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More "Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lady, "I am by no means convinced that the affair is anything but a mere boy and girl friendship, or that it is ever likely to be more than that. But I did think I ought to tell you about it and that you should meet the young man. You have met him, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... under wat circumstances, and to whom. Wen, in my infancy, I wuz inkarseratid in the common jail uv my native village, in Noo Gersey, a victim to the prejudisis uv twelve men, who believed, on the unsupportid testimony uv three men, and the mere accident uv the missin property bein found in my possession (notwithstandin the fact that I solemnly asshoored em that I didn't know nothin about it, and if I did it, it must hev bin in a somnamboolic state), that I hed bin guilty uv bustin open ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... admirably exposed in Swift's 'Meditation on a Broomstick.' Hall's method is, in general, the opposite of this. The objects on which he muses seem to have sought him, and not he them. He surrounds himself with his thoughts unconsciously, as one gathers burs and other herbage about him by the mere act of walking in the woods. Sometimes, indeed, he is quaint and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... best beloved, to you—to order my life in accordance to your pleasure—to marry you the day I set foot in Harmouth—or to wait impatiently till you are pleased to give yourself to me. I trust your love too entirely to fear that you will needlessly prolong the time. You are too fair-minded to let mere conventions weigh with you as against my happiness. Between you and me there must be no shams, and yet I would not shock or hurry you ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... must be confessed that he lingered most over the thanks and admiration he set to haunt his dream-steps, and hover about his dream-person, it must be remembered that he was the only real person in the dreams, and that he regarded lovingly the mere shadows of his fellow-men. His dreams were not of strength and destruction, but of influence and life. Even his revenges never-reached further than the making of ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... no harm in petitions, and if Grassini gets one up I'll sign it with all the pleasure in life. But I don't think mere petitioning and nothing else will accomplish much. Why can't we have both ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... years of professional contact with mankind and consequent knowledge of their general cussedness! Huh! I have helped too many hundreds of children into this world, and have carried too many of them through the measles, whooping-cough, chicken-pox and the like to be so moved by a mere boy." ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... She had gone to the post-office for the last mail, and all the time there had been over her a premonition of something unwonted of much import to her. The very dusty flowers and weeds by the way-side seemed to cry out to her as she passed them. They seemed no longer mere flowers and weeds, but hieroglyphics concerning her future, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the world—in America, India, and the Colonies. I don't believe there are half a dozen of the old fighting regiments available, and even their ranks are half-filled with raw recruits. Almost all the regiments at home are mere skeletons. Surely they will never be sending us away at ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... the world with level, dispassionate eyes in which there was none of Virginia's uncritical, emotional softness. Temperamentally she was uncompromisingly honest in her attitude toward the universe, which appeared to her, not as it did to Virginia, in mere formless masses of colour out of which people and objects emerged like figures painted on air, but as distinct, impersonal, and final as a geometrical problem. She was one of those women who are called "sensible" by their acquaintances—meaning ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... much for the good opinion of men, when I should be quietly serving them without report? (For Mrs. Carrack and her son:) And what are pomp and fashion, but the painted signs of good living where there is no life? These (he continued,) are all outward, mere pretences to put off our duty, and the care of our souls. Yea, we may have churches, schools, hospitals abounding—but these are mere lath and mortar, if we have not also within our own hearts, a church where the pure worship ever goeth on, a school where the true knowledge is taught, a hospital, ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... answered, "to a mere man woman always will be an everlastin' puzzle and a riddle; but even a man kin appreciate, in a poor, faint way, the depths of mother love. It's ez though he looked through a break in the clouds and ketched a vision of the glories of heaven. But you ain't told me yit how you come to ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... the limits of its immediate usefulness. But here, though the first hint leading to remarkable discoveries was a direct consequence of his astronomical work, the novelty and interest of the phenomena observed induced him to follow the investigation very far beyond the mere solution of the practical question ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... were tending to improve, if not at Rome yet in many parts of Christendom. If objectionable practices of the priests had been a sufficient cause for the secession of whole nations, the Reformation would have come long before it actually did. Again, there is good reason to doubt that the mere abuse of an institution has ever led to its complete overthrow; as long as the institution is regarded as necessary, it is rather mended than ended. Thirdly, many of the acts that seem corrupt to us, gave little offence to contemporaries, for they were universal. If the church ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... (subjunctive) are often used, regardless of their original meaning, as mere interjections. Translate: come now, well, etc. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... and Edouard with comical severity all the rest of the time she was there; and, when she retired, she kissed Rose affectionately, but whispered her eldest daughter, "I hope you are not serious. A mere boy compared ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... the Hobby-horse not forgotten. Their host had entrusted to Lord Henry the restoration of many old observances; and the joyous feeling which this celebration of Christmas had diffused throughout an extensive district was a fresh argument in favour of Lord Henry's principle, that a mere mechanical mitigation of the material necessities of the humbler classes, a mitigation which must inevitably be limited, can never alone avail sufficiently to ameliorate their condition; that their condition is not merely 'a knife and fork question,' to use ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... could not forget that he was a murderer, and she wondered what she was expected to do if he should try to escape. It was absurd to suppose that Panfilo, her own hired man, could be capable of treachery; the mere suspicion was a sort of ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... after he had separated from the Empress and wedded Maria Louisa of Austria, an heir soon came. Yet Josephine had children by Beauharnais, her previous husband. But as all is not known as to the physical condition of Josephine during her second marriage, it cannot be assumed that mere lack of adaptability was the cause of unfruitfulness between them. There may have been some cause that history has not recorded, or unknown to the state of medical science of those days. There are doubtless many cases of apparently causeless ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Her mere entry dazzled him. There is no knowing with a woman like Belvane; and I believe she had purposely kept herself plain during these last few days so that she might have the weapon of her beauty to fall back upon in case ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... said Mr. Geoffrey Langford, as if it was a mere casual observation, though in reality it was the announcement that the fatal twelve hours had ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... biographer may suppose to have conspired to his crime, have never been used by the novelist as excuses for its enormity, nor indeed, lest they should seem as excuses, have they ever been clearly presented to the view. The moral consisted in showing more than the mere legal punishment at the close. It was to show how the consciousness of the deed was to exclude whatever humanity of character preceded and belied it from all active exercise, all social confidence; how the knowledge of the bar between the minds of others and ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... allow for it? YOU DIDN'T. Who can look at this scrawl, and not see that the poor heart-broken creature was not herself when she wrote it? This is not a letter, it is a mere scream of agony. Put yourself in her place. Imagine yourself a woman—a creature in whom the feelings overpower the judgment. Consider the shock, the wound, the frenzy; and, besides, she had ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Glancing about me here at the worthless-looking things by which I was surrounded, my eye was caught by a bundle of rags lying on the counter, as if they had just been brought in and left there. From mere idle curiosity, I looked close at the rags, and saw among them something like an old cravat. I took it up directly and held it under a gaslight. The pattern was blurred lilac lines running across and across the dingy black ground in a trellis-work form. I looked at the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... opinion, dear," her mother said. "Our police system nowadays is a mere farce. The foreigners are far ahead of us, even in the detection of crime. Surely the mystery of your poor husband's death might have been solved, if they ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... "It is a mere trifle when you think of the details and cost of setting it up; for it will take six months," said Vitelot. "Here is the estimate and the order-form—seven thousand francs, sketch in plaster ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... tired, and his eyes were heavy; he noticed this as he glanced into his glass, but after all it did not matter. His social importance was small, and for to-night he was nothing more than an adjunct of Hartley, a mere postscript put in out of formal politeness. He was not going in order to please Mrs. Wilder—though, as she appeared on his mental list of names, she had her place in the structure that filled ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... things that hang on trees. They are both pretty and both furry, and both declare the glory of God. And this abstract exultation in all living things is truly to be called Love; for it is a higher feeling than mere affectional convenience; it is a vision. It is heroic, and even saintly, in this: that it asks for nothing in return. I love all the eats in the street as St. Francis of Assisi loved all the birds in the wood or all the fishes in the sea; not so much, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... danger to get him out of a house where I thought he was ill-treated? Has he any reason to complain of and abuse me? This is what one gets by serving unthankful people. He accuses me of being a prattling fellow, which is a mere slander: of seven brothers, I speak least, and have most wit to my share; and to convince you of this, gentlemen, I need only relate my own story and theirs. Honour me, I beseech ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... warren, give-away, freebee [coll.]; run of one's teeth; nominal price, peppercorn rent; labor of love. drug in the market; deadhead[obs3]. V. be cheap &c. adj.; cost little; come down in price, fall in price. buy for a mere nothing, buy for an old song; have one's money's worth. Adj. cheap; low, low priced; moderate, reasonable; inexpensive, unexpensive[obs3]; well worth the money, worth the money; magnifique et pas cher[French]; good at the price, cheap at the price; dirt cheap, dog cheap; cheap, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have employed the day in correcting the history for Cyclopaedia as far as page 35, exclusive, and have sent it off, or shall to-morrow. I wish I knew how it would run out. Dr. Lardner's measure is a large one, but so much the better. I like to have ample verge and space enough, and a mere abridgment would be discreditable. Well, nobody can say I eat the bread of idleness. Why should I? Those who do not work from necessity take violent labour from choice, and were necessity out of the question I would ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the cottage, but said not a word of the result of their examinations in the mine, so that to the rest of its inhabitants, the bursting in of the vaulted roof of the caverns continued to be regarded as a mere accident. There was but a loch ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... well of him. We had an elephant, a horse, abundance of shawls, and other fine clothes placed before us as presents; but I prayed the old gentleman to keep them all for me till I returned, as I was a mere voyageur without the means of carrying such valuable things in safety; but he would not be satisfied till I had taken two plain hilts of swords and spears, the manufacture of Datiya, and of little value, which Lieutenant Thomas ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... suppose that as you had no brothers or sisters they taught you to pray for your cousin, didn't they? Oh, I know all about it. It is my unfortunate sex that is to blame; while I was a mere tom-boy it was different. No one can serve two masters, can they? You have chosen to serve a machine that won't go, and I daresay that you are wise. Yes, I think that it is the better part—until you find someone that will make it go—and then you ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... that the dreary course of seventy winters has not erased the memory of my boyish follies, David, I should esteem you mad. Think you, because I am old, I am enamoured of disgrace, and love a house of bondage? If life were a mere question between freedom and slavery, glory and dishonour, all could decide. Trust me, there needs but little spirit to be a moody patriot in a sullen home, and vent your heroic spleen upon your fellow-sufferers, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... they actually considered the holy ikons to be mere planks of wood, Chouev answered,—"Just look at the back of any ikon you choose and you will see what they are ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... in September 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the central government and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... himself. His fury was foolish, a mere generalization of discontent from very little data. Still, it was a relief to be out in the purring night sounds. He had passed from the affluent stone piles on the boulevard to the cheap flat buildings of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... London, interviewed his publisher, made researches into seventeenth century documents at the British Museum, and somehow managed in his rapid way to acquire those glimpses of life and character which he afterwards turned to such good account. All was grist that came to his mill, and at first the mere sight of his old home, London, seemed to revive him. Of course at the very first opportunity he called at the Probyns', and we both of us had an invitation to go there on the following Wednesday to see the march past of the troops and to lunch. ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... exhibit for mere lads," Jack's father was heard to say on his way home; "If we could bring into this little village a few more men like our boys' Chief there would be no question about a boy's coming up all right. It makes me ashamed to think that ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... in Africa, but was quelled by his lieutenant. But the mere rumour of it set Rome in a turmoil. The Senate found something of its ancient spirit. So did the Italian people. They would not be for ever bullied by the legions. As Maximin approached from the frontier, with the sack of ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of "those holy fields." But a few hundred years ago, it might have cost a throne. To-day we may have either Testament printed in our daily newspaper and put upon our table before breakfast. So free is the word of God that only the mere wish to have it is necessary to secure at once the greatest of spiritual boons and the most perfect piece of writing in our language, or in any other tongue. The beauties of the Bible have charmed the critical of all ages. The young have departed ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... 'becoming-inward' of what is manifested to the 'reader's' eye and mind as the objective nature of colours. So, in one realm of the sense-world, Goethe succeeded in closing the abyss which divides existence and consciousness, so long as the latter is restricted to a mere onlooker-relationship towards ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... smell is too much for his new-born virtue. He will go in just for a moment to pass the time of day with his friend the publican and see his last brand of books, but not to buy—I mean to drink—and then he comes across a little volume, the smallest and slimmest of volumes, a mere trifle of a thing, and not dear, but a thing which does not often turn up and which would just round off his collection at a particular point. It is only a mere taste, not downright drinking; but ah me, it sets him on fire again, and I who had seen him go in and then by a providence have ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... awaiting you anxiously—not out of mere curiosity to know what your attitude will be, but to lead it, to give it direction. The public opinion which you developed in favor of the "square deal" is stronger to-day than when you left, and your personal following is ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... brutality by the commandant. The frigate at once opened fire, but after four hours' bombardment had failed to silence a single gun in the fort. At midnight it was carried in an attack led by young Channing, then a mere lad, and who, although two-thirds of his small force fell ere the walls were reached, refused to draw back and abandon Reay and his men. From that day Reay became his warm and ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... on a little further and tell them more about the burden of proof and the preponderance of evidence. He may say that the weight of evidence does not mean the number of witnesses. The mere fact that one side has six and the other side only two does not mean that the jury are to believe the side who has six. The jury know that when probably they are all exaggerating somewhat they are going to decide the way the thing happened. Then ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... to nobler enjoyments, and finds all the scattered excellencies of the female world united in a woman, who prefers his addresses to wealth and titles; he is afterwards to engage in business, to dissipate difficulty, and overpower opposition: to climb, by the mere force of merit, to fame and greatness; and reward all those who countenanced his rise, or paid due regard to his early excellence. At last he will retire in peace and honour; contract his views to domestick pleasures; form the manners of children like himself; observe how every ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... one species in South America, and another in Europe. He loves the mountain stream, with its dashing rapids and cascades. Indeed, he will erect his oven-like cottage nowhere else, and it must be a fall and not a mere ripple or rapid. Then from this point as a centre—or, rather, the middle point of a wavering line—he forages up and down the babbling, meandering brook, feeding chiefly, if not wholly, on water insects. ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... anything that is to be made of their testimony. And, finally, when the question arises as to what was the condition of mankind more than a paltry two or three thousand years ago, history and archaeology are, for the most part, mere dumb dogs. What light does either of these branches of knowledge throw on the past of the man of the New World, if we except the Central Americans and the Peruvians; on that of the Africans, save those of the ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... contemptuous pity, almost equally unbecoming, speaking of him as "the poor man" whom she had made a tool of to further some views of her own, though Mercy assured the empress that her assertion of having so treated him was a mere fiction of her imagination, to impart a sort of lively tone to her letter; that, in spite of occasional outbursts of levity, she had in reality the firmest affection and esteem for Louis; and that nothing could be more ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... winter." Then she told the boys how the little train toiled up the sheer face of a great mountain to the clouds. And it had to descend, also, which was worse far. Clary shuddered and hid her blue eyes as she described that coming down, while the eyes of the boys fairly bolted over the mere thought of a journey so full of ...
— A Big Temptation • L. T. Meade
... signifies yellow-beak ("bec jaune"), seems to have been given almost everywhere to the freshman, and the custom of receiving the fledgeling into the academic society was, towards the close of the Middle Ages, no mere tradition of student etiquette, but an acknowledged and admitted academic rite. The tradition, which dates from very early times, and which has so many parallels outside University history, was so strong that the authorities seem to have deemed it wisest ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... reward. Elsie grew up with a kind of filial feeling for him, such as her nature was capable of. She never would obey him; that was not to be looked for. Commands, threats, punishments, were out of the question with her; the mere physical effects of crossing her will betrayed themselves in such changes of expression and color that it would have been senseless to attempt to govern her in any such way. Leaving her mainly to herself, she could be to some extent indirectly influenced,—not otherwise. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... threatening, marked their slow progress up and down the walk; in the clear spaces of the little park they trotted freely after hoops and balls, rolled and ran over the green, and hid, shouting, behind the bushes. It was a giant nursery, and the mere man who trespassed on its borders smiled deprecatingly, and steered a careful course among the parasols and tricycles, stooping now and then to rescue some startled adventurer, sprawling from the disgusted shock of encounter with this large ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... into the camp, then examined Grace's wound, which, as the Overland girl had said, was a mere scratch over the left temple. Miss Briggs washed the wound where a bullet had barely grazed the skin, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... charge us soon enough," I replied. But it seemed as if they never would, for what promised to be an attack along our whole line dwindled down to a mere exchange of shots. Hour after hour went by, and yet they never advanced beyond a certain point except when a company or so would dash forward and a sharp skirmish would break forth for a moment or two, and then die away again. But far over to our left the sound ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... It was charming to hear the little happy twitterings of the downy babes, how they gobbled and sputtered and talked to each other over their repast, swimming to and fro as if they had been ducks of mature age and experience, instead of mere yellow fluffs of a day old; and, finally, they seemed to remember they had a warm, comfortable mother somewhere, and sought refuge under her kindly wings, where I left them exchanging confidences in ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... publication, thus far, of the details of the campaign, and the causes of our defeat,—may stand as excuse for one more attempt to make plain its operations to the survivors of the one hundred and eighty thousand men who there bore arms, and to the few who harbor some interest in the subject as mere history. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... there was much. The discipline proceeded from the candidate's influence, from his harmonizing personal leadership. This he exercised not through oratory, for he had none of the tricks of speech, not even the knack of story-telling, but by the mere force of his will and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... stone replied with assurance, "why are you so excessively dull? The dynasties recorded in the rustic histories, which have been written from age to age, have, I am fain to think, invariably assumed, under false pretences, the mere nomenclature of the Han and T'ang dynasties. They differ from the events inscribed on my block, which do not borrow this customary practice, but, being based on my own experiences and natural feelings, present, on the contrary, a novel and unique character. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... so has the little old woman who once danced at the opera; so have old Bibi La Puree, and Alphonse, the gray-haired garcon, and Mere Gaillard, the flower-woman. They have seen the gay boulevards and the cafes and generations of grisettes, from the true grisette of years gone by, in her dainty white cap and simple dress turned low at the throat, to the ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... from fifteen to twenty are aware of the glamour they cast over the straggling, awkward boys whom they regard and treat as mere children? I wonder, now. Young women are so keen in such matters. I wonder if Miss Nelly Glentworth never suspected until the very last night of her visit at Rivermouth that I was over ears in love with her pretty self, and was suffering pangs as poignant ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... said simply, "that is to be feared. They meddle in everything. As for my interest, monsieur, I only referred to it by mere chance,—the mere chance of finding myself in the same train with you, and in the same compartment of the ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... of the third day were given, and of these the accounts were very succinct. The movements of the mobs and the conflicts with them were so similar in character, that a detailed description of them would be a mere repetition of what had gone before. After the police force, and the troops under General Brown had become organized so as to move and act together, each fight with the rioters was almost a repetition of its predecessor. ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... writing this letter, on the mere chance of its reaching you, and fastening it to a stone. Perhaps, one day, I shall be able to throw it over the wall and some peasant will pick ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... creation more credible? Nay, hath it not furnished the atheists and infidels of all ages with the most plausible arguments against a creation? That a corporeal substance, which hath an absolute existence without the minds of spirits, should be produced out of nothing, by the mere will of a Spirit, hath been looked upon as a thing so contrary to all reason, so impossible and absurd! that not only the most celebrated among the ancients, but even divers modern and Christian philosophers have thought Matter co-eternal with the Deity. Lay these things ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... sentence is not a mere empty scarecrow, designed to terrify me, to punish me through fear and intimidation, to humiliate me, that he may then raise me again ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... robber of the treasury by Hadding is a variant of the world-old Rhampsinitos tale, but less elaborate, possibly abridged and cut down by Saxo, and reduced to a mere moral example in favour of the goldenness of silence and the danger of letting the tongue feed ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the morning. In the afternoon we were sent to graze our horses outside the town with a warning to look out for sniping. As I write I am sitting under a rock, the reins secured to one of my legs, which accounts for bad writing. Lindley is below, a mere little village with a few stores, which nevertheless was for a proud week the capital of the Free State. For some time past it has been closely besieged by the Boers, and entirely dependent on one ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... own men was on post at the south-east corner, and his yell for the corporal, instantly following the distant shot, was so excited and vehement that the infantry non-commissioned officer, who went at a run, was minded to rebuke him for raising such a row over a mere shooting scrape among the Mexican packers. "Packers, your granny!" said Number Six. "It's Lieutenant Willett that's shot, and I know it! He came down out of the office not twenty minutes ago and went straight out south for Craney's shack, and ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... token of admiration. True artists never fail generously to recognise each other's greatness. Thus Beethoven's admiration for Cherubini was regal: and he ardently hailed the genius of Schubert: "Truly," said he, "in Schubert dwells a divine fire." When Northcote was a mere youth he had such an admiration for Reynolds that, when the great painter was once attending a public meeting down in Devonshire, the boy pushed through the crowd, and got so near Reynolds as to touch the skirt of his coat, "which I did," says Northcote, "with great satisfaction to ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... of music, beyond that derived from its mere execution, is greatly influenced by the amount of electricity infused into the sounds by the performer; and in our planet the human voice has often been known to soothe, and sometimes to restore, a disordered brain, by awakening ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... freshness of early morning. One's nerves seem peculiarly strung for exquisite impressions in the first dewy hours of the day, there is a virginal sensitiveness and purity about all our senses, and the mere delight of the eye in the printed page is keener than at any other time. "The Muses love the morning, and that is a fit time for study," said Erasmus to his friend Christianus of Lubeck; and, certainly, if early rising agrees with one, there is no better time for getting the ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... say? Would she divulge the crime, and try to hold him as her accomplice? Who would believe her? How could she prove that he, who loved and had married another woman, had any interest in Sauvresy's death? People don't kill their friends for the mere pleasure of it. Would she provoke the law to exhume her husband? She was now in a position, thought he, wherein she could, or would not exercise her reason. Later on, she would reflect, and then she would be arrested by the probability of those dangers, the certainty of ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... Trestrail," said the Marchesa, "an education in cookery does not mean the teaching of a certain number of recipes. Education, I maintain, is something far higher than the mere imparting of facts; my notion of it is the teaching of people to teach themselves, and this is what I have tried to do in the kitchen. With some of you I am sure I have succeeded, and a book containing the recipe of every ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... himself up to his full height, "I would have you understand that, uneuphonious as the name may seem, the Daddleskinks sat in the seats of the mighty when our best-known American families of to-day, such as the Murphys, the Cohens, the Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons, were mere nebulous films ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... seat, and Camus, with a turn and a step, reached the window, where, resting his hands on the mullions, he leaned far out. I was on his heels; but the window was narrow, a mere slit, and so I could see nothing below. Late as it was the cry had, however, reached other ears than ours as well. Here and there a dim light glowed for an instant or so in an overhanging window. Here and there a ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right, plainly written down in the Constitution. But we ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... thickest. When we came within a town, and found the church clocks all stopped, the dial-faces choked with snow, and the inn-signs blotted out, it seemed as if the whole place were overgrown with white moss. As to the coach, it was a mere snowball; similarly, the men and boys who ran along beside us to the town's end, turning our clogged wheels and encouraging our horses, were men and boys of snow; and the bleak wild solitude to which they at last ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... arid and terrible, repose is a dream, prudence is useless; mere reason alone serves simply to dry up the heart; there is but one virtue, the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... no mere hare-brained radical. I did not go to Russia, did not join the revolutionary circles of Paris, did not yet seek out Prussia. That is folly. My father was right. It must be the years, it must be the good heritage, it must be the good environment, ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... not, like Suetonius, a mere military conqueror. He saw that Britons would never unfeignedly submit so long as they were treated as slaves; and he set himself to remedy the grievances under which the provincials so long had suffered. Military licence, therefore, and civil corruption alike, he put ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... back frequently in a half curious, half wistful way. Vic, if you will stop to think of it, had been transplanted rather suddenly from the midst of many happy-go-lucky companions to an isolation lightened only by a mere sister's vicarious comradeship. If he yearned secretly for a share of Starr's interest, surely no one can blame him; but that he should voluntarily remove himself from Starr's presence in the belief that he had come to see Helen May exclusively, proves ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... bonnet that told of a high pressure of narrative. The bearded Dublin tourist on her left was but little behind her in the ardour of giving information. His wife, a beautifully dressed lady with cotton-wool in her ears, remained abstracted, whether from toothache, or exclusiveness, or mere wifely boredom, we cannot say. Among the swift shuttles of Irish speech the ponderous questions and pronouncements of an English fisherman drove their way. The talk was, we gathered, of sport and ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... great controversies which agitated the fourteenth century. Pope John XXII. ruled at Avignon, a shameless truckster in ecclesiastical merchandise, a violent oppressor of his subjects, yet obliged by force of circumstances to be a mere subject of the King of France. The Emperor Ludwig IV. ruled in Germany in spite of the excommunication pronounced against him by the Pope. Many voices were raised in support of Louis denouncing the assumptions of the occupant ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... the little all I have to write. Can it interest you? To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it, seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph, mere stops. Yet I suppose it is not so to the absent. At least, I have read things written about Niagara, music, and the like, that interested me. Once I was moved by Mr. Greenwood's remark, that he could not realize this marvel till, opening his eyes the next morning after he had seen it, his ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... four francs a day at his trade; but as they had three children, it was all that they could do to gain an honest living. Yet I have never met with more sterling honesty than in this man and wife. For five years after I left the quarter, Mere Vaillant used to come on my birthday with a bunch of flowers and some oranges for me—she that had never a sixpence to put by! Want had drawn us together. I never could give her more than a ten-franc piece, and often I had to borrow the money for the occasion. This will perhaps explain my promise ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... different sphere of life; but even in their hearts, there was an open truthfulness which gave signs of real nobility; and a full flowing sympathy, a solid common sense, a love of principle, a love of the good and noble, against which mere surface refinement and polite words, empty of soul and meaning, would weigh but as feathers in ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... it denotes uncertainty, possibility, or mere futurity.[4] (a) Concessive clauses (introduced by ah, though) and (b) temporal clauses (introduced by :r, :r :m e, before) are rarely found with any other mood than the subjunctive. The subjunctive ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... him almost alone to represent the old school of thought, but he adds, "the solemn convictions of my judgment, sustained by some pride of character, admonish me not to hazard the disgrace of continuing in office a mere inefficient pageant."[Footnote: Proceedings Massachusetts Historical ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... quit his pleasant home in the beautiful valley of the Tomhannock, for the privations, hardships, and dangers of military life, have always proved him to be a true and warm sympathizer in his country's cause. It was evidently not the mere love of adventure, or the mere pageantry or glory of war, that led him to make the great sacrifice. He has been with us in every conflict, and shared with us the varied fortunes of the Harris Light. His death, which he would rather have met on the field of strife, battling manfully ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... proposal, whatever its exact terms, led however to no result. Rome declined to do as Kobad desired; and thus another ground of estrangement was added to those which had previously made the renewal of the Roman war a mere ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... to sell. They did a thriving business and when their papers were disposed of desired to return to the city. But they were so bright and intelligent that he suspected their visit involved other purposes than the mere selling of papers, and held them until the command was across the river and then permitted them to go. There is an interesting coincidence between this story and the one told to the writer by St. George Tucker, of Richmond, and which appears on page ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... Culture at the University Farm, which has charge of teaching, demonstration, extension work, research, queen rearing, correspondence, statistics and model apiaries, $6,500. Minnesota beekeepers should be grateful to those men who have helped them to raise their industry from a mere nothing, until we have become the acknowledged leaders in beekeeping among all the states of the Union. They, however, are rapidly following, nearly all states now have efficient bee inspection laws, and twelve universities have followed our lead ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... present form) the behaviour of anthranilic acid, yet Hewitt has shown that his theory goes far to explain the fluorescence of substances in which a double symmetrical tautomerism is possible. This tautomerism may be of a twofold nature:—(1) it may involve the mere oscillation of linkages, as in acridine; or (2) it may involve the oscillation of atoms, as in fluorescein. A theory of a physical nature, based primarily upon Sir J.J. Thomson's theory of corpuscles, has been proposed by J. de Kowalski (Compt. rend. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... and more unprofitable under the sun, nothing more nearly approaching to a state of addle, than a builder's brains. Your regular builders (and, indeed, not a few of your architects) are the sorriest animals twaddling about on two legs; mere vivified bags of sawdust, or lumps of lath and plaster, galvanised for a while, and forming themselves into strange, uncouth, unreasonable shapes. A mere "builder" has not two ideas in his head; he has only one; he can draw only one "specification," as he calls ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... was the same, but he was strong enough to restrain his nature, and wise enough to know that his magnificence was incompatible with ordinary interests. As he got to be older he broke down, and took up with mere mortal gossip. But I think it must ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... this is not apparent, since he might have gone direct from Hastings to Wilhelmshoehe without any necessity for invoking the Chancellor's offices. It seems extremely probable that the request for a pass was a mere pretext to gain an interview, and the more so since Bismarck made no allusion to the subject, but after a few moments, according to Regnier, addressed that ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... which we once had. Desperate is not too strong a word. We shall let this impulse to snatch markets carry us whither it will, whither it must. To-day it is successful burglary and disgrace, to-morrow it may be mere defeat and disgrace. ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... then, at a later hour, at four o'clock in the morning, when we of the Sixth corps heard brisk picket firing in front of the Eighth and Nineteenth corps, we were scarcely aroused from our slumbers, for we thought it to be a mere picket skirmish, in which none but those directly engaged had any particular interest. But when the firing became general along the whole line of these two corps, and we saw hundreds of men going with hasty steps and lengthy strides to the rear, we were at length aroused to the truth ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... under consideration may be developed from oversensitiveness to sound, colour, or form, and the man of the twenty-first or twenty-second century may be a being of pure intellect whose organization of mere nervous pulp would be shattered by a strong emotion, like a pumpkin filled with dynamite." (vide "Pollen Therapy in Pollinosis," reprinted from the Medical Record, March 18, 1916; and many thanks to Mr. H.L. Mencken, fellow sufferer, for sending me a ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... this point, the play, so far as the mere incidents are concerned, is little else than a dramatized version of the tale: henceforth the former diverges more widely from the latter, though many of the incidents are still the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... two persons entirely beyond exception, namely Quintus Silius Bassus and Marcia Sabina. A match has been made between these parties, perhaps several years before the actual marriage can take place, and while the intended bride is a mere child of ten: even the future groom may be but a boy. When the go-between has done his or her work to the satisfaction of both families, there takes place a betrothal ceremony, of which the original purpose was, of course, to bind each party morally to carry out the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... curiously, but, the other three were relieved to notice, without any of that overwhelming interest which the mere name of it had ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... went upon the walls afterwards, as we had three hours upon our hands. I had a great desire to plant my foot in Wales, and so we crossed the river Dee. I stopped to look at the river Dee. It is a mere brook in comparison to our great rivers, though the Concord is no wider in some places. It was flowing peacefully along; and I remembered that Edgar the Peaceable was rowed in triumph by eight kings from his palace on the south bank to the ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the term "Christianity" used as a point of view, a mere mental attitude, would include such a man, and it is equally evident that we have only to imagine him to see that he had nothing to do with the Christian religion of that day. For the Christian religion (then as now) was a thing, not a ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... Fewson there was much friendly strife with regard to the solving of hard arithmetical problems. This contest was no mere private matter. It was entered into with great zest by the men of both the villages concerned; the Catwickians and the Ristonians each backing their man to win. "A straw shows which way the wind blows," we say, and herein we may feel a breathing of the Holderness man's love of ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... down his pen and pictured it. The terrific force of that conviction cannot fairly be set before the intelligence of average cultured people, because, whatever they profess to believe in their hearts, the truth is that, even with forty-nine Christians out of fifty, hell appears a mere vague conceit meaning nothing. They affirm that they believe in eternal torment; they confess all humanity is ripe for it; but their pulses are unquickened by the assertion or admission; they do not believe in it. Nor can educated man so believe, for that way madness lies, and he ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... mere to the same effect, and it is sad to think that all this trouble, all this expenditure of ink and English grammar, was thrown away. Papa Bonham could not pay down the fortune demanded by the prince without injuring the other members of his family; [Footnote: Mr. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... not a thing that has evolved from a simple germ, by a mere process of expansion. It is the coalescence of several things. In different countries and periods you will find schools taking over this function and throwing out that, and changing not only methods but professions and aims in the most remarkable manner. What has either been teachable ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... be of sympathy, mere humanity would suggest that it would be pleasanter, far pleasanter, to record that this day of all days in Simon Varr's life was peaceful and calm, but the truth is exactly the reverse. It was destined to be a day of bitterness and strife, ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... sensitive and delicate pride of her own—and then, if she had succeeded in forgiving Lightmark, it had not been without an effort which had made it difficult for her to pardon herself. Sometimes, though she would scarcely have confessed it, her husband's mere approbativeness had almost shocked her. It was good, no doubt, to be popular, harmless even, to care for popularity—at least, one's traditions declared nothing to the contrary; but to care so exorbitantly ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... traveller sets out on a journey, he provides himself with a new pair of straw sandals; these last him for a tramp of from ten to twenty miles, according to the nature of the road. When worn out, his foot-gear may be readily renewed at any village for a mere song. The same may be said of his horse or buffalo, although several extra shoes are generally carried along ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the Mere, close to the hall where the Blood Council hold their sittings, when who should I see hobbling away but old Dame Trond! She cast a suspicious glance at me, which I could not help feeling meant mischief. ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... "The mere landing on the mole was a perilous business. It involved a passage across the crashing and splintering gangways, a drop over the parapet into the field of fire of the German machine guns which swept its ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... duty at Deane and rented the parsonage while his own was under repair. It seems impossible now to unravel this skein. The story of the move to Steventon, in 1771, is connected with a statement that the road was then a mere cart-track, so cut up by deep ruts as to be impassable for a light carriage, and that Mrs. Austen (who was not then in good health) performed the short journey on a feather-bed, placed upon some soft articles of furniture in the waggon which held their household goods. This story ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... to vibrate and emit the same note, although there was no interrupted current to make it. A few experiments soon showed that his reed had been set in vibration by the magneto-electric currents induced in the line by the mere motion of the distant reed in the neighbourhood of its magnet. This discovery led him to discard the battery current altogether and rely upon the magneto-induction currents of the reeds themselves. Moreover, it occurred to him that, since the circuit was ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Leary came, endeavouring while coming to wear a manner combining an atmosphere of dignified aloofness and a sentiment of frank indifference to the opinion of this loutish busybody, with just a touch, a mere trace, as it were, of nonchalance thrown in. In short, coming out he sought to deport himself as though it were the properest thing in the world for a man of years and discretion to be wearing a bright pink one-piece article of apparel on a public highway ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... made some tough camps in my time, "carried the banner" in infernal metropolises, bedded in pools of water, slept in the snow under two blankets when the spirit thermometer registered seventy-four degrees below zero (which is a mere trifle of one hundred and six degrees of frost); but I want to say right here that never did I make a tougher camp, pass a more miserable night, than that night I passed with the Swede in the itinerant saloon at Council Bluffs. In the first place, the ...
— The Road • Jack London
... appears to have borrowed it from his neighbour Adwaita Acharjya, whose custom it was, after performing his daily ritual, to go to the banks of the Ganges and call aloud for the coming of the god who should substitute love and faith for mere rites and ceremonies. This custom is still adhered to by Vaish.navas. The Charitamrita veils the priority of Adwaita adroitly by stating that it was he who by his austerities hastened the coming of K.rish.na in ...
