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More "Proverbial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on Poppy's part—this little lurking gleam of disappointment—were as the proverbial last straw to poor Jasmine. Her fortitude gave way, and she burst into the bitterest tears she ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... very frequently, impaired their constitutions by study, or careless inattention to their health, and the violence of their passions bearing a proportion to the vigour of their intellects, the sword's destroying the scabbard has become almost proverbial, and superficial observers have inferred from thence, that men of genius have commonly weak, or to use a more fashionable phrase, delicate constitutions. Yet the contrary, I believe, will appear to be the fact; for, on diligent inquiry, I find ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... this warning, consider the Vitagraph release, "A Wasted Sacrifice," referred to in the previous chapter.[28] The big "punch" in this story, as already pointed out, was where the young squaw steps on the concealed rattlesnake. Women in the audience screamed; men felt the proverbial "cold chill" run down their spines. Then came the climax, in which the young Westerner, hoping to save the life of the papoose, takes it away from the dead mother and hurries back to meet the doctor-sheriff who is pursuing him with the posse. The doctor ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... Dutch courage is proverbial, although a libel upon one of the bravest of nations. Vanslyperken now felt it, and again he commenced with the corporal. "What ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the other what I may call the poetico-devout—finding 'sermons in stones, books in the running brooks,' and hints of the spiritual world in all the phenomena of the natural. So, just as in spite of meteorological science, there has passed into common speech the proverbial simile 'as free as the wind,' so Jesus Christ says here, 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, ... so is every one that is born of the Spirit.' He passes by the intermediate link, the Spirit that is the parent of the life, and deals ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... most practical advice. The baron did not even think of attempting to do so. He had known Madame d'Argeles for years; he had seen so many proofs of her invincible energy and determination. She possessed the distinguishing characteristic of her family in a remarkable degree—that proverbial Chalusse obstinacy which Madame Vantrasson had alluded to in her conversation with ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... owner. Relief and assistance were rendered so frequently and so abundantly to distressed emigrants, and aid and succor were so often sent over the Sierra to feeble or disabled trains, that Sutter's charity and generosity became proverbial. In the sunny hillslopes and smiling valleys, amidst the graceful groves and pleasant vineyards of this Golden State, it would be difficult to find localities where pioneers have not taught their ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... Marquise was more than a mere leader of wit and fashion. If she set the mode in the shape of a petticoat, or devised the sumptuous splendours of a garden fete, her talent was not merely devoted to things frivolous and trivial. She had the proverbial 'esprit des Mortemart'. Armed with beauty and sarcasm, she won a leading place for herself at Court, and held it in the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... considerable bustle and excitement. The activity of the Breed is not proverbial; they are at best a lazy lot, but now men and women came and went bristling with energy to their finger tips. Preparations were nearing completion. The chief item of importance was the whisky supply, and this the treasurer, Baptiste, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... meant what Macaulay took him to mean, it would be superfluous to argue the question gravely. The reasoning is only fit, like the reasoning of all Macaulay's antagonists, for the proverbial schoolboy. Mill, according to Macaulay, proposes to discover what governments are good; and, finding that experience gives no clear answer, throws experience aside and appeals to absolute laws of human nature. One such 'law' asserts ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... society. Lord Chesterfield denounced the practice of quoting proverbs as a palpable violation of all polite refinement in conversation. Notwithstanding all this, we acknowledge having much pleasure in recalling our national proverbial expressions. They are full of character, and we find amongst them important truths, expressed forcibly, wisely, and gracefully. The expression of Bacon has often been quoted—"The genius, wit, and wisdom of a nation, are ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... spread with the proverbial rapidity of evil news. At the doors of all the public houses, in every open shop, on every private stoop, and at the street-corners, people were soon discussing the event, with such additions and comments as their imaginations ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... I were recruiting for schoolmarms, I should come here. I like it thoroughly, and mean to be here earlier next year. The scenery is enchanting, and I quite enjoy being with 'Proverbial Philosophy' people." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... privies, but Englishmen? Not to mention their original treachery to the Britons, that hired by them to defend them they turned upon them in spite of their oaths and engagements, they are to this day given to treachery and murder.' The lying Saxon was, according to this authority, a proverbial expression. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... father into the boat, where was waiting a negro as black as the proverbial black hat, a local fisherman who had taken up sponge growing, and who, while shrewd enough for a business ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... E BRATHAIR, If it be not Bran, it is Bran's brother,' was the proverbial reply of Maccombich. [Bran, the well-known dog of Fingal, is often the theme of Highland ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... on seeing this, at once concluded that he had unknowingly entered a gulf, and had left the main Lake, for the only place he had ever seen scum before was at the extremity of a creek near home, where the water was partly stagnant on a marshy level. The water of the Lake was proverbial ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... Christianity, biblical texts were substituted for the runes, and the art of composing the former was studied with as much care as had been devoted to the heathen charms.[136:1] The term rune became a synonym for knowledge and wisdom; an oracular, proverbial expression.[136:2] The traditional belief of the Anglo-Saxons in the efficacy of healing runes persisted in the fourteenth century. When foreign medical practitioners settled in England at that period, the cures wrought ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... their numerous and obscure allusions. The best extant specimen is the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius; the most characteristic is the Alexandra or Cassandra of Lycophron, the obscurity of which is almost proverbial. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... an equivalent Arabic name, a pungent odor, and a very small seed. Inasmuch as the mustard which is systematically planted for fodder by Old World farmers grows with the greatest luxuriance in Palestine, and the comparison between the size of its seed and the plant's great height was already proverbial in the East when Jesus used it, evidence strongly favors this wayside weed. Indeed, the late Dr. Royle, who endeavored to prove that it was the shrub that was referred to, finally found that it ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... the previous winter still remained a baffling mystery. Locally it had proved, as such occurrences usually do, merely a proverbial nine days wonder. Long since, in the stress and interest of current events, it had faded more or less from the minds of all men, excepting the Mounted Police, who, though saying little concerning it, still kept keenly on the alert for any ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... seconds," said the doctor. "Our temper is getting brittle. We are cross as the proverbial fever patient. If you don't come at once we will imagine you don't want to, and refuse to ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... the village, Frobisher took Ling with him and went off to see that the carts were properly loaded, and the mule-drivers at their stations; and to his astonishment found that, in spite of the proverbial slackness of the Korean, everything was in readiness, and only his word was necessary to enable the caravan to start. During his previous visit to the shore he had done a little exploration, and had quite made up his mind which road to take in order to avoid the troops coming from ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... already on record of the refined knavery displayed by Chinese merchants in their dealings with Europeans, or the tricks that they play off in their transactions with one another. They are well known to most nations, and are proverbial in their own. A merchant with them is considered as the lowest character in the country, as a man that will cheat if he can, and whose trade it is to create and then supply artificial wants. To this general character, which public opinion has most probably made to be what it is, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... savant, blue, bookish, scholastic, solid, profound, deep-read, book- learned; accomplished &c (skillful) 698; omniscient; self-taught. known &c v.; ascertained, well-known, recognized, received, notorious, noted; proverbial; familiar, familiar as household words, familiar to every schoolboy; hackneyed, trite, trivial, commonplace. cognoscible^, cognizable. Adv. to one's knowledge, to the best of one's knowledge. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... when supported by a powerful king, nobly descended, and legally invested with the crown. A natural sympathy, too, had been awakened for the emperor, as numbed with cold he besought the pity of the Pontiff; and, with proverbial fickleness, men, in ascribing humility to the king, imputed arrogance to the Pope. Owing to these causes, it was not long before Henry found himself stronger than ever. Inflamed with new ardor, he loudly ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... Shaykh held by the hand a youth cast in beauty's mould, all elegance and perfect grace; so fair that his comeliness deserved to be proverbial; for he was as a green bough or the tender young of the roe, ravishing every heart with his loveliness and subduing every soul with his coquetry and amorous ways.[FN265] It was of him the poet spake when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... nonsense to prate so. Why it is hard enough to gape and gasp and catch a mouthful of sanded breath, without that added worry. There is nothing for it, but to grin and bear it and get through with the swallowing of that proverbial peck of dust in a life-time, as quickly ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... at once removed from his office, on the charge of having left the city contrary to precedent, by the populace convened by his colleague Publius Titius; and in this way he was condemned. When Titius not long after died, the proverbial fate that had been observed from of old was once more in evidence. No one up to that time who had expelled a colleague had lived the year out: but first Brutus after the expulsion of Collatinus died in his turn, then Gracchus was stabbed after ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... Render, who had been long enough in England to forget German, but not long enough to learn English. This worthy, in spite of his deficiencies, was a voluminous translator of his native literature, and it became a proverbial saying among his intimates respecting a bad translation that it ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... Poets are proverbial for uncongenial marriages, and to this Poe can scarcely be classed as an exception. From the time when as a youth of nineteen he became a tutor to his sweet and gentle little cousin of six years old, he loved her with the protective tenderness of an elder brother. As years ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... racing was to keep a slack rein and to ride a waiting race, not calling on his horse till near the end. His son Samuel, who followed him, observed the same plan; from its frequent success the term "Chiffney rush" became proverbial. In his ride through the desert (p. 169) Kinglake speaks of his "native bells—the innocent bells of Marlen, that never before sent forth their music beyond the Blaygon hills." Marlen bells is the local name for the fine peal of St. Mary Magdalen, Taunton. ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... out of place; and no other was possible. Even Hay's relation was a false one, while Adams's ceased of itself. History's truths are little valuable now; but human nature retains a few of its archaic, proverbial laws, and the wisest courtier that ever lived — Lucius Seneca himself — must have remained in some shade of doubt what advantage he should get from the power of his friend and pupil Nero Claudius, until, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... indulged him, though he was the elder, and his mother's favourite. Tom began to dress early. His open admiration was Dr. Courtenay, his confessed hope to wear five-pound ruffles and gold sword knots. He clung to Will Fotheringay with a tenacity that became proverbial among us boys, and his boasts at King William's School were his father's growing wealth and intimacy with the great ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... straight-from-the-shoulder thinking but all the way out to the scene of the festivities she pondered quietly. The episode of the mares was growing in importance. So far she had been able to do nothing of importance on the ranch; if this scheme fell through also it would be the proverbial last straw. ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... has become proverbial, has a very obscure authority, probably not known to many of your readers. It is from Gualtier de Lille, as has been remarked by Galeottus Martius and Paquier in their researches. This Gualtier flourished in the thirteenth century. The verse is ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... Colonel had to undergo in order that his assertions might in some way be shaken by the prosecution, but with military precision and frigid calm he repeated his important statements amidst a general silence, through which you could have heard the proverbial pin. ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... It is interesting to the etymologist for the important share it has taken in naturalising useful foreign words into our speech. It includes (as we shall have occasion to observe) a respectable quantum of wisdom fit to become proverbial, and several passages of admirable literary quality. In point of date (1763-65) it is fortunate, for the writer just escaped being one of a crowd. On the whole, I maintain that it is more than equal in interest to the Journey to the Hebrides, and that it deserves ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... [34] A proverbial saying, which means that all are alike, 'there is no one barrel better than another, the whole cargo ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I went over to Vicky Van's first. I had been on the proverbial pins and needles to get there ever since I woke to consciousness by reason of the sisterly pounding that brought me from the land ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... connection being made to aid and correspond mutually on both sides. Cicero says in his oration for Murena: "They who have not a genius for playing on the lyre, may become expert at playing on the flute (a proverbial saying among the Greeks to specify the man who can not make himself master of the superior sciences): so among us they who can not become orators, turn to the study of the law." In another passage of the same oration, the connected comparison is conceived in a sort of poetical spirit. ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... composition to local and topical uses might well be considered prejudicial to its chances of obtaining a permanent place in literature. Yet Munchausen has undoubtedly achieved such a place. The Baron's notoriety is universal, his character proverbial, and his name as familiar as that of Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, or Robinson Crusoe, mariner, of York. Condemned by the learned, like some other masterpieces, as worthless, Munchausen's travels have obtained ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... a busy place, was soon rivaling the proverbial beehive. Mrs. Reist, to whom sentiment was ever a vital, holy thing, to be treasured and clung to throughout the years, had long ago, in Amanda's childhood, begun the preparation for the time of ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... cannon-balls; hence such disgraceful proceedings as the betrayal of the Libyan troops by their general Himilco in 358, which was followed by a dangerous insurrection of the Libyans, and hence that proverbial cry of "Punic faith," which did the Carthaginians no small injury. Carthage experienced in full measure all the evils which armies of fellahs and mercenaries could bring upon a state, and more than once she found her paid serfs more dangerous than ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... which, at that time, were as essential a concomitant of a roystering party as, in later centuries, cards became. Nor were these the least attraction of the feasts of Sergius; for though the excellence of his viands and wines was proverbial, the ease with which he could be despoiled at the gambling table was not less so. Already he was known to have seriously crippled his heritage by continued reverses, springing from united ill luck and want of skill; but it was as well understood ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... by us; of the person with whom life flowers and bears fruit. If this were so, the chances of our meeting that person would be small indeed; our intuition would often fail; the blindness of love would then be fatal as it is proverbial. No, love works differently, and in its blindness lies its strength. Man and woman, each strongly desires to be loved, each opens to the other that heart of ideal aspirations which they have often hid till then; each, thus knowing the ideal of the other, tries ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the interior of the edifice, who has overthrown that colossus of Saint Christopher, proverbial for magnitude among statues, as the grand hall of the Palais de Justice was among halls, as the spire of Strasbourg among spires? And those myriads of statues, which peopled all the spaces between the columns of the nave and the choir, kneeling, standing, equestrian, men, women, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... to be little use. At the present time my mind is so full of heterogeneous matter that I almost despair of ever being able to put it in order. Whenever I enter the region that was the kingdom of my mind I feel like the proverbial bull in the china shop. A thousand odds and ends of knowledge come crashing about my head like hailstones, and when I try to escape them, theme-goblins and college nixies of all sorts pursue me, until I wish—oh, may I be forgiven ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... manner," the Prince began, with a pretence of hesitation, "a charm of manner, I might say, which is proverbial. It is, we know, attractive to women. Every woman acknowledges it. But your Majesty is sometimes too gracious. He permits himself to condescend to many women, to any woman, to women of ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... get it. A proletariat organized for revolutionary ends has no difficulty in securing reforms; it does not need to ask for them, for an awakened and apprehensive bourgeoisie will shower reforms upon them like the proverbial manna. If, indeed, workers want only reforms, why ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... when a travelling Bollscaire, or newsman from the west, related the events which enabled him to return to his native province. "Farewell sickle," he exclaimed, casting it from him —"now for the sword." Hence "Cathal's farewell to the rye" was long a proverbial expression for any sudden change of purpose or of condition. Fortune seems to have favoured him in most of his undertakings. In a storm upon Lough Ree, when a whole fleet foundered and its warrior crew perished, he was one of seven who were saved. Though in some of his early battles ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... proverbial sayings among country people concerning the state of the weather, which, having been derived from long observation, have become axioms, and were designated by Bacon "the philosophy of the people." These prognostics are ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... called Corcereis owing to the beauty and wonder of her enchanted garden. Corcyra was the abode of King Alcinous, of whose court, parks and orchards a famous description is to be found in the seventh Odyssey. Martial (xiii, 37), speaks of 'Corcyraei horti', a proverbial phrase. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the audience," began Joe, smilingly addressing the house, "often wonder how we actors and professional people eat. It is proverbial, you know, that actors are always hungry. Now I am going to show you that it is easier for us to get food than it ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... temptations of power, and from that impatience which one is apt to restrain among his equals and to indulge among his inferiors. The irritability of an Abolitionist may lead him to outrages as great as those which spring from the selfishness of a mere soldier. It is becoming almost proverbial, in colored regiments, that radical anti-slavery men make the best and the worst officers: the best, because of their higher motives and more elevated standard; the worst, because they are often ungoverned, insubordinate, impatient, and will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... delivered down to us under the title of proverbs. It were to be wished that, instead of filling their pages with the fabulous theology of the pagans, our modern poets would think it worth their while to enrich their works with the proverbial sayings of their ancestors. Mr Dryden ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... such as drunkenness and debauchery, by illustrated lectures upon the physiological effects of violations of nature's laws. They would teach men that the laws of health are found in the laws of temperance and purity. The Hebrew sages had this vision of Wisdom. Their proverbial sayings abound with graphic pen-pictures of the folly of vice. No illustration of the physical consequences of debauchery could be more impressive than the vivid sketch of the foolish young man, going after the strange woman as an "ox goeth to the ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... had measured her for his victim verified, if ever man did, the proverbial expression of the iron hand under the velvet glove. Under all his gentle suavities there was a fixed, inflexible will, a calm self-restraint, and a composed philosophical measurement of others, that fitted him to bear despotic rule over an impulsive, unguarded nature. The position, at once ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of mourning for him. It was an open secret that they had quarreled like the proverbial cat and dog. Charles Holland and his wife had naturally sided with Benjamin, and Naomi fought her battles single-handed. After her husband's death, she managed to farm alone, and made it pay. When the mysterious malady which ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Biscay fulfilled all its proverbial roughness: the whole sea was dells and knolls. It was terrible to see the pilot jump aboard while his boat was alternately tossed above our deck; he was caught by the sailors in their arms.... The custom-house officers have detained the ship so long that ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Hans Nilsen Hauge (1771-1824), a peasant lay-preacher, of whom a biographer has said: "Since the Reformation no single man has had so profound an influence on ecclesiastical and Christian life in Norway." The "Haugian revival" of the emotional religious life is proverbial. Its value was great in every way; directly and also by his widely distributed writings it fostered intellectual enlightenment. The peasant political movement started soon after 1830 among his followers. This explains ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... as a nation to the men in arms who for eight years met the force of Great Britain with counter force, and thus cleared the field for the statesmanship that can make the proverbial two blades of grass grow. The man with the gun opened the way for the man with the hoe. We who are here, and the race we represent, owe our deliverance from chattel slavery to the men in arms who conquered the slaveholders' Rebellion. It is a sad thought, but nevertheless one too ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the Salii was on the first of March, in commemoration of the time when the sacred shield was believed to have fallen from heaven, in the reign of Numa. After their procession, they had a splendid entertainment, the luxury of which was proverbial.] ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... My answer is plain. Lest in naught, and unwittingly, I should betray your hospitality; lest, in the caprice of will which in our world is proverbial among the other sex, and from which even a Gy is not free, your adorable daughter should deign to regard me, though a Tish, as if I were a civilised An, and—and—and—-" "Court you as her spouse," put in Aph-Lin, gravely, and without any visible ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... merciful, glad and ready to forgive, sweetly patient of mood, and distinguished throughout by such prominent virtues, that, while always sure of the affections of followers and comrades, he was not less secure in the unforced confidence of his enemies, among whom his integrity and mercy were proverbial. By their fruits, indeed, shall we know this community, the history of which furnishes as fine a commentary upon the benefit of good social training for the young—example and precept happily keeping concert with the ordinary necessities and performances of life, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... deal of mirth at the Cardinal's expence, for his complexion was of the darkest Italian olive, and West's was even of more than the usual degree of English fairness. For some time after, if it be not still in use, the expression of "as fair as the Cardinal" acquired proverbial currency in the Roman conversations, applied to persons who had any inordinate conceit of their ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... gladly accepted. She was a little old Quaker lady, in Quaker garb, neat as the proverbial pin, and with the appearance of having just stepped from ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... a nest for herself where she might lay her young; but this is the first time we ever knew of the conference of such honors on the Felis domestica. It could not have been anything mercenary that took the old cat into the pulpit, for "poor as a church mouse" has become proverbial. Nothing but lofty aspirations could have taken her there, and a desire that her young should have advantages of high birth. If in the "Historical Society" there are mummied cats two thousand years old, much more will post-mortem honors ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... humanity, which never deserted him; and resolutions as to conduct, to which he adhered with a constancy never surpassed. What shall we say are the qualifications for a great and good man?