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More "Petty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... aristocracy of their own country which they had inveighed against, and setting themselves up as the original and mighty landed aristocracy of the new country. The patroons encased themselves in an environment of pomp and awe. Like so many petty monarchs each had his distinct flag and insignia; each fortified his domain with fortresses, armed with cannon and manned by his paid soldiery. The colonists were but humble dependants; they were his immediate subjects ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... When I was looking upon that marvellous scene—that transfigured world—the morning after my arrival, you appeared and seemed a part of it. Do you remember what I said then? I have reluctantly thought to-night that you could wear your coronet of beauty, not Only as a benignant queen, but as a petty tyrant,—that you could put it to ignoble uses, and make it a slave to self. It seemed at times that you only sought to lead men to bow in admiration to you, instead of inspiring them to stand erect in true manhood, with their faces heavenward. A woman endowed as you are ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... said the captain, who had joined the group of wondering young adventurers, "but in spite of their good looks they are petty thieves, ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... persons who figure in this narrative, shall not be indulged in any longer, for there is nothing more intolerable than the stale reminiscences of those who insist on talking about Venice after so many great poets and petty travelers. The interest of the tale requires only this record of the most startling contrast in the life of man: the dignity and poverty which are conspicuous there in some of the men as they are in ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... no flatterer, it is true, but chivalrous in every sense of the word. A keen appreciator of all that is honorable and high-minded, he could not stoop to those petty meanesses, which too often characterize the conduct of those who flatter themselves with the name of gentleman,—a title which Tennyson forcibly ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... people they were distinctly "free" schools, as distinguished from the schools established by the law at the expense of the taxpayers. We were gravely informed that it was an act of war to call a free school free! In this same petty and childish spirit the congregations are called "associations" in the text of the law. When a free school is to be opened, the teacher who is to have charge of it must run the gauntlet of a series of public officers, all of them, if they are on good terms with the Government, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... from stealing a place in the line in front of a box-office window ahead of ten persons who were there before her, up the tiny scale of petty aggressions within her narrow reach to the cool climax of spending three months every summer in a pine-wood mountain resort (thus depriving her city-bound husband of the personal companionship which was the one best thing she had to give him in return for what he gave her), ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... captivity, but from the Jews of Solomon's glory came the only dissatisfied, hopeless words in the Bible. Yes, indeed! it is the souls that have too much, who cry out vanity, vanity, all is vanity! For myself, I like not the petty prudencies of Solomon. There is better reading in Isaiah, and in the Psalms, ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... trying one to Ruth. The sensation of the completion of the Temple and the stir made by its dedication had increased Gordon's fame, and the story of her sorrow had been repeated again and again. A hundred petty details, utterly false, had been added as the story had passed from paper to paper, until she was afraid to look in a public print lest she find her own name staring her in the face. From the Socialist point of view, she was attacked as a blatant scold who had made her husband's life intolerable, ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... passed away, but the great issues have been settled also. The last of these was the National Bank, and that has been overthrown forever. Nothing is left you, sir, but puny sectional questions and petty strifes about slavery and fugitive-slave laws, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... seemed and devoid of desire at the hour when he stood near the corpse of his daughter, joined with the silent smoke of the censer, which rose like light mist in the air. How petty he appeared at that juncture, crushed, as it were, by some giant hand—not a demi-god in any sense, or a Titan, but rather an insect, pushing into some narrow cranny to hide from a bird of prey. Kranitski had seen Darvid then, for, on hearing of the misfortune, no power ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone with respect to "great" and "small": perhaps he will find that the New Testament, the book of grace, still appeals more to his heart (there is much of the odour of the genuine, tender, stupid beadsman and petty soul in it). To have bound up this New Testament (a kind of ROCOCO of taste in every respect) along with the Old Testament into one book, as the "Bible," as "The Book in Itself," is perhaps the greatest audacity and "sin against the Spirit" which literary Europe ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... may say will perhaps hurt their feelings. People really care about nothing that does not affect them personally. True and striking observations, fine, subtle and witty things are lost upon them: they cannot understand or feel them. But anything that disturbs their petty vanity in the most remote and indirect way, or reflects prejudicially upon their exceedingly precious selves—to that, they are most tenderly sensitive. In this respect they are like the little dog whose toes you are so apt to tread upon inadvertently—you ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the same, with some of the parish officers to attend, hoping by that means a discovery of the same might be attained. The high constable of Westminster liberty also issued private orders to all the petty constables, watchmen, and other officers of that district, to keep a strict eye on all coaches, carts, etc., passing in the night through their liberty, imagining that the perpetrators of such a horrid fact would endeavour to free themselves ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... he was staring bravely into the darkness to see God's face once more, but in a gentler guise. The first thing he saw was Ellen again, sitting there beautiful, exculpated, made more desirable by all his accusations. How great and fateful all petty things became here! What was the good of defending himself? She was his fate, and he would have to surrender unconditionally. He still did not comprehend her, but he had a consciousness of greater laws for life, laws that raised her and made him small. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... moment that he joined the regiment a certain Corporal Warne and he had conceived an antipathy to one another, which Rake had to control as he might, and which the Corporal was not above indulging in every petty piece of tyranny that his rank allowed him to exercise. On active service Rake was, by instinct, too good a soldier not to manage to keep the curb on himself tolerably well though he was always regarded in his troop rather as a hound that will "riot" is regarded in the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... thereupon, the entire chorus interested itself in the grandeur of his country and all the nations of South America where they had agencies or investments—exaggerating its importance as though its petty republics were great powers, commenting with gravity upon the deeds and words of its political leaders and giving him to understand that in Germany there was no one who was not concerned about the future of South America, predicting for all ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... moved cared little what any one thought of her feelings; and even if she had been able to reflect, she would have held it petty to keep silence at injurious words about Will from fear of being herself misunderstood. Her face was flushed and ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... to the discipline of the Army. We were used to doing exactly as we liked, and the unquestioning obedience demanded did not come easy. Gee, but it used to hurt to take a "call-down" from a petty officer without having a chance to reply or even to show what we felt in our faces, and when he had said everything he could think of we had to touch our cap and say "Yes, Sir!" I assure you, very often we felt ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... place; and here I met in St. James's Park with one that told us that the Duke of York would be in town to-morrow, and so Turner parted and went home, and I also did stop my intentions of going to the Court, also this day, about securing Mr. Turner's place of Petty-purveyor to Mr. Hater. So I to my Lord Brouncker's, thinking to have gone and spoke to him about it, but he is gone out to town till night, and so, meeting a gentleman of my Lord Middleton's looking for ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... records exhibit no trace of him between May and December of that year. Whether by proxy or in person, however, he received his pensions regularly until 1382, when his income was increased by his appointment to the post of Controller of Petty Customs in the port of London. In November 1384, he obtained a month's leave of absence on account of his private affairs, and a deputy was appointed to fill his place; and in February of the next year he was permitted to ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... however jingo or legitimist they were; the romantic conservative Burke, the earth-devouring Imperialist Chatham, even, in reality, the jog-trot Tory North. The intractability was in the Elector of Hanover more than in the King of England; in the narrow and petty German prince who was bored by Shakespeare and approximately inspired by Handel. What really clinched the unlucky companionship of England and Germany was the first and second alliance with Prussia; the first in which we prevented the hardening tradition ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... fallen, never to recover? Must I sink deeper and deeper with these villains? Since I joined them they have never yet attempted anything like this. Petty theft, to support existence, I have participated in, but nothing more. Can I retreat? Ah, when I look upon these hills, and remember the time when I roved here, careless, innocent, and happy, how ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... of his men, a temporary petty officer of R.N.V.R., was certainly on board, and he tells me that down in the engine room was another—a civilian fitter. They were both first-class men. The electric wires, as you know, are carried about the ship under the deck beams, where they are accessible for examination and repairs. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Matrimonial Causes Act, 1857, a wife deserted by her husband may apply to a magistrate, or to the petty sessions, for an order to protect her lawful earnings or property acquired by her after such desertion, from her husband and his creditors. In this case it is indispensable that such order shall, within ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... what one believes. One needs sometimes to get away from the world around, 'from the noise and from the hurryings of this life,' and to hear, read, see, or do something to remind one that there is a standard which is not of drawing-rooms; that petty troubles are the pilgrimage of the soul; that great and happy lives have been lived here by those who have had but little; and that satisfying bliss is ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... "you must enter society under such auspices as I should wish, or you must be content to remain at home. I can't have a daughter of mine hawked about in that petty Holborough set. Lady Laura will be at Hale Castle by-and-by, I daresay. If she chooses to take you up, she can do so. Pretty girls are always at par in a country house, and at the Castle you ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... been accustomed to be crammed at home by their fond mothers. Besides eatables, everything necessary for a student was there sold, and articles used in the play-grounds, as bats, balls, &c.; and, in general, a petty trade with small profits was carried on in stationery and other matters, —in things innocent or suitable for the young customers, and in some things, perhaps, which were not. The Butler had a small salary, and was allowed the service of a Freshman in the Buttery, who was ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... and Life of the Indians, they live in a kind of patriarchal Manner, variously diversify'd, not unlike the Tribes and Families mentioned in the Old Testament. Every small Town is a petty Kingdom govern'd by an absolute Monarch, assisted and advised by his great Men, selected out of the gravest, oldest, bravest, and richest; if I may allow their Dear-Skins, Peak and Roenoak (black and white Shells with Holes, which they wear on Strings about their ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... death" might put an end to Pitt; and even when death had freed him from "this trumpet of sedition," he denounced the proposal for a public monument to the great statesman as "an offensive measure to me personally." But dull and petty as his temper was, he was clear as to his purpose and obstinate in the pursuit of it. And his purpose was to rule. "George," his mother, the Princess of Wales, had continually repeated to him in youth, "George, be king." He called himself always "a Whig of the Revolution," ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... was a native of Perthshire. Sometime before 1745 he was settled as missionary at Amulree, a muirland district near Dunkeld. In 1759 he became minister of Petty, a parish in the county of Inverness. He obtained his preferment in consequence of an interesting incident in his history. The proprietor of Delvine in Perthshire, who was likewise a Writer to the Signet, was employed in a legal ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... vials of wrath upon the head of Mr. Heathcote, whom he characterized as a coward, not able to stand up against petty persecution, and from the committeeman he passed on to others of Mr. Grayson's immediate following, taking "King" Plummer next. Mr. Plummer, in his opinion, was an excellent type of democracy run to riot. He was one of the "boys" in every sense. He was wofully wanting in personal dignity, speaking ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... always a mystery to me why he had not come to wear the crossed anchors and crown of a Yeoman of Signals, for his qualifications certainly seemed to fit him for promotion to petty-officer's rank, while his habits and character in the last ship in which I knew him were all ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... thou hast known the pain Of meaner lives,—the exile's galling chain, How steep the stairs within kings' houses are, And all the petty miseries which mar Man's nobler nature with the sense of wrong. Yet this dull world is grateful for thy song; Our nations do thee homage,—even she, That cruel queen of vine-clad Tuscany, Who bound with crown of thorns thy living ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... have none of the petty jealousies and quarrelling which distinguish the harems of the East, among the Zulu women, who, as a rule, are most friendly to each other, and the many wives of a great chief will live in a little colony of huts, each ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... sins into which you are thrust by their neglect, than the prison! Take, and keep the rights of your humanity!—the right to think,—the right to speak,—the right to know what is being done with the money you patiently earn for others;— and work, all together in unity. Put aside all petty differences,—all small rancours and jealousies; and even as a Ministry may unite to defraud and deceive you, so do you, the People, unite to expose the fraud, and reject the deception! There is no voice so resonant and ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Plain, or wandering sadly by the shore of Shetland fiords, there may be men who had in them the makings of eminent preachers; but whose powers have never been called out, and are rusting sadly away: and in whom many petty cares are developing a pettiness ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Captain was responded to by a respectful hail from a Russian petty officer, who was lounging at the head ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... smiled the Shade. "Yon supercilious sage, With patent prejudice and petty rage, Penning a tart jobation On practised Statesmen, must as much amuse As Statesmen-sciolists venting vapid views On ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... Memoirs! By a few strokes of his pen, in words that bite like acid, he etches for us the fools and knaves, the wife-beaters and adulterers, the cardsharpers and gamesters, the grovelling sycophants with their petty struggles for precedence or favour, their slang, their gluttony and drunkenness, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... open trunk with the words, and began to sweep together every article of clothing it contained. Dinah watched her in horror-stricken silence. She remembered with odd irrelevance how once in her childhood for some petty offence her mother had burnt a favourite doll, and then had whipped her soundly for ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... period the Czar and his advisers were temporizing and attempting to obtain peace by means of petty concessions. A greater degree of religious liberty was granted, and a new representative body, the Imperial Duma, was provided for. This body was not to be a parliament in any real sense, but a debating society. It could discuss ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... forgotten long ago,' he answered, 'by both of us, I should think. When my mother bribed you to leave Ilfracombe, you bartered my love and my happiness for the petty price she was able to pay. I was a weak fool in those days, and I took the business to heart bitterly enough, God knows; but the lesson was a useful one, and it served its turn. I have never trusted myself to love any woman since that day, till I met the pure young creature ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... was united, a number of petty sovereigns were deprived of their crowns and now wander around without any particular aim in life. Unlike an ex-President of the United States, an ex-king cannot go to work, and, if he has not saved any money, must depend on ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... allurement of the Sauages, we were prouided of Musike in good variety: not omitting the least toyes, as Morris dancers, Hobby horsse, and Maylike conceits to delight the Sauage people, whom we intended to winne by all faire meanes possible. And to that end we were indifferently furnished of all petty haberdasherie wares to barter ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... were two great literary concepts—that truth was a higher quality than beauty, and that to spread the reign of justice should everywhere be the design and intent of the artist. The merely beautiful in art seemed petty, and success at the cost of the happiness of ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... came, I did to others as I had been done by. Jackson had no excuse for his treatment of me, whereas I had every excuse for retaliation. He did know better, I did not. I followed the ways of the world in the petty microcosm in which I had been placed. I knew not of mercy, of forgiveness, charity, or good-will. I knew not that there was a God; I only knew that might was right, and the most pleasurable sensation which I felt ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in complete contradiction with himself. Careless, petty, and at the same time most unusually proud; a lover of pomp and ceremony, yet fond of solitude and retirement; fiery and at the same time lax; a man of genius and yet pedantic; eager to acquire and reckless in giving away; confidential ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... you, it is large enough to bring out His sympathy; and if the grief be too small for Him to compassionate and share, it is too small for you to be troubled by it. If you are ashamed to apply that divine thought, 'Christ bears this grief with me,' to those petty molehills that you sometimes magnify into mountains, think to yourselves that then it is a shame for you to be stumbling over them. But on the other hand, never fear to be irreverent or too familiar in the thought that Christ is willing to bear, and help you to bear, the pettiest, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... their grandfathers of my grandfather's class. As a small landlord I had my gentlemanly leisure; but as well as I know my name, I realize now that I could never return to that life again. Looking back, I see its intolerable narrowness, its petty smugness. By comparison it's like the relative clearness of the atmosphere there and here. There, perhaps I could see a few miles: here, I look away over leagues and leagues of distance. It's symbolic." The voice paused; the face, turned directly ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... a very self-confident lady-killer," said she; "for you make yourself expected. But I was determined to meet you. When a woman has once so far forgotten herself as to make the first advance, she has long ago left behind her all considerations of petty pride." