourses. They are more or less diffuse and vagrant, while his are concise and to the point. They do not reveal, as his do, a man fresh from agonising ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Scottish coast or to the Continent. There exist enough of them to fill a volume; but it is not in letters of this kind to his family that a young man unbosoms himself most freely, and these are perhaps not quite devoid of the qualities of the guide-book and the descriptive exercise. Nevertheless they seem to me to contain enough signs of the future master-writer, enough of character, observation, and skill in expression, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appearing, probably, to the poets not devoid of ingenuity, they accordingly founded on it the romantic story of the passion of the river God Alpheus for the Nymph Arethusa. Some of the ancient historians appear, however, in their credulity, really to have believed, at ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... has reference to the very nature of God as He is in Himself—that attribute which leads God always to do right. Justice, as an attribute of God, is devoid of all passion or caprice; it is vindicative not vindictive. And so the Righteousness and Justice of the God of Israel was made to stand out prominently as contrasted with the caprice ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... Hamish's answer to this gay invitation? The Gaelic tongue is almost devoid of those meaningless expletives which, in other languages, express mere annoyance of temper; when a Highlander swears, he usually swears in English. But the Gaelic curse is a much more solemn ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... says that severe critic of the Annals, the Vicar of Wrexham (p. 89), "but tumults, advances, retreats, kings recalled, kings banished, kings slain, and all in such confusion and hurry," as to be devoid of "satisfaction and pleasure"; and the Rev. Thomas Hunter likens these mean tribes so signalized by immortality to the ill-conditioned natives of India whom the Great Mogul styled ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... lions of Tenby none is more interesting than St. Catharine's Island, a great rugged hill of solid limestone almost devoid of verdure and rent into innumerable fissures, with a succession of dark romantic coves and caverns and jagged projecting crags fringing its sides completely round. At high tide this islet is separated from the mainland by a deep rolling sea. At low tide ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... this great humiliation to a proud army. The town itself was a dreadful spectacle with, as a French observer noted, "big holes made by bombs, cannon balls, splinters, barely covered graves, arms and legs of blacks and whites scattered here and there, most of the houses riddled with shot and devoid ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... from the narrow idolatry of the present times and fashions, and create the noblest kind of imaginative power in your soul, that of living in past ages;—wholly devoid of which power, a man can neither anticipate the future, nor ever live a truly human life, a life ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... curious fact about my dreams is that I am wholly deserted by any moral sense. I have stolen interesting objects, I have even killed people in dreams, without adequate cause; but I am then entirely devoid of remorse, and only anxious to escape detection. I have never felt anything of the nature of shame or regret in a dream. I find myself anxious indeed, but fertile in expedients for escaping unscathed. On the ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... chief lines of travel, and it has neither the magnificent views that draw the visitor aside to Orbe nor the associations that induce him to stop at Coppet or Clarens. Yet its breezy upland plains and its quiet villages—some of them once populous and prosperous towns—are not devoid of charm, or of the interest connected with historical epochs and famous names. The "lone wall" and "lonelier column" at Avenches date from the period when this was the Roman capital of Helvetia. Morat still ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... why not lose Beauty? No, better still, Naughty; the prime favorite, Naughty. He looked into Naughty's eyes, and they seemed full of liquid reproach. Naughty had been his friend—supposititiously, and to abandon him now to the world, a cold place devoid of French lamb chops? A hard place for homeless dogs and men, alike! About to waive the temptation, Mr. Heatherbloom paused; the idea was capable of modification or ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... as all these artificial changes went, they were of an English character. But it was England devoid alike of its luxury and its poverty, and with a superfluity of space that gave to the meanest habitation in the view, an air of abundance and comfort that is so often wanting about the dwellings of the comparatively rich, in countries ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... of ze Progress Pilgrim. I read ze book what describe to me ze paradise of ze heart—love." How very aggravating, thought Mr. Gusher. Instead of a girl with a whole volume of poetry in her soft blue eyes, here was one whose very nature seemed devoid of sentiment. Still there was something in this cold and reserve manner, this indifference to Mr. Gusher's attractions, that tended to excite his ambition, for he was ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... of the Resolution, describes the natives as a mild, cheerful race, with an appearance less wild than is common to savages. He considered them devoid of activity, genius, and intelligence; their countenance, he delineates as plump ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... moods of sullen silence, no less than in the sudden fits of almost epileptic rage: all these things in reference to which one of my letters to you, left by you lying about in the Savoy or some other hotel, and so produced in court by your father's counsel, contained an entreaty not devoid of pathos, had you at that time been able to recognise pathos either in its elements or its expression—these, I say, were the origin and causes of my fatal yielding to you in your daily increasing demands. You wore me out. It was the triumph of the smaller over the bigger nature. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the King, was sufficiently adroit to pay his court to M. d'Orleans, by telling him that the prisoner had uttered nothing which concerned him, and by representing the services he did M. d'Orleans with the King. Like a sagacious man, D'Argenson saw the madness of popular anger devoid of all foundation, and which could not hinder M. d'Orleans from being a very considerable person in France, during a minority that—the age of the King showed to be pretty near. He took care, therefore, to avail himself of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... years I shall be a well-educated girl—that is, if I win the Scholarship, and then perhaps you will allow me to come out to you to India. I am not without hope, now, but I should be utterly and completely devoid of it if I had to go ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... routine of fixed duties in a large and complex household furnished to our grandparents, during their youth, just the opportunity for the formation of habits in attending to what needed to be done, without regard to the momentary impulse or mood. Many of our modern homes are so devoid of such opportunities that there is great danger that our children will have altogether too much practice in following their whims ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... stood face to face with the governor, at a distance that gave both parties not only the facility of tracing the expression of each other's features, but of conversing without effort. There he made a sudden stand, and thrusting his spear into the earth, assumed an attitude as devoid of apprehension as if he had been in the heart of ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... been notoriously behind Brodrick's back, and that the editor was, notoriously again, in love with her, Caro made her point triumphantly, maintaining that to be in love with Jane Holland required some subtlety, if it came to that; and pray how, if Brodrick was devoid of it, did Jane Holland come to be in ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... perhaps the most nutritious, and when baked are a feast in themselves. With a tree of the Jersey sweet or of Tolman's sweeting in bearing, no man's table need be devoid of luxuries and one of the most wholesome of all deserts. Or the red astrachan, an August apple, what a gap may be filled in the culinary department of a household at this season, by a single tree of this fruit! And what a feast is its shining crimson coat ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... is sinful; but in this case it is peculiarly foolish and daring. If the affections of the heart be sanctified, they will be elevated to God in every religious