—Honesty. In spite of his infamy, Robespierre's honesty has become proverbial. Moral conduct—the life he led even during the zenith of his power, and at a time when licentiousness was general, and morality ridiculous, was characterized by the simplicity of the early Quakers. Industry—without payment from the State, beyond that which he received as a member of the Convention, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... See Isaiah xxxii. 2. The following proverbial saying in India may serve to show how natural such comparisons are in the mouths of the inhabitants of hot climates: "Ah, that benevolent man, he has long been my shelter from the wind; he is a river to the dry country." See Roberts' Oriental Illustrations of Scripture, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... A creature of proverbial good-nature and exhaustless vitality, his extraordinary popularity was due to the equally extraordinary extravagance with which he supported that latest Gallic fad, "le Sport." The Parisian Rugby ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Nan, who was observant, took with the proverbial pinch of salt. The expression of his countenance was kindly, but his character was firm and he spoke at times with a decision that made the servants, for instance, hurry to obey him. He was, indeed, a very forceful man; but Nan Sherwood liked ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... Jane stared a long while at the coffee-pot, and then called the two squaws who assisted her in her household duties, to clear away the things while she went up to her own room to make her bed. Here she was confronted with a possible prospect of that proverbial bed she might be making in her willfulness, and on which she must lie, in the photograph of a somewhat serious young man of refined features—Reuben Waters—stuck in her window-frame. Salomy Jane smiled over her last witticism regarding him and enjoyed, it, like your true humorist, ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... been neat even when it was forlorn there was now the stamp of desolation. The beds which had been seeded or planted a month before, and which should now have been weeded, trimmed, and hoed, were growing with an untended recklessness that had all the proverbial resemblance to moral breakdown. In the cucumber-house the vines had become rusty and limp, sagging from the twines on which they climbed in debauched indifference to sightliness. The roof of the hothouse that had contained the flowers had a deep ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... of Southern women for having the gift of fascination is perhaps due not to prettiness of feature more than to the brilliancy or sweetness of their ready smile. That Southern women are charming and "feminine" and lovable is proverbial. How many have noticed that Southern women always bow with the grace of a flower bending in the breeze and a smile like sudden sunshine? The unlovely woman bows as though her head were on a hinge and her ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... of the richness of the Roscoff fauna? This has become proverbial among zoologists, as can be attested by the 265 of them who have worked at the laboratory. The very numerous and remarkable memoirs that have been prepared here are to be found recorded in the fourteen volumes of the Archives de Zoologie Experimentale ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... taking the City sword in his hand, stood on the south side of Temple Bar. As soon as the Queen's carriage arrived within the gateway it stopped, and then, unfortunately, it began to rain." The Queen's weather, which has become proverbial, of which we are given to boast, did not attend her on this occasion. Perhaps it would have been too much to expect of the clouds when the date was the 9th of November. Regardless of the weather, "the Lord Mayor delivered ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... and similar pleadings had about as much effect upon the Ministerial steam-roller as the proverbial water on a duck's back. With a rush the Natives' Land Bill was dispatched from the Lower House to the Senate, adopted hurriedly by the Senate, returned to the Lower House, and went at the same pace to Government House, and there receiving ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... was the winning side. It is quite likely that the more pronounced enmity he showed towards Hamilton during the second session of Congress was due in some measure to his knowledge of this feeling towards himself among Federalists. He seemed, at any rate, to be animated by something more than the proverbial zeal of the new convert. If it was not always shown in debate, it lurked in his letters. Anything that came from the secretary, or anything that favored the secretary's measures, was sure to be opposed by him. He was not, of course, always in the wrong, and sometimes he was very ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... that that Agatha Warburton creature has written threatening to cut off our dear Lisbeth with the proverbial shilling unless she complies with her wish and marries Mr. Selwyn within the year. Did you ever know of anything ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... time they arrived at the smithy. Deacon Winslow lived close to his shop. He was a big man, with the proverbial muscles of the blacksmith; and for many years he had been looked upon as a pillar in ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... presented themselves, one sees in Rome some wise and honest monarchs (Augustus, Vespasian, Titus). But few men had a head strong enough to resist vertigo when they saw themselves so elevated above other men. The majority of the emperors profited by their tremendous power only to make their names proverbial: Tiberius, Nero, Domitian by their cruelty, Vitellius by his gluttony, Claudius by his imbecility. One of them, Caligula, was a veritable fool; he had his horse made consul and himself worshipped as a god. The emperors persecuted ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... land of delight and plenty, which is proverbial to this day! By the Celts it was called 'Dunna feadhuigh,' a fairy land, &c. But all these notions have earlier foundations, since the English Druids put their paradise in a remote island in the west, called {344} 'Flath-Innis,' the flat island", &c.—American ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... peace-loving people, genial and courtly; but whether law-abiding is another matter. We know nothing about their laws, but we know {37} that the law-courts were busy, and that legal officials were numerous; and we know, further, that their duplicity and lack of straightforwardness were proverbial among the Greeks and Romans, and persists ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... could be resumed at need. Conversation, gay and loud, interspersed at times with snatches of song, was heard amongst the soldiery; and in the nobler group that rode with Villena, there was even less of the proverbial gravity of Spaniards. ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... said to have replied, "You do well to put me in the way of making a MAN of him;" and ordered him a pension of 500 pounds. This story, however current, seems to have been made after the event. The King's answer implies a greater acquaintance with our proverbial and familiar diction than King William ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... of many others. Basile wrote independently of Straparola, though a few tales are common to both. He was very careful not to alter the tale as he took it down from the people. He told his stories with allusions to manners and customs, to old stories and mythology. He abounds in picturesque, proverbial expressions, with turns and many similes, and displays a delightful exuberance of fancy. A valuable translation, with notes, was written by Felix Liebrecht, in 1842, and an English one by John Edward ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... her death being followed within a month by that of his sister Margaret. Before another month was out, his father, as we have already said, had married again, and whether the new wife had proved the proverbial injusta noverca or not, his home must have been sufficiently altered by the double, if we may not say triple, calamity, to account for his leaving the dull monotony of his native village for the more stirring career of a soldier. ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... Brougham has become almost proverbial. His public labors extended over a period of upward of sixty years, during which he ranged over many fields—of law, literature, politics, and science—and achieved distinction in them all. How he contrived it, has been to many ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... to destroy all the male children. This order does not seem to have been long in force but was a terrible blow to a people like the Hebrews whose passion for children, and especially for male children, has always been proverbial. ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... could call his very own. But when the mid-watch had been mustered, the lookouts stationed, and the rest of them had settled themselves down for sleep between the guns, out of the way of passing feet, the forecastle of the Congress offered a very decent promenade, magnificent compared to that proverbial of the poops of small vessels—"two steps and overboard." Then began the steady pace to and fro, which to me was natural and inherited, easily maintained and consistent with thought—indeed, productive of it. Not every officer has this habit, but most acquire it. I have been told that, however ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the most cruel wretch of any woman with whom I was ever acquainted—yet she was nothing more than a slaveholder. She would deplore slavery as much as I did, and often told me she was much of an abolitionist as I was. She was constant in the declaration that her kind treatment to her slaves was proverbial. Thought I, then the Lord have mercy on the rest. She has often told me of the cruel treatment of the slaves on a plantation adjoining her father's in the low country of South Carolina. She says she ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of some half dozen editions—some of them very beautiful in typography and pictorial illustrations—of The Proverbial Philosophy of Mr. MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, reminds us of the observation of Dana, that something "resembling poetry" is oftentimes borne into instant and turbulent popularity, while a work of genuine character may be ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... discussion. The original application of the name is not agreed upon. Thompson says, "The term Saturnius seems to have possessed two distinct applications. In both of these, however, it simply meant 'as old as the days of Saturn,' and, like the Greek Ogugios, was a kind of proverbial expression for something antiquated. Hence (1) the rude rhythmical effusions, which contained the early Roman story, might be called Saturnian, not with reference to their metrical law, but to their antiquity; and (2) the term Saturnius ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... and embracing the Appalachian system of mountains. This section contains a population of nearly 3,000,000 souls. They belong for the most part to the most thrifty element of our complex population—an element whose toughness of moral and mental fiber is proverbial. The Scotch-Irish are famed the world over for their manly and moral vigor. And yet this people have sunken to the lowest depth of poverty and degradation—a depth from which, without the assistance of outside help, they can be lifted nevermore.[17] Is this condition of depravity ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... contemptuous appellation for Scottish Highland clansmen and native Irish, with reference to their naked hirsute limbs, and "As lively as a Red-Shank" is still a proverbial saying:—"And we came into Ireland, where they would have landed in the north parts. But I would not, because there the inhabitants were all Red-shanks."