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More "Theme" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... affection." Thus, after many years of lonely wandering, another period of Longfellow's life opened with his marriage in 1843. Had he himself been writing of another, he might have divided his story into cantos, each one with a separate theme. One of aspiration, one of endeavor, one with the despair of young sorrow, and one of triumphant love. Advancing thus through the gamut of human experience he might have closed the scene with the immortal ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... there is a certain frame of mind, and certain ideas are diffused in the air which we find alike in the works of the writers of that time, although they did not borrow them from each other. Lelia is a sort of summing up of the themes then in vogue in the personal novel and in lyrical poetry. The theme of that suffering which is beneficent and inspiring is contained in the following words: "Come back to me, Sorrow! Why have you left me? It is by grief alone that man is great." This is worthy of Chateaubriand. The theme of melancholy is as follows: "The moon appeared. . . . What is the ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... of the church suggested trinity as a substitute and started a titter, but the preacher had already got his dramatic momentum, and was sweeping along in a tumultuous tide of oratory. Right at his three victims did he aim his fiery eloquence, and ever and again he came back to his theme, "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity," even though Ann Pease had turned her back on William, whose head was low bowed, and Nancy was ostentatiously weeping into a yellow ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Burgh; and Katherine did not resume, hoping he would continue the theme, which he did, saying: "He has left his big house, gone into chambers somewhere, and has I believe, taken up literature, politics, and social subjects. So Lady Mary Vincent says. I fancy he is a clever fellow in ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... imagination." He was very much attached to his sisters, and used to entertain them with stories, in which "an alchemist, old and grey, with a long beard," who was supposed to abide mysteriously in the garret of Field Place, played a prominent part. "Another favourite theme was the 'Great Tortoise,' that lived in Warnham Pond; and any unwonted noise was accounted for by the presence of this great beast, which was made into the fanciful proportions most adapted to excite awe and wonder." To his friend Hogg, in after-years, Shelley often ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... disgusted at an age and clime Barren of every glorious theme, In distant lands now waits a better time, Producing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... divert him from his course for an hour, save by his own initiative. His mother's letter had changed it all. A few hours before he had had a struggle with Soolsby, and now another struggle on the same theme was here. Fate had dealt illy with him, who had ever been its spoiled child and favourite. He had not learned yet the arts of defence ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the theme of mutual felicitation were we assured of experiencing similar moderation and justice from the French Republic, between which and the United States differences have unhappily arisen; but this is denied us by the ultimate failure of the measures which have been taken ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... wind and was playing variations on the theme of the famous six bottles of champagne. Lanyard lounged in his easy chair and let his bored thoughts wander. He was weary of being talked about, wanted one thing only, fulfillment of the promise that had been implicit ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... King James consigned his great rival in the arts of government, but that rival of his contrived to rear a 'crest' there which will outlast 'the tyrants,' and 'look fresh still' when tombs that artists were at work on then 'are spent.' 'And when a soldier was his theme, my name—my name [namme de plume] was nor far off.' King James forgot how many weapons this man carried. He took one sword from him, he did not know that that pen, that harmless goose-quill, carried in its sheath another. He did ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... represents one-third, or one beat of that of the minuetto, and the other allegro in 2/4, of which a whole bar represents two-thirds, or two beats, correspond with each other and with the principal theme; while the whole proceeds without the slightest confusion. All that is requisite is to make ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... of this discussion at "Dollop's" had been the common theme among all classes in the town, had been carried to Lowick Parsonage on one side and to Tipton Grange on the other, had come fully to the ears of the Vincy family, and had been discussed with sad reference to "poor Harriet" by all Mrs. Bulstrode's friends, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;— I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... upon this theme, men were surprised to find him imbued with an unwonted seriousness. They heard from his lips fewer anecdotes and more history. Careless listeners who came to laugh at his jokes were held by the strong current of his reasoning and ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... have their long happy jaunts together. Jane said dolefully that it could only be on Sundays, as their respective working hours would never correspond—"And you haven't given me your Sundays for a year," she added. Paul slid from the dark theme and, to comfort her, spoke glowingly of the future, when he should have achieved his greatness. He would give her a beautiful house with carriages and servants, and she ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... every encouragement for you to labor and pray, my friends, because the abolition of slavery as well as its existence, has been the theme of prophecy. "Ethiopia (says the Psalmist) shall stretch forth her hands unto God." And is she not now doing so? Are not the Christian negroes of the south lifting their hands in prayer for deliverance, ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... my success in classical fiction, the conspiracy of Cataline appeared to me, a theme particularly well adapted for the purpose, as being an actual event of vast importance, and in many respects unparalleled in history; as being partially familiar to every one, thoroughly understood perhaps by no one, so slender are the authentic documents concerning it which have come down ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... interest is taken up and debated in regular parliamentary fashion. In a number of cities both plans have been adopted. On a Sunday afternoon or evening, or at a convenient time on another evening of the week, a popular speaker addresses the audience on a theme of social interest, after it has been entertained for a half hour with music; following the address a brief intermission allows for relaxation, and then for an hour the question goes to the house, and free discussion takes place under the direction of the leader of the meeting. Sometimes series ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... "New Education," hoping for some appreciative response from educational circles in which collegiate influences prevail, I did not deem it prudent to introduce some of the noblest thoughts that belong to the great theme. The book was sent forth limited and incomplete, hoping that, heretical as it was, and quite irreverent toward the ignorance descended from antiquity, it might still receive sufficient approbation and appreciation to justify later introduction ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... Meeting. The result was that in the first century of the Hill, 1728-1828, there were many instances of sexual immorality, many accusations of married persons untrue to their vows, and a resulting attention of the whole community to this theme which we do not know to-day. Frankness of discussion of these matters prevailed. The punishments inflicted, the public confessions demanded, the condemnation of specific and detailed offences read from the steps of the Meeting Houses, were all as far from present ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... Edna, in some embarrassment, for she should have remembered that Mademoiselle Reisz's avoidance of the water had furnished a theme for much pleasantry. Some among them thought it was on account of her false hair, or the dread of getting the violets wet, while others attributed it to the natural aversion for water sometimes believed to accompany the artistic temperament. Mademoiselle offered ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... eyes, but he had reached Paris at a time when their artistic possibilities were just discovered. The peculiarities of lighting, the masses of dingy red and tarnished gold, the heaviness of the shadows and the decorative lines, offered a new theme; and half the studios in the Quarter contained sketches made in one or other of the local theatres. Men of letters, following in the painters' wake, conspired suddenly to find artistic value in the turns; and red-nosed comedians were lauded to the skies for their sense of character; ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... weak minstrels of a laggard day Skilled but to imitate an elder page, Timid and raptureless, can we repay The debt thou claim'st in this exhausted age? Thou givest our lyres a theme, that might engage Those that could send thy name o'er sea and land, While sea and land shall last; for Homer's rage A theme; a theme for Milton's mighty hand - How much unmeet for us, ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... and where you won't get cramped ideas." Then he rode on, leaving the boy staring at him with open eyes. An attractive attribute was his love of his early associations, his father especially being often the theme of his conversation. He used freely to express his admiration for the type the latter represented, now almost extinct, of the old-fashioned country clergyman-squire. He held with tenacity to the traditions of his childhood in having always a cold supper on Sunday evenings, instead ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme; Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; Strong without ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... his patrons, brother of the Bishop of Cambray, a letter on the wickedness of war, obviously designed for publication and actually translated into German by an admirer a few years later, to give it wider circulation. In 1515 the enlarged Adagia contained an essay on the same theme, under the title quoted above: words which, translated into English, were again and again reprinted during the nineteenth century by Peace Associations and the Society of Friends. In 1516 he was appointed Councillor to Philip's son, Charles, who at 16 had just succeeded to the crowns ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... Raphael, which we reproduce. For over six hundred years, from the time of Cimabue to our own day, artists of all countries have vied with each other in representations of St. Cecilia, but none have risen to the height of Raphael's treatment of the theme. ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... coloured plates of varying merit which enrich the original edition has not been considered desirable. The map shows clearly the route taken by the Author in the journey the description of which is the leading theme ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... attract candidates for employment as a temporary expedient. The control of considerable bodies of men, under favorable circumstances, demands both vigilance and firmness. The prisoners perceive, almost at a glance, the character of their superiors: their history and habits are the theme of constant inquiry and discussion. An equal temper and unwearied attention are required in this arduous occupation. But the persons engaged were often wholly disqualified by their past pursuits and personal character, to inspire either awe or respect. ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... has the San Saba mission-house been the theme of their thoughts, and topic of discourse. They will re-people the deserted dwelling, restore it to its pristine splendour; bring its long neglected fields under tillage—out of them make fortunes by the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... removed by time and distance, during the latter months of the rickety infancy of that ill-starred Government and the first period of the Second Empire. Tocqueville spoke from a point of vantage, such as few other men have attained, upon a theme which he had studied profoundly in youth, and upon which Fate had ever since been writing elaborate commentaries. He spoke with a mind naturally calm, candid, and judicial, enriched by a deeper knowledge than any other Continental writer enjoyed of the working of popular ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... languages. Recent research upon the soil,[1] both natives and foreigners making contributions, has illustrated the subject afresh. Relics and memorials found in various churches, monasteries and palaces, on both sides of the Pacific and the Atlantic, have cast new light upon the fascinating theme. Both Christian and non-Christian Japanese of to-day, in their travels in the Philippines, China, Formosa, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and Italy, being keenly alert for memorials of their countrymen, have met with interesting trovers. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Baptista, Lucentio, and Hortensio, who enter, the last two disguised as teachers. In the next scene, Petruchio and Katharine alone, we have the turbulent wooing, which is accompanied throughout by characteristic music. As the others return Petruchio announces his success in the song, "All is well," the theme of which is taken by the quintet, closing ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... the time irregular?" continued Hawkins, blushing under Wingate's eye, and yet clinging despairingly to his theme, like a shipwrecked mariner ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... the leaf had fallen. Then turning to her companion, who regarded with surprise and admiration the agile grace of the act, she said, "Mr. Gregory, you need lessons in logic. If the leaf you hold is your theme, as you gave me reason to believe, you don't stick to it, and you draw from it conclusions that don't follow the premise. Another thing, it is not right to develop a subject without regard to its connection. Now from just this place," she continued, pointing with ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... men for a good woman's love. Gone, perhaps, the greatest heart picture of a generation, the picture at which you laugh with a lump in your throat and smile with a tear in your eye, the story of plausible punches, a big, vital theme masterfully handled—thrills, action, beauty, excitement—carried to a sensational finish by the genius of that sterling star of the shadowed world, Clifford Armytage—once known as Merton Gill in the little hamlet of Simsbury, Illinois, where for a time, ere yet he was called to screen triumphs, ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... misappropriation should become impossible. The whole industry of the nation would then be devoted to supporting millions of honest, simple peasants and labourers, whereas it now went to increasing the splendour of the great at the expense of the poor. Price enlarges upon this theme, which was, in fact, the contemporary version of the later formula that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer. The immediate effect of equalising property, then, would be an increase of population. It was the natural retort, adopted ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... sandman drove his noble team Of raw-rump'd jennies, "Sand-ho!" was his theme: Just as he turned the corner of the drum, [1] His dear lov'd Bess, the bunter, chanc'd to come; [2] With joy cry'd "Woa", did turn his quid and stare, First suck'd her jole, then thus ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... strike somewhere between a temperance lecture and the "Bartender's Guide." Relative to the latter, drink shall swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to the former, not an elbow ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... songs whose main theme is love, subdivided as below. Many are hardly "popular" in the strict sense: though current among the folk, they differ from the true folk-song, or "song-ballet." On the other hand, many bear a striking resemblance ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... them to raise. We hear the after-shout that rings For them who smote the power of kings; The swelling triumph all would share, But who the dark defeat would dare, And boldly meet the wrath and wo, That wait the unsuccessful blow? It were an envied fate, we deem, To live a land's recorded theme, When we are in the tomb; We, too, might yield the joys of home, And waves of winter darkness roam, And tread a shore of gloom— Knew we those waves, through coming time, Should roll our names to every clime; Felt we that millions on that shore Should stand, our memory to adore— ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague
... surpassed himself and dwarfed his own best work is, certainly no immaturity, for the flavour of wisdom and old experience hangs about his earliest writings, but a vague sense awakened by that brilliant series of books, so diverse in theme, so slight often in structure and occasions so gaily executed, that here was a finished literary craftsman, who had served his period of apprenticeship and was playing with his tools. The pleasure of wielding the graven tool, the itch of craftsmanship, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... shared in. However various and brilliant his talk may be, we suspect him of impoverishing us by excluding the contributions of other minds, which attract our curiosity the more because he has shut them up in silence. Besides, we get tired of a "manner" in conversation as in painting, when one theme after another is treated with the same lines and touches. I begin with a liking for an estimable master, but by the time he has stretched his interpretation of the world unbrokenly along a palatial gallery, I have had what the cautious Scotch mind ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Babylonian, and is a purified, elevated rendering of it, is not so likely as that both are renderings of a more primitive account, to which the Hebrew narrative has kept true, while the other has tainted it with polytheistic ideas. In this passage the cessation of the flood is the theme, and it brings out both the love of the God who sent the awful punishment, and the patient godliness of the man who was spared from it. So it completes the teaching of the flood, and proclaims that God ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... look at O'Halloran you feel this, the same as you do when you look at Val Collins. Oh, he'll get us out all right. I've been in several tighter holes than this one." His mention of Collins suggested a diversion, and he took up a less distressing theme lightly. "Wonder what Val is doing at this precise moment. I'll bet he's beginning to make things warm for Wolf Leroy's bunch of miscreants. We'll have the robbers of the Limited behind the bars within two weeks now, ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... resemblance to the appearance that the earth would present if viewed from afar off. In remote antiquity there were philosophers who thought that the moon was an inhabited world, and very early the romancers took up the theme. Lucian, the Voltaire of the second century of our era, mercilessly scourged the pretenders of the earth from an imaginary point of vantage on the moon, which enabled him to peer down into their secrets. Lucian's description of the appearance of the earth from the moon shows ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... progress of culture and civilization in their various constituents is the theme of history. It does not limit its attention to a particular fraction of a people, to the exclusion of the rest. Governments and rulers, and the public doings of states,—such as foreign wars, and the struggles of rival dynasties,—naturally form a prominent topic in historical ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... coming of the locomotive, it needed only imagination and a map to see all British North America clamped by an iron band. Engineers like Bonnycastle and Synge and Carmichael-Smyth wrote of the possibility in the forties. Politicians found in the theme matter for admirable after-dinner perorations—colonial governors like Harvey in 1847, colonial secretaries like Lytton and Carnarvon in the fifties, and colonial premiers like Joseph Howe, who declared in Halifax in 1851: 'I believe that ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... those who disagreed with him wrong. Sir Wilfrid Laurier is described in the preface as "the finest and simplest gentleman, the noblest and most unselfish man it has ever been my good fortune to know;" and the work is faithfully devoted to the elucidation of this theme. Men may fail to be heroes to their valets but they are more successful with their biographers. The final appraisement of Sir Wilfrid, to be written perhaps fifty years hence by some tolerant and impartial historian, will probably not be an echo of Prof. Skelton's judgment. It will perhaps ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... whole truth. There is not enough of Christ in them. We find fault with them, not for what they contain, but for what they do not contain. True, they make mention of the great facts and doctrines of Christianity, but they do not make enough of them; they do not dwell on them as their constant theme." They made many such complaints. They charged me with winning from my hearers, for a partial and defective view of the Gospel, the love and reverence which were due only to a very different view. They called me a legalist, a work-monger, and other offensive names. They ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... shall I choose for the theme of my song? Or must my poor pipe on the willow be hung? No more to commend that good nature and sense, Which always cou'd please, but ne'er once gave offence. What honour directed he firmly pursu'd, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... for ever With those whom Thou dost love, Thou art the theme inspiring The choirs who dwell above; The love that brought Thee earthward, The love that stooped and died, The pardon won for sinners, When ...
— Hymns from the Greek Office Books - Together with Centos and Suggestions • John Brownlie
... Jorden:—"Sir, you have sconced [fined] me two pence for non-attendance at a lecture not worth a penny." Hawkins's Johnson, p. 9. A passage in Whitefield's Diary shows that the sconce was often greater. He once neglected to give in the weekly theme which every Saturday had to be given to the tutor in the Hall 'when the bell rang.' He was fined half-a-crown. Tyerman's Whitefield, i. 22. In my time (1855-8) at Pembroke College every Saturday when the bell rang we gave in our piece of Latin prose—themes were things ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... conclusion from its premises strikes one as true. But neither will the term "a work of Art" be denied to the same writer's four "Bergeret" volumes, whose negative finality consists only in the temperamental atmosphere wherein they are soaked. Now, if the theme of "Le Lys Rouge" had been treated by Tolstoy, Meredith, or Turgenev, we should have had spiritual conclusions from the same factual premises so different from M. France's as prunes from prisms, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... It is this that kindled the flame of transport in celestial bosoms, and raised that triumphant song, "glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will towards men." Salvation is the doctrine of the Bible, and ought ever to be the theme of the pulpit. Salvation is the oracle of heaven around which all denominations assemble, receive their instructions, and believe according ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... condition, they got him in a room, and commenced conversing about delirium tremens, directing all their remarks to him, and telling him what fearful objects, such as snakes and rats, were always seen by the victims of this horrible disease. When the conversation had waxed high on this theme, one of the number stepped out of the room, and from a trap which was at hand let a large rat into the room. None of his friends appeared to see it, but the young man who was to be the victim seized a chair and hurled ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... sisters who took London by storm, and who "made more noise than any of their predecessors since the days of Helen," in the summer of 1751. Their conquest was immediate, electrifying. London raved about the new beauties; they were the theme of every tongue, from the Court to the meanest coffee-house. Even Grub Street rubbed its eyes in amazement at the wonderful vision, and ransacked its dictionaries for superlatives; and the poets, with one accord, struck their lyres to ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... to ask what new profession Cashel could adopt, and what likelihood there was of his getting on with his mother any better than formerly. No satisfactory answer was forthcoming. So she went back to the likelihood of his reforming himself for her sake. On this theme her imagination carried her so far from all reasonable probability, that she was shaking her head at her own folly when Bashville appeared and announced Lord Worthington, who came into the room with Alice. Lydia had not seen ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... could scarcely meet Mrs. Steel again without a word about the prospective story, which they had so often discussed together, and upon which he was at last free to embark; nor could he touch upon that theme without disclosing the new knowledge which would burn him until he did. Charles Langholm and Rachel Steel had two or three qualities in common: an utter inability to pretend was one, if you do not happen ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... exploring, colonizing and the like in which universal interest and cooeperation are necessary fascinate the mind. These things satisfy the dramatic instinct, and they may prove to be in the future an actual substitute for war, as James hoped. The educational opportunities of this theme, at least, are great. Any nation that expects to play a great part in the world's politics must expect to do much in the world's service. These nations must be prepared in every possible way to contribute greatly to the material improvement of the earth. To this end technical education, all along ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... Post Office, at least as far as they are known, the certainty of the transmission of letters, the economy with which it is conducted, are the theme of admiration by the nation at large, and more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... gather his material—as I have done—from Parkman, Shea, Joutel, Hennepin, St. Cosme, Monette, Winsor, Roosevelt—from state records, and local traditions richer and oftener more reliable than history; and let him hang over his theme with brooding affection, moulding and remoulding its forms. He will find the task he so lightly set himself a terribly hard and exhausting one, and will appreciate as he never before appreciated the labors of those who work ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... I was more fascinated by her theme or by her exposition of it. "Then, how is it that the rest of you...?" I began, but she had not the patience to wait while I finished the question. She was suddenly eager, vivid, astonishingly alive; a different woman from ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... not take it amiss," answered the other; "for we do him an honor when we suppose that more learning is required to make such verses than one of his years can possess." I replied with something indifferent; but my friend continued, "It will not cost much labor to convince you. Give him any theme, and he will make you a poem on the spot." I assented; we were agreed; and the other asked me whether I would venture to compose a pretty love-letter in rhyme, which a modest young woman might be supposed to write to a young man, to declare her inclination. "Nothing is easier than ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... distinct decorative value that has been seldom equalled in the later decadent period. The fourteen large central bosses on the main longitudinal ribs present in themselves an epitome not only of Bible history, but of the connecting incidents forming the theme of Christian teaching. In the tenth bay, on the longitudinal rib, there is, in place of a boss, a circular hole through the vault. It is supposed to have been formed to allow a thurible to be suspended therefrom into the church below. Harrod, quoting ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... act, behind the scenes. Ministerial exertions were also paralysed by another cause. A prevalent notion existed that there was a mysterious power about the court which worked to the detriment of the public good. This was a constant theme of invective among the opposition, and, it would seem, not without good reason. But there was another cause of obstruction to the measures formed by government. This was found in the democratical spirit, which now universally prevailed. Courted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... search the three of us,—a proceeding that puzzled Fred and his lordship not a little, for they weren't on to the fact that the letters hadn't been recovered. I presume the latter will some day write a book dwelling on the favorite theme of the foreigner, that there is no personal privacy in America, and I don't know but his experiences justify the view. The running remarks as the search was made seemed to open Fred's eyes, for he looked at me with a puzzled air, but I winked and frowned ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... back against the spruce and watched a hawk float in easy circles round the blue emptiness above. He felt physically indolent; at one with the silences. Shoop's voice came to him clearly, but as though from a distance, and as Shoop talked Lorry visualized the theme, forgetting where he was in the vivid picture the old ex-cowboy sketched in the rough dialect of ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... a stirring stanza[D] from another poet, who found a theme and an inspiration in contrasting the wretched condition of the people of Labrador, prior to the arrival of missionaries, with the wonderful change wrought among the poor Eskimoes through their noble efforts under the ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... such sentiments defended the cause of the new religion St. Augustine was the chief. In his great work, "the City of God," which may be regarded as the ablest specimen of the early Christian literature, he pursues this theme, if not in the language, at least in the spirit here presented, and through a copious detail of many books. On the later Christianity of the Western churches he has exerted more influence than any other of the fathers. To him is due much of the precision of our views on original ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... I too readily admitted; he seemed to use me with so much tenderness, and his conversation was so very engaging, that all my constancy and virtue were too soon overcome; and, to dwell no longer upon a theme that causeth such bitter reflections, I must confess with shame, that I was undone by the common arts practised upon all easy credulous virgins, half by force, and half by consent, after solemn vows and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... bank, and sat on the stern seat, side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep green by the high woods. If they talked, it was but a word of love now and then, or to draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a dragon-fly. What use making plans—for lovers the chief theme? Longing paralysed their brains. They could do nothing but press close to each other, their hands enlaced, their lips meeting now and then. On Noel's face was a strange fixed stillness, as if she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sat no longer in her cushioned chair by the window. She was now confined to her bed, where she lay restlessly, moaning at intervals, but always on one theme. "My children! my lost children! Will not God give ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... misleading and confusing than might otherwise have been the case, the result had not been to lighten our labours. My rendering of the famous ballad had, in consequence, acquired a dolefulness not intended by the composer. Sung as I sang it, the theme became, to employ a definition since grown hackneyed as applied to Art, a problem ballad. Involuntarily one wondered whether the marriage would turn out as satisfactorily as the young man appeared to anticipate. Was there not, when one came to think of it, a melancholy, a pessimism ingrained ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... to remember the lady's name. It is one of those portraits in which the painter, impatient of the stiff conventional attitudes which were in vogue in his day, drew his inspiration from a simple homely theme of daily life. ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... known stories are highly artistic in finish, powerful in theme, and often of such a nature as to make one shudder and avoid them. "Israfel" is considered one of his most beautiful poems, and if his self-consciousness could have allowed him to omit the last stanza, it would have been ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... benefits of amicable intercourse with foreign nations, we have not been insensible to the distractions and wars which have prevailed in other quarters of the world. It is a proper theme of thanksgiving to Him who rules the destinies of nations that we have been able to maintain amidst all these contests an independent and neutral position toward ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Zachary Taylor • Zachary Taylor