exercise, and especially in this. Those who value their own souls, will not be devoid of intense concern for their salvation, when before God they engage in testifying to their acceptance thereof. They who seek to glorify God, will in this draw near to him with their mouth, and with their lips ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... ripe old age of ninety-three that he claims. He is about five and one-half or six feet in height, weighs one-hundred and seventy-five pounds or more, and has good sight and hearing in addition to a skin that is almost devoid of any wrinkle. Besides all of this he is a clear thinker and has a good sense of humor. Following is an account of the experiences of Mr. Womble as a slave and of the conditions in general on the plantations where ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... seemed to me, who am not devoid of a sense of humour and an appreciation of the pleasant flippancies of life, somewhat futile and frothy talk, unworthy of the author of "The Diamond Gate" and the lover of Doria Jornicroft. I expressed this opinion and Barbara, for once, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... disease, but has no effect on the healthy. This method is that commonly applied in testing cattle for tuberculosis. As the results of tuberculin injection in the consumptive are something like an attack of grippe, and as tuberculin is not wholly devoid of danger to these patients, this test should be reserved to the last, and is only to be used by ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... so habitually silent that she might have been taken for another Mrs. Shandy; but, occasionally, a word, look, or gesture betrayed that her feelings still retained all the vigor and the freshness of their youth. Her dress, devoid of coquetry, was often in bad taste. She usually sat passive, buried in a low sofa, like a Sultana Valide, awaiting or admiring her Ginevra, her pride, her life. The beauty, toilet, and grace of her ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... lies Reuben Lloyd, Of breath deprived, of sense devoid. The Templars' Captain-General, he So formidable seemed to be, That had he not been on his back Death ne'er had ventured ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... pride, drag it through the mud, through thorns! But she had not. And she clenched her fist, and struck out at the night, as though at the face of that Fate which one could never reach—impalpable, remorseless, surrounding Fate with its faint mocking smile, devoid of all human warmth. Nothing could set back the clock, and give her what this girl had. Time had "done her in," as it "did in" every woman, one by one. And she saw herself going down the years, powdering a little more, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... conceptions in order to create souls so unfairly endowed, most of whom will never hear the Gospel message, and consequently cannot be saved, whilst the rest are destined to animate the bodies of savages and cannibals, devoid of moral consciousness? Is it not an act of sacrilege thus to convert God, Who is all Wisdom and Love, into a kind of accomplice of adulterers and lewd persons or the sport of Malthusian insults. Unconscious blasphemers are they who would ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... complaints, and agreed that Louis XV. had been ungrateful in not conferring the Order of St. Michael on him; that Venice had rewarded his services very shabbily; that Spain was stingy, and Naples devoid of honesty, etc., etc. When he had finished, I asked him if he could give me a bill on ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Mr. Squires, a man of learning, and a general purchaser of new books,) who knew anything of them. Before I left Norfolk in the year 1760, the Ramblers were in high favour among persons of learning and good taste. Others there were, devoid of both, who said that the hard words in the Rambler were used by the authour to render his Dictionary indispensably necessary. BURNEY. We have notices of the Rambler in the Carter Corres:—'May 28, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... God, though Kant was very anxious to show that it is our duty on moral grounds to believe very firmly in both. Now if Kant is right about this, his result is tremendously important. If psychology and theology are wholly devoid of scientific value, it is most desirable that we should know this, not only that we may not waste time in studying them, but because it may reasonably make a very great difference to the practical ordering of our lives. If Kant ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... of Virginia families for nine months of the year, and which is hardly known in the crowded cities of the North. The floor of the passage was covered with a strip of carpeting in winter, and in summer presented a smooth polished surface devoid of matting. If you opened the first door on the left, you entered the office of Mr. Tazewell, a well lighted southern room, fourteen by twenty, in the middle of which was a table furnished with writing apparatus and covered ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... girl of nineteen, called Lucie, who was highly hysterical, having daily attacks of several hours' duration. She was also devoid of the sense of pain or the sense of contact, so that she "lost her legs in bed," ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... set us down at the hotel Bedford, Rue de L'Arend, where, although near one o'clock, we found a good supper waiting for us; and, as I was not devoid of an appetite, I did my share towards putting ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... when all the people, seeing them approach, called out to the knight: "Ill come, sire, ill come. This lodging-place was pointed out to you in order that you might suffer harm and shame. An abbot might take his oath to that." "Ah," he replied, "foolish and vulgar folk, full of all mischief, and devoid of honour, why have you thus assailed me?" "Why? you will find out soon enough, if you will go a little farther. But you shall learn nothing more until you have ascended to the fortress." At once my lord Yvain turns toward the ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... eyes of uncertain color which sometimes seemed to scintillate with a sudden gleam; the under lip defiantly protruding; the whole expression usually stern. His figure would have looked stalwart but for a deformed foot which made him bend and limp. His conversation, carried on in a hollow voice devoid of music, easily disclosed a well-informed mind, but also a certain absolutism of opinion, with contemptuous scorn for adverse argument. He belonged to the fierce class of anti-slavery men who were inspired by humane sympathy with the slave and righteous abhorrence of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... be dismissed. The object indeed of the whole system is to reform and amend the criminal. He is therefore forbidden to speak or to communicate in any way with human beings, and is segregated in a very small room devoid of all ornament, with the exception of one hour a day, during which he is compelled to walk round and round a deep, walled courtyard designed for the purpose of such an exercise. If (as is often the case) after some years of this treatment the ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... vivacity of youth, while they had acquired the maturity and solidity of manhood. The subjects of these works, however, being for the most part historical, are of a nature which renders them less susceptible of analysis in our pages—and indeed their local nature would cause such analysis to be devoid, in a great measure, of interest to the English reader. There is, however, one episode in the poet's life, which must possess peculiar interest to those who delight to watch that fond fidelity with which genius returns to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... information as to their course. Nelson believed, and properly believed, that an alert mind would have found a way of spying out the enemy's intentions, but Sir John's resource did not extend to anything beyond the fear of being attacked and overpowered. He obviously was devoid of any of the arts of the wily pirate or smuggler. A month after the French had passed through the Gut, Nelson got his chance. A change of wind came within five hours after a southerly slant brought his ships ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... as the English have shown,—that was not to be expected, since our public life has done so much to develop an aptitude of this kind, and the public life of the Germans has done so little,—but they seem in a singular degree devoid of any aptitude at all for rhetoric. Take a speech from the throne in Prussia, and compare it with a speech from the throne in England. Assuredly it is not in speeches from the throne that English rhetoric or any rhetoric shows its best side;—they are often ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... is a standing puzzle to the uninitiated where the soldier in barracks contrives to obtain drink of a morning. The