—Sir Walter ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... there was no conclusive evidence of any criminal act. The patient might be a confirmed opium-eater, and the symptoms heightened by deliberate deception. The cunning of these unfortunates is proverbial and is only equalled by their secretiveness and mendacity. It would be quite possible for this man to feign profound stupor so long as he was watched, and then, when left alone for a few minutes, to nip out of bed and help himself from some ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... at the mocking sign and the proverbial allusion to the gaping of the people of Beauce. He started up in wrath, and striking his fist on the table, "Monsieur Varin!" cried he, "do not cross your thumbs at me, or I will cut them off! Let me tell you the gentlemen of Beauce do not breakfast on gaping, but have plenty of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... bowling." The obviously accidental substitution of the word "batting" for "bowling" here, caused "the Nottingham Giant" to be credited with a novel cricketing performance, to which even he would hardly be equal. The proverbial Irish gun that could "shoot round a corner," would not be "in it" with a GUNN who could "bat against batting!" As a Correspondent (in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... and, in particular, the musicians with whom Christophe was most in touch, unprotestingly put up with the effrontery of the scaramouches of the Press, who laid down the law for them? There were absolute idiots among them, whose ignorance in omni re scibili was proverbial, though they were none the less invested with a sovereign authority in omni re scibili. They did not even take the trouble to write their articles and books: they had secretaries, poor starving creatures, who would have sold their souls, if they had had such things, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... what is noblest in ourselves. When we are merely studying an eccentricity, the method of our study is but a series of allowances. To begin to understand is to begin to sympathise; for comprehension comes only when we have stated another's faults and virtues in terms of our own. Hence the proverbial toleration of artists for their own evil creations. Hence, too, it came about that Dick Naseby, a high-minded creature, and as scrupulous and brave a gentleman as you would want to meet, held in a sort of affection the various human creeping ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her in a town in North Italy, almost without means. She was thinking of going on the stage, when chance provided her with another resource, which enabled her to reassert her position in society. She became a secret police agent, and soon was one of their most valuable members. In addition to the proverbial charm and wit of a Polish woman, she also possessed high linguistic attainments, and spoke Polish, Russian, French, German, English, and Italian, with almost equal fluency and correctness. Then she had that encyclopedic polish which impresses people much more than ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... each other. It was evident that their thoughts were similar, and that one could have known them without the expenditure of the proverbial penny. ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... centuries in tongue license and unmanly Billingsgate. This had been promoted by the example hourly ringing in their ears of vernile scurrility. Verna—that is, the slave born in the family—had each from the other one universal and proverbial character of foul-mouthed eloquence, which heard from infancy, could not but furnish a model almost unconsciously to those who had occasion publicly to practise vituperative rhetoric. What they remembered ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Returning in hot haste to the caucus, he burst into the room, exclaiming, "It's all right, my lords; the Archbishop says he will be d——d to hell if he doesn't throw the Bill out." The Duke of Wellington's "Twopenny d——n" has become proverbial; and Sydney Smith neatly rebuked a similar propensity in Lord Melbourne by saying, "Let us assume everybody and everything to be d—- d, and come to the point." The Miss Berrys, who had been the correspondents of Horace Walpole, and who carried down to the 'fifties the most refined ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... suddenly observed Sir William listening to our conversation behind the hinges of the door. Being an enormous man, he had screwed himself into a cramped posture and I was curious to see how long he would stick it out. It was indique that I should bring home the proverbial platitude that "listeners never hear any good ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... chiefest interest to himself, but, at the same time, he was looked upon as one of the best and staunchest Protestants of the day. His loyalty and devotedness to the throne of England were not only unquestionable, but proverbial throughout the country; but, at the same time, he regarded no clergyman, either of his own or any other creed, as a man whose intimacy was worth preserving, unless he was able to take off his three or four bottles of claret ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... who, with my paper (not Mr. Gladstone's version of my arguments) in hand, consult the original authorities, that they will find full justification for every statement I have made. But in order to dispose those who cannot, or will not, take that trouble, to believe that the proverbial blindness of one that judges his own cause plays no part in inducing me to speak thus decidedly, I beg their attention to the following examination, which shall be as brief as I can make it, of the seven propositions in which Mr. Gladstone professes to give a faithful ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... consists rather of a series of gulps than of articulate or intelligible statements. But then mark the singular courage and audacity of the whole proceeding. There are traditions still in the House of Commons of the marvellously stimulating effect upon followers of leaders, who were proverbial for their oratorical impotence. Everybody remembers the scornful description of Castlereagh which Byron gave to the world; and yet it has been said in some memoirs that the moment Castlereagh stood up and adjusted ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... cup to Diana and set it on a stool beside her. "Ahmed flatters himself I come to see him, Madame. I do not. I come to drink Gaston's coffee. It has become proverbial, the coffee of Gaston. I propitiate him every time I come with a new apparatus for making it. The last is a marvel of ingenuity. Excuse me, I go to drink it with the reverence it inspires. It is a rite, Madame, not a ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... visitors to the Chesapeake bay painted rosy pictures of its marine life, stressing the abundance, variety and tastiness of the fish and shellfish. Exploration and communication were chiefly by water: it was natural that emphasis be laid on water resources. Though it is proverbial that fish stories partake of fiction, in the case of John Smith and his successors, it is doubtful whether they were greatly exaggerated. This was a world where nature, especially in ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... the prisoner bad-tempered. She did not need to prove anything of the sort concerning John Borg. They all knew his terrible fits of anger; they all knew that his temper was proverbial in the community; that it had prevented him having friends and had made him many enemies. Was it not very probable, therefore, that the masked men were two such enemies? As to what particular motive actuated these two ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... fule can see what's flapped in his face,' with which bit of proverbial philosophy he suddenly left me. But Geordie thenceforth contented himself, in Mr. Craig's presence at least, with ominous head-shakings, equally ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... "The proverbial fate of listeners," he said easily; "but I don't blame you at all. No, 'he' isn't going to live here," he went on, grasping each brother's hand in turn, as Billy murmured faint introductions; "and what is more, he hereby asks everybody's pardon for the annoyance his little joke has caused. He might ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... at Pergamus, the rival school to Alexandria. He died at Cyprus, whither he probably withdrew on the death of Philometor. He was chiefly known for his critical writings, in which his opinions of poetry were thought so just that few dared to disagree with them; and his name soon became proverbial for a critic. Aristarchus had also the good fortune to be listened to in his lecture-room by one whose name is far more known than those of his two royal pupils. Moschus of Syracuse, the pastoral poet, was one of his hearers; but his fame must not be claimed for Alexandria; he can hardly have ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... not see, even in this tragedy so recent, how fast the terror and ruin of the massacre are already burning into glory around the victim? Far happier this fate than to have lived to be wished away; to have watched the decay of his own faculties; to have seen—perhaps even be—the proverbial ingratitude of statesmen; to have seen mean men preferred. Had he not lived long enough to keep the greatest promise that ever man made to his fellow men,—the practicable abolition of slavery? He had seen Tennessee, Missouri, and Maryland emancipate their slaves. He had seen Savannah, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... incomprehensible to you how they can suppose you to be happy. At the same time, you are not without a certain exultation: you cheat yourself from day to day with the thought that there are better things to come. Quite the contrary turns out to be the case. Your prospects, like the proverbial sacrifice of Mandrobulus, dwindle and contract from day to day. Gradually you get some faint glimmerings of the truth. It begins to dawn upon you at last, that those golden hopes were neither more nor less than gilded ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... were starred with brilliant detail reorganizations. The shipping department, first; the correspondence division next; the accounting department third, and he literally swept through the office like the proverbial new broom, caught up all the loose ends, and established a routine like clockwork. So successful was his work that the directors hastened to add ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... her experiments on the frock, the bonnet, and the hoop petticoat bought for her in London and sent like the proverbial pig in a poke, had taken to watching the Yankee peddling sloop, which, having lain for an hour at Patterson's on the Virginia shore, was now heading for the Browne place. It was pretty to see the sloop heel over under a beam wind ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... "Proverbial Fool-osophy," observed Henderson, contemptuously, as Burton handed him the book. "Shall I be a silly sheep like the rest of you, and leap over the bridge because your leader has? I suppose I must, though it's ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... little devil in France. And now, mademoiselle du Barry, having nothing further to add, I pray God to take you to His powerful and holy keeping." After this pleasantry the king, delighted at the gay termination of a somewhat serious scene, went, or rather vanished; for to use a proverbial expression, he ran like a thief. As soon as I was alone with my sister-in-law, I told her all that had passed. "I see," said she, "that the king is fearful of offending the duc de Choiseul, and giving annoyance to his daughters. But a step ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... is quite too severe for such a long stretch, strewn as it is with no less than twenty-four obstacles, and some of them pretty serious. The weather, too, is nearly always bad at Auteuil, even at the summer meetings, and the ill-luck of the Steeple-chase Society in this respect has become as proverbial as the good-fortune and favoring skies that smile upon the Societe d'Encouragement, its neighbor at Longchamps. It is not to be wondered at, then, that the English do not feel at home upon this dangerous track. They have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... make my appearance in London with merely the proverbial half-crown in my pocket, nor was I breathlessly expectant to find the streets paved with gold. Thanks chiefly to my savings in Dublin, my balance at my bankers' was sufficient to keep me for at least a year, and as soon as the editors returned from their summer holidays I was fortunate ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... of Seville is proverbial. "Who has not seen Seville, has not seen a wonder of loveliness," say the Spaniards. They are proud indeed of Seville, as they are of everything else belonging to them, and of themselves especially, often with less reason. We must carry the reader back about three hundred years, to ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... steadiness, they knew incessant change—the variety of a daisy's existence was proverbial. Nor was the surprise of being walked upon too alarming—it did not come to all—for they knew a way of bending beneath enormous pressure so that nothing broke, while sometimes it brought a queer, delicious pleasure, as when the bare feet of ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... number of men are employed to take care of, load and unload these animals when in camp. When on the march, these men perform duty as drivers, and otherwise look after their charge. Notwithstanding their proverbial obstinacy, these pack mules quickly learn the labor which they have to perform. After finishing their usual day's work, they often exhibit impatience to be relieved of their burdens. In the morning they are correspondingly reluctant about being loaded, and by their hostile demonstrations, they ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... for the worst of every man's character is already well known to the rest; but be his conduct what it will, the heart is commonly right enough—il luon cuor Lombardo is famed throughout all Italy, and nothing can become proverbial without an excellent reason. Little opportunity is therefore given to writers who carry the dark lanthorn of life into its deepest recesses—unwind the hidden wickedness of a Maskwell or a Monkton, develope the folds of vice, and spy ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... New Testaments which a clever boy would be certain to acquire either in the schoolroom or at church on Sundays. Shakespeare quotes or adapts biblical phrases with far greater frequency than he makes allusion to episodes in biblical history. But many such phrases enjoyed proverbial currency, and others, which were more recondite, were borrowed from Holinshed's 'Chronicles' and secular works whence he drew his plots. As a rule his use of scriptural phraseology, as of scriptural history, suggests youthful reminiscence and the assimilative tendency of the mind in a stage of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... of the army; Murat, whose courage had become proverbial; Murat, who might well have been taken by a sculptor as a model for the god of war; Murat, on one occasion, when he must have slept ill or breakfasted badly, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Well, Moses smiting the rock, Joseph's servants finding the cup in Benjamin's sack. There would be a center table, with books of a tranquil sort on it: The Whole Duty of Man, Baxter's Saints' Rest, Fox's Martyrs, Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, bound copies of The Missionary Herald and of Father Damon's Seaman's Friend. A melodeon; a music stand, with 'Willie, We have Missed You', 'Star of the Evening', 'Roll on Silver Moon', 'Are We Most There', 'I Would not Live Alway', ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... term. Thus, they often go to church on Sundays, and do not follow their avocation on Sunday nights. On New Year's Eve, their practice is to attend the Watch Night services, where, doubtless, poor people, they make those good resolutions that form the proverbial pavement of the road to Hell. Nearly all of them drink more or less, as they say that they could not live their life without stimulant. Moreover, their profession necessitates their walking ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... Fil's spelling was proverbial in the form, and was often of a purely phonetic character. Miss Strong had periodical crusades to improve it, but generally gave them up as a bad job, and recommended constant use ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... tranced, falling into all plans, just so they included the presence of his mother-in-law, without comment. To her proverbial apron strings he kept firm hold, literally not permitting her out of his sight. Even when he addressed Lilly or his daughter his gaze was straight for Mrs. Becker, and the flags of her moral support that he must have had the eyes to see ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... 