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The characters show traits of Goethe's parents, and possibly something of his wife is in Dorothea. Hermann's mother bears the name of the poet's and reveals many of her qualities. But some of these are given to the landlord-father, while the elder Goethe's pedantry and petty weaknesses are shown in the apothecary. The poet's experiences in the field are realistically reproduced in many particulars of character and incident, as are doubtless also his mother's vivid ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... keep up a second house, quite content with his position as quire of Bragton, but with considerable pride about him as to that position. He had always liked to have his house full, and had hated petty oeconomies. He had for many years hunted the county at his own expense, the amusement at first not having been so expensive as it afterwards became. When he began the work, it had been considered sufficient to hunt twice a week. Now the Rufford and Ufford hounds ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... scandal. People should be given a chance to forget. I dare say it would have been better for her if she had been turned into a scullion or something of that kind. Of course he's trying to make money in every sort of petty way, but in such a business there'll never be enough ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... laughter—rare, it is true, but hearty enough. Even when cracked lips and swollen mouths checked the outward and visible signs of amusement we could see a joke of the primitive kind. Man's sense of humour is always most easily stirred by the petty misfortunes of his neighbours, and I shall never forget Worsley's efforts on one occasion to place the hot aluminium stand on top of the Primus stove after it had fallen off in an extra heavy roll. With his frost-bitten fingers he picked it up, dropped it, picked it up again, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... very bold. She did not care a bit; and, to tell the truth, she had little need to care. Beauty so positive as hers is indomitable. The petty accidents that are the terrors of homely charms seem to enhance Queen Beauty. Disheveled hair adorns it: close bound hair adorns it. Simplicity adorns it. Diamonds adorn it. Everything seems to adorn it, because, the truth is, it adorns everything. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... no further concern with the interests and people around me. I saw a reason why John Hollingford and Mr. Noble were not likely to be friends, even if their fathers had been brothers. And the little lady's petty grievance worried me. And all things troubled me, for in three days I was to leave Hillsbro' for ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... Finns—big broad-shouldered, ruddy, light-haired, bearded fellows; very good-natured and merry, notwithstanding the harsh treatment they often received. Big as they were, they were knocked about like so many boys by the petty officers, and I began to feel rather uncomfortable lest I should come in for share of the same treatment, of which I had had enough from the hands of old Growl. I determined, however, to grin and bear it, and do, as well as I could, whatever I ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... papers for news of Alice's disappearance, but were perplexed by failure to see such reference. Not being able longer to bear the suspense, Paul, in new disguise, again appeared in the vicinity of Northfield. Inquiring as to any incidents of note occurring in that neighborhood, he learns only of other petty gossip. He dares not visit the residence, but watches for its ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... you, monsieur, if I told you what refined torture these daughters of noblemen invented to gratify their petty spite. I might have complained to the superior, but I scorned to do so. I buried my sorrow deep in my heart, as I had done years before; and I firmly resolved never to show ought but a smiling, placid face, so as to prove to my enemies ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... different clans were driven farther into the hills, they each clinched as much land as they could. In course of time, by petty quarrels, civil wars, and common feuds, the Nou-su were gradually thinned out. The Miao-tsi—the men of the hills and the serfs of the landlords, who four thousand years ago were a powerful race in their own kingdom—became the tenants of the Nou-su, whose rule is ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... but he had brought no certificates of parentage or age. Had he his parents' permission to come to sea? he was asked. They were both dead: he had no friends; but he produced a tin case which had been his father's. The contents showed that the owner had been a petty officer in the navy, and had borne an excellent character. But another question was put; could he read and write? (No boys could be received at that time unless they possessed those accomplishments.) Poor Ned had to confess that he was ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... Mansour, besides a son of the great house of Ettence. These merchants belong to the rival factions of the city, and accordingly have separate encampments. The greater number of the merchants of our ghafalah are only petty traders, some with only a camel-load of merchandize. We are escorted by sixty Arab troops on foot, with a commandant and some subordinate sheikhs on horseback. They are to protect us to The Mountains, where ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... strained look on his seamed face, and a glitter in his eyes that Dick could not but think boded ill toward some one, and he rejoiced that fortune had not thrown his daily lot under the finger of this petty tyrant. ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... was extremely anxious to prove the illustrious descent of his prospective son-in-law. Napoleon refused to have the account published, remarking, "I had rather be the descendant of an honest man than of any petty tyrant of Italy. I wish my nobility to commence with myself and derive all my titles from the French people. I am the Rudolph of Hapsburg of my family. My patent of nobility dates ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Charlecote, who was hearing the night's adventures in the schoolroom. Scarcely, however, had Honor had time to embrace the little heroine, whose conduct had lost nothing in Miss Fennimore's narration, when a message came from Elverslope. It was the day of the petty sessions, and a notable bad character having been taken up with some suspicious articles upon him, the magistrates were waiting for Mr. Fulmort to make out ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "you can neither steal nor lie, as a Highland gentleman's ghillie should. You would have me do those petty things myself, and they are not for me, although, mayhap, I'd be ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... Guy," she remarked. "You are aiming at—windmills; at least, I think you are not suddenly gone stupid. However, you do not need to answer. Mrs. Clephane, you think, is not tinctured, and you know that I have been—several shades deep. In other words, she surpasses me in your estimation in the petty matter of morals. So be it; you're no fool, and a pretty woman cannot blind you to the facts for long. Then we shall see which you prefer. The woman who is honest about the tincture, or the woman who is not. Now let us drop the matter, and attend ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... and yet, it is hard to imagine how men could have been treated worse, so far as food is concerned than were the men of this boat. I am going to be just as frank as I know how in describing food conditions with the hope that by calling public attention to this petty graft, such practices will be stopped, so far as American fighting men are concerned. To any who have weak stomachs, I suggest that they skip over the next two or three pages, as the details may ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... defence of the articles? I will publish it immediately; with a preface stating the whole transaction.'—'You will be to blame.'—'Why so?'—You may be better employed.'—'What! than in exposing vice?'—'The employment is petty; and what is worse, it is inefficient. The frequent consequence of attacking the errors of individuals is the increase of those errors. Such attacks are apt to deprave both the assailant and the assailed. They begin ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... illustrations, for those who still deny the authenticity of Ossian to declare whether they have ever studied him; and for those who still wrangle about the style of Macpherson's so-called Gaelic to decide whether they will continue such petty warfare among vowels and consonants, and ill-spelt mediaeval legends, when the science, the history, the navigation, the atmospheric phenomena, and the impending volcanic changes of Western Europe fifteen hundred years ago, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... which controlled and regulated the flow of the river-sources were very often in one jurisdiction, the plains to be irrigated, or to be inundated by floods and desolated by torrents, in another. Concert of action, on such a subject, between a multitude of jealous petty sovereignties, was obviously impossible, and nothing but the permanent union of all the Italian States under a single government can render practicable the establishment of such arrangements for the conservation and restoration of the forests, and the regulation of the flow of the waters, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... in voting by his technical knowledge, and it is almost impossible that the choice should fall upon any but the best qualified persons. But, further, this simple spinner in Freeland is no mere automaton, whose knowledge and skill begin and end with the petty details of his own business: he is familiar with at least one or several other branches of industry; and from this again it follows that the man can take advantage of any favourable circumstance that may occur in such other branch or branches of industry, and can exchange the plough ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... je suis un bel esprit; mais si on m'apprenait que mes ecrits eussent corrige quelques vices, ou seulement quelque vicieux, je serais vraiment sensible a cet eloge."[78] However, he was tolerant, as one who knows the weaknesses that flesh is heir to, and, whether his attack was aimed at the petty foibles or graver weaknesses of the individual, coquetry, ambition, avarice, hypocrisy, vanity, and the like, or at certain social evils, the reprimand was always given with ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... modern levity in all its nauseousness. It is evident that Miss Sisson is emulating the appreciative Anne Carroll of 1834, rather than her obtuse and indifferent descendant. "The District School," by Edna R. Guilford, describes very vividly the many petty annoyances that beset the average teacher. While the picture is extremely well presented as a whole, certain roughnesses of diction nevertheless arrest the critical eye. "Onto," in the first paragraph, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... than those who have not so good an Estate as himself. He would be a good Neighbour if he did not destroy so many Partridges: in short, he is a very sensible Man; shoots flying; and has been several times Foreman of the Petty-Jury. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the Prince von Lichtenstein, and that she does not want to be disturbed," shouted the voice of the prebendary. "Yes, sir; in that case I shall equally lament my fate and yours, for both of us are deceived and deprived of sweet hopes. Both of us will have a more fortunate rival in this petty prince—in this conceited young dandy, who even now believes he is a perfect Adonis, and carries his ludicrous presumption so far as to believe that he can outstrip men of ability and merit by his miserable little title ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... worthy of being coveted! His treasure is inexhaustible, His poem infinite, His love immutable, His science sure and darkened by no mysteries. Be anxious for nothing, He will give you all. Yes, in His heart are treasures with which the petty joys you lose on earth are not to be compared. What I tell you is true; you shall possess His power; you may use it as you would use the gifts of lover or mistress. Alas! men doubt, they lack faith, and will, and persistence. If some set their feet in the path, they look behind them and presently ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar demonstrate: but then he lives free of house-rent, has a limited allowance of coals and candles, and an almost unlimited allowance of authority in his petty kingdom. He is a tall, thin, bony man; always wears shoes and black cotton stockings with his surtout; and eyes you, as you pass his parlour-window, as if he wished you were a pauper, just to give you a specimen of his power. He is an admirable specimen of a small tyrant: morose, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... but none more so than Roswell Crawford. He would have cared less if any one else had obtained the situation; but for a boy who lived in Mott Street to be preferred to him, a gentleman's son, he considered indeed humiliating. In a spirit of petty spite, ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... Petty," said Brewster, "or it will make you poetical. What I want to know is who owns it and is it likely to be occupied at ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... Salem. If he could have made a novel out of his custom-house acquaintances, he might have given us something less immaterial. He felt the lack of solidity in his own creations: the folly of constructing "the semblance of a world out of airy matter"; the "value hidden in petty incidents and ordinary characters." "A better book than I shall ever write was there," he confesses, but "my brain wanted the insight and my hand ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... inferior, writers it is most fortunate that our design has taken so wide a scope. These can go on with their perennial wrangle over the petty question of penal and educational flagellation, while we grapple with the higher problem, and unfold the broader philosophy of an universal walloping. Reflections upon the Beneficent ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... laughed, and forgotten the remark soon after. Nevertheless, the underlying truth was working out in his own life. He was being made a better man because he had been given a fine name and reputation. He had no petty conceit to be fed by his patients' adulation. It brought him only a saving sense of his own shortcomings and an honest desire to be more worthy. And there had been still another influence at work, one of which he was entirely unconscious—the ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... place of my nativity as well as that of many others of more or less national and local prominence, such as Thomas Dixon, Jr., of the Clansman fame; Hon. E. Yates Webb, Congressman Ninth District; Col. A. M. Lattimore, of Lattimore; Capt. O. D. Price, the old-time singer; Capt. Pink Petty, the famous fox-hunter with the silver-mounted horn; Capt. Nim Champion, the standing candidate for the Legislature on the one-plank platform—the restoration of the whipping-post. Then we have Frank Barrett, the old soldier ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... Spanish occupation there were in the Philippines many petty kingdoms headed by native princes known as datus. Luzon, the scene of countless ravages and hard fightings of warlike tribes, was the home of Datu Nebucheba. His kingdom—at first only a few square miles—was greatly extended by the labor of his young brave warrior, Tomarind. Tomarind ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... stood up. "Gentlemen and brothers of the syndicate," he began, "I'm satisfied that the back-bitin', the scrappin', the petty jealousies and general cussedness that characterized our lives on the old Maggie will not be duplicated on the Maggie II. Them vicious days is gone forever, I hope, an' from now on the motto ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... new interest. The lawyer, who had been introduced as Mr. Ashe, was one of those people who are more worth looking at than most people realize when they look. If Napoleon had been red-haired, and had bent all his powers with a curious contentment upon the petty lawsuits of a province, he might have looked much the same; the head with the red hair was heavy and powerful; the figure in its dark, quiet clothes was comparatively insignificant, as was Napoleon's. He seemed more at ease ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... into an abyss. The slow but inexorable march of the mightiest glacier of the Alps, though comparable, was not equal to this in force. The whole of a Pyramid, shot from a colossal catapult, would not have been the petty charge of a pea shooter to it. Imagine Niagara, or a greater even than Niagara, falling upon an ordinary collection of brick ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... had been told that, under the misrule of Perennis, the ergastula of Italy were filled, not half with runaway slaves, petty thieves, rascals, ruffians and outlaws, but mainly with honest fellows who had committed no crime, but had been secretly arrested and consigned to their prisons merely because they had incurred the displeasure of Perennis or of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... heterogeneous materials, which have in a longer or a shorter space successively crumbled to decay. At a time when the kings of Egypt had never ventured beyond their borders, unless it were for a foray in Ethiopia, and when in Asia no monarch had held dominion over more than a few petty tribes, and a few hundred miles of territory, he conceived the magnificent notion of binding into one the manifold nations inhabiting the vast tract which lies between the Zagros mountain-range and the Mediterranean. Lord by inheritance ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... to represent the Government, but claimed to be himself the judge of the expediency or necessity of his doing so. The ministerial life of this doyen of the Whig Party spanned half a century, for he had, as Lord Henry Petty, been Chancellor of the Exchequer in the ministry of "All the Talents" in 1806-1807. Lord Granville now assumed the Liberal leadership in the Lords, which, as Lord Fitzmaurice points out, he held, with a brief exception of three years, till ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Sens and the countship of Bourges—such was the whole of its extent. But this limited state was as liable to agitation, and often as troublous and as toilsome to govern, as the very greatest of modern states. It was full of Petty lords, almost sovereigns in their own estates, and sufficiently strong to struggle against their kingly suzerain, who had, besides, all around his domains, several neighbors more powerful than himself in the extent and population of their states. But ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... guffaw of derisive laughter, and the man who had done it was highly complimented on his achievement. I took no notice, however, doing that which I had set out to do. This, instead of lessening their dislike for me, increased it, and for days after I was subjected to many petty annoyances. A few weeks before, I should not have stood it. I was wild and passionate then, full of life and strength, now I was so bitter that I scarcely felt any interest in anything. Besides that, the men were so low and brutal ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... his feelings, the young officer contented himself with a kind glance from Isabella Gonzales, who had overheard the last act of petty tyranny on the general's part, and for that very reason redoubled her passing notice and smiles upon Captain Bezan. The officer marched his company to their barracks, and then sought the silence and quiet ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... you take me for a Country Squire, whose Reputation will be crackt at the loss of a petty Thousand? You have my Note ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... did not look at him. If she could have read the truth in his face, it would have told her that she had never been loved as she was at that moment. All that she had been in her loyalty, her nobility, was so much a part of this man's life. What, compared to that, were petty sins, or big ones? He saw the past as a drowning man sees the panorama of his existence. Yet he knew that everything he could say would be powerless ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... filled up. One of the aldermen had inserted the name of a troublesome nephew, another that of a foreman with whom he had had a dispute about wages, and who had threatened to proceed against him in the court. Some of the names were inserted from mere petty spite; but with scarce an exception the aldermen responded to the invitation of the mayor, and placed on the list the name of some one whom they, or Southampton, would be ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... Sir Robert Borden, was due the splendid response to the call to arms of the Canadian people. He put duty before public