canteen is rigorously closed. No one is allowed to go out of barracks and no drink is allowed to come in. A teetotallers' meeting-hall could not appear more rigidly devoid of opportunities for indulgence than does a barrack during the morning. Yet I will venture to say, if you go into any barrack in the three kingdoms, accost any soldier who is not a raw recruit, and offer to pay for ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... eye had lighted upon a sort of chain of knolls, or little round hills, devoid of vegetation, and he told Falcon he would like to inspect these, before ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... letter of statute law, the use of which powers and the adoption of which methods would be denounced as the worst of crimes, even made the basis of an impeachment, should the mass of the populace be dissatisfied with his proceedings. It is easy to find fault, easy in positions devoid of public responsibility to think we see how errors might have been avoided, how powers might have been more successfully employed and greater results achieved. But the American Executive is surrounded with difficulties too little ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... at the corner of some dark street, and rush upon the first man that comes along, demanding, "Your money or your life," is but a poor business, devoid of all prestige, and long since given ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In his efforts along these lines he has endeavored to give expression to his ideas, opinions and convictions in language that is moderate and devoid of bitterness, and entirely free from race prejudice, sectional animosity, or partisan bias. Whether or not he has succeeded in doing so he is willing to leave to the considerate judgment and impartial decision of those who may take the time to read what is here recorded. ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... 'proceed;' but at the same time contains the idea of excitement or vehemence. [347] Ambitio, 'courting favour;' ambitiosum, something the object or consequence of which is to gain favour; hence 'winning,' 'captivating.' [348] Inanis, 'empty.' Of persons, signifies a man devoid of substance, one who has only the appearance of something, and is satisfied with it; hence 'vain,' 'superficial.' Vanus also is used in the same sense. Regia superbia. See ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... down principles contrary to the established rules of war. Yet it had good qualities, too; for it was designed to be stimulating; it certainly meant fighting; and fortunately, though Pope was not a great general, he was by no means devoid of military knowledge and instincts, and he would not really have committed quite such blunders as he marked out for himself in his rhetorical enthusiasm. On the whole, however, the manifesto did harm; neither ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... the depths of the forest, however, they began to realise that its gloomy aisles were by no means so devoid of life as they had at first imagined. The first intimation of this fact came to them in the form of a sudden yell from one of the Indian carriers, who declared that he had been bitten on the leg by something; and upon investigation this proved to be the case, for the ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... for the fire engine were solidly built, had iron roofs, and were painted at the right time. In the tool house carts, ploughs, harrows, stood in perfect order, the harness was well cleaned and oiled. The horses were not very big, but all home-bred, grey, well fed, strong and devoid ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... that mankind, whose minds we look upon as akin to those of the gods, can sometimes discern what is likely to be beneficial or hurtful to them, when even animals devoid of reason sometimes secure their own safety by profound silence, of which the following is ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... at the eighteenth century, and still find no tolerable history of Joan of Arc. In the year 1753 the Abbe Longlet Dufresnoy published a Life of Joan of Arc; it is totally devoid of any merit. ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... can be said. Many country houses are pleasing from their complete simplicity; plastered, and washed pink, yellow, or white, they are devoid of all architectural pretension, and their low roofs of red pantiles look much more natural than do the steep slated roofs of some of the ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... cheerless was that resting place For him who claimed a throne: His canopy, devoid of grace, The rude, rough beams alone; The heather couch his only bed,— Yet well I ween had slumber fled From couch of eider down! Through darksome night till dawn of day, Absorbed in wakeful thought he lay Of Scotland ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... life devoid of stirring incidents, and from the date at which his correspondence with Lord Carlisle begins the course of his days is indicated in his letters. It is sufficient, therefore, to state that he died at his house in Cleveland Row, St. James's, on the ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... hopes for the speedy diffusion of the Gospel amidst the nations, than the contemplation of the present war,—a war not only waged by nations the most Christian, but a war involving no principle and devoid of all glory,—a war stamped in its every feature, and chargeable at its every step, with the attribute ...
— National Character - A Thanksgiving Discourse Delivered November 15th, 1855, - in the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church • N. C. Burt
... self-pride, of complacency, is essential to every human being. I judge no man any more for displaying an overweening vanity, rather do I envy him this representative mark of his humanity. The Wonder was completely and quite inimitably devoid of any conceit, and the word ambition had no meaning for him. It was inconceivable that he should compare himself with any of his fellow-creatures, and it was inconceivable that any honour they might have lavished upon him would have given him one moment's pleasure. He was entirely alone among ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... of the skiff was utterly devoid of comfort; it was narrow and damp, tiny cold drops of rain dribbled through the damaged bottom; gusts of wind penetrated it. We sat in silence and shivered with cold. I remembered that I wanted to go to sleep. Natasha leaned her back against the hull of the boat and curled herself up into a ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... drawn away the thoughts from the color, and prevented the mind from fixing upon it or enjoying it, by the degree of attention which the sculpture would have required. So they left their purple capitals full broad masses of color; and sculptured the white ones, which would otherwise have been devoid of interest. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the Heart of Mid-Lothian, succeeded in some degree in awakening an interest in behalf of one devoid of those accomplishments which belong to a heroine almost by right, I was next tempted to choose a hero upon the same unpromising plan; and as worth of character, goodness of heart, and rectitude of principle, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... backward it may wish to be, is taking a step forward. The Dominicans themselves do not escape the operation of this law, but are imitating the Jesuits, their irreconcilable enemies. They hold fiestas in their cloisters, they erect little theaters, they compose poems, because, as they are not devoid of intelligence in spite of believing in the fifteenth century, they realize that the Jesuits are right, and they will still take part in the future of the younger ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Winstanley may seem devoid of taste, but his acquaintance with English poetry is impressive. Indeed, Winstanley, unlike Phillips, strikes us as a man who really read and enjoyed poetry. Phillips is more the slipshod bibliographer and cataloguer, ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... scene appears devoid of life, but suddenly the call of a jay bird is heard faintly and far up the trail that leads to the right among the rocks. It is repeated nearer at hand, perfectly imitated but with a nuance that advises of human origin, and two or three half-naked Indians are seen to be making ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... the liability of all to be dreadfully frost-bitten. The hardiest and strongest became helplessly crippled. About the same time the strength of their draught animals began to fail. The small supply of provender they could carry with them had given out. The winter-bleached prairie straw proved devoid of nourishment; and they could only keep them from starving by seeking for the "browse," as it is called, this being the green bark and tender buds and branches of the cottonwood and other stunted growths ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... that changed, abject