'Publicani', as they were termed—might prove very dangerous enemies to any too zealous reformer. If the Roman governor there really wished to do his duty, what with the combined servility and double-dealing of the Orientals, the proverbial lying of the Greeks, and the grasping injustice of the Roman officials, he had a very difficult part to play. How Quintus had been playing it is not quite clear. His brother, in this admirable letter, ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... gardens; and Lebrun, the decorator of the apartments. If the Chateau de Vaux possessed a single fault with which it could be reproached, it was its grand, pretentious character. It is even at the present day proverbial to calculate the number of acres of roofing, the restoration of which would, in our age, be the ruin of fortunes cramped and narrowed as the epoch itself. Vaux-le-Vicomte, when its magnificent gates, supported by caryatides, have been passed through, has the principal front of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... alcoholic drinks like vino. In this connection it may be well to remark that I have never observed a case of delirium tremens nor of any of the other serious consequences that in other parts of the world frequently afflict the habitual drinker. The only ill effects I have seen are the proverbial headache and thirst, but even these are very rare and usually occur only after periods of long and uninterrupted indulgence. As a rule such effects are at once dispelled by taking hot taro-top soup or by ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... for having the gift of fascination is perhaps due not to prettiness of feature more than to the brilliancy or sweetness of their ready smile. That Southern women are charming and "feminine" and lovable is proverbial. How many have noticed that Southern women always bow with the grace of a flower bending in the breeze and a smile like sudden sunshine? The unlovely woman bows as though her head were on a hinge and her smile sucked ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... been due to the kindness of a belated winter storm that had surprised every one the last of March. After that, March, as if ashamed of her untoward behavior, donned her sweetest smiles and "went out" like the proverbial lamb. With the coming of April, and the stirring of life in the trees, Billy, too, began to be restless; and at the earliest possible moment she made her plans for her long anticipated "digging ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... Pericles, which, if we reckon from the first entrance of Pericles, into politics, extended from about 466 to 429, has become proverbial as a period of extraordinary artistic and literary splendor. The real ascendancy of Pericles began in 447, and the achievements most properly associated with his name belong to the succeeding fifteen years. Athens at this time possessed ample material resources, derived in great measure from ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... which is worthy of especial notice, is, that conscience is much more readily acted upon by examples, than by precepts.—In communicating a knowledge of duty, this principle in Nature has become proverbial; but it is not less true with respect to the executive powers, in approving or reproving that which is right or wrong. It is the prerogative of conscience to excite us to approve or condemn the conduct of others, as well as our own; and this is regulated, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... know as much of certain sciences as they did four thousand years ago. Their applications of mechanics, engineering, dyeing, and embalming still remain to us "lost arts." The wisdom of the Egyptians was proverbial, and the great scholars of other countries made pilgrimages to Egypt to study philosophy, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... learned, and not wanting the countenance of Cicero, is confuted by the larger experience of New England. On the whole, I think it safer to apply here the rule of interpretation which now generally obtains in regard to antique cosmogonies, myths, fables, proverbial expressions, and knotty points generally, which is, to find a common-sense meaning, and then select whatever can be imagined the most opposite thereto. In this way we arrive at the conclusion, that the Greeks objected to the questioning of candidates. ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... considered preeminently the Society officer. He went to all the receptions, all the afternoon teas, all the bridge parties, all the dinners. He was an adept at tennis and golf and a first-rate shot. His elegance was proverbial, and the beautiful cut of his tunics, breeches, jackets, and coats was universally admired. The way his harness was kept and the shape of his high boots were a marvel. To say all this is to give some idea of the change he suddenly experienced in his habits and his tastes during ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... afar," sweeping straight at his prey, and instantly, as if by miracle, the stinging rain has ceased and the noxious cloud vanished from overhead, to be re-formed no more. This has always seemed very extraordinary to me; for in other matters gnats do not appear to possess even that proverbial small dose of intellect for which we give most insects credit. Before the advent of the dragon-fly it has perhaps happened that I have been vigorously striking at them, making it very unpleasant for them, and also killing and disabling many hundreds—a larger number than the most voracious ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... away, ashamed of their fickleness. But reinforcements were continually arriving. And to these new-comers all that had been said in gossip had to be repeated and repeated: the same questions, the same answers, the same exclamations, the same proverbial philosophy, the same prophecies recurred in all parts of the Square with an uncanny iterance. Well-dressed men spoke to mere professional loiterers; for this unparalleled and glorious sensation, whose uniqueness grew every instant more ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... easy to prescribe sacrifices for another, or even for one's self, provided always that they be made before the necessity arises. All parents are models in their treatment of each other's offspring, rivalling, in this regard, even those proverbial patterns who never took the initial step ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... ask me?" she began. "Then I feel that I must admit to you that the Ostrander pride is proverbial. Oliver may think he would be happy if he married your daughter under these changed conditions; but I should be fearful of the reaction which would certainly follow when he found that old shames are not so easily outlived. There is temper in the family, ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... as Porter does in his, of the severe suffering and dreadful weather experienced. For twenty-one days the Essex struggled with the furious blasts, the heavy seas, and the bitter weather, which have made the passage round Cape Horn proverbial for hardship among seamen. On the 3d of March, he writes, a sea was shipped which burst in, on one side of the ship and from one end to the other, all the ports through which the guns are fired, and which, for such a passage, are closed and securely ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... Master of Ballantrae," "The Child's Garden of Verses," and "Across the Plains" had been each of them one shade less perfectly done than they were, everyone would have seen that they were all parts of the same message; but by succeeding in the proverbial miracle of being in five places at once, he has naturally convinced others that he was five different people. But the real message of Stevenson was as simple as that of Mohamet, as moral as that of Dante, as confident as that of Whitman, and as practical as that of James Watt. The conception ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... additional legislation for the Philippines. Nothing better can be done for the islands than to introduce industrial enterprises. Nothing would benefit them so much as throwing them open to industrial development. The connection between idleness and mischief is proverbial, and the opportunity to do remunerative work is one of the surest preventatives of war. Of course no business man will go into the Philippines unless it is to his interest to do so; and it is immensely to the interest of the islands that he should go in. It is therefore necessary that the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... gossips as a matter of policy. A few disgruntled men on a ship can shoot morale to hell, and on a ship this size the Exec is the morale officer. But I was torn between two desires. I wanted Allyn to go on, but I didn't want to hear what Allyn had to say. I was like the proverbial hungry mule standing halfway between two haystacks of equal size and attractiveness. And like the mule I would stand there turning my head one way and the other ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... thoughts of the land of their birth," it continues, "seems to enter their minds, although the Irish people have been proverbial for their attachment to their ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... as white as the proverbial sheet and trembled like the aspen of similar associations. ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... graduating, Mr. Hayes began the study of the law in the office of Thomas Sparrow, of Columbus. Mr. Sparrow was a lawyer of high standing, whose integrity was proverbial. Although a Democrat in politics, he was regarded by his political adversaries as the purest of pure men. This worthy instructor certifies to the "great diligence" and "good moral character" of his student on the latter's ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... ascribes all mischief and infamy to them, and his hatred is only exceeded by his credulity. He cites all the arguments in favour of the salt statue at Usdum as the identical one into which Lot's wife was changed, adds some of his own, and presents her as "a type of doubt and heresy." With the proverbial facility of dogmatists in translating any word of a dead language into anything that suits their purpose, he says that the word in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis which is translated "statue" or "pillar," may be translated ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... frequently, impaired their constitutions by study, or careless inattention to their health, and the violence of their passions bearing a proportion to the vigour of their intellects, the sword's destroying the scabbard has become almost proverbial, and superficial observers have inferred from thence, that men of genius have commonly weak, or to use a more fashionable phrase, delicate constitutions. Yet the contrary, I believe, will appear to be the fact; ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... about twenty years after Fulton's first voyage from New York to Albany, which required seven days. Steamboats had been put on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, but these crafts were of primitive construction—awkward as to shape and slow as to speed. The frequency of boiler explosions was proverbial for many years. The lads, Gentry and Lincoln, returned home duly and the employer was well satisfied with ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... charitable types helped it, at the bottom of the page, with the title of "Love at First Sight." On those remarkable words Amelius seized, with the desperation of the drowning man, catching at the proverbial straw. They offered him a chance of pleading his cause, this time, with a happy indirectness of allusion at which not even a young lady's susceptibility ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... is plain. Lest in naught, and unwittingly, I should betray your hospitality; lest, in the caprice of will which in our world is proverbial among the other sex, and from which even a Gy is not free, your adorable daughter should deign to regard me, though a Tish, as if I were a civilised An, and—and—and—-" "Court you as her spouse," put in Aph-Lin, gravely, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... inspiring sight, and it was a pleasure to those of us who were lucky enough to have our sealegs on to watch the big ship bury her nose in the mountainous waves, scattering the spray in great clouds and then rising again as buoyantly as the proverbial cork. The decks were not a pleasant point of vantage, however, even for the most enthusiastic admirer of nature, as a big wave would now and then break over the forward part of the vessel, drenching everything and everybody within ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... farmers and their friends, and when the cattle had been driven off under the escort of infantry and cavalry soldiers, the clergyman who claimed the tithes was not always any nearer to the getting of that which the law declared to be his own. The familiar proverbial saying about the ease with which a horse may be brought to the water and the difficulty there may be in getting him to drink when he has been brought there was illustrated aptly and oddly enough in the difference ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to pool their poverty in the interests of progress. To ask the landlord for his blessing seemed out of the question, in view of the fact that the printer was two weeks behind in his board. The girl had the proverbial clothes on her back. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... derived from the ancient Manichees, spread rapidly through Provence and Languedoc. The clergy of the Catholic Church were regarded with loathing and contempt. "Viler than a priest," "I would as soon be a priest," became proverbial expressions. The Papacy had lost all authority with all classes, from the great feudal princes down to the cultivators of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... garden; "out of Weathersfield" Wethersfield (the modern spelling), Connecticut, was famous for its onions (there is still a red onion called "Red Weathersfield"), until struck by a blight about 1840; "old Egyptians" ancient Egypt was proverbial for ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... shadows, falls a clear, still radiance, like beams from an eye of blessing; and, within the circle of that divine illumination, beauty and goodness, truth and love, purity and cheerfulness blend like primal colors into the clear harmony of light. The author of Proverbial Philosophy has a passage not unworthy of note in this connection, when he speaks of the train which attends the just ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... A proverbial expression, meaning that, as he did not absolutely kill Alaeddin, though doing what was (barring a miracle) certain to cause his death, he could not be said to be his slayer; a piece of casuistry not peculiar to the East, cf. the ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... latter feature of the school will arrest his attention is almost certain. Utopia belongs to a county which is proverbial for the dullness of its rustics, but there is no sign of dullness on the face of any Utopian child. On the contrary, so radiantly bright are the faces of the children that something akin to sunshine seems always to fill the school. When he gets ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... competition of the importations of New Zealand lamb has reduced the price of English lamb to an unremunerative level. This thin dry stuff bears about the same resemblance to real fat home-grown lamb, as do the proverbial chalk and cheese to each other; but it is good enough for the restaurants and eating-houses; and the consumer who lacks the critical faculty of the connoisseur in such matters, devours his "Canterbury" lamb, well disguised with mint ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... relates some anecdotes of Braddock, which give a familiar picture of him in the fashionable life in which he had mingled in London, and are of value, as letting us into the private character of a man whose name has become proverbial in American history. "Braddock," says Walpole, "is a very Iroquois in disposition. He had a sister, who, having gamed away all her little fortune at Bath, hanged herself with a truly English deliberation, leaving a note on the table ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... to that city by force of arms from which he was driven by the power of the law. But, however, this is a case common to him and to many others who are very unlike him. But this is quite true which men are in the habit of saying of this Plancus in a proverbial way, that it is quite impossible for him to die unless his legs are broken.[50] They are broken, and still he lives. But this, like many others, is a service that has ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... very much as that proverbial bear that dreams of pears might accept an exceedingly mellow "swan-egg"—really liking the gift, but accustomed to have his pleasures and pains ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... perfect August morning poured down upon the white beach, dotted here and there with ambitious bathers, who had grasped Time firmly by his venerated forelock, and fared forth with the proverbial early bird for a morning dip in a deceitfully ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... course it was permissible for the thirty-five thousand poor white people of Charleston to talk about the Saint Cecilia, and to indulge in the thrilling sensation that comes to the proverbial cat when she looks at a queen. Some of them, moved by curiosity, even ventured within half a block of the Hibernian Hall to observe from afar ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... of the red scout was not forgotten, and when they spoke it was in whispers, while frequent pauses were made, in answer to the faintest possible "'Sh!" of Lena-Wingo, who was conducting matters with his proverbial caution. Minturn saw something suggestive in the fact that their guide was leading them away from instead of toward the river, for the depths of the wood was not the place to look for the canoe, of which they stood in so much need just then. He suspected there was another reason, which would soon ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... that law. Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. It destroys the power to do right, which is man's true freedom. The effect of vicious habit in diminishing a man's ability to resist temptation is proverbial. But what is habit but a constant repetition of wrong decisions, every single one of which reacts upon the faculty that put them forth, and renders it less strong and less energetic, to do the contrary. Has the old debauchee, just ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... his brawny arm up to the elbow, and putting his full strength to the blow, gave the Knight a buffet that might have felled an ox. But his adversary stood firm as a rock. A loud shout was uttered by all the yeomen around; for the Clerk's cuff was proverbial amongst them, and there were few who, in jest or earnest, had not had the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... genial of men, although it kept him toiling like a slave to keep a score of mouths in bread. The third Mrs. Heffner became the mother of 9 children in ten years, and the contentment and happiness of the couple were proverbial. One day, in the fall of 1885, the father of the 41 children was crossing a railroad track and was run down by a locomotive and instantly killed. His widow and 24 of the 42 children ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... tentacles. It had no head, just body and members and a row of eyes completely around it. The top end of the barrel-body was a diaphragm stretched as tight as a drum head, and that was all. It was pushing a little coppery cart and tore right past us like the proverbial bat out of Hell. It didn't even notice us, although I thought the eyes on my side shifted a little ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... nunnery, "that she may not," said the unhappy queen, "run the risk of having such a lot as I have"? Does he know that John Knox was possessed by a mad passion of love for Mary Stuart? It has always been thought otherwise—that in point of fact he held her in contempt; but as it is proverbial that "nippin' and scartin' (figurative of course) is Scotch folks' wooin'," there may be truth in the new discovery. But true or not true, it is enough to make the bold Reformer blush standing on the top of his pillar in the necropolis of Glasgow: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... white as the proverbial sheet, which means much whiter than some sheets, Elmer Rogers', for example, was slowly rising from his chair. One hand was pressed against his forehead and he looked as if he were dazed, stunned, suffering ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... experienced men, though they failed us in the Imperial Preference Conference and, partially, on the Indentured Labour question. Yet we hope that the presence in the Conference of men of Indian birth may prove to be the proverbial "thin end of the wedge," and may have convinced their colleagues that, while India was still a Dependency, India's sons ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... the Prince of Darkness, saith proverbial philosophy, let us concede his due. If, then, a single ray of good illuminates at some happy moment the dark spirit of these roughs, let it be recorded with that bare, unfledged truth which is so much better a bird than uncandor with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... feel so native to the earth as formerly. That is a loss. Yet a poorer walker it would have been hard to find, and on even my most prolonged wanderings the end of each day usually brought extreme fatigue. This, too, although my only companion was slow—slower than the poor proverbial snail or tortoise—and I would leave her half a mile or so behind to force my way through unkept hedges, climb hills, and explore woods and thickets to converse with every bird and shy little beast and scaly creature I could discover. But mark what follows. In the late afternoon ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... go look for them things. The harder you hit the trail, and can stand it, the quicker you'll get built up." Then Overland, realizing that his companion was worse than tired, that he was dispirited, became as wily as the proverbial serpent. His method, however, could hardly be compared with the dove's conciliatory cooing. "You sure are a bum ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the really picturesque industries of the Union which is the breeding of ostriches, "the birds with the golden feathers." Ask any man who raises these ungainly birds and he will tell you that with luck they are far better than the proverbial goose who laid the eighteen-karat eggs. The combination of F's—femininity, fashion and feathers—has been productive of many fortunes. The business is inclined to be fickle because it depends upon the female temperament. The ostrich feather, however, is always more ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... of shooting, trapping, and fishing as the proverbial duck takes to water, and could follow a deer trail almost in the dark. He had brought down all sorts of game, and his left shoulder showed deep scars dating back to a fierce face-to-face fight with a bear, in which he had, after a tough struggle, ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... limit to such slowness. I myself set a pace, which I knew to be reasonable, and men who straggled interviewed me next day. By this policy the evening's work was completed in two-thirds of the time it would otherwise have taken, and my disregard of proverbial maxims probably saved the ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... need of the proverbial feather. Mrs. Muldoon made a grab at the settle but missed it. She caught at a chair, but that gave way. It was the ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... conuertit. Apparently a proverbial expression. Cp. Quintilian Declam. iv. 10: "Faciamus potius de fine remedium, de necessitate solatium"; Jer. Adv. Rufin. iii. 2: "Habeo gratiam quod facis de necessitate uirtutem"; Ep. 54. 