... does is nothing, except Naevia be at his elbow. Be he joyful or sorrowful, be he even silent, he is still harping upon her. He eats, he drinks, he talks, he denies, he assents; Naevia is his sole theme: no Naevia, and he's dumb. Yesterday at daybreak, he would fain write a letter of salutation to his father: 'Hail, Naevia, light of my eyes,' quoth he; ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... when you expect and want news is tantalising, is it not? Pray agree with me, and then you will allow that I have acted very kindly in not writing till I had something to tell you. Something, of course, means Wilkes, for everything is nothing except the theme of the day. There has appeared a violent North Briton, addressed to, and written against Lord Mansfield, threatening a rebellion if he continued to persecute Mr. Wilkes. This paper, they say, Wilkes owned to the Chevalier de Chastelux, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... a theme of inspiration for innumerable sermons and a prodigious quantity of doggerel. Among the ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... with it more commonplace ideas. The white and juicy flesh of the iguana was quite a feast for us all. Our meal we sat over a longer time than usual; for in conversation we entered upon the subject of our native countries, and the theme appeared inexhaustible. I reminded my friend that, only a few days before, he had shown as much emotion as the Indian on seeing two butterflies which he fancied belonged to a Swiss species; and I brought ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... that followed one another without interlude. Phoebe was counting her pile of boxes and ranging them into piles of twelve high; so she couldn't sing, and I, consequently, could not catch all the words of each song. The theme in every case was a more or less ungrammatical, crude, and utterly banal rendition of the claptrap morality exploited in the cheap story-books. Reduced to the last analysis, they had to do with but one subject—the frailty ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint, on which he dwells in his moments of dejection. Jack's topick of sorrow is the want of time. Many an excellent design languishes in empty theory for want of time. For the omission of any civilities, want ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... into his pen, and his heart to flow through it, the writer has adopted every precaution to prevent or correct all those refractions of ignorance and prejudice, and all that coloring of morbid sentimentality, which would stand in the way of truth and use. In treating such a theme as friendship, the worst dangers are hardness and levity on the one extreme, exaggeration and mawkishness on the other, and cowardice and squeamishness between. These faults, it is hoped, are not chargeable ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... policemen have fled the city. Their monstrous crimes are the theme of universal execration. But I reported them many months ago, and Gen. Winder was cognizant of their forgeries, correspondence with the enemy, etc. The Secretary of War, and the President himself, were informed of them, but it was thought to be ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... ago an unknown American friend proposed my writing a story on the loves and adventures of Sir Harry Frankland, Collector of the Port of Boston in the mid-eighteenth century, and Agnes Surriage, daughter of a poor Marble-head fisherman. The theme attracted me as it has attracted other writers—and notably Oliver Wendell Holmes, who built a poem on it. But while their efforts seemed to leave room for another, I was no match for them in knowledge of the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... will you learn my continence!" said Stephen, solemnly stroking his grey beard. "What an example I set you! But a truce to this light conversation,—let us resume our theme. You must know, Adrian, that it is to the brave band of my guest I am indebted for those valiant gentlemen below, who keep Rome so quiet, though my poor habitation so noisy. He has called to proffer more assistance, if need be; and to advise me on the affairs of Northern Italy. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... officer; and then to crown his glory, in the Afghan War he again won the star for valour, and the clasp which that great distinction carries. But this story is not about Juma, and so we must reluctantly leave him and get to our theme. ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... reputation would touch such a theme as that. I should be distinguished as the only "distinguished dead" who went down to the grave unsonneted, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... horrible, that encounter with the descending enemy, and then the firing and the shrieks and yells as they had shot at these men; and then unconsciously, while he and his brothers were silently and thoughtfully dwelling on the same theme, Norman said aloud: "No, they are not men, but wolves, and must be ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... way, but not once of Redgrave; her theme was the excellence of Alma's playing, which, she declared, had moved everyone with ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... of the Mass. She even ventured to offer up a vague prayer, and when the dread interval was over, she remembered that her father had spoken to her of the second "Agnus Dei" as an especially beautiful number. It was for five voices; exquisitely prayerful it seemed to her. With devout insistence the theme is reiterated by the two soprani, then the voices are woven together, and the simile that rose up in her mind was the pious image of fingers ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... is no voluptuary in music. Music is simply the means by which the soul wings its way into the azure of spiritual theory and contemplation. Take only 'Saul' and 'Abt Vogler' in illustration. 'Saul' is a magnificent interpretation of the old theme, a favorite with the mystics, that evil spirits are driven out by music. But in this interpretation it is not the mere tones, the thrumming on the harp, it is the religious movement of the intelligence, it is the truth of Divine love throbbing in every chord, which constitutes ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... earnestness had the desired effect upon Mr. Garrison, who accepted his proffer and relinquished the Journal of the Times. Before going to Baltimore Mr. Garrison was invited to address the Congregational societies of Boston on July 4th, at the Park Street Church, and took for his theme "Dangers to the Nation." The poet John Pierpont was present and wrote a hymn for the occasion. The address was a stirring denunciation of slavery and a rebuke to the nation for its pretentious devotion to liberty. The speaker was accused by a Boston paper ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... upon the portfolio of theme paper I carry underneath my arm. But in this corner of the world a portfolio of theme paper and a pile of books are as common a part of a girl's paraphernalia as a muff and a shopping-bag on a winter's day on Fifth ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... part in the action. The rondet is a dancing-song, in which the refrain corresponds with one of the movements of the dance; a solo-singer is answered by the response of a chorus; in the progress of time the rondet assumed the precise form of the modern triolet; the theme was still love, at first treated seriously if not tragically, but at a later time in a spirit of gaiety. It is conjectured that all these lyrical forms had their origin in the festivities of May, when the return of spring was celebrated by dances ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... a Neutral Policy" is the theme of Mir, the organ of the Bulgarian Nationalist Party of Sofia, which on May 29 said: "If Bulgaria remains neutral to the end of the war, she runs the risk of being condemned to live forever within the narrow limits she has today, hemmed ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... of Jarrow[2] that Bede wrote in rude Latin the Church history of England. It was at that in Whitby that the poet Caedmon composed his poem on the Creation, in which, a thousand years before Milton, he dealt with Milton's theme in Milton's spirit. ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... up apparently a thought which Paoli, as reported by Boswell, had thrown out in conversation, proposed to Cowper the Mediterranean for a topic. 'He replied, "Unless I were a better historian than I am, there would be no proportion between the theme and my ability. It seems, indeed, not to be so properly a subject for one poem, as for a dozen."' Southey's Cowper, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... of banqueting and speech-making, and banners, emblazoned with such appropriate mottoes as "Whalley for ever," "Hurrah for Sir John Hanmer and John Stanton, Esquire," floated in the breeze. One ingenious gentleman, elaborating the topical theme, had erected a flag which, we are told, "attracted special attention from its significance and quaintness," representing a donkey cart with two passengers on one side and a steam engine and carriages on the other, to personify "Ellesmere of yesterday," and "Ellesmere of ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... him who now filled the post of commander on board their vessel. The object of their remarks, meanwhile, stood once more quietly leaning over the monkey-rail on the weather side of the quarter-deck, quite unconscious that he was supplying a theme of entertainment to ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... The theme of the Treatise on the Sensations, 1754, is: Memory, comparison, judgment, abstraction, and reflection (in a word, cognition) are nothing but different forms of attention; similarly the emotions, the appetites, and the will, nothing but modifications of desire; ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... of an English Opium Eater," but he reached perfection only in some compositions intended as sequels to that book, namely, "Suspiria de Profundis," and "The English Mail Coach," with its "Vision of Sudden Death," and "Dream-Fugue" upon the theme ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... shilly-shally from first to last," continued the old sailor, warming up to his theme. "Why, when the Russians actually fired on our flag—the Union Jack of England, sir, that had never previously been insulted with impunity—they actually blamed me for returning the fire, and recalled me for it! I tell you what it is, Vernon, they were all a pack of pusillanimous ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... People who come in contact with him and who may have occasion to oppose his views, may leave with the impression that he is hot-tempered; nothing could be further from the truth. He argues his point with great vehemence, pounds on the table to emphasize his views, and illustrates his theme with a wealth of apt similes; but, on account of his deafness, it is difficult to make the argument really two-sided. Before the visitor can fully explain his side of the matter some point is brought up that starts Edison off again, and new arguments from ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Cripple—a recitation I had prepared with particular enthusiasm and satisfaction. It fulfilled, as few poems do, all the requirements of length, climax and those many necessary features for a recitation. The subject was a theme of real pathos, beautified by the cheer and optimism of the little sufferer. Consequently when this couple left the hall I was very anxious to know the reason and asked a friend to find out. He learned that they had a little hunch-back child of their own. After this experience I never used that ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... same nation, and sometimes it has been the oppression of a weak nation by a stronger one. The successful revolt against tyranny, the terrible conflict resulting in the emancipation of a people, has always been the favorite theme of the historian, marking as it does a step in the progress of mankind from a savage to ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... pageant-comedy had of course been made long before war was contemplated. The completion of Mr. BOURCHIER'S beard in itself points to a comparatively remote date for the play's inception. Certainly there is nothing very apposite in its theme at the present juncture; for HARRY OF ENGLAND, suffering from the gout, blustering into a sixth marriage, and haunted by the ghosts of four dead wives and the wraith of the sole survivor, is not a figure precisely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... near Witney and but a few miles out of Oxford. He and Charles visited Wroote that Christmas, and on January 11th he preached a funeral sermon at Epworth for John Griffith, a hopeful young man, the son of one of his father's parishioners, taking for his theme 2 Samuel xii. 23, "But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me "—a text obvious enough. He returned for the beginning of the Oxford Lent Term, having ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was perfect melody. Their evenings were enlivened by the dance, or by those pleasant social games so prevalent among the French; and when she appeared at the village ball on Sunday evenings, she was the theme of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... she displayed a most decided poetic predisposition,—writing, when but ten years old, with surprising facility on every possible subject. No metre had any difficulties for her, and no theme seemed dull to her vivid intelligence,—her fancy being roused to action in a moment, by the barest hint given either by Nature or Art. Her first drama was written at this early age; it was called "Boadicea," and was composed immediately after she had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... brilliant color is the theme of many jests in the South, but it is entirely justified esthetically, although the constant sarcasm of the whites has checked its satisfaction, if it has not ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... so stirred by the news that he ascended a cracker barrel, and made a speech to the assembled countrymen, preaching to responsive ears the theme of North and South, now reunited in a common sorrow. Thus, by the time he was twenty-six, Page, at any rate in respect to his Americanism, was a ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... age I happen to live in, and I accommodate myself to it. [Pacing the room as he warms to his theme.] And if it's necessary for a private individual such as myself to advertise, as I maintain it is, how much more necessary is it for you to do so—a novelist, a poet, a would-be playwright, a man with something to sell! Dash it, they've ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... to where the master-tuner sat, and squatting down beside him began picking up tuning forks and striking one against the other. Each time he did that some city sound or other distinguished itself for a moment, exactly as the theme appears in music; only some of the vibrations seemed to jar against others instead of blending with them, and when that happened the effect ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... be about twenty years of age,—in the full splendor of loveliness, and endowed with charms which presented to the gaze of those around a very incarnation of the ideal beauty which forms the theme of raptured poets. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... to explain why, except on that principle of decimation by which Macaulay accounted for the outcry against Lord Byron, Gibbon's solitary and innocent love passage has been made the theme of a good deal of malicious comment. The parties most interested, and who, we may presume, knew the circumstances better than any one else, seem to have been quite satisfied with each other's conduct. ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... disagreeable themes, talk persistently and ceaselessly; never let up; the more tired he may be the more steadily you must talk, and the more irritating your theme must be. Go to the gadfly; consider her ways and be wise. Buzz, ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... race will find in it a theme well worthy of their finest talents. The subject can be ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... great occasions of life. Every day there seemed something fresh and exciting to discuss, and the game of "pretend" made unfailing appeal to the happy Irish natures, but it was not often that such an original and thrilling topic came under discussion. A repaired nose! Pixie warmed to the theme with the zest of a skilled raconteur. ... "You'd be sitting here, and I'd walk in in my hat and veil—a new-fashioned scriggley veil, as a sort of screen. We'd kiss. If it was a long kiss, you'd feel the point, being accustomed to a button, ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... particulars so that there should be no doubt, and then the half-crazed Adah took up the theme nearest to her heart, her boy, her beautiful Willie. She could not take him with her. She knew not where she was going, and Willie must not suffer. Would Anna take ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... my meaning," replied Mittie, pausing under a tree that shaded their path, and leaning against its trunk; "but I can feel it. Till you came, I knew not what feeling was; I read of it in books. It was the theme of many a fluent tongue, but all was cold and passive here," said she, pressing her hand on the throbbing heart that now ached with the intensity of its emotion. "Everybody said I had no heart, and I believed them. You first taught ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna," continued Prince Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not without an inner struggle; "at such a moment as this one must think of everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love you all, like children of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Shaw's social philosophy is remarkable. His latest volume[10] deals with parents and children, the theme he touched on in 1884; his social ideal is still a birthright life interest in national wealth, and "an equal share in national industry," the latter a phrase more suggestive than lucid. On the other hand, he, ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... we may say, had come down from heaven with wonderful endowments. If he sang of a mountain, the eyes of all mankind beheld a mightier grandeur reposing on its breast, or soaring to its summit, than had before been seen there. If his theme were a lovely lake, a celestial smile had now been thrown over it, to gleam forever on its surface. If it were the vast old sea, even the deep immensity of its dread bosom seemed to swell the higher, ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be a man, over it is to be a boy at school, if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the theme of a grammar lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser? whenas all the writer teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to blot or alter what precisely accords ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... seem to have had communion with God and the saints most often when they seemed unconscious to bystanders.[2] The obsession with death, which seems so intimate a part of the stupor reaction, is a fundamental theme in poetry, religion and philosophy. The psychology of this interest is, speaking broadly, the psychology of stupor. So, from a general standpoint, our problem is related to the study of one of the most potent ideas which move ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... by this great poet, which has escaped the researches of all his editors. Prefixed to a translation, translation is the theme; with us an unvalued art, because our translators have usually been the jobbers of booksellers; but no inglorious one among our French and Italian rivals. In this poem, if the reader's ear be guided by the compressed sense of the massive ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... this voluminous outpouring of matter the machinery is varied with wonderful fertility of invention, but one sentiment recurs very frequently. The great majority of Balzac's novels, including all the most powerful examples, may thus be described as variations on a single theme. Each of them is in fact the record of a martyrdom. There is always a virtuous hero or heroine who is tortured, and most frequently, tortured to death, by a combination of selfish intrigues. The ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... life supplies the writer his theme. People who have not lived, no matter how grammatically they may write, have no real message. Robert Louis had now severed the umbilical cord. He was going to live his own life, to earn his own living. He could do but one ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... that put to use in Hamlet. Romeo is half hidden from us in the rose-mist of passion, and after he is banished from Juliet's arms we only see him for a moment as he rushes madly by into never-ending night, and all the while Shakespeare is thinking more of the poetry of the theme than of his hero's character. Romeo is crude and immature when compared with a profound psychological study like Hamlet. In "Hamlet" the action often stands still while incidents are invented for the mere purpose of ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... and exhaust-pipes and furniture—what on earth can they tell you that you have not heard already? A mere grinding-out of commonplaces! How often one has covered the same field! They cannot even put their knowledge, such as it is, into an attractive shape or play variations on the theme; it is patter; they have said the same thing, in the same language, for years and years; you have listened to the same thing from other lips, in the same language, for years and years. How one knows it all beforehand—every note in that barrel-organ of echoes! ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... once attracted attention quite as marked, though different in kind. His book became interesting not alone as the production of a Southern man interested in politics, but as an entirely original conception of a great theme. There was no question that a life of Jefferson from the hands of such a writer would command very general attention, and the publishers had no sooner announced the work as in preparation than negotiations were begun ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... was over to our joint satisfaction, she had to return to the distressful main theme of our talk. She harked back to Sir Anthony, touched on his splendid behaviour, recalled, with a little dismay, the hitherto unnoted fact that, after the ceremony he had held himself aloof from those that thronged round Boyce. Then, without hint from me, she perceived the significance of the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... a sermon on that theme," said he; for this was with him a favourite way out of an argument. In truth the Vicar loved the prophecy, as a quiet student often loves a thing that echoes of the world ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... and windows against all mankind, the victor in the election, Senator Harding, of Ohio, knew better. The election returns were hardly announced before he began to ask the advice of his countrymen on the pressing theme that would not be downed: "What part shall America—first among the nations of the earth in wealth and power—assume at the council ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... himself with affairs of this life, that he might please Him who had called him to be a soldier;" and the reader of his life will find that this unworldly man took similar pains to avoid wealth, which others do to acquire it. Perhaps I may be excused for dwelling a moment on this theme, when I state that one of the latest public acts of my beloved and lamented father-in-law, James Cropper, was to cause John Woolman's auto-biography and writings to be re-edited, and a large and cheap edition to be struck off, which has appeared since his decease.[A] ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... forth they went, with tongues of flame, In one blest theme delighting, The love of Jesus and His Name, God's children all uniting! That love, our theme and watchword still; That law of love may we fulfil, And love as we ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... stronger King than he—a bony figure, in General's uniform, snow-besprinkled, who 'beckons him away.' Of all Leech's work, this seems to be the finest example. Think how savage Gillray or vulgar Rowlandson would have handled such a theme!—the Emperor would have been caricatured into a repulsive monster, and Death would have ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... that record them rather guess at than solve. But the blow which had shattered my life had been dealt by the hand of a fool. Here, there were no mystic enchantments. Motives the most commonplace and paltry, suggested to a brain as trivial and shallow as ever made the frivolity of woman a theme for the satire of poets, had sufficed, in devastating the field of my affections, to blast the uses for which I had cultured my mind; and had my intellect been as great as heaven ever gave to man, it would ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He first stated his theme; to the effect that all the forces of the civilised world were concentrating into two camps—the world and God. Up to the present time the forces of the world had been incoherent and spasmodic, breaking out in various ways—revolutions and wars had been like the movements of ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... gift is bestowed is a subject of more controversy perhaps than any other Bible theme. There need be no confusion upon this point if all would take the plain statements and examples in the New Testament. Jesus declares the world can not receive the Spirit, John 14:17. The disciples enjoyed the ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... from him a series of the same impatient, sarcastic remarks on the subject of the neighbors as had scandalized her the day before. She fired up, and they were soon in the midst of another battle-royal, partly on the merits of particular persons and partly on a more general theme—the advantage or disadvantage of an optimist view of ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He {67} lived on Earth—(3) after His Ascension (see the Latin Form). The Saviour's Existence, from the Eternal Beginning on to the Eternal Future, is the central thought of the Hymn. The dual form of each line in this Middle Stanza proves it to be a separate Stanza. The Incarnation is its theme—The Incarnation ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... the sight should cause surprise to the most indifferent observer, nor that it should have been long a theme of speculation with the curious, and an interesting subject of ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... unimportant fact—unimportant, that is, to you—my name is Malcolm Francois de Lorraine Vernon. My father was cousin-german to Sir George Vernon, at and near whose home, Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, occurred the events which will furnish my theme. ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... beside the proud Potowmac's stream, Might sages still pursue the flattering theme Of days to come, when man shall conquer fate, Rise o'er the level of his mortal state, Belie the monuments of frailty past, And plant perfection in this world at last! "Here," might they say, "shall power's divided reign "Evince ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... I shall pursue the theme no further. The truth is, Mr. O'Brien remained among a people who were sorely stricken by terror. Their friends were dead or scattered; and rumour, with a thousand tongues, multiplied the most awful horrors which were said to be approaching them. Although they received ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... which the battle-ground is a bereaved human heart and the prize its complete possession; between earthly duty and spiritual desire also; was one that had long attracted him. Finding at length a few months of leisure, he treated the difficult theme, not indeed as he would have wished to do, but as best ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... monarch. His court was splendid, and his retinue large and magnificent. But the chief glory of his palace, and the pride of his heart, was his daughter Clotilda, whose amazing beauty formed the theme of poets' praise, and whose fame was spread far beyond the limits of the Empire. Her form was of queenly majesty, her movements swan-like. Her glossy raven tresses set off a complexion of the greatest brilliancy: her faultless features would ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... conversation is that it is kept personal, in the sense, I mean, that the personality of the speakers suffuses it. "The theme being taken," as Stevenson says, "each talker plays on himself as on an instrument, affirming and justifying himself." This counter-assertion of personality, to all appearances, is combat, but at bottom is amicable. An issue which is essentially general and impersonal ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... any credit due to her, but the more I exercise my memory for evidence, the more I am convinced that her compliance on these occasions was not conceived entirely in the spirit of self-sacrifice. Often would she suggest the game and even the theme; in such case, casting herself invariably for what, in old theatrical parlance, would have been termed the heavy lead, the dragons and the wicked uncles, the fussy necromancers and the uninvited fairies. As authoress of a new cookery book for use in giant-land, my aunt, I am sure, would have been ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... limited than that of any other great English novelist; for she deliberately restricted herself, with excellent judgment, to portraying what she knew at first-hand, namely the life of the well-to-do classes of her own 'provincial' region. Moreover, her theme is always love; desirable marriage for themselves or their children seems to be the single object of almost all her characters; and she always conducts her heroine successfully to this goal. Her artistic achievement, like herself, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... that treads thy shore? No legend of thine olden time, No theme on which the mind might soar High as thine ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... the winter of 1869, and now appears for the first time as completed. The sea, as a picture of life, has been celebrated by the poetic thought of all ages, and the author will therefore hardly hope to offer much that is new in the following verses. His only excuse for so worn a theme is, that the world still loves the picture, and that each generation can, at best, but reset the old ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... clutches of the fever, unconscious that her most devoted and tenderest nurse was the father whom she had bitterly imagined thought more of his hobby than of his boys and girls. All Northbourne, as with one heart, sorrowed aloud for their favourite Miss Theedory; her grave condition was the sole theme of talk in the cottages round ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... dynasty would form a brilliant poem; and, if India shall ever have a poet again, he could not choose a more varied, animating, and splendid theme. Tippoo, in peace, turned saint, and, following the example of his prophet, forced one hundred thousand Hindoos, at the sword's point, to swear by the Koran. We pass over the remaining features of his fierce history. Restless with ambition, and plethoric with power, in 1790 he invaded Travancore. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... only acted, when he did act, behind the scenes. Ministerial exertions were also paralysed by another cause. A prevalent notion existed that there was a mysterious power about the court which worked to the detriment of the public good. This was a constant theme of invective among the opposition, and, it would seem, not without good reason. But there was another cause of obstruction to the measures formed by government. This was found in the democratical spirit, which now ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... imperfect passage, through human agents, of the life of God into the life of man. The subject is too vast, the agents too various and numerous, to be more than hinted here; and in the limitation of our theme, not only to the young in years, but to the male in sex, we are precluded from celebrating one who stands in history as perhaps the loveliest human embodiment of all that is more winning and inspiring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... as the portrait of a real man, faithfully copied from the man as he lived. But that is precisely the art of the painter. Walton's picture is so beautiful because everything in it is sacrificed to beauty; because it is a convention, a picture in which life is treated almost as theme for music. And so there remains an opportunity, even after this masterpiece, for a life of Donne which shall make no pretence to harmonise a sometimes discordant existence, or indeed to produce, properly speaking, a piece of art at all; but which shall be ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... a common cause dilutes the sectarian ego, dissolves village caste, makes neighbor acquainted with neighbor, and liberates a vast amount of human love which otherwise would remain hermetically sealed. Gossip is only the lack of a worthy theme. A town library supplies topics for talk, and the books there supply ten thousand more. To accept a Carnegie library means to take on an obligation. Achievement always stands for responsibility. "Is it possible that you are nervous?" asked the man of Abraham Lincoln when ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... than in pages of writing. It is probable that nearly the same emotions, but much weaker and far less complex, are felt by birds when the male pours forth his full volume of song, in rivalry with other males, to captivate the female. Love is still the commonest theme of our songs. As Herbert Spencer remarks, "music arouses dormant sentiments of which we had not conceived the possibility, and do not know the meaning; or, as Richter says, tells us of things we have ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... or rocks or winds or waves, the mutable or the unchangeable was in turn the theme of our reproductive praise. There were transfigurations on the mountain tops, where the spirit of the universe wore shining garbs and hailed us, their Interpreters. From every wave stretched Undine arms to greet us, and tongues of flame taught us ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... search it to the very core, leads you straight to a sex problem of a very curious nature. Nowhere else does it occur in the relations of the great personages of history; but in literature Balzac, that master of psychology, has touched upon the theme in the early chapters of his famous novel ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... me my life through gratitude. I was going to continue my defense, by relating frankly my relations with Marie, and her rescue. But if I spoke of her the Commission would force her to appear, and her name would become the theme of no very delicate remarks by the interrogated witnesses. These thoughts so troubled me that I stammered, and at last ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... hours of reflection were at first shortened, and then dismissed entirely. The general mirth of my new shipmates at the thoughts of once more revisiting their dear native land—the anticipation of indulging in the sensual worship of Bacchus and Venus, the constant theme of discourse among the midshipmen; the loud and senseless applause bestowed on the coarsest ribaldry—these all had their share in destroying that religious frame of mind in which I had parted with my first captain, and seemed to awaken me to a sense of the folly ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the result of reading; but since there is a meagre quantity of literature bearing on this general theme, they are largely the result of observation, experiment, and discussion with my students. Many of the latter will recognize their own contributions in these pages, for I have endeavored to preserve and use every good suggestion that came ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... the work of ages into meteorites and from meteorites into worlds—and these went on rolling in their appointed orbits, for what reason nobody knew, but then nobody cared! And Love—the key-note of the theme to which I had set my mistaken life in tune—Love was only a graceful word used to politely define the low but very general sentiment of coarse animal attraction—in short, poetry such as mine was altogether absurd and out of date when confronted with the facts of every-day ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... it was found that topics failed them, the professor would give Bob a Spanish book to glance through, and its subject would serve as a theme for talk on, the following day; and as it was five months since the lad had landed, he was now able to speak in Spanish almost as fluently as in English. As he had learnt almost entirely by ear, and any word mispronounced had had to be gone over, again and again, until Don ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... be said that this glorious Elizabethan Era with its Shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded it, is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this Practical Life which Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital fact in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... thy countenance, and thy God," was all that I could say in reply. Then I turned to the boy, who sat with his eyes cast down as if in deep thought, and engaged him in conversation on other subjects, by way of diverting the old woman's mind from the painful theme. ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... of snow over the follies and adventures of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and had whitened them so thoroughly that it now required a serious effort of memory to recall them. Of the queen once adored by so many courtiers, and whose follies might have given a theme to a variety of novels, there remained a woman still adorably beautiful, thirty-six years of age, but quite justified in calling herself thirty, although she was the mother of Duc Georges de Maufrigneuse, a young man of eighteen, handsome ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... cheerful; tales with a purpose seldom are. But the poignant humanity of it will hold your sympathy throughout. You may think that Mr. MAXWELL too obviously loads his dice, and be aware also that (like others of its kind) the story suffers from over-concentration on a single theme. It moves in a world of incompatibles. The heroine's kindly friend is tied to a dipsomaniac wife; her coachman has no remedy for a ruined home because of the expense of divorce, and so on. To a great extent, however, Mr. MAXWELL'S craft has enabled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... not the dignity of the theme which constitutes the great work of art, for in that case a prose summary of the "Divine Comedy" would be as exalted as the original, and it would be necessary merely to know the subject of a poem in order to pass judgment ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... a few months they would be left to carry on without His bodily companionship. They had solemnly testified that they knew Him to be the Christ; to them therefore He could impart much that the people in general were wholly unprepared to receive. The particular theme of His special and advanced instruction to the Twelve was that of His approaching death and resurrection; and this was dwelt upon again and again, for they were slow or unwilling ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the fox has furnished theme for song and legend, and only those who have followed the trap line for both fox and coyote know that Reynard's vaunted brain is but a dry sponge when compared to the knowledge-soaked brain of the prairie wolf. It is the ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... years. But the slight regard paid to English influence and action throughout the struggle by those Continental writers who had dealt imaginatively with Napoleon's career, seemed always to leave room for a new handling of the theme which should re-embody the features of this influence in their true proportion; and accordingly, on a belated day about six years back, the following drama was outlined, to be taken up now and then at ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... his life to the study. The most I can do is to name the architects of the most famous of the palaces and draw the reader's attention to the frequency with which the lovely Ducal gallery pattern recurs, like a theme in a fugue, until one comes to think the symbol of the city not the winged lion but a row of Gothic curved and pointed arches surmounted by circles containing equilateral crosses. The greatest names in Venetian architecture are Polifilo, who wrote the Hypnerotomachia, the two Bons, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... full of another and a different subject; but the sight of Libbie's sad, weeping face, and the quiet, subdued tone of her manner, made her feel it awkward to begin on any other theme than the one which filled up her companion's mind. To her last speech ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... Lord is my Shepherd: or—as the Greek, vibrating to the force of the original—The Lord is shepherding me; I shall not want. This is the theme ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... am your theme: you have the start of me. I am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel; ignorance itself is a plummet over me: ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... little time would soften his views on Saloonio. But I had not reckoned on the way in which old men hang on to a thing. Colonel Hogshead quite took up Saloonio. From that time on Saloonio became the theme of his constant conversation. He was never tired of discussing the character of Saloonio, the wonderful art of the dramatist in creating him, Saloonio's relation to modern life, Saloonio's attitude toward women, the ethical significance of Saloonio, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... whole, we must express our gratitude to Mr. Gage for his labor of love, in thus giving us the results of the studies of his friend and master on this important theme. Students of the Bible and of Syrian geography can nowhere else find the matters treated so fully and conscientiously ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... or in hilly regions far away from the refining influences of social contact, the old-time superstitions lingered, changing little in the theme, and inspiring the succeeding generations, as they unfolded in the long roll-call of life, with the same fears of the mystery of death and of a future life. One of the customs of recent practice is fitly described ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... alteration in her dress, and went down, perfectly calm, and outwardly at ease, to a tete-a-tete dinner with her son. When they were left alone at the table she suddenly changed the subject from the commonplace to the engrossing theme occupying both their minds, and, leaning towards him, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... Canaan. "And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren."[17] This passage was the leading theme of the defenders of slavery in the pulpit for many years. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... has lost the grace and beauty of the earlier dialogues. The mind of the writer seems to be so overpowered in the effort of thought as to impair his style; at least his gift of expression does not keep up with the increasing difficulty of his theme. The idea of the king or statesman and the illustration of method are connected, not like the love and rhetoric of the Phaedrus, by 'little invisible pegs,' but in a confused and inartistic manner, which ...
— Statesman • Plato
... books for any information. I find a S. Tryphonius, but only as a grown man; not a word of his tender years and his grotesque attendant. How amusing it would be to forget the halo and set the picture as a theme among a class of fanciful fantastic writers, to fit it with an appropriate fairy story! For of course it is as absolute a fairy tale illustration as the dragon pictures on the ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... "belly"; how to fill up the middle so that the butts of the sheaves droop to run off the rain; and how high to go with the bulge before he begins to draw in with the roof. All day long as he worked on his knees, not in prayer, he had mental leisure to think about one vast, fructifying theme; which of course is Free-Trade as they had it in England; unrestricted trade according to the Manchester School. And when he got his stack done he could tell to a ten-dollar bill how much tariff the railways and steamships would levy on that stack by the time the wheat ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... the course of the evening my attention was called to listen to a narrative with which he was entertaining those around him, and he seemed as usual to have excited the eager interest of his hearers. The commencement of the story I had not heard, but soon perceived that a shipwreck was the theme, which he described with all the vivid touches of his fancy, marshalling the incidents and striking features of the situation with a degree of dexterity that seemed to bring all the horrors of a polar storm home to every one's mind, and although it occurred to me that our ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... be loved?—then let thy heart From its present pathway part not; Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise. And ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... have it your own way," said her husband impatiently. "Of course, I do not wish that Laura should become the theme of scandal. But as for this young firebrand of a Haldane, there must be a decided change in him. I cannot ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... And what a theme! It demands a volume from any pen capable of doing it justice. For the present purposes, however, I approve strongly of a compilation which shall express the reasoned opinions of writers representing the allied nations, while it is a real pleasure to turn for a few minutes from ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... in discussion is exactly given in the title, and she does not stray from her theme; but brings out, sharply and inescapably, the universal fact, that marriage, to a woman, is not only a happiness (or a grief!), not only a duty, or at least a natural function, but a trade—she earns her ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... you talk of glory and the guards, Of fighting heroes, and their great rewards! Our eyes behold you glow with martial flame, Our ears attend the never-ceasing theme. Fast from your tongue the rousing accents flow, And horror darkens on your sable brow! We hear the thunder of the rolling war, And see red ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... either of superiority or of inferiority. The great historian of European Morals has analysed the constitutional differences of the sexes as he conceived them; and I may quote his remarks as pertinent to my theme. Lecky writes as follows[422]: ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... be a mingled one, for so is our theme; having a sympathy alike for our mirthful and sorrowful moments, which it alike spiritualizes; striking the light, gleesome chord to the one, and attuning the soul to more ethereal joy; while by its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... is e a brathair, If it be not Bran, it is Bran's brother,' was the proverbial reply of Maccombich. [Footnote: Bran, the well-known dog of Fingal, is often the theme of Highland proverb ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... falleth on those things that have not relation to stage-plays, musick in the church, dancing, new-years' gifts, &c.,—then upon altars, images, hair of men and women, bishops and bonfires. Cards and tables do offend him, and perukes do fall within the compass of his theme. His end is to persuade the people that we are returning back again to paganism, and to persuade them to go and serve God in another country, as many are gone already, and set up new laws and fancies among themselves. Consider what may come ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... good," said I complacently, regarding the drawing with head bent sideways. "It's an old theme, but it's up to date. At Janot's they would say it was palpitating ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... prayer in prose, preceded by nine defective verses which probably preserve old epic turns of expression. The dialect is Bavarian, the theme that of Psalm XC, 2. The manuscript dates from the year 814. Wessobrunn was the ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... turning over the pages of this volume, one is struck by his breadth, his versatility, his compass, as evidenced in theme, sentiment, and style." ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... this theme till we have sought to set our hearts a-singing by a sight of Him who is, and ever shall be, the source as well as the theme of all our songs. We but recently traced Him in His glorious upward path ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... the portfolio of theme paper I carry underneath my arm. But in this corner of the world a portfolio of theme paper and a pile of books are as common a part of a girl's paraphernalia as a muff and a shopping-bag on a winter's ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... of them, with a higher art, and to her a finer cruelty, a sharper torture, uttered no abuse, but always spoke of her in terms of mocking eulogy and ironical admiration. Everybody talked about the new wonder, canvassed the theme of her proposed discourse, and marveled how she ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... not play—she had been too busy to practice, all spring and summer; she scarcely ever touched the violin, she said. And she did not want to talk—or if she did, it was plain that she had only one theme. So Kent, perforce, listened to the story. Afterward, he assured her that it was "outa sight." As a matter of fact, half the time he had not heard a word of what she was reading; he had been too busy just looking at her and being glad he was there. He had, however, a dim impression ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... theme was touched upon now. "No, poor girl, she is in bad condition, but I think she's better. The air seems not to have made her worse, at any rate. I haven't much faith in climate, but I believe she has improved since we left Kansas City ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... men, typifies the spirit of the age. The one motiv is loud at the beginning of the Reformation but almost dies away before the end of the century; the other, beginning at the same time, rises slowly into a crescendo culminating far beyond the boundaries of the age. The first theme was the Prodigal Son, treated by no less than twenty-seven German dramatists, not counting several in other languages. To the Protestant, the Younger Son represented faith, the Elder Son works. To all, the exile in the far country, the riotous living with harlots and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... I raise my glass, The goal of every human, The hope of every clan and class And every man and woman. The daydreams of the urchin there, The sweet theme of the maiden's prayer, The strong man's one ambition, The sacred prize of mothers sweet, The tramp of soldiers on the street Have all the selfsame mission. Life here is nothing more or less Than just a ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... no less novel than his theme. It may or it may not have been consciously modelled after the saga style, to which, however, it bears an obvious resemblance. In his early childhood, while he lived among the peasants, he became familiar with their mode of thought and speech, and it entered into his being, and became ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... doubtful if in any previous age our highest literature has more emphatically and persistently devoted itself to proclaiming this great doctrine of the Cross. Sometimes directly and explicitly, oftener by implication, this is the ultimate theme of those who are most deeply influencing the spirit of the time. Our finest and most widely recognised pulpit oratory is at home here, and only here: Maurice and Arnold, Trench and Vaughan, Robertson and Stanley, James Martineau and Seeley, Thirlwall and Wilberforce, Kingsley ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... must have large recourse to "big names," not because of inbred snobbishness on the part of the editors but because the "big name," besides carrying advertising value, is more likely than a little one to stand for material with a "big" theme, handled by a writer of experience. A surer touch in selecting and handling topics of nation-wide appeal is what counts most heavily in favor of the writer with an established reputation. Often enough it is not his vastly superior craftsmanship. ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... and death. There are also some very healthy bacchic notes. Often the ballads are a mere presentation of a scene, with neither plot nor moral; once in a while, too, Uhland shows a humorous touch. But various as are his themes and treatments, the treatment is always nicely adapted to the theme. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Authors have feelings, which even scholastic young maidens cannot be permitted to lacerate. I therefore warn the reader of this article against any inclination toward sympathy with the critical mood of that obnoxious female. My theme is not as lively as "Punch" used to be; but, on the other hand, it is not as dull as a religious novel. Patient investigation may find it really agreeable: good-nature will not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... she said was always worth hearing; a greater compliment could not be paid her. She was a most conscientious listener, giving you her mind and heart, as well as her magnetic eyes. Persons were never her theme, unless public characters were under discussion, or friends were to be praised. One never dreamed of frivolities in Mrs. Browning's presence, and gossip felt itself out of place. Yourself, not herself, was always a pleasant subject to her, calling ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... Orthodox doctrine of justification to be of merely local and temporary interest, having no permanent value. It is not likely that a man like Paul, of so large, so deep, so philosophic a mind, should have devoted himself so earnestly, and returned so fondly, to a theme involving no universal and eternal principles, whose interest was to perish with the hour. It is not probable that, in this small volume of writings of the new covenant,—this precious gift of God to the world in all ages and in every nation,—so large a portion should ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... my line To enact "Love in a Cot." Well, you see, I'd had my swing, Been engaged to eight or ten, Got to stop some time, of course, So it don't much matter when. Auntie hates old maids, and thinks Every girl should marry young— On that theme my whole life long I have heard the changes sung. So, ma belle, what could I do? Charley wants a stylish wife. We'll suit well enough, no fear, When we settle down for life. But for love-stuff! See my ring! Lovely, isn't it? ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... no claim to unity of theme, since its subjects range from skyscrapers to symbols and soul states; but the author claims for it nevertheless a unity of point of view, and one (correct or not) so comprehensive as to include in one synthesis every subject dealt with. For according to ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... is giving most of his attention to a bound volume of music which he has open. He is a young man of twenty-two, with wavy auburn hair; wears old corduroy trousers and a grey flannel shirt, open at the throat. He stirs the fire, then takes violin and plays the Nibelung theme ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... is it, at each turn I trace Some memory of that exiled race? Can I not mountain maiden spy, But she must bear the Douglas eye? Can I not view a Highland brand, But it must match the Douglas hand? Can I not frame a fevered dream, But still the Douglas is the theme? I'll dream no more,—by manly mind Not even in sleep is will resigned. My midnight orisons said o'er, I'll turn to rest, and dream no more.' His midnight orisons he told, A prayer with every bead of ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... turn; and as thereby you are now rested, I judge that 'tis meet to revert to our accustomed rule. Wherefore I ordain that for to-morrow you do each of you take thought how you may discourse of the ensuing theme: to wit, of such as in matters of love, or otherwise, have done something with liberality or magnificence. By the telling, and (still more) by the doing of such things, your spirits will assuredly be duly attuned and animated to emprise high and noble; whereby ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... back again. After remaining some time, however, we came to the conclusion that we had come upon a foolish errand, and had just risen to go, when an exquisite strain of very soft music came from the organ. We listened spell-bound, rooted to the spot. The theme was simple, almost Gregorian in its character, but handled in a most masterly way. Such playing I had never before heard; it was the very ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... presented. In a Balcony, the one drama in Men and Women, has but a fragment of a plot, but in intensity, reality, and passion it excels most of Browning's dramas, and, in spite of its long speeches, has proved effective on the stage.[5] In variety of theme, subject-matter, and verse-form, the poems of Men and Women defy classification. Whatever page one turns, there is something novel, stimulating, captivating. All of Browning's Florentine interests are represented here—his love of old pictures and little-known music, his delight in Florence, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... is worthy of his theme, and is the only one I recall by any of our well-known poets upon the much-loved mayflower or arbutus. There is a little poem upon this subject by an unknown author that also has the right flavor. I recall ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... made an exit while I was giving The Happy Little Cripple—a recitation I had prepared with particular enthusiasm and satisfaction. It fulfilled, as few poems do, all the requirements of length, climax and those many necessary features for a recitation. The subject was a theme of real pathos, beautified by the cheer and optimism of the little sufferer. Consequently when this couple left the hall I was very anxious to know the reason and asked a friend to find out. He learned that they had a little hunch-back child of their own. After this experience ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... for liturgical purposes, and it was several centuries before "Corde natus" was adopted into the cycle of Latin hymns. Its elaborate rhetoric is very unlike the severity of "Veni, redemptor gentium," but again the note is purely theological; the Incarnation as a world-event is its theme. It sings the Birth of Him ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... it fell in with my humour for a space to foist the man's personality upon you as yours and call you scientific—that most abusive word. But here he is, indisputably, with me in Utopia, and lapsing from our high speculative theme into halting but intimate confidences. He declares he has not come to Utopia to meet again with ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... fugue goes rolling on, From Maine to utmost Oregon; The factory-wheels a rhythmus hum; From brawling parties concords come;— All this I hear, or seem to hear; But when, enchanted, I draw near To fix in notes the various theme, Life seems a whiff of kitchen-steam, History a Swiss street-singer's thrum, And I, that would have fashioned words To mate that music's rich accords, By rash approaches startle thee, Thou mutablest Perversity! The world drones on its old tum-tum, But thou hast ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Wit and Wisdom! that, my lads; I'll none but that; the theme is very good, And may maintain a liberal argument: To marry wit to wisdom, asks some cunning; Many have wit, that may come short of wisdom. We'll see how Master poet plays his part, And whether wit or wisdom grace his art.— Go, make him drink, and all his ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... to stop. My heart is so full that it seems as if I could spend the day on this theme. But I must stop, and, in conclusion I say, first to the church, accept frankly the responsibility which God throws on you in the persons of these young men. You are the appointed agency, the proper agency, and the only agency to save and restrain and protect them. You cannot shirk ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... a set of golfers at a summer hotel than you do like farmers," began Neil Chase, still harping on the theme which seemed to cause him so much unrest, as the party ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... Clerk, chief clerk to the Jury Court, Edinburgh, when he first learned it, now nearly thirty years ago, from a passenger in the mail-coach. With Mr. Clerk's consent, I gave the story at that time to poor Mat Lewis, who published it with a ghost-ballad which he adjusted on the same theme. From the minuteness of the original detail, however, the narrative is better calculated for prose than verse; and more especially as the friend to whom it was originally communicated is one of the most accurate, intelligent, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... cause dilutes the sectarian ego, dissolves village caste, makes neighbor acquainted with neighbor, and liberates a vast amount of human love which otherwise would remain hermetically sealed. Gossip is only the lack of a worthy theme. A town library supplies topics for talk, and the books there supply ten thousand more. To accept a Carnegie library means to take on an obligation. Achievement always stands for responsibility. "Is it possible that you are nervous?" asked the man of Abraham Lincoln when the orator ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... all intermediate steps are omitted, and the result is linked immediately to the first Cause. God Himself is the theme, and trust in Him ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... poured out a glass of water. Her hand trembled as she drank. Widdowson fell into gloomy abstraction. Later, as they lay side by side, he wished to renew the theme, but Monica would not talk; she declared herself too sleepy, turned her back to him, ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... her man (ladies are very apt to fathom their male acquaintance—too apt, I think); and, to pin him to the only medical theme which interested her, seized the opportunity while he was in actual contact with Julia's wrist, and rapidly enumerated her symptoms, and also told him what Mr. Osmond had said ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... found to be compounds or derivatives in the other languages from which they have come to us. To show the composition, origin, and literal sense of these, is also a part, and a highly useful part, of this general inquiry, or theme of instruction. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... did act, behind the scenes. Ministerial exertions were also paralysed by another cause. A prevalent notion existed that there was a mysterious power about the court which worked to the detriment of the public good. This was a constant theme of invective among the opposition, and, it would seem, not without good reason. But there was another cause of obstruction to the measures formed by government. This was found in the democratical spirit, which now universally prevailed. Courted by the aristocracy, who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... question, by whom? I, for one, would far sooner in the long run trust the people at large than I would the few, who in everything which relates to Government are as little instructed as the many and more difficult to move. The very fickleness of the multitude, the theme of such constant declamation, is so far good that it proves a susceptibility to impressions to which men hedged round by impregnable ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... useful?" Gregory asked, waiving the question of maternal cravings. He had vexed Miss Scrotton a good deal, but the theme was one upon which she could not resist enlarging; anything connected with Madame von Marwitz was for her of ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... not the only celebrated poet who made the Purgatory of St. Patrick the subject of his song. Four centuries before the great Spanish dramatist was born, a most elaborate and very lengthy poem was written on the same attractive theme by Marie de France, the first woman, as M. de Roquefort says,who ever wrote French verse, the Sappho of her age.* Nor was Marie herself the only minstrel of that early time who yielded to the fascination of this legend. Two anonymous Trouveres of a little later ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... "And I have a theme to finish," added Dave. "Let us do all the studying we can," he went on. "Then, if it clears off, we'll have so ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... sunshine and air. She recalled drearily the clock-like revolutions of the year which brought bull-fights, races, rodeos, church celebrations; her mother's anecdotes of the Indians; her father's manifold interests, ever the theme of his tongue; Reinaldo's grandiloquent accounts of his exploits and intentions; Prudencia's infinite nothings. She hated the balls of which she was La Favorita, the everlasting serenades, the whole life of pleasure which made that period of California ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... reported by Boswell, had thrown out in conversation, proposed to Cowper the Mediterranean for a topic. 