aspect, that bearing, devoid totally of confidence? All pretense of a certain coster smartness that he remembered, had vanished; the hair, once curled with cheap jauntiness, hung now straight and straggling; a tawdry ornament which had stood out in the past, absurdly distinct on a bright cravat, with many ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... help suspecting that the little thing he said, which was not so many things, must then have been something peculiarly tactless! This girl was not, like some of us, devoid of humour—that much is clear: laughter lived in her as in its home. What had he said? Whatever it was, he "did not mean it." But that is frequently the sting of stings. Spontaneity which hurts us hurts far ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... should be set on low, jut out rather straight, then turn downwards, the end pointing horizontally. It should be quite round in its whole length, smooth and devoid of fringe or coarse hair. It should be moderate in length, rather short than long, thick at the root, and taper quickly to a fine point. It should have a downward carriage, and the dog should not be able to raise it above the level of the backbone. The tail should not curve at the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... his shoulder, he raised her right foot, and thrust it into the stirrup; and, with a hand under each of her arms, lifted her until she was able to throw the left foot over, and her body into the saddle. Once more Marion bit her lip. His action was as devoid of personal interest as Pete's had been when he carried her out of the pool; and she had not come to Philip Haig to be treated like ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... like sheep, follow the lead of the most ancient bell-wether; and the reason of this is not far to seek. Curators, as a rule, are men with one hobby—"one-horse" men, as the Americans so aptly put it—"sometimes wise, sometimes otherwise," but in many cases totally devoid of that technical education so much needed in reconciling the divergent atoms of the institutions they represent; in fact, head and ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... few moments he realized that the grounds were not so devoid of human life as he had believed. He heard voices on the side toward the hill, and a rustling in the thicket told him that some ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... naturally-serviceable actions implied by the division of labour—there has been a development of those gentle emotions of which inferior races exhibit but the rudiments. Savages delight in giving pain rather than pleasure—are almost devoid of sympathy; while among ourselves, philanthropy organizes itself in laws, establishes numerous institutions, and dictates ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... a Corean woman, though that of a slave kept in strict seclusion, with prospects of floggings and head-chopping, is not always devoid of adventures. Love is a thing which is capricious in the extreme, and there are stories current in Cho-sen about young, wives being carelessly looked after by their husbands, and falling in love with some good-looking youth, of course married to some one else. Having, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Scriptures; they are good thoughts presented in pleasing words. Some songs, though expressed in charming words, are worldly and carnal; while others presenting good thoughts are at the same time expressed in words inappropriate, unattractive and devoid ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... that not all things desire peace. For, according to Dionysius (Div. Nom. xi), peace "unites consent." But there cannot be unity of consent in things which are devoid of knowledge. Therefore such things cannot ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... space at the bottom of the cup devoid of tea-leaves, it shows water, and that, in all probability, the letter is coming from abroad. If the symbol of the letter comes very near to a bird flying, it shows a telegram. If the bird is flying towards the consultant (the handle), the telegram has been received. The news in it is to be judged ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... so full of wantonness, as the unwieldy rabble. It were folly not to be borne, for men, while seeking to escape the wantonness of a tyrant, to give themselves up to the wantonness of a rude unbridled mob. The tyrant, in all his doings, at least knows what he is about, but a mob is altogether devoid of knowledge; for how should there be any knowledge in a rabble, untaught, and with no natural sense of what is right and fit? It rushes wildly into state affairs with all the fury of a stream swollen in the winter, and confuses everything. Let the enemies of the Persians be ruled by democracies; ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... has inserted a formal complimentary letter from king James to the Great Mogul, or emperor of Hindoostan, together with another from the Mogul to king James, containing nothing besides hyperbolical expressions of regard; both of which are here omitted, as entirely devoid of interest, amusement, or information. Purchas has also added several letters said to have been found among the papers of Sir Thomas Roe, with some others which he says were transcribed from Sir Thomas Roe's own book. As these letters merely repeat circumstances and opinions already more ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... do not mean to say that the French are wholly, or even generally devoid of religious feeling; on the contrary, we believe it may often be seen to break out in a very striking manner, even in the conversation of those who are accustomed to think it wise to express contempt for it. A Frenchman, full of enthusiasm about the glory of his country, who was talking ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... whom he was at variance, in the woods alone, he would murder them and attribute it to the savages. He had led, when in England, a most abandoned life, and after he was transported to this country, was so reckless of reputation and devoid of shame for his villainies, that he would often recount tales of theft and robbery in which he had been a conspicuous actor. The fearful apprehensions of increased and aggravated injuries after the taking of him prisoner, were well-founded; and subsequent events fully proved, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... celebration of the first completed division of sixteen and a half miles, from Omaha to Papillon. When the orators spoke so confidently of the determination to build two thousand miles of railway across the plains, mountains, and desert, devoid of timber, with no population, but on the contrary raided by the bold and bloody Sioux and Cheyennes, who had almost successfully defied our power for half a century, I was disposed to treat it jocularly, because I could not ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... cry "Land ho!" The storm abated, but the wind carried the Sea Adventure upon this shore and grounded her upon a reef. A certain R. Rich, gentleman, one of the voyagers, made and published a ballad upon the whole event. If it is hardly Shakespearean music, yet it is not devoid ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... plaint of the land-holders, one not devoid of equity and, therefore, awakening a response in the minds of timid and sober business men, who were as yet unaffected by the danger. But some of these found their own personal interests at stake. So good had the tenure seemed, that it had ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... things which inspired the terror of the little ones, and caused respect not devoid of fear in the grown-up people, was the horse that the baron had. It was a creature with a fiery eye, and so fierce that nobody but he and his friend Fray Diego, who had served in the cavalry, dared to mount him. He had to be most cleverly managed when taken to drink, and even then the ungovernable ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... angry crowd of track-graders with the ax in his hand, and she had seen very much the same tenacity and steadfastness stamped on the faces of successful men. Her father was one, and he was a man who had scarcely been educated, and was certainly devoid of any complexity of character. Stirling had made his mark by smashing down opposition, and, when that was not possible, grimly holding on and bearing the blows dealt him. There was, as she recognized, something to be said in favor of that kind ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... for officers to command without humoring their soldiers. In this condition they left the city, and encamped by the river Allia, about ten miles from Rome, and not far from the place where it falls into the Tiber; and here the Gauls came upon them, and, after a disgraceful resistance, devoid of order and discipline, they were miserably defeated. The left wing was immediately driven into the river, and there destroyed; the right had less damage by declining the shock, and from the low grounds getting to the tops of the hills, from whence most of them afterwards ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... shutters to its loopholes, and being in every way inferior to the powerful machines I saw working along the southern frontier. Nevertheless it is a useful means of reconnaissance, nor is a journey in it devoid of interest. An armoured train! The very name sounds strange; a locomotive disguised as a knight-errant; the agent of civilisation in the habiliments of chivalry. Mr. Morley attired as Sir Lancelot would seem scarcely more incongruous. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... support his frame in an upright and easy attitude. The first glance of the eye told his former friends, that the old man was at length called upon to pay the last tribute of nature. His eye was glazed, and apparently as devoid of sight as of expression. His features were a little more sunken and strongly marked than formerly; but there, all change, so far as exterior was concerned, might be said to have ceased. His approaching end was not to be ascribed to any positive disease, but had been a gradual and mild ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... what is undoubtedly one of the most effective artifices at the command of the lyric writer—we mean repetition—render the following lines worthy of the universal admiration which they have obtained in the original, and may not be devoid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... action are looking at the writing, and both are thinking of the next letter which must be written, and of the motion of the pen necessary to produce it. Unless the executing hand were absolutely lifeless or entirely devoid of power, it would be impossible for it not to influence the guiding and presumably stronger hand; for the least force exerted cannot fail to deflect a hand, however strong, in an unnatural and cramped position. Nor can ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... night. Even the part of town where they were, so devoid of character by day, had become all at once romantic with phantasmal lights and glooms, echoes and silences. Along the edge of a wide chimney-top on one blank, new hulk of a house, that nothing else could have made poetical, a mocking-bird ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... These unfortunate children cannot have any notion of good or evil. Their souls must be an abyss of scandal and impurity—brought up as they have been, by an impious mother, and a soldier devoid of religion." ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of ill presage, Go vanish into Night! Let all things sweet and fair Yield homage to the pair: From Infancy to Age Each Brow be smooth and bright, As Lake in evening light. To-day be Joy! and Sorrow Devoid of Blame (The widow'd Dame) Shall welcome be to-morrow. Thou, too, dull Night! may'st come unchid: This wall of Flame the Dark hath hid With turrets each a Pyramid;— For the Tears that we shed, are Gladness, A ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... one of these bearskins; and it added no little to the natural ferocity of his countenance, which betook of the Upsaroka character. The mouth extended nearly from ear to ear, the lips were thin, and seemed, like some other portions of his frame, to be devoid of natural pliancy, so that the ruling expression never varied under the influence of any emotion whatever. This ruling expression may be conceived when it is considered that the teeth were exceedingly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... glance also the cathedral seemed devoid of charm. I suppose travellers seek emotions in the things they see, and often the more beautiful objects do not give the most vivid sensations. Painters complain that men of letters have written chiefly of second-rate pictures, but the literary sentiment is different from the artistic; and ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... may still be seen to-day. It was the same with architecture, for it was necessary to build, and as form and good methods were lost by the death of good artists and the destruction of good buildings, those who devoted themselves to this profession built erections devoid of order or measure, and totally deficient in grace, proportion or principle. Then new architects arose who created that style of building, for their barbarous nations, which we call German, and produced some works which are ridiculous to our modern eyes, but appeared ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... mother of the perambulating young officer, (he was a class-mate of Rossitur's,) was extremely plain in feature, even more than ordinary. This plainness was not, however, devoid of sense, and it was relieved by an uncommon amount of good-nature and kindness of heart. In her son the sense deepened into acuteness, and the kindness of heart retreated, it is to be hoped, into some hidden recess of his nature; for it very rarely showed itself in open expression; ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 22, 28 and 32. If this has been done without due authorization you are liable for trespass. Fine of not less than $200 or imprisonment for not less than twelve months—or both." He delivered this in a voice absolutely devoid ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... sparkling lakelets, teeming with wild fowl, are always close at hand, and if the surface water in some of these has alkali, excellent water can always be had in others, and by the simple process of digging for it a short distance beneath the sod with a spade, the soil being so devoid of stones that it is not even necessary to use a pick. No wonder that under these circumstances we hear no croaking. Croakers are very rare animals throughout Canada. It was remarked with surprise, by an Englishman accustomed to British grumbling, ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... little light that was meant to keep Renwood's ghost from disturbing the slumbers of old man Grimes and his wife. She could not reach that light, that much she knew. Her feet were like hundredweights, her limbs almost devoid of power; Grimes' hut appeared to be a couple of miles away. With a last, breathless effort, she turned off the road and floundered through weeds and brush until she came to what proved to be the rear of the darkened house. Long, low, rangy it reached off into the shadows, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... always felt in the welfare of the very humblest of his brethren of the lyre, is highly creditable to him. But the extent to which he sacrificed his own interests to serve them, was often any thing but prudent. He was devoid of every sordid and avaricious feeling, and indeed carried ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... new fact, those pages, seemingly so cold, are seen to be alive with feeling. What appeared to be a lack of interest in the philosopher turns out to have been a touching insincerity of the man to his own heart; and that fine-spun airy theory of friendship, so devoid, as I complained, of any quality of flesh and blood, a mere anodyne to lull his pains. The most temperate of living critics once marked a passage of my own with a cross and the words, "This seems nonsense." It not only ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at the Bank of England, devoid equally of dignity and sensation, and then turned and looked at the Royal Exchange. A pigeon flew up from the ground and perched among the figures carved over the portico, and as he watched it, he read the inscription beneath the figure of Justice: The Earth ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... what is all this?" a chill, incisive voice demanded. Barnabas turned, and lowering the cane, stood looking curiously at the speaker. A tall, slender man he was, with a face that might have been any age,—a mask-like face, smooth and long, and devoid of hair as it was of wrinkles; an arresting face, with its curving nostrils, thin-lipped, close-shut mouth, high, prominent brow, and small, piercingly-bright eyes; quick eyes, that glinted between their red-rimmed, hairless lids, old in their experience of men and the ways of men. For ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... and a gale of talk and laughter came to his ears. Wilbur stared at the picture, his face devoid of expression. The "Petrel" came on—drew nearer—was not a hundred feet away from the schooner's stern. A strong swimmer, such as Wilbur, could cover the distance in a few strides. Two ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... young man's mother. The commandant was under bonds for the safe-keeping of his prisoner; but being a man of tender feelings, he imposed little restraint upon Gustavus, merely exacting from him a promise that he would make no effort to escape. His life therefore was, to outward appearance, not devoid of pleasure. The castle was situated on a promontory in Jutland, at the northern end of Kaloe Bay. Its wall ran close along the cliffs, a hundred feet above the sea. At either end of the castle was a gray stone tower, and from the windows in the towers was a ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... past