6 (Hilberg): "Arripe, quaeso, occasionem ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... looks like madness. Haydn's case was not the tenth. His salary from Count Morzin was only 20 pounds with board and lodging; he was not making anything substantial by his compositions; and his teaching could not have brought him a large return. Yet, with the proverbial rashness of his class, he must needs take a wife, and that, too, in spite, of the fact that Count Morzin never kept a married man in his service! "To my mind," said Mozart, "a bachelor lives only half a life." It is ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... piggish habits and propensities so conspicuous in the inhabitants of certain places in England, and whose partiality for swine's flesh, is proverbial. The sheepish manners of our students and school-boys, may also be attributed to the mutton so generally alloted to them. I might continue my observations, ad infinitum. I might say, that the wisdom of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... aspect. Mildred Jocelyn is an unusual girl. Until to-day I thought her a trifle cold, and even incapable of very deep feeling. I thought pride—not a common pride, you know, but the traditional and proverbial pride of a Southern woman—her chief characteristic, but the girl was fairly volcanic with feeling to-night. I believe she would starve in very truth to save her father, though of course we won't permit any such folly as they are meditating, and I do not believe there is any sacrifice, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... sure that he liked the arrangement. He was wondering whether lions were gifted with the proverbial memory of elephants. If so, and if the big cat should get loose in the night, Chunky knew what would happen to himself. The boy determined to sleep with one eye open, his rifle beside his bed. He would die fighting bravely ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... been secreted in any of the ordinary ways known to smugglers. Hence her candid acknowledgment of its possession was less an evidence of the lady's superiority to the majority of her sex in the matter of "beating the government" than of her having been confronted with the proverbial choice of ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... of pudding, goose, ham, mutton, beef, and pickles—all packed on one plate—I suppose it rarely falls to the lot of the more polished Frenchman to behold. Well might they look aghast at the miracle required of them. It is the proverbial hospitality of the Englishman, enacted over again, which always imagines its guest starving. Considering that not one word of the other's language was understood on either side, a very kindly feeling sprang up between us during the afternoon, and the time of departure arrived all too ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... thought anything of even his somewhat prolonged absence on the hill, for he usually dropped round when luncheon was pretty nearly done. There was always something kept warm for 'old Dugald,' as we all called him, and I declare it did every one of us good to see him eat. His appetite was certainly the proverbial appetite ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... way Carmack was struck down. Nothing cute and fancy, no frills or improvisation—just the proverbial blunt instrument, after which the killer simply walked out of there. Believe me, I know about these things. The very simplicity is the killer's protection. You can bet no trace will ever be found of that blunt instrument, and naturally he left no evidence coming ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... I mean to say. When I went into the church for my early service I found that some one had ripped off the wainscoting in a half a dozen places and even pried up the altar. It’s the most outrageous thing I ever knew. You’ve heard of the proverbial poverty of the church mouse,—what do you suppose anybody could want to raid a simple little country chapel for? And more curious yet, the church plate was untouched, though the closet where it’s kept was upset, as ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... a proposal touches a girl's pride and may prove the entering-wedge of love; hence the proverbial folly of accepting a girl's first refusal as final. And if she accepts, the thought that she, the most perfect being in the world, prefers him above all men, inflates his pride to the point of exultation; thenceforth he can talk and think only in "three pil'd hyperboles." ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... mud and snow to the proverbial end of all things, always followed by the same crowd, and stared at by all the inhabitants of the houses we passed. They seemed very timid, and inclined to run away directly we turned round. Still, their curiosity, especially respecting my sealskin ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Dramatic, sensitive, artistic, intuitive, he was often rendered inarticulate by the very force and variety of his feelings. A little, rotund, ugly man, with the eyes of a dreamer, the wide, mobile mouth of a humourist, the ears of a comic ol' clo'es man. His generosity was proverbial, and it ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... Notwithstanding the proverbial variety of the climate, there is no nation under the sun so fond of Pic-Nic parties as the English; and yet how seldom are their pleasant dreams of rural repasts in the open air fated to ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... stunted gums made it difficult for him to see far from where he stood. The level stretch along the margin of the pool showed clear enough, but around him the vegetation was so dense that, unless he had some clue to guide him, to prosecute a search within it was like trying the proverbial search for a needle in ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... as taxidermy the making and repairing of robes will bring in many a dollar to the worker in the middle and northern states. A stitch in time (on a robe) often saves more than the proverbial nine, and the better the quality the more anxious the owner to have it put ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... already been attempted. Nora knew well that she must act, she must do something—what, was the puzzle. Squire O'Shanaghgan was one of the most generous, open-hearted, and affectionate of men. His generosity was proverbial; he was a prime favorite with his tenants; but he had, like many another Irishman of his type, a certain hard phase in his character—he could, on occasions, be almost cruel. He had taken a great dislike ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... was no conclusive evidence of any criminal act. The patient might be a confirmed opium-eater, and the symptoms heightened by deliberate deception. The cunning of these unfortunates is proverbial and is only equalled by their secretiveness and mendacity. It would be quite possible for this man to feign profound stupor so long as he was watched, and then, when left alone for a few minutes, to nip out ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... "Sanson" (Samson) is Foerster's most recent (1904) suggestion to replace the word "lion" which stands in all the MSS. Solomon's name has always been synonymous with wisdom, and Alexander's generosity was proverbial in the Middle Ages. For Alexander, cf. Paul Meyer, "Alexandre le Grand dans la litterature francaise du moyen age", 2 vols. (Paris, 1886), vol ii., pp. 372-376, and Paget Toynbee, "Dante Studies and ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... (It must be remembered that the country gentlemen had recently given evidence of their patriotic zeal by the inauguration of the Volunteer movement; and the ability and eloquence of the Irish Bar at that period is proverbial). Thirdly, he regarded Protestant ascendancy as a fundamental necessity. It is true that other politicians at the time saw that they were faced with a serious difficulty: the very principles to which they ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... and traditions of her family, a family bound up—as it is quite unnecessary to explain to any one in good society—with all that is most venerable and heroic in the history of the Republic. Miss Carew never relaxed the proverbial hospitality of her house, even when she remained its sole representative. She continued to preside at her table with dignity and state, and to set an example of excessive modesty and gentle decorum to a generation of restless ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... dog's nose is, of course, proverbial, and I have only put a few tests to Lola in this particular, yet, such as they are (proving perhaps no more than is already known) I will here set down. I put the first of these tests to her on the 17 April, ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... was one of these fortunate individuals, and his luck was proverbial throughout Australia. If there was any speculation for which Mark Frettlby went in, other men would surely follow, and in every case the result turned out as well, and in many cases even better than they expected. He had come out in ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... of the land on the upper parts of this river has always been proverbial: "as rich as Dove" being applied to any spot highly forced. The land has a perpetual verdure, and the spring-floods of the river are very gratifying to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... Chukchis who had seen them, we might wander over those desolate plains for a month without coming across the stove-pipe, which was the only external sign of their subterranean habitation. It would be far worse than the proverbial search for a ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... lead you southward. My hacienda lies but twenty miles from here, and from this moment, it is placed at your disposition. Not in the polite terms of the proverbial Spanish etiquette which presents the visitor with everything and yet nothing at all, but actually. Indeed, I shall expect to see you there soon. The life ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... reason, the concentration of talent in the government contrasts, in Austria, more violently with the obscurantism of the provinces than in any other state. Not only does the overpowering intelligence of the chancery of state awe the nations beneath its rule, but the proverbial good nature and patriarchal cordiality of the imperial family win every heart. The army is a mere machine in the hands of the government; a standing army, in which the soldier serves for life or for the period of twenty years, during which he necessarily loses all sympathy with his fellow-citizens, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... aiding Sheppard in his Escape. The prudence of Mr. Pitt caus'd a Separation between him and his Brother the first Night, as a Means to prevent any ensuing Danger, by having two Heads, which (according to our Proverbial Saying) ...
— The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard • Daniel Defoe
... Rocco, as usual, had also lost at terziglio; and this gave a somewhat gray cast to his ideas, notwithstanding his proverbial carelessness of every mundane interest. That hole in his pocket, that continuous dropping, made him reflect. Would it not have been better for him to give the same amount ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... to pressure from the north. It had long been proverbial that white the eight provinces of the Kwanto could defy the whole empire, 0-U (Oshu and Ushu-Mutsu and Dewa) could defy ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... experimenters were detected in the most shameless and determined impostures." This sentence fell among the savants like a bomb, and "great was the fall thereof." Some have described it as an ad captandum vulgus use of words, and others have called it rash, and unduly sceptical. It is proverbial that doctors disagree, and it would be wonderful indeed if they were of one mind on ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... not say he was aware of the proverbial character of the phenomenon. He was a very eccentric man. He treated his dogs as friends, and buried them with ceremony. He quarrelled with the cure of his parish, who remarked that he could not take his dogs to heaven with him. I will go nowhere, said he, where ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... all, and pregnant with good medical philosophy. "Keep your saliva in your mouth to help to digest your food with," said he, "and do not spit it all over my carpet." Very wholesome counsel. And, seriously, who can say how much the pallid face, the proverbial indigestion of our country, even consumption itself, may not be owing to this constant drain, which deprives the stomach of a secretion which nature provided for the most important purposes in the manufacture of the blood, and which she certainly did not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... like the proverbial doctors, and purists shudder at the jumble of orders, periods and nationalities, a tyro may well hesitate. An opinion of the building will no more suit everybody than does the building itself; but one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... aware that the self-illusions of inventors have become proverbial, but I have, nevertheless, the most complete certainty of having discovered an infallible means of bringing the produce of the entire world into France, and reciprocally to transport ours, with a very important ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... tint, with the green feathery branches beneath whose shade they hang, and give a richness to the landscape they adorn which adds greatly to its attractions. And the utility of the palm has been at all times proverbial. A Persian poem celebrated its three hundred and sixty uses. The Greeks, with more moderation, spoke of it as furnishing the Babylonians with bread, wine, vinegar, honey, groats, string and ropes of all kinds, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... man. "His name, I believe is, Villiers. I shortened it to Villain, and the natives hereabouts have bobbed it down to Vil. But he'll have to breakfast alone this morning, as usual. I've changed my mind. You see, I share the proverbial weakness of the clergy for a good meal. And against so charming a hostess, old Vil hasn't a chance in the world." Dismounting, the Reverend Len Christie removed his saddle and bridle and, with a resounding slap on the flank turned the pinto loose. "Get along, old Paint, and ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... after his death which neatly illustrates his lack of worldliness. His modesty was proverbial, and once Daubigny, on introducing him to an American picture dealer, warned him not to ask less than five thousand francs for the first picture he sold to the man. The American went to Daumier's atelier, and seeing a picture on the easel, asked, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Phrygia; of Guneus, Prothous, and Eurypylus, in Crete as well as in Libya. The obscure poem of Lycophron enumerates many of these dispersed and expatriated heroes, whose conquest of Troy was indeed a "Cadmean" victory (according to the proverbial phrase of the Greeks), wherein the sufferings of the victor were little inferior to those of the vanquished. It was particularly among the Italian Greeks, where they were worshipped with very special solemnity, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... that the sect in question