applause of petty politics like a true Canadian. Future generations will do ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... saddened his life as a man. Now he believed that he might have produced the most remarkable works, if he had not known that little woman who crushed him with her weight. Her silent censure, her prying eyes, that narrow, petty morality of a well-educated girl, blocked his course and made him turn out of his way. Her fits of temper, her nervous attacks, made him lose his bearings, belittling him, robbing him of his strength for work. Must he always live like this? The thought of the long years ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... on our own coasts, my lords, have multitudes of our ships been taken by the Spaniards; they have been seized by petty vessels as they were entering our ports, and congratulating themselves upon ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... red squirrel may be known by its smaller size. He is more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields. He is most abundant in old bark-peelings, and low, dilapidated hemlocks, from which he makes excursions to the fields and orchards, spinning along the tops of the fences, which afford, not only convenient ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... sister, Anne, only daughter of Sir William Petty, and wife of Thomas Fitzmaurice, Lord of Kerry, afterwards created ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... unbranded calf until it could be weaned he understood; the paring of hoofs to prevent travelling he could tell as far as he could see; the crafty alteration of similar brands—as when a Mexican changed Johnson's Lazy Y to a Dumb-bell Bar—he saw through at a glance. In short, the hundred and one petty tricks of the sneak-thief he ferreted out, in danger of his life. Then he sent to Phoenix for a Ranger—and that was the last of the Dumb-bell Bar brand, or the Three Link Bar brand, or the Hour Glass Brand, or a ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... well suppressed in the previous cases. The indictment was very similar to that preferred against Nicholls; but, in addition to all that the latter had been charged with, Talbot rapidly enumerated a long list of wanton cruelties and petty tyrannies which had sprung spontaneously and unprompted as it were from the second mate's own evil nature. At the conclusion of Talbot's address the men, without waiting for Rogers to formally charge them, sprang ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... goad the Provinces into energy and alertness, the local questions and politics discussed give a flavour to the narrative without limiting the reader's interest. One does not need to be deeply concerned in Nova Scotia prosperity, nor versed in the turnings of petty politics, to take a lively pleasure in the sharp thrusts which the author, under shield of the Clockmaker's wit, gives at stupidity and narrowness. The two sides of the question involved are as little a matter of concern to the general reader as the opposing ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... been given to the enlisted men in the next enclosure. For a few minutes there was some bustle over getting petty belongings together and marshaling them into a pack that could be slung over ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... was shocking! Darya Mihailovna certainly did not care to stand on ceremony in the country, and in the unconstrained frankness of her manners there was perceptible a slight shade of the contempt of the lioness of the capital for the petty and obscure creatures who surrounded her. She had a careless, and even a sarcastic manner with her own set; but the shade of ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... happiness of the human race had ever been considered as the end and aim of policy. The Moors, the Pisans, the kings of Aragon, and the Genoese, successively attempted, and each for a time effected its conquest. The yoke of the Genoese continued longest, and was the heaviest. These petty tyrants ruled with an iron rod; and when at any time a patriot rose to resist their oppressions, if they failed to subdue him by force they resorted to assassination. At the commencement of the last century they quelled one revolt by the aid of German auxiliaries, whom the Emperor Charles VI. ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... promptly. It is urgent. This note will be sent off to day. I shall complete it to-morrow. It will reach you, as usual, by the hands of the petty shopkeeper." ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... who does not cease to humiliate our good old nobility and the parliaments, and to sap the foundations of the edifice upon which the State reposes. I hear that the nobles are taxed and condemned by petty judges, contrary to the privileges of their condition, forced to the arriere-ban, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... oh, don't talk to me of Boston girls, don't talk to me of any girls anywhere," burst in Laura. "I'm sick—sick of girls. Girls will do things and say things—little, mean, petty things—that boys would be ashamed ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... easily explained than this thing, colonel, and all I want now is a chance to get that tramp. Then I'll go to Sibley; and 'pon my word I believe that mystery can be made as commonplace a piece of petty larceny as ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... process of at least six thousand years into its present form. Milton's Satan is a debased intellect who in his boundless ambition is still a supernatural being. Mephistopheles is the incarnation of our complicated modern social evils, full of petty tricks and learned quotations; he piously turns up his eyes, he lies, doubts, calumniates, seduces, philosophizes, sneers, but all in a polite and highly educated way; he is a scholar, a divine, a politician, a diplomatist. Satan is capable of wild enthusiasm, he ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... myself more entirely to benefiting my fellow creatures. Girl as I am, I mean to join the grand army of workers—that is what Mr. Arnold called them. Oh, how I wish I could remember all he said! He told us not to be disheartened by petty difficulties, or to feel lonely because, perhaps, those who were our nearest and dearest discouraged our efforts or put obstacles in our way. 'You think you are alone,' he said, 'when you are one of the rank and file in that glorious battalion. There ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the exposition of the weak sides of great men, inasmuch as it reads them a valuable lesson on their own infallibility, and tends to lower the molehills of conceit that are raised in the world as stumbling-blocks along every road of petty ambition. It would, however, be but a sorry toil for the most cynical critic to illustrate these vagaries otherwise than so many slips and trippings of the tongue and pen, to which all men are liable in their unguarded moments—from Homer to Anacreon Moore, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... suggestions of colour. Many a much-belauded brush is but a fumbling and ineffective tool, compared with the ink-charged crowquill handled by CHARLES KEENE. Look at "Grandiloquence!" (No. 220) There's composition! There's effect! Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent PAT himself, a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with stable sea-legs firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of the waves, the very whiff of the wind so vividly suggested!—and all in some ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... drunkenness, in my opinion, has been very erroneously fastened upon the German population. During my sojourn in Carlsruhe I have paid many a visit to the beer-shops, from the petty taverns frequented by the poor to the lofty saloons where Ganymedes in white skirts shuffled with huge tankards through a perfect forest of orange trees in tubs; for, worse luck to my morals, I have not seen a single frightful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... he was my old skipper," observed Jack. "And you fine young fellows couldn't do better than join her," exclaimed a petty officer, who was standing near, clapping Jack on ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... region not before visited by whites, where I might succeed in coming into contact with the shy nomads, called Punans, known to roam there in limited numbers. To this end I had taken along one of the Sultan's petty officials, a so-called raja, who exercised more or less control over the Punans. This man, evidently half Malay and half Dayak, and as nude as the rest, demanded to be waited upon by the other natives, who even had to put ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... Columbia, but the captain is a modest man, and one knows not just how much of our admiration of him and his ship he would care to see spread upon the minutes. Were Mr. Green such a man as the captain, would he be lowering himself to have any truck with journalists and such petty folk? Mr. Green would not. Mark you: Captain Bone is the master of an Atlantic liner, a veteran of the submarine-haunted lanes of sea, a writer of fine books (have you, lovers of sea tales, read "The Brassbounder" and "Broken Stowage"?) a collector of first editions, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... talk and epigrams of the various petty impinging circles under the social dome passed into and out of her small ears—gossip, epigrams, aphorisms, rumours, apropos surmises, asides, and off-stage observations, subtle with double entendre, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... function is amply fulfilled when he has measured the movements of the hour by the somewhat higher standards of the day. The conditions under which Swift lived demanded a journalist of an entirely different calibre; and they got him. They obtained a man who dissolved the petty jealousies of party power in the acid of satire, and who distilled the affected fears for Church and State in the alembic of a statesmanship that establishes a nation's majesty and dignity on the common welfare of its free ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... of things, disappear, for it is charming; it is innocent with the innocence of very good, simple women; it is at the same time subtle with that inimitable subtlety which only such women can achieve. It is petty finance on such a moral height that even the sufferers by its code must look up to it. Before even woman, showing anything except a timid face of discovery at the sights of New York under male escort, invaded Wall Street, the church fair was in ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... of his love of power had passed. He had too keenly felt, one after another, the discouragements of the office that he sought in order to do good, to reform, to act, in the pursuit of which he found himself, from the first moment, clashing with routine, old-fashioned ideas, petty ambitions, the general welfare, all the brood of selfish interests. It had been his to dream a sort of Chimera bearing the country toward Progress on outstretched wings: he found himself entangled in the musty mechanism of a worn-out and rancid-smelling engine, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... below my itching fingers; and to set this by, turn a deaf ear upon the siren present, and condescend once more, naked, into the ring with fortune - Macaire, how few would do it! But you, Macaire, you are compacted of more subtile clay. No cheap immediate pilfering: no retail trade of petty larceny; but swoop at the heart of the position, and ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... hers, but he was puzzled. Had he probed her aright? It was one of those intimate moments that come to nervously organized people, when the petty detail of acquaintanceship and fact is needless, when each one stands nearly confessed to the other. And then she left ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... vices charged upon these people, or a portion of them, and truth requires that nothing be withheld. There is said to be a good deal of petty pilfering among them, although they are faithful to trusts. This is the natural growth of the old system, and is quite likely to accompany the transition-state. Besides, the present disturbed and unorganized condition of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... would she be by my side; daily could I plot and plan to give her pleasure; every hour by word and look and act could I lavish on her the exhaustless measure of my love. Ah! life would be too short for me. Could aught in this petty purblind existence of ours redeem it and exalt it so: her love, this pure sweet girl's, and mine. Let nations grapple, let Mammon triumph, let pestilence o'erwhelm; what matter, we love, we love. O proud, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the past weeks a number of petty thefts had been committed. Day-scholars who left small sums of money in their jacket pockets would find, on returning to the cloakrooms, that these had been pilfered. For a time, the losses were borne in silence, because of the reluctance inherent in young girls to making ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... he fixed his residence at Sardis, and was employed by that monarch in various difficult and delicate affairs of state. In his discharge of these commissions he visited the different petty republics of Greece. At one time he is found in Corinth, and at another in Athens, endeavoring, by the narration of some of his wise fables, to reconcile the inhabitants of those cities to the administration of their respective rulers, Pariander ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... love of tranquillity this letter breathes, the dislike of publicity as a snare fatal to future quiet, the contempt for the petty vanity that makes men of letters run into print with their little personal affairs, as if they were of moment to anybody but themselves, are all very characteristic of Smith's philosophic temper of mind; and there is also—what appears ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... be just as great children as those we have now. No; let us be manly and straightforward with them in everything. We shall fight for our place, but we will not be petty." ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... alliance with the Flemish burghers, whose French count, Louis de Nevers, had gained nothing in their affections through the humiliation of Cassel, which confirmed his rule. The hated count showed his hostility to Edward, as well as his spite against his own subjects, by various petty acts which interfered with the commerce and industry of both Flanders ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... my bier is borne to the grave And its burden is laid in the ground Think not that Rumi is there, Nor cry, like the mourners around, He is gone,—all is over—farewell! But go on your ways again, And forgetting your own petty loss, Remember his infinite gain. For, know that this world is a tent, And life but a dream in the night, Till death plucks the curtain apart And awakens the sleeper ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... I don't see how a man can wholly devote himself to a work he thinks so great, and yet have patience to struggle with the thousand petty cares of life. The shifts and turnings to which insufficient means must reduce one, cannot but vex and hurt such a nature, if it does not change it at last. But I see I fail to make myself understood by you; let me try again. I don't know how it may be in your country, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... little more than twenty years Salmon was himself a Senator, and had the making of such clerks. And what happened a dozen years later? This: he who had once sought in vain a petty appointment was called to administer the finances of the nation. Instead of a clerk grown gray in the Department, to whom the irreverent youngsters might be saying to-day, "——, do this," or, "——, do that," and he doeth it, he is himself the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... threatening proportions, laws of barbarous severity have been applied for its repression; in not one solitary instance have they been successful. The more barbarous and severe the law against crime, the more has crime flourished. When men were hanged for petty theft, when they were whipped at the cart's tail for seditious language, when they were disembowelled for treasonable practices; theft, sedition, and treason flourished as they have never flourished since. The very disproportion and hideousness of the penalty ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... been settled in Canada, Flora picked up a note which had been thrown out as waste paper, and which was addressed to the father of a very dirty, dishonest girl, whom she had dismissed from her service for sundry petty frauds, a few weeks before. It was addressed to Edward Brady, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... slavery had been frustrated by the Freedmen's Bureau and the Fifteenth Amendment. The disfranchisement of 1876 was followed by the widespread rise of "crime" peonage. Stringent laws on vagrancy, guardianship, and labor contracts were enacted and large discretion given judge and jury in cases of petty crime. As a result Negroes were systematically arrested on the slightest pretext and the labor of convicts leased to private parties. This "convict lease system" was almost universal in the South until about 1890, when its outrageous abuses and cruelties aroused ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... lords, who always sought to advance their own interests by the force of arms. Feudalism in form of government was the antithesis of imperialism, yet in effect something the same. It substituted a horde of petty despots for one and it developed a petty local tyranny in the place ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... expediency, summing up his decided rejection of the proposals made by the Nabob Fyzoola Khan in the following remarkable words. "With respect to Fyzoola Khan, he appears not to merit our consideration. The petty sovereign of a country estimated at six or eight lacs ought not for a moment to prove an impediment to any of our measures, or to affect the ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was about to take the place that had once been filled by Egypt and Babylon. But the opportunity was lost; the murder of Joab and the unwarlike character of Solomon effectually checked all dreams of conquest, and Israel fell back into two petty states. ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... all these petty colonial interests, saw at once that to ensure loyalty it was only proper to administer justice impartially to all creeds and to all classes, and that the French Canadians, whose numbers were at least equal to the British Canadians, had a positive right to be heard and ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... was effectually attained. The wrongs of Napoleon, the cold cruelty of the English government, and the pestilent petty tyranny of Sir Hudson Lowe, were the perpetual themes of table-talk all over Europe. There were statesmen of high rank in either house of the British parliament, who periodically descanted on these topics—and the answers ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... Oatlands for years; for consider I cannot walk, much less climb a precipice; and the Duke of Newcastle has none of the magnificence of petty princes in a romance or in Germany, of furnishing calashes to those who visit his domains. He is not undetermined about selling the place; but besides that nobody is determined to buy it, he ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... aura; the aura of Arnold Schoenberg is, for me, the aura of subtle ugliness, of hatred and contempt, of cruelty, and of the mystic grandiose. He is never petty. He sins in the grand manner of Nietzsche's Superman, and he has the courage of his chromatics. If such music-making is ever to become accepted, then I long for Death the Releaser. More shocking still would be the suspicion that ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... surnamed Haarfager (fair-haired), by him the petty kingdoms of Norway were all conquered and knit into one compact realm; the story goes that he undertook this work to win the hand of his lady-love, and that he swore an oath neither to cut nor comb his hair till his task was done; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... banks on the river Scheldt, King Henry and his Saxon nobles were one day assembled in their hall of justice, which in those times was beneath a broad-spreading oak. From another petty German political division had come Frederick of Telramund, with his wife Ortrud. In turn they were surrounded by their own retainers from their province, but all were assembled at King Henry's call to rally ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... before, she had admired him; indeed, as far as her power of admiration went, his strength had appealed to her as only strength can appeal to a woman of her type; but now that his strength was gone hatred of him rose up in her heart, petty yet powerful, a dwarf passion that had been ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... sin in the man of the North, if God and his country ever clashed, to say, that well as he loved his country, he loved his God yet more. But what plea shall shield the sin which claims to love one's own petty State better than either country or God? They have virtually tunneled and honey-combed into ruin the fundamental obligations of the citizen. Jesuitism had made itself a name of reproach by the doctrine ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... to gratify a curiosity which they probably considered morbid, by yielding to it. This was a mistake. It was a mistake, as much as it would be for us to leave out of our letters to our friends the petty incidents of daily life, and describe only grand principles and outside events. It is only to those loved most by us that we recite the trivial things, for we know that those trivialities link us closer than anything else, filling all the chinks in our friendship or love. It was a disappointment ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... chiefs, who had surrendered on his solemn pledge of amnesty, were either handed over to the executioner or sent to linger for life, loaded with fetters, in some of the prison ambas. For the next three years Theodore's rule was acknowledged throughout the land. A few petty rebels had risen here and there, but with the exception of Tadla Gwalu, who could not be driven from the fastness of his amba in the south of Godjam, all the others were but of little importance, and did not disturb ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... bells in the first watch, when every man turned out of his hammock. The watch on deck came springing down below and immediately unshipped the ladders. While some were engaged in lashing up the hammocks, others rushed aft and secured the warrant and petty officers. ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... spurring on the English, and one which must be well understood and well remembered, if men like Drake, and Hawkins, and Raleigh are to be tolerably understood. One of the English Reviews, a short time ago, was much amused with a story of Drake having excommunicated a petty officer as a punishment for some moral offence; the reviewer not being able to see in Drake, as a man, anything more than a highly brave and successful buccaneer, whose pretences to religion might rank with the devotion of an Italian bandit to the Madonna. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... was half jocular; there was a smile on his lips, but his eyes seemed to look beyond the petty troubles and problems of his craft to a ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... when he had made the use of her he wished, and she had cut the curls of Nisias. A great love does not of necessity imply a great intelligence, but it must spring out of a great nature, that is certain; and where the heart has spent itself in much base petty commerce, it has no deep treasury of gold on which to draw; it is bankrupt from its very over-trading. A noble passion is very rare; believe me; as rare as any other ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... something which hitherto I have hid even from you. I have a right to that name, for if your blood is high, O Shabaka, so is mine. Know that this poor dwarf whom you took captive and saved long years ago was more than the petty chief which he declared himself to be. He was and is by right the King of the Ethiopians and that throne with all its wealth and power he could ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... over another, the enclosure of the bureau pushed back against the president's chair, a tumult such as to bring to mind 'the day of judgment," the death-shrieks, songs, yells, and "people beside themselves, for the most part not knowing where they are nor what they want."—Each district is also a petty center, while the Palais-Royal is the main center. Propositions, "accusations, and deputations travel to and fro from one to the other, along with the human torrent which is obstructed or rushes ahead with no other guide than its own inclination ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... propitious, but though I struggled hard I simply could not get the julep spirit to descend to our mortal plane. Finally I made inquiry and found that one of the guests was a root-beer manufacturer. Of course you may say that was petty jealousy on the side of the departed, but even these vanished spirits ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... to-morrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... S. Armstrong displayed great coolness in conducting the fire of their guns. Petty Officers Ashley, Doris, and Fuller, Monarch, laid their guns with great ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... prophet, talking of were-wolves, vampires, cathedrals, sunrises, forests, passion and despair, hatted like brigands, cloaked after Vandyke, curled like Absalom, making new laws unto themselves in verse as in morals, and leaving all petty talk of duty or common sense to the Academy ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for hero-worship is based on very simple considerations. A nation's great men, he says, are but slight deviations from the general level. The hero is merely a special complex of the ordinary qualities of his race. The petty differences impressed upon ordinary Greek minds by Plato or Aristotle or Zeno, are nothing at all compared with the vast differences between every Greek mind and every Egyptian or Chinese mind. We may neglect them in a philosophy of history, just as in calculating the impetus ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... work of this scope, it is impossible to describe all the wars between the petty kingdoms peopled by races of various languages, which occupied Scotland. In 603, in the wild moors at Degsastane, between the Liddel burn and the passes of the Upper Tyne, the English Aethelfrith of Deira, with an ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... oatcakes would stick to the bake-stone, and no force could get them away from it till they were burnt and spoiled; the milk turned sour, the cheese became so hard that not even rats' teeth could gnaw it, the stools and settles broke down if sat upon, and the list of petty grievances was completed by a whole side of bacon being devoured in a single night. Roger Nowell and Nicholas listened patiently to a detail of all these grievances, and expressed strong sympathy for the sufferers, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... all the petty trials of her existence. In order not to feel that she was prematurely a widow, she had to go with her husband in his automobile and show an interest in his trips which once had amused her but ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of Lord Bacon, that when it was necessary to economize, it was better to look after petty savings than to descend to petty gettings. The loose cash which many persons throw away uselessly, and worse, would often form a basis of fortune and independence for life. These wasters are their own worst enemies, though generally found amongst the ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... the fruits of the spirit. As his romances have brought pleasure to thousands of readers, so the spectacle of his cheerful march through the Valley of the Shadow of Death is a constant source of comfort and inspiration. One feels ashamed of cowardice and petty irritation after witnessing the steady courage of this man. His philosophy of life is totally different from that of Stoicism; for the Stoic says, "Grin and bear it," and usually succeeds in doing neither. Stevenson ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their lives arriv'd yet At any thought of King: Imperial dignities, And powerful God-like actions, fit for Princes They can no more put on, and make 'em sit right, Than I can with this mortal hand hold Heaven: Poor petty men, nor have I yet forgot The chiefest honours time, and merit gave 'em: Lisimachus your Master, at the best, His highest, and his hopeful'st Dignities Was but grand-master of the Elephants; ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... misfortune. The road, the haystack, the park bench, the kitchen door, the bitter round of eleemosynary beds-with-shower-bath-attachment, the petty pickings and ignobly garnered largesse of great cities—these formed the ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... the power that nature had placed at the disposal of their intelligence, they have idled away their time gabbling about nothing. And even since, at last, they have begun to do something, look at the time that they have wasted upon such petty forces as steam and 'electricity,' burning whole mines of coal and whole lakes of oil, and childishly calling upon winds and tides and waterfalls to help them, when they had under their thumbs the limitless energy of the atoms, and no more understood ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... requiring to be assured at times that she spoke intelligible Italian and exquisite French. Violetta supposed her to feel that she commanded the situation. Patient study of this woman revealed to Violetta the amazing fact that she was dealing with a born bourgeoise, who, not devoid of petty acuteness, was unaffectedly enjoying her noble small-talk, and the prospect of a footing in Italian high society. Violetta smiled at the comedy she had been playing in, scarcely reproaching herself for not having ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he clung, great was his weight. Two hours he bore him on high. The eagle spake to him, to Etana:— See my friend, the land, how it lies, Look at the sea, the ocean-girded, Like a mountain looks the land, the sea like petty waters. Two hours more he bore him up. The eagle spake to him, to Etana:— See my friend the land, how it lies, The sea is like the girdle of the land. Two hours more he bore him up. The eagle spake to him, to Etana:— See my friend ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... is such a world of difference between the two! I longed for my friend to see the smoke ascending from my small burnt-offerings of self made for his sake. But I longed, too, for him not always to see with calm, clear eyes my petty failings, my minute vanities, my inconsistencies, my incongruities, my frequent lack of reasoning power and logical sequence, my gusts of occasional injustice—ending nearly always in a rain of undue benefits—my surely forgivable follies ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... he got up, took his stick, and seemed about to depart. Just then in burst a rabble rout of game-keepers and river-watchers who had come from the petty sessions, and were in high glee, the two poachers whom the landlord had mentioned having been convicted and heavily fined. Two or three of them were particularly boisterous, running against some of ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... admitting them to Parliament, and refusing to them a full and equal participation in all the blessings of society and government. The thing most alien from his clear intellect and his commanding spirit was petty persecution. He knew how to tolerate; and he knew how to destroy. His administration in Ireland was an administration on what are now called Orange principles, followed out most ably, most steadily, most undauntedly, most unrelentingly, to every extreme consequence ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Japan was simply a combination of the uji. It was purely Japanese. Not until the seventh century of the Christian era were any foreign elements introduced. From ministers and generals of the highest class down to petty functionaries, all offices were discharged by uji no Kami, and as the latter had the general name of kabane root of the uji the system was similarly termed. In effect, the kabane was an order of nobility. Offices were ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... I feel From what it is that I must wean myself. Once it was otherwise! Yes, once thy soul Was bounteous, rich, and warm, and there was room For a whole world in thy expanded heart. Those feelings are extinct—all swallowed up In one poor, petty, selfish passion. Now Thy heart is withered, dead! No tears last thou For the unhappy fate of wretched Flanders— No, not another tear. Oh, Carlos! see How poor, how beggarly, thou hast become, Since all thy love ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... wandering sadly by the shore of Shetland fiords, there may be men who had in them the makings of eminent preachers; but whose powers have never been called out, and are rusting sadly away: and in whom many petty cares are developing a ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... are very varied. We have been several times into the town and spent an hour in the Petty Sessions Court with Mr. Colquhoun, who sits on the bench. Each time we have come home laden with stories 'as good as any in the books,' so says Francesca. Have we not with our own eyes seen the settlement of an assault and battery case between two of the most notorious brawlers in that alley of ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... spring that was no more. He had told her that she would sing that song well some day when she learned what it meant. She would never sing it again as she had sung it to-night. All the dross that Peter had worn in the world was stripped from him in that moment, all that was petty and ignoble in his heart driven forth and he stood with bowed head, in shame for what he had been, and in gentleness for this dear creature whose idols ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... from the seventh century, at which period they migrated from the Carpathians to the Danube, were in the twelfth century divided into petty states. ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... which, as she fears, must sweep his self-confidence and his purposes away. He may be permitted to assure her that "my ears are stone-dead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as insensible as iron to these petty stings," and to accompany his assurance with a reasoned statement of the grounds ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... morning after my arrival, you appeared and seemed a part of it. Do you remember what I said then? I have reluctantly thought to-night that you could wear your coronet of beauty, not Only as a benignant queen, but as a petty tyrant,—that you could put it to ignoble uses, and make it a slave to self. It seemed at times that you only sought to lead men to bow in admiration to you, instead of inspiring them to stand erect in true manhood, with their faces heavenward. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... himself and Justine, apart from their love for each other, there was the wider passion for their kind, which gave back to them an enlarged and deepened reflection of their personal feeling. In such an air it had seemed that no petty egotism could hamper their growth, no misintelligence obscure their love; yet all the while this pure happiness had been unfolding against a sordid background of falsehood and intrigue from which his ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... deprives the colony of customary gaiety and impulsiveness. While the female sits close, the male perches on top of the nest, occasionally beguiling the time by inconsequent repairs and petty squabbles with next door neighbours. How brilliant are their eyes, especially when they sparkle with spite—flame ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... experience, may be regarded as the product of a superficial spirit that has never known the deeper evils of life. But, if pessimism be true, it differs from other truths by its uselessness; for, even if it saves man from the bitterness of petty disappointments, it does so only by making the misery universal. There is no need to specify, when "All is vanity." The drowning man does not feel the discomfort of being wet. But yet, if we reflect on the problem ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... soldiers to take their places along the walls, and they did so in silence, yet wondering greatly at all they saw. There were four-and-twenty of them, not counting the two who held the officer, all men of Indian blood whom the Spaniards[D] had made rather slaves than soldiers to fight their petty quarrels for them for little ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... and religious foundations! That this should be the case, before the Conquest, is not surprizing. Our empire was but forming itself, or re-collecting its divided members into one mass, which, from the desertion of the Romans, had split into petty kingdoms. The invasions of nations as barbarous as ourselves, interfered with every plan of policy and order that might have been formed to settle the emerging state; and swarms of foreign monks ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... a place in his Junior House Fifteen, and the other, to score some signal and lasting victory over his form-master, a Mr Sydney Mellar, with whom he appears to wage a sort of perpetual guerilla warfare. Every vacation brings him home with a fresh tale of base subterfuges, petty tyrannies, and childish exhibitions of spite on the part of the infamous Mellar, all duly frustrated, crushed, and made ridiculous by the ingenuity, resource, and audacity of the intrepid Rubislaw. I have never met Mr Mellar in the flesh, ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... of gratitude or affection. In expressing their opinion of us in after years, they said we were a very troublesome, obstinate, disobedient set of children. I have no doubt we were in constant rebellion against their petty tyranny. Abraham, Peter, and Jacob viewed us in a different light, and I have the most pleasant ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... "I would be petty, then. But, as far as that goes, Arlt's ancestors were gentlemen, when hers were shovelling gravel for a dollar a day. American democracy runs in strange grooves. Thayer, I am going to leave Beatrix in your care for a few minutes. I promised Ned Carpenter I would ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... progress, as it had never before advanced at one stride. But to effect this, it should be planned and executed as a great, harmonious, and centrally powerful scheme, not be tinkered over and frittered away by all the petty doughfaces in every village. In great emergencies, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... for the most part in walled enclosures known as kampongs, in flimsy houses built of bamboo and thatched with grass or leaves. But as diagonal struts are not used the walls soon lean over from the force of the wind, giving to the villages a curiously inebriated appearance. In several of the eight petty states which comprise the confederation of Boni the ruler is not infrequently a woman, the female line having precedence over the male line in succession to the throne. The women rulers of the Bugis have invariably shown themselves ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Pao, it would not have mattered," remarked Hsiao Hung, "but Miss Lin delights in telling mean things of people and is, besides, so petty-minded. Should she have heard and anything perchance comes to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that crawl on the earth were shared, we may be sure, by her Grace's waiting-maid. Of humanity there was as little as there was of religion. It was the age of the criminal law which hanged men for petty thefts, of life-long imprisonment for debt, of the stocks and the pillory, of a Temple Bar garnished with the heads of traitors, of the unreformed prison system, of the press-gang, of unrestrained tyranny and savagery at public schools. That the slave trade was ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... end of April, everything had become aggravated. The fermentation entered the boiling state. Ever since 1830, petty partial revolts had been going on here and there, which were quickly suppressed, but ever bursting forth afresh, the sign of a vast underlying conflagration. Something terrible was in preparation. Glimpses could be caught of the features still indistinct and imperfectly lighted, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... so easily, La Trape ran to the gate; but he failed to find his friend, and two or three days elapsed before I thought again of the matter, such petty rogueries being ingrained in a great man's VALETAILLE, and being no more to be removed than the hairs from a man's arm. At the end of that time La Trape came to me, bringing the Spaniard; who had appeared again at the gate. The stranger proved to be a small, slight man, ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... other boys, under the superintendence of one of the petty officers, were working away at the cranks of the Downton pumps with the energy of so many convicts on the treadmill; clink-clanking at such a rate, that one could hear the suck of the pumps and the rush of the ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... is Jack at work again." Indeed, Jack was a warm friend, and a gallant partisan, and when he had the pen in hand, seldom let slip an opportunity of letting the world know that Rafferty was the greatest painter in Europe, and wondering at the petty jealousy of the Academy, which refused to make him an R. A.: of stating that it was generally reported at the West End, that Mr. Rooney, M. P. was appointed Governor of Barataria; or of introducing into the subject in hand, whatever it might be, a compliment to the Round Towers, or ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a Huff, remembering past treacheries and living in the expectancy of more, the Widow cast aside all petty heart-burnings in her joy at the humiliation of Stiff Neck George. Leaving Virginia in the kitchen, to fry Wiley's steak, she rushed into the dining-room with her eyes ablaze and all but ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... that he fed petty assemblages with narcotic words to stupefy conscience, or corrosive words to kill conscience, but in that he gave to the world those decisive, true words which shall yet pierce all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... must precede the man of genius, who often becomes only the vehicle of public feeling. MACHIAVEL has been reproached for propagating a political system subversive of all human honour and happiness; but was it Machiavel who formed his age, or the age which created Machiavel? Living among the petty principalities of Italy, where stratagem and assassination were the practices of those wretched courts, what did that calumniated genius more than lift the veil from a cabinet of bandtiti? MACHIAVEL alarmed the world by exposing ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... chaouch's wife, about two Tunisian piastres which were missing, she accusing him of theft and he indignantly repelling the charge. These Easterns seem to have minds constructed on different patterns from ours, and are apt to introduce such petty discussions at the most solemn moments; but we must not, therefore, be hasty in concluding that there is any sham in their sorrow, or ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... reformers who come to explain their projects are among the most formidable of earthly visitations. Emerson accepted his martyrdom with meek submission; it was a martyrdom in detail, but collectively its petty tortures might have satisfied a reasonable inquisitor as the punishment of a moderate heresy. Except in that one phrase above quoted he never complained of his social oppressors, so far as I remember, in his writings. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Christmas in a horrible way. To begin with, I had palpitations of the heart; secondly, my brother Ivan came to stay and was ill with typhoid, poor fellow; thirdly, after my Sahalin labours and the tropics, my Moscow life seems to me now so petty, so bourgeois, and so dull, that I feel ready to bite; fourthly, working for my daily bread prevents my giving up my time to Sahalin; fifthly, my acquaintances bother me, and ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... pride and the soldier's guerdon of valor. He would be in the van of such an uprising. He scorns to be a petty buccaneer, a butcher of half-armed natives, a rover and a robber. In every scene, through the days of 1859, Valois bears himself as a cavalier. Personal ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... these laborers still were! If only they could be relied on, if only they would stand together! Slavery! It WAS slavery; so long as they could be turned out of their homes at will in this fashion. His rebellion against the conditions of their lives, above all against the manifold petty tyrannies that he knew they underwent, came from use of his eyes and ears in daily contact with a class among whom he had been more or less brought up. In sympathy with, and yet not of them, he had the queer privilege of feeling their slights ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Thus a system of law grew up, and arrangements for preserving public order, for promoting the general industry, and rules and regulations for the collection of the tribute, until at length, when all these arrangements were matured, and the multitude of petty chieftains became combined under one great chieftain ruling over the whole, and collecting the revenue for his subordinates, we find a great kingdom as the result, in which the descendants of the ancient marauders that lived in castles on the hills, under the name of princes and nobles, ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... the same degree of perception as he himself professes, he begins an explanation in such a curious manner that our taste and self-love are offended continually. Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty, and beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart, I care not for white busts; and many a glorious thing, when associated with him, becomes a nothing. This distorts one's mind—makes one's thoughts bizarre—perplexes one ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... one has the whole world on his shoulders, and unless his own petty ideas and schemes are adopted and succeed, he prophesies the end of the world. You are on the right road—push on! Our maxim is: Be sure you are right ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... forward, the boat finally drew up alongside. Willing hands helped Ted and Bill up the steep side of the Dewey and they were tendered such a reception as they had never known before. Then ensued a parley between the petty officer of the sunken gunboat Strassburg and the ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... imagined on the mental state of the persons who use it when they wish to arraign the conditions of "modern life." A vituperative epithet is capable of making a big show. "Artificialities" is a sufficiently scornful word, but when you add "petty" you somehow give the quietus to the pretensions of modern life. Modern life had better hide its diminished head, after that. Modern life is settled and done for—in the opinion of those who have thrown the dart. Only it isn't done for, really, you know. "Petty," ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... he wished it: he knows that I have been always more inclined to tolerate his ambition than to restrain it. If he had continued my friend and my ally, I would have made him greater than he ever will be now. Prussia, and the petty Kings of the Rhenish confederation, will follow the lot cast by Russia. If I had Russia on my side, she would secure me all the second-rate powers. As to the Austrians, I do not know what they would do: they have never treated me candidly. I suppose ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... The lord lieutenant's carriage was drawn up outside, and there was an unusual muster of magistrates. As a rule the cases brought before their jurisdiction were trivial in the extreme, consisting chiefly of drunkenness, varied by an occasional petty assault. There was scarcely one of them who remembered having sat upon so serious a charge. Lord Lathon came over to Mr. Thurwell directly he ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... crocketed pinnacles and spire, and the fantastic far-stretching gargoyles of the venerable cathedral, makes one feel that joy of the eye and the spirit which is the wanderer's reward for all the sun-scorch and other petty tribulations he may have to endure ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... manifestation of the Eternal. But one should go to such a scene prepared to yield entirely to its influences, to forget one's little self and one's little mind. To see a miserable worm creep to the brink of this falling world of waters, and watch the trembling of its own petty bosom, and fancy that this is made alone to act upon ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... being, of course, well used to such scenes; looking upon all kinds of robbery, from petty larceny up to housebreaking or ventures on the highway, as matters in the regular course of business; and regarding the perpetrators in the light of so many customers coming to be served at the wholesale and retail shop of criminal law where he stood ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... and simple notion, yet it had entered nobody's head till that moment. It was a saying that had extraordinary consequences. All scandal and gossip, all the petty tittle-tattle was thrown into the background, another significance had been detected. A new character was revealed whom all had misjudged; a character, almost ideally severe in his standards. Mortally insulted by a student, that is, an educated ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to shew an usurper and a murderer not only odious, but despicable; he therefore added drunkenness to his other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and condition, as a painter, satisfied with ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... remembered, is in the first instance only an idea, and the narrowest of local jealousies may be, and often are, forms merely of the same impulse. To men living in one of these small isolated communities, each under the rule of its own petty chieftain, it was natural and perhaps inevitable that the sense of connection with those outside their own community should have been remarkably slight, and of nationality, as we understand the word, quite non-existent. Their own little circle of hills and valleys, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... just wanted to make a pleasant impression on a girl, and said anything he thought would please her. I don't care whether he does things like that or not. What I care about is that the principle didn't reach him and that he mocked it! I don't care about a petty treachery to me, ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... instead of restraining this imperious spirit in his son, as he might, perhaps, have done by a considerate and kind, and, at the same time, decisive exercise of authority, teased and tormented him by sarcasms and petty vexations. Among other instances of this, he gave him the nickname of Short Boots, because he was of inferior stature. As Robert was, however, at this time of full age, he was stung to the quick at having such a stigma attached to him by his father, and his bosom burned with secret sentiments ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... harbor, where ships arrive daily from the different quarters of the world. I frequented also the society of the learned Indians, and took delight to hear them converse; but withal, I took care to make my court regularly to the maharaja, and conversed with the governors and petty kings, his tributaries, that were about him. They put a thousand questions respecting my country; and I, being willing to inform myself as to their laws and customs, asked them concerning everything which I ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... Emily in that she was always sweet-spoken and, on the surface, sweet-tempered. Emily, hurt and galled in a score of petty ways, so subtle that they were beyond a man's courser comprehension, astonished her husband by her fierce outbursts of anger that seemed to him for the most part without reason or excuse. He tried his best to preserve the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Flemish burghers, whose French count, Louis de Nevers, had gained nothing in their affections through the humiliation of Cassel, which confirmed his rule. The hated count showed his hostility to Edward, as well as his spite against his own subjects, by various petty acts which interfered with the commerce and industry of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Vaux, Robert O'Sargent; second master, Henry F. Collins; surgeon, Stephen Stanley; assistant surgeon, Harry D.S. Goodsir; paymaster and purser, Charles H. Osmer; master, James Reid, acting; fifty-eight petty officers, seamen, etcetera. Full ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon my dress, The day of the great ball, was Lucy Merle; I found her saving up her petty means To go to London, to get better wages,— And said: 'Well, Lucy, let us go together.' She sold some jewels for me, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... intellectual concentration which could enable him to examine a subject to its close. He would begin to talk with me seriously enough, and with a due solemnity, about the suit against him; but, in a tangent, he would dart off to the consideration of some trifle, some household matter, or petty affair, of which, at any other time, he must have known that his hearers had no wish to hear. Poor Julia confirmed the conjectures which I entertained, but did not utter, by telling me that her father had changed very much in his ways ever since ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... was the woof of petty interests and petty conspiracies which united Blois with Orleans and Orleans with Paris; and which was about to bring into the last named city, where she was to produce so great a revolution, the poor little La Valliere, who was far from suspecting, as she returned joyfully, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... eagerness as they used to do—how many years agone? It is chiefly for their sakes that I have added several interludes, telling how Sweetheart, Hugh John, Sir Toady Lion, and Maid Margaret received my petty larcenies from the full chest of ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the Constitution of the United States is no supreme effort of genius; but events now passing are teaching us that every day of fidelity to the spirit of it lends it new preciousness; and that an adherence to it, not petty and literal, but at once large and indomitable, might almost make it a charter of new sanctities both of law and liberty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Take it? I guess not. I turned on my heel without a word and went straight home. I don't think anything ever inspired more contempt in me as a boy than that piece of petty thievery. ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... are not uninhabited. On the contrary, one considerable kingdom (Nepaul), with many petty states and communities (as Bhotan, Sikhim, Gurwhal, Kumaon, and the famed Cashmere), are found within their boundaries—some enjoying a sort of political independence, but most of them living under the protection either of the Anglo-Indian empire, on the one side, or that of China upon ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... QUARTER-MASTER. A petty officer, appointed to assist the master and mates in their several duties, as stowing the hold, coiling the cables, attending the binnacle and steerage, keeping time by the watch-glasses, assisting in hoisting the signals, and keeping his eye on general ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... times two parties will meet and exchange the different kinds they respectively bring. Among the younger people I have often seen a poor hungry fellow, who had by his skill or perseverance obtained some small article of food, compelled by the rules of savage politeness to share out the petty spoil among a group of expectant sharks around, whilst he whose skill or labour had procured it dared hardly taste it, and was sure to come ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... their presence there to an outsider. Should the man by any chance die, their situation would be such that their only safety would lie in flight. To the law they were already fugitives and consequently to be suspected of anything from petty larceny ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... said Mr. Esthwaite turning off. "The 'Queen Esther'!—I know her. She's not fit for you; she's a leaky old thing, that that man Hawkins sails on all sorts of petty business; she'll go to pieces some day. She ain't sea-worthy, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... which he, as a brave soldier, no matter how modest, could not fail to play. He would recognise that such public honourings of valour had widespread effect among the population. In face of such arguments I had to withdraw my opposition; otherwise it might have appeared that I was actuated by petty personal motives. God knows I only desired to save Boyce from undergoing a difficult ordeal. For the same reasons I could not refuse to serve on the Reception Committee which was immediately formed under the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... forces, and to bring it into the greatness and power of submission to the dominion of this sovereign, unifying motive. Our lives would thus be greatened and strengthened, even as Germany and Italy have been, by being delivered from a rabble of petty dukes and brought under the sway of one emperor or king. Let us try to approach nearer and nearer to the fusion of action and contemplation, and to the blending with all other motives of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... that out of the bowels of wall, beam and rafter, I had a new birth into the outside. In making fresh acquaintance with things, the dingy covering of petty habits seemed to drop off the world. I am sure that the sugar-cane molasses, which I had with cold luchis for my breakfast, could not have tasted different from the ambrosia which Indra[15] quaffs in his heaven; ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... existing government in Canada, or approved of by a majority of the citizens in the Canadian townships; but when they bear in mind that civil law is suspended in Canada, and in its place are substituted the summary proceedings of military courts and the capricious wills of petty military officers; when they consider the excited and embittered feelings which prevail along the frontier, and which some have studied to inflame, and also the character of a portion of the population ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... sin yet remains, And human frailties do attend the best; To bear and forbear here, will tend to rest. Vain jangling, jars, and strifes will there abound, Where moles are mountains made, or fault is found, With every little, trivial, petty thing; This spirit snib, or 'twill much mischief bring Into this house, and 'tis for want of love, 'Tis entertain'd: it is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... royalty was the amelioration of the condition of the Lutherans. It came about in this way: in the course of her inquiries and intercourse among the people of the Prussian dominions, she discovered that adherents to the Lutheran Church were subject to much petty persecution on behalf of their faith. True they were not dealt with so cruelly as in former times, but frequently, at that very day, they were imprisoned, or suffered the loss of property because of their religious opinions. ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... but if you're thinking of dragging up Simpkins before the Petty Sessions on a bogus charge, you may as well put the idea out of your head at once. It won't work. You'll have the Major on the Bench with you, and though he doesn't like the man, I don't think he'd ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... and had no notion of sailing balloons over the sea. With this view he discouraged Stanhope's philanthropic and propagandist paper, the Telegrapho, and disparaged Dr. Mayor, its Swiss editor, saying, "Of all petty tyrants he is one of the pettiest, as are most demagogues." Byron had none of the Sclavonic leanings, and almost personal hatred of Ottoman rule, of some of our statesmen; but he saw on what side lay the forces ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... the Darlings were a rising family, and offense comes down the hill like stones dislodged by the upward traveller. Mrs. Twemlow knew nothing she disliked so much as any form of haughtiness; it was so small, so petty, so opposed to all true Christianity. And this made her think that the Darlings were always endeavoring to patronize her—a thing she would much rather ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... the elevator depositing a nighthawk. A plong of the bedspring. Somebody's cough. A train's shriek. The jerk of plumbing. A window being raised. That creak which lies hidden in every darkness, like a mysterious knee joint. By three o'clock she was a quivering victim to these petty concepts, and her pillow so explored that not a spot but was rumpled to the aching lay of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... exerting a strength that dominated the man upon whom his hold was fastened. The mayor went on in an undertone, as if anxious to show additional deference in the presence of the senatorial ponderings. "Governor, petty politics haven't been allowed to make a bad mess of what has been turned into an open proposition. Now don't allow your tongue to make a mess of this new development as it stands right now. Humor Miss Corson's notions! And let me ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... persuading even the men most obdurate to counsel,—all served to invest the practical man with those spells which are usually confined to the ideal one. But, indeed, Audley Egerton was an Ideal,—the ideal of the Practical. Not the mere vulgar, plodding, red-tape machine of petty business, but the man of strong sense, inspired by inflexible energy and guided to definite earthly objects. In a dissolute and corrupt form of government, under a decrepit monarchy or a vitiated republic, Audley Egerton might have been a most dangerous citizen: ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and, like all interpretation, depends more on insight and selection than on representation. Try for this always. Search for it in the manner, in the pose and occupation, of your sitter. Get likeness if you will, of course; but remember that there is a petty likeness, which may be accident or not, which you can always get by a little care in drawing; and that there is a larger character which includes this, and does not depend on exaggeration of feature or emphasis of accidental ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... administrative slackness and confusion in a country where the officials work scarcely two hours a day; those who know the cost of going to and returning from the capital to obtain a permit; those who are aware of the petty retaliations of the little tyrants will well understand how with this crude arrangement it is possible to have the most absurd agriculture. True it is that for some time this absurdity, which would be ludicrous had it not been so serious, has disappeared; but even if the words ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... part of our present prison system is probably our county jails. It is supposed about 8,000 persons pass through our county jails each year. They are generally persons charged with crimes and awaiting trial. But lunatics and petty offenders in considerable numbers are also confined in these places. The young and the old, the innocent and the guilty, hardened offenders and beginners in crime, are commonly mingled together in the ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... said the inventor peevishly, "why do you tack on these petty details to my grand conception? It is the idea I want to sell; other people can use it. Now, will the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... with all the persons he encountered. The people whom he loved when at his best as a fine young fellow were so very soon, and through petty causes, to become nothing to him, and he himself was to be converted into a commonplace tradesman. And living seemed to Jurgen a wasteful ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... authority, so often ridiculed as chimerical and absurd, was in a measure justified by the event, since it did, in fact, determine the principles on which the vast extent of unappropriated empire in the eastern and western hemispheres was ultimately divided between two petty states of Europe. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... side of New York, during this year, a variety of petty enterprises were undertaken. While Sir Henry Clinton was absent, Knyphausen was at first occupied in making preparations for the defence of that city? for, by the extreme severity of the winter, New York was deprived of that natural defence which arises from its insular ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Lewis. He immediately communicated with Shelley, and the whole edition was suppressed—not, however, before about one hundred copies had passed into circulation. To which of the collaborators this daring act of petty larceny was due, we know not; but we may be sure that Shelley satisfied Stockdale on the point of piracy, since the publisher saw no reason to break with him. On the 14th of November in the same year he issued Shelley's second novel from his press, and entered into negotiations with him ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... some of the things I say about people in our own rank of life. She believes that certain vulgar vices, such as cheating, lying, gluttony, petty gossip, malicious mischief-making, etc., are confined to the lower orders, or, as she wisely and kindly phrases it, to people who know no better. She laughs at me, and I laugh at myself, when I say (to support my own views) that I know more of the ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... tendencies, which are a mockery to her Philistine brothers, and a reproach to her commonplace sisters. She will have elevated her father to a lofty pinnacle of imaginative and immaculate excellence, from which a tendency to shortness of temper in matters of domestic finance resulting in petty squabbles with her mother, and an irresistible desire for after-dinner somnolence, will have gradually displaced him. One after another her brothers will have been to her Knights of the Round Table of her fancy, armed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... ever a great load removed from the mind of the petty officer who had charge of flats and certain parts of the deck when his inspection was over. But if fault had been found ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... that the union of the familiar and beautiful with the unfamiliar and wild is that which arouses our enthusiastic admiration. As we stand in the calm genial atmosphere of a summer day, surveying the land and sea-scape from a commanding height that seems to have raised us above the petty cares of life, the eye and mind pass like the lightning-flash from the contemplation of the purple heather and purple plants around—and from the home-feelings thereby engendered—to the grand, apparently illimitable ocean, and the imagination ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... future—whatever was important in life—were therefore at stake with Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne; and yet her great duty to herself was perpetually in danger of being stifled by the fictitious and petty duties of daily life. It was necessary to stimulate her. She felt these things in general; and that it was necessary that her sister-in-law should be a Princess, neither able nor willing to give her umbrage, and over whom she should be mistress. But in spite ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... suppose some months to have elapsed in this manner—months, to me, of prolonged torture and suspicion. Circumstanees, like petty billows of the sea, kept chafing upon the low places of my heart, keeping alive the feverish irritation which had already done so much toward destroying my peace, and overthrowing the guardian outposts ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the very seat of his dignity. Maidens, inconsolable for lovers snatched from them and now bound for Bodmin Gaol, hushed their sorrow and wiped their tears by stealth, abashed before those tragic eyes which, fixed on the river reach ahead, travelled beyond all petty private woe to meet the end of all things ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... manage to live where so many poor wretches who have escaped found their end. But I was servant to a just man; your mother and sisters treated me when they saw me as if they were sorry for me, and I could not go. Then you dame, boy, and tied me tighter to the place, making all the petty troubles caused by that ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... the Bismarck petty title outright, but while he confiscated Burgstal forest, he offered Schoenhausen, on the Elbe, in exchange. However, Schoenhausen did not compare with the estate that the envious monarch took by force. The Burgstal forest is to this ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... done it; marked the hiding-place which he had deemed so safe, and made off with the prize; and i' faith 'twas easy carrying. There was but one piece, and Dickon minded how he had changed his petty hoard to gold scarce a month back at the fair. Maybe it was Thomas the charcoal burner had served him this ill turn; or William Crookleg, the miller's man; he was a sly, prying fellow, and there had ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... he was in the game country, and he was able to go on buck-shooting expeditions as frequently as he cared. He was not compelled to rise at a certain hour in the morning, and he could go to bed whenever he wished. There was no drill, no roll-calls, nor any of the thousands of petty details which the soldiers of even the Portuguese army are compelled to perform. As a result of a special law there was no work on Sundays or Church-holidays unless the enemy brought it about, and then, if he was a stickler for the observance of the Sabbath, he was not compelled to move a muscle. ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... strange, until after the enactment of the Municipal Corporation Bill, Sheffield had no local authorities. The Petty Sessions business was discharged by county magistrates, and the Master Cutler acted as a sort of master of the ceremonies on occasions of festivity, without any real power. That honorary office is still retained, although Sheffield has now its ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... called vendetta, still exists in the villages; where the people having no social amusements, nothing to read, nor any other resource than cards during the winter nights, are apt to quarrel over trifles; which, fanned by their local petty jealousies, assisted often by the generous nature of their wine, ripen ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... Edgeworth's story. She first established infant schools in France.] a literary and fashionable lady, with something of Mrs. Saunderson's best style of conversation: M. de Pastoret, her husband, a man of diplomatic knowledge; Lord Henry Petty, son of Lord Lansdowne, with whom my father had much conversation; the Swiss Ambassador, whose name I will not attempt to spell; M. Dumont, [Footnote: M. Pierre Etienne Louis Dumont, tutor to Lord ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... unpleasantly about his forehead, and in scrambling up the side of the last high ridge which he had crossed, one neatly-fitting boot had galled his foot, while he smiled with somewhat sinister amusement as he felt the grip of the tight jacket on his shoulders. These were, as he recognized, petty troubles, and he was rather astonished that he should resent them, as he certainly did. He remembered that a little while before he had made no complaint against the restraints of civilization, and had, indeed, begun to shrink from ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... How petty men were, how cruel was the fate of the great, to whom envy clings like their own shadow, and whose image was basely distorted even by those who knew the grandeur of their intellect and their deeds, and who owed to them their ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... what a long chapter we have been betrayed into! We had quite forgotten all such petty restrictions as chapters, we solemnly declare. So here goes, to give the goblin a fair start in a new one. A clear stage and no favour for the goblins, ladies and gentlemen, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... maintained a stoic calm that effectually hid the storm raging within his breast. All the annoyances incidental to building a house were heaped on Morris, and both he and Rashkin, equally, suffered petty blackmail at the hands of the attorney and the architect for ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... but being convicted by Cicero, was forced to fly the city. Yet Lentulus and Cethegus remained with several others, to carry on the same plot; and blaming Catiline, as one that wanted courage, and had been timid and petty in his designs, they themselves resolved to set the whole town on fire, and utterly to overthrow the empire, rousing whole nations to revolt and exciting foreign wars. But the design was discovered by Cicero, (as we have written in his life,) and the matter brought before the senate. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of her non-resisting organization. Ernie, on the contrary, grappled with obstacles uncomplainingly, and was only outspoken in his moments of gratification. His was the temperament that is the noblest and the most magnanimous in its very moulding. Whining children are selfish, as a rule, and petty-minded, and most often incapable of enjoyment—which last is a gift of itself that goes ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... have not the people in Hindustan united in the same way? There the agricultural settlements remain as they did ages ago; separate petty chieftains rule under the all-governing power of England. ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... man such as I to follow all the changes of your petty laws, and to remember under which form of government he happens to be living at the moment!" he had boldly said to a great personage from St. Petersburg, and the observation was duly reported in the capital. It was, moreover, said in Warsaw that the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... as I listened to them, my mind spread out its wings; it burns to babble about trifles, to maintain worthless arguments, to voice its petty reasons, to contradict, to tease some opponent. But are they not going to show themselves? I should like to ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... next day to Court, and there the Judges as before, and Sir John the High Sheriff, and the Counsel for the Crown and for us, and twelve honest gentlemen in a box by themselves, that were of the Petty Jury, to try us; and, I am ashamed to say, a great store of Ladies, all in ribbons and patches and laces and fine clothes, that sate some on the Bench beside the Judges, and others in the body of the Court among the Counsel, and stared at us miserable objects in ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... its numberless stereotyped divisions, its myriad insurmountable barriers between class and class, and its countless petty jealousies and mutual antagonisms, is well known to all. And so long as Hindus continue to worship this demon, caste, it is impossible for them to become a united body to which, with any courtesy, the name Nation can be applied. Nor can they blend into such action as can in any sense be ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... his covetous eyes such a vast horizon of enjoyment, that he had come to look upon things as pitiful, which would formerly have satisfied his highest wishes. Should he, after having dreamed of those glorious achievements by which millions are won in a day, sink back again into the meanness of petty thefts? His heart turned from that prospect with unspeakable loathing; and yet ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... of his assailants decreased, the enterprises of the Sultan became more numerous and more bold in this species of petty warfare. The camp of the Crusaders was surrounded, and almost besieged, by clouds of light cavalry, resembling swarms of wasps, easily crushed when they are once grasped, but furnished with wings to elude superior strength, and stings to inflict ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Paris on the 11th of April, and found everything in the utmost confusion. It would be impossible to follow all the petty intrigues, or even make allusion to all the events which affected the relative situations of the parties in the capital; but it may be observed that the tendency of both parties was to hold themselves in the neighbourhood of ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... blessing; the parents on one of their eventful journeys representing themselves as brother and sister, instead of husband and wife, for fear that some potentate might kill Isaac, in order to possess his beautiful wife; all these petty deceptions handed down from generation to generation, show that the law of heredity asserted itself even ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... recurrent types. On the one hand, there are the small kinship groups, often vigorous enough in themselves, but feeble for purposes of united action. On the other hand, there are larger societies varying in extent and in degree of civilization from a petty negro kingdom to the Chinese Empire, resting on a certain union of military force and religious or quasi-religious belief which, to select a neutral name, we have called the principle of Authority. In the lower stages of civilization ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... not an Indian nor a Frenchman was to be seen, and night closed over the frightful but silent masquerade, with the steady and unalterable progress with which the earth obeys her laws, indifferent to the petty actors and petty scenes that are in daily bustle and daily occurrence on her bosom. The night was far more quiet than that which had preceded it, and Mabel slept with an increasing confidence; for she now felt satisfied that ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... appointed a justice of the peace. Then he went on to Yale. At Yale he considered the price of provisions too high, and by arbitrarily reducing the price at the company's stores, he broke the ring of the petty dealers. This won him the friendship of the miners. Within a week he had allayed all irritation between white man and Indian. In a quarrel over a claim a {37} white man had been murdered on one of the bars. Douglas appointed magistrates to try the ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... quantities of bread, meat, soup, and other eatables; and to such a length were these shameful impositions carried, that a considerable traffic was actually carried on with the articles so collected, between the beggars, and a number of petty shop-keepers, or hucksters, who purchased them of the beggars, and made a business of selling them by retail to the indigent and industrious inhabitants. And though these abuses were well known to the public, yet this custom had so long ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... sigh. "Hadria," she said, "are you going to allow your petty rancour about this—well, I will call it error of ours, if you like to be severe—are you going to bear malice and ruin your own life and Hubert's and the children's? Are you so ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... securing of an alliance with the Flemish burghers, whose French count, Louis de Nevers, had gained nothing in their affections through the humiliation of Cassel, which confirmed his rule. The hated count showed his hostility to Edward, as well as his spite against his own subjects, by various petty acts which interfered with the commerce and industry ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... driving. If you plotted my disgrace by leading me into these confessions, you have found me easy prey. But do not credit yourself too much. I have often vowed I would go to Admiral von Kufner, and say these things to him. But the formal exterior of that petty pompous man I cannot penetrate. If I have confessed to you, it is merely because you are a man without that protecting shield of bristling authority and cold formality. You seemed merely a man of flesh ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... grew gradually cold and numb, and then became insensible as so much lead. The physical pain, however, was nothing to what I felt mentally. Only an hour or two before I was leading that calm, happy home-life, without a trouble beyond some petty disappointment in the garden or farm or during one of the hunting or shooting expeditions with Joeboy to carry my game; and now a lightning-like stroke seemed to have descended to end my idyllic boy-life and make me ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... delighted, vexed and grieved Pao-yue. He felt delighted, on account of the consideration shown by P'ing Erh for his own feelings. Vexed, because Chui Erh had turned out a petty thief. Grieved, that Chui Erh, who was otherwise such a smart girl, should have gone in for this disgraceful affair. Returning consequently into the house, he told Ch'ing Wen every word that P'ing Erh had uttered. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Occasionally a Babylonian word is followed by the corresponding Canaanite word, also in cuneiform, but marked as a translation. Like the Egyptian kings, so the Asiatic sovereigns had each his staff of scribes. One of the petty chiefs, Tarkhundarash of Arsapi, was evidently so unhappy as to have none in his Court who could read or write a letter in Babylonian, for letters to him were written in his own tongue. The scribe of the Hittite king produced only a species of dog Latin, while the scribe of the ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... the preparation of the Slater Museum. On photographs about $800 have been spent thus far, the electrotype coins cost something less than $750, and the balance of the total quoted was made up by such incidentals as the draperies and upholstering, photograph frames, the designer's commission and petty expenses. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... had of such good luck, the better pleased I am to have found here my sister. And indeed, I know not any man, however exalted his station, who ought not to be well pleased to have such a sister; much more, then, I, who am but a petty merchant; but, I pray you, resolve me of one thing: how came you to know that I was here?" Then answered she:—"'Twas told me this morning by a poor woman who is much about the house, because, as she tells me, she was long in the service of our father both at Palermo and at Perugia, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... dynasty; the shadow of its power was also cast over the lesser princes of Southern India. But after 1709, and still more after 1739, the Mogul Empire collapsed, and the whole of India, north and south, rapidly fell into a condition of complete anarchy. A multitude of petty rulers, nominal satraps of the powerless Mogul, roving adventurers, or bands of Mahratta raiders, put an end to all order and security; and to protect themselves and maintain their trade the European ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... tenants, but by all who were conscious of their hereditary claims to respect; they did not care whether hair were long or short, and their benefits were more substantial and reliable than could be looked for from the casual visitors and petty gentry around, so that sundry houses that were forbidden ground to district visitors, were ready to grant ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hats and their other garments" in the fiery furnace. If Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego wore their hats before Nebuchadnezzar and kept them on even in the fiery furnace, why should a free-born Englishman take his hat off in the presence of a petty Justice of the Peace? Fervent Fifth Monarchy men were willing to die rather than acknowledge any king but King Jesus who was about to come to reign. Non-juring bishops were willing to go to jail rather than submit to the judgment of ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... and forgot her skirt. The solemn beauty that his words conjured up called her from her petty irritation. She looked at the mountains, her face ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... where the languid air tends to produce elisions. The Carrolls came originally from Kentucky, and had lived there until after the births of the two daughters. When they were scarcely more than infants, Arthur Carroll had experienced the petty and individual, but none the less real, cataclysm of experience which comes to most men sooner or later. It is the earthquake of a unit, infinitesimal, but entirely complete of its kind, and possibly as far-reaching in its thread of consequences. Arthur Carroll had had his palmy days, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... improperly, through the efforts of the religious who are in this province who are born in these regions. In it his Holiness ordained that all the elections among the said religious, from that of provincial to that of the most petty official, should be shared between the religious of these regions and those who have come from Espana at your Majesty's cost. The execution of this decree was impossible, because the number of the said religious who ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... the question he feared to answer. To drag out into the open his petty, selfish reasons, shorn of the tinsel glamor of so-called "service" and ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... of the many mean and petty acts of certain members of Congress, the President, while talking on the subject one day ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the end of Ali Higg's prospects, for as sure as my name's Grim the British would smash him to avenge me, and you know it! If they didn't get you they'd get him, and you'd become the property of the first petty chief who could lay his hands on you. So let's talk like ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... that—a friend in need. And to Colonel Elliot also I was an American, and one needing assistance. We seldom spoke of our political differences, partly because our lives speedily became too full and intimate to admit of the petty exchange of divergent views, and partly because I had been a boy during the Civil War and my youthful brain had not been sufficiently mature to assimilate the manifold prejudices, likes, dislikes and opposing theories that were the ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... Suffolk, with Commodore Payne, R.N., Mr. Hodgson, the British Consul, the President of the Zemstrov Prava, and Russian and Allied officials, were assembled on the quay to receive me. As I descended the gangway ladder the Czech band struck up the National Anthem, and a petty officer of the Suffolk unfurled the Union Jack, while some of the armed forces came to the present and others saluted. It made quite a pretty, interesting and immensely impressive scene. The battalion at once disembarked, and led by the Czech band and our splendid sailors ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... themselves impressed with divine changelessness—no domesticity—no jest—no anxiety—no expectation—no variety of action or of thought. Love, all fulfilling, and various modes of power, are alone expressed; the Virgin never shows the complacency or petty watchfulness of maternity; she sits serene, supporting the child whom she ever looks upon, as a stranger among strangers; "Behold the handmaid of the Lord" forever written ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... no time or inclination for petty revenge. That is not my nature." General Waymouth was as cold and calm as inexorable Fate itself. "I accept your pledge, Chairman Presson. Not one interest of yours that is right will suffer at my hands. On the other hand, ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... position in the village community of Elstow. The family was of long standing there, but had for some generations been going down in the world. Bunyan's grandfather, Thomas Bunyan, as we learn from his still extant will, carried on the occupation of a "petty chapman," or small retail dealer, in his own freehold cottage, which he bequeathed, "with its appurtenances," to his second wife, Ann, to descend, after her death, to her stepson, his namesake, Thomas, and her ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... nevertheless be mixed and formed into one mass if they are broken up into small pieces, because then they more easily fit into each other, determined to divide the whole mass of the people of Rome into many classes, and thus, by creating numerous petty rivalries, to obliterate their original and greatest ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... never tried to understand them, stood amazed; they remembered their own commonplace, bungling youth, full of petty egotisms, small ambitions, and mean pleasures. As they could not recognise themselves in their children they attributed to the war this flowering of virtues which had been growing up for twenty years around their indifference and which the war was ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... of the Greek torso which other students were copying in the next room. The intimacy of the studio, the warmth and the colour and the meretricious luxury were gone from his life. On the other hand he was making money. He had fifty pounds in the Savings Bank, the maximum of petty thrift which an incomprehensive British Government encourages, and a fair, though unknown, sum in an iron money-box hidden behind his washstand. Up to now he had had no time to learn how to spend money. When he took to smoking cigarettes, which he had done ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... stand at all. I opposed Poundstone for the office; Dobbs, who was appointed to fill a vacancy caused by the death of a regularly elected councilman, was once a bookkeeper in our office, you will remember. I discharged him for looting the petty-cash drawer. Andrews and Mullin are professional politicians and not to be trusted. In fact, Poundstone, Dobbs, Andrews, and Mullin are known as the Solid Four. Yates and Thatcher, the remaining members of the city council, are the result of the reform ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... only do all the mighty and subtle work possible on this planet better than we could do it, but with the immense advantage of banishing from the earth's atmosphere screaming consciousnesses which, in our comparatively clumsy race, make an intolerable noise and fuss to each other about every petty ant-like performance, looking on at all work only as it were to spring a rattle here or blow a trumpet there, with a ridiculous sense of being effective? I for my part cannot see any reason why a sufficiently ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Wolseley and some members of the Cabinet. He was asked if he would undertake a mission to the Soudan, to try to resettle affairs there, to bring away the Egyptian garrisons, and to divide, if possible, the country amongst the petty sultans whom he thought strong and wise enough to ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... by his environment. It made mass-movements impossible. Great waves of migration from the steppe-land to the northeast, or from the forest-land to the north-west, would thunder on the long mountain barrier, only to trickle across in rivulets and form little pools of humanity here and there. Petty feuds between plain, shore, and mountain, as in ancient Attica, would but accentuate the prevailing division. Contrariwise, on the southern side of the Mediterranean, where there was open, if largely desert, country, there would be room under primitive ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... were ordered out, each in charge of a midshipman and a petty officer. Twenty men were told off for each boat. Our instructions were, as soon as night fell, to put off for shore, land at two different points a mile apart, and approach the fort from opposite sides. The Diana, meanwhile, ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... experience there. But it was no fairy-land. It was an academy town in New England, and the fact that it was so alluring is a fair indication of the kind of life from which she had emerged, and to which she now returned. What could she do? In the dreary round of petty details, in the incessant drudgery of a poor farmer's household, with no companions or any sympathy—for the family of a hard-working New-England farmer are not the Chloes and Clarissas of pastoral poetry, nor the cowboys Corydons—with ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... by which new invasions and pacifications may be lawfully made; also the smallness of the number of men, the slight cost, and the great ease and advantage with which they should be made, because of the division of the country into many islands and among many petty rulers, who easily come to blows among themselves, and ally themselves with the Spaniards, and hence can be preserved with but few soldiers. Since the petition in regard to the pay and number of the soldiers there was conceded—and you must ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... which my mind had been driven. The intricate windings of the river, after we had passed the lake, rendered the navigation very slow and difficult; and the swarms of flies, that plagued us for the first time seriously, brought petty annoyances to view more forcibly than we had experienced in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... error, and the second proved almost as mischievous. She thought to divert Morris from a central idea by a multitude of petty counter-attractions; she believed that by stopping him from the scientific labours and esoteric speculation connected with this idea, that it would be deadened and in ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... anything, meant a doctrine as low in the intellectual scale as that of any of the objects of missionary enterprise. The conception of the transactions between God and man was apparently modelled upon the dealings of a petty tradesman. The "blood of Christ" was regarded like the panacea of a quack doctor, which will cure the sins of anybody who accepts the prescription. For anything I can say, such a creed may be elevating—relatively: elevating as slavery is said to have ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... dependents or followers married, exercised the right of assuming the bridegroom's proper place in the marriage couch for the first night. Seldom was there any escape from this abominable practice. Sometimes the husband, if wealthy, succeeded in buying off the petty ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... naught, A measure of disquietude suppressed, A peace in importunity possessed, A reconcilement generously sought, A purpose put aside, a banished thought, A word of self-explaining unexpressed,— Trifles they seem, these petty soul-restraints; Yet he who proves them so must needs possess A constancy and courage grand and bold. They are the trifles that have made the saints. Give me to practise them in humbleness, And nobler power than mine ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... manners without having them imposed on us Men overweeningly in love with their creations Must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer Petty concessions are signs of weakness to the unsatisfied Statesman who stooped to conquer fact through fiction The social world he looked at did not show him heroes The exhaustion ensuing we named tranquillity Utterance ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... expect his young friends to sympathize with the schoolmaster of this story, for doubtless many of them have known and despised a similar creature in real life. Mr. Parasyte is not a myth; but we are grateful that an enlightened public sentiment is every year rendering more and more odious the petty tyrant of the school-room, and we are too happy to give this retreating personage a parting blow as he retires from the scene of ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... that evening she was cheerful enough—so cheerful, indeed, in her little bird-like way, that many of those who talked with her fancied that the resourceful little body was beyond the reach of petty grief. The modest, almost girlish smile beamed through the wrinkles of fifty autumns as brightly that evening at the Penningtons' as the town had ever seen it. From her place in a high-backed chair in the corner, Miss Morgan, in her shy, self-deprecatory way, ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... exuberant fun and fancy, in a letter addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette in 1867, and afterwards republished in Friendship's Garland. Arminius, the cultivated Prussian, accompanies his English friend to Petty Sessions in a country town, and is horrified by the degraded plight of an old peasant who is tried for poaching. The English friend (the imaginary Arnold) says that for his own part he is not so much concerned about ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... little experiences, all the petty ways of narrow life, are shut off behind by the ponderous and impassable cliff; as if we had dwelt in the dim light of a cave, but coming out at last to look at the sun, a great stone had fallen and closed the entrance, so that there was no return to the shadow. The impassable precipice ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... claims. But many considerations made him refuse to despair of the empire. His intensely human view of politics led him to put more trust in the bonds of kindred and affection than in constitutional forms. He hated the petty quibbles of political legists and pedants—their dilemmas, and metaphysical distinctions, and catastrophes. In his opinion the bulk of mankind was not excessively curious concerning any theories whilst they were really happy. But perhaps his political ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... elementary crudity or barbarism which the human spirit often betrays when it is deeply stirred. Not only are chance and divination welcomed into the world but they are reverenced all the more, like the wind and fire of idolaters, precisely for not being amenable to the petty rules of human reason. In truth, however, the English duality between prudence and science is no more fundamental than the German duality between reason and understanding.[A] The true contrast is ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... herself, and have a great sympathy with their small hopes and aims; but she would not have been led into such a crime if she had cultivated from her infancy upward a consistent self-indulgence, making herself the centre of a world of mean desires and petty gratifications. And then she thought of the old and beautiful days up in the Lewis, where the young English stranger seemed to approve of her simple ways and her charitable work, and where she was taught to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... short months of war had cast all that at his feet. It was the harvest of but a single year of war. Thirty-nine years of his life had previously gone in the service in tedious monotony, in an eternal struggle with sordid everyday cares. He had worn himself out over all the exigencies of a petty bourgeois existence, like a poor man ashamed of his poverty, making pathetic efforts to conceal a tear in his clothes and always seeing the telltale hole staring out from under the covering. For thirty-nine years he had never swerved ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... their share of the land, had parted with them long since, either to their own officers or to the trafficers in such bonds, who had sprang up by hundreds, and who obtained them from the needy soldiers often for a mere trifle. Sharp-sighted speculators like Dr. Petty, by whom the well-known Survey of Ireland was made, acquired immense tracts of land at little or no outlay. Of those soldiers, too, who did receive grants of land many left after a while. Others, despite ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... not speak here of politics in the ordinary sense of the word,—nay, Igladly leave the groping for the petty causes of the late war to the scrutiny of those foreign statesmen who have eyes only for the infinitesimally small, but cannot, or will not, see the powerful handiwork of Divine justice that reveals itself in the history of nations as in the lives of individuals. Ispeak of politics ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... because there are no operations during the war, with the exception perhaps of those of the Rhodesian Column, concerning which it is so difficult to get a clear impression. The fluctuating forces, the vast range of country covered, and the petty farms which give their names to positions, all tend to make the issue vague and the narrative obscure. The British still lay in a semicircle extending from Slingersfontein upon the right to Kloof Camp upon the left, and the general ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... developed; he would fain be held a connaisseur in wines, and kept up a good stock of distinguished vintages, from which he had brought of such to Glenruadh as would best bear the carriage. Having no aspiration, there was room in him for any number of petty ambitions; and it vexed him not to reap the harvest of recognition. "But of course," he said to himself, "no highlander ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... properly transitive, at least, in respect to this word; as, "It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish, dull, and crudy vapours."—Shakspeare's Falstaff. "Then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart."—Id. This is a faulty relic of our old Saxon dative case. So of the second person; "Fare you well, Falstaff."—Shak. Here you was written for the objective case, but ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of the condition of England toward the close of the sixth century. The old Roman organization and civilization had disappeared entirely, and a new race, with a new language, a different religion, another form of government, changed institutions and customs, had taken its place. A number of petty kingdoms had been formed during the fifth and early sixth centuries, each under a king or chieftain, as in the old Celtic times before the Roman invasion, but now of Teutonic or German race. The kings and their followers had come ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... whom (in their songs So bards of elder time had haply feigned) Some Fury fondled in her hate to man, 175 Bidding her serpent hair in mazy surge Lick his young face, and at his mouth imbreathe Horrible sympathy! And leagued with these Each petty German princeling, nursed in gore! Soul-hardened barterers of human blood![116:1] 180 Death's prime slave-merchants! Scorpion-whips of Fate! Nor least in savagery of holy zeal, Apt for the yoke, the race degenerate, Whom Britain erst had blushed to call her sons! Thee to defend ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "The rascal has been doing something wrong," he said to himself; "he is afraid of being found out! And found out he is sure to be; he has not the brains to hide a thing! It's not murder—he ain't got the pluck for that; but it may be petty larceny!" ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... alone were unable to move and handle the enormous eggs, the Countess, whose sweet character was a stranger to vindictiveness or petty resentment, had written to the members of the ornithological committee, revealing the marvellous fortune which had crowned her efforts in the search for evidence to sustain her theory concerning the ux, and inviting these gentlemen to aid her in ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... conducting it in person; Morga describes this naval campaign in detail. Ternate is captured by the Spaniards without bombardment, and with little loss to themselves. The fugitive king of the island is persuaded to surrender to the Spaniards and become a vassal of Felipe. Several other petty rulers follow his example and promise not to allow the Dutch to engage in the clove trade. Acuna builds a new fort there, and another in Tidore, leaving Juan de Esquivel as governor of the Moluccas, with a garrison and several vessels ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... this village in the condition in which it was to be expected that a place of so much importance during the progress of the late siege would be found, in other words, completely metamorphosed into a chain of petty posts. Being distant from the outworks of Bayonne not more than a mile and a half, and standing upon the great road by which all the supplies for the left of the British army were brought up, no means, as may be supposed, had been neglected, which art or nature could supply, towards ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... scarcely been permitted to see the general aspect of the British aristocracy, or to become acquainted with their sentiments, their characters, or their manners. The petty, artificial world framed and got up for her deception, is no more capable of suggesting to her mind the vast moral and social creation beyond its narrow boundaries, than one or two leaves of a hortus siccus exemplify the ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... that had always existed between Richard and the King of France now led to constant petty wars between them. To secure his Norman province, Richard built on its border a splendid fortress, which he called his Chateau Gaillard,—"Saucy Castle." Amazed and enraged at the wonderful strength of this stronghold, perched ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... (She laughs.) Ah, my woman's diplomacy knows how to tie a knot and draw tight the ends of it. How your embarrassment pleases me. But there is something quite different. Let us suppose that I am a vain person, full of womanly self-love; full of petty jealousy and envy. Well, you have painted the portrait of Mme. Zofia and of Helena. I wish to have mine also. One does not refuse the women such things. Reports of your fame come to me from all sides. I hear all around me the words: "Our ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... quick to enthusiasm; the sight of the Eagles planted on the Acropolis at Carthage moved him in a way he never forgot. He acquired the habit of seeing big, and began to cast off race prejudices and all the petty narrowness of a local spirit. When he became a Christian he did not close himself up, like the Donatists, within the African Church. His dream was that Christ's Empire upon earth should equal the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... of petty humiliations had exasperated Eaton's bold and fiery temper. He found some relief in horse-whipping Monsieur Famin, who had been unceasing in his quiet annoyances, and in writing to the Government at home despatches of a most undiplomatic warmth and earnestness. From the first, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... ornamenting it with various designs in black! Otherwise he was much the same in appearance as Romata, though not so powerfully built. As this chief had never seen a ship before—except, perchance, some of the petty traders that at long intervals visit these remote islands—he was much taken up with the neatness and beauty of all the fittings of the schooner. He was particularly struck with a musket which was shown to him, and asked where the white men got hatchets hard enough to ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... wisdom, affection, or goodness. He never spares himself, except now and then to assume a somewhat diaphanous anonymity. Without regard for his own dignity, he exhibits himself as humiliated, or drunken, or hypochondriac, or inquisitive, or resorting to petty subterfuge—anything for the accomplishment of his one main purpose. 'Nay, Sir,' said Johnson, 'it was not the wine that made your head ache, but the sense that I put into it.' 'What, Sir,' asks the hapless Boswell, 'will sense make the head ache?' 'Yes, Sir, when ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... long the Other Girl smiled over her petty, distasteful work, and Glory's face crept in between her tasks and nodded at her in friendly fashion. She watched for it breathlessly at night, when the train stopped at Centre Town. And it was there on the platform; it came smiling ...