these glacial outposts, scarcely any signs of storm appeared; last year's leaves, still matted together underfoot, were tangled with the green vine of the creeping linnaea and a rare root of the lustrous winter-green. Here, beneath the thick canopy of branches not all devoid of their foliage since many larches and pines were to be found there, was another climate; coming from that bland whiteness which was not cold, these dark arcades of forest struck chills to the feet and face; ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... going to answer the first. While not objecting to the nomination of Mr Bayley,[49] she wanted to point out the importance of, at a future vacancy, not to confine the selection to respectable parish priests, but to bear in mind that the Bench of Bishops should not be left devoid of some University men of acknowledged standing and theological learning; it would be seriously weakened if, in controversies on points of doctrine agitating the Church, no value were attached to the opinions at least of some of those who are to govern her. Lord Palmerston ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... than the lion, and her form is more slender and graceful. She is devoid of the mane of her lord and master, and has four or five cubs at a birth, which are all born blind. The young lions are at first obscurely striped and spotted. They mew like cats, and are as playful as kittens. As they get older, the uniform color is gradually assumed. The mane appears ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... staircase, with room in the head for a child, like another Pallas in the brain of Zeus, must alone involve very considerable outlay. But I am encouraged by your Majesty's wise and statesmanlike measure of debasing the currency; since, money having become devoid of value, there can be no difficulty in devoting any amount of ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... silent for an instant. Saintly man that he was naturally, altogether devoid of passions, with no keen intelligence to disturb him in his faith, he displayed a naive admiration for beauty, wealth, and power, which he had never envied. Nevertheless, he ventured to express a doubt, a scruple, which troubled ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... moment, too, Footsack shouted that the wagon was inspanned and ready. Now I hesitated what to do. If we made for the wagon, which must be very slowly because of Anscombe's wounded foot, we had to cross seventy or eighty yards of rising ground almost devoid of cover. If, on the other hand, we stayed where we were till nightfall a shot might catch one of us, or other Basutos might arrive and rush us. There was also a third possibility, that our terrified ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... the United States. And yet when I take a look at my inner identity it impresses me as being precisely the same as it was thirty or forty years ago. My present station, power, the amount of worldly happiness at my command, and the rest of it, seem to be devoid of significance. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... feel constrained to inquire sternly who I am that I should talk in this unbecoming manner of Carlyle? To which I reply that I am only a humble German seeking after peace, devoid of the least real desire to criticise anybody, and merely anxious to get out of the way of geniuses when they make too much noise. All I want is to read quietly the books that I at present prefer. Carlyle is shut up now and therefore silent on his comfortable ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... be seen, however, and Balsamides followed the negro, who entered a door on the right-hand side, at the end of the hall. They passed through a narrow passage, entirely hung with rose-colored silk and matted, but devoid of furniture, and then Selim raised a curtain and admitted Gregorios to the presence of the ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... instincts, and, for all the childish or ridiculous perversions which they may exhibit in certain individuals, of the highest utility! After all, these are forms, the most rudimentary forms, of the scientific spirit. Those who are devoid of them have no place in the world of critical scholarship. But those who aspire to be critical scholars will always be numerous; for the labours of interpretation, construction, and exposition require the rarest gifts: all ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... numbness, and a sleepiness, when he was forced to sit for two or three hours while M. Foissac pointed his fingers at him? As for the amelioration in his health, no argument can be adduced to prove that he was devoid of faith in the remedy; and that, having faith, he should not feel the benefit of it as well as thousands of others who have been cured by means ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... laughed heartily. The detective, greatly vexed, bit his lips; to him the joke was quite devoid of humor. The arrival of a prison guard gave Ganimard an opportunity to recover himself. The man brought Arsene Lupin's luncheon, furnished by a neighboring restaurant. After depositing the tray upon the table, the guard retired. Lupin broke his ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... of building hotels in dead areas, although I admitted that I'd steer clear of any hotel in a clear area myself. But I didn't need a clear area nor a sense of perception to inform me that Room 913 was absolutely and totally devoid of any remote sign of female habitation. In fact, I gathered the impression that for all of his brute strength and virile masculinity, Mr. Horace Westfield hadn't entertained a woman in that room ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... Both Corona and her husband were surprised at his imposing appearance, as well as at the dignity and self-possession he displayed. His southern accent was not more noticeable than that of many Neapolitan gentlemen, and his conversation, if neither very brilliant nor very fluent, was not devoid of interest. He talked of the agricultural condition of the new Italy, and old Saracinesca and his son were both interested in the subject. They noticed, too, that during dinner no word escaped him which could give any clue to his former occupation ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... herd on their arrival, with our gun-bearers squatted around us behind our respective trees, while the non-sporting village followers, who now began to think the matter rather serious and totally devoid of fun, scrambled up various large ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... of the youngest sister was established solely, I think, by one big braid down her back. Neither was it because she was the plainest, for the beauty of the Piper girls was a recognized general distinction, and the youngest Miss Piper was not entirely devoid of the family charms. Nor was it from any lack of intelligence, nor from any defective social quality; for her precocity was astounding, and her good-humored frankness alarming. Neither do I think it could be said that a slight deafness, which ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Image, Eikon, paragraph by paragraph, turning it round, and asserting the negative. To the Royalist view of the points in dispute Milton opposes the Independent view. A refutation, which follows each step of an adverse book, is necessarily devoid of originality. But Milton is worse than tedious; his reply is in a tone of rude railing and insolent swagger, which would have been always unbecoming, but which at this ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... are in reality very uninspiring emotions. The thing that has most deeply impressed me in my searching of the German war-scriptures is the extraordinary aridity of spirit that pervades them. A literature more unidea'd (to use Johnson's word), more devoid of original thought, or grace, or charm, or atmosphere, it would be hard to conceive. There are, of course, some inequalities. One or two writers seem (to the foreign reader) to have a certain dignity of style which is lacking in the ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... Society which has been caluminated as devoid of all sense of religion, law or morality, to sympathize with one whom calumny of a similar kind is about to drive from his native land, a land which he has adorned and enlightened in almost every branch of liberal literature, and of useful philosophy. ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... mushrooms, and depend on commercial or manufactured spawn, should see to it that the spawn purchased possesses these desirable qualities of texture, and the presence of an abundance of the mycelium. That which appears devoid of an abundance of mycelium should be rejected, and good spawn should be called for. There is no more reason why a grower should accept a worthless spawn from his seedsman than that he should accept "addled" eggs from his grocer. In this business, that is, the manufacture ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... spend all his rage; And that must end us; that must be our cure— To be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated Night, Devoid of sense and motion? And who knows, Let this be good, whether our angry Foe Can give it, or will ever? How he can Is doubtful; that he never will is sure. Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire, Belike through impotence or unaware, To give his enemies ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... who are entirely devoid of any such religious principle or belief as would bind their consciences to speak the truth, are incompetent as witnesses. Hence, the testimony of an atheist must be rejected; because, as it has been well said, such ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... the dead soul of ancient Rome away with him, and it was not the paintings executed after Raffaelle's designs that had touched him, it was rather the pretty hall on the river side decorated in soft blue and pink and lilac, with an art devoid of genius yet so charming and so Roman; and in particular it was the abandoned garden once stretching down to the Tiber, and now shut off from it by the new quay, and presenting an aspect of woeful desolation, ravaged, bossy and weedy like a cemetery, albeit the golden fruit ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... another family of insects, the singular habits of which will not fail to attract the traveller in the cultivated tracts of Ceylon—these are moths of the genus Oiketicus[1], of which the females are devoid of wings, and some possess no articulated feet. Their larvae construct for themselves cases, which they suspend to a branch frequently of the pomegranate[2], surrounding them with the stems of leaves, and thorns or pieces of twigs bound together by threads, till the whole presents the appearance ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... and of inquiry, an oriental savant—more than a savant—a sage, with a mind clear, loyal, and vast; a German mind passed through an English filter, a cloudless, unruffled mirror, open and limpid; of pure and frank morality; early disenchanted with all things; with a grain of irony devoid of all bitterness, the laugh of a child under a bald head; a Goethe-like intelligence, but free from all prejudice." "A charming and spirituelle Frenchwoman," Miss O'Meara goes on to say, "said of Julius Mohl that Nature in forming his character had skimmed the cream of the three ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... that power developing until that detection is possible at interstellar ranges, with members of that race being able to pick up faint impressions from received thoughts—distorted impressions? And can you imagine that same race, ignorant of the humanic equations, devoid of a stable ethic, superstitious, distrustful and fearful of advanced entities? They would be undetectable by normal telepathic means, you know. And suppose they were disposed to destroy what they could not understand." ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... not so reckless of our true interest, so blind to utter helplessness—not to say so devoid of humanity, as to entertain the hostile designs, or to cherish the fiendish passions, which it seems have been, by the unthinking, so unjustly attributed ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Quaritch hid a vein of considerable richness. Few of those who associated with him would have believed that the man had a side to his nature which was almost poetic, or that he was a ripe and finished scholar, and, what is more, not devoid of a certain dry humour. Then he had travelled far and seen much of men and manners, gathering up all sorts of quaint odds and ends of information. But perhaps rather than these accomplishments it was ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... mental images as speedily as they are developed in the subconscious area, and goes out to meet them in a mood of speculative enquiry. But the passive temperament most frequently feels first and sees afterwards, the visionary process being entirely devoid of speculation and mental activity. In a word, the distinction between them is that the one sees and thinks while the other feels ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... became a power of tremendous magnitude and extent. People read leading articles by torchlight, and shouted out to the moon apostrophes to liberty, ay, 'liberty, equality, fraternity.' These three talismanic words, too often devoid of meaning in the apprehension of those who shouted them with a fervour sufficient to split the ears of the groundlings. Liberty? every man doing what he deemed best, seemed to be the interpretation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... however, to a princedom by paths of wickedness and crime; that is, not precisely by either merit or fortune. We may take as example first Agathocles the Sicilian. To slaughter fellow citizens, to betray friends, to be devoid of honour, pity, and religion cannot be counted as merit. But the achievements of Agathocles can certainly not be ascribed to fortune. We cannot, therefore, attribute either to fortune or to merit what he accomplished without ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... her thoughts are gone, She nothing sees—no sight but one! The maid, devoid of guile and sin, I know not how, in fearful wise, So deeply had she drunken in That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, That all her features were resigned To this sole image in her mind: And passively did imitate That look of dull and treacherous hate! ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... But the chief result of the penny-in-the-pound rate is to supply women old and young with outmoded, viciously respectable, viciously sentimental fiction. A few new novels get into the Library every year. They must, however, be "innocuous," that is to say, devoid of original ideas. This, of course, is inevitable in an institution presided over by a committee which has infinitely less personal interest in books than in politics or the price of coal. No Municipal Library can hope to be nearer than twenty-five years to date. Go into the average good home ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... not devoid of wisdom. Fine clothes sometimes went with a long purse, and a long purge might do wonders to help the comfort of any prisoner in London, as well as the comfort of his keeper. Truly his eyes opened wide ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Service is devoid of partisanship; its importance should appeal to every American citizen and should receive the generous consideration ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... consistent even with extreme old age. The forehead is wide and low, supported by regular eyebrows; the face beneath long and narrow, of a dark and dry complexion. In sleep, open-mouthed, the expression is rather inane; though we can readily imagine the waking face to be not devoid of a certain intensity and comeliness of aspect, marred, however, by an air of guarded anxiety which is ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... to another lady, Judith Cowper, afterwards Mrs. Madan, who was for a time the object of some of his artificial gallantry. The only thing that can be said is that his abuse was a sheer piece of Billingsgate, too devoid of plausibility to be more than an expression of virulent hatred. He was like a dirty boy who throws mud from an ambush, and declares that he did ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... dwelt, yonder, behind the horizon. And now that age was stealing upon him his torment seemed to increase, as if he were in despair at finding himself unable to try the possibilities of the unknown, before he ended a useless life devoid ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... virtues of an ancient aristocracy. In this respect Catharine's "Memoirs" are not peculiar. For it is remarkable, that in all the published memoirs, journals, and confessions of members of royal households, (there may be an exception, but we do not remember it,) court-life within-doors has appeared devoid of every grace and beauty, and deformed by all that is coarse, brutal, sordid, and grovelling. Even that grace, almost a virtue, which has its name from courts, seems not to exist in them in a genuine form; and instead of it we find ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to be so late," she said in a voice devoid of anything in the way of tone or inflection, "and I had to bring my dressing-case, it would be so tiresome to be stranded in the desert with no looking-glass ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... of wonder, and devise twenty romantic fictions to account for it. Formerly I used to listen to report with interest, and a certain credulity; but I am now grown deaf and sceptical: experience has taught me how absolutely devoid of foundation her stories ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... grip of a mean, paltry fear, was he overcome by that wretched blindness of the soul which cannot lift its vision beyond its own ego nor lose sight of its ego for the sake