— Chaitanya and the Vaishnava Poets of Bengal • John Beames
... unholy devices, of which the issue of contaminating cartridges was one. The seeds of disaffection had been sown by agitators, who thought they saw an opportunity for realizing their hope of overthrowing our rule, maintained as it was by a mere handful of Europeans in the midst of a vast population of Asiatics. This feeling of antagonism, only guessed at before, was plainly revealed in these letters, never intended to meet the European eye. Some corps did not appear to be quite so guilty as others, but ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... the rebuilding of the old capital of the Euphrates. The reverent student quietly notes the movements taking place in that part of the world, but restrains mere curious speculation, as he continues fervently to pray, "Thy ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... do not belong to any particular province. As for its power and influence, we may fairly say that it is of just the same consequence to a man's immediate society, how he talks, as how he acts. Now of all those who furnish their share to rational conversation, a mere adept in his own art is universally admitted to be the worst. The sterility and uninstructiveness of such a person's social hours are quite proverbial. Or if he escape being dull, it is only by launching into ill-timed, learned loquacity. We do not desire of him lectures or speeches; ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... this moment I have expiated all my faults, whatever they have been; for to-night you have made a heart in one who had it not, made it and broken it.—But let that pass. I may have wrecked my own life, but I will not let you wreck yours. You- -why, you are a mere girl, you would be lost. You haven't got the kind of brains that enables a woman to get back. You have neither the wit nor the courage. You couldn't stand dishonour! No! Go back, Lady Windermere, to the husband who loves you, whom you love. You have a child, Lady Windermere. Go back ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... wonderful and admirable in the parables, not readily grasped, but specially indicated by the Lord himself—their unintelligibility to the mere intellect. They are addressed to the conscience and not to the intellect, to the will and not to the imagination. They are strong and direct but not definite. They are not meant to explain anything, but to rouse a man to the feeling, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... words than any in the tribe. And her talk was a terrible thing to hear. Sometimes she screamed and moaned incoherently, and sometimes the shape of her guttural cries was the mere phantom of thoughts. But she conveyed to Eudena, nevertheless, much of the things that were yet to come, of the Lion and of the torment he would do her. "And Ugh-lomi! Ha, ha! Ugh-lomi ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... city of Holguin. The former is only one of a number of such places found along the coast. Most of them are attractive in point of surrounding scenery, but little or not at all attractive in themselves, being mere groups of uninteresting structures of the conventional type. Holguin is perhaps two hundred years old, quite pleasantly situated, but affording no special points of interest for the tourist. The city is now easily reached ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... Library, which has prospered as only the result of the most careful selection could prosper, are "Lovers in London," by A.A. Milne, brightest and most promising of the younger humorists, and "The Loot of Cities," by Mr. Arnold Bennett, the mere name of whom is a sufficient guarantee of entertainment. As for general literature, "The Soul of London," by Ford Madox Hueffer, may be justly described as worthy of a place in every library. The author in his introduction, remarks that he has tried to ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... of Kernan as a speaker and presiding officer exaggerated by contrast the feebleness of Herman J. Redfield, the permanent president of the convention. Redfield was an old man, a mere reminiscence of the days of DeWitt Clinton, whose speech, read in a low, weak voice, was directed mainly to a defence of the sub-treasury plan of 1840 and the tariff act of 1846.[793] He professed to favour a vigorous prosecution of the war, but ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Burk, Smith, Campbell, and Neill gave 1619 as the date.[121] But we are persuaded to believe that the first slaves were landed at a still earlier date. In Capt. John Smith's history, printed in London in 1629, is a mere incidental reference to the introduction of slaves into Virginia. He mentions, under date of June 25, that the "governor and councell caused Burgesses to be chosen in all places,"[122] which is one month later than the occurrence of this event as fixed ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... simply as a story, we have not for a long while read anything more intensely dramatic. It would compel notice for the mere manner of its telling. Not often has an author who has boldly departed from the traditional lines of the writer of fiction so completely vindicated his method. There is high quality in this book, with its vivid glimpses of life, and its clever characterization.... Altogether, ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... district, in Sussex, in fluviatile accumulations. Was it fitted to live exclusively in water? Such an idea was at one time entertained, in consequence of the biconcave character of the caudal vertebrae, and it is often suggested by the mere magnitude of the creature, which would seem to have an easier life while floating in water, than when painfully lifting its huge bulk, and moving with slow steps along the ground. But neither of these arguments ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... main entrance to the house at Point Helen, she appeared in the doorway, her face really beautiful with mother-pride. For Janet she cared as it is the duty of parent to care for child; Ross she loved. It was not mere maternal imagination that made her so proud of him; he was a distinguished and attractive figure of the kind that dominates the crowds at football games, polo and tennis matches, summer resort dances, and all those events which gather together the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... certain characteristics in a certain region, then moves on, leaving the old abode but not all the accretions of custom, social organization and economic method there acquired. These travel on with the migrant people; some are dropped, others are preserved because of utility, sentiment or mere habit. For centuries after the settlement of the Jews in Palestine, traces of their pastoral life in the grasslands of Mesopotamia could be discerned in their social and political organization, in their ritual and literature. Survivals ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... collision, I say; but I am tempted to believe otherwise. I am tempted to believe the threat to arrest Fletcher was the last mutter of the declining tempest and a mere sop to Knappe's self-respect. I am tempted to believe the rumour in question was substantially correct, and the steamer from Wellington had really brought the German consul grounds for hesitation, if not orders to retreat. I believe ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... against the tyranny of home had long since passed into a mere withholding of assent. She went about her daily task more dutifully than ever. She had always been the household drudge: but now she not only took over all the clerical work upon the Dissertationes in Librum Jobi (for the Rector's ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... look back on the paper read at this meeting by Mr. J—— in his uncouth manner, I think when a man is thoroughly in earnest, how careless he is of mere words!" ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... realize what it means, Olivetta?" she concluded in a benumbed voice. "It means that, except for less than a thousand which I have on hand,—a mere nothing,—I am penniless until more dividends are due—perhaps months! I cannot go to Europe! I cannot ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... could not call at her home. He knew well that it would only provoke a storm; nor did Amy ask him to. They met only at church or at the Mission; and nothing but the common greetings passed between them. No one ever dreamed that they were more than mere acquaintances. But they each felt that the other understood, and so were happy; content to wait until God, in his own way, should unite ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... before. Cattle were roasted whole and eagerly devoured, with dances and with shouts which made the welkin ring. With wastefulness characteristic of the Indians, they took no thought for the morrow, but slaughtered the animals around them in mere recklessness, and, when utterly satiated with the banquet, the ground was left strewed with smoking and savory viands sufficient to ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... when, as a mere boy, he received his baptism of fire upon this battle-ground. When the clatter of the musketry fell upon his ears, his heart jumped and an indescribable fear seemed to take possession of him. His limbs trembled, and in despair he looked for something to steady him in the ordeal. ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... whisper stirring round the silent place, No foot of guest across the startled halls, No rustling robes about the corridors, No voices floating on the waveless air, No laughters, no sweet songs like angel dreams On silver wings among the arched domes,— No swans upon the mere—no golden prow, Parting the crystal tide to Pleasure's breeze,— No flapping sail before the idle wind,— No music pulsing out its great wild heart In sweetest passion-beats the noontide through,— No lovers gliding down sun-chequer'd glades, In dreams that open ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... represents about 2 per cent. of the world's production. The return per acre is low, but as has been pointed out, the cost of production is likewise low, and it is doubtful if in any other country the business of growing wheat is more profitable. The area now cultivated is but a mere percentage of what could be put under wheat profitably. The exact area is almost impossible to arrive at, for the simple reason that with improved methods and better varieties of wheat, the extent of country in which the cereal can be successfully ...
— Wheat Growing in Australia • Australia Department of External Affairs
... normal a tendency as to move; and it actually happens, when nothing ideal has been attained, that not to be thus is the whole law of being. There is then a nameless satisfaction in passing on; which is the virtual ideal of pain and mere willing. Death and change acquire a tragic character when they invade a mind which is not ready for them in all its parts, so that those elements in it which are still vigorous, and would maintain somewhat longer ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... who is my true son,' exclaimed the old man; 'the others are mere cowards. And as you have shown me that you are brave, I will satisfy your curiosity. My right eye laughs because I am glad to have a son like you; my left eye weeps because a precious treasure has been stolen from me. I had in my garden a vine that ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... Catholic church is no marriage at all, but simply concubinage born of lust and wickedly sanctioned by human law. He forbade Catholics, under pain of his dire displeasure, even witnessing Protestant marriages or attending as mere spectators at Protestant funerals. Archbishop Cleary has flagrantly insulted every non-Catholic wife in the world. He cast the baleful bar-sinister on the escutcheon of every child born of non-Catholic parents. With all due respect to his holy office, Archbishop ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... said calmly, "I shall have committed a crime so wonderful and so enormous that the mere offence of 'administering a noxious drug'—that is the terminology which describes the offence—will be of no importance and hardly worth the consideration of the Crown officers. Now I think I can unfasten you." He loosened and removed the straps ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... the expression, though in a somewhat grotesque form, of a widespread popular feeling that nothing is worthy of the name of education which does not fit a man to earn his bread rapidly and dexterously. Considering with how large a proportion of the human race the mere feeding and clothing of the body is the first and hardest of tasks, there is nothing at all surprising in this view. But the preservation and growth of civilization in any country depends much on ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... in an ordinary standing posture. It gratifies curiosity, but raises no particular moral emotion. Compared with the statue by Greenough, it presents a good example of the difference between the work of a mere sculptor—skillful indeed, but still a mere sculptor—and the work of a ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... of such extreme delicacy, in fact, that anything in the shape of rude or harsh sounds caused him positive distress. On one occasion Schachtner, at the request of Leopold Mozart, who imagined that Wolfgang's aversion to loud sounds was a mere childish fancy, blew a blast upon the trumpet towards the child, but he regretted it the next moment, for the boy nearly fainted away at ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... said Ted, nodding toward a yellow car that had been in evidence oftener than mere ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... buffalo dance, however, that I propose to treat in this chapter, and of which I will try to give the reader as clear an idea as is possible from a mere description; but no words of mine can enable you to fully realize the strange tumult, scampering, grunting and bellowing with which my ears have been ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Berwick streets, walking very fast with his eyes on the ground, as if, as the youngsters say, he was seeking sixpences; and I should not have thought him likely to be attracted to an affair of that sort by mere curiosity. And, whatever he might be in his pulpit, he looked very nervous and shy as he stood up between the coroner and the ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... he continued, "want emotions, great scenes, and witty talk; but you'll find good wines, and I rely on my collection of pictures to compensate an artist like you for the bore of dining with mere merchants." ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... "A mere trifle. I had arrived late at a small ale-house, had put up my pack, which was in a painted deal box, on the table in the tap-room, and was very busy, after reading a paragraph in the newspaper, making a ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... each window had a small plant stand, but there was no connection between them. I have no theory to explain these things. I have tried to find out how they are done, but the more I studied them, the more satisfied was I that they could not be explained by mere ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... the Congo scandal, in the House of Lords: "a marvellous performance, nothing said which should not have been said, everything said which required saying; the speech of a great statesman." Bishop —— followed him with a mere piece of missionary claptrap. In the Commons on the same occasion our charming friend Hugh Law distinguished himself, silencing some of his compatriots, the Irish Roman Catholics, whose line was to support Leopold because the Protestant missionaries abused him. Leopold II. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... murderous ruffians, because of his sympathy with law enforcement, and the promotion of the moral welfare of his community. But the Assistant Superintendent of the C. P. R., under whom Mr. Smith worked, was not moved by such consideration, a mere sentimental consideration he would probably call it. He preferred to cooeperate with the rum ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... strange to her to have a mere acquaintance spoken of as "her countryman"—not the first time nor the last time in her career. As there appeared no trace or sign of jealousy in her questioner's manner, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... only a village street, shares with Chichester the distinction of possessing a market cross. Alfriston's specimen is, however, sadly mutilated, a mere relic, whereas Chichester's is being made more splendid as I write. Alfriston also has one of the oldest inns in the county—the "Star"—(finer far in its way than any of Chichester's seventy and more); but Ainsworth was wrong in sending Charles II. thither, in Ovingdean ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... obscured by the fact that in most cases what is in form a mere part of the demonstrative gesture is in fact a part of the proposition which it is desired directly to convey. In such a case we will call the phraseology of the proposition elliptical. In ordinary intercourse the phraseology ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... exchange of messages between King George and Prince Hussein—one promising unfailing support, and the other unfailing allegiance—completed the transaction, one of the greatest triumphs of British statesmanship, compared with which the recent statecraft of the Germans is mere amateur bungling. Marshal von der Goltz Pasha, who has now exchanged his Governorship of Belgium for the position of chief military counsellor on the Bosphorus, will find it harder than ever—with his rabble army under Djemal Pasha—to "liberate" from the British yoke ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... feeling of friendship for his antagonist. There was that in Baron Petrescu which he had received no credit for, even from his friends. What contempt he had had for Ellerey disappeared, and a desire to win for the mere sake of winning took possession of him. All the thoughts which had prompted him to this duel were forgotten; he was no longer intent on killing his adversary. Now to verify his superiority and to prove it to this worthy foeman was his ambition, and it was in this ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... of the very earliest of his writings upon the subject, some comments upon the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach, and intended to form the basis of a separate work, we find Marx insisting that man is not a mere automaton, driven irresistibly by blind economic forces. He says: "The materialistic doctrine, that men are the products of conditions and education, different men, therefore, the products of other conditions and changed education, forgets that circumstances ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... shortly after birth. The colour varies from brown to black, according to the amount of melanin pigment present. The lesion consists in an overgrowth of epidermis which often presents an alveolar arrangement. Moles vary greatly in size: some are mere dots, others are as large as the palm of the hand, and occasionally a mole covers half the face. In addition to being unsightly, they bleed freely when abraded, are liable to ulcerate from friction and pressure, and occasionally become the starting-point of melanotic ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... seemed that oath to him, yet at that moment he wished he had made it greater, and made all the kindred, yea and the Bride herself, sure of the meaning of the words of it: and he deemed himself a dastard that he had not done so. Then he looked round him and beheld the winter, and he fell into mere longing that the spring were come and the token from the Mountain. Things seemed too hard for him to deal with, and he between a mighty folk and two wayward women; and he went nigh to wish that he had taken his father's offer ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... of acuteness of intellect and precision of language, as indicate a genius of the highest rank[854]. This it is which marks the superiour excellence of Johnson's Dictionary over others equally or even more voluminous, and must have made it a work of much greater mental labour than mere Lexicons, or Word-books, as the Dutch call them. They, who will make the experiment of trying how they can define a few words of whatever nature, will soon be satisfied of the unquestionable justice of this observation, which I can assure my ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... disposition to abandon this section was shown by opening new stores in Cedar street, which soon became so popular as a jobbing resort that its rents quadrupled. The Cedar street jobbers would in the present day be considered mere Liliputians, since many of their stores measured less than eighteen by thirty feet. They were occupied by a class of active men, who bought of importers and sold to country dealers on the principle of the nimble sixpence. Of this class (now about extinct) a few built up large concerns, while ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Arthur Dalrymple's version of the Yarmouth escapade is wrong in making his brother John a partner in the transaction. John had quite too much sense for that; the only victims of Borrow's romance were two or three silly boys—mere lackeys of Borrow's commanding will—who helped him to make up a kit for the common knapsack by pilferings out of their ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... plate be enlarged to about 1-1/2 or 2 inches in diameter, C (fig. 108.), then no charge will be given to the carrier at f, though when applied nearer to the edge at g, or even above the middle at h, a charge will be obtained; and this is true though the plate may be a mere thin film of gold-leaf. Hence it is clear that the induction is not through the metal, but through the surrounding air or dielectric, and ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... canoe is the home of the Ojibbeway. While the trees are green, while the waters dance and sparkle, while the wild rice bends its graceful head in the lake and the wild duck dwells amidst the rush-covered mere, the Ojibbeway's home is the birch-bark canoe. When the winter comes and the lake and rivers harden beneath the icy breath of the north wind, the canoe is put carefully away; covered with branches and with snow, it lies through the long dreary winter until the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... keen-sighted hawks hover about, picking up those which, failing to obey the first law of nature, reveal themselves by movement. If the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, what is the provision of Nature which enables so tender a thing as a young bird, a mere helpless ball of creamy fluff, to withstand the frizzling heat with which the sun bleaches the broken coral? Many do avail themselves of the meagre shadow of shells and lumps of coral, but the majority are exposed to the direct rays of the sun, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... in the literary and artistic world enabled them to draw together not only the best-known people of this country, but to a degree greater than any, as far as I know, the most distinguished visitors from abroad, beyond the ranks of mere title or fashion. No home, I think, in all the land compared with theirs in the number and character of ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... constitution.—3. That this meeting, having unanimously agreed to the preceding two resolutions, the following humble address to her most excellent majesty the queen, embodying them, be adopted, and that such address be signed by the chairman on behalf of the meeting. [The address was a mere transcription of the resolutions, placed in the ordinary form.]—4. That, considering the discourtesy shown by his excellency the governor to the former meeting, and to its deputation, this meeting abstains ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his heart, he regards them not as the productions of his own soul, but as emanations from the Spirit of God which dwells in him, and pervades all his being. Such a mode of viewing things is, after all, not a mere effect of his imagination, but a true reflex of the influence that actuates this man, an influence springing from the fact already stated, that his will has identified itself with the will of God. Hence the prophet is called a man inspired by God, for it is the Divine Spirit that pervades, agitates, ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... are mere savages," said Sir Humphrey, who ceased to watch the retreating Indians, to sweep the front of the towering cliffs with his glass. "This palace must have been the work of a ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... foolish as old Johnny!" exclaimed Judith. "You were in almost as bad shape as I was, and two hours' sleep would have been a mere aggravation to me. Will you let me have enough grub to see me down to the ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... religious, and courageous divine, during whose life our factions were oft qualified, our wants and greatest extremities so comforted that they seemed easy in comparison of what we endured after his memorable death." When, in 1609, in a nobler spirit than that of mere commercial enterprise, the reorganized Company, under the new charter, was preparing the great reinforcement of five hundred to go out under Lord de la Warr as governor of the colony, counsel was taken with Abbot, the Puritan Bishop of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... exclusive privileges of a private trading company. D'Ogeron first established himself at Port Margot on the coast of Hispaniola opposite Tortuga in the early part of 1665; and here the adventurers at once gave him to understand that they would never submit to any mere company, much less suffer an interruption of their trade with the Dutch, who had supplied them with necessities at a time when it was not even known in France that there were Frenchmen in that region. D'Ogeron pretended to subscribe to these conditions, passed ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... "Freedom! or learn to die!" Ah! and they meant the word, Not as with us 'tis heard, Not a mere party shout: They gave their spirits out; Trusted the end to God, And on the glory sod Rolled in triumphant blood. Glad to strike one free blow, Whether for weal or woe; Glad to breathe one free breath, Though on the lips of death, Praying—alas! in vain!— ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... mentions GAYETY as the third clement of satisfying discourse, I fancy he does not mean mere fun, though that has its value at the right time and place. But there is another quality which is far more valuable and always fit. Indeed it underlies the best fun and makes it wholesome. It is cheerfulness, the temper which makes the best of things and squeezes ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... vary from mere appendages of skin to fully developed toes (Fig. 163); if they interfere with the wearing of boots ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... well up in the firing trench. Fixing the camera, and the rest of the apparatus, I began taking scenes of actual life and conditions in the trenches—that mysterious land about which millions have read but have never had the opportunity of seeing. No mere verbal description would suffice to describe them. Every minute the murderous crack of rifles and the whir of machine-guns rang out. Death hovered all round. In front the German rifles, above the bursting shrapnel, each shell ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... mentioned on p. 144 in connection with the Army Council stood on an entirely different footing. When a body of officials resign, or threaten to resign, their action cannot be ignored; in the second case mentioned the mere threat sufficed. Lord Fisher paid me one of his meteoric visits on the morning that he submitted his resignation to Mr. Asquith, and he confided his reasons to me; the reasons were good, but it seemed doubtful whether they ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... deserted, being populous in the morning only, because they are so many short-cuts or direct thoroughfares from the suburbs to the city. The morning sweeper is generally a lively and active young fellow; often a mere child, who is versed in the ways of London life, and who, knowing well the value of money from the frequent want of it, is anxious to earn a penny by any honest means. Ten to one, he has been brought up in the country, and has been tutored by hard ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... met in conference at London and the whole vast and complex problem of federal empire has come under discussion. The problem is still far from solution, but that the relation has passed beyond the stage of mere sentiment is shown in many ways. The joy of the colonies over the diamond jubilee (1897), their united grief at Victoria's passing (1901), their welcome to the son of Edward VII., upon his progress ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... stimulated American shipping more than the restrictive decrees growing out of them retarded it, for they at least kept England and France (with her allies) out of the active encouragement of maritime enterprise. But the vessels of that day were mere pigmies, and the extent of the trade carried on in them would at this time seem trifling. The gross exports and imports of the United States in 1800 were about $75,000,000 each. The vessels that carried them were of about ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... he was so high above the earth that to fall off would mean the end of him. And far beneath him he saw the green fields and the white road, which now seemed like a mere thread. ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... Nazareth, so the new world is coming out of the multitude, amid the toil and sweat and anguish of the mills, mines, and factories of the world. It has endured much; suffered ages long of slavery and serfdom. From being mere animals of production, the workers have become the "hands" of production; and they are now reaching out to become the masters of production. And, while in other periods of the world their intolerable misery led them again and again to strike out in a kind of torrential anarchy ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... a leaf in the book of life," his friend made answer, "and on the new page which now lies before us, we find it written, that in wise dispensation, not in mere getting and hoarding, lies the secret of happiness. The lake must have an outlet, and give forth its crystal waters in full measure, if it would keep them pure and wholesome, or, as the Dead Sea, it will be full of bitterness, and hold no life in ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... than I need at the moment. Even if I succeeded in getting away from the inn, what could I do at Brede with no money at all?—for in that part of the country they would certainly look upon the Earl of Westport as the real owner of the property, and on me as a mere interloper; and if I could not get money on the documents in London, there was little chance of getting credit even for food ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... succeeded in retaining its republican form. Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few rich families seized all authority, and while the fame and territory of the republic were extended, its dogeship became a mere figurehead. All real power was lodged in the dread and secret council of three.[11] Genoa was defeated and crushed in a great naval contest with her rival, Venice.[12] Everywhere tyrannies stood out triumphant. The first ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... mentioned in this report, but, knowing you as I believe I do, I am satisfied that you did your full duty in that terrible affair; although, in your report to me by Oneida runner, you record the action as though you yourself were a mere spectator. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... is but 1640 miles distant from Ireland. Its population in 1881 was 161,384, and its area was estimated at 42,006 square miles; but, strange as it seems, up to the present time the interior is almost unknown, while the mere existence of certain splendid fertile valleys in portions of the island has only been discovered in quite recent times. The appearance of the coast is rocky and forbidding, but there are a great number of deep bays and fiords, containing magnificent ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... and went into the thicket, near a stream of water, where she could die in peace. I don't know whether I hit her or not. I didn't look to see, but ran home as fast as my legs would carry me. Thus ended the first hunting excursion in which I ever engaged; and though I was a mere boy then, and am approaching the meridian of life now, it proved to ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... regular fraternisation had gone on between the crews, and after a mere glance at the three masts of the schooner, which were standing out of the water about a couple of hundred yards away, the skipper's whole attention was directed to their own vessel, whose keel was now fast in the mud, and which was beginning to ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... cause for rejoicing in ourselves. . . . We are paltry, poor-spirited, useless people . . . a mean lot. . . . We are only gentry in name, but in a material sense we are the same as peasants, only worse. . . . We live in stone houses, but it's a mere make-believe . . . for the roof leaks. And there is no money to buy wood to mend ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... wasn't I shouldn't be here, working for thirty pounds a year, when there's gold to be dug for the mere paying of a license. No, no, just wait till I can call myself my own master, and then the sheep and stock may go to the devil, for ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... a mere periwig-makerHad I asked Ochiltree the question, he would have had a legend ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... lie down on the bed by her side, on condition that she should be awakened in an hour. In this manner she obtained a few hours' sleep during the night; but these severe labors were a fearful task to be imposed upon a mere child. ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... a good deed in helping to console a little child, and no kindness ever goes without this reward. Besides, she had met a young, strange man, a country boy, it was true, and very plainly dressed, but with the manner and tone of a gentleman, quite good-looking, and very strong. Strength, mere physical strength, appeals to all girls at certain ages, and Miss Alice Yorke's thoughts quite softened toward the stranger. Why, he as good as picked her up! He must be as strong as Norman Wentworth, who stroked his crew. She recalled with approval ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... as something which in a living body was united with physical matter and forces in the same way that the force of a magnet unites itself with iron. Then came the time when vital force was banished from the domain of science. Mere physical and chemical causes were ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... where she had pawned the plate, her tale being that she and the man Evans had gone down to Whitechapel together and pawned it in the Mile End Road. But she did not know the number of the pawnbroker's, nor could she give any indications as to its whereabouts—beyond the mere fact that it was in the Mile End Road she could say nothing. All the pawnbrokers in the Mile End Road had been searched, but no plate answering to the description furnished by the ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... had taught her the sanctity of parenthood, also that women are not always the weaker sex. There are times when they must show their superiority to "mere man" in being the stronger of the two, mentally if not physically, and Ralph Jackson knew when he called Mary "wife" she would endow him with all the wealth of her pure womanhood, sacredly kept for the clean-souled young man, whose devotion she finally rewarded by promising to marry him the ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... loop is horizontal and the wire vertical and axial, 20f and 20g, there will be rotation, and the figures are mere ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... principles, have in the history of the Church not unfrequently broken into small controversies, involving narrow principles; just as in the history of the world mighty empires like that of Alexander the Great have broken up into petty provinces, headed by mere satraps and captains, when the master-mind that formed their uniting bond has been removed. Independently of that stability which the legalized framework of a rightly-constituted Establishment is almost sure to impart to its distinctive doctrines, the influence of its temporalities has in one special ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... theology, to his great irritation; and once, Hareton, I came upon a secret stock in your room—some Latin and Greek, and some tales and poetry: all old friends. I brought the last here—and you gathered them, as a magpie gathers silver spoons, for the mere love of stealing! They are of no use to you; or else you concealed them in the bad spirit that, as you cannot enjoy them, nobody else shall. Perhaps your envy counselled Mr. Heathcliff to rob me of my treasures? But I've most of them ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... an errand, and Pluto had shown her the road. After all the others were done she picked up again the communication she had shown to Mrs. McVeigh—the report from the yacht master, and from the same envelope extracted a soft silken slip of paper with marks peculiar—apparently mere senseless scratches of a thoughtless pen, but it was over that paper and the reply most of the evening was spent. It was the most ancient method of secret writing known to history, yet, apparently, so meaningless that it might pass ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Mere, or Meri, n. (pronounced merry), a Maori war-club; a casse-te^te, or a war-axe, from a foot to eighteen inches in length, and made of any suitable hard material—stone, hard wood, whalebone. To many people out of New Zealand the word is only known as the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... A debate is in the nature of a contest, and is quite as interesting as any other contest. The desire to win should never lead you to take any unfair advantage or to descend to mere quibbling over the statement of the proposition or the meanings of the terms. Win fairly ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... put himself under the protection of Marguerite d'Angoulme, queen of Navarre, who made him her valet-de-chambre. He acted as the queen's secretary, and transcribed the Heptamron for her. It is probable that his duties extended beyond those of a mere copyist, and some writers have gone so far as to say that the Heptamron was his work. The free discussions permitted at Marguerite's court encouraged a licence of thought as displeasing to the Calvinists ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... gracious he is, and how good. Of course, there has been money spent, but he can afford it without hurting the children. It has been so necessary that with a Coalition people should know each other! There was some little absurd row here. A man who was a mere nobody, one of the travelling butterfly men that fill up spaces and talk to girls, got hold of him and was impertinent. He is so thin-skinned that he could not shake the creature into the dust as you would have done. It annoyed him,—that, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water... How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Jane. "I do not desire a mere soldier's glory for any one I love, since it is bought by violence, and must therefore harden the heart: and honour of a better kind may be had, as far as ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... forty mills were debasing the immemorial and gigantic sequoia into mere timber in its last refuge in California. But even the general public sees now that this was a barbarous and idiotic perversion of relative values. What is a little perishable timber, for which substitutes can be found elsewhere, compared with a grove ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... have been too early instructed, and too long habituated to believe, that the only firm seat of all authority is in the minds, affections, and interests of the people, to change our opinions on the theoretic reasonings of speculative men, or for the convenience of a mere temporary arrangement of state. It is not consistent with equity or wisdom to set at defiance the general feelings of great communities, and of all the orders which compose them. Much power is tolerated, and passes unquestioned, where much is yielded ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... are dressed as women, living in the Sadow and possessing all the privileges of the other sex. Small-pox is never mentioned by its proper name of "char-char" by the Dyaks, but always spoken of as "he," "she," or "it;" for they imagine the mere mention of its name may attract, and ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... what was going on behind him, had to carry the whole tree, and the little tailor into the bargain. There he sat behind in the best of spirits, lustily whistling a tune, as if carrying the tree were mere sport. The giant, after dragging the heavy weight for some time, could get on no further, and shouted out: "Hi! I must let the tree fall." The tailor sprang nimbly down, seized the tree with both hands as if he had carried it the whole way and said to the giant: "Fancy a big lout ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... equally true assertion that their physical strength is not equal to the performance of the work of an ordinary day-laborer. Under the pressure of necessity, both moral and physical strength might be forced and kept up to the required standard; but the mere conviction of expediency is not enough to secure its development, unless enforced by such laws as will insure universal and systematic action. A voluntary association for military instruction may be commenced with a zeal which will carry its members for a time through the daily routine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... trifling question. And the arguments put forward for their several views by the two champions are not strikingly convincing. Sir Edward wants only one account, because he thinks the consequence would be a stronger reserve and fewer changes in bank rate. But a mere change of bookkeeping such as the amalgamation of the two accounts would not make a half-pennyworth of difference to the extent of the Bank's responsibilities and its ability to meet them, and it is on variations in these factors that movements in bank rate ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... when he addresseth thee, and then thy words shall be acceptable. When a man hath wealth he ordereth his actions according to his own dictates. He doeth what he willeth.... The great man can effect by the mere lifting up of his hand what a [poor] man cannot. Since the eating of bread is according to the dispensation of God, a man cannot ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... attracted the eye. Everybody greeted her; evidently all except Thaddeus were acquainted with her. Her figure was fine and elegant, her bosom charming; her gown was of pink silk, low cut, and with short sleeves, the collar of lace. In her hands she twirled a fan for mere pastime, for it was not hot; the gilded fan as it waved spread around it a dense shower of sparks. Her head was like a milliner's model; the hair was frizzled and curled and intertwined with pink ribbons; amid them a diamond, half ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... verses by fashionable people, which were put into her vase at Batheaston, in competition for honourary prizes being mentioned, Dr. Johnson held them very cheap: 'Bouts-rim'es,' said be, 'is a mere conceit, and an old conceit; I wonder how people were persuaded to write in that manner for this lady.' I named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase. Johnson—'He was a blockhead for his pains!' Boswell. 'The Duchess of Northumberland ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Statisticians tell us that Americans have been consuming meat at the rate of 171 pounds per capita per year, which means nearly half a pound apiece every day for each man, woman, child, and infant in arms. Now, as mere infants and some older folk have not had any, it follows that many of us have had a great deal more. Did we need it? Shall we be worse off without it? Meat is undeniably popular. In spite of the rising ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... ejaculated Dave. "I s'pose that's the feminine of 'lunch.' I could eat a stack of pancakes and a whole can of beans right now. I'm too hungry for any mere 'luncheon.'" ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... have sent innumerable substance— By what means got, I leave to your own conscience— To furnish Rome, and to prepare the ways You have for dignities; to the mere undoing Of all the kingdom. Many more there are; Which, since they are of you, and odious, I will not taint ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... but was not connected with the egg. But they may once have been connected, and if so, there may be a common foundation both for the Greek and the Celtic conceptions in a Celtic element in Thrace.