— Glory and the Other Girl • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... brow. Even of Shakespeare, it is said in the morning he polished his sonnets, while at midnight he poached game from a neighboring estate. Our era bestows unstinted admiration upon the essays of Lord Bacon. How noble his aphorisms! How petty his envy and avarice! What scholarship was his, and what cunning also! With what splendor of argument does he plead for the advancement of learning and liberty! With what meanness does he take bribes from the rich against the poor! His mind seems like a palace ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Left in the Prussian Landtag; yet we never heard a disrespectful word spoken of Frederick William IV, and we were instructed to show the utmost respect to the prince of the little country of Rudolstadt to which Keilhau belonged. Barop, spite of his liberal tendencies, was highly esteemed by this petty sovereign, decorated with an order, and raised to the rank of Councillor of Education. From a hundred isolated recollections and words which have lingered in my memory I have gathered that our teachers were liberals in a very moderate way, yet they were certainly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Anthony's uniform kindness and courtesy to reporters, always granting an interview no matter how tired or how busy she might be, and assisting them in every possible way with information and suggestions, it is astonishing that any one of them could indulge in petty, personal criticism and innuendoes. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Dawson's room. When I told him that we were resolved, if possible, to effect his escape, nothing could exceed his transport and gratitude; this was, indeed, expressed in so mean and servile a manner, mixed with so many petty threats of vengeance against Thornton, that I could scarcely conceal ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the very essence of democracy." For democracy means freedom, equality of opportunity, "self-determination." No man is a greater slave than one who is bound and driven by financial necessity. By thrift the mind is "unfettered by the petty annoyances that result from improvident ways." Thrift means providing for the future. There is nothing in the world that will so establish one's faith in the future and that will, therefore, give that freedom of spirit upon which democracy ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... any argument against intemperance, only that it was expensive. Now he hated all the petty meanness that he ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... of all outward pastimes is that of [3243]Areteus, deambulatio per amoena loca, to make a petty progress, a merry journey now and then with some good companions, to visit friends, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... in that hall in fear of death, and he began shouting his insults. Law was a farce in Linrock. The court was a farce. There was no law. Your father's office as mayor should be impeached. He made arrests only for petty offenses. He was afraid of the rustlers, highwaymen, murderers. He was afraid or—he just let them alone. He used his office to cheat ranchers ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... I think I may have succumbed a little when I first wrote about him. He is so great a master of literature that one may be led to concentrate attention on this; and if not to neglect, to regard somewhat inadequately, his greatness as a novelist. Here at any rate such failure would be petty, if not even ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of his fellow-men, he is constantly acting a studied part. The bold and peculiar traits of native character are refined away or softened down by the levelling influence of what is termed good-breeding, and he practises so many petty deceptions and affects so many generous sentiments for the purposes of popularity that it is difficult to distinguish his real from his artificial character. The Indian, on the contrary, free from the restraints and refinements of polished life, and in a great degree a solitary ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Pfalz proved a highly respectable Kaiser; lasted for ten years (1400-10), with honor to himself and the Reich. A strong heart, strong head, but short of means. He chastised petty mutiny with vigor, could not bring down the Milanese Visconti, who had perched themselves so high on money paid to Wenzel; could not heal the schism of the Church (double or triple Pope, Rome-Avignon affair), or awaken the Reich to a sense of its old dignity and present ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of view advanced by the chair, the miners decided that the two thieves should be whipped and banished from camp. A strong feeling prevailed that any man who, in this age of plenty, would descend to petty thieving, was a poor, miserable creature to be pitied. Some charitably inclined individual actually took up a small collection which was presented to the thieves after ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... wrote you an answer to your last, which, on reflection, pleases me as little as it probably has pleased yourself. I will not wait for your rejoinder; but proceed to tell you, that I had just then been greeted with an epistle of * *'s, full of his petty grievances, and this at the moment when (from circumstances it is not necessary to enter upon) I was bearing up against recollections to which his imaginary sufferings are as a scratch to a cancer. These things ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... up yonder amongst the snows, and they think that, tired and half starved, our poor fellows will be marching to their death, leaving their enemies very little work to do beside cutting down the stragglers. Ah, depend upon it, all these little petty generals think they have a great victory within their hands without any cost to themselves, and that none of our poor fellows will get across ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... vain our tale, if it convinces Small states that 'tis a wiser thing To trust a single powerful king, Than half a dozen petty princes. ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... beyond me, more important than myself, is all undone." And though she was far from knowing this, that something was her country's civilisation, its very soul, the meaning of it all gentleness, balance. Her spirit, of that quality so little gross that it would never set up a mean or petty quarrel, make mountains out of mole-hills, distort proportion, or get images awry, had taken its stand unconsciously, no sooner than it must, no later than it ought, and from that stand would not recede. The issue had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gratification of his personal animosities seem due to public-spirited indignation have been generally exposed. Beside the overwhelming desire to spite Theobald for his presumption in publishing "Shakespeare Restored" the aggrieved poet was actuated by numerous petty grudges against the inhabitants of Grub Street, all of which he masked behind a pretence of righteous zeal. According to the official explanation "The Dunciad" was composed with the most laudable motive of damaging those ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... petty of me, I know, but I do hope he has not grown stout," she said presently. "But of course it is to be expected, and if it is so I must try to bear it. It could not make any real difference. Your Uncle Tom is the same age, and ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... them sought hospitality at the doors of the stately mansions which then stood in the vicinity of Hanover Street and the North Square. Others were applicants at the humble wooden tenements, where dwelt the petty shopkeepers and mechanics. Pray Heaven that no family in Boston turned one of these poor exiles from their door! It would be a reproach upon New England,—a crime worthy of heavy retribution,—if the aged women and children, ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... paradoxical statement appears at first thought contradictory or absurd, while it may be really true. Anything is irrational when clearly contrary to sound reason, foolish when contrary to practical good sense, silly when petty and contemptible in its folly, erroneous when containing error that vitiates the result, unreasonable when there seems a perverse bias or an intent to go wrong. Monstrous and preposterous refer to what is overwhelmingly ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... was the principal landlord, and, socially, the most important person in the neighbourhood. Sir Timothy did not like Mr. Courtney. He was of opinion that the R.M. was inclined to take a high hand at Petty Sessions and to bully the other magistrates—Sir Timothy was himself a magistrate—who sat with him on the Bench. He also thought that Mr. Courtney was "too d——d superior" in private life. Sir Timothy had the lowest possible opinion of the progress made by ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... Brussels was to secure more speedy execution of justice. He appointed a new provost, "a dangerous varlet of low estate, but excellently fitted to carry out perilous work." Then he determined to settle petty civil suits himself, as there were many which had dragged on for a long time. In order to do this and to receive complaints from poor people, he arranged to give audience three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, after dinner. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... vessel of twelve hundred tons, and the other was the Evening Star, somewhat smaller in size, but both classed A1 at Lloyd's. The former cost twenty-two thousand pounds, and the latter seventeen thousand. Now, Mr. Girdlestone had always had a weakness for petty savings, and in this instance he determined not to insure his new vessels. If the crazy old tubs, for which he had paid fancy premiums for so many years with an eye to an ultimate profit, met with no disaster, surely those new powerful clippers were safe. With their tonnage and horse-power ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled, and oceans bounded, by the slender ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... present system the fishermen would consider themselves bound to deal at the shop of the landowner or tacksman if he were engaged in fishing?-If a system of money payments were adopted they might not consider themselves bound to do so, but there would be so many petty vexations put upon them, that the men, out of regard for their own comfort, would decidedly give the preference to the tacksmaster's or the landlord's shop, if he happened to be in the trade, notwithstanding that they might have to pay a trifle ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... of freedom as regards external circumstances, such as she had not known for a long time, encompassed her; there were none of the petty domestic cares of the daily round, there was no obligation to talk to relations or acquaintances; she was at liberty that evening to do just ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... North seventy-five years ago, "that cant-patriotism which plumes itself in selecting men from within the State confines only. The truer a nation is, the more essentially it is elevated, the more it disregards petty considerations, and takes the true and the good from whatever quarter it may come. Look at history and you find the proof. Look around you, where you are, and you find it now." And, were Lieber living to-day, he would find a striking exemplification ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... over himself in the effort not to be rude to her. With Herbert, however, it was different. HE was BOUND to him, and therefore in his power. Abner Holden exulted in this knowledge, and with the instinct of a petty tyrant determined to ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... company it was far easier to approach Katharine; alone with her, the aloofness and force of her character checked all his natural methods of attack. He believed that she had behaved very badly to him, but each separate instance of unkindness seemed too petty to be advanced when they ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... This petty event has ascertained the existence of a certain being, who, till now, has not been much more than a matter of faith—the Grand Lama. There are some affairs of trade between the sovereigns of Oude and his Holiness the Lama. Do not imagine the East India Company ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... The statue of Liberty I recognized at once, for it had no pedestal as yet, but stood flat in the mud, with Young America most symbolically making dirt pies, and chip forts, in its shadow. But high above the squabbling little throng and their petty plans, the sun shone full on Liberty's broad forehead, and, in her hand, some summer bird had built its nest. I accepted the good omen then, and, on the first of January, the Emancipation Act gave the statue a nobler and more enduring pedestal than any marble ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... empire enabled France on the west and Turkey on the east to wrest valuable possessions from it. The successors of Charles V. were unable to breast the storm of progress successfully, and the imperial authority was completely shattered. The power of the petty rulers of small states increased and overshadowed that ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... whatever to do it," she raged, as Polly and Lois joined them. "You didn't do it because you thought Fanny really knew how to coast; you just thought it was a good chance to get even with me. You've a fine idea of class dignity to do anything so petty. If you ever do a thing like that again—Jemima, I'll— You ought to be ashamed ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... and ginger beer at a little open-air restaurant near the Broad Walk and talked on until nearly four. We were so young that I think we both felt, beneath our very real and vivid emotions, a gratifying sense of romantic resourcefulness in this prolonged discussion. There is something ridiculously petty and imitative about youth, something too, naively noble and adventurous. I can never determine if older people are less generous and imaginative or merely less absurd. I still recall the autumnal melancholy of that queer, neglected-looking place, in which I had never been before, and which ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... irritable and petty, and in every trivial incident saw an act of robbery or outrage. His gate was kept bolted even by day, and at night two watchmen walked up and down the garden beating a board; and they gave up employing anyone from Obrutchanovo as a labourer. As ill-luck would have it ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... his weighty judgment, his great experience, and his upright character, and we believe his decisions were invariably stamped by the qualities of impartiality and justice. He was always ready to lend a helping hand to a friend, and no petty jealousy stood between him and his rivals in the engineering world. The author remembers being with Mr. Stephenson one evening at his house in Gloucester Square, when a note was put into his hands from his friend Brunel, then engaged in his first ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... those middle-class families which were called indifferently, in the impertinent language of the last century, the high bourgeoise or the petty nobility. This family had inherited from the brothers Paclet the fief of Tirechappe, which was dependent upon the Bishop of Paris, and whose twenty-one houses had been in the thirteenth century the object of so many suits before the official. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... at the country itself. In the first place, Arabia is not a nation but a country made up of petty states—some independent, some controlled by the sultan of Turkey; two or three are included in the British Empire. But the country itself is very far removed from the rest of the world so far as accessibility is concerned; and although its coast is scarcely a gunshot from ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... more conspicuous than in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturbance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon,"[202] were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... glad you think so, papa, for I was afraid I might seem to you very small and petty to have all my ambitions bounded by the four walls ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... classical type of majesty and grandeur, and superiority to everything that is petty and mean. So Shakespeare uses it, and only in this way; for it is very certain he never saw a living specimen of the Cedar of Lebanon. But many travellers in the East had seen it and minutely described it, and from their descriptions he derived his knowledge ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the historian Et Teberi) is a fair specimen. Ardeshir ibn Babek (Artaxerxes I.), the first Sassanian King of Persia (A.D. 226-242), having long unsuccessfully besieged El Hedr, a strong city of Mesopotamia belonging to the petty King Es Satiroun, at last obtained possession of it by the treachery of the owner's daughter Nezireh and married the latter, this having been the price stipulated by her for the betrayal to him of the place. "It happened afterwards ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Clumb," said he, "but this is serious work." So admonished, the meeting appointed committees, fixed upon a time for a future meeting, threw a collection of half-dollars on the desk to start a petty cash fund, made the usual joke about putting the secretary under bond, adjourned ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... you will permit me to take this opportunity to say that I deplore, as must all right-minded and clear-thinking men, the occasional petty criticisms which attribute to you some selfish motive for the honest and noble stand you have taken concerning the importance of immediate action and of a widespread, far-reaching, and generally effective movement looking toward, not the ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... it exercised the powers of a sovereign, even to the infliction of capital punishment on the Hindoos within its jurisdiction. It is incorrect, therefore, to say, that the Company was at first a mere trader, and has since become a sovereign. It was at first a great trader and a petty prince. The political functions at first attracted little notice, because they were merely auxiliary to the commercial functions. By degrees, however, the political functions became more and more important. The Zemindar became a great nabob, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bateaux, fitted out at Montreal, and conveying a body of pale-faced warriors, under the command of one whose hair was white and whose face was seamed with scars, entered the mouth of the Oswego[A]. This petty armament was joined at the beginning of the following season of sleep by a great number of canoes that contained the traders, artizans, and labourers, with their families, together with such tools and utensils as had been deemed necessary for the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
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