is proverbial for charitable institutions. One vital principle is preserved. Surely this is a redeeming virtue. Catholics are untiring in ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... Knave to catch another, is a proverbial Saying of great Antiquity and Repute in this Kingdom. Thus the vigilant Vintner, notwithstanding all his little Arts of base Brewings, abridging his Bottles, and connecting his Guests together, does not always ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... or Obstetric Dispute, a still more roughly executed satire (published by Tegg in September, 1814), refers to the wretched impostor Southcott. Doctors called in to report on her condition "differed" according to their proverbial custom. Three of these learned pundits may be seen in consultation in the right-hand corner. A blatant and irascible cobbler, standing on a stool, loudly proclaims the woman to be "a cheat!" "a faggot!" "a bag of deceit!" "a blasphemous old hag!" The indignant Joanna, far ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... there is nothing in the world of mental endeavour in which they will not make a success. It is a curious fact that these people seldom carry out what they were first trained for, and in fact in the course of their lives they are likely to change their profession or vocation as many times as the proverbial cat ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... had planned and executed the escape of Mary, with the well-devised cunning for which the race is proverbial, had told his companions that he would rise before day and pursue the same direction in advance of them, and endeavor to kill a deer for their next night's meal. Thus his absence created no suspicion, and the ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... time, it may be recollected, Master Larrikins' tale with a very good pinch of the proverbial salt, believing he only intended to 'pull my leg'; but when on the present occasion the brig began to labour heavily and the green seas, rolling over from the open sea beyond Ushant, the wind having come on to blow a regular stiff sou'-wester, topped our bulwarks and ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... livery; that, in a word, he was his wife's wife. They reversed the parts indeed, down to the least particular; it was the husband who showed himself the ministering angel in the hour of pain, while the wife displayed the apathy and heartlessness of the proverbial man. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books; I therefore filled all the little spaces that occurr'd between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality, as the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue; it being more difficult for a man in want, to act always honestly, as, to use here one of those proverbs, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... for it is said that no phrase becomes a proverb until after a century's experience of its truth. In England it is proverbial to judge of men by the company they keep. Judge of the Cardinal de Rohan from his ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... properly Melitides) was an Athenian of proverbial stupidity, whose name was synonymous for blockhead. Eustathius on Odyss. x. 552, says that he could not count above five or distinguish ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... I'd bought from Rivers to Philip Cabot, who had seen the revolver Mr. Fleming had bought, and he recognized it. It hasn't been established just how Rivers got the Leech & Rigdon, and never will be; the only people who knew were Rivers and Dunmore, and both are in the proverbial class of non-talebearers. I assume that Dunmore gave it to Rivers as a sort of down payment on Rivers's silence, and to get rid ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... the master. Everybody knew "Mliss," as she was called, throughout the length and height of Red Mountain. Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce, ungovernable disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character, were in their way as proverbial as the story of her father's weaknesses, and as philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with and fought the schoolboys with keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She followed the trails with a woodman's ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... have turned into an enemy at the very moment when she so obviously needed the support of her sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of husbands to their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind, reason obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between smoke and fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher's hints, and the corroboration of his own impressions, while they deepened his pity also increased his constraint, since, whichever way he ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... from them. How can a Jew reside in that porkopolitan municipality? The brutishness of the Bowery butchers is proverbial. A late number of Leslie's Pictorial represents a Bowery butcher's wagon crowded with sheep and calves so densely that their heads are protruded against the wheels, which revolve with the utmost speed, the brutal driver ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... bow and arrows to conserve my ammunition-supply, but so quick was the little animal that I had no time to draw and fit a shaft. In fact my dinner was a hundred yards away and going like the proverbial bat when I dropped my six-shooter on it. It was a pretty shot and when coupled with a good dinner made me quite ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fleets, we set sail for Iceland in June. The fight with the liquor traffic which the Mission had been waging had now been successful in driving the sale of intoxicants from the North Sea by international agreement; but the proverbial whiskey still continued its filibustering work in the Scotch seaports. As our men at times had to frequent these ports we were anxious to make it easier for them to walk straight while they ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... though it is almost proverbial, is only comparative. The faculties of the mind, like the dexterity of the limbs, need exercise. The dancer's strength is in his feet; the blacksmith's in his arms; the market porter is trained to ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... unimportant element of influence and success, next to a becoming spirituality, is the social-religious element. This is proverbial of the Allen ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... his position and with an affectation of carelessness began throwing the rings. It was really a remarkable exhibition, for notwithstanding the fact that his hand trembled like the proverbial aspen leaf, he succeeded in striking the board almost in the centre every time; but somehow or other most of them failed to catch on the hooks and fell into the net. When he finished his innings, he had only scored ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a ship bound for China, he set sail with the proverbial light heart and light pair of breeches, to which we may add light pockets. His heart soon became somewhat heavier when he discovered that his captain was a tyrant, whose chief joy appeared to consist in making other people miserable. Bill ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... very small seed. Inasmuch as the mustard which is systematically planted for fodder by Old World farmers grows with the greatest luxuriance in Palestine, and the comparison between the size of its seed and the plant's great height was already proverbial in the East when Jesus used it, evidence strongly favors this wayside weed. Indeed, the late Doctor Royle, who endeavored to prove that it was the shrub that was referred to, finally found that it does not ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... influenced by a stronger character than his own. At the moment he's being influenced by you to go to Confession, and say his rosary, and hear Mass, and enjoy all the other treats that our holy religion gives us. In addition to that he's enjoying them like the proverbial stolen fruit. You were very severe with me when I demurred at hearing his confession without authority from his father; but I don't like stolen fruit, and I'm not sure even now if I was right in yielding on that ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... expression with Frederic when he was angry, and which has since become proverbial among the Prussian and other German officers. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... expressing many colloquial terms, and the result was often very funny. Doubtless it was due to his not hearing well; it was some years since he had left America, and consorted with people of culture. His dreadful solecisms were quite proverbial in Lancia. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... life and death, affecting sounds, Are only varied modes of endless being.' Act ii. sc. 8. 'Directs the planets with a careless nod.' Ib. 'Far as futurity's untravell'd waste.' Act iv. sc. 1. 'And wake from ignorance the western world.' Act iv. sc. 2. 'Through hissing ages a proverbial coward, The tale of women, and the scorn of fools.' Act iv. sc. 3. 'No records but the records of the sky.' Ib. '... thou art sunk beneath reproach.' Act v. sc. 2. 'Oh hide me from myself.' Act ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... found his sister, no longer the magnificent queen whose rich toilets were as proverbial as her beauty; but a lovely, unpretending woman, without rouge, without jewels, clad in a dress of India muslin, which was confined at the waist by a simple sash of pale ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... controversy, and others from political ambition. During the first centuries of its existence, and while Mussulman learning flourished under the patronage of the Caliphs, religious questions were discussed by the learned with all the proverbial virulence of theological hatred. The chief of these questions respected the origin of the Koran, the nature of God, predestination and free will, and the grounds of human salvation. The question, whether ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... beasts that can afford to prostitute their ears to ornamental purposes. The only other beast that I can think of at this moment which has tufted ears is the lynx. Now the lynx is a tree cat, and there is proverbial wisdom in the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... of India was proverbial long before the Christian era. She supplied Nineveh and Babylon, and later Greece and Rome, with steel, zinc, pearls, precious stones, cotton, silk, sugar-cane, ivory, indigo, pepper, cinnamon, incense and other commodities. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... army. Clearing away the crowd, he seized the leader's line, and distending his lungs, he shot out in a voice that could have been heard a mile a series of whoops, oaths, adjectives, and billingsgate that would have silenced the proverbial London fish vender. The mules recognized the "dilec" at once, pricked up their ears and took the load out in ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... this imposition, I should have purchased at Baltimore a "through ticket," as it is called; that is, should have paid in advance for the whole distance; but the advertisement did not inform me that this was necessary. No wonder that "tricks upon travellers" should have become a proverbial expression, for they are a much-enduring race, more or less plundered in ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... satisfaction of seeing that it was not lost. Nothing could present a finer display of true friendship founded upon a sense of equality, mutual interest, and good-will, than the Irishman and his pig. The Arabian and his horse are proverbial; but had our English neighbors known as much of Ireland as they did of Arabia, they would have found as signal instances of attachment subsisting between the former as between the latter; and, perhaps, when the superior comforts of an Arabian hut are contrasted with the squalid poverty of ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... plus ultra or impassable limit of European navigation, and had accordingly received its ordinary name from a negative term in the Portuguese language, as implying that there was no navigation beyond; and respecting which a proverbial saying was then current, of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... planning the expedition, it had seemed so important to get the men a foothold in Florida that I was willing to risk everything for it. But this important post once in our possession, it began to show some analogies to the proverbial elephant in the lottery. To hold it permanently with nine hundred men was not, perhaps, impossible, with the aid of a gunboat (I had left many of my own regiment sick and on duty in Beaufort, and Colonel Montgomery had as yet less than ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... who owns anything out here: he is instantly deprived of it. "Pinching" is proverbial, and people have taken to carrying as many of their possessions as possible on their person, with the result that they are the strangest shapes and sizes. Still, one hopes the goods are valuable until one discovers that they generally consist ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... the country church to retain its best ministers. Many reasons enter into this, but always at the top of the list is the desire for better educational opportunities for the ministers' children. The advice has become proverbial in theological seminaries, "Go to the country for five years." It is said that in New England there are three classes of country ministers and the first of them is the bright young man who will not long be in ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
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