[712] The resemblances, however, may be mere coincidences, and horned serpents are known in other mythologies—the horn being perhaps a symbol of divinity. The horned serpent sometimes accompanies a god who has horns, possibly Cernunnos, the underworld ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... assembled in such space as the tent left on the lawn, or thickly filled the walks immediately adjoining it. The gay dresses of the ladies, the joyous laughter heard everywhere, and the brilliant sunlight over all, conveyed even to Leonard the notion, not of mere hypocritical pleasure, but actual healthful happiness. He was attracted from his revery, and timidly mingled with the groups. But Richard Avenel, with the fair Mrs. M'Catchley—her complexion more vivid, and her eyes more dazzling, and her step more elastic than usual—had turned ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... really pretty," thought Sara, "but how thin and blue. And what mere claws her hands are!" looking at the one clutching a corner of the sheet. "Poor girl! I don't believe she is much older than I, but she looks as if she had suffered enough for an old ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... credit affirm, that the king entered into an agreement with Bartholomew, and sent him to invite his brother to England; and that the nation in general were fond of the project, either from motives of mere curiosity ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... and the Spanish missionaries, on their arrival in the country, found men dressed as women and assuming their part. They were trained to this from youth, and often publicly married to the chiefs. Nero was evidently a mere plagiarist. The existence of analogous customs has been proved against the Guyacurus of La Plata, the natives of the Isthmus of Darien, the tribes of Louisiana, ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... a little stir of excitement in the small country church when Seth Winters and his following of young folks entered it, and by mere force of numbers so impressing the ushers that the very front pews were vacated in their behalf, although the farrier protested against this. However, he wasn't sorry to have his company all together, and motioned ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... hopes, however, were but faint and weakly; for they could not repose any extraordinary confidence in his good faith—not only because in all cases he conducted his affairs in a disinterested spirit, and with a perverse obstinacy of moral principle, whereas his seven relatives were mere novices, and young beginners in the trade of morality,—but also because, in all these moral extravagances of his (so distressing to the feelings of the sincere rascal), he thought proper to be very satirical, and had his heart so full of odd caprices, tricks, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... EST'MERE (2 syl.), king of England. He went with his younger brother Adler to the court of King Adlands, to crave his daughter in marriage; but King Adlands replied that Bremor, the sowdan, or sultan of Spain, had forestalled ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... in some secluded spot, and the calves soon begin to follow their mother about, and they follow her, too, into their second year. Horns begin to grow on the young bull before he is a year old, but they are mere knobs until he is a year and a half old, when spikes form; by the third year he is supplied with antlers. The perfect antlers of a big bull sometimes measure seventy inches across, yet every winter—in January or February—the horns ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... Naylor, or the Cheltenham Bell-man, or the Shep-herd of the Fleece, will be sure to prepare for your morning mastication. Fashion always requires some talismanic power to draw her votaries together, beyond the mere healthful attractions of salubrious air, pleasant rides, romantic scenery, and cheerful society; and this magnet the Chelts possess in the acknowledged medicinal properties of their numerous spas, the superior qualities of which ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... which their Republic wrote up on the walls of their buildings. Now for the first time he began to grasp the meaning of the bellicose Liberty which they adored as the terrible sword of Reason. No: it was not for them, as he had thought, mere sounding rhetoric and vague ideology. Among a people for whom the demands of reason transcend all others the fight for reason dominated every other. What did it matter whether the fight appeared absurd to nations who called themselves practical? To eyes ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... indomitable courage and resource of Haco. But it was not in this clumsy fashion that her genius moulded the materials at her command. She now controlled, as she believed, the mainspring of the resistance, which would probably cease with the death of Jean. But her aim went far beyond the mere submission of her antagonists; she wished that the blow should be struck in such a manner as to stamp out the false creed which had held the islanders in thrall, to prove to all sceptics the powers of her own Gods and the impotence of those of her opponents, and to commit ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... postponed until the arrival of Parker's counsel, O'Connell & Kilpatrick, of Grass Valley, and after they reached Cape Horn not a single word could be extracted from the prisoner. It is said that the inquisition was a mere farce; there being no witnesses present except one lady passenger, who, with commendable spirit, volunteered to lay over one day, to give in her testimony. We also learn that, after the trial, the justice, together with the prisoner and his counsel, were closeted ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... school were young men. On the word they went. Each knew what he had to do. Each had his little book of instructions. He needed no orders. The mere fact that mobilization had been ordered was all he needed to know. He knew already where he must report, where his uniform and his equipment would be given to him, and which regiment he was to join. He was a soldier by virtue of the three years, or ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... than to suffer me to take the least honor to myself, of anything which He has been pleased to do by me for the good of others. I am only a poor nothing. God is all-powerful. He delights to operate, and exercise His power by mere nothings. ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... sound rule that, before you determine to write a tragedy, you should make sure that you have a really tragic theme: that you can place your hero at such odds with life that reconciliation, or mere endurance, would be morally base or psychologically improbable. Moreover, you must strike deep into character before you are justified in passing capital sentence on your personages. Death is a disproportionate close for ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... said, approaching the bed. "The more you weep the sooner God will pardon you. Hold the sorrow of repentance as better than that of mere penitence. Weep, daughter, weep! You don't know how much I enjoy seeing you weep. Beat yourself on the breast also, but not hard, for you're ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... lately the invention of the spectroscope has informed us of the very elements which go to the composition of these numberless stars, and we can distinguish those which are in a similar condition to our sun from those differing from him. And photography has recorded for us objects too faint for mere sight to detect, even when aided by the most powerful telescope; too detailed and intricate for the most ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... eldest son, by having got a whole inheritance to yourself; while the manor of Granta is to be divided between your three younger brothers, Thomas of Lancashire, [153] Thomas of London [154] and Horace. We don't wish you dead to enjoy your seat, but your seat dead to enjoy you. I hope you are a mere elder brother, and live upon what your father left you, and in the way you 'were brought up in, poetry: but we are supposed to betake ourselves to some trade, as logic, philosophy, or mathematics. If I should prove a mere younger brother, and not turn to any Profession, would you receive ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... objection, then, to the organization against Mr. Lincoln is, that it is a mere party organization, arrayed under an old party name, and marching under an old party banner. In the midst of a great contest like this, when all old party names and prejudices should be forgotten, and when Democrats and Republicans should be united ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... incredible chance she was not dead (lo! the human heart), could he kill Ravengar? This question had presented itself to him as he sat in the dome listening to Ravengar's asseverations that Camilla lived. And the mere ridiculous, groundless suspicion that she lived, the mere fanciful dream that she lived, had quite changed and softened Hugo's mood. He had struggled hard to keep his resolution to kill Ravengar, but it had melted away; he had ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... perhaps, freed it from foreign oppressors. In their grateful admiration for these heroes, whose doings naturally became more and more marvellous with each generation that told of them, men could not believe that they should have been mere imperfect mortals like themselves, but insisted on considering them as directly inspired by the deity in some one of the thousand shapes they invested it with, or as half-divine of their own nature. The consciousness of the imperfection inherent to ordinary humanity, and the limited powers awarded ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... his solicitor—"has left two illegitimate children, both of them young women who are of an age to earn their own livelihood. Be so good as to tell them that neither you nor I have anything to do with questions of mere sentiment. Let them understand that Providence has restored to me the inheritance that ought always to have been mine, and I will not invite retribution on my own head by assisting those children to continue the imposition which their parents practised, and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Through all his hurt he had clung, not only to the picture, but also to some fond belief that Ailsa loved him still; that the words she had spoken and the things she had done, in the days of their courtship, had not been mere idle falsehoods. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... reflection." She quotes a "wonderfully just" passage from Milton, calls a licentious speech from Dryden's "State of Innocence" an "odious thing," and says "a thousand good things at random, but so strangely mixed, that you would be apt to say, all her wit is mere good luck, and not the effect of reason and judgment." In the second paper Sappho quotes examples of generous love from Suckling and Milton, but takes offence at a letter containing some sarcastic remarks on married women. We know that Steele was personally acquainted ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... first, and the resumed relationship of commander and subordinate was inexpressibly dear to him. It was something to see Adler waiting on the table in the "glass-room" in his blue jersey, standing at attention at the door, happy in the mere sight of Bennett at his meals. In the mornings, as soon as breakfast was ready, it was Adler's privilege to announce the fact to Bennett, whom he usually found already at work upon his writing. Returning thence to the dining-room, Adler waited for his ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... fingering his cylinder; his gaze roved me as I sat docile on my bunk. "Did you think George Prince was a leader of this? A mere boy. I engaged him a year ago—his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... and motion of the head. When he speaks, there is a strange peculiarity in his argument and expression; when he holds his tongue, his imagination teems with some extravagant reverie; his sobriety of demeanour is no other than a lucid interval, and his passion mere delirium. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... sung his own sonnets of true love, and it is perhaps on this account that William Smith finds him in a mood favourable to the defence of a young aspirant. At any rate, the language of the dedication rings with something more than mere desire for distinguished patronage. The youth looks with a beautiful humility upward toward the greater but "dear and most entire beloved" poet. His own sonnets, he says, are "of my study the budding springs"; they are but "young-hatched orphan things." He nowhere boasts that they will ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... obligations to foreign settlers; and therefore (without additional but doubtful arguments from any imaginary traces of Eastern, Egyptian, Phoenician rites and fables in the religion or the legends of Greece in her remoter age) I see sufficient ground for inclining to the less modern, but mere popular belief, which ascribes a foreign extraction to the early civilizers of Greece: nor am I convinced by the reasonings of those who exclude the Egyptians from the list ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with comparatively few exceptions, indolent; but they had naturally lapsed into the easy, slovenly methods, or rather want of method of the old slave life, and a few were doing the greater part of what was done. They were mere children in capacity, will and perseverance. Mrs. Griffin, with her intensely energetic nature, soon effected a change. Order took the place of disorder, under her direction; new cabins were built, neatness and system maintained, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Heartsease, looking just as she looked when I parted with her long, long years before. Ellen had not changed with time: she had written me the same sweet, placid, sympathetic letters from the beginning, and the beginning was when, a mere child, I had worn out my heart with longing for home, and had at last been welcomed back over the two seas and across the slender chain of flowers that binds the two Americas together—back to the land I love, California. Ellen would lead me in all the old paths; we would see the garden ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... idea of sharks, however, haunted me more than any other thought, for I knew that there were plenty of these sea monsters in the Mozambique Channel, and I dreaded more being caught by one of them than the mere fear of drowning, which now seemed to lose all its terrors, although I still swam on mechanically. Every time a wave broke over me, or when I splashed up the water with my own feet, the haunting horror seized me that ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... befell that, when Richard of Gloucester reached the first house of Shoreby, he was met in the mouth of the street by a mere handful of lances, whom he swept before his onset as the storm chases ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... toad's appearance does really deter its enemies. Such an hypothesis resembles an Empirical Law in its need of derivation (chap. xix. Sec.Sec. 1, 2). If underivable from, or irreconcilable with, known laws, it is a mere conjecture or prejudice. The absolute leviation of phlogiston, in contrast with the gravitation of all other forms of matter, discredited that supposed agent. That Macpherson should have found the Ossianic poems extant in the Gaelic memory, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... respectfully believe that from ancient times decisions upon important questions concerning the welfare of the empire were arrived at after consideration of the actual political condition and its necessities, and that thus results were obtained, not of mere temporary brilliancy, but which bore good fruits in ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... men ever were more long-suffering, or showed more unwillingness to rise in arms against their domestic tyrants, than the much-calumniated Huguenots of France. When we read the hideous edicts that were promulgated against them, and which were not mere empty threats, but were carried into execution throughout the land with unrelenting and strenuous ferocity, we feel that if ever the right of self-defence can make an appeal to arms justifiable, it was so in their instance. Extermination or apostasy ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... usually able to assign a nationality to each member of a mixed assembly; but there was a subtle resemblance to each other in these diners, which would have made the task a hard one. These were citizens of the world, and their likeness lay deeper than a mere accident of dress. In fact, the most remarkable thing about them was that they ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... lay in the Wharfe Valley above Skipton, and, though its acreage was large, a good deal was made up of mere moorland sheep pasture. Luckily he recognized that a poetical taste for a rural life might not necessarily imply the whole mystery of stock rearing and agriculture, and so he hired a capable foreman as philosopher and guide. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... both failed at lighting it. I, too, redressed when very close to the bag, and made a steep bank in order to escape the burst of flame from the ignited gas. The rockets leaped out, with a fine, blood-stirring roar. The mere sound ought to have been enough to make any balloon collapse. But when I turned, there it was, intact, a super-Brobdingnagian pumpkin, seen at close view, and still ripe, still ready for plucking. If I live to one hundred ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... never for the whole day came higher up than east by north. The consequence was, that we proceeded into a deep bight, and made no progress northwards up the river. At our camp it had dwindled to a mere thread, so narrow was the line of water in its bed. Its banks were as even and as smooth as those of a fortification, and covered with a thick, even sward. There was no perceptible current and the water was all muddy; but the scenery in ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... life: what do you know of necessity or hunger? I know both, and I tell you necessity and hunger are two gods before whom all who meet them bow down. Better a live jackal than a dead poet. Besides, is he not the greatest of kings? Bishop Thibault had me in gaol for a mere slip of the fingers and talked of a judicial noose—the third I've looked through—but the King fetched me out—God ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... been more than mere pleasant acquaintanceship between him and Miss Wynn? Rightly or wrongly, Sam Holt fancied it the case. He heard many allusions to former times and incidents, not knowing that as children they had been playmates. The gallant ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Her only distinct recollection of her native home was, that every morning early her mother poured out water before the rising sun. Her growing intelligence and keen appreciation of the blessings of civilization overreached mere animal grief at the separation from her mother. And as she knew more of the word of God, she became more deeply interested in ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... theory is that in terms of soil organic matter, vegetables grow quite well at the humus level that would peak naturally on a virgin site. In semi-arid areas I'd modify the theory to include an increase as a result of necessary irrigation. Expressed as a rough rule of thumb, a mere 2 percent organic matter in hot climates increasing to 5 percent in cool ones will supply sufficient biological soil activities to grow healthy vegetables if the mineral nutrient levels are high ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... of the matter was that the child was half-starved. Still the doctor insisted that she should have nothing but mutton or rice gruel, and those only in very small quantities. Under such treatment she wasted to a mere shadow of her ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... sequestered from the world, seek unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness, while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly: and they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives, which you have been vaunting in such elevated terms. Believe me, then, my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic, which could ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... consideration would be, the effect produced upon the national character, by the mere circumstance of the modes of preparing the different beverages of different countries. Much of the acknowledged inferiority of the inhabitants of wine countries, arises from the circumstance of having their liquor prepared to their hand. There is no stretch of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... But the mere name system calls up the static idea of a finished building. Here there is nothing of the kind. The new philosophy desires to be a proceeding as much as, and even more than, to be a system. It insists on being lived as well as thought. It demands ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... was so surprised that for a moment he could not collect his wits. Erick's grandfather! There stood the man bodily before him, whose existence had been to him a mere fairy tale, and the man looked so stately and so commanding, that everyone who beheld him must be inspired with respect. But at the same time there was something winning in his expression, which was familiar to the reverend gentleman ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... other proposal could have fitted in so well with his scheme. The mere fact that Dick was away would start people at the pleasant business of conjecturing mishaps and quarrels. Perhaps indeed the lovers had quarrelled. Perhaps Richard had taken his advice and was off to consult ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... * * * I can remember when mere living was delightful. I didn't envy the birds. That sounds sentimental to a man, doesn't it? But then that is the way a happy girl—a child—feels. I do not envy the birds now, though I suppose it is silly for a worldly woman to ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... his sword the sunbeams. The youthful year grows up in the dark days of winder. When its time has come, it goes forth triumphantly and destroys the darkness and the cold of winter. Through the symbolization the abstractions gain form and become persons; the saga is thus not a mere allegory, but a personification of nature's forces. The treasure may have entered the saga through the widespread idea of the dragon as the guardian of treasure, or it may represent the beauty of nature which unfolds ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... indisposition to the incurring of a similar expense again, unless it can be shown to promise, upon good probable grounds, a much better return than we have had; and, generally speaking, I cannot but fear that the mere difference in point of exertion which we can hope from this country, may not turn out to be worth the purchase-money in the estimation of the country at large, though I should hope they might easily acquiesce in a very considerable exertion, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... chiefly literary and poetic merits, some persons in France have been astonished that the obsequies of Beranger should have been so magnificently celebrated, while, but a few months before, the coffin of another poet, M. Alfred de Musset, had been followed by a mere handful of mourners; yet M. de Musset was capable of tones and flights which in inspiration and ardor surpassed the habitual range of Beranger. Without attempting here to institute a comparison, there is one thing essential to be remarked: in Beranger there was not only a poet, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... we find that he apologised to Cowley for having published this very treatise, which seemed to condemn that life of study and privacy to which they were both equally attached; and confesses that the whole must be considered as a mere sportive effusion, requesting that Cowley would not suppose its principles formed his private opinions. Thus LEIBNITZ, we are told, laughed at the fanciful system revealed in his Theodicee, and acknowledged that he never wrote it in earnest; that a philosopher is not always obliged ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... by their crestfallen demeanor with the inclemencies of the season, were peasants. The one was an old man, gray-haired, stooping, and apparently sixty years of age: the other, his son, as I afterward found out, was a mere youth of, at the most, twenty. They were strikingly alike in physiognomy, notwithstanding the difference in their years, but neither had anything at all remarkable either in his looks or general appearance: both were small, clumsy-limbed, somewhat simple-faced, rather ugly; and on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... the way, is not a moral tale. Virtue does not triumph, nor will vice be crushed. It is the mere record of a few mistakes, culminating in Mark Ruthine's blunder—a little note on human nature without vice in it; for there is little vice in human nature if one takes the trouble to sift that which ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... At first a mere thread of a footpath half blotted out by the grasses Sweeping triumphant across it, it wound between hedges of roses Whose blossoms were poised above leaves as pond lilies float on the water, While hidden by bloom ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... happened in cities and among crowds. I like to forget them. They smack of that slavery of the spirit which is so much worse than any mere slavery of the body. ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... always foists its egg upon other birds; or whether, on the other hand, it is not mending its manners in this respect. It has but little to unlearn or to forget in the one case, but great progress to make in the other. How far is its rudimentary nest—a mere platform of coarse twigs and dry stalks of weeds—from the deep, compact, finely woven and finely modeled nest of the goldfinch or king-bird, and what a gulf between its indifference toward its young and ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... me that you can not always out-plan, the other person. That is a lack, but it is not fatal. Are you great enough to run fast and far when it is a straight-away race depending only upon mere man-strength and indomitable determination?" ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... could be kidnaped, in broad daylight, in the heart of London, and be sent home, as it were, in pieces? Had sacrilegious hands already been playing pranks with that great lady's hair? Certainly, that hair was so like her hair that the mere resemblance made his grace's blood run cold. He turned on Messrs. Barnes and Moysey as though he would have liked to ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... fish with that, using but a dozen inches of line, and not letting so much as your eyebrows show above the bank. Is it a becoming attitude for a middle-aged citizen of the world? That depends upon how the fish are biting. Holing a put looks rather ridiculous also, to the mere observer, but it requires, like brook-fishing with a tip only, a very delicate wrist, perfect tactile sense, and a ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... advantage which Richard had gained over his great enemy; but the battle was a mere skirmish with the outposts of the potent foe. It was a victory, however, and it strengthened him. It improved the morale of his ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... mortals, thus overwhelmed with terror, form to themselves of the irresistible cause that could produce such extended effects? Without doubt they did not attribute these wide spreading calamities to nature; neither did they conceive they were mere physical causes; they could not suspect she was the author, the accomplice of the confusion she herself experienced; they did not see that these tremendous revolutions, these overpowering disorders, were the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... with Lee's plan. The tips were quickly passed round. But none of the hints were ever given, not a single one. A facer lay ahead of them beside which the mere receipt of the five letters was nothing. To be sure, the letters were the greatest sensation the outfit had enjoyed since they stood off successfully two troops of U. S. Cavalry, come to arrest them for killing twenty maurauding Utes. But what soon followed filled them with an ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... accompanied the men upon a hunt since the arrival of the guests. She never had cared particularly for the sport of killing. The tracking she enjoyed; but the mere killing for the sake of killing she could not find pleasure in—little savage that she had been, and still, to some measure, was. When Bwana had gone forth to shoot for meat she had always been his enthusiastic ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... straight as an arrow to dwindle in perspective to a mere thread. The little car leaped forward on the invisible down grade. Again I anchored myself to one of the top supports. A long, rangy fowl happened into the road just ahead of us, but immediately flopped clumsily, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... that Undine had been only a mere apparition of the forest, again gained ascendancy over him; indeed, amid the howling of the waves and the tempest, the cracking of the trees, and the complete transformation of a scene lately so calmly beautiful, he could almost have considered the whole peninsula with its cottage and ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... that was especially absorbing was the matter of lighting; catching the high lights and shadows. This was the first time the "bridge of lights" was used on any stage. Lighting has always been to me more than mere illumination. It is a revelation of the heart and soul of the story. It points the way. Lights should be to the play what the musical accompaniment is to the singer. A wordless story could be told by lights. Lights should be mixed as a painter mixes his colours—a bit of pink here, of blue there; ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... thought, a wave of which has reached us, is undoubtedly in the direction of bringing all subjects, however sacred, to the crucial test of argument, fact and experience, and our religious guides must not think they will prevail by the exhibit of mere contemptuous indifference to the free thought that prevails around them. If our great theological schools and seats of learning are to prove themselves equal to the demands of the present day, it will be by moving out of their ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... more than the mere setting to rise again of a heavenly body. The perfume of a flower, the sighing of the wind, suggesting some harmony or song, a full or crescent moon, recalled thoughts and associations of Sylvia. Everything seemed to bring out memory, and ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the upper Agsan, there were only two towns of Maggugan conquistas—Tagusab and Pilar—and even these were mere suggestions of towns. It may be, however, that since the appointment of a deputy governor, the great numbers of Christianized Maggugans that had fled from the wrath of their enemies into the swamp region at the headwaters of the Mnat River have returned and that Maggugan ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... written a line. I will show him the manner of man you are, and a box of bright volumes shall be packed for you. The one condition is that you shall write me in return a sheet of similar appreciations. The only thing is to know what one likes, and strike out a line for oneself; the rest is mere sheep-like grazing—forty feeding ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... each other. Voltaire did not spare the King's poems; and the King has left on record his opinion of Voltaire's diplomacy. "He had no credentials," says Frederic, "and the whole mission was a joke, a mere farce." ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... considered as a curiosity, from other reasons than those which mere criticism affords. The poem was bad, the readers were many. The subject was sacred, the author a reputed atheist, and the profits which it produced exceeded two thousand pounds sterling. The fortunate writer relieved himself from the jaws of famine by this strange incomprehensible ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... a disgraced and ruined man, broken in health and spirits, contest the mere details of life with a high-spirited woman ten ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... is correct when he says that the land and sea forces were under separate commands, and it is equally true that but for the conciliating temper of Pepperrell, harmony could not have been preserved between the two chiefs; but when he calls Warren a mere spectator, he does glaring injustice to that gallant officer, whose activity and that of his captains was incessant, and whose services were invaluable. They maintained, with slight lapses, an almost impossible blockade, without ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... his limbs and joints, one after another, with invincible patience and courage, repeating these words, "Lord, teach me thy wisdom:" for the tyrants had forgot to cut out his tongue. After so many martyrdoms, his body lay a mere trunk weltering in its own blood. The executioners themselves, as well as the multitude, were moved to tears and admiration at this spectacle, and at such an heroic patience. But Arcadius, with a joyful countenance, surveying his scattered limbs all around ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Waste of energy brings waste of life and victory thrown away. A regimental leader has, with his many other burdens, to endure the intolerable toil of taking thought, and of transmitting thought without pause into action. And those who work with him are not mere figures, not only items of a unit, but are intimate friends whose lives he must devote himself to preserve, whose lives he must be ready to sacrifice as freely as his own. It is well that we neither know nor decide the issues of life and death. There is, I think, a second meaning in ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... (268)—a flower growing out of the debris of the avalanche. The Coda begins, at measure 374, with a passionate insistence upon the fundamental rhythm, driven home with sharp hammer-blows and, as in all Beethoven's symphonic movements, furnishes an overpowering climax, not a mere perfunctory close. The second Movement, in A-flat major, is a series of free[154] Variations (five in number) based on a theme, Andante con moto,[155] of great rhythmic vitality, peculiarly rich and suave—announced, as it is, by 'celli and violas ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... branch. A little later, again, the branch at Liverpool, one of the most important, had been in peril owing to mismanagement and defalcation, and the man had gone to take charge of it, and again, by mere chance apparently, Jones had been promoted to the same place. And this pursuit of the Assistant Manager had continued for several years, often, too, in the most curious fashion; and though Jones had never exchanged a single word with him, or been so much as ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... view of the position expressed by the commander-in-chief, the month of July had passed, and the early days of August had already arrived; and yet the camp was not formed, nor anything more than that mere handful of troops mustered about Tilbury, to defend the road from Dover to London. The army at Tilbury never, exceeded ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... outcasts there; and I saw an infant literally die of hunger; a boy suffering from alcoholism; and a consumptive charwoman rinsing clothes outside in the cold. Then I returned home, and a footman with a white tie opens the door for me. I see my son—a mere lad—ordering that footman to fetch him some water; and I see the army of servants who work for us. Then I go to visit Bors—a man who is sacrificing his life for truth's sake. I see how he, a ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... being changed, or, if he was very gracious, give him a slight nod. With respect and a certain awe the people looked upon even these subordinate servants of the new principle, and the Silesians were not alone in this. Something new had come into the world in general. It was not a mere figure of speech when Frederick called himself the foremost servant of his State. As he had taught his wild nobility on the battlefield that it was the highest honor to die for the Fatherland, so his ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... I must have a fixed determination, and not a mere fluctuating and soon broken intention. I must have a steadfast affection, and not merely a fluttering love, that, like some butterfly, lights now on this, now on that, sweet flower, but which has a flight straight as a carrier pigeon to its cot, which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... covered, and without an ax it was impossible to make a hole. At last it began to dawn, but the fog hid the sun. Nine o'clock, and he had not yet found the shore, though the fog seemed to grow less and the sun's disk was visible, like a pale, colorless ball, a mere shadow of its glorious self. The air was full of countless glittering particles of ice, which melted into a dazzling vapor. Now he will discover ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... even the mere forms of friendship, are the touchstone of a man. O'Neill was credited in his world with the friendship of Regnault. It had even been to him a matter of some social profit; there were many who deferred willingly to the great man's intimate. O'Neill saw no reason to set them right, but he knew ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Dryden, nor that of more recent date by Sir Walter Scott; and, possibly, either of those works would render my present Query needless. It relates to a copy of Absalom and Achitophel now lying before me, which is a mere chap-book, printed on bad paper, in the most economical manner, and obviously intended to be sold at a very reasonable rate: indeed, at the bottom of the title-page, which is dated "1708," we are told that it was "Printed and sold by H. Hills, in Black-fryars, near the Water-side, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... the list of his weaknesses; but so far from being convicted by seventy witnesses, he does not appear to have been directly criminated by one. In short, I look upon these aspersions as the effects of mere malice. How is it possible a buccaneer should have been so good a scholar as Blackbourne certainly was? He who had so perfect a knowledge of the classics (particularly of the Greek tragedians), as to be able to read them with the same ease as he could Shakespeare, must have taken great ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... under the passions? Think, O my brother, how many courts there are in Italy: are the princes more fortunate than you? Which among them all loves truly, deeply, and virtuously? Among them all is there any one, for his genius, for his generosity, for his gentleness, ay, for his mere humanity, worthy to ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... for harvest with steam-ploughs here. How could mere horses face the endless furrows? And they attack the earth with toothed, cogged, and spiked engines that would be monstrous in the shops, but here are only speckles on the yellow grass. Even the locomotive is cowed. A train of freight cars is passing along a line that comes out of the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... intelligence of the American people, who are ordinarily alert and analytical, to realize how few of them really know how serious a matter constipation is. They don't know because they have given the matter absolutely no thought. They have accepted it as a mere matter of fact, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... is a mere hypothesis based on the idea that "if there was an Iliad at all in the ninth century, its length must have been such as was compatible with the conditions of an oral delivery,"—"a poem or poems short enough to be recited at ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... Narkom, with a slight shudder. "Awful thing, wasn't it? Gave me the creeps to read about it. The chap who was killed, poor beggar, was a mere boy, not twenty, son of the Chevalier di Roma himself. There was a great stir about it. Talk of the authorities forbidding the performance, and all that sort of thing. They never did, however, for on investigation—— Ah, the tea at last, thank fortune. ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... and, while disavowing the treaty, did not proceed against the pensionary. England declared war on December 20. The opposition maintained that the government had behaved arrogantly and was actuated by a desire for plunder, and that it was unjust to found a war on a mere proposal emanating from the magistracy of a single city and not confirmed by the states-general. Yet, if the conduct of Holland is viewed as a whole, it will be found to justify the course pursued by the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... the town rose a picturesque building. Originally it had been a mere case to hold people. The shell had been so thin, so devoid of excrescence, and so closely drawn over the accommodation granted, that the grim character of what was beneath showed through it, as the shape of a body is ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... heed the common good, and not any private good, and would appoint officials and those who are to rule the city, not by party or prejudice, not for flatteries or bribery, but with virtue and reason alone; and they would choose men mature and excellent, and not mere children—such as fear God and love the Commonwealth and not their own particular advantage. Now in this way, their state and the city is preserved in peace and unity. But unjust deeds, and living in cliques, and the appointment to rule and government of men who do not ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... are deceptive. No. 1 is the saving of an abnormal grant, Nos. 2 and 5 signify mere transfers to Grants in Aid of Local Taxation, No. 7 a transfer of duties to ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... dressed up Abraham in the uniform of one of our dead troopers; and when at last a Kurdish chief rode up with a hundred men at his back and demanded to know our business, Ranjoor Singh called Abraham to interpret. We could easily have beaten a mere hundred Kurds, but to have won a skirmish just then would have helped us almost as little as to lose one. What we wanted was free ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... silver idol, and ne'er worshipp'd thee!— It is too late—or thou should'st have my knee— Too late now for the old Ephesian vows, And not divine the crescent on thy brows!— Yet, call thee nothing but the mere mild Moon, Behind those chestnut boughs, Casting their dappled shadows at my feet; I will be grateful for that simple boon, In many a thoughtful verse and anthem sweet, And bless thy dainty ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... way over, in overdrive, Sergeant Madden again dozed a great deal of the time. Sergeants do not fraternize extensively with mere patrolmen, even on assignments. Especially not very senior sergeants only two years from retirement. Patrolman Willis met with the sergeant's approval, to be sure. Timmy was undoubtedly more competent as a cop, but Timmy would have been in a highly emotional state with his girl on the ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the junta became a mere show. Everything was brought before the King in private, and he gave no decision until the Queen and Madame des Ursins had passed theirs. This conduct met with no opposition from our Court, but our ministers at ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... at the time with the Ape and the Fox, the confederate impostors, charlatans, and bullying swindlers, who had stolen the lion's skin, and by it mounted to the high places of the State, it seems to be a proof of the indifference of the Court to the power of mere literature, that it should have been safe to write and publish so freely, and so cleverly. Dull Catholic lampoons and Puritan scurrilities did not pass thus unnoticed. They were viewed as dangerous to the State, and dealt with accordingly. The fable contains ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... manners, and uses uncommonly correct and beautiful language. Let it not be supposed that, with such witnesses as these among them, our English brethren have derived their first practical knowledge of slavery from Uncle Tom's Cabin. The mere knowledge that two such persons as William and Ellen Crafts have been rated as merchantable commodities, in any country but ours would be a sufficient comment ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Canadian politics; they concern the leaders of to-day, all minor figures in the 1917 drama. Because the Union government passed without leaving behind it tangible and visible manifestations of its power, there are those who regard it as a mere futility—a sword-cut in the water, as the French say. But of the Union movement it might well be said: Si monumentum requiris circumspice. The spirit behind the movement passed with the war, but it left the old traditional ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... by way of the Tarim Valley, are eager to seize upon the faintest tradition, or what seems to them an apparent tradition, in support of these preconceived views; ignoring the obviously just argument that, if we are to pay any attention to mere traditions at all, we must in common fairness give priority in value to such traditions as there are, rather than such traditions as are not, but only as might be. For instance, there was a Chinese ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... and continual howlings seemed to claim our succour; but there was no possibility of relieving them in the slightest degree, except that some of them crept to the opening in our carriage through which the smoke escapes; and the more they felt the warmth closer they crept, and then, through mere feebleness, losing their equilibrium, they rolled into the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... China and India to see antiquity. Superficially it may be so, but not fundamentally. Any country is old where birth and death are like the coming and dropping of leaves on a tree, and where the individual is of as much importance as the leaf. Old world and New world are not mere relatives; they are as near ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... discovery of the robber of the treasury by Hadding is a variant of the world-old Rhampsinitos tale, but less elaborate, possibly abridged and cut down by Saxo, and reduced to a mere moral example in favour of the goldenness of silence and the danger of letting the tongue ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... instant looked keenly back; his eyes contracted in that time to a mere narrow slit; then, sudden as thought, he sprang back into the corner. He knew now. This was the man who held the aces at the barbecue, the railroad man—Whispering Smith. Kennedy, directly across the table, watched the lightning-like move. ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... even the family affection. It would be well on this account, if no other, if every child could be wisely and adequately diagnosed in respect to mental power so that fewer mistakes would be made in confounding greatness with showiness or creative power with mere discriminating taste. ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... opium license, precipitated the revolution of 1887. Overawed by the unanimity of the movement, and deserted by his followers, the King yielded without a struggle. The Constitution which he was pleased to sign on the 7th of July, 1887, was a revision of that of 1864, intended to put an end to mere personal government, and to make the executive responsible to the representatives of the people. Office-holders were made ineligible to seats in the Legislature. The Ministers were henceforth to be removable only upon a vote of want of confidence ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... was a dismal yesterday at least, perhaps it was to me! The genius of England might be a mere mercenary man of the world, and employed all his attention to turn aside cannonballs from my Lord Stair, to give new edge to his new Marlborough's sword: was plotting glory for my Lord Carteret, or was thinking of furnishing his own apartment in Westminster ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... flung himself on the sofa and turned his face to the wall. Devilish! But he had not been there five minutes before his anger seemed childish and evaporated into the chill of deadly and insistent fear. He was perceiving himself up against much more than a mere incident, up against her nature—its pride and scepticism—yes—and the very depth and singleness of her love. While she wanted nothing but him, he wanted and took so much else. He perceived this but dimly, as part of that feeling that he could not break through, of the irritable longing to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... answer he turned away from her. He had done all that he could do. And, besides, he thought that the woman's physical injuries were superficial and that her distress was doubtless that of mere violent hysteria. ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... joy to her heart. With this joy filling and pervading it, she awoke. From that hour Mrs. Voss never doubted for a single moment that her son was dead, nor that he had come to her in a vision of the night. As a Christian woman with whom faith was no mere ideal thing or vague uncertainty, she accepted her great affliction as within the sphere and permission of a good and wise Providence, and submitted herself to the sad dispensation with a patience that surprised ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... It is no mere accident that in not one of the hundredfold provinces of life, from art to military organization, from State-craft to jointstock-companies, from saintliness to table-utensils, have we Germans discovered a single essential and enduring form. And again, there is scarcely one ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... been willing there was no opportunity for more than a word or a touch of her fingers—well, save once, when her father went himself to seek the bottle of oil she had been sent to fetch, and was some time in finding it. But even that was a mere nothing, and might have happened to ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... The heights of Peterswald were in his possession on the 28th; it would have been well for his master had he attempted nothing further. Vandamme, however, was ambitious of earning the marshal's baton by something more than mere obedience to an order received. He saw that Toeplitz was uncovered, and knowing that the possession of that place would render him master of all the passes that diverge from it, he resolved, on the 29th, to make the essay. He descended ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... such beautiful things. For my part, I think the duty of the true priest is not to grovel to the crowd and call wrong right and right wrong for the sake of a fleeting popularity. How striking! What a lesson to the Bishop, if he were only here. He is so lax about Dissent, as if right and wrong were mere matters of opinion! What a gift he has! I know he will eat nothing for luncheon. If only we were somewhere else where the best joints were a little cheaper, and his talents more appreciated." And Mrs. Gresley closed her ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... much more about the curious history of the Boston edition than I do. And the reader will not need, even in these lines of mine, any light on the curious question about Madam Vergoose, or her son-in-law Mr. Fleet, or the Contes de Ma Mere l'Oye, which are so carefully discussed in the preface. All this is admirably discussed also in Mr. William Whitmore's paper published in Albany in 1889, and reprinted in Boston in 1892. In that paper he reproduced in facsimile Isaiah Thomas's ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous
... different initials ([Arabic] instead of [Arabic]), it can scarcely be doubted that the Kalchi and Kalakchi of Timur's Institutes are mere mistranscriptions of the same word, e.g.: "I ordered that 12,000 Kalchi, men of the sword completely armed, should be cantoned in the Palace; to the right and to the left, to the front, and in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... home in the north, and which, though greatly overladen with reflection and remark, has preserved for me both the thoughts and incidents of an early time more freshly than if they had been suffered to exist till now as mere recollections in the memory. I next set myself to record, in a somewhat elaborate form, the traditions of my native place and the surrounding district; and, taking the work very leisurely, not as labour, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Torlonia furbished it up at his own expense, and brought to light the inscription which proved it to be Maxentius's instead of Caracalla's Circus. The remains are so perfect that it is easy to trace the whole arrangement of the ancient games. Forsyth says very truly that the Fountain of Egeria is a mere trough; but everybody praises the water, which is delicious, and it falls with a murmur which invites to idleness and contemplation. This fountain has been beautifully sung, but it is a miserable ruin, ill ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... forget Suki or Dhritarashtri yet. Then Kraunchi bare the crane and owl, And Bhasi tribes of water fowl: Vultures and hawks that race through air With storm-fleet pinions Syeni bare. All swans and geese on mere and brook Their birth from Dhritarashtri took, And all the river-haunting brood Of ducks, a countless multitude. From Suki Nala sprang, who bare Dame Vinata surpassing fair. From fiery Krodhavasa, ten Bright ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... in November 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the center and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, UN sanctions on its largest market Yugoslavia, and ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Ham, and Japhet, the various Allophyllian and American aborigines would appear to have existed, and to have been spread over the world before the above nations overran it. On the other hand, supposing that the mere power of reproduction be not of itself sufficient evidence of identity of species, the similarity of physical formation, of periodic changes, and of psychical instincts, are strongly corroborative of this evidence, and would of themselves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... seldom any inducement to him to buy. It was sufficient to him that he had the book.' 'The garniture of a book,' he would observe,'was apt to recommend it to a great part of our modern collectors'; he himself was not a mere nomenclator, and versed only in title-pages, 'but had made that just and laudable use of his books which would become all those that set up for collectors.' He was the possessor of thirteen fine Caxtons, which fetched altogether less ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... died for the liberties of Ghent, and who might in these days be thought a mere ordinary craftsman if the historian omitted to say that he possessed over forty thousand silver marks, obtained by the manufacture of sail-cloth for the all-powerful Venetian navy,—this Claes had a friend in the famous sculptor in wood, Van Huysum of Bruges. The artist had ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... case of natural agents. These, when unappropriated, and to be had for the taking, do not enter into the cost of production, save to the extent of the labor which may be necessary to fit them for use. Even when appropriated, they do not (as we have already seen) bear a value from the mere fact of the appropriation, but only from scarcity—that is, from limitation of supply. But it is equally certain that they often do ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... shall such men be reckoned of none account, and their labors of no value? No, the wealth of both Indies cannot balance their work; nor all the talents ever possessed by fallen man, with all the orthodoxy which mere talents are capable of acquiring, without that divine teaching which many of those, thus contemned, possess. That same small discourse, those few plain points, these same things repeated in the same way, contain truths by which ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... old lady and he was tall and stalwart; his handsome face was youthful, and she wished him to know that she thought him a mere boy. ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... on the struggles that went on between the prince president and the Assembly, from December, 1848, to November, 1851. It is enough to say that the Chamber, from being the governing power in France, found itself reduced to a mere legislative body much hampered by the mistrust and contempt of the Executive. Its members of course hated "the Man at the Elysee," or "Celui-ci," as they called him. The Socialists hated the Assembly even more than they hated the president. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... 1: Because evil is the privation of good, and not a mere negation, as was said above (A. 3), therefore not every defect of good is an evil, but the defect of the good which is naturally due. For the want of sight is not an evil in a stone, but it is an evil in an animal; since it is against the nature ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... court? Your number and your stature Are both advanced; all six foot high at least, In bearskins clad, Swiss, Swedes, and Brandenburghers." In a song which appeared just after the entrance into Exeter, the Irish are described as mere dwarfs in comparison of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more to the EXPRESSION, of, rather than to a meaning in a deeper sense—which may be a feeling influenced by some experience perhaps of a spiritual nature in the expression of which the intellect has some part. "The nearer we get to the mere expression of emotion," says Professor Sturt in his "Philosophy of Art and Personality," "as in the antics of boys who have been promised a holiday, the further we get away ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... institutions.' The chamber will want before long to administrate, and the administrators will want to legislate. The government will try to administrate and the administrators will want to govern, and so it will go on. Laws will come to be mere regulations, and ordinances will be thought laws. God made this epoch of the world for those who like to laugh. I live in a state of jovial admiration of the spectacle which the greatest joker of modern ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... auxiliis etiam artis usus sum."[272] Again with regard to the episode of the ignition of his bed twice in the same night, without visible cause, he says that this portent may have come about by some supernatural working; but that, on the other hand, it may have been the result of mere chance. He tells another story of an experience which befell him when he was in Belgium.[273] He was aroused early in the morning by the noise made outside his door by a dog catching fleas. Having got out of bed to see to this, he heard the sound as of a key being softly put into the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... rose to do Miss Sherard's bidding that Miss Abingdon, of course, found it quite hopeless to try to assert herself. Kitty, further, had a ridiculous way of eating, which Miss Abingdon could not approve. She ate mere morsels of everything and talked the whole time, very often with the air of a gourmet; and she would lay down her knife and fork, after a meal such as a healthy blackbird might have enjoyed, as though she had finished some aldermanic ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... submit to,—a chain of pleasure-grounds all around her. The Bostonian has looked up at the gilded dome of the State House, and down at the reflection of his own features in the Frog Pond, long enough. Our city has always been a centre; and it must not act as if it considered itself a mere feeder. We must provide ourselves with the complete equipment, not of a village community, not of a thriving town, but of a true metropolis, large enough for a citizen of the world to live in without feeling himself provincialized, ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... natural, and Mr. Middleton continued: "Ashton was wasted to a mere skeleton by ship fever, and my heart yearned toward him. Perhaps I felt a stronger sympathy for him when I learned that he was an American. He, like myself, had run away. The vessel, in which he had embarked, had been wrecked, and he, ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... earliest prison work, entitled "Profitable Meditations," was in verse, and neither this nor his later metrical ventures before his release—his "Four Last Things," his "Ebal and Gerizim," and his "Prison Meditations"—can be said to show much poetical power. At best he is a mere rhymester, to whom rhyme and metre, even when self-chosen, were as uncongenial accoutrements "as Saul's armour was to David." The first-named book, which is entitled a "Conference between Christ and a Sinner," in the form of a poetical dialogue, according to Dr. Brown has "small literary merit ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... conscious; nor, indeed, have I found words since. I ran sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into the squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a stick; I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense,—irresponsible babble; the tune was an improvisation, a weary, unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and yet it seemed to me a genuine utterance, and just at that moment the one thing fitting and right ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... The machine.—A Cartesian expression. Descartes considered animals as mere automata. According to Pascal, whatever does not proceed in us from reflective thought is a product of a necessary mechanism, which has its root in the body, and which is continued into the mind in imagination and the passions. ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... church; but when I came to the part about his boarding with George and Miss Temple he could not help laughing. He excused himself, however, and told me to go on. He looked very happy when I had told him my story, and no one would have supposed that he had ever assumed the air of a mere common acquaintance. ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... for your noble faith in my poor girl, when all the world was against her, I can not express in mere words; but I shall rejoice in my ability to supplement it by a solid reward as soon as I am reinstated in my property," he exclaimed, as he wrung her ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... scrawled note which she knew Percy had not seen, but what did it signify? An eccentric old lady's penchant for match making? Perhaps she was even more guilty than the girl in attempting to lead Percy to see in Adelaide more than he ought. She might even take an old flirt's delight in the mere number of conquests made by her granddaughter. Or was the scrawled note slipped into the envelope by a prank- playing fourteen-year-old brother? In any case was it wise that Percy should see the note? She could probably do nothing better than ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... National Library, with all its immense accumulations, and in Hazlitt's Collections, many thousands of items are probably deficient; while the two sets of books above mentioned contain a very slender percentage of the whole—in fact, mere representative selections. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... folding of the earth's crust is caused by the fact that the "crust," or skin of the earth, has ceased to cool, being warmed by the sun, and therefore does not shrink, whilst the great white-hot mass within (in comparison with which the twenty-mile-thick crust is a mere film) continually loses heat, and shrinks definitely in volume as its temperature sinks. The crust or jacket of stratified rock deposited by the action of the waters on the surface of the globe has been compelled—at ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... that Bhava is here used in the sense of that from which all things now and into which all things merge when the universal dissolution comes. Or, it may imply, mere existence, without reference, that is, to any attribute by which it is capable of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... half-tolerant smile crept into Agatha's eyes. The mere idea that the sunny-tempered, brilliant young man whom she had given her heart to could have changed or degenerated in any way seemed absurd to her. Winifred, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... interests and experiences came to mingle that had never consciously approached each other before,—in which the little household of independent existences in Leicester Place was fused into an almost family relation all at once, after years of mere juxtaposition,—before the end of that ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... native dogs of all regions approximate closely in size, coloration, form, and habit to the native wolf of those regions. Of this most important circumstance there are far too many instances to allow of its being looked upon as a mere coincidence. Sir John Richardson, writing in 1829, observed that "the resemblance between the North American wolves and the domestic dog of the Indians is so great that the size and strength of the wolf seems to be the only difference. I have more than once mistaken a band ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... To Constance, Sophia's mere enterprise was just as staggering as her success. Fancy her deliberately going out that Saturday morning, after her mother's definite decision, to enlist Miss Chetwynd ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... dull boy of yesterday. He was speaking to the exhorter and appeared not to have her in sight or mind, although, in fact, her untimely levity ran him through like a dart. His absurdly deep voice was rich with a note not of mere forbearance but of veritable comradery, yet his eyes, as they held the offender's, were as big and dangerous as she had ever seen her mighty father's and she laughed on for what laughter might be worth, the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... only make progress in this direction if we frankly adopt the simple everyday conception of living things—which many of us have had drilled out of us—that they are active, purposeful agents, not mere complicated aggregations of protein and other substances. Such an attitude is probably quite as sound philosophically as the opposing one, but I have not in this place attempted any justification of it. I have touched very lightly upon the controversy ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... heavenly!" and Phebe's face shone at the mere idea; but fell again as she added wistfully, "Only I'm afraid I ought not to let you do it, Miss Rose. It will take time, and maybe the Doctor ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... men and women, of the highest rank—the most noteworthy among his feminine correspondents being Lady Louisa Stuart (sister of the Marquis of Bute and grand-daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) and Lady Abercorn. With the former the correspondence is always on the footing of mere though close friendship, literary and other; in part at least of that with Lady Abercorn, I cannot help suspecting the presence, especially on the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... others, show that incest is not the cause but the effect of mental disorders. This does not mean that the offspring of such unions are not slightly tainted by the mere fact of such concentrated incest, but these cases are comparatively so rare that they do not contribute to any appreciable extent, as incest, in causing degeneration of the race; the factor which causes degeneration is here mental disease, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... tell a little of the why of things." And Colonel Kirby hoped it was the punkah, and not funk, that made the sweat stream down his neck until his collar was a mere uncomfortable mess. "For more than a year there has been much talk in India. The winds have brought it all to me. There was talk—and the government has known it, for I am one of those who told the government—of a ripe time for ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... things. Citizens said that their largest spiders could not more than spread their legs over an ordinary saucer, and that they had always been considered honest. Here was testimony of a clergyman against the testimony of mere worldlings—interested ones, too. On the whole, I judged it best to lock ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... not," he said sulkily. "I can't walk. I haven't walked two consecutive blocks in three years. Automobiles have made legs mere ornaments—and some not even that. We could have Johnson out there chasing us over the country ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to compare each bull which he received with the Gospels and the canon law, and if he found anything in it that would not stand this test, he tore it in pieces. In 1254, one of these letters commanded him to institute to a benefice a nephew of the Pope, a mere child, besides containing what was called the clause "non obstante" (namely, in spite of), by which the Pope claimed, as having power to bind and loose, to set aside and dispense with existing statutes ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... within him that spurned this ignoble existence, and called for higher aims and worthier exertion. He was not vicious, he never had been vicious, or, as somebody else said, his vices were all refined vices; but a life of mere self-indulgence, although pursued without self- satisfaction, is constantly lowering the standard and weakening the forces of virtue lessening the whole man. He felt it so; and to leave his ordinary scenes and occupations, and ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of recent years, and the outcome of the same so far gives me at any rate more unmixed pleasure than the way in which the theorists have been confounded, those men who cut and carve and label human beings, whether individually or in the aggregate, as if they were mere blocks of wood. The Oriental mind, we have been told, cannot do this; Oriental prejudices and idiosyncrasies and modes of thought and hereditary influences will not admit of that; the traditions of the Far East, that mysterious thing, will prevent the other—we ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... to fortune, one of our poorest republican generals who have headed armies. He has not, during all his campaigns, collected more than a capital of eight millions of livres—a mere trifle compared to the fifty millions of Massena, the sixty millions of Le Clerc, the forty millions of Murat, and the thirty-six millions of Augereau; not to mention the hundred millions of Bonaparte. It is also true that Jourdan ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... may still be readers who suppose that Burns was a mere unsophisticated singer, without power of self-criticism, it may be as well to insert here a passage from a Commonplace Book written in 1783, ten years after ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... ventured to flee from France to England, where he did homage to Edward as King of France for the duchy which he claimed. He then went to Brittany, and there shortly afterwards died. The new Duke of Brittany, also named John, was a mere boy when he was thus robbed of both his parents' care, and his cause languished for want of a head. Edward took upon himself the whole direction of Brittany as tutor of the little duke. Northampton was once more sent thither, but for a time the war degenerated into ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... had made himself exceedingly popular; and the witty conversation of this gentleman kept the whole dinner-table convulsed with laughing, to such an extent that his colleague-in-arms, our quondam Mafeking commander, General Baden-Powell, who was also of the party, was reduced to mere silent appreciation. This impromptu feast, given under difficulties which almost amounted to siege conditions, was again an evidence of the versatility and inherent hospitality of the French nation, and the memory of that pleasant ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... can sink so low but that Jesus Christ will stoop to take his hand. Who so low, who so poor, who so despised as the American slave? The law almost denies his existence as a person, and regards him for the most part as less than a man—a mere thing, the property of another. The law forbids him to read or write, to hold property, to make a contract, or even to form a legal marriage. It takes from him all legal right to the wife of his bosom, the children of his body. He can do nothing, possess nothing, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... upon a ledge of rock just outside the area of a great elm tree, and as they looked down and afar off, Black Lake seemed a mere puddle with toy cabins ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... oak that hung by his chimney, or bent double over the rosary of stone beads brought to him a cargo of silks and laces out of France. One night he had watched hour after hour, because a gentle and favourable wind was blowing, and La Mere de Misericorde was much overdue; and he was about to lie down upon his heap of straw, seeing that the dawn was whitening the east, and that the schooner would not dare to round Roughley and come to an anchor after daybreak; when he saw a long line ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... The mere fact of being able to exchange letters with Deena was a revelation to French, and as he walked home from their interview his fancy was busy putting himself in Simeon's place. The paths that lead through another man's kingdom are never very safe for the wandering feet of imagination. It is an old ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... her truly accomplished. One or two things for which she had real taste and ability thoroughly mastered would have been a far greater source of delight to her husband, and of satisfaction to herself, than the mere handful of unripe fruit which she had gathered from a dozen different branches of the tree of knowledge, and in the collecting of which she had, in a measure, impaired the elasticity of her mind and her bodily strength, and found no time for making herself mistress of ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... meditated. There was no use in staying where he was, that would bring him no nearer to Leoline, and nothing was to be gained by killing the count beyond the mere transitory pleasure of the thing. On the other hand, he had an intense and ardent desire to re-visit the ruin, and learn what had become of Miranda—the only draw-back being that, if they were found they would both be most assuredly beheaded. Then, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... furious vituperation—something that affected certain nerves within his body in a new and awful manner. Once or twice in his life he had been conscious of it before, once in an empty room, once in a room tenanted by a mere outline beneath a sheet and closed by a ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... was unequalled. His knowledge of men enabled him to determine the character of every juror, and his versatility to adapt his argument or address to their feelings and prejudices so effectually as to secure a verdict in mere compliment to the advocate. He left the bench to enter the political arena. It was here he found the field nature designed him for. Before the people, he was omnipotent. At this period Dawson, Cooper, Colquitt, Cobb, Stephens, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... mode of treating the question the order of the terms is numerical, and though the amount of labour is such as might well have deterred a younger man, yet the details were easy, and a great part of it might be entrusted to a mere computer. The work was published in 1886, when its author was eighty-five years of age. For some little time previously he had been harassed by a suspicion that certain errors had crept into the computations, and accordingly he addressed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... necessary. This plan may possibly be admissible in a very small school; that is, in one of ten or twelve pupils. I am convinced, however, that it is very bad here. No vigilant watch, which it is possible for any teacher to exert, will prevent a vast amount of mere talk, entirely foreign to the business of the school. I tried this plan very thoroughly, with high ideas of the dependence which might be placed upon conscience and a sense of duty, if these principles are properly brought out to action in an effort to sustain the system. I was told ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... had left him. Left him for a stripling of a slave—a mere creature from the public market. What was the loss of gold and jewels and quarries to this! And how could he ever hold up his head again, with this heavy shame upon it! For there could be no doubt;—alas! no. Had he not seen ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... virtue of their office, and that religious orders should not be exempt from the authority of the ordinaries, nor be placed under the jurisdiction of foreign superiors. The /Punctuation of Ems/ reduced the primacy of the Pope to a mere primacy of honour, and had it been acted upon, it must have led ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... saying that, in like manner with the mental phenomena called sensations, all the other states of mind have for their proximate causes nervous states, there would be no original laws of mind, and Psychology would be a mere branch of Physiology. But at present, this tenet is not proved, however highly probable; and, at all events, the characteristics of those nervous states are quite unknown; consequently the uniformities of succession among the mental phenomena, which undoubtedly do exist, and which ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... Gates found the colony in a pitiable condition. The tomahawk of the Indians, famine and pestilence had wrought terrible havoc with the settlers. A mere handful of poor wretched men were left to welcome the newcomers and to beg eagerly to be taken away from the ill-fated country. The town "appeared rather as the ruins of some auntient fortification, then that ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... I cried, "she baffles me; for a hint I let drop in a mere careless badinage of your gallanting reputation made her ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... He had Sage-brush rattled. The coolest man on the ranch was flustered by the mere thought of ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... and the Democratic National Convention the week following, both included suffrage planks in their national platforms for the first time in history. To be sure, they were planks that failed to satisfy us. But the mere hint of organized political action on suffrage had moved the two dominant parties to advance a step. The new Woman's Party had declared suffrage a national political issue. The two major parties acknowledged the issue by writing it ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... think the savages of America live much more happy than the poorer sort of these, because as they have nothing, so they desire nothing; whereas these are proud and insolent and in the main are in many parts mere beggars and drudges. Their ostentation is inexpressible; and, if they can, they love to keep multitudes of servants or slaves, which is to the last degree ridiculous, as well as their contempt of all the ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... asked whether this investigation is a matter of mere curiosity, or whether it tends to any beneficial purpose? I should answer, that notwithstanding the happy effects of Inoculation, with all the improvements which the practice has received since its first introduction into this country, it not very unfrequently produces deformity of ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... bare ground, but sometimes the nest is lined with seaweed or grass. They lay either one or two eggs early in April. These eggs are of a dull white color and are heavily covered with a chalky deposit. Size 2.50 x 1.70. Data.—Clarion Is., Mexico, May 24, 1897. Nest a mere hollow in the sand near the beach. Collector, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... far-fetched and quaint Simile's, which runs thro' almost all these Characters, makes 'em appear like so many Pieces of mere Grotesque; and the Reader must not expect to find Persons describ'd as they really are, but rather according to what they are thought ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... the fine and excellent Uncle Braesig, who, in the opinion of competent critics, is the most successful humorous figure in all German literature. Braesig is certainly a masterpiece of psychology; as remote from any mere comic effect, despite his idiosyncrasies, as from maudlin sentimentality; an impersonation of sturdy manhood and a victor in life's battles, no less than his creator, who, although he had lost seven of the most precious years of his life in unjust imprisonment ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Agobbio, and having expelled the Count Novello, caused Lando d'Agobbio to be brought into the city as Bargello (sheriff), and gave him the most unlimited power of the citizens. This man was cruel and rapacious; and going through the country accompanied with an armed force, he put many to death at the mere instigation of those who had endowed him with authority. His insolence rose to such a height, that he stamped base metal with the impression used upon the money of the state, and no one had sufficient courage to oppose ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... now-a-days to rob others of the King's subjects. Has not Lonee Sing robbed all his cousins of their estates, and added them to his own, and thereby got the means of bribing the King's servants to let him do what he likes?" "What," said the Rajah, with some asperity, "should you, a mere soldier, know about State affairs? Do you suppose that all the members of any family can be equal? Must there not be a head to all families to keep the rest in order? Nothing goes on well in families or governments where all are equal, and there is no head to guide; and the head ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... the man. But the singer and the seeker, the two main tendencies of his being, are already apparent in early life. Of moral traits, the most conspicuous in the child is a power of self-control,—a moral heroism, which secured to him in after life a natural leadership unattainable by mere intellectual supremacy. An instance of this self-control is recorded among the anecdotes of his boyhood. At one of the lessons which he shared with other boys, the teacher failed to appear. The young ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... they lived still it was in the background. The grasp of his hand was firmer than usual, the tone more earnest, which said, "I am very glad to see you!"—and yet the doctor felt that in them both there was more—and also less—than mere personal feeling. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the stone replied with assurance, "why are you so excessively dull? The dynasties recorded in the rustic histories, which have been written from age to age, have, I am fain to think, invariably assumed, under false pretences, the mere nomenclature of the Han and T'ang dynasties. They differ from the events inscribed on my block, which do not borrow this customary practice, but, being based on my own experiences and natural feelings, present, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... revolutionary Socialists even, to say nothing of "reformists," become mere political partisans, make almost instinctive efforts to credit all political progress to the Socialist Parties, contradict their own revolutionary principles. All reforms that happen to be of any benefit to labor, they claim, are ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... I looked when I first came, and the stupidity, the emptiness, the mere wood and dirt and rock of it seemed like a personal insult. I should prefer the worst huddle of a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... its primary motive, is invariably expected to deal broadly with the entire problem of the Negro and his relationships of every kind. It must be more than a mere flesh-and-blood narrative, descriptive of the material progress of the men and women the Institute has produced and is producing. It must be a book free from ostentatious pretension, breathing the atmosphere of the life of the earnest people it describes. It must, of course, exhibit not only the ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... approach to idealistic fiction and to the analysis of human feelings. Defoe's romances of incident were the triumphant culmination of the picaresque type; Mrs. Haywood's sentimental tales were in many respects mere vague inchoations of a form as yet to be produced. But when freed from the impurities of intrigue and from the taint of scandal, the novel of heart interest became the dominant type of English fiction. Unfortunately, however, Eliza Haywood was ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... remark expressed volumes. We knew that most of the poor creatures "had no papa and didn't know where mamma lived," that they were mere jetsam and flotsam thrown up on this quiet shore from the waves of the great ocean of London and forgotten by all the world save those whose business it was to pay and to receive the twenty pounds a year which was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... sensible argument that the President could not be held to responsibility unless he could control his subordinates. "And if it should happen that the officers connect themselves with the Senate, they may mutually support each other, and for want of efficacy reduce the power of the President to a mere vapor; in which case, his responsibility would be annihilated and the ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... earth to leave so many by-ways unexplored. We can only glimpse and conjecture and, generally, forget. Life for us is like a walk along the broad, modern streets of an Italian city. Every little while we pass narrow alleys, mere slots in the mass of marble architecture, which dive down into darkness and mystery. Every little while we pass low-lying ramps and odd little causeways, where lighted windows give one sudden vivid pictures of heads and faces ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... catalogue took a long time. Both were absorbed in their occupation. Cataloguing in itself is a straight and narrow path, but in this instance there were so many delightful side excursions that rapid progress could not be expected. To a reader the mere mention of a book brings up recollections. Margaret was reading out the names; Renmark, on slips of paper, each with a letter on it, ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... him slightly, invited him to stay at Pisa, but Keats refused. He had never cared for Shelley, though Shelley seems to have liked him, and, in his invalid state, he naturally shrank from being a burden to a mere acquaintance. ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... the State, though he held no official position and excited no man's envy. People paid their respects to him and courted his society, and, though he spent much of his time on his couch, his room was always full of company who were no mere chance callers, and he passed his days in learned and scholarly conversation, when he was not busy composing. He wrote verses which show abundant pains rather than genius, and sometimes he submitted them to general criticism by having them read ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... which nothing but mere vanity could have inspired, in opposition to so many more weighty presumptions, she took the resolution of bringing the affair to a fuller explanation, before she would concert any measures to the prejudice of our ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... three, and four, and five years of age, I was not yet I. I was a mere becoming, a flux of spirit not yet cooled solid in the mould of my particular flesh and time and place. In that period all that I had ever been in ten thousand lives before strove in me, and troubled the flux of me, in the effort to incorporate ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the time the mid-June days were come, the little brook that sang through John McIntyre's pasture-field had shrunk to a mere jeweled thread of golden pools and silver shallows, with here and there only the bleached pebbles to mark its course. But this summer was of a new and wonderful variety. Just two or three brilliant, hot days, and then, as regular as the sun, up from the ocean's rim would ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... do this with the utmost purity, who should in the highest degree approach each subject by means of the mere mental faculties, neither employing the sight in conjunction with the reflective faculty, nor introducing any other sense together with reasoning; but who, using pure reflection by itself, should attempt to search out each essence purely by itself, freed as much as possible from the eyes and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... any arguments had been supported in any speech he had ever heard. He wished, however, that more of these facts had been introduced into the debate; for they were apt to have a greater effect upon the mind than mere reasonings, however just and powerful. Many had affirmed that the Slave Trade was politic and expedient; but it was worthy of remark, that no man had ventured to deny that it was criminal. Criminal, however, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... There be women such as she: but they are not to be picked, like blackberries, off every bramble. Edith, young folks are apt to think love a mere matter of youth and of matrimony. They cannot make a deeper blunder. The longer love lasts, the stronger ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... were, exactly, no one but the mate seemed to know, nor whither we were going. The captain—a mere cipher—was an invalid in his cabin; to say nothing more of so many of his men languishing ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... seeing him, and the long distance we shall have to travel, the pain I suffer now may become easier; though I daresay the remedy I propose will do me very little good. I don't know how the devil this has come about, or how this love I have for him got in; I such a young girl, and he such a mere boy; for I verily believe we are both of an age, and I am not sixteen yet; for I will be sixteen Michaelmas ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... duties at all, yet for this reason I praise you the more and I am heartily grateful that you have shown yourselves obedient and are helping to replenish the fatherland. It is by lives so conducted that the Romans of later days will become a mighty multitude. We were at first a mere handful, but when We had recourse to marriage and begot children we came to surpass all mankind not only in manliness but in populousness. This we must remember and console the mortal element of our being with an endless succession ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... made a perfectly conceived, finely delivered, coherent, logical, telling speech in his own defence. It was long, but nowhere diffuse, and it held the attention manifestly, not only of the mutineers, but of the Emperor himself, and of all his retinue, even the most vacuous of the mere courtiers. As he ended it, it was plain that Perennis believed he had cleared himself completely and had not only vindicated himself before his master, but had convinced the mutineers of his guiltlessness and loyalty. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... loyalty. The leaders of this enthusiastic attachment, most of them lawyers, had no superiors for influence in Illinois. The man who had such a following was a power in politics whether he would or no. This the mere politicians saw. They also saw that the next Republican nomination would rest on a delicate calculation of probabilities. There were other Republicans more conspicuous than Lincoln—Seward in New York, Sumner in Massachusetts, Chase in Ohio—but ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... They must be convinced that a great increase in speed is possible by seeing here and there a man among them increase his pace and double or treble his output. They must see this pace maintained until they are convinced that it is not a mere spurt; and, most important of all, they must see the men who "get there" in this way receive a proper increase in wages and become satisfied. It is only with these object lessons in plain sight that the new theories can be made to stick. It will be in presenting these object lessons and in smoothing ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... well how to conciliate and manage these faithful and important auxiliaries during all his continental wars. A Flemish army covered the siege of Calais in 1348; and, under the command of Giles de Rypergherste, a mere weaver of Ghent, they beat the dauphin of France in a pitched battle. But Calais once taken, and a truce concluded, the English king abandoned his allies. These, left wholly to their own resources, forced the French and the heir ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... passing to right and left round what had once been a white-walled church with a square tower, and it was easy to see that, although our guns had played havoc with the sacred edifice and reduced it to a shapeless mass of rubbish, with the mere stump of the tower remaining, the enemy had turned it into ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... deviate from the stated form. But, since many of the latter are words of very frequent occurrence, the irregular verbs appear exceedingly numerous in practice, and consequently require a great deal of attention. The defective verbs being very few, and most of these few being mere auxiliaries, which are never parsed separately, there is little occasion to treat them as a distinct class; though Murray and others have ranked them so, and perhaps it is best to follow their example. The redundant verbs, which are regular in one form and irregular ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... through the blanket of white. Norris was the first to take off. He shot downward and as he gained momentum sent back a cry that floated up eerily. Teeny-bits poised at the edge and took a deep breath. This was living. Down there, growing smaller and smaller, a moving speck that seemed a mere shadow on the snow, was a new friend of his. It seemed strange that this was one of the outcomes of the Jefferson-Ridgley game: that from so desperate a struggle had arisen this opportunity to know the leader of the purple for whom he held a growing admiration. A fellow who fought ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... strayed far from his bearings and wandering like a lost soul through great vastnesses and unknown deeps. Oh, well, let his moods slip on, until, mayhap, he gathers his tangled wits together. Who knows?—the mere sound of a fellow-creature's voice may ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... important attribute Hermod was usually employed by the gods as messenger, and at a mere sign from Odin he was always ready to speed to any part of creation. As a special mark of favour, Allfather gave him a magnificent corselet and helmet, which he often donned when he prepared to take part in war, and sometimes Odin entrusted to his care the precious spear Gungnir, bidding ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... earth angelic graces beam, Celestial beauty in our world below, Whose mere remembrance thrills with grief and woe; All I see now seems shadow, smoke and dream. I saw in those twin-lights the tear-drops gleam, Those lights that made the sun with envy glow, And from those lips such sighs and words did flow, As made revolve ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... might be. Or sometimes, if the crime was very bad, he would command that they should be sent to "travel in the desert," that is, wander to and fro without food or water until death found them. Now and again miserable-looking men, mere skeletons, with hollow cheeks, and eyes that seemed to start from their heads, would appear at their camps weeping and imploring that the curse which had been laid upon them in past days should be taken off their heads. ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... being mere tracks a foot deep in mud, and looked as though they had never been repaired, ...