of an idea? Was he really so devoid of any sense for the common welfare, so utterly ruled by short-sighted selfishness, concerned with nothing but his bare, miserable existence? No, he was not like that. He clung to his own life no more than any other man. He could have ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... establishments, where alone the artist-cook can flourish. But it seems that the neglect of decent cooking is also due in this country to a racial incapacity and indifference which leads both men and women to despise "taking pains" about small things, and brings them into the world devoid of the desire to carry out with skill those small enterprises on which much of the sweetness ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... discussed rambled a while in the grounds without a purpose. Tides in her mind ebbed and flowed, and carried her to and fro like seaweed. She tried a path, paused, returned, and tried another; questing, forgetting her quest; the spirit of choice extinct in her bosom, or devoid of sequency. On a sudden, it appeared as though she had remembered, or had formed a resolution, wheeled about, returned with hurried steps, and appeared in the dining-room, where Kirstie was at the cleaning, like one charged with ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no longer to be any connection between labor and the satisfying of our wants? Political economy has not treated of gifts. It has hence been concluded that it disowns them, and that it is therefore a science devoid of heart. This is a ridiculous accusation. That science which treats of the laws resulting from the reciprocity of services, had no business to inquire into the consequences of generosity with respect to him who receives, nor into its effects, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... begged her to defend him against the charge of undutiful conduct. It might be true, he said, with the irony which was one day to become so familiar, that he was that dreadful thing, a liberal, but devoid of natural feeling he was not. On the great day when the Statute was granted, he said to the light-hearted old lady, "Marina, we get on capitally, you and I; you were always a little bit of a Jacobin." ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of trench warfare was not entirely devoid of interest, and several little incidents occurred to break the monotony. The first was a big "strafe" on the 25th of August, when for some unknown reason the enemy shelled Stansfield Road very vigorously, and obtained a direct hit on "C" Company Headquarters. Lieuts. Banwell and Edge ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... poems are a number called Poems of the Imagination. He wrote learnedly about the imagination and fancy; but the truth is, that of all the great poets,—and, in spite of his faults, he is a great poet,—there is none so entirely devoid of imagination. What has been said of the heroic may be applied to wit, so important an element in many kinds of poetry; he ignores it because he was without it totally. If only humble life and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... emphatic delineation of Michiella's magic sway over him. (Leonardo, in fact, is your small modern Italian Machiavelli, overmatched in cunning, for the reason that he is always at a last moment the victim of his poor bit of heart or honesty: he is devoid of the inspiration of great patriotic aims.) If Michiella (Austrian intrigue) has any love, it is for such a tool. She cannot afford to lose him. She pleads for him; and, as Camilla is silent on his account, the cynical magnanimity of Camillo is predisposed to spare a fangless ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Glaucus were slowly strolling towards the house of Diomed. Despite the habits of his life, Sallust was not devoid of many estimable qualities. He would have been an active friend, a useful citizen—in short, an excellent man, if he had not taken it into his head to be a philosopher. Brought up in the schools in which Roman ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... contains chapters on Keats, Jane Austen, Anatole France, Walt Whitman, Pope and Rabelais of that more considered character one expects from the editor of the London Mercury. This is not to say that these studies are devoid of humour; and those chapters in the volume which are in the nature of interludes are among the best Mr. Squire has written. Unfortunately I have left myself no room to quote the incomparable panegyric ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... their edges as if a plate had taken to spreading at its rim, the tits were much occupied in picking out minute insects; the wagtails came too, sparrows, robins, hedge-sparrows, and occasionally a lark; a bare blank wall to all appearance, and the bare lichen as devoid of life to our eyes. Yet there must have been something there for all these eager bills—eggs or pupae. A jackdaw, with iron-grey patch on the back of his broad poll, dropped in my garden one morning, to the great alarm of the small birds, and made off with some large dark ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... with equal liberality. The contest was nearly as fierce as the struggle between the whites and Indians. If epithets had been as fatal as bullets, the loss of life would have been terrible. Happily, the wordy battle was devoid of danger, and the State of Minnesota, her politicians, her generals, and her men emerged from ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... profession. Within a few years he has returned to England, the outlawry against him having been removed; and those who feel an interest in the history of this persecuted family, may be gratified to know that their decline of life will not be devoid of comfort. They reside near Bath, in England, with a sister of Blennerhasset, the relict of the late admiral De Courcy. The evening of life promises to close free from those clouds that so long ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... ministrations of mercy to the wounded, but ready if occasion required, to lead the troops into action and always manifesting the most perfect indifference to the shot and shell or the whizzing minie balls that fell around her. She seemed entirely devoid of fear, and though so constantly exposed to the enemy's fire never received ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... merely emphasised the extreme ungracefulness of his figure. His long pale face was made paler by the shock of coarse, tow-coloured hair; his eyes, even, looked colourless, though they were certainly the least uninteresting feature of his face, for they were not devoid of expression. He had a way of slouching when he moved that singularly intensified the general uncouthness of his appearance. "Are you very tired?" asked his wife, gently, when he had dismounted close to the tent. The question would have been an unnecessary ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... wept as though her heart was broken." Many good writers, even some devoid of the lexicographers' passion for inclusion and approval, have specifically defended this locution, backing their example by their precept. Perhaps it is a question of taste; let us attend their cry and ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... of their parents. No difficulty about relapsing. But a fair percentage of the lowest classes tend to rise; they stand, potentially, above their surroundings. An apparatus has been contrived for catching these children. But it is defective, because devoid of sympathy. I have known hundreds of cases in the East End of London where families have been unable to raise themselves by this means because, at the critical moment, there was not twenty shillings in the house wherewith to buy ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... John absently. It was some years before Beetle perceived that this was rather a tribute to innocence than observation. The long, light, blindless dormitories, devoid of inner doors, were crossed at all hours of the night by masters visiting one another; for bachelors sit up later than married folk. Beetle had never dreamed that there might be a ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... arrival at the front was devoid of excitement; for the three neophytes—Rockwell, Chapman, and myself—it was the beginning of a new existence, the entry into an unknown world. Of course Rockwell and Chapman had seen plenty of warfare on the ground, but ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... and color of this cuticle. Thus, in the dark races, the pigment cells are most numerous, and in proportion as the skin is dark or fair do we find these cells in greater or lesser abundance. The skin of the Albino is of pearly whiteness, devoid even of the pink or brown tint which that of the European always possesses. This peculiarity must be attributed to the absence of pigment cells which, when present, always present a more or less dark color. The theory that climate alone is capable ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
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