— Through Siberia and Manchuria By Rail • Oliver George Ready
... the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness achieved, if there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what is done, if it be an envious or powerless imitation of other men's labors, if it be a display of mere manual dexterity or curious manufacture, or if in any other mode it show itself as having its origin in vanity,—Cast it out. It matters not what powers of mind may have been concerned or corrupted in it, all have lost their savor, it is worse ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... two or three letters which he writ in his youth to a coquette lady. The raillery of them was natural, and well enough for a mere man of the town; but very unluckily, several of the words were wrong spelt. Will laughed this off at first as well as he could; but finding himself pushed on all sides, and especially by the Templar, he told us with a little passion that he never liked ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... of his life ruled him. He soon came to the conviction that he ought not to take time from the work of winning souls, and spend it in writing papers and books—and from the moment of that decision he put mere literary work resolutely aside. ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... of 'Past and Present,' which, with its intense and sympathetic mediaevalism, might have been written by a Tractarian. The 'Life of Sterling' is the favourite book of many who would sooner pick oakum than read 'Frederick the Great' all through; whilst the mere student of belles lettres may attach importance to the essays on Johnson, Burns, and Scott, on Voltaire and Diderot, on Goethe and Novalis, and yet remain blankly indifferent to 'Sartor ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... began about the time of the decay of the Roman Empire, and ended suddenly, and more or less unaccountably, at the time of the Reformation. The society of this period was supposed to be lawless and chaotic; its ethics a mere conscious hypocrisy; its art gloomy and barbarous fanaticism only; its literature the formless jargon of savages; and as to its science, that side of human intelligence was supposed to be an invention of the time when the Middle Ages had ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... to him, as was also his American citizenship. A mere citizen of Greece could not have maintained his ground after the persecuting hierarchy had overawed the courts of justice and the officers of state. His courage resembled that of Martin Luther. He was a sturdy Puritan, which no Greek at that time could ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... The shadow called Thorns was for bolting across country; but Lilly white was not built for speed. Besides he did not know the lie of the land, and believed the Free Traders were mere bogeys. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... after long, serious, severe, close consideration. Let all sides of the subject be viewed in all its vastness and far-reaching consequences. Let Senators consider the results, and let at least their aims in this matter be something higher than mere political and partisan considerations, which I fear have animated much of the discussion to which we have listened. Mr. President, I trust sincerely that the vote just taken, indicating the refusal of the Senate ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the way towards what I regarded as the natural solution of the immediate problem. "Come," I said, "the idea of a marriage between Banks and your sister doesn't appear so unreasonable. The Bankses are evidently good old yeoman stock on the father's side. It is a mere accident of luck that you should be the owners of the ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Captain Pearson afterward, "Jones' answer to me meant mere bravado. But I soon perceived that it was the defiance of a man desperate enough, if he could not conquer, to sink with ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... nothing to do but to pretend I had heard some report, and so draw from you what you might not have a mind to mention: I do tell you when I hear any, for your information, but insist on your not replying. The vice-admiral of America is a mere feather; but there is more substance in the notion of the Viceroy's quitting Ireland. Lord Bute and George Grenville are so ill together, that decency is scarce observed between their adherents: and the moment the former has an opportunity or resolution enough, he will remove the latter, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 1828; "all its great and glorious transactions are now nothing more than mere matter of history!" What wars of arms and words! what lots of changes and secessions! what debates on "guarantee," "stipulations," and "untoward" events! what "piles of legislation!" what a fund of speculation for the denizens ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... the most exquisite fabric and colour. Sophy liked to wander round, to marvel and admire, but soon discovered that to do the latter was to be immediately endowed with her fancy—be it an enormous Chinese jar, or a lacquered cabinet, or a mere silver bowl. Mrs. Krauss firmly resisted every ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... the ugly man, and now his teeth began to chatter, "but I confess that I need more than mere shelter. The rain and cold have entered my system, and I shall suffer severely unless we have a fire. Is it not possible to build one here near the center of the Council House? The dry bark will feed it, until it is strong enough to take hold of the ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... turn, saluted and envied; and perhaps the men, in pointing her out to one another, would say that she was beautiful. She noticed all those that appeared to her distinguished among the throng and inquired their names, without thinking of anything beyond the mere sound of the syllables, though sometimes they awoke in her an echo of respect and admiration, when she realized that she had seen them often in the newspapers or heard stories concerning them. She could not become accustomed to this long procession of celebrities; it ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... fish, otherwise 12, but when combined they represent that value exactly, that is x plus y equals 12. So, if I and my equipment coordinate perfectly with my skill and patience, which most certainly will happen, the fish are as good as caught by me already. The rest is a mere matter of counting." ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... they form its very construction. Style does not exist in modern arrayings, for all their prettiness and precision, and for all the successes—which are not to be denied—of their outer part; the happy little swagger that simulates style is but another sign of its absence, being prepared by mere dodges and dexterities beneath, and the triumph and success of the present art of raiment—"fit" itself—is but the result of a masked and lurking ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Cross, like many others in various parts of the kingdom (afterwards converted to the same purpose,) was doubtless at first a mere common cross, and might be coeval with the Church. When it was covered and used as a pulpit cross, we are not informed. Stowe describes it in his time, "as a pulpit-crosse of timber, mounted upon steppes of stone, and covered with leade, standing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... tell us that Monsieur Bergeret made some naive remark, or the Abbe Jerome Coignard uttered some unctuous sally, in so large and deliberate and courtly a way that the mere "he said" or "he began" falls upon us like a papal benediction or like the gesture of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... in existence at Belhaven in 1739, just ten years before Alexandria was founded. Presumably the Alexandria school of 1760 was put into operation under identical conditions and it may be that special classes beyond the mere rudiments of education were conducted for children whose families could pay extra tuition. Such a plan would closely approximate the tutorial arrangement prevailing on outlying plantations. For orphaned children and the very poor who had to earn while they learned, provision was usually made for ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... cheerfully agreed. "Of course, a mere baby! That's why I can be friends with him. He's so utterly friendless. He needs a kind word ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... a relief to Rosemary who was sure she would be less nervous and shaky herself with her aunt out of the room. But before she had finished with Shirley she was ready to admit that the mere presence of a third person would have ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... then it must be remembered that there are as great differences in mothers as in girls. And besides, I believe wise girls have an instinct about men that all the experience of other men cannot overtake. But yet again, there are many girls foolish enough to mistake a mere impulse for instinct, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Republic. "How strange," says M. d'A., "is our destiny! that that Republic which I quitted, determined to be rather an hewer of wood and drawer of water all my life than serve, he should die for." The secret history of this may some day come out, but it is now inexplicable, for the mere fact, without the smallest comment, is all that has reached us, In the period, indeed, in which M. d'A. left France, there were but three steps possible for those who had been bred to arms-flight, the guillotine, or fighting for the Republic, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... and toes are eminently liable, as various authors have insisted, to transmission, but they are noticed here chiefly on account of their occasional regrowth after amputation. Polydactylism graduates[26] by multifarious steps from a mere cutaneous appendage, not including any bone, to a double hand. But an additional digit, supported on a metacarpal bone, and furnished with all the proper muscles, nerves, and vessels, is sometimes so perfect, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... universally to appoint their own pastors, we do not see how such an issue is open to evasion. The leaders of the new Secession all protest against Voluntaryism: but to that complexion of things they travel rapidly by the mere mechanic action of their dependent (or semi-dependent) situation, combined with one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... should be willing to give up a mere whim for the pleasure of those I love so well. But this is not a whim; it is a ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... been describing, the whole city continued in a state of the fiercest commotion. The Calvinists in vast numbers had taken possession of the Mere; it was here the market was held: it is a long wide place, too wide almost to be called a street, with fine buildings on either side—the streets which enter it communicating with the Exchange and ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... arches of anxiety, a rash of tiny perspiration broke out over his blue shaved face and as he sat on the edge of his chair, it seemed that inevitably the tight sausage-like knees must push their way through mere fabric. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... capacity of spectators we did not then see occasion to mention what had otherwise come to our knowledge—that the evidences of extreme suffering manifested by Mrs. Glover on that evening—her inability to go through her part, except as a mere shadow of her former self, and the substitution of an apologetic speech from Mr. Leigh Murray for the address which had been written for her by a well-known and talented amateur of the drama—arose not merely from the emotion natural on ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... agreeable. And she tried to be chatty and pleasant with him for the rest of the way home. But Uncle Jabez was short on conversation— he seemed to have hoarded that up, too, and was unable to get at his stores of small-talk. Most of his observations were mere grunts and nods, and that evening he was just as glum and silent as ever over his ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... spectacle for pity, as the average man would be on Blondin's tight rope. The faintest deviation, the most momentary uncertainty of footing, a doubt, even, and it is all over. But Meredith never falters. He proves the impossible true by the mere fact of ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... reason to distress yourself. I can say, from the bottom of my heart, that you have never given me cause for real anxiety, your conduct has been exemplary, and I never saw such attention to religion in any young man. These are mere trifles—' ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been informed by an acquaintance of his, a Rebel soldier who has known him from early life, has always been a sort of guerilla—deserting from his father's house in mere boyhood—fighting duels as a pastime—roving the country far and wide in search of pleasure or profit—a thorough student of human nature and of the country in which he operates—bold and daring to a fault and romantic in his make—and finding now his chief ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... to regret the refusal of the authorities to accede to his wish, when rumour and vague innuendo concerning himself and Mrs. Markham came to his ears. He wondered that so much had been made of a mere passing incident, but he forgot that his fortunes were intimately connected with those of many others. He passed Harley once in the streets and the flamboyant soldier favoured him with a stare so insolent ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Haemus and overran the portion of Thrace belonging to the Dentheleti who had a compact with Rome, then Crassus, partly to defend Sitas king of the Dentheleti, who was blind, but chiefly because of fear for Macedonia, came out to meet them. By his mere approach, he threw them into a panic and drove them from the land without a conflict. Next he pursued them, as they were retiring homeward, gained possession of the district called Segetica, and invading Moesia damaged that territory. He made an assault ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... It is mere summer lightning that flashes harmlessly and without striking any one of the conspirators, terrifies all. Sixty of them at least for a fortnight had not dared sleep in their beds. Marat's way was to denounce traitors by their name, to point the finger of accusation at conspirators. The Incorruptible ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... nominate that they have to elect their own officers. Why not? Ultimately, too, they will take that right, and for its own sake no party can afford to make itself the nursery of caucus power. The political machinery should be simplified, that nothing which mere politicians can desire shall stand between the people and their government. In a genuine republic, every act of the government should be but a practical expression of its subjects. All the subjects, too, should share equally the power of such expression. There ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... would,—the cursed cowardly traitor!" replied the latter, gnashing his teeth. "But let him, and that pitiful poltroon of a Redding, go where they please. We will see to matters ourselves. I don't believe it is any thing more than a mere mob, who will scatter at the first fire. So follow me, Gale; and all the rest of ye, that aint afraid of your own shadows, follow me, and I'll soon ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... of psychology and metaphysics, which I fear may discourage some readers, but which cannot be shirked by those who wish to form a judgment based upon a more solid foundation than their own personal taste. The mistake made by nearly all writers on Wagner hitherto has been to suppose that the mere assertion of an individual opinion has any value at all, however illustrious the person who holds it, however able his exposition. Of what use can be the assertion that a certain progression of ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... replied impatiently. "You'll have to do that, Sarge. Hang it, can't you see where I stand? The mere fact that Lessard was taking her about shows that these officers' women have received her with open arms. They form a clique as exclusive as a quarantined smallpox patient, and a 'non-com' like myself is barred out, until I win a pair of shoulder-straps; when ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... mattered to me but little whether a violent death should shorten a life to which a limit was already set, and which I was far from being anxious to retain: but I could not endure the thought of bringing upon my mother and my sister the wretchedness and shame which the mere suspicion of a crime so enormous would occasion them; and when my eye caught all the circumstances arrayed against me, my pride seemed to suffer a less mortification even in the course I adopted than in the thought of the felon's ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the derivation of the name "Runnymede" an ancient use of the meadow as a place of council. This is, of course, mere conjecture, but at any rate it was, at this season of the year, a large, dry field, in which a considerable force could encamp. The Barons marched along the old Roman military road, which is still the high-road to Staines from London, crossed the river, and encamped on Runnymede. Here ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... which she made bore upon the advisability of discovering Janet and Mr Orgreave. They threaded themselves out of the moving crowd and away from the hokey-pokey stall and the barrels into the tranquillity of the market-place, where the shadow of the gold angel at the top of the Town Hall spire was a mere squat shapeless stain on the irregular paving-stones. The sound of the Festival came ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... man had seated himself beside his hostess in an attitude of perfect ease. Though bored by his present environment, he was entirely at home in it. Just because he greatly dared towards her and was never afraid, Mrs. de Tracy liked him. With the mere flicker of an eyelid, she dismissed ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... found consolation in castigating a school of young artists who had "unfortunately become notorious by addicting themselves to an antiquated style and an affected simplicity in painting.... We can extend no toleration to a mere servile imitation of the cramped style, false perspective, and crude colour of remote antiquity. We want not to see what Fuseli termed drapery 'snapped instead of folded'; faces bloated into apoplexy, or extenuated into skeletons; colour borrowed from the ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... vent to her feelings; always did, always will. My little wife is in many respects a mere child, you know," ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... hunters and learned from our guide that the Indians usually leave their canoes here as the water communication on their hunting grounds is bad. The Yellow-Knife River had now dwindled into an insignificant rivulet and we could not trace it beyond the next lake except as a mere brook. The latitude of its source 64 degrees 1 minute 30 seconds North, longitude 113 degrees 36 minutes 00 seconds West, and its length is one hundred and fifty-six statute miles. Though this river is of sufficient breadth and depth for navigating ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... organized interest had developed itself. Letters received from often remote parts of the United States had been for many years a detail of his daily experience; and even when they consisted of the request for an autograph, an application to print selections from his works, or a mere expression of schoolboy pertness or schoolgirl sentimentality, they bore witness to his wide reputation in that country, and the high esteem in which he was held there.** The names of Levi and Celia Thaxter of Boston had long, I ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... eh? Come upon her unprepared, would they? Ha! ha! She laughed scornfully and tossed her head of midnight hair as she pictured the duke's rage at finding he had been foiled again, and by a mere slip of a girl! ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... means a mere "abstract philosopher," but a good mathematician and well versed in the physical science of his time, not only proved this in an essay of exquisite clearness and intelligibility, now more than a century old,[54] but deduced from it some of its more important consequences, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... spade at such rates as may be fixed; for women the needle, and its myriad forms of cheap production; and within these ranks is no sense of real economic interest, but the fiercest and blindest competition among themselves. Mere existence is to a large extent all that is possible, and it is fought for with a fury in strange contrast to the apparent worth ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... ideals of service from which every taint of self-seeking and commercialism have been eliminated—do you think that these are mere figments of the impractical imagination? Go ask Perry Holden out in Iowa. Go ask Luther Burbank out in California. Go to any agricultural college in this broad land and ask the scientists who are doing more than all other forces combined to ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... the tenants on their estates, which the Premier, and his commentator, the Times, looked upon as a mere ordinary duty, many Irish landlords began to evict for non-payment of rent. The parish priest of Swinford concludes a letter, detailing the sufferings of his people, thus: "One word as to the landlords. There are several owners of land in this parish (Kilconduff), ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... boy," retorted Mr. Gordon evenly. "You'll stir up something more than mere trouble if he isn't brought here within a few minutes, or information given where we may find him. Where ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... waxen images represented, however far distant, felt all the pains and torments in good earnest, which were inflicted in show upon these images: and such a horror I had of these wicked witches, that though I am now better instructed, and look upon all these stories as mere idle tales, and invented to fill people's heads with nonsense, yet I cannot recall to mind the horrors which I then felt, without shuddering and feeling something of the old ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... attempt was made to move, for the mere sake, it must be confessed, of moving and keeping the people on the alert, rather than with the slightest prospect of gaining any ground; but, by the time that we had laid out the hawsers, the small hole of water that had appeared again closed, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... similar slight of this kind; but she must assuredly, in the cause of good morals, at once confront the blind with the culpable, and this time with such proofs as would make the blow irresistible. By the mere thought, Madame de la Roche-Jugan had persuaded herself that the new turn events were taking might become favorable to the expectations which had become the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... awakening one, on the path to himself. All of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell of Mara, was no longer the veil of Maya, was no longer a pointless and coincidental diversity of mere appearances, despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman, who scorns diversity, who seeks unity. Blue was blue, river was river, and if also in the blue and the river, in Siddhartha, the singular and divine lived hidden, so it was still that very divinity's way and purpose, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... to say how many comets, not to forget the enormous groups or hosts of comparatively small stones or meteors, which are believed to be revolving round the solar centre like pigmy asteroids; and the Copernican conception of the mere constitution of the solar system, as developed by time and toil, is completed. The sun is 882,000 miles in diameter; the earth is 7926; Juno is 79; Saturn, 79,160, and so forth. The earth is more than five times as heavy ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... their paddles over the side in concert, without uttering a single word, or giving more than a slight exclamation when anything worthy of notice attracted their attention. The interchange of thought during the labours of the day did not seem to strike them as necessary. The mere being in company of each other was a sufficient bond of sympathy, until an encampment was reached each evening, supper disposed of, and the tobacco-pipes in full blast. Then, at last, their native reserve gave way, and they ventured to indulge a little—sometimes a good deal—in the ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... reached town, and wondered that such a grand and clever gentleman could have kept constant to a little country cousin like herself. She had seen nothing of Howel during the most stirring years of his life, and could not have supposed what a change the mere commerce with the world could effect. She considered him far more agreeable than her brother Rowland, handsomer and more polished than Sir Hugh Pryse, and much more fashionable than ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... nice a problem. Colonel Kenton, however, did not mind. He at once possessed himself of much more than his share of the cylinder, extorting a cry of indignation from his wife, who now saw herself reduced from a fastidious choice of luxuries to a mere vulgar strife for the necessaries of life,—a thing ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... plunder of the community. He keeps a supply of silver and gold by him in the foot of an old stocking, and seems to have great confidence in the value of Spanish milled dollars. He has no kind of patience with the new doctrines of farming. Liebig, and all the rest, he sets down as mere theorists, and has far more respect for the contents of his barnyard than for all the guano deposits in the world. Scientific farming, and gentleman farming, may do very well, he says, "to keep idle young fellows from the city out of mischief; but as for real, effective management, ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... of palm-oil. The plantations still showed fruits and flowers probably left by the Portuguese—wild oranges, mangoes, limes, pine-apples, and the 'four o'clock,' a kind of 'marvel of Peru,' supposed to open at that hour. The houses, crepi or parget below and bamboo above, are mere band-boxes raised from the ground; the smaller perfectly imitated poultry-crates. All appeared unusually neat and clean, with ornamental sheets of clam-shells trodden into the earth before the thresholds. 'Fetish' was abundant, and so was that worst ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... own life and his friend's and it seemed to him unjust. Gallaher was his inferior in birth and education. He was sure that he could do something better than his friend had ever done, or could ever do, something higher than mere tawdry journalism if he only got the chance. What was it that stood in his way? His unfortunate timidity He wished to vindicate himself in some way, to assert his manhood. He saw behind Gallaher's ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... their character, and represent the varying Duties of men, not their varying Interests. But this end will not come by impatience. "Day will not break the sooner because we get up before the twilight." Still less will it come by mere undoing, or change merely as change. And moreover, if we believed that it would be unconditionally hastened by our getting the franchise, we should be what I call superstitious men, believing in magic, or the production of a result by hocus-pocus. Our getting the ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... slightly or badly wounded our brave Fusiliers spare the Fatherland as far as possible the expensive trouble of looking after numerous enemies. In the evening, with prayers of thanksgiving on our lips, we go to sleep." Are these mere boastings of crimes? No. The article was submitted to the Captain of the Company who certified it as correct and counter-signed it. The N.C.O., the Captain, the Silesian public, the whole German nation were delighted to see this abominable story ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... opened the debate, which did not excite much interest until Luther's turn came, the antagonist whom Eck was most desirous to meet, and whose rising fame he hoped to crush by a brilliant victory. Ranke thus describes Luther's person at this time. "He was of the middle size, and so thin as to be mere skin and bone. He possessed neither the thundering voice, nor the ready memory, nor the skill and dexterity, of his distinguished antagonist. But he stood in the prime of manhood and in the fulness of his strength. His voice was melodious and clear; ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... right have you to assume that I should marry you? Because I rather liked to talk to you when I felt dull, is that any reason why you should be so very rude to me? And once for all, sir, I shall never marry a mere merchant sailor—a common whaling master. I shall marry, when I do marry, an officer and a ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... to see her transformed, by the mere putting aside of her cloak, from the sweet-faced, thoughtful girl to the stern, accusing, dark, and tense woman of the play. Her voice took on the quivering intonation of the seeress, and her spread hand seemed to clutch at the hearts of ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... work with you, with all of you, to pass welfare reform. But our goal must be to liberate people and lift them from dependence to independence, from welfare to work, from mere childbearing to responsible parenting. Our goal should not be to punish them because they happen ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sentimentalities swathing the whole woman question. It is a question of capital importance to all human beings, and it deserves to be discussed honestly and frankly, but there is so much of social reticence, of religious superstition and of mere emotion intermingled with it that most of the enormous literature it has thrown off is hollow and useless. I point for example, to the literature of the subsidiary question of woman suffrage. It fills whole libraries, but nine tenths of it is merely ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... old," he said gently, "very, very old. We have returned to Nature—but not the nature of mere academicians. We paint, not the world of the camera, but the world of the brain. We paint, not the thing you think you see, but the way you think you see it—its vibrations of your inner mentality. To paint the apple ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Champlain. Is this the language of a common fur-trader, simply seeking to increase his fortune? What were really Champlain's designs during all these years of labour and self-sacrifice? Was he animated by the mere curiosity of the tourist, or the ambition of a man of science? No. Champlain desired, it is true, to gain an intimate knowledge of the country, and his labours are highly valued as a geographer and cosmographer, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... boy to life again. There will be plenty of dangers in our excursion without seeking them out for mere pleasure. I want to bring you all back safe and sound to Orizava; therefore, don't let us have any ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... personality that she seems to be sitting beside us, looking at us directly and talking just as she really would, could she have come on a magic carpet, instead of sending her proxy in ink-made characters on mere paper. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... from the. Old Testament are certainly urged, and spoken of as direct proofs, as absolute proofs in themselves, and not as mere proofs ad hominem to the Jews; for if these prophecies are only urged by the apostles as proofs to the Jews, and intended only as proofs founded on the mistaken meanings of the Old Testament of some Jews of their time, what sense is there in appealing upon all occasions to the prophets, ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... independence in September 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the center and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, UN sanctions on the down-sized ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... a race are considered mere superstition and a perpetuation of injustice and wrong, or are accepted as a lesson in charity and brotherhood. Thus is ever growing and becoming established the entire homogeneity of the race. We have girded the earth, and established our fiery rule in the ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... refused. "I am astonished," said the Emperor, "at your making such objections; this severity is necessary for the good of the State." "I do not believe it, Sire." "But I do, and I alone have the right to judge. I have not asked your concurrence, but your signature, which is a mere matter of form, and cannot compromise you in the least." "Sire, a minister who countersigns the decree of his sovereign becomes morally responsible. Your Majesty has declared by proclamation that you granted a general amnesty. I countersigned that with all my heart; I will not countersign ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... seen before the Nazarene was standing with her hands clasped and eyes streaming, looking towards heaven. The mere transformation would have been a sufficient surprise; but it was the least of the causes of his emotion. Could he be mistaken? Never was there in life a stranger so like his mother; and like her as she was the day the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... am rich, mamma," Jansoulet, when he was a mere urchin, used to say to his mother whom he adored, "I'll ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... blue, and the water smooth as a polished mirror. There was not a breath of air where the ship lay. Then down on us came the fierce squall with its utmost fury—rain, hail, and wind united—over heeled the stout ship as if she had been a mere cockleshell, till her gunwale was buried in the water. I thought she would never rise again, but I kept my eye on Captain Frankland, who seemed as cool and collected as if nothing unusual was happening. With speaking-trumpet in hand, and holding on by the weather-rail, he ordered the mizen-topsail ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... existence which is enough for its needs, which affords the moderate amount of comfort and pleasure for which its being is now adapted, and of which there seems no reason that there should ever be any end. To passion, to joy, to anguish, an end must come; but mere gentle living, determined by a framework of gentle rules and habits—why should that ever be ended? When a soul has got to this retirement and is content in it, it becomes very hard to die; hard to accept the necessity of dying, and to accustom one's ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... described with complacency and even with a sort of gaiety this new kind of life. Afterwards, discarding an idea which sounded like mere irony, he went on. 'If they do not like me to remain in France, where am I to go? To England? My abode there would be ridiculous or disquieting. I should be tranquil; no one would believe it. Every fog would be suspected ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... vivacity of his dialogue—Addison, whose fame as a poet greatly exceeded his genius, which was cold and enervate; though he yielded to none in the character of an essayist, either for style or matter—Swift, whose muse seems to have been mere misanthropy; he was a cynic rather than a poet, and his natural dryness and sarcastic severity would have been unpleasing, had not he qualified them, by adopting the extravagant humour of Lueian and Rabelais—Prior, lively, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... not call at her home. He knew well that it would only provoke a storm; nor did Amy ask him to. They met only at church or at the Mission; and nothing but the common greetings passed between them. No one ever dreamed that they were more than mere acquaintances. But they each felt that the other understood, and so were happy; content to wait until God, in his own way, should unite the streams of ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... sharks, however, haunted me more than any other thought, for I knew that there were plenty of these sea monsters in the Mozambique Channel, and I dreaded more being caught by one of them than the mere fear of drowning, which now seemed to lose all its terrors, although I still swam on mechanically. Every time a wave broke over me, or when I splashed up the water with my own feet, the haunting horror seized me that the wide capacious maw and gaping saw-like teeth of a shark were ready to close ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Jones rose to great eminence. When he was a mere child, he was very inquisitive. His mother was a superior woman of great intelligence, and he would apply to her for the information which he desired; but her constant reply was, "READ AND YOU WILL KNOW." This gave him a passion for books, which ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... anniversary of his wedding day. Setting out on an important mission in the month of June, he would, when a short delay was immaterial, defer it to the anniversary of his wedding. This was not, as some might suppose, from mere superstition, for in all his doings he was anxious to trust to the will of God alone; it was with the idea of uniting every important act in his life with one which made his existence on earth, as he affirmed, ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... together by common dangers. Those who would form a League of Nations seek to draw into one compact, of course with very loose restraining bonds, nations utterly adverse in blood and history. The mere effort to form such a league is a wonderful step in advance. It remains for the future to determine the success of ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... of twenty kilometres was a mere trifle for infantry troopers. They walked as lightly as gymnasts, under a clear sky, through the fields, guided by the lights in the farmhouses, and at nine o'clock, having passed the frontier, they stumbled upon a post of Cossacks ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... young men who are in the habit of meeting together for manly sport, or military exercise. They, therefore, exerted themselves earnestly to prevent attendance on these occasions by those who could find any possible excuse for absence, and were especially severe upon such of their hearers as mere curiosity led to be spectators, or love of exercise to be partakers, of the array and the sports which took place. Such of the gentry as acceded to these doctrines were not always, however, in a situation ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Yeomanry adventures, which included a charge by six of us upon a whole army, would be to stray from my point, which is to describe what I saw at the Military Exhibition. I was lame (oh, dear no, not the gout, a mere strain) and took a friend, an amiable young man, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... popular in London, at the period of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been aware of the insolence with which he spoke of us in notes written at intervals from the field of Waterloo. As though it had been mere felony in our army to look a French one in the face, he said in more notes than one, dated from two to four P.M. on the field of Waterloo, "Here are the English—we have them; they are caught en flagrant delit" Yet no man should have known us better; no man had drunk deeper ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... think it certain that diminutions or additions should be made to suit the nature or needs of the site, but in such fashion that the buildings lose nothing thereby. These results, however, are also attainable by flashes of genius, and not only by mere science. ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... there's plenty of time, if we only get into the boat again. This is how it stands, Mr. Armadale. We settled, if you remember, to have the gypsy tea-making at the next 'Broad' to this—Hurle Mere?" ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... relieved the tedium of her trial by using her eyes a little more; if, for example, she had condescended to look twice at the handful of mere spectators beyond the reporters on her right, she could scarcely have failed to recognize the good-looking, elderly man who was at her heels when she took her ticket at Blackfriars Bridge. His white hair was covered by his hat, but the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... distinction between what is public and what is private is always a subtle one; and in the case of a reigning sovereign—as the next few years were to show—it is often imaginary. Considering all things—the characters of the persons, and the character of the times—it was something more than a mere matter of private interest that the bedroom of Baroness Lehzen at Buckingham Palace should have been next door to the bedroom ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... like nothing whatsoever. She does not have to strive to be something. She is something. She understands what most other American cities do not understand, and what, in view of our almost unrestricted immigration laws, it seems the National Government cannot be made to understand: namely, that mere numbers do not count for everything; that there is the matter of quality of population to be considered. Therefore, though Charleston's white population is no greater than that of many a place which would own itself frankly ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... makes a quite contrary show to that of Socrates. It has often befallen me, that upon the mere credit of my presence and air, persons who had no manner of knowledge of me have put a very great confidence in me, whether in their own affairs or mine; and I have in foreign parts thence obtained singular and rare favours. But the two following examples are, peradventure, worth ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... with the circumstance that the antero-temporal sulcus is present in such Platyrrhini as the Saimiri, which present mere traces of sulci on the anterior half of the exterior of the cerebral hemispheres, or none at all, undoubtedly, so far as it goes, affords fair evidence in favour of Gratiolet's hypothesis, that the posterior sulci appear before the anterior, in the brains of the Platyrrhini. But, it by no ...
— Note on the Resemblances and Differences in the Structure and the Development of Brain in Man and the Apes • Thomas Henry Huxley
... that she had "outlived his liking." From that time to the present he had treated her continually with the greatest cruelty; and, at last, when by this means he had reduced her from a comely young person to a mere handful of a poor creature, he beat her, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to which the name topographical strictly applies, as confining itself to the mere account of the form and relative location of the several organs comprising the animal body, is almost wholly isolated from the main questions of physiological and transcendental interest, and cannot, therefore, be supposed to speak in those comprehensive views which anatomy, ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... domains in which knowledge, in the proper sense of the term, is attainable. In passing their boundaries, we leave the regions of positive certitude, and come into the domain where Conjecture, varying from the strongest presumption to mere plausibility, is the highest proof. Laws or Principles are yet undiscovered there, and in their place we find Generalizations—Suppositive or Proximate Laws—which are in process of proof, or already established by such evidence ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... left the New York team to join the Australian tourists, and the interest in the games ended, the receipts falling off from $2,365 on October 25 to $411 on October 26. The last game of the series was a mere ordinary exhibition game, Titcomb pitching in four innings and Hatfield in four. The player's game on the 28th was even less attractive, the St. Louis team winning easily by 6 to 0, Keefe, Welch and George taking turns in the box ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... closed ere the wheels had ceased to sound on the gravel. The carriage stopped at the left side of the portico, two men presented themselves at the carriage-window; the one was Ali, who, smiling with an expression of the most sincere joy, seemed amply repaid by a mere look from Monte Cristo. The other bowed respectfully, and offered his arm to assist the count in descending. "Thanks, M. Bertuccio," said the count, springing lightly up the three steps of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and not one of the other children, for the part of Mamilius? some one may ask. It was not mere luck, I think. Perhaps I was a born actress, but that would have served me little if I had not been able to speak! It must be remembered that both my sister Kate and I had been trained almost from our birth for the stage, and particularly in the important branch of clear articulation. Father, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... noiseless dry sobs; but he was fuming and fretting too much to notice her distress. He bit his thumb with rage at the mere idea. ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... slightly into my family history. My father owned a farm near Springfield, Massachusetts, where my mother brought up the family while he was away at sea. He was as fine a seaman as ever trod a deck, and became Captain in one of the regular lines of East India packet companies while I was a mere child. I had one brother who died very young, leaving me the only boy of the family. I had two sisters, however, Lucy and Annie. My father took me to sea with him when I was quite a boy, and he put me through such a thorough course of seamanship and navigation ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... who have had their "fiery trials," tried and made white. Man would have no credit and could not hear: "Good and faithful servant;" if he had no temptations to do otherwise, man would be but a mere machine. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... summons; and had we required any additional help we should have had no difficulty, in a case like this, of finding plenty of volunteers. The only road leading to Mr. G.'s was from the town, a mere bush-road, and full three miles farther than if we could go ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... of great beauty and worth was she, but shining as a mere rushlight, in comparison to the Bleriot head-light radiance ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... than before, I resolved to publish something as quickly as possible. As I had nothing ready, I hastily brought together, by a few days' reading, a collection of Adagia, in the supposition that such a booklet, however it might turn out, by its mere usefulness would get into the hands of students. In this way I demonstrated that my friendship had not cooled off at all. Next, in a poem I subjoined, I protested that I was not angry with the king or with the country at being deprived of my money. And my scheme was not ill received. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... he took possession in the name of France, crossed the country of the Natchez, with whom he made a treaty of friendship, and finally passed out into the Gulf of Mexico on April 9th, after a navigation of 1050 miles in a mere bark. The anticipations so skilfully conceived by Cavelier de la Sale, were realized. He immediately took formal possession of the country, to which he gave the name of Louisiana, and called the immense river which he had ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... be sassy,' I replied. And then he very good-naturedly commenced arranging my homespun. He fussed over me as if I were a mere substance to be transformed into anything Mr. Pierce might require. Then, to my utter astonishment, he apprised me of the fact of General Cass having carried off my boots and breeches—adding that it was a sort of mania with him, and for which he was not morally ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... and continued without further urging for twenty paces. "Of course, Lucy," he resumed, profiting by the opportunity for conversation which the mare's temporary activity afforded, "I should feel myself greatly to blame if I thought I had gone beyond mere kindness in my treatment of the poor fellow. But at first I couldn't realise that the stuff was so bad. Their saying that he read all the books he could get, and was writing every spare moment, gave me the idea that he must be some sort of literary genius in the germ, and I listened on and on, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... the consideration of so great a personage. Lord Marney also really liked pomp; a curious table and a luxurious life; but he liked them under any roof rather than his own. Not that he was what is commonly called a Screw; that is to say he was not a mere screw; but he was acute and malicious; saw everybody's worth and position at a glance; could not bear to expend his choice wines and costly viands on hangers-on and toad-eaters, though at the same time no man encouraged ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the traditions still preserved on the coast, about the Pongo and the Chimpanzee, date from old. Surely M. du Chaillu does grave injustice to this good old Briton, who was not a literary man, by declaring his stories to be mere travellers' tales, "untrue of any of the great apes of Africa." Battel had evidently not seen the animal, and with his negro informants he confounds the gorilla and the "bushman;" yet he possibly ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... has been called pantheism, and for that belief the Jews expelled Baruch Benedict Spinoza from their synagogue. In our time there was a very learned magazine published in its behalf, and I heard David Starr Jordan say no man could tell whether it was a mere jargon of words, meaningless and empty, or whether monism was the profoundest philosophy the world ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... crimping-pins, petticoat and short gown, and list slippers. The bonnes who thus serve as chaperons are often as young as or even younger than the demoiselles whose virginal modesty they are supposed to protect. That they are anything more than a mere form of guardian, a figment of the social fiction that a young French girl never leaves her mother's side till she goes to her husband's, it is unnecessary to observe. Human nature, especially French human nature, is human nature all the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... then as now, living in the midst of libraries, and finding constant employment, and a never-ending pleasure, in researches for the simple investigation of the truth. There was in fact no retirement, no seclusion, no study. Every thing except what related to the mere daily toil of tilling the ground bore direct relation to military expeditions, spectacles and parades; and the only field for the exercise of that kind of intellectual ability which is employed in modern times in investigating ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Ebony," said Rosco, with a deep sigh and a shake of the head, "very kind, both of you and Zeppa, but your efforts cannot now avail me. Just consider. If the description of me possessed by Captain Fitzgerald is as faithful and minute as you say, the mere absence of my feet could not deceive him. Besides, when I am found, if the commander of the man-of-war asks me my name I will not deny it, I will ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... praised his name. In the warmth of kindly treatment after many hardships, he cast aside reserve and caution as mere winter garments, and, the girl Nesibeh being still before his eyes, kissed Mitri's hand and owned his passion for her. Already he loved Mitra as a father. He prayed to Allah he might some day be in truth his son. That was his dearest wish, the one hope left to him. The priest regarded ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... that some slight variations in the form of our plurals are either mere points of orthography, or else capable of being explained ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... number a most remarkable man, whose history I have read with feelings that I could not adequately express under any circumstances, and least of all when I know he hears me, who worked when he was a mere baby at hand-loom weaving until he dropped from fatigue: who began to teach himself as soon as he could earn five shillings a-week: who is now a botanist, acquainted with every production of the Lancashire valley: ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... ashamed. Yet, clear-headed and logical as Courtland was in his ordinary affairs, he was nevertheless not entirely free from that peculiar superstition which surrounds every man's romance. He believed there was something more than a mere coincidence in his unexpectedly finding himself in such favorable conditions for making her acquaintance. For the rest—if there was any rest—he would simply trust to fate. And so, believing himself a cool, sagacious reasoner, ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... all, who since him have liv'd, His offspring: whence, below, the human kind Lay sick in grievous error many an age; Until it pleas'd the Word of God to come Amongst them down, to his own person joining The nature, from its Maker far estrang'd, By the mere act of his eternal love. Contemplate here the wonder I unfold. The nature with its Maker thus conjoin'd, Created first was blameless, pure and good; But through itself alone was driven forth From Paradise, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... delegates, forming an unusual trio, Dr. William Samuel Johnson, Roger Sherman, and Oliver Ellsworth. These men were fearful of establishing too strong a government and were at one time or another to be found in opposition to Madison and his supporters. They were not mere obstructionists, however, and while not constructive in the same way that Madison and Wilson were, they must be given some credit for the form which the Constitution finally assumed. Their greatest service was in restraining the tendency ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... in that house—not to be accounted for by mere creature comforts—that made it easier to fight off the blue devils of loneliness and took away a little of the reminder's stings when some tantalizing shape appeared in his tobacco clouds. Every morning he was awakened by her voice at the piano, a few minutes of scales and then one ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... have not the deterring influence which imprisonment for life carries. Mere death is not dreaded. See the number of suicides. Hopeless captivity is much ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Villedo, who has made a European reputation and rejuvenated his theatre in a dozen years, is doubtless, as he said, a professional maker of compliments. In his position a man must be. But, nevertheless, last night's triumph is officially and very genuinely Villedo's. While as for Morenita and Diaz, the mere idea of these golden stars waiting on me, the librettist, effacing themselves, rendering themselves subordinate at such a moment, was fantastic. It passed the credible.... A Diaz standing silent and deferential, while an idolized prima donna stepped down from her throne to flatter ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... country of one hundred and sixty-seven men, without increasing the quantity of food consumed; and it should also be remarked, that the time of the class of men thus supplied, is far more valuable than that of mere labourers. ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... far stronger—it was different, I can tell you, from any mere proposal of marriage. What do you ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... accident, or were committed to the hands of the burgesses domiciled in the capital. It is, therefore, quite easy to understand how the assemblies of the burgesses, which had great practical importance during the first two centuries of the republic, gradually became a mere instrument in the hands of the presiding magistrate, and in truth a very dangerous instrument, because the magistrates called to preside were so numerous, and every resolution of the community was regarded as the ultimate legal expression of the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the production of his play in New York; his second play was to be brought out in London in a month. But the heartiness of his friends' greetings, and the anxiety of men to be recognized who had been mere acquaintances hitherto, had touched and amused him. He was too young to be cynical over it, and he was glad, on the whole, that ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... so indifferent about meeting death, that he declared while in confinement, that if he should be hanged, he would create a laugh before he was turned off, by playing off some trick upon the executioner. Holding up such a mere animal as an example was not expected to have the proper or intended effect; the governor therefore, with the humanity that was always conspicuous in his exercise of the authority vested in him, directed that he should be sent to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... to explain some of the views that have been held about them. How people first of all had thought them mere candles set in the sky, to guide their own footsteps when the Sun was gone; till wise men, sitting on the Chaldean plains, and watching them with aged eyes, became impressed with the solemn view that those still and shining lights were the executioners of God's decrees, ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... in the hands of the publishers, from the most eminent educational and literary men in all parts of the country. From year to year their sale is steadily and rapidly increasing. It is believed that the mere increase in the sale of these abridgments the present year, will be greater than the entire combined sale of ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... doubt about the worthiness and divineness of your letters? The last one sparkles and beams as if it had bright eyes. It is not mere writing—it is music. I believe that if I were to stay away from you a few more months, your style would become absolutely perfect. Meanwhile I think it advisable for us to forget about writing and style, and no longer to postpone the highest and loveliest of studies. I have practically ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in pleasure spends, Heedless of duty and of friends, Nor dost thou mark, though fondly true, The evil path his steps pursue. He cares not for affairs of state, Nor us forlorn and desolate, But sits a mere spectator still, A sensual slave to pleasure's will. Four months were fixed, the time agreed When he should help us in our need: But, bound in toils of pleasure fast, He sees not that the months are past. Where beats the heart which draughts of wine To virtue or to gain incline? ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the eastern town, found it a mere mass of ruins, with the dead bodies of the soldiers lying everywhere, half covered with the wreck of the works they had died in defending. The taking of this portion of Athlone had cost Ginckle dearly, and he was ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... you in mind of Galloway!" she said. And indeed the bog myrtle is the characteristic smell of the great world of hill and moss we call by that name. In far lands the mere thought of it has brought tears to the eyes unaccustomed, so close do the scents and sights of the old Free Province—the lordship of the Picts—wind themselves about the hearts ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... beaming, "You have a wife, sir, that is a jewel. Solomon never spoke a truer word; an ornament to her husband, he said, I think; but you as a minister should know better than I, a mere layman"; and his face ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... object of my secret, enthusiastic worship. She was not exactly pretty, but her slight figure, fair complexion and beautiful auburn curls furnished a piquant setting for her refined, intelligent countenance which made up for the lack of mere beauty. I used to thrill with admiration as I watched her riding at a swift gallop, a little black velvet cap showing off her fairness, the long curls ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... laugh, in which his partner, having quitted her scullery to seize the gift, which in its colors resembled the skin of a garter-snake, did not fail to join, through mere excess of animal delight. The effect of the gift, however, was to leave the negro to make his observations, without any further interruption from one who was a little too apt to ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... broadening; below it, the level bars of light struck full on the sullen black of the west, and worked there undaunted, tinging it with crimson and imperial purple. Two or three coy mist-clouds, soon converted to the new allegiance, drifted giddily about, mere flakes of rosy blushes. The victory of the day came slowly, but sure, and then the full morning flushed out, fresh with moisture and light and delicate perfume. The bars of sunlight fell on the lower earth from the steep hills like pointed ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... treatise published by the Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft, by Hirschfeld and others, 1908). Examples on this point would prove of little value, as nothing but a complete unveiling of the complication in question would carry conviction. I therefore content myself with the mere assertion, and will cite an example, not for conviction but for explication. The hysterical vomiting of a female patient proved, on the one hand, to be the realization of an unconscious fancy from the time of puberty, that she might ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... circle, they are found placed side by side at the same extremity of a diameter, at the other extremity of which is the—Bible. The resemblances, in some instances, are so striking, that one is reminded of that little animal, the fresh-water polype, whose external structure is so absolutely a mere prolongation of the internal, that you may turn him inside out, and all the functions of life go on ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... whoever has this Show is setting a new scene. Or, no. The wall opens and the genie slips through, spreads his rug on the ground and begins to make new magic before your very eyes. Never a doorbell rang yet, I thought, that didn't bring a bit of heaven or hell—or mere purgatory—with it. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... believe, that the question is a hopeless one. The failure of past measures is no reason that future ones should not be more successful, especially when we consider, that all past efforts on behalf of the Aborigines have entirely overlooked the wrongs and injuries they are suffering under from our mere presence in their country, whilst none have been adapted to meet the exigencies of the peculiar relations they are placed in with regard to the colonists. The grand error of all our past or present systems—the very fons et ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... all, my child. Four hundred thousand francs are a mere nothing to me. Paccard will give you an account for some plate, amounting to thirty thousand francs, on which money has been paid on account; but our goldsmith, Biddin, has paid money for us. Our furniture, seized by him, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... than a mere coincidence that as all the Semitic tribes worshipped the goddess Isis, so—the Japanese worshipped, for supreme being, the goddess of the Sun? Thus, here again there would seem to have been some ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... best reason that can be given for the practice. It is an innocent mode of passing the time, it takes one out of oneself, it is amusing. Of course, it can be carried to an excess; and a man may become a mere book-eater, as a man may become an opium-eater. I used at one time to go and stay with an old friend, a clergyman in a remote part of England. He was a bachelor and fairly well off. He did not care about exercise or his garden, and ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... all, are the three or four you smoke before the fire at night, when the day is dying and the opossums are beginning to chatter in the twilight. So that you find that a fig of Barret's twist, seventeen to the pound, is gone in the mere hours of day-light without counting such a casualty as waking up cold in the night, and going at ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... provide the invader with a number of oxen, to be slaughtered for food, numerous casks of wine, the purpose of which was obvious, and a large supply of forage valued at L12,000. After all, however, that was a mere trifle in comparison with what the present Kaiser's forces would probably demand on landing at Hull or Grimsby or Harwich, should they some day do so. By the terms of the surrender of Versailles, however, the local National Guards were to have ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... very natural and proper that this should be done. A mere obligation not to resort to war, without more, would almost imply that disputes between the parties to the obligation should {15} find some other method of settlement. For if some other method could not be found, feelings due to the continuance of the ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... Docks are like no other docks in the world. About their gates you find the scum of the world's worst countries; all the peoples of the delirious Pacific of whom you have read and dreamed—Arab, Hindoo, Malayan, Chink, Jap, South Sea Islander—a mere catalogue of the names is a romance. Here are pace and high adventure; the tang of the East; fusion of blood and race and creed. A degenerate dross it is, but, do you know, I cannot say that I don't prefer it to the well-spun gold that is flung from the Empire ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... like it still does in Bud Corn-tassel's when he comes over to see or help me or to bring me something from Aunt Mary, his mother. "Bess is one of the best of friends I've got in the world, but I just—just couldn't see Corn-tassel dancing in some man's arms in the mere hint of an evening gown that Bess occupied while fox-trotting with Evan Baldwin at the ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... be proper briefly to notice the state of the public mind at the moment. The natives were now a mere handful: an irregular contest of several years duration, now and then slackened, was ever adding some new victim to the slain. The constables occasionally fell in with the temporary huts, which told the mournful ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... heart, "Make Haste my Beloved" —"Even so, come Lord Jesus." The Holy Spirit ungrieved and unhindered in the believer will not alone produce this desire, but keep it alive in the soul and make it more intense. One may hold the Second Coming of Christ in a mere intellectual way; there is no profit in that. The blessed Hope must have its seat in the heart and affection. It is therefore a good test of our spiritual state. If our hearts are crying more for Him, ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... English, Van Orsdale, Harden, and Woodbridge were all at their posts, and none of them lost an opportunity to put in a telling shot. Lieut. Francis Woodbridge was the youngest officer in the command, then a mere boy, but a few months from West Point, yet he was as cool as any of the veterans, and displayed, soldierly qualities that endeared him to everyone who participated ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... the hero of the play. It is a singular mark of the dissolute manners of those times, that an audience, to whom matrimonial infidelity was nightly held out, not only as the most venial of trespasses, but as a matter of triumphant applause, were unable to brook any ridicule, upon the mere transitory connection formed betwixt the keeper and his mistress. Dryden had spared neither kind of union; and accordingly his opponents exclaimed, "That he lampooned the court, to oblige his friends in the city, and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... did not hesitate to express his opinion that the new method of graduating circles, published by Troughton in 1809,[343] was the "greatest improvement ever made in the art of instrument-making."[344] But a more secure road to improvement than that of mere mechanical exactness was pointed out by Bessel. His introduction of a regular theory of instrumental errors might almost be said to have created a new art of observation. Every instrument, he declared in memorable words,[345] ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... their functions to the full within the limits of their responsibility. Not only does devolution of work and responsibility cause subordinates to take more interest in their work (it makes them feel less like mere figure-heads), but it also teaches them initiative and gives them valuable experience in the art of training and handling men. Furthermore, it enables the company commander to devote more time to the larger and more important matters connected ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... liberty is but a mere trifle when compared with the circumstances that necessarily attend, and are inseparably connected with it. It is the recollection of what we once were, of the friends, the home, and the pleasures that we have left or lost; the anticipation of ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... to oppression—that is, he either oppresses or is oppressed—and he is dully callous to death. So the villages were not much surprised at Kettle's descents upon them, and usually surrendered to him passively on the mere prestige of his name. They were pleasantly disappointed that he omitted the usual massacre, and in gratitude were eager to accept what they were pleased to term his ju-ju, but which he described as the creed of the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... melancholy." This passage in Milton possesses an excellence far superior to that of mere description: it is spoken in the character of the melancholy Man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety. The Author makes this remark, to rescue himself from the charge of having alluded with levity to a line in Milton: a charge than which ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... did the customary enemies of the voles arrive on the scene: Nature called to her great task a number of unexpected destroyers—sea-gulls from the distant coast, a kite from a wooded island on a desolate, far-off mere, and a buzzard from a rocky fastness, rarely visited save by keepers and shepherds, near the up-country lakes. Food had gradually become scarce even for the few hundred voles that yet remained. No longer were they to be seen at play together, in little groups, during ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... that the greatest part of the Architects of that Age, who had gained the general Vogue, being so ignorant, that they did not know even (as himself is forced to declare) the first Principles of their Art: The Quality of a mere Architect was become so Contemptible, that if his Books had not carried all the Marks of an extraordinary Knowledge, and rare abilities, and undeceived the World by taking away the prejudice that his small employ created him, the Precepts he has left us would have wanted that Authority that ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... could still hurt, for a moment it seemed as if her whole body was pain because of it. Successful, important, thriving Joanna Godden could still suffer because eight years ago she had not been allowed to make the sacrifice of all that she now held so triumphantly. This mere name of Martin's brother had pricked her heart, and she suddenly wanted to get closer to the past than she could get with her memorial-card and photograph and tombstone. Even Sir Harry Trevor, ironic link with faithful ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... to display his great thick-set person to the most advantage; he was as vain as any fop, without the affectation of that character, for he was always blunt and free-spoken, but, as long as he had enough to satisfy his vanity, he cared nothing for mere wealth. He had generosity, though he neglected the precept about the right hand and the left, and showed some ostentation in his charities. When a poor ruined fellow at his elbow saw him win at a throw L200, and murmured 'How happy that would make me!' ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... looking from one to the other of us declared: "Upon my word, I had grown so desperate that I'd have gone boldly up to the devil himself on the mere hint that he had a second mate's job ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... might know how really gracious he is, and how good. Of course, there has been money spent, but he can afford it without hurting the children. It has been so necessary that with a Coalition people should know each other! There was some little absurd row here. A man who was a mere nobody, one of the travelling butterfly men that fill up spaces and talk to girls, got hold of him and was impertinent. He is so thin-skinned that he could not shake the creature into the dust as you ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... situation of Cad Sills. A dark, lush, ignorant, entrancing woman, for whose sake decent men stood ready to drop their principles like rags—yes, at a mere secret sign manifested in her eye, where the warmth of her blood was sometimes seen as a crimson spark alighted on black velvet. She went against the good government ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the use of this instrument which is such a rare gift to us. Thrice happy are those who are able to give to listening humanity the full comprehensive and soulful touch of song which the individual instrument is capable of producing. There is so much more in singing than the mere possession of a beautiful voice. The singer must be able to supplement the beauty of the voice with intelligence in the exposition of the song. But few realize how much skill this demands. No amount ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... much envy. The Marechal de Rochefort, who had expected to be named, made a great ado. Madame de Maintenon, who despised her, was piqued, and said that she should have had it but for the conduct of her daughter. This was a mere artifice; but the daughter was, in truth, no sample of purity. She had acted in such a manner with Blansac that he was sent for from the army to marry her, and on the very night of their wedding she gave birth to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... difficult to choose in a chain of cadences so equal and so exalted, but perhaps the last, "Telle que dans son char la Berecynthienne" is the most marvellous. The vision alone of Rome like the mother of the Gods in her car would have made the sonnet immortal. He adds to the mere picture a noise of words that is like thunder in the hills far off on summer afternoons: the words roll and crest themselves and follow rumbling to the end: he could not have known as he wrote it how great a thing he was writing. ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... reeds," Chafi Three said. "Creatures who collapse with terror at the mere projection of a Zid can be of little assistance ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... this sword, invincible, for thy beloved wolf-boy, but I declare to you, I shall give you henceforth no peace till the sword is taken from him. Hunding shall have his revenge! The conduct of these mortals is shameful. But when Gods, such as thou, misbehave, what can be expected of mere mortals?" Fricka sighed. "However thou may seek to free thyself or defend thyself, I am thy eternal bride; thou canst not get away from me, and if thou wouldst have peace, thou wilt heed me. See to it that the wolf-man ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... pensionary. England declared war on December 20. The opposition maintained that the government had behaved arrogantly and was actuated by a desire for plunder, and that it was unjust to found a war on a mere proposal emanating from the magistracy of a single city and not confirmed by the states-general. Yet, if the conduct of Holland is viewed as a whole, it will be found to justify the course pursued by the government. England, then, in addition to the war with her rebellious colonies, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... reflection, was inclined to agree with Gorman. Mere recognition, though agreeable to any king, is unsubstantial, and the support suggested was ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... recreant lover, or ask that John should hear the story. Her mind was too much disturbed, and for more than half an hour she sat, looking intently into the fire, seeing there visions of what might be in case Charlie loved her still, and wished her to be his wife. The mere knowing that he had written made her so happy that she could not even be angry with her mother, though a shadow flitted over her face, when her reverie was broken by the entrance of Madam Richards, who had come to see what she thought of fitting up the west chambers ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... trust to the oaths of those who do not join us," he answered. "For your own sake, I must make you take part in the next capture we attempt, or else my people will begin to suspect that you are a mere coward, and even I shall ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... By von Domaszewski in Archiv for 1907, p. 333 foll. The learned author's reasoning is often based on mere hypotheses as to the meaning of the festivals or the gods concerned in them, and his ideas as to the agricultural features of the months July, August, December seem to me doubtful; but the paper is one that all students of ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... of Chinese there, to prevent further disturbance, and afterwards to Seattle, in Washington Territory, to avert a threatened attack upon Chinese laborers and domestic violence there. In both cases the mere presence of the troops had the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... possibly an impostor, certainly a disturbing element, it was her duty to drive her from her employer's house; but however pure and noble her disapproval, Grace could not speak of the orphan without a tone or look suggesting mere spite. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... exaggerations of the North-Americans." One would think the dream of Columbus half-fulfilled, and that Europe had found in the West the near way to Orientalism, at least of diction. But it seems to us that a great deal of what is set down as mere exaggeration is more fitly to be called intensity and picturesqueness, symptoms of the imaginative faculty in full health and strength, though producing, as yet, only the raw material.[B] By-and-by, perhaps, the world will see it worked up into poem and picture, and Europe, which will be hard-pushed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... curious to see how the other one turns out," remarked Giovanni. "There seems to be a certain unanimity in our opinion of Flavia. However, I daresay it is mere gossip, and Casa Montevarchi is not a gay place for a girl of ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... any secret that should unwittingly fall from either of the seamen. His forethought was followed by no very important results, though it served to supply his suspicions with all the additional testimony of the treachery of their characters that could be furnished by evidence so simple as the mere sound of their voices. As to the words themselves, though the good-man they might well contain treason, he was compelled to acknowledge to himself that it was so artfully concealed as to escape even his acute capacity We leave the reader himself to judge of the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... they should decide for themselves and take the consequences, the guilt of sinful action clings to them and cannot be transferred. This whole scene, indeed, is a mirror for magistrates, to show them down what dark paths they may be pushed if they resign themselves to be the mere tools of the popular will. Pilate ought to have opposed the popular will at whatever risk and refused to do the deed of which he disapproved. But such a course would have involved loss to himself; and this was the real reason ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... has come out with a strong denunciation of "devilry" in German music. How little we suspected, before the War opened our deluded eyes, that it was no mere lack of skill but the fierce promptings of a demoniac hate that marred our evenings on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... old Spanish writers on Mexico give a tolerably full account of the manner in which the obsidian knives, &c., were made by the Aztecs. It will be seen that it only modifies in one particular the theory we had formed by mere inspection as to the way in which these objects were made, which is given at p.97; that is, they were cracked off by pressure, and not, as we conjectured, by a blow of some ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... giants, to suggest improvements, to repeat the admiration of others for their graceful outlines—to, in fact, direct thought and conversation into the common channel of love for those trees. This peculiarity was noticeable to outsiders, to their own circle, to their children. At mere mention of the trees the shadow of coming cloud would lessen, then waste, then grow invisible. Their mutual love for these voiceless yet voiceful and kingly creations was as the love of children for a flower—simple, nameless, beautiful ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... invasion of barbarians, nor by the violence of rebellious armies urged on by greed, nor by angel nor archangel, nor by any created power, but by the Paraclete himself. How, for a motive so unworthy, for a mere woman, for a tear or two, feigned, perhaps, scorn that august dignity, that authority that was not conceded by God even to the archangels nearest to his throne? How should he descend to be confounded ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... only slender trees, mere saplings, at first, and as you acquire skill, slightly heavier trees can be felled. Begin in the right way with your very first efforts and ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... sir," replied the sergeant. "I'm only acting upon orders"; and he spoke humbly, apologetically. Even at that moment a passing stranger could not have helped noticing the difference between the men. The policemen were stolid, commonplace, the mere creatures of formula; the young man whom they had come to apprehend was, to the most casual observer, a man of mark. Neither of them could help feeling it. Pale of face, clear-cut features, black, flashing ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... visible, but it seemed a mere spark. It alternately paled and glowed. One moment it almost went out, and the next it gleamed brightly. To the men, compelled to look on and powerless to prevent the burning of the now apparently doomed block-house, that spark was like ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... this situation the question, What would you put in place of Christianity? is a mere mockery. One can see some pertinence and use in the question: How shall we induce the Christian Churches to employ their still great resources in helping to bring on the reign of peace? But it is not to them that we now look for redemption. ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... impossible in the confines of the tunnel which, in places, was a mere tube in the rocks; the roar of the water was almost deafening. It was so black, too, that they could not see one another's faces. Of real alarm Jack did not feel much, and for an excellent reason. ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... am!" he breathed. "I bet the feller's got grub in there." He had been out two days. He was light-headed from lack of food; at the thought of it nervous caution gave way to mere brute instinct, and he plunged recklessly into the cave. Inside, the sudden darkness blinded him for a moment. Then there began to be visible in one corner a bed of bracken and sweet-fern; in another ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... are not to ignore the fact that this lonely death, with which we are now concerned, is of the nature of a penal infliction. And so it stands forth in consonance with the whole tone of the Mosaic teaching. I admit, of course, that the mere physical fact of the separation between body and spirit is simply the result of natural law. But that is not the death that you and I know. Death as we know it, the ugly thing that flings its long shadows across ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... almost involuntary. It was as though they were a mere verbal expression of what was passing through his mind, and made without thought of addressing her. He was almost powerless in his self-control before her beauty. And Jessie's conscience in its weakly life could not hold ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... was much the same, and so was their manner of life: their virtues and their vices were similar, and thus it happened that a mere acquaintance grew into a friendship, and on his return from the field the marquis introduced Sainte-Croix to his wife, and he became an intimate of the house. The usual results followed. Madame de Brinvilliers was then scarcely eight-and-twenty: she had married the marquis ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... a winding entrance beneath a powerful circular bastion from an extremely narrow quay, from which the remains of a once powerful mote projected about 120 yards into the sea and commanded the inner harbour. This was now a mere line of loose and disjointed stones. A citadel that is separated from the main fortress by a wet ditch which communicates with the sea by an adit beneath the wall commands the harbour on the east side. This ditch is as usual scarped from the rock, and otherwise of solid masonry; should ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... acquiesced. "A foreigner in your world of dreams and shadows. No prince, Audrey, or great white knight and hero. Only a gentleman of these latter days, compact like his fellows of strength and weakness; now very wise and now the mere finger-post of folly; set to travel his own path; able to hear above him in the rarer air the trumpet call, but choosing to loiter on the lower slopes. In addition a man who loves at last, loves greatly, with a passion that shall ennoble. A stranger ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... them had the charm of Sally. The memory of youth—true-hearted, romantic, wonder-working youth—had enthroned her in its golden castle and was defending her against the present commonplace herd of mere human beings. No one of them had played with me in the old garden or stood by the wheat-field with flying hair, as yellow as the grain, and delighted me with the sweetest words ever spoken. No one of them had been glorified with the light and ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... to me and, snatching up his mace from his saddle bow, struck me with it on the head. I fell to the ground, whilst the people came round us and seizing the trooper's mare by the bridle said to him, "Strikest thou this youth such a blow as this for a mere push!" But the trooper cried out at them, "This fellow is an accursed thief!" Whereupon I came to myself and stood up, and the people looked at me and said, "Nay, he is a comely youth: he would not steal anything;" and some of them took my part and others were against me ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... form, not dramas. His odes have the turgidity without the grandeur of Gray's. His 'English Garden' is too long and too formal. His Life of Gray was an admirable innovation on the form of biography then prevalent, interspersing, as it does, journals and letters with mere narrative. Mason was a royal chaplain, held the living of Ashton, and was precentor of York Cathedral. We quote the best of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... doubt Judas did not receive Christ's body in the dipped bread; he received mere bread. Yet as Augustine observes (Tract. lxii in Joan.), "perchance the feigning of Judas is denoted by the dipping of the bread; just as some things are dipped to be dyed. If, however, the dipping signifies here anything good" (for instance, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... do you remember it, Sampson, when I was a mere stripling, you took me aside, and pointed out a dim light, away down to the water's edge, and told me I would have seen different days before I made it again? Do you think I can ever forget it? I could ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... "Essay on Criticism," which was published by Lewis in 1711. His mastery over his medium was still more noticeable than the originality of his thought. But this cento of exquisitely chiselled critical commonplaces goes far toward being a chef d'oeuvre of mere manipulative skill; and we are still, by our daily use of some of its lines, justifying the truth of Addison's dictum, that "Wit and fine Writing doth not consist so much in advancing Things that are new as in giving Things that are known ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... remark was unquestionably true, for the road—if a mere footpath merits the name—was rugged in the extreme—here winding round the base of steep cliffs, there traversing portions of luxuriant forest, elsewhere skirting the margin ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... he had a particular grudge against them because he alone of his father's offspring had been chosen for the nauseating infliction. Why should his sisters have been spared and he doomed? He became really impatient when Sunday schools were under discussion, and from mere irrational annoyance he would not admit that Sunday schools had any good qualities whatever. He knew nothing of their history, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... they never ask me to join in those things," she said, pleasantly enough. "The sacred fire has not descended on me. They say that I regard their performances as mere childish amusement; but I don't really; it isn't for a Philistine like myself to express disdain about anything. But then, you see, if I were to try to join in with my clever sisters, and perhaps when they were most in earnest, I might ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... and thinks of it as a corpse; I see a corpse and behold sleep rather than death. And as in regard to books, both learned persons and unlearned see them with the same eyes, but not with the same understanding. To the unlearned the mere shapes of letters appear, while the learned discover the sense that lies within those letters. So in respect to affairs in general, we all see what takes place with the same eyes, but not with the same understanding and judgment. Since, therefore, in all other things we differ from them, shall ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Tuskegee, with an enrolment of 1,231 students in 1889, gave much impetus to industrial education among the blacks, turning in that direction educational interest and energy which had previously found vent to too great an extent, relatively, in providing negro students with mere literary training. The Slater-Armstrong Memorial Trades' Building, dedicated January 10, 1890, was erected and finished by the students practically alone. At least three-fourths of those receiving instruction at this school ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... nation and equal to the great crisis upon which your lot is cast;" and in this declaration it gives us marked pleasure to add we are confident that the convention has but spoken the intelligent and patriotic sentiment of the country. Ever inaccessible to the low influences which often control the mere partisan, governed alone by an honest opinion of constitutional obligations and rights and of the duty of looking solely to the true interests, safety, and honor of the nation, such a class is incapable of resorting to any bait for popularity at the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... will abandon their reserved attitude towards the Government which they were far from entertaining when the State was first established. It seems as if the role of conciliator may well be filled by that wise old man, Nicholas Pa[vs]i['c], who is now no longer a mere Balkan Premier. When he was that he very properly used Balkan methods, despite the stern remarks ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... around, but suddenly stopped, and then, much to our satisfaction, down he came to the ground. The body lay still within point-blank range of my rifle. This was a matter of great importance. It must be understood that I killed the rhinoceros, not in mere wantonness, but that the carcass might serve as a bait to a lion, of which I was so anxious to get possession. I waited for some time, during which an unusual stillness seemed to reign through ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the practical results of this sequence in the position of Corals on the Reef, we cannot fail to see that it is not a mere accidental difference of structure and relation, but that it bears direct reference to the part these little beings were to play in Creation. It places the solid part of the structure at the base of the Reef,—it fills in the interstices with a lighter growth,—it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... issue, admits that the Southern white people have made no progress in the great world of thought, because they had everything their way. The solid South practically destroyed its opportunities to develop thinkers in the political world, and the prejudice they entertain and foster by mere sentiment was not conducive to the production of strong men, or the development of great thinkers or leaders of distinguished constructive ability. In some sense the South has for some time lived in an eddy. There has not been that broad sweep of the current ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the satisfied deep grass Looking straight upward stars itself with white, Like ships in heaven full-sailed do long clouds pass Slowly o'er this great peace, and wide sweet light. While through moist meads draws down yon rushy mere ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... so dainty narrow, just like a sheep-track, led through long ferns that lodged. Fairy land at last, thought I; Una and her lamb dwell here. Truly, a small abode—mere palanquin, set down on the summit, in a pass between two worlds, participant ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... it is the promise of what she will be in the careless school-girl, that makes her attractive, the undeveloped maidenhood, or the mere natural, careless sweetness of childhood. If Laura at twelve was beginning to be a beauty, the thought of it had never entered her head. No, indeed. Her mind wad filled with more important thoughts. To her simple school-girl ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Shakspeare's characters are the representatives of the interior nature of humanity, in which some element has become so predominant as to destroy the health of the mind; whereas Chaucer's are rather representatives of classes of manners. He is therefore more led to individualize in a mere personal sense. Observe Chaucer's love of nature; and how happily the subject of his main work is chosen. When you reflect that the company in the Decameron have retired to a place of safety from the raging of a pestilence, their mirth ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... being in general little else than mere natural voices or cries, must of course be adapted to the sentiments which are uttered with them, and never carelessly confounded one with an other when we express them on paper. The adverb ay is sometimes improperly written for the interjection ah; as, ay me! for ah me! and still oftener ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... compromise. He had the choice, by his nature, his aims, his capacities, of being a genius or nothing. He had no little gifts, and he was even destitute of some of the separate and indivisible great ones. In mere writing, mere style, he was not supreme; one seldom or never derives from anything of his the merely artistic satisfaction given by perfect prose. His humor, except of the grim and gigantic kind, was not remarkable; his wit, for a Frenchman, curiously ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... may be like, there are, and will be, two sides to human life. There is the material, commonplace, and in a sense, vulgar existence; there is also life's ideal side. Give a man, who is a man and not a mere biped animal, all the comforts and enjoyments of physical life, good food, good habitation, safety and health, even a clear intellect, and give him nothing else. Would he not scorn and weary of such a life as that, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... law, leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression of chaos. The story is told, that a citizen of Paris in the seventeenth century having heard it said that in Venice there was no king, the good man could not recover from his astonishment, and nearly died from laughter at the mere mention of so ridiculous a thing. So strong is our prejudice. As long as we live, we want a chief or chiefs; and at this very moment I hold in my hand a brochure, whose author—a zealous communist—dreams, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... down for just a minute," said the hearty voice of little Captain Witherspoon. "I'll just wash my hands here at the sink, if you'll let me, same 's I did the other day. I shouldn't have bothered you so late about a mere fish, but they was such prime mackerel, an' I thought like's not one of 'em would make ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and development which the child does not possess. There is no doubt that our development of charity methods has reached this pseudo-scientific and stilted stage. We have learned to condemn unthinking, ill-regulated kind-heartedness, and we take great pride in mere repression much as the stern parent tells the visitor below how admirably he is rearing the child, who is hysterically crying upstairs and laying the foundation for future nervous disorders. The pseudo-scientific spirit, or rather, the undeveloped stage of ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... a mighty canter by a boy with a rope's end, or it is horrified by the hair-breadth escape of a group of hooded countrywomen from before the neighing charge of a two-year-old in a halter and string. Yet these things are the mere preliminary to the fair. At the end of the town a gap broken in a fence admits to a long field on a hillside. The entrance is perilous, and before it is achieved may involve more than one headlong flight to the safe summit of a friendly wall, as ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... and results were accomplished which have not since been exercised or accomplished. In other words, the origin of the world and the things upon it was essentially and radically different from the manner in which the present order of nature is now being sustained and perpetuated. The mere matter of time is in no way the essential idea in the problem. The question of how much time was occupied in the work of Creation is of no importance, neither is the question of how long ago it took place. The one essential idea is that the processes and methods of Creation are beyond us, ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... everything. He had done for himself in the office, pawned his watch, spent all his money; and he had not even got drunk. He began to feel thirsty again and he longed to be back again in the hot reeking public-house. He had lost his reputation as a strong man, having been defeated twice by a mere boy. His heart swelled with fury and, when he thought of the woman in the big hat who had brushed against him and said Pardon! his fury nearly ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Henry's absence," Olive said, tapping the letter in her lap. "No doubt he was summoned without any previous warning. Of course, he is a mere tool for his master. They will hardly dare let him see ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the strongest stomach. On the other hand, when overboiled they become vapid, and in a state similar to decay, in which they afford no sweet purifying juices to the stomach, but load it with a mass of mere feculent matter. The same may be said of many other vegetables, their utility being too often sacrificed to appearance, and sent to table in a state not fit to be eaten. A contrary error often prevails respecting potatoes, as if they could never be done too much. Hence they ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... reflecting mirrors of Anthemius; they were astonished by the noise which he produced from the collision of certain minute and sonorous particles; and the orator declared in tragic style to the senate, that a mere mortal must yield to the power of an antagonist, who shook the earth with the trident of Neptune, and imitated the thunder and lightning of Jove himself. The genius of Anthemius, and his colleague Isidore the Milesian, was excited and employed by a prince, whose taste for architecture had degenerated ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... that has been acting for thousands upon thousands of years and is still going on. My best thanks for the book about the boulders. Those are fellows indeed! They could tell us something worth hearing, if they only knew how to talk. It's really a pleasure now and then to become a mere nothing, especially when a man is as highly placed as I am. And then to think that we all, even with patent lacquer, are nothing more than insects of a moment on that ant-hill the earth, though we may be insects with stars and garters, places and offices! One feels quite a novice ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... you were mere questions of right or wrong? You had a world of light and frivolous women to choose from, your own kind of women who could dance and fritter life away in following fads that make for license—but you must come into the household of a man who has tried to fight God's battles; standing against ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... will the increase in the facilities of communication we have assumed affect the condition of those whose circumstances are more largely dictated by economic forces? The mere diffusion of a large proportion of the prosperous and relatively free, and the multiplication of various types of road and mechanical traction, means, of course, that in this way alone a perceptible diffusion of the less independent classes will occur. To the subsidiary centres will be drawn doctor ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... so small that this would be effected without injury to society or industrial pursuits. Thus it was in Wisconsin, notwithstanding the ordinance of '87; and other examples might be cited to show that this is not mere theory. ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... wrong. She was old Judge Carmody's daughter, you know. Longworth got Carmody under his thumb in money matters and put the screws on. They say he made Carmody's daughter the price of the old man's redemption. The girl herself was a mere child, I shall never forget her face on her wedding day. But she's been plucky since then, I must say. If she has suffered, she hasn't shown it. I don't suppose Longworth ever ill-treats her. He isn't that sort. He's simply a grovelling cad—that's all. Nobody would sympathise much ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the dance; it was still savagery, the custom of a remote, fierce, old world. Dick and Albert at last recovered somewhat; they threw off the power of the flute and the excited air that they breathed and began to assume again the position of mere spectators. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... where the Adriatic rushes into Cattaro at the hidden end of the great sheet of lakes, can't be more than fifteen miles as the crow flies; but so does the course twist that it is much longer for mere wingless things, going by water. How I wished for a motor-boat! But we did not do badly in the big fishing smack. I feared at last that in the straits the wind might die, but instead it blew as through a funnel. We were swept finely up the narrow channel, and so into the last lake ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... thrashed them again and again, despoiled them of their plunder, walked away with their young women, insulted and jeered at their young men. Except when backed by the braves of other bands, therefore, the Apache Yumas were fearful and timorous on the trail. Once they had broken and run before a mere handful of Tontos, leaving a wounded officer to his fate. Once, when scaling the Black Mesa toward this very Snow Lake, they had whimpered and begged to be sent home, declaring no enemy was there in hiding, when the peaks were found alive ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... which they once made the waters foam and the oars bend. Their whole bodies swung with an awkward and laboured motion. Their arms appeared to be nerveless; their faces became haggard, their persons emaciated, their spirits wholly sunk; nature was so completely overcome, that from mere exhaustion they frequently fell asleep during their painful and almost ceaseless exertions. It grieved me to the heart to see them in such a state at the close of so perilous a service, and I began to reproach Robert Harris that he did not move down the river to meet us; but, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... higher gratifications and more remote aspirations. Foresight became a dominating motive even in the general population, and a man's anxiety for the welfare of his family was no longer forgotten in the pleasure of the moment. The social state again became more stable, and mere "prosperity" was transformed into civilisation. This is the state of things now in progress in all industrial countries, though it has reached varying levels ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... meet a man of pleasure, sacrificing every laudable improvement of mind, or of his fortune, to mere corporeal sensations, Mistaken man, says I, you are providing pain for yourself instead of pleasure; you give too much ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... you said, that too much love of learning is in fault, and that I have given up myself to dream away my years in the arms of studious retirement, like Endymion with the moon, as the tale of Latmus goes; yet consider that if it were no more but the mere love of learning—whether it proceed from a principle bad, good, or natural—it could not have held out thus long against so strong opposition on the other side of every kind. For, if it be bad, why should not all the fond hopes that forward youth and vanity are fledge with, together with ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... itself must be seventy or eighty feet above the pedestal. It is split at the top into two points. There it stands, a vast monument of the geological periods that must have elapsed since the mountain ridge, of which it was formerly a part, was washed by the action of old Ocean's waves into mere sandhills at its feet. The stone is so friable that names can be cut in it to almost any depth with a pocket-knife: so loose, indeed, is it, that one almost feels alarmed lest it should fall while he is scratching at its base. In a small orifice or chamber of the pillar I discovered an opossum ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... that the very language of the metaphor before us requires us to interpret the fruitless branches as meaning all those who have a mere superficial, external adherence to the True Vine. For, according to the whole teaching of the parable, if there be any real union, there will be some life, and if there be any life, there will be some fruit, and, therefore, the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... Blossholme, of Cranwell and of Shefton, in whose veins ran the blood of mighty nobles, aye, and of old kings, is dead, murdered by a beggarly foreign monk, who not ten days gone butchered her father also yonder by King's Grave—yonder by the mere. Oh! the arrow in his throat! the arrow in his throat! I cursed the hand that shot it, and to-day that hand is blue beneath the mould. So, too, I curse you, Maldonado, evil-gifted one, Abbot consecrated by Satan, you and all your ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... twisted them together feverishly. It was almost too much for her—you could see the pain of too great emotion in her face, and all the tremor of her form. She was so young—not quite sixteen—and small for her age, a mere child; and she had just been married—and married to Jurgis,* (*Pronounced Yoorghis) of all men, to Jurgis Rudkus, he with the white flower in the buttonhole of his new black suit, he with the mighty shoulders ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... a minute after I was awake that I became aware that I had been dreaming. I was soon convinced that the vision of Old Grimes was a mere dream, but I was not quite so well satisfied about the voices I had heard. I listened, expecting to hear them again, but all was silent as before. I now got up, resolving to try and make my way out. ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... satisfy us," said Dr. O'Grady. "It's a mere trifle. After the shabby way the Lord-Lieutenant has behaved to ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... before, it is not the mere training of the individual that has produced this remarkable development of the power of carrying loads. The centuries before the Conquest, when there were no beasts of burden, had gradually produced a race whose bodies were admirably fitted for such work; and the persistency ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... expression of personal emotion, she fluctuated between the impulse to pour out all she felt and the fear lest her extravagance should amuse or even bore him. She never lost the sense that what was to her the central crisis of experience must be a mere episode in a life so predestined as his to romantic accidents. All that she felt and said would be subjected to the test of comparison with what others had already given him: from all quarters of the globeshe saw passionate ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... well to point out, ere closing this chapter, that S. Paul himself sanctions the use of the theoretical mystic teaching in explaining the historical events recorded in the Scriptures. The history therein written is not regarded by him as a mere record of facts, which occurred on the physical plane. A true mystic, he saw in the physical events the shadows of the universal truths ever unfolding in higher and inner worlds, and knew that the events selected for preservation in occult writings were such as were typical, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... very same thing; and Lewes was a little frog-faced man, with the manner of a dancing master. But Warrington, now, had everything in his favor; intellect, passion, romance, distinction, and the connection was a mere piece of undergraduate folly. Arthur, I confess, has always seemed to me a bit of a fop; I can't imagine how Laura married him. But you say you're a solicitor, Mr. Denham. Now there are one or two things I should like ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... his jeers to reach a swifter end, he was mistaken in that hope. No fire was kindled at their stakes, no sudden stroke of death maul or tomahawk followed his words. The Nakonkirhirinons had keener tortures, torments of a finer fibre than mere physical suffering, and the Bois-Brules' liquor had stirred the ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... the talk had been mere confessions of faith—in Ibsen, in Browning, in Maeterlinck, in English gardens, in Art for Art's sake, and in Whistler ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... greatly to injure English landscape, and the neighbourhood of these Lakes especially, by furnishing such apt occasion for whitening buildings. That white should be a favourite colour for rural residences is natural for many reasons. The mere aspect of cleanliness and neatness thus given, not only to an individual house, but, where the practice is general, to the whole face of the country, produces moral associations so powerful, that, in many minds, they take place of all others. But what has already been said upon ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... years before this time, Sunderland, then Secretary of State to Charles the Second, had married his daughter Lady Elizabeth Spencer to Donough Macarthy, Earl of Clancarty, the lord of an immense domain in Munster. Both the bridegroom and the bride were mere children, the bridegroom only fifteen, the bride only eleven. After the ceremony they were separated; and many years full of strange vicissitudes elapsed before they again met. The boy soon visited his estates in Ireland. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... no doubt know," resumed the Senora, "no one has had the secret of the hiding-place. It has been by mere tradition that they were going to dig. That secret, you may know or may not know now, was in reality contained in the inscriptions on an ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... of insincerity Great deal of the reading done is mere contagion His own tastes and prejudices the standard of his judgment Inability to keep up with current literature Main object of life is not to keep up with the printing-press Man who is past the period of business activity Never to read a book until it is from one ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... the weary little head resting on her sister's shoulder. "Yes," she agreed gladly, comforted greatly by Esther's tone. Esther herself did not feel at all inclined for games or jollity, or anything of the sort, but the mere pretending helped her. Penelope and Angela strolled on ahead, linked arm in arm. Guard trotted along slowly between the two couples, as though determined to be prepared for any more attacks, and so they reached home again at last, and thankfully they made their ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Death came as a mere matter of course. Without apparent effort, the monarch ripped off Jennerby's helmet and sent him spinning back. The man's body writhed and shuddered, and in a moment another stark white face showed where ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... reform our spelling, which has always been a mere rag-bag of lawlessness, I hoped that they would do it right; but I was too deeply immersed in completing the index of my forthcoming volume to spend thought upon this question; nor did I court interruption. My waste-paper basket, therefore, received ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... snow," might be discounted as an instance of sour grapes; but the estimate of its new possessors was evidently little higher, since they debated long and dubiously whether in the peace settlement they should retain Canada or the little sugar island of Guadeloupe, a mere pin point on the map. Canada had been conquered not for the good it might bring but for the harm it was doing as a base for French attack upon the English colonies—"the wasps' nest must be smoked out." But once it had been taken, it had to ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... the most revolting kind are laid down as the foundation of his plots, upon which he wastes a pathos and tenderness deeper than is elsewhere found in the drama; and with Shirley vice is no longer held up as a mere picture, but it is indicated, and sometimes directly recommended, as a fit example. When the drama was at length suppressed, the act destroyed ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... comfort and tranquillity mingling with his more unquiet happiness. There was a fire burning cheerily on the hearth, though it was a May evening. Coming from a warmer climate, he felt chilly, and he bent over the fire, stretching over it his long thin hands, which told plainly their story of mere scholarly work and of health never very vigorous, Smiling all the time, with the glow of the flame on his face, with its expression of tranquil gladness, as of one who had long been buffeted about, but had reached home at last, he sat listening till the voices ceased. A profound silence ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... "atmosphere," of the indefinable quality that some people impart to a dwelling-place. Entering, one felt refinement, daintiness, and the ability to live above mere externals. Barbara had, very strongly, the house-love which belongs to some rare women. And who shall say that inanimate things do not answer to our love of them, and diffuse, between our four walls, a certain gracious ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... of the whole of soctety to-day. Consciousness, I hold, is the supremely valuable thing, and progress, evolution, civilisation, etc., are only significant in so far as they afford nourishment to it. Literature is the self-sufficient fruit of this consciousness, I say; the world says it is a mere means of promoting our physical adjustment. You see I take up lightly the huge ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... unseasonable use of them, custom somewhat detracts and qualifies, according to that of Hippocrates, 2 Aphoris. 50. [1437] "Such things as we have been long accustomed to, though they be evil in their own nature, yet they are less offensive." Otherwise it might well be objected that it were a mere [1438]tyranny to live after those strict rules of physic; for custom [1439]doth alter nature itself, and to such as are used to them it makes bad meats wholesome, and unseasonable times to cause no disorder. Cider and perry are windy drinks, so are all fruits windy in themselves, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... illustrations based on human understanding, and I wrote for my students a certain tract on the unity and trinity of God. This I did because they were always seeking for rational and philosophical explanations, asking rather for reasons they could understand than for mere words, saying that it was futile to utter words which the intellect could not possibly follow, that nothing could be believed unless it could first be understood, and that it was absurd for any one to preach to ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... numberless dissolute rous, one and all of whom maintain that libidinous affections do not constitute lewdness; and who try, further, to prove that licentious love is not tantamount to lewdness. But all these arguments are mere apologies for their shortcomings, and a screen for their pollutions; for if libidinous affection be lewdness, still more does the perception of licentious love constitute lewdness. Hence it is that the indulgence of sensuality and the gratification of licentious affection ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... had varied his peroration with a local allusion very cleverly introduced. "They probably knew him" (he said)—"those, at any rate, who happened to live near Kennington probably knew him—for one who earned his living by a form of sport, by a mere game, if they preferred so to call it." (Cheers.) "He was not there to defend himself, still less to defend cricket." (Hear, hear.) "He would only say that cricket was a game which demanded some skill and— especially when one bowled at the Oval" (loud cheers) "against Surrey" ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had elapsed since we had been on the open streets, and it being near midday, and everything still quiet, we were surprised to see people of the lower classes moving cautiously about on the main streets, but disappearing quickly at the mere sight of other people whose business they could not divine. That, too, was soon explained; for, seeing one rapscallion trying to run away with a sack over his back, we discharged a rifle at him. Straightway the man stopped running, fell ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... not proper to be alarmed by a mere sound, when the cause of that sound is unknown. A poor woman obtaineth consequence for discovering the ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... left grey and bare. [Footnote: Compare Heller's "Chronicle of the Town of Wolgast," p. 42, &c. The riots were caused by the successor of Philippus Julius (d. 6th Feb. 1625), who was also the last Duke of Pomerania, Bogislaus XIV., choosing to reside in Stettin. At the present time the castle is a mere ruin, and only several large vaulted cellars remain, wherein some of the tradesmen of the present day keep their shops.] At this sight my heart was sorely grieved; but I presently inquired for the merchants, who sat at the table drinking their parting cup, with their travelling equipments ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Chechevinski was pressed into service. He won for the first few rounds, and then began to lose, till the amount of his losses far exceeded the slender remainder of his capital. A chance occurred where, by the simple expedient of neutralizing the cut, mere child's play for one so skilled in conjuring, he was able to turn the scale in his favor, winning back in a single game all that he had already lost. He had hesitated for a moment, feeling the abyss yawning beneath ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... face betrays mere indifference, then surprise, then a sudden awakening to intense interest, and lastly ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... looked like a mere cockle-shell, and the African coast could be distinctly seen in the west marked out by a fringe ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... 41. This office, even in the fourth century, was often committed to mere children—a sad proof that the importance of reading the Word ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... not do. The Epistles of St. Paul were truth of truths to Paul, but they do not attract us to the man who wrote them, and, except here and there, they are very uninteresting. Mere strength of conviction on a writer's part is not enough to make his work take permanent rank. Yet I know that I could read the whole of The Pilgrim's Progress (except occasional episodical sermons) without being at all bored by it, whereas, having spent a penny upon Mr. Stead's abridgement ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... certain specific requirements would, indeed, be the key to the situation, but its commercial adaptation required a multifarious variety of apparatus and devices. The word "system" is much abused in invention, and during the early days of electric lighting its use applied to a mere freakish lamp or dynamo was often ludicrous. But, after all, nothing short of a complete system could give real value to the lamp as an invention; nothing short of a system could body forth the new art to the public. Let us therefore set down briefly a few of the leading items needed for ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... by terrible necessity to go through the dread experience of war. I gained an idea of the unspeakable homesickness of the man who leaves his family to an unimagined fate, and sacrifices years in the service of his country. I saw that the mere foregoing of roof and bed is an indescribable distress; I learned something of what the palpitant anxiety before a battle must be, and the quaking fear at the first rattle of bullets, and the half-mad rush of determination with which ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... She was not, I mean, queenly, impassive, never-anything-but-her-cool-calm- self. Tonight, for instance, her eyes were as I had never seen them. There danced in them the merriest glitter, which was more than a mere glorification of the ordinary merry glitter—which scores of girls possess at every ball. To begin with, there was a diabolical abandon in Eva's glitter, which raised it instantly above the common herd's. And behind it ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... take your hat,' I said, little thinking that my courtesy would reveal the true state of affairs. The mere mention of the word hat brought about a terrible change in my visitor; his knees trembled, his face grew ghastly, and he clutched the brim of his beaver until it cracked. He then nervously removed it, and I noticed a dull red mark running about his forehead, just as there ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... Moses really was, what the heathen legislators pretended to be, under a Divine direction; nor does it yet appear that these pretensions to a supernatural conduct, either in these legislators or oracles, were mere delusions of men without any demoniacal impressions, nor that Josephus took them so to be; as the ancientest and contemporary authors did still believe them to ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... long, mother, as you imagine," replied Aladdin. "This demand is a mere trifle, and will prove no bar to my marriage with the princess. I will prepare at once ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... But for such a mere child, Gianetta played with marvellous correctness. As for Nicolo, his countenance cleared with every sound that he drew from his beloved violin; he forgot his gloomy father; he thought no longer of his dull, sad home. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... days. After that no further reinforcements can be expected for a month, so that during the next few weeks the whole strength of the Boers, so far as it is available at all, can be employed against a mere fragment of the British power. To the gravity of this situation it would be folly to shut our eyes. It contains the possibility of disaster, though what the consequences of disaster now would involve must for the present be left unsaid. Yet it may be well to say ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... holding up the head, not an eyelid had time to wink before the wicked King Polydectes, his evil counselors and all his fierce subjects were no longer anything but the mere images of a monarch and his people. They were all fixed forever in the look and attitude of that moment! At the first glimpse of the terrible head of Medusa, they whitened into marble! And Perseus thrust the head back into his wallet and went ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... are mixed up, of all species, Oak and Maple and Chestnut and Birch! But Nature is not cluttered with them; she is a perfect husbandman; she stores them all. Consider what a vast crop is thus annually shed on the earth! This, more than any mere grain or seed, is the great harvest of the year. The trees are now repaying the earth with interest what they have taken from it. They are discounting. They are about to add a leaf's thickness to the depth of the soil. This ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... language and the Romansh of the Grisons cannot be considered as a mere object of curiosity, but may also serve to corroborate the proofs I have above alleged of the antiquity of the latter, I have annexed in the appendix,[AQ] a translation of this oath into the language of Engadine, which approaches nearest to it; although I must observe, ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... people coming up, and urging me in the same manner with great earnestness, I suspected that some of the king's messengers, who were sent in search of me, were in the town; and that these Negroes, from mere kindness, conducted me past it with a view to facilitate my escape. I accordingly took the road for Sego, with the uncomfortable prospect of passing the night on the branches of a tree. After travelling about three miles, I came to a small village near ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... contradictory, were his attributes, both moral and intellectual, that he may be pronounced to have been not one, but many: nor would it be any great exaggeration of the truth to say, that out of the mere partition of the properties of his single mind a plurality of characters, all different and all vigorous, might have been furnished. It was this multiform aspect exhibited by him that led the world, during his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... negotiation. His majesty was highly indignant, said his confidence had been abused, and that now, for the first time, he was made acquainted with the real state of affairs. He accused the ministers of falsehoods, malversations, and all kinds of offences. His displeasure did not end in mere words; he drew his Da, or sword, and sallied forth in pursuit of the offending courtiers. These took to immediate flight, some leaping over the balustrades which rail in the front of the Hall of Audience, but the greater number escaping ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... chief alteration was in the formula of the Lord's Supper. Elizabeth and her divines were not inclined to let this stand as it was read in the second edition of Edward's time, since the mystical act there appeared almost as a mere commemorative repast.[188] They reverted to a form composed from the monuments of Latin antiquity, from Ambrose and Gregory, in which the real presence was maintained; this which already existed in the first edition they united with the view of the second. As formerly in the Augsburg confession ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... had been consented to by his grand-uncle, and, instead of travelling for his own pleasure, he might be the means of satisfying the mind and quieting the anxiety of one who had been so kind to him. Indeed, he should actually prefer a journey into the interior of Africa to a mere sojourn of some time on the continent; the very peril and danger, the anticipation of distress and hardship, were pleasing to his high and courageous mind, and before he fell asleep Alexander had ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... nature to practical politics, or in fact to any activity save that of ideas, I was far from regarding myself as mere material for a scholar, an entertaining author, a literary historian, or the like. I thought myself naturally fitted to be a man of action. But the men of action I had hitherto met had repelled me ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... of the "Ruined Mill" is familiar to all who are acquainted with it, and has been greatly admired by those who did not feel impelled to condemn its many faults. But CLAUDE is now known to have been no artist, but a mere pretender. There is reason to believe that he had never read RUSKIN, and was hence necessarily ignorant of the aim and method of landscape painting. Our young friend BROWN, the spirituel and fascinating assistant Rector of a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... more completely how I have severed my bonds than this: that my wife is willing to let our friends smoke in the study, but I will not hear of it. There shall be no smoking in my house; and I have determined to speak to Jimmy about smoking out at our spare bedroom window. It is a mere contemptible pretence to say that none of the smoke comes back into the room. The curtains positively reek of it, and we must have them washed at once. I shall speak plainly to Jimmy because I want him to tell the others. They ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... finished; I paid for it and sauntered out, keeping the boy well in view. His route to the office lay through a dozen streets which were all deserted at so late an hour; but I remarked one that was even more forbidding than the rest—a mere alley that seemed positively to have been designed for our purpose. Our course is clear—we shall attack him in the ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... called The Muses' Welcome to King James, (first of England, and sixth of Scotland,) on his return to his native kingdom, shewed that there was then abundance of learning in Scotland; and that the conceits in that collection, with which people find fault, were mere mode.' He added, 'we could not now entertain a sovereign so; that Buchanan had spread the spirit of learning amongst us, but we had lost it during the civil wars[169].' He did not allow the Latin Poetry of Pitcairne so much ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... many persons. The old saying concerning the rushing in of fools where angels walk warily came involuntarily to her mind. Then she laughed and squaring her capable shoulders murmured half aloud, "I'm neither a fool nor an angel. I'm just Grace Harlowe, a 'mere ordinary human being,' as Hippy would put it. I'm not going to be so silly as to expect to get along with a whole houseful of girls without some friction. Like the gardens Anne and I planted away back in our freshman year, there are sure ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... As a mere infant Borrow was gloomy and fond of solitude, "ever conscious," he says, "of a peculiar heaviness within me, and at times of a strange sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to horror, and for which I ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... are blossoming out and getting independent! I should think mere decency would have made you consult us before you did anything. What do you know about business? Herbert will be mad as anything when I tell him; and like as not you'll get into no end of trouble with a strange tenant, and we'll have to help you out. Herbert always says women make all ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... the street, torrents of water poured from above, which, instead of diminishing, seemed to be growing more terrible every moment. I had never seen so fearful a storm. It did not appear like mere rain which was falling; the water came down in broad sheets, and changed the road into a river. I got more and more anxious about old Nip. It was getting dark, and I knew he was not strong. My hope was that he ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... for producing sonorous shocks following each other rapidly at regular intervals. Musical sounds are distinguished from mere noises by their regularity. If we shake a number of nails in a tin box, we get only a series of superimposed and chaotic sensations. On the other hand, if we strike a tuning-fork, the air is agitated a ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... as he went, and must have known from his gait what was the nature of the answer he had received. But yet she went quickly upstairs to inquire. The matter was one of too much consequence for a mere inference. Mary had gone from the sitting-room, but her stepmother followed her upstairs to her bed-chamber. "Mamma," she said, "I couldn't do it;—I couldn't do it. I did try. Pray do not scold me. I ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... you see one of those naval officers has turned round and heard you? My dear Clopper, it was a mere childish bagatelle." ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you mean?" asked Joe, beginning to feel that it was more than a mere notion on the part of the treasurer that something was wrong. "Is it a rough crowd? Will there be a 'hey rube!' cry raised—a fight between our men and the ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... bit her lip and turned away. And she did not make the apology her father expected. Dimly it seemed to her that they were all over ready, over eager to condemn the man whose one crime had been mere heedlessness, who was surely hurting no one but himself, but who offended their ideas in refusing to take life seriously and bear ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... stuff, Jim, even if it is in cipher. Well, the last I remember of that note was crumpling it up till it was a mere nothing at all. I must have tossed it away unconsciously and it got lodged in the toe of my gum boot, although I always felt certain within myself till now that I had burned it along with every other scrap of paper ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... plead with all his heart that he had left home with no evil intentions towards young Oakshott, the lawyers agreed that to prove that the death of the victim was uncertain would reduce the matter to a mere youthful brawl, which could not be heavily visited. Mr. Harcourt further asked whether it were possible to prove that the prisoner had been otherwise employed than in meddling with the body; but unfortunately it had been six hours before ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... present day, it may be considered a general rule, that no picture is admired, no book pronounced readable, no magazine or newspaper circulated, unless in each case it develope intrinsic merit. The mere name of the artist, or author, or editor, has not the slightest weight with our present intelligent, discriminating community, who are never enslaved, or misled, by whim, caprice, or fashion. It has been said, but it seems too monstrous for belief, that, formerly, persons were ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... famous "purge" had reduced the House to a mere shadow of its former self, and who was elected a member of the Common Council on the same day as Lilburne, was allowed to take his seat without objection,(980) whilst Colonel John Fenton was declared by the House to be disabled ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... left, his class would follow, dropping the number to twenty or under, and all would be likely to take the same course. He did not feel satisfied with laboring under such circumstances, with a guard, may be a mere boy, at his side to watch him, and he, perhaps, turned off as unceremoniously as the other. He preferred going of his own accord. But my plea prevailed, ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... Natal left but scant numbers to Cape Colony, which was comparatively of less consequence, because the points of vital importance to Great Britain lay near the sea-coast, protected by their mere remoteness from any speedy attack. On the far inland borders of the colony the situation soon reduced itself to that with which we were so long familiar. The four or five thousand men available at the outbreak of the war for the defence of the long frontier, extending over ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... to give away to-day, Sir W. Pen and I took coach, and (the weather and ways being foul) went to Walthamstowe; and being come there heard Mr. Radcliffe, my former school fellow at Paul's (who is yet a mere boy), preach upon "Nay, let him take all, since my Lord the King is returned," &c. He reads all, and his sermon very simple, but I looked for new matter. Back to dinner to Sir William Batten's; and then, after ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... felt, because you would be ashamed of not liking to go to heaven. But answer God. Answer yourselves in the sight of God. When you keep yourselves back from doing a wrong thing, because you know it is wrong, is it for love of heaven, or for mere fear of being punished in hell? Some of you will answer boldly at once: "For neither one nor the other; when we keep from wrong, it is because we hate and despise what is wrong: when we do right it is because it is right and we ought to do it. We can't explain it, but there ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... Your father has deserv'd it at my hands, Who, of mere charity and Christian ruth, To bring me to religious purity, And, as it were, in catechising sort, To make me mindful of my mortal sins, Against my will, and whether I would or no, Seiz'd all I had, and thrust me out o' doors, And made my house a place for ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... that the Son was long before Jesus was born is no mere mysterious dogma without bearing on daily needs, but stands in the closest connection with Christ's work and our faith in it. It is the guarantee of His representative character; on it depends the reliableness of His revelation of God. Unless He is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... structure itself. "Curious and clever" well describes it. As for the former cathedral over which the Kreisker throws its shadow, it is one of those majestic twin-towered structures not usually associated with what, when compared with the larger French towns, must perforce rank as a mere village. ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... dashed it to pieces against a stone. Like a human being, his imagination was stronger than his experience; he tried to persuade himself that there might be something there; hoping against hope. Mind, you see, working in the bird's brain, and overlooking facts. A mere mechanism would have left the empty and useless shell untouched—would have accepted facts at once, however bitter, just as the balance on the heaviest side declines immediately, obeying the fact of an extra grain of weight. The bird's brain was not mechanical, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... which Sara's character is depicted in the course of the story make it impossible that the reader should entirely dislike her as a mere sample of the calculating coquette. She is one of that large class of women, with a limited capacity for affection, whose natures expand only in an atmosphere of luxury. 'Don't be shocked,' she says to her sister in reference to the unsuccessful suit of her clerical lover; ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... have made a very clever hit!" he said—"Quite a random shot, of course—which by mere coincidence went to its mark! It's quite true I have brought with me a curious piece of jewel-work which I always carry about wherever I go—and something moved me to- night to ask your opinion of its value, as well as to place its period. It is old Italian; ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... Jove, or Thetis, stop thy arm, Some beam of comfort yet on Greece may shine, If I but lead the Myrmidonian line: Clad in thy dreadful arms if I appear, Proud Troy shall tremble, and desert the war; Without thy person Greece shall win the day, And thy mere image chase her foes away. Press'd by fresh forces, her o'erlabour'd train Shall quit the ships, and Greece respire again." Thus, blind to fate! with supplicating breath, Thou begg'st his arms, and in his arms thy death. Unfortunately good! a boding sigh Thy friend return'd; ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... arranged on an EXCELLENT SYSTEM, calculated to give an intelligent grasp of the subject, and not the mere faculty of mechanical copying.... Mr. Wells shows how to make complete working drawings, discussing fully each step in ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... is to say, the tendency of this electromagnet to retard the current was 496 times as great as that of the simple coil. But when an armature was put over the top, the effect ran up to 2,238. By the mere device of putting the coils in parallel, instead of in series, the 2,238 came down to 502, a little less than the quarter value which would have been expected. Lastly, when the armature and yoke were both of them split in the middle, as is done in fact in all the standard patterns ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... and Power of the Deity are in equilibrium. The laws of nature and the moral laws are not the mere despotic mandates of His Omnipotent will; for, then they might be changed by Him, and order become disorder, and good and right become evil and wrong; honesty and loyalty, vices; and fraud, ingratitude, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... books were arranged wholly on the calendar method—giving specific directions for each month in the year. We have now accumulated sufficient fact and experience, however, to enable us to state principles; and these principles can be applied anywhere,—when supplemented by good judgment,—whereas mere rules are arbitrary and generally useless for any other condition than that for which they were specifically made. The regions of gardening experience have expanded enormously within the past fifty and ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... and never loves Hugging the chain of denial to his bosom I have a good memory for forgetting I am only myself when I am drunk I should remember to forget it Importunity with discretion was his motto In all secrets there is a kind of guilt Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting It is good to live, isn't it? Know how bad are you, and doesn't mind Liquor makes me human Nervous legs at a gallop Pathetically in earnest Shure, if we could always be 'about the same,' we'd do So say your prayers, believe ...
— Quotations From Gilbert Parker • David Widger
... for the first time since the apostolic period, occurred an outburst of general missionary zeal and activity. Beginning in Great Britain, it soon spread to the Continent and across the Atlantic. It was no mere push of fervor, but a mighty tide set in, which from that day to this has been steadily rising and spreading."—"A Hundred Years of ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... to discover education, which is the necessary reciprocal of government, and that all this—in which my own little speck of a life was so manifestly overwhelmed—this and its yesterday in Greece and Rome and Egypt were nothing, the mere first dust swirls of the beginning, the movements and dim murmurings of a sleeper who will presently ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... country, fifty miles in width, was opened for peaceful settlement by the bravery of Captain John Lovewell and the company under his command. In this view their acts become more important than those of a mere scouting party, and demand, and have received, an acknowledged ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... He cannot seem smug, nor colourless, nor over-prosperous: he is too vivid and too vigorous. His childish vanity is nobly discounted by his childlike simplicity in facing big issues. The blue and gold which he wore so magnificently can never to us be the mere trappings of rank: they carry on them the shadows of battle smoke, and the rust of enviable wounds. Let us take his memory then gladly, and with true homage, rejoicing that its record of happiness appears as stainless ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... where none could have rolled down from above. They must have been ejected within the previous five or six months, but they now consisted of more or less rounded fragments of all sizes, from 0.75 of an inch in diameter to minute grains and mere dust. Dr. King witnessed the crumbling process whilst drying some perfect castings, which he afterwards sent me. Mr. Scott also remarks on the crumbling of the castings near Calcutta and on the mountains of Sikkim during ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... letter was written to Poppy, in which the noisy room was secured for the following Thursday, and as this was Monday, the girls were too busy packing to give many mere thoughts to poor ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... pouncing upon peaceful settlers by surprise, and generally in the night. Combatants and non-combatants were slaughtered together. By parading the number of slain, without mentioning that most of them were women and children, and by counting as forts mere private houses surrounded with palisades, Charlevoix and later writers have given the air of gallant exploits to acts which deserve a very different name. To attack military posts, like Casco and Pemaquid, was a legitimate act of war; but systematically to butcher helpless farmers and their ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... the smallest detail, everything was laid open, clear before him in those astounding letters. To-night, it was vague at best. A man had been murdered. Connie Myers had committed the murder under circumstances that pointed strongly to some hidden motive behind and beyond the mere chance it afforded him to search his victim's house for the hidden cash. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... letter was a curiosity. It bore the Englishman's signature, and hinted at cats—at a Sending of cats. The mere words on paper were creepy and ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... transported himself into Italy, and had drunk to intoxication of her genial atmosphere. How truly it has been said, that "although Romeo and Juliet are in love, they are not love-sick!" What a false idea would any thing of the mere whining amoroso, give us of Romeo, such as he is really in Shakspeare—the noble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty! And Juliet—with even less truth could the phrase or idea apply to her! The picture ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... night, they killed as many hogges as they needed. In this iourney they were well prouided of beefe and porke: And they were greatly troubled with Muskitos, especially in a lake, which is called the mere of Pia, which they had much adoe to passe from noone till night, the water might be some halfe league ouer, and to be swome about a crosse bowe shot, the rest came to the waste, and they waded vp to the knees in the mire, and in the bottome were cockle ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... and proper that this should be done. A mere obligation not to resort to war, without more, would almost imply that disputes between the parties to the obligation should {15} find some other method of settlement. For if some other method could not be found, feelings due to the continuance of the dispute might well arouse such passions in ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... difference and distinguish one from the other requires a little close inspection. The color of the faeces varies with the comb on which they feed, from white to brown and black. The size of these grains will be in proportion to the worm—from a mere speck to nearly as large as a pin-head: shape cylindrical, with obtuse ends: length about twice its diameter. By the quantity we can judge of the number. If the hive is full of combs the lower ends may appear perfect, while ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... this direction, Chellalu applied herself to bandaging. She would persuade someone to lend her a finger or a toe; the owner was assured it was sore—very sore. She would then proceed to bandage it to the best of her ability. But all this was mere play. What Chellalu's soul yearned for was a real knife, or even only a needle, provided it would prick and cause red blood to flow. Oh to be allowed to operate properly, as grown-up people do! Chellalu had seen them do it—had ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... "could not we start our little reading sociables, that were so pleasant last year? You know we want to keep some little pleasant thing going, and draw Lillie in with us. When a girl has been used to lively society, she can't come down to mere nothing; and I am afraid she will be wanting to rush off to New York, and ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "died three months ago, in England, whither he had emigrated when I was a mere child, leaving my poor mother to struggle along for a livelihood as best she could. My mother died last year, Monsieur, and I have hard a hard life; and now it seems that my father made a fortune in England and left it ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the center and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, UN sanctions on the ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... is no great cleverness needed where there is a will to it. Yefim murdered people with viper's fat. That is such a poison that folks will die from the mere smell of it, let alone ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... more genuine memory of the real greatness of his race than the modern and almost gimcrack stars and garters that were pulled in Windsor Chapel. From modern knighthood has departed all shadow of chivalry; how far we have travelled from it can easily be tested by the mere suggestion that Sir Thomas Lipton, let us say, should wear his lady's sleeve round his hat or should watch his armour in the Chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury. The giving and receiving of the Garter among despots and diplomatists is now only part of that ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... consciousness of his own innocence he could not see where he had been at all to blame; they could certainly not accuse him of a misdemeanor on the strength of mere suspicion in the mind of Mr. Graylock, who had shown so plainly the strange and unreasonable dislike ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... sand to bearing, had made three hundred acres of desert a thing of breathing beauty from January to January, the ranch meant something to him that a northern farmer could not understand. And these three hundred acres were Oscar's world. He could not see beyond them. The dam was a mere adjunct to the Ames ranch. He would leave no stone unturned to see that it served his own ranch's needs as he saw them. If Sara saw this quality in Oscar and had any motive for playing on it, he could do infinite ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... deepened and widened wondrously. I sat often among the crowd of students in Kirchoff's lecture-room, watching the play of his delicate features as he unravelled mysteries which till he showed the way were a mere hopeless knot. Near him as he spoke, on a table were the wand, the rings, the vials, above all a spectroscope with its prisms, the apparatus with which the magician solved the universe. Once, as I stood near him, he indicated in a polite sentence, with a gesture ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... magistrates, male and female, should contrive secretly, by the use of certain lots, so to arrange the nuptial meeting, that the bad of either sex and the good of either sex might pair with their like; and there was to be no quarrelling on this account, for they would imagine that the union was a mere accident, and was to be ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... to endeavor to awake a response in her heart. But she held herself aloof from all. Proud of the Spanish blood in her veins, though that blood was but that of a common soldier, she counted herself to be of the gente de razon, far above the level of the mere Indians, her mother's people. And, indeed, in her finer features, quick glance, and more spirited bearing, the difference of strain was manifest: the Latin admixture, though only fractional, justified itself in evident supremacy over ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... to you, my friend," said I, "for this piece of information, and in order that you may understand something of the person you are speaking to beyond the mere exterior view, here is ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... "Mere matter of business," replied Orcutt. "Figure it out for yourself. If he stayed with you the best he could expect would be a fair salary. With us he was in position to dictate his own terms. They were stiff terms, too, for Wentworth is shrewd. But he has been worth all he cost. He is ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... faintest excuse for speaking. She had kept him from any avowal so completely that he might well, now, wonder if his self-control had not been owing far more to the intuition of hopelessness than to mere submission. Could she have kept him so silent, had she been the least little bit in love with him? He had, of course, been tremendously in love with her—it was bewildering to use the past tense, indeed—and she, of course, clever ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... admiraient surtout, c'etaient qu'ils fussent si traitables et si dociles sons la main de leurs cavaliers, qui les faisaient marcher a leur fantaisie. [333] Sa Majeste a encore envoye des chevaux, ecrivait en 1667 la mere Marie de l'Incarnation, et on nous a donne pour notre part deux belles juments et un cheval, tant pour la charrue que pour le charroi. [334] "L'annee 1670, le Roi envoya pareillement un etalon et douze ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... verdicts, undoubtedly, gave rise to a grave discussion, whether the law, as it now stands, was sufficiently stringent to have reached these cases; and though this question was decided in the affirmative, the mere entertaining of the doubt afforded another specious confirmation of the impression, that a singular fatality was attendant upon a state prosecution. This idea received another support from the case of Lord Cardigan, who, about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... epidemic of influenza. The strange disease was all over the country, in the cities, the villages, the cow-camps, the mines—everywhere. At first I thought Haught's informant was exaggerating a mere rumor. But when he told of the Indians dying on the reservations, and that in Flagstaff eighty people had succumbed in a few weeks—then I was thoroughly alarmed. Imperative was it indeed for me to make a decision at once. I made it instantly. We would break camp. So I told the men. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... up and down petite mere's avenue, alongside the Couillards' farm. Something weighed on her spirit like a presentiment of the long boredom of the monotonous life ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... was otherwise. She was old England, through and through. The conversation cheered him to an unusual degree—among all those foreign people he felt strangely drawn towards this wistful lady who could talk so naturally and conjure up, by the mere power of words, a breath of his own homestead in the Midlands. He might have been sitting with an elder sister just then, eating strawberries and cream and watching a tennis match on some shady green lawn. He was happy; happier still when Angelina once more floated into his ken and, noticing ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... label on the bottle under discussion. "Well, as a writer, I might say that it depends how far you travel up or down Green River. But as a mere individual enjoying the blessings of companionship, I should say, ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... that tree as the hierarchy—the priesthood—he has not reached the entire truth. He does not touch the ground which supports the tree. Polygamy is but one development of the doctrine of woman's created inferiority, the constant tendency of which is to make her a mere slave, under every form of religion extant, and of which the complex marriage of the Oneida Community ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... unwholesome fable of Dr. Faustus, with its rebuke to the mere arrogance of learning, is sound and stringent enough; but it is not a fair sample of the mediaeval soul at its happiest and sanest. The heart of the true Middle Ages might be found far better, for instance, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... leave, madam," said I; "that is my office. Allow me, and I hope to make both head and tail of it for you. But let me give you first a mere general, and indeed a more applicable motto for my story. It is this—from no worse authority ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... you are a thinking man, and yet you lie idly there. You could do something, and you do nothing. You lie on the top with full paunch and say, 'To lie idle—so must it be; because all that people ever do—is all vanity, mere nonsense ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... the house still went on. Set a business going, and it is astonishing how long it will continue to move by the force of mere daily routine. People flocked in for shirts and stockings, and young women came there to seek their gloves and ribbons, although but little was done to attract them, either in the way of advertisement or of excellence of supply. Throughout this wretched month or two Robinson ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... leaving home, were perverted, by the vilest misconstruction, to support an accusation of treachery and falsehood which would have stung any man to the quick. Andrew felt, what I felt, that if these imputations were not withdrawn before his generous intentions toward his brother took effect, the mere fact of their execution would amount to a practical acknowledgment of the justice of Michael's charge against him. He wrote to his brother in the most forbearing terms. The answer received was as offensive as words could make it. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... that manual workers have to concentrate their minds and their attention on their work or they would not be able to do it at all. His talk about employers being not only the masters but the "friends" of their workmen is also mere claptrap because he knows as well as we do, that no matter how good or benevolent an employer may be, no matter how much he might desire to give his men good conditions, it is impossible for him to do so, because he has to compete ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... your own personal activity is a mere preliminary to the activity of Mrs. Omicron. Without hers, yours would be absurd, ridiculous, futile, supremely silly. By spending she completes and justifies your labour; she crowns your life by spending. You married her so that she might spend. You wanted some one to ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... appetites and usually secured the desired revelation of the whereabouts of the hidden ivory or other goods under the torture of the burning feet, and divers other ingenious methods. Of late this practice had proved so satisfactory that the mere threat was usually sufficient. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... of it all? A larger plant with more machines to buy and more men to work them and to be overseen and to be paid, a few more figures in a Bank Book—what else? Jack's tastes were simple. He despised the ostentation of wealth in the accumulation of mere things. He had only pity for the plunger and for the loose liver contempt. Why should he tie himself to a desk, a well appointed desk it is true, but still a desk, in a four-walled room, a much finer room than his father ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... please, belle mere," said Edward, and he motioned to a gentleman, who stood a few paces behind his chair, and who, from the entrance of the mechanician, had seemed to observe him with intense interest. "Master Nevile, attend this wise man; supply his wants, and hark, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not take up the idea, Mr. Lawrence?" asked his employer. "House finishing and furnishing is fast coming to be a fine art. An intelligent, harmonious beauty is demanded. We are leaving behind the complacency of mere money in our adornments, and asking for something that evinces thought and refinement. I am sure you could succeed if you once ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... are extremely abundant, producing figs, nutmegs, and oranges, besides the fruits common to the rest of Polynesia. The inhabitants present the most ugly specimen extant of the Papuan race; the men wear no covering, and the women, who are used as mere beasts of burden; wear only a petticoat, made from the plantain leaf. Their canoes are more rudely constructed than in most of the other islands; and, on the whole, these people seem to be among the most degraded of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... gates for the rood screen with the loft and rood. But this, it might plausibly be contended, was merely an adaptation of the old idea to modern requirements, and it would have been quite difficult to explain why the whole building, from the mere mortar setting between the stones to the Gothic gas standards, was a mysterious and elaborate blasphemy. The canticles were sung to Joll in B flat, the chants were 'Anglican,' and the sermon was the gospel ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... were closely surrounded on all sides, not to be released until they had decided to give one another their hands. "God be with you, Ivan Nikiforovitch and Ivan Ivanovitch! declare upon your honour now, that what you quarrelled about were mere trifles, were they not? Are you not ashamed of yourselves ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... stringent obligations to us who stand, however unworthy, in the place of the generations that are gone, as the hearers and ministers of the Word of God. Let me put two or three very simple and homely exhortations. First, see to it, brother, that you accept that Word. By acceptance I do not mean a mere negative attitude, which is very often the result of lack of interest, the negative attitude of simply not rejecting; but I mean the opening not only of your minds but of your hearts to it. For if what I have been saying is true, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... satisfaction. The joy of being able to meet Ylajali cleanly and honourably, and of feeling I could look her in the face, ran away with me. I was not conscious of any pain. My head was clear and buoyant; it was as if it were a head of mere light that rested and gleamed on my shoulders. I felt inclined to play the wildest pranks, to do something astounding, to set the whole town in a ferment. All up through Graendsen I conducted myself like a ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... at the door, and when the commandant said, "Come in," one of their automatic soldiers appeared, and by his mere presence announced that breakfast was ready. In the dining-room, they met three other officers of lower rank: a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two sub-lieutenants, Fritz Scheunebarg, and Count von Eyrick a very short, fair-haired ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... expounded, "the progression from, and the regression of all things to, the One, and the entire domination of the One,"[15] and, further, these different Beings were evoked, and appeared, sometimes to teach, sometimes, by Their mere presence, to elevate and purify. "The Gods," says Iamblichus, "being benevolent and propitious, impart their light to theurgists in unenvying abundance, calling upwards their souls to themselves, procuring them a union with themselves, and accustoming them, while they are yet in body, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... day that was passing over him required to be provided for. His fight for fame was long and hard; and his life was interrupted, like that of other men, by sickness and pain. In the stoop in his gait, in the lines in his face, you saw the man who had reached his Ithaca by no mere yachting over summer seas. And hence, no doubt, the utter absence in him of all that conventionalism which marks the man of quiet experience and habitual conformity to the world. In the streets, a stranger would have known Jerrold to be a remarkable man; you would have gone away speculating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of the lost woman told its terrible tale in that one word. Invited to rest herself in the hotel, she asked leave to remain where she was; the mere effort of rising was too much for her now. Catherine said the parting words kindly. "I believe in your good intentions; I believe in ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... seek knowledge rather than attempt any laborious application of it. We love to add to our stock of ideas, facts, or even notions of things, provided moderate pains will suffice; but to put our knowledge in practice is too often esteemed servile, or eschewed as mere drudgery. Useful activities flatter pride, and gratify the imagination, too little. But of what avail, ordinarily, is the possession of truth, unless as light to direct us in the ways of beneficent labor, for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Flossie had forgotten about in the excitement and, after eating them, the two children made another snow man; for the first one, and his "little boy" as they called him, had melted into mere lumps. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... the custom of the naive people of those days to torture a wolf if they caught one. They put him to death with the same refinements which were requisitioned for human criminals. This meant nothing to the wolf. The mere fact that he had been caught was what tortured him. And so I think it will be with the Germans when they find that they have failed. They have built up their power on the absurd hypothesis that they are men. Their punishment will be in discovering that they never were anything but low animals ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... of gesture, also, in a measure, bespeak and proclaim commanding oratory. The power, moreover, which with the Indian resides in mere gesture, as a medium for disclosing and laying bare the thoughts of his mind, is truly remarkable. Observe the Indian interpreter in Court, while in the exercise of that branch of his duty which requires that the evidence of an English-speaking ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... plants which had been subjected to the same conditions and had been self-fertilised during the seven previous generations, did not effect the least good; for the intercrossed grandchildren were actually shorter than the self-fertilised grandchildren, in the ratio of 100 to 107. We here see that the mere act of crossing two distinct plants does not by itself benefit the offspring. This case is almost the converse of that in the last paragraph, on which the offspring profited so greatly by a cross with a fresh stock. A similar trial was made with the descendants of Hero in the ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... terribly eloquent. To tell the truth, my lonely musings, before you came in, were eloquent enough, in their way. What do you know of anything but this strange, terrible world that surrounds you? How do you know that your faith is not a mere crazy castle in the air; one of those castles that we are called fools for building when we lodge ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the cause. In a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added, as "Offe Caraccas," or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as "62o 17' ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into a fruit-garden, demand that all unproductive trees should give way as fast as possible, in a civilized country, to other trees which afford food to the inhabitants? Are there not desolate countries enough in which to grow trees for the mere purposes of timber? Are there not soils and situations even in England, where none but timber-trees can grow? And is not the timber of many fruit-trees as useful as the timber of many of the lumber-trees which ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... condition with what I at first expected it should be; how I should have done, if I had got nothing out of the ship, that I must have perished before I had caught fish or turtles; or lived, had I found them, like a mere savage, by eating them raw, and pulling them in pieces with my claws, like a beast. I next compared my station to that which I deserved: how undutiful I had been to my parents; how destitute ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... and to convince all and sundry that they were destined not to rule, but to serve him as the ruler. As he did precisely the contrary, and the matter came to look quite as if the object was to place the government in the hands not of an intelligent and vigorous master, but of the mere -canaille-, the men of material interests, terrified to death at the prospect of such confusion, again attached themselves closely to the senate in presence of this common danger. While Gaius Gracchus, clearly perceiving that no government could be overthrown ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... sincerities and insincerities—were the subject of his wholly brilliant analysis. He rather admired the clever opportunist, I think, so long as he was not mean in view or petty, yet he scorned and even despised the commercial viewpoint or trade reactions of a man like McKinley. Rulers ought to be above mere commercialism. Once when I asked him why he disliked McKinley so much he replied laconically, "The voice is the voice of McKinley, but the hands—are the hands of Hanna." Roosevelt seemed to amuse him always, to ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... of dress, are stamped in my memory. She is seated on the extreme left of the mirror. A sort of shadowy figure crouches down beside her— I can dimly discern that it is a man—and then behind them is cloud, in which I see figures—figures which move. It is not a mere picture upon which I look. It is a scene in life, an actual episode. She crouches and quivers. The man beside her cowers down. The vague figures make abrupt movements and gestures. All my fears were swallowed up in my interest. It was maddening to ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the eleven that were killed at this place. She remained on her hiding place till just before the arrival of a party, who were in pursuit of the murderers, when she came down and fled to a swamp, where, a mere child as she was, with the horrors of the late scene before her, she lay concealed until the next day, when seeing a party go up to the house, she came up, and on being asked how she escaped, replied with the utmost simplicity, ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... was troubled about the uncertainty of there being at the Corners any repair shop. He knew it was a small settlement. At most, the repair garage would be very small, and perhaps the mechanic a mere country "jack-of-all-trades," who ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... we rise above the mere workaday world of manual labor, with its sense-dulling disgust, its vexatious monotony, and its frightful menace against law and justice. While jurists merely studied the language of dead laws, expounding them with effort unceasing, and, one may complain, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... heavenly citizenship is ours in no mere play of the imagination but in most solid substance, is because He is there for whom we look. Where Christ is, is our Mother-country, our Fatherland, according to His own promise, 'I go to prepare a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hesitation, and then the boys struck the ice almost at the same time. There was a ringing hissing sound, mingled with a peculiar splitting as if the ice were parting from where they started across the mere to the Toft, and then they were going at a rapidly ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... especially well "The Ray of Madness," "Cold Light," "From the Ocean Depths" and its sequel "Into the Ocean's Depths," "Brigands of the Moon," and "Murder Madness." Of course, I like the others too. I am only a mere girl (that accounts for this poor typewriting)—only ten years old—but I know my likes and dislikes.—Ellen Laura Nightingale, 223 So. Main ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... being damp or wet. To keep these extremities warm and dry is a great preventative against the almost endless list of disorders which come from a "slight cold." Many imagine if their feet are not thoroughly wet, there will be no harm arising from mere dampness, not knowing that the least dampness is absorbed into the sole, and is attracted nearer the foot itself by its heat, and ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... oppose us with other arguments, arguments which, indeed, receive their force from folly and credulity; but what more powerful assistance can be desired? They promise not mere negative advantages, not an exemption from remote oppression, or an escape from slavery, which, as it was yet never felt, is very little dreaded; they offer an immediate augmentation of dominion, and an extension of power; they propose new tracts of commerce, and open new sources ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... to talk in that odd strain for the mere joy of it, and there was in his voice the God-given vanity of bird ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... poet did not sing for the mere love of singing: he knew nothing about "Art for Art's sake". His object in singing appears to have been intensely practical. The world was inhabited by countless hordes of spirits, which were believed to be ever exercising themselves to influence ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... (1) analysable only by abstraction, and (2) are compound of deduction and induction, i.e. rational and empirical. An illustration of his empirical tendency is found in his attitude to the Absolute and the Self. The "Absolute'' doctrines he regarded as a mere disguise of failure, a dishonest attempt to clothe ignorance in the pretentious garb of mystery. The Self as a primary, determining entity, he would not therefore admit. He represented an empiricism ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... them, as if keeping watch over the Blue Mountains, the far-distant Idaho hills, the near-by forests of Oregon, and the puny, man-made structures at its feet, appeared to have a lofty disdain of them and the burrowings into its mammoth sides, as if all ravagers were mere parasites, mad to uncover its secrets of gold, and futile, if successful, to wreak the slightest damage on ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... enough, Mr Clennam, I don't doubt; but, hear reason. It almost always happens, in these cases, that some insignificant matter pushes itself in front and makes much of itself. Now, I find there's a little one out—a mere Palace Court jurisdiction—and I have reason to believe that a caption may be made upon that. I wouldn't be taken ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... waste your efforts on the mere gratification of revenge, was but natural when you did but know of the result of one deed in the plan of emancipation. Then it might have been enough that you should destroy the breakers and tear down ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... Sir, do I owe the pleasure of your visit?" he went on to inquire. "Tonight," replied Shih-yin, "is the mid-autumn feast, generally known as the full-moon festival; and as I could not help thinking that living, as you my worthy brother are, as a mere stranger in this Buddhist temple, you could not but experience the feeling of loneliness. I have, for the express purpose, prepared a small entertainment, and will be pleased if you will come to my mean abode to have a glass of wine. But I wonder ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... indices, loose-leaf systems, adding machines, and the like. Of course it requires more clerks and stenographers, and possibly we are a bit slower than some. Your father says, however, that he prefers conducting his business as a gentleman should, rather than to make a mere machine of it. His idea," said Rangar, "of a gentleman in business is one who refuses to make use of abbreviations ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... about ten o'clock opposite the campong of the rajah. It was a good deal larger than any that they had passed on the way up, but the houses were mere huts, with the exception of a large wooden structure, which they at once concluded was the residence of the rajah. As soon as the Serpent turned the last bend of the river before reaching the place, the ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... signification which embraces every description of intercourse resulting from the exercise of "man's natural inclination" for association, while with the other TRADE has reference to no idea, beyond that of the mere pedler who buys in the cheapest market and sells in the dearest one. The system of the one is perfectly harmonious, and tends toward peace among men. The other is a mass of discords, tending toward war among the men and the nations ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... 2d of April. Mr. Calhoun, who acknowledged it on the 6th, referred it to the Topographical Bureau. Some question, connected with the establishment of an agency in Florida, complicated my matter. Otherwise it appeared to be a mere question of time. The Secretary of War left me no room to doubt that his feelings were altogether friendly. Mr. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... lexicographers, uncertain which of the two renderings was the true one, called it in their vocabularies the "Rhine horse or hoss," and thence the present still more senseless corruption, "Rhinoceros." This is, of course, mere theory, but it is supported by the well authenticated parallel case of the Nylghau—more properly Nile Ghaut—which derived its name from the singular fact that it was never seen by any human being ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... beacon fires on the near hill tops, and, far in the East, roses over the Sierran snow. Birds twittering in the alder fringes a mile below, and the creaking of wagon wheels,—the wagon itself a mere cloud of dust in the distant road,—were heard distinctly. Then the melting pot was solemnly broken by Don Jose, and the glowing incandescent mass turned ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... correction (even tho we may not expect it) involves the use on our part of an ideal standard. Rationalists themselves are, as individuals, sometimes sceptical enough to admit the abstract possibility of their own present opinions being corrigible and revisable to some degree, so the fact that the mere NOTION of an absolute standard should seem to them so important a thing to claim for themselves and to deny to us is not easy to explain. If, along with the notion of the standard, they could also claim its exclusive warrant for ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... run—fortunately for him a very fast and long one—with imperturbable pluck and with no further misadventure. "Nasty cut that," I said to him as we trained back together, "you'd better get it properly looked to in town." "Pooh," said JOHNNIE, "it's a mere scratch. Did you see the brute take me into the tree? By Jove, it must have been a comic sight!" and with that he set off again on another burst ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... certain amount of talk in diplomatic, or shall we say semi-diplomatic circles, about King Konrad Karl, mere ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... and ask yourselves honestly what theory of Christ's nature and person and work explains that fact, and saves Him from the charge of folly and blasphemy? 'He that believeth upon Me shall never hunger.' Ah, my brother! He was no mere man who said that. He that spake from out of the cloud to the Apostle on the road to Damascus, and said, 'Sanctified by faith that is in Me,' was no mere man. Christ was our brother and a man, but He was the Son of God, the divine Redeemer. The Object of faith is Christ; and as Object of faith ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Squittini, withdrawing the names of their adversaries from the purses, and filling them with those of their friends. Taking advice from the ruin of their enemies, they considered that to allow the great offices to be filled by mere chance of drawing, did not afford the government sufficient security, they therefore resolved that the magistrates possessing the power of life and death should always be chosen from among the leaders of their ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... appears to me, in spite of all this, not completely exhausted. It might not thus be absolutely ruled out that more than a mere superstition lurks behind the folk belief which conceives of a "magnetic" influence by which the moon attracts the sleeper. Such a relationship is indeed conceivable when we consider the motor overexcitability of all sleep walkers and the effecting ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... supernatural serenity of his peace in the presence of such a bereavement that led his attending physician to say to a friend, "I have never before seen so unhuman a man." Yes, unhuman indeed, though far from inhuman, lifted above the weakness of mere humanity by a power ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... propose to do—what we have indeed done—is to make two of these terms constant in connection with a diagram, here given, so that a mere inspection may indicate, with its aid, the focus of a lens. All that is required in making use of it is to plant the camera perfectly upright, and place in front of it, at exactly fifteen feet from the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... were panthers larger than that one. According to Uncle Billy the Wardsboro panther was a mere kitten to the one that he once encountered when he was a boy of fourteen. Our old Squire, who then was fifteen years old, was with him and shared the experience. But try as we would, we never could induce him to tell the story. "You get Uncle Billy ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... greater than that of the moon or electricity upon it—that extreme light of the world—the happiness of a human being who blesses in a moment of prosperity the hour he was born. He knew for the first time in his life that happiness is as true as misery, and no mere creation of a fairy tale. No trees of the Garden of Eden could have outshone for him those oaks and birches. No gold or precious stones of any mines on earth can equal the light of the little star of happiness in ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... want reminding! And stranger still that a few verses lower down we should find the Apostles remembering no prophetic saying, but regarding the story of the women as mere idle tales. What shall we say? Are not these differences precisely similar to those which we are continually meeting with, when a case of exaggeration comes before us? Can we accept BOTH the stories? Is this one of those cases in which all would be made clear if we ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... of being able to cross it, and, availing myself of this southerly wind, to run along the coast to the northward, and reach Port Jackson in a few days; but as we drew near the meridian of the south cape, the gale increased to a mere tempest, attended with thick hazy weather, and a most astonishing high sea; this brought us under a reefed fore-sail, balanced mizzen, and the three ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... doll with a giggling appreciation of the importance of her situation in such grand company, and a half-frightened gladness at being so near MacTaggart) he seemed more mysterious and wonderful than ever. Mrs. Petullo, without looking at his half-averted face, knew by the mere magnetic current from his cold shoulder that of her he was just now weary, that with his company as a whole he was bored, and that some interest beyond that noisy ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... witnesses declared he had any concern in hiring the vessel; that the papers were not found upon him; that there ought to be two credible witnesses to every fact, whereas the whole proof against him rested on similitude of hands and mere supposition. He was, nevertheless, found guilty. Ashton behaved with great intrepidity and composure. He owned his purpose of going to France in pursuance of a promise he had made to general Worden, who, on his death-bed, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... for a day the enclosed owing to the arrival of your most interesting letter. I knew it was a mere chance whether you could inform me on the points required; but no one other person has so often responded to my miscellaneous queries. I believe I have now in my greenhouse L. trigynum (155/7. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... existence trembles in the balance, and through which it must safely pass before it can be firmly established as a great fact in history, a tangible landmark of progress, a controlling influence in the affairs of humanity. Nor is this crisis ever a mere fortuitous circumstance, but the necessary consequence of conflicting ideas and of untried systems. It is that point in the great process of assimilation when different and hitherto almost discordant elements tremble on the verge either of a harmonious blending for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... upon which a higher type of citizenship might be built. The development of character appears, to us, to be of far greater importance, in the preparation of the youth for the discharge of the duties of public life, than is mere political instruction; for only by introducing loftier ethical standards can the grade and quality ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... who never tell lies for either themselves or for others, or in jest or for exciting laughter, succeed in ascending to Heaven. They who never tell lies for earning their subsistence or for earning merit or through mere caprice, succeed in ascending to Heaven. They who utter words that are smooth and sweet and faultless, and who welcome all whom they meet with sincerity, succeed in ascending to Heaven. They who never utter words that are harsh and bitter and cruel. and who are free from deceitfulness ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... again, this blessed day, if you would give us a chance!" exclaimed Sir Gervaise, striking the back of one hand into the palm of the other, with a sudden energy, that showed how much he was excited by the mere recollection of the scene. ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the intercourse between the two blind youths consisted of a mere word or two tossed by Keith to the other who gave a still shorter word in reply. And even this was not every day, for John McGuire was not out on the porch every day. But as the month passed, he came more and more frequently, and one evening Mrs. McGuire confided ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... your daughter has been brought up in the belief that you died when she was a mere infant. Consider the effect of ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... became more and more distinct, and soon they were in full view of the most marvellous landscape that human eyes had ever beheld. The distances were tremendous. Mountains, compared with which the Alps or even the Andes would have seemed mere hillocks, towered up out of ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... of gliding, and the lightness of their following; all of which I could see at once, through knowledge of our own farm-sleds; which we employ in lieu of wheels, used in flatter districts. When I had heard all this from her, a mere chit of a girl as she was, unfit to make a snowball even, or to fry snow pancakes, I looked down on her with amazement, and began to wish a little that I had given more time ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... place at sunrise or sunset, as it often does, one gets the splendor of the apocalypse. There will be cloud pillars miles high, snow-capped, glorified, and preserving an orderly perspective before the unbarred door of the sun, or perhaps mere ghosts of clouds that dance to some pied piper of an unfelt wind. But be it day or night, once they have settled to their work, one sees from the valley only the blank wall of their tents stretched along the ranges. To get the real effect of a ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... Sebastian and Onaelia in order to placate the Queen and finally in 5.1 when he tells the King that the murder has been carried out. Scene 3.3 shows a further unedifying side of Balthazar when he bursts in on the King and stabs a servant and refuses to express remorse as the servant is a mere groom. On a different note, the character is also used to comic effect, especially in 4.2 when he acts out bawdy dialogue with Cornego. His last significant act is to dissuade the faction from attempting ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... tried to pray; but the habits of a whole life are not to be thrown off at will; and he who endeavors to regain, in his extremity, the moments that have been lost, will find, in bitter reality, that he has been heaping mountains on his own soul, by the mere practice of sin, which were never laid there by the original fall of his race. Jack, however, had disburthened her spirit of a load that had long oppressed it, and, burying her face in the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... that certain words make him sick; that certain other words he reserves for his own use,—"meticulous" once a year, "adscititious" once in a life time. This explains why editors write so little. In the end, out of mere good nature, or seeing the futility of it all, they contribute their words to ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... in, and the employment of such mere children in the mines is forbidden, but at that time it had not been changed, and if a boy was big enough to shut a door he was big enough to go into ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... Aniela, and am even now asking myself, "Have I gone mad?" I did not hold her close to my heart, did not hear an avowal of love. I was spurned without a moment's hesitation; all her modesty risen in arms, she reduced me to a mere nothing. What is it? Am I a fool without brains, or has she no heart? What am I fighting against? What are the obstacles in my way? Why does she spurn me? My head is in such a chaotic state that I can neither think, write, nor reason. I only repeat to myself, over and over ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... applicants was being disposed of by his trained assistants. To the advertising expert's offices had come that day but three cases difficult enough to be referred to the Ad-Visor himself. Two were rather intricate financial lures which Average Jones was able to dispose of by a mere "Don't." The third was a Spiritualist announcement behind which lurked a shrewd plot to entrap a senile millionaire into a marriage with the medium. These having been settled, the expert was free to muse upon a paragraph which had appeared in all the important ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... before the most renowned robbers, before the most famous rogues, of France and Navarre, and who is immediately expected at Brest and at Toulon, where he goes by order of the government. Twenty sous! A mere nothing, gents." ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... now, before going out of the door, he fixed on her his baleful glance. His aspect was more full of meaning than could have been any words. A horrible power, of which he was boastfully conscious, shone from his little, pointed eyes. His mere presence was deadly. Plainly as if he had spoken was the significance of his long gaze. Any one ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... little chalet we look upon what seems no mere cleft in a mountain chain, but in the vast globe itself. This huge hollow, brought about by some strange geological perturbation, is the valley of Muenster, no longer a part of French territory, but of Prussian Elsass. The road we have come by lies behind us, but another as formidable ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... recognise you, my boy," replied M. Moriaz, "although, to tell the truth, you have greatly changed. When you left us you were a mere youth." ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... not fall into the common error of didactic writers, of laying upon life more than it will bear; but he insists that it shall at least bear the fruits of integrity, truth, honour, justice, self-denial, and brotherly charity. Over and above the mere literary charm of his works, too—and herein, perhaps, lies no small part of the secret of his popularity—the warm heart and thoroughly urbane nature of the man are felt instinctively by his readers, and draw them to ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... representations. Because our minds delight greatly in song and harmony, the early poets used meter and rhythm better to incline the soul of man to virtue and morality. It is impossible, however, for a person ignorant of logic to be a true poet. A mere concern with rhythm and the composition of sentences profits nothing, for what is the use of painting and decorating a ship if it is going to be swamped in the storm and never come to port? The poets who endeavor to place ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... said presently, "whom do you mean by the bird of red plumage? Is it a mere figure of speech? Or has it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... what I my self have seen and done; and have caused the same to be printed for you, Candid Readers, out of mere Liberality, gratis communicating it, according to that of Seneca: I desire in this to know somewhat, that I may teach others. Si cum hac Exceptione detur Sapientia, ut illlam inclusam tencam, abjiciam, &c. But if any man doubt of the real truth of this ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... pas trop le Sieur L'eandre. She cries her eyes to scarlet. He has made her four visits, and is so in love, that he writes to her every other day. 'Tis a strange match. After offering him to all the great lumps of gold in all the alleys of the city, they fish out a woman of quality at last with a mere twelve thousand pound. She objects his loving none of her sex but the four queens in a pack of cards, but he promises to abandon White's and both ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... half an hour to a single man at the end of each swath or work. Supposing the mowers made twenty in ten hours from bottom to top of the field, here is the loss of one whole day for one man, or one sixth of the whole aggregate time applied to the harvesting of the crop, given to the mere running down that hill of six pairs of legs for no earthly purpose but to cut inward instead of outward, as we do. The grain-ricks in Scotland are nearly all round and quite small. Every one of them is rounded up at the top and fitted with a Mandarin-looking hat of ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... the traders left their shops; the women forsook their children; swords, hatchets, and sticks were seized; but the obstacle which had stayed Salammbo stayed them. How could the veil be taken back? The mere sight of it was a crime; it was of the nature of the gods, and contact ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... finally, the monarch will soon be obliged, if we pay any attention to the chatter of certain scribblers, to give to every individual a share in the throne or to adopt certain revolutionary ideas, which are mere Punch and Judy shows for the public, manipulated by a band of self-styled patriots, riff-raff, always ready to sell their conscience for a million francs, for an honest woman, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... influences of sun and wind make no difference to the life of a tree. We have to bear carefully in mind that those who sow an act reap a habit, who sow a habit reap a character, who sow a character reap a destiny both in this world and in that which is eternal. It is mere selfishness, unconscious, no doubt, but none the less fatal, when parents to suit their own convenience omit to inculcate obedience, self-restraint, habits of order and unselfishness in their children. Youth is the time when the soul is apt to be shaken by sorrow's power and when stormy passions ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... 1875. It may be just possible, however, that this is the same bird recorded by Miss C.B. Carey, and that Mr. MacCulloch only heard of it in the May of the following year, and noted it accordingly. This, however, is mere supposition on my part, for which I have no reason except that both birds were said to have been killed in Herm, and both ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... social virtues as the consummation of happiness here and hereafter, suggests an object sufficiently attractive for the bulk of mankind; but Buddhism presents along with it no adequate knowledge of the means which are indispensable for its attainment. In confiding all to the mere strength of the human intellect and the enthusiastic self-reliance and determination of the human heart, it makes no provision for defence against those powerful temptations before which ordinary resolution must give way; and affords no consoling support under those overwhelming afflictions by ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... runners in their great hats shaped like inverted bowls, their incomprehensible blue tights, and their short blue over-shirts with badges or characters in white upon them, tearing along, their yellow faces streaming with perspiration, laughing, shouting, and avoiding collisions by a mere shave. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... much more than literary criticism as that type of writing had been generally conceived before his time. In place of the mere classification of books and the passing of a judgment upon them as good or bad, he sought to illuminate and explain by throwing light on a literary work from a study of the life, circumstances, and aim of the writer, and by a comparison with ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... we learn that, when an interval occurred inoccupied by his princely duties, Alfred stole into the quietude of his study to seek comfort and instruction from the pages of those choice volumes, which comprised his library. But Alfred was not a mere bookworm, a devourer of knowledge without purpose or without meditation of his own, he thought with a student's soul well and deeply upon what he read, and drew from his books those principles of philanthropy, and those high resolves, which did such honor to the Saxon monarch. He viewed ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... fare the Kyng my father and the good lady my mother. Coment se porte le Roy mon pere et la bonne dame ma mere. ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... would appear on the face of it that the efforts of the Government are absolutely impotent, the notices so much waste paper, and the 'rights of liberty' mere empty phrases of no meaning or significance to the Chinese mind ... A Chinawoman would never dream of effecting her escape for the purpose of evading the blood money. Of course such transactions are absolutely illegal, there is no tittle of reason why the ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... to have been abandoned; or, what is more probable, has never been seriously attempted, the visible roadways from village to village being mere ox-wagon and pack-donkey tracks, crossing the wheat-fields and uncultivated tracts in any direction. The soil is a loose, black loam, which the rain converts into mud, through which I have to trundle, wooden scraper ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... so from the instant when, crouching behind the vines of the cucumber-house, with all her senses strained, she perceived by the mere rustling of the leaves that Claude was making his way down the long, green aisle. She knew then that it was the end. If there had been no other cause of rupture between them, the girl who kept ten or twelve servants would have created it. Rosie ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... the sane way to put it. Yes, I know that you can. If you'll only not be satisfied with the results that come easy, you will make a reputation. Not a mere Park Row reputation, but the ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... appreciation of the poetry. In later times we suffer from the opposite difficulty. Our descendants will be able to see the general characteristics of the Victorian age better than we, who unconsciously accept our own peculiarities, like the air we breathe, as mere matters of course. Meanwhile a Tennyson and a Browning strike us less as the organs of a society than by the idiosyncrasies which belong to them as individuals. But in the normal case, the relation of the two studies is obvious. ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... wanderers in the sky because of their ever changing position. Sharply distinguished from them, therefore, are the "fixed" stars. These appear as mere points of light and always maintain the same relative positions in the heavens. Thousands of years ago the "Great Dipper" hung in the northern sky just as it will hang tonight and as it will hang for thousands of years to come. Yet ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... virtue. He will go in just for a moment to pass the time of day with his friend the publican and see his last brand of books, but not to buy—I mean to drink—and then he comes across a little volume, the smallest and slimmest of volumes, a mere trifle of a thing, and not dear, but a thing which does not often turn up and which would just round off his collection at a particular point. It is only a mere taste, not downright drinking; but ah me, it sets him on fire again, and I ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... believed all priests impostors or fools, all religion a mockery and a lie. But now, finding how utterly his own strength had failed him when tried by the rude test of physical pain, he began to think that this Religion which was talked of so largely was not a mere bundle of legend and formulae, but must have in it something vital and sustaining. Broken in spirit and weakened in body, with faith in his own will shaken, he longed for something to lean upon, and turned—as all men turn when in such case—to the Unknown. Had now there been at hand some ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Bowne's conception of the physical organism as but an instrument for the expression of the inner, personal life, just as the telegraphic apparatus is the instrument for the expression of messages, is erroneous, because body is not a mere instrument of inner personal life, but an essential constituent of it. Who can deny that one's physical conditions determine one's character or personality? Who can overlook the fact that one's bodily conditions positively act upon one's personal life? There is no physical organism ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... present to rake up the still smouldering ashes of that controversy. The time will come when it will be reviewed in the calm light of history, and with the assistance of materials that are not now before the public. I shall here content myself with a mere sketch. In the earlier stages of their foreign policy the Government appear to have been perfectly agreed. Lord Derby fully concurred in the purchase of the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal, which was one of the most successful strokes ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... it down to their own want of knowledge. The idea is true. Thought is the great power of the Universe. But to make it practically available we must know something of the principles by which it works—that it is not a mere vaporous indefinable influence floating around and subject to no known laws, but that on the contrary, it follows laws as uncompromising as those of mathematics, while at the same time allowing unlimited ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... head of an army, on which depended the fate of Austria and the empire. Born of a noble family, he relied solely upon his own merit, without soliciting court favour; he aspired after the highest preferment, and succeeded by mere dint of superior worth. His progress from the station of a subaltern was slow and silent; his promotion to the chief command was received with universal esteem and applause. Cautious, steady, penetrating, and sagacious, he was opposed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... considering the nature of the text. The next number ("Quis est Homo"), for two sopranos, is equally familiar. It is based upon a lovely melody, first given out by the first soprano, and then by the second, after which the two voices carry the theme through measure after measure of mere vocal embroidery, closing with an extremely brilliant cadenza in genuine operatic style. The fourth number is the bass aria "Pro peccatis," the two themes in which are very earnest and even serious in character, and come nearer to the church style than any other ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... spectator, who was not, and did not aspire to be, an actor in the occurrences he witnessed, but who lived on terms of intimacy with many of the most active politicians of his times, in both the leading parties in the State, although he strictly belonged to neither of them, and was wholly indifferent to mere party interests. ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the working classes, owing to the absence of opportunity for higher education, to the disadvantage of the nation. In consequence of these fundamental differences, the catchword 'equality of opportunity' is meaningless and mere claptrap in the absence of any equality to respond to such opportunity. What is wanted is not equality of opportunity, but education adapted to individual potentiality; and if the time and money now spent in the ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... precious stones, except through gross carelessness—a fault seldom, if ever, met with in the trade. For example—a piece of rock-crystal, chemically coloured, and cut to represent a ruby, might appear so like one as to deceive a novice, but the mere application to its surface of a real ruby, which is hardness 9, or a No. 9 needle, would reveal too deep or powdery a scratch; also its possibility of being scratched by a topaz or a No. 8 needle, would alone prove it false, ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... equivalent is elaborately treated by Leonardo. But both text and diagrams (as Pl. IV, 1-3 and Pl. V) must at once convince the student that the distinction he makes between ombra primitiva and ombra dirivativa is not merely justifiable but scientific. Ombra dirivativa is by no means a mere abstract idea. This is easily proved by repeating the experiment made by Leonardo, and by filling with smoke the room in which the existence of the ombra dirivativa is investigated, when the shadow becomes visible. Nor is it difficult ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... did with great ferocity. All this time there had been growing, among the Russian people, a feeling that they were being robbed and betrayed by the grand dukes and high nobles. They distrusted the court. They felt that the Czar was well-meaning, but weak, and that he was a mere puppet in the hands of his German wife, his cousins the grand dukes, and above all a notorious monk, called Rasputin. This strange man, a son of the common people, had risen to great power in the court. He had persuaded ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... The West was the place for young men with ambitions. That expression had been ding- donged into their ears by college mates from Los Angeles and Seattle ever since they had learned that these two towns were something more than mere dots ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the poet here had the nepenthe of Homer in his mind. Odyssey, lib. iv. This nepenthe was a something of exquisite charm, infused by Helen into the wine of her guests, which had the power of dispelling every anxiety. A French writer, De Mere, conjectures that this spell, which made the bowl so beguiling, was the charm of Helen's conversation. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to find that it was in reality a flying lemur. It had a largely developed membrane, connecting the fore limbs with the others, and the hind limbs with the tail. With this apparatus the animal can fly from one bough to another separated by a wide distance, which it could not possibly reach by a mere leap. Dan caught sight of it as it was making its way through the forest; but at each flight it reached a bough somewhat lower than the one it had left, till it pitched very near the ground, when, closing the membrane round its body, it ran nimbly up the trunk, its sharp claws ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... This crime was committed in his palace by the husband, attended by a band of cut-throats.[211] In 1577, at Milan, Count Giovanni Borromeo, cousin of the Cardinal Federigo, stabbed his wife, the Countess Giulia Sanseverina, sister of the Contessa di Sala, at table, with three mortal wounds. A mere domestic squabble gave rise to this tragedy.[212] In 1598, in his villa of Zenzalino at Ferrara, the Count Ercole Trotti, with the assistance of a bravo called Jacopo Lazzarini, killed his wife Anna, daughter of the poet Guarini. Her own brother ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... breakfasts upstairs in triumph. I enter the bedroom like no mere humdrum son, but after the manner of the Glasgow waiter. I must say more about him. He had been my mother's one waiter, the only manservant she ever came in contact with, and they had met in a Glasgow hotel which she was eager to see, having heard of the monstrous things, and conceived ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... Toothpick.' Statesmen have cut their teeth on it, and it has been their solace in the great crises of the nation's history. As for spittoons, they were invented for our own Southern aristocrats who loved tobacco then as now. They decorate our Capitol as a mere matter of form. I don't pretend to hope that ninety representative Americans are Beau Brummels, but there must be a respectable minority of gentlemen— whether self-made or not I don't care. I am going to make a deliberate attempt to know that minority, and shall call on Lady Mary Montgomery ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... little stir of excitement in the small country church when Seth Winters and his following of young folks entered it, and by mere force of numbers so impressing the ushers that the very front pews were vacated in their behalf, although the farrier protested against this. However, he wasn't sorry to have his company all together, ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... their souls in quietude, despite the storm and turmoil without. Pancoast says: "He delights in leading us to contemplate the infinite calm of Nature, beside which man's transitory woes are reduced to a mere fretful insignificance. All the beautiful poem of Tristram and Iseult is built upon the skilful alternation of two themes. We pass from the feverish, wasting, and ephemeral struggle of human passions and desire, into an atmosphere ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... his personality than mere sociability and a genial manner, because an indefinable power or strength went forth from him. It was in his ministry to the sick that people felt especially a certain grace in his faith. He carried about with him "the medicine of a merry heart," and patients wanted to see him. ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... was inevitable. When the paroxism was over she found a shaded seat under a cocoanut tree and determined not to return to the hotel for breakfast, nor indeed until she felt herself able to endure the sight of mere people; and endeavoured to expel all thought of Warner from her still tormented mind. In the distance she could see Monserrat and Antigua, gray blurs on the blue water, she could hear the singing of negroes in the cane fields far away, but near her no living thing ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... her excellent mother? I don't know much about you, Mrs. Bertram, but I feel—forgive me, I am a man of intuition—I feel that you are one to look up to. Miss Catherine is a fortunate girl. You are right. She is far too young to walk alone. Seventeen, did you say—pooh—a mere child, a baby. An immature creature, ignorant, innocent, fresh, but undeveloped; just the age, Mrs. Bertram, when she needs the aid and counsel of ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... the alertness peculiar to those who work on the night-shifts of restaurants, dumped a tray down on the table with a clatter. The Duchess woke up. Babe took her eyes off the ceiling. The Southern girl ceased to look at the sunshine. Already, at the mere sight of food, the extraordinary recuperative powers of the theatrical worker had begun to assert themselves. In five minutes these girls would be feeling completely ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the length of the dowel you can observe the crooked portions. If these are very bad, they should be heated gently over a gas flame and then bent into proper line over the base of the thumb or palm. A pair of gloves will protect the hand from burning. If the deviation be slight, then mere manual pressure is often sufficient. During this process the future arrow should be tested for strength. If it cannot stand considerable bending it deserves to break. If ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... time we write of, and indeed at all times during Turkish rule, human life was held very cheap. For the slightest offences, or sometimes at the mere caprice of those in power, men were taken up and bastinadoed in the open streets until they died from sheer agony, and their relations did not dare to remove the bodies for burial until their tyrants had left the scene. Cruelty became almost the second ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... turns to draw. One looked up, and, as he fancied, recognised him, for she nudged her neighbour. And then first the one woman and then the other, looking askance, muttered something; it might have been a prayer, or a charm, or a mere word of gossip. But he liked neither the glance nor the action, nor the furtive, curious looks of the women; and as quickly as he could he filled his ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... awe, or was it with intensity of gladness? Perhaps every night he was thus near me while I slept—a heavenly sentinel patrolling the house—the visible one of a whole camp unseen, of horses of fire and chariots of fire. So entrancing was the notion, that I stood there a little child, a mere incarnate love, the tears running down my checks ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... identified English and Rationalism, German and Lutheranism (that is to say, unionistic Evangelicalism). Lamenting the inroads that Rationalism was making also in Lutheran congregations, they wrote: "But now the Protestant churches are threatened by a terrible storm, which is not the mere consequence of the natural course of things, but a sign of this time, and it will soon despoil them of the treasures of their Church together with all their happiness, unless teachers and parents will counteract it with united strength. Almost universally, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... knowledge of the facts must come first, but there was always in school with me—either they have it as a natural gift, or my teaching takes naturally that line—a tendency to go deeper than the mere apprehension of a fact, a miracle wrought, or a statement made. The moral meaning of the miracle, the principle involved in the less important expression of it, or particular manifestation of it, these points always of late I am able to talk about ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has five toes on the fore feet, and four on the hind feet, with a mere rudiment of a fifth metatarsal bone in some feet; but, in others, the fifth bone is long and well proportioned, and advances as far as the origin of the first phalanx of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... dualism of the theistic view has all sorts of collateral consequences. Man being an outsider and a mere subject to God, not his intimate partner, a character of externality invades the field. God is not heart of our heart and reason of our reason, but our magistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however strange they may be, remains ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... here," replied Mr. Dwerrihouse, pointing significantly to his breastpocket, "but a mere fraction of what we shall ultimately have ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... individual and various Thing in women on which Browning seized with delight. He did not write half as much as other poets had done of woman as being loved by man or as loving him. I have said that the mere love-poem is no main element in his work. He wrote of the original stuff of womanhood, of its good and bad alike, sometimes of it as all good, as in Pompilia; but for the most part as mingled of good and ill, and of the good as ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... life a love for goodness and truth in every form. In short, through the curriculum the latent powers constituting the life capital of every normal child are to be stimulated and developed to the end that his life shall be more than mere physical existence—to the end that it shall be crowned with fullness of knowledge, richness of feeling, and the victory of worthy achievement. This is the right of every child in these prosperous and enlightened ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... feeling came over her that an invisible companion glided by her side. This was the revenge of that other. The shadow that once fell on her innocent life now drove her friend away from their circle. Anton's affections clung to another. She had but been in his eyes a mere stranger, who had once loved and languished for one now far away, and who now, in widow's weeds, looked back regretfully to the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... justified in giving to the public it is important, of course, to take into account the character, the idiosyncrasy of the writer in regard to all his relations towards what may be called the mechanism of every-day life. Some poets are so methodical that the mere fact of anything having been left by them in manuscript unaccompanied by directions as to its disposal is primâ facie evidence that it was intended to be withheld from the public, either temporarily for revision or finally and absolutely. And, of course, the representative, especially ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... noted that his words were not mere polite patter. Farrel's gravely courteous bearing, his respectful bow to Mrs. Parker and the solemnity with which he spoke impressed them with the conviction that this curious human study in light and shadow regarded their approval as an ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... his client honest knowledge concerning the various matters about which he is consulted? That he shall keep abreast of the tide of discovery and improvement, and that upon these subjects he shall know, not trusting to mere hearsay or to unintelligent prejudice for ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... torpor fell from the skies and amid this general silence, this immobility, the cabin door alone seemed to live, live in weird manifestation. It had been left open, and now it was swinging and slamming to and fro jerkily, and shuddering from top to bottom. Half in plan, half in mere irritation at this senseless, incessant jigging, I sprang toward it and with one nervous pull tore it, hinge and all, from the rotten woodwork. I heaved it over the side, went in head first after ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... course, to get that letter, to have to read so many lines in that loathsome, large, neat, inflated handwriting, but she took it that it meant that those toys which he had sent Roger every six months were not, as she thought, mere attempts to torture her by reminding her of his existence, but signs that he had really wanted to be a father to his son, and that now that Harry was dead he was declaring his desire freely. That made her very happy, for she knew that love from the worst man on earth ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
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