'He replied, "Unless I were a better historian than I am, there would be no proportion between the theme and my ability. It seems, indeed, not to be so properly a subject for one poem, as for a dozen."' Southey's Cowper, iii. 15, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... offered on the commons during holidays, without let or hindrance, the drunkard's glass to the crowds thronging by extemporized booths and bars. Shocking as was the excesses of this period "nothing comparatively was heard on the subject of intemperance—it was seldom a theme for the essayist—the newspapers scarcely acknowledged its existence, excepting occasionally in connection with some catastrophes or crimes—the Christian and patriot, while they perceived its ravages, formed no plans for its overthrow—and it did not occur to any that a paper devoted mainly ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... again, Annixter, pretending to look over the new cheese press, asking about details of her work. When this had happened on that previous occasion, ending with Annixter's attempt to kiss her, Hilma had been talkative enough, chattering on from one subject to another, never at a loss for a theme. But this last time was a veritable ordeal. No sooner had Annixter appeared than her heart leaped and quivered like that of the hound-harried doe. Her speech failed her. Throughout the whole brief interview she had been miserably tongue-tied, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... her graduation she did a thing for which Winnebago felt itself justified in calling her different. Each member of the graduating class was allowed to choose a theme for a thesis. Fanny Brandeis called hers "A Piece of Paper." On Winnebago's Fox River were located a number of the largest and most important paper mills in the country. There were mills in which paper was made of wood fiber, and others in which ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... year. That precious intangible, the initiative, is becoming ours. Our policy, not limited to mere reaction against crises provoked by others, is free to develop along lines of our choice not only abroad, but also at home. As a major theme for American policy during the coming year, let our joint determination be to hold this new ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... bitter and telling popular satire against the new monarchy. When a comedian ventured on a republican allusion, he was saluted with the loudest applause. The praise of Cato formed the fashionable theme of oppositional pamphleteers, and their writings found a public all the more grateful because even literature was no longer free. Caesar indeed combated the republicans even now on their own field; he himself ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the spirit, he soon entered into the flesh, and there he ended. If by an effort of his hearer his attention was diverted from himself, it would with all the quickness of an elastic bow rebound to his favourite theme. Out of the sphere of his own "poor body," as he used to call it, he was no more at home in conversation than a fish wriggling on ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... pithy analysis of character, I enlarged upon my theme. "He rebukes MacLachan for past drunkenness. He mourns for Schepstein, who occasionally helps out a friend at ten per cent, as a usurer. He once accused old Madame Tallafferr of pride, but he'll never do that again. He calls the Little Red Doctor, our local physician, to account for profanity, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... those rocks—she is actually with thee, Ab Gwilym; but she is not long with thee, for a storm comes on, and thunder shatters the rocks—Morfydd flees! Quite right, Ab Gwilym; thou hadst no need of her, a better theme for song is the voice of the Lord—the rock shatterer—than the frail wife of the Bwa Bach. Go to, Ab Gwilym, thou wast a wiser and a better man than thou wouldst fain ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... they are not so; and if they are, even though that happiness may be the creation of a delusion, I like to leave them so. I, therefore, encouraged Mr Pridhomme to pour all his raptures into, what he thought, an approving ear, and Jemima was the theme, until he left me at the door of the hotel at which I was to dine with Captain Reud. Whatever the reader may think of Jemima, I was, at this period, perfectly innocent myself, though not wholly ignorant. I should have deemed Miss Jemima's osculatory art as the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the Crusaders, of the homage paid to the heroes of the Cross at the courts they visited, of the adventures of their life, and the exciting spirit that animated their war. In fact, neither minstrel nor priest suffered the theme to grow cold; and the fame of those who had gone forth to the holy strife gave at once emulation and discontent to ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by the convenient phrase "economy of means."[3] By originality is meant something new in plot, point, outcome, or character. (See Introduction III for a discussion of these terms.) Ingenuity suggests cleverness in handling the theme. The short-story also is impressionistic because it leaves to the reader the reconstruction from hints of much of ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... the resolutions were interminable. It was not thought that full justice was done to the subject, if every point of interest or dissatisfaction in this prolific theme was not condensed into a resolution. Accordingly the Akron Convention presented, discussed, and adopted fifteen resolutions. At Salem, the previous year, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... upon thoughts of death. And while her face took this expression, and she, staring upon the earth before her, seemed to be meditating upon irremediable fate, thought Corilla: "This is a charming theme which the good Cardinal Albani has thrown into the urn for me. I found it directly by the small pin which, according to his promise, he inserted in the paper. This cardinal is an agreeable imp, and I must give him a kiss for his ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... references is very marked and equally natural. The whole address down to verse 27 inclusive is of that nature, and the same theme recurs in verse 31, is caught up again in verse 33, and continues thence to the end. That abundance of allusions to himself is characteristic of the Apostle, even in his letters; much more is it to be looked for in such an outpouring of his heart to trusted friends, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... necessity of confession—is so powerfully presented to us that we forget all question of originality until our memory of the fascinating pages has cooled down. Then we may recall the resemblance of theme in the recent novel entitled "The Silence of Dean Maitland," while we find the prototype of both these books in "The Scarlet Letter" of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who has handled the problem with a subtlety and haunting weirdness to which neither of the English ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... ALL THE CRACK. The fashionable theme, the go. The Crack Lay, of late is used, in the cant language, to signify the art and mystery ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... mouth to mouth. Yes. Fat Taskinar! He was known well enough! His corpulence had been the theme of many an article in the journals of ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... note-paper directed to Dudley Venner, Esq., and all too scanty to hold that incredible expansion of the famous three words which a woman was born to say,—that perpetual miracle which astonishes all the go-betweens who wear their shoes out in carrying a woman's infinite variations on the theme, "I love you." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... began, as we have seen, in the reign of George III., when the Whig ascendancy in Parliament had passed. But the Whigs did nothing during their long lease of power to bring democracy nearer, and were entirely contemptuous of popular aspirations. At the very time when the democratic idea was the theme of philosophers, and was to be seen expressed in the constitution of the revolted American colonies, and in the French Revolution, England remained under an aristocracy, governed first by Whigs, and then by Tories. It is true democracy ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... hotly discussing the events of the previous day. Pyotr Stepanovitch talked more than anyone and made them listen to him. He was always considered among us as a "chatterbox of a student with a screw loose," but now he talked of Yulia Mihailovna, and in the general excitement the theme was an enthralling one. As one who had recently been her intimate and confidential friend, he disclosed many new and unexpected details concerning her; incidentally (and of course unguardedly) he repeated some of her own remarks about persons known to all in the town, and thereby piqued ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of the chaplain from a whaling ship who is said to have wandered into an encampment of the Eskimos. He told the people of heaven with all its glories, and it meant nothing to these children of the North; they were not interested in his story. But when he changed his theme and spoke of hell, with its everlasting fires which needed no replenishing, they cried, "Where is it? Tell us that we may go"; and big and little, they clambered over ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... verse Deal boldly with substantial things—in truth And sanctity of passion speak of these, That justice may be done, obeisance paid Where it is due. Thus haply shall I teach Inspire, through unadulterated ears Pour rapture, tenderness, and hope; my theme No other than the very heart of man, As found among the best of those who live, Not unexalted by religious faith, Nor uninformed by books, good books, though few In Nature's presence: thence may I ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... no man of ability would attempt to unwind the tangle of Bigot's dishonesty during a critical war. Montcalm wrote home complaints in cipher. The French government bided its time, and Bigot tightened his vampire suckers on the lifeblood of the dying nation. The whole era is a theme for the allegory ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... circumstance, at all events, as detailed by Alley, was one which in this instance justified their sagacity. Roberts and she had met, precisely as Alley said, three or four times at Lady Gourlay's and the Dean's, where their several attractions were, in fact, the theme of some observation. Those long, conscious glances, however, which, on the subject of love are such traitors to the heart, by disclosing its most secret operations, had sufficiently well told them the state of everything ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... This evening the theme of the discourse was a phrase of Chateaubriand's: "The tiger kills and sleeps; man kills and is sleepless." On listening to the discussion, Saniel said to himself that it was truly a pity not to be able to reply to all this rhetoric by a simple fact of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sufficient ingenuity to construct a plausible defence of a sentiment which, however adapted to supply a theme for eloquent declamation, is not to be found in Scripture. "It must be admitted," says he, "that Mary would have been involved in the general ruin of mankind, had not the merciful Physician who heals our diseases determined to imbue her beforehand ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... THEME no poet gladly sung, Fair to old and foul to young; Scorn not thou the love of parts, And the articles of arts. Grandeur of the perfect sphere Thanks the atoms ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in the court-house of Albert Lea, October 9, 10. On the first evening Mrs. Chapman Catt was the speaker, her theme being A True Democracy. The Rev. Ida C. Hultin of Illinois lectured on The Crowning Race. Miss Laura A. Gregg and Miss Helen L. Kimber, both of Kansas, national organizers, gave reports of county conventions conducted by them throughout Minnesota, with the assistance of Mrs. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... almost the last of their profession, hanged at about the same spot. I find that Mr. Paine has printed this piece, in Buried Treasure, but I know no other that so well illustrates its particular aspect of our theme.] ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... and only appeared radiant on the field of battle. So that the Duke de Nemours was not the only rival with whom Conde had to contend for the favours of that beauty for whom Louis XIV. in his boyish amusements had shown a preference, and which has furnished a theme for some agreeable trifling to the sparkling muse of Benserade. An abbe, named Cambiac, in the service of the house of Conde, balanced for some time the passion to which Nemours had given birth in the bosom ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... veracity—the veracity which is faithful to the spirit and gambols only with the letter. The humor of that work lies in its sympathetic and creative insight quite as much as in the broad good-humor and imaginative whimsicality with which the author handles his theme. The caricature of a true artist gives a better likeness than ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... in which this great theme is treated we need say little; no living writer is so well qualified to do it justice as Captain Mahan, and certainly the true significance of the tremendous events of these momentous years has never been more luminously ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... deeds is the conquest of Vritra, the dragon dwelling in a mountain fastness amidst the waters, where Indra, accompanied by the troop of Maruts, or storm-gods, slew the monster with his bolt and set free the waters, or recovered the hidden kine. Our poets sing endless variations on this theme, and sometimes speak of Indra repeating the exploit for the benefit of his worshippers, which is as much as to say that they, or at least some of them, think ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... his own lips that the perils of the way made him see the poetry of it all, and he said to himself that here was the theme for that great epic, which would be the chef d'oeuvre of his literary life. It is to be written in blank verse, with the hymns and secular songs he sang at each stop given in an appendix, and he confidently hopes that it will stand out as something conspicuous and distinct against ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... has attempted in these volumes to present in a judicial spirit a chapter of our Revolutionary history which usually bears the most of passion in its recital,—believing, as he does, that impartiality is identical with charity, in dealing with his theme. The first edition of his work, in a single volume, has been before the public seventeen years. The zeal and fidelity of his labor have been well appreciated. So far as his purpose has involved a plea or an apology ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the Silver Fox Patrol when on one of their vacation trips to the wonderland of the great Northwest. How apparent disaster is bravely met and overcome by Thad and his friends, forms the main theme of the story, which abounds in plenty ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... searching and complete analysis of an abstract theme of which I know. It sums the subject up like an essay by Herbert Spencer, and disposes of the case once and forever. It is so learned that only a sophomore could have written it, and we quite forgive the author when we are told that it was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... encouragement for you to labor and pray, my friends, because the abolition of slavery as well as its existence, has been the theme of prophecy. "Ethiopia (says the Psalmist) shall stretch forth her hands unto God." And is she not now doing so? Are not the Christian negroes of the south lifting their hands in prayer for deliverance, just as the Israelites did when their redemption was drawing ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... in the course of their talk he mentioned, as the merest matter of fact, the visit of the famous beauty to his home. Kauhi pooh-poohed this. He was sure of the girl's death. Mahana adroitly kept the conversation on this theme until Kauhi lost his temper, confessed that he had killed Kaha for faithlessness, and swore that the woman whom Mahana sheltered was a spirit or an impostor. He would wager his life that it was so. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... depict in his mysterious hierarch of the powers of nature. "It was the Staubach and the Jungfrau, and something else," not the influence of Faust on a receptive listener, which called up a new theme, and struck out a fresh well-spring of the imagination. The motif of Manfred is remorse—eternal suffering for inexpiable crime. The sufferer is for ever buoyed up with the hope that there is relief ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... another. If we listen attentively, however, to a number of songs, we shall detect in all of them a theme, as it is termed by musicians, of which the different individuals of the species warble their respective variations. Every song is, technically speaking, a fantasia constructed upon this theme, from which none of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... next theme must be popular report, to which very great attention must be paid. But what I have said throughout the foregoing discourse applies also to the diffusion of a favourable report: the reputation for eloquence; the favour of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... works, in which the characters of scholars and beauties is delineated their allusions are again repeatedly of Wen Chuen, their theme in every page of Tzu Chien; a thousand volumes present no diversity; and a thousand characters are but a counterpart of each other. What is more, these works, throughout all their pages, cannot help bordering on extreme licence. The authors, however, had ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Sometimes a Tertullian voices this abdication of the reasoning faculty defiantly—certum est quia impossibile est; but more often perhaps the same position {26} is expressed in the spirit of Tennyson's well-known lines, which, indeed, bear directly upon our immediate theme:— ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Gombert himself dispelled her fear that his composition would be purely secular in character, and Wolf upheld him by singing to the musical princess, to the accompaniment of the lute, snatches of the principal theme of the Benedictio, which had impressed itself upon ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wife," she said, fixing her whole attention upon the stilled actor, and softening the quality of her voice until it was again low and musical. "Ray, my friend, courtship is the text from which the whole sermon of married life takes its theme. Do not let ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... criticisms may help us with their side lights. A critic in "The Edinburgh Review" for January, 1861, thinks that "Mr. Motley has not always been successful in keeping the graphic variety of his details subordinate to the main theme of his work." Still, he excuses the fault, as he accounts it, in consideration of the new light thrown on various obscure points of ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... basis of moral instruction in the public school," was the interesting theme of an address it was the privilege of the author to deliver at a teachers' institute forty years ago, when engaged in teaching in central Pennsylvania. The conviction then became indelibly impressed, that the Bible is really the basis of the American public school system. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... giving daily lessons, and the limited income of the family required the strictest economy. The dependence was upon the small salary of Professor Stowe, and the few dollars she could earn by an occasional newspaper or magazine article. But the theme burned in her mind, and finally took this shape: at least she would write some sketches and show the Christian world what slavery really was, and what the system was that they were defending. She wanted to do this with entire fairness, showing ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... seat in the vicinity) to Cruikston Castle, the country is rich, and the scenery delightful. The castle itself might be the subject of volumes, as it has been the theme of many a poet, and the subject of many a painter's pencil. Its name is known all over the world, or may be so, from the circumstance of its once having been the residence of Mary Queen of Scots and Henry Lord Darnly; and though the famed yew-tree ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... that a woman who has been O.K.'d by a government physician one day may contract a disease and spread it the very next day. You can depend upon it that if she has done so she will evade the examination next time in order not to interfere with her trade profits. So, there you are. This is an ugly theme, but ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... Upon this theme he continued to preach for half an hour. The alcalde snored, and Maria Clara nodded, for the poor child could no longer keep from sleeping, since she had no more paintings or images to study, nor anything else to amuse her. On Ibarra the words and allusions made no more impression, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... himself down on Tennelly's couch when he got back to the dormitory. Bill Ward was deep in a book under the drop-light, and Tennelly was supposed to be finishing a theme ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... jest than it could Thomas Hood. When nothing else was left him to joke upon, when he could no longer seek fun in the city streets, or visit the Tower of London and call it "a sweet boon," his own shattered self suggested a theme for jesting. He commenced this paper "On Health." The purport of it, I believe, was to ridicule doctors generally; for Artemus was bitterly sarcastic on his medical attendants, and he had some good reasons for being so. A few weeks before he died, a German physician ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... thousand dollar American prize play. From thousands of manuscripts submitted to Mr. Ames of the Little Theatre, Miss Brown's was chosen as being the most notable, both in theme and characterisation. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... overwhelmed in her turn by Amy's vehemence, stood silent for an instant, and then replied, "Why, God ha' mercy, woman! I see thou canst talk fast enough when the theme likes thee. Nay, tell me, woman," she continued, for to the impulse of curiosity was now added that of an undefined jealousy that some deception had been practised on her—"tell me, woman,—for by God's day, I WILL know,—whose wife or whose paramour art thou? Speak out, and be speedy: ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... camp the day after the capture of Illora, and advanced thus far to receive the queen and escort her over the borders. The queen received the marques with distinguished honor, for he was esteemed the mirror of chivalry. His actions in this war had become the theme of every tongue, and many hesitated not to compare him in prowess with ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Lorimer was writing his sermon for the last Sunday in Advent. His theme was eternal punishment and one which he considered worthy of his utmost eloquence. There was nothing mythical or allegorical in that subject in the opinion of the Reverend Stephen. He believed in it most firmly, and the belief afforded ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... L'Ouverture, a full-blooded negro, who had made himself master of Santo Domingo and had thus planted himself squarely in the searoad to Louisiana. The story of this "gilded African," as Bonaparte contemptuously dubbed him, cannot be told in these pages, because it involves no less a theme than the history of the French Revolution in this island, once the most thriving among the colonial possessions of France in the West Indies. The great plantations of French Santo Domingo (the western part of the island) had supplied half of Europe with sugar, coffee, and cotton; three-fourths ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... incongruous patchwork of wood, leather, metal, paper, paint and mortar, thrown together in some of the thousand and one fantastic fashions that spring up in a day, run their little course, and speedily return to the dust they have spent their short lives in collecting. I am afraid to dwell on this theme lest I should lie awake all night in a fever ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... that is it. That is the way to talk under the new regime. It is favor, and oblige, and education, and monsieur, and madame, now. What child's play to call this a country—a government! I would not be surprised"—jumping to his next position on this ever-recurring first of the month theme—"I would not be surprised if Pompey has failed to find the letter in the box. How do I know that the mail has not been tampered with? From day to day I expect to hear it. What is to prevent? Who is to interpose? The ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... American Literature." In revising them for publication a briefer title has seemed desirable, and I have therefore availed myself of Jefferson's phrase "The American Mind," as suggesting, more accurately perhaps than the original title, the real theme of discussion. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... have while I sense in you a momentary outwardness. The gifts of the heart are too sacred to be laid before a closed door. Your mood, I know, will pass, and tomorrow we shall have this bond between us. I wait, for it can be said but once: I cannot commune magically twice on the same theme with you. I do not propose we should be opportunists, nor lay down a formula; but to be skillful in action we must work with and comprehend the ebb and flow of power. Mystery and gloom, dark blue and starshine, doubt and feebleness alternate with the clear and shining, opal skies and sunglow, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... experiment upon their own families and should never fail to enlarge upon their theme. If need be, they can prepare the matter for a short address or a ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... plenty o' birds," remarked Mowat, with the absent air of a man whose mind is running on some other theme. ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... grave and national considerations that were involved in these investigations. The principles of political institutions, the rival claims of the two Houses of Parliament, the authority of the Established Church, the demands of religious sects, were, after a long lapse of years, anew the theme of public discussion. Men were attracted to a writer who traced the origin of the anti-monarchical principle in modern Europe; treated of the arts of insurgency; gave them, at the same time, a critical history of the Puritans, and a treatise on the genius of the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... generations unborn in Australian climes, even to the realms of the rising sun (the greek: anatolai haedlioio,) must in every age draw perennial streams of intellectual life, we feel that the little accidents of birth and social condition are so unspeakably below the grandeur of the theme, are so irrelevant and disproportioned to the real interest at issue, so incommensurable with any of its relations, that a biographer of Shakspeare at once denounces himself as below his subject if ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... devised. Nevertheless serious technical faults and shortcomings may coexist with great merits of composition and expression. So it is in this relief of Seti. The design is stamped with unusual refinement and grace. The theme is hackneyed enough, but its treatment here raises it above the level ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Xaquixaguana, both died within a year after Pizarro. Hinojosa was assassinated but two years later in La Plata; and his old comrade Valdivia, after a series of brilliant exploits in Chili, which furnished her most glorious theme to the epic Muse of Castile, was cut off by the invincible warriors of Arauco. The Manes of Pizarro ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... life, founded on facts as they existed some years ago in the District of Columbia. The theme is the maternal love and splendid courage of ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... never be deficient in courtiers. Delay not—and send me to the Bastile with my friend; for, if you did not know how to listen to the Comte de la Fere, whose voice is the sweetest and noblest in all the world when honor is the theme; if you do not know how to listen to D'Artagnan, the frankest and honestest voice of sincerity, you are a bad king, and to-morrow will be a poor king. And learn from me, sire, that bad kings are hated by their people, and poor kings are driven ignominiously away.' That is what ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... condensed by the work of ages into meteorites and from meteorites into worlds—and these went on rolling in their appointed orbits, for what reason nobody knew, but then nobody cared! And Love—the key-note of the theme to which I had set my mistaken life in tune—Love was only a graceful word used to politely define the low but very general sentiment of coarse animal attraction—in short, poetry such as mine was altogether absurd and out ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... for a while. Garstin had said most. He had been more agreeable than usual, and had explained to Arabian, rather as one explains to a child, that a worker in an art is sometimes baffled for a time, a writer by his theme, a musician by his floating and perhaps half-nebulous conception, a painter by his subject. Then he must wait, cursing perhaps, damning his own impotence, dreading its continuance. But there is nothing else to be ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... his daughters Mr. Flack was frequently the theme, though introduced much more by the young ladies than by himself, and especially by Delia, who announced at an early period that she knew what he wanted and that it wasn't in the least what SHE wanted. She amplified this statement very soon—at least as regards ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... and progress of culture and civilization in their various constituents is the theme of history. It does not limit its attention to a particular fraction of a people, to the exclusion of the rest. Governments and rulers, and the public doings of states,—such as foreign wars, and the struggles of rival dynasties,—naturally ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... by this time lost in his own reflections. These girls had supplied an all-sufficient theme; whether they slept or wakened was no affair of his. He had somewhat to argue for himself about extreme unction, priestly intervention, confession, absolution,—something to say to himself about Leclerc, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... narrative which differs from all others. It differs from tragedy in its subject matter in this way, that tragedy in the beginning is admirable and quiet, in its ending or catastrophe foul and horrible ... Comedy on the other hand, begins with adverse conditions, but its theme has a happy termination. Likewise they differ in their style of language, for tragedy is lofty and sublime, comedy ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... different. There was one subject in which each took the deepest interest, and about which each had something to say. Frederick Dalton's health was precious to each, and each felt anxiety about his condition. This formed a theme about which they ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... the Mill's study incident formed the only theme of conversation that morning. Previously the sudden elevation to the first fifteen of Barry, who was popular in the house, at the expense of Rand-Brown, who was unpopular, had given Seymour's something to talk about. ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... world, yea, and things that are not," may provide matter for good talk, if only the right people are engaged in the enterprise. I know a man who can make a description of the weather as entertaining as a tune on the violin; and even on the threadbare theme of the waywardness of domestic servants, I have heard a discreet woman play the ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... how deeply! and yet I can say, and do say, it is good for me that I was afflicted. But I meant not to speak so much of myself, and you must forgive the intrusion. Self, you know, is ever an attractive theme. I have called this morning to try and interest you in a poor woman who lives next door to me. She is very ill, and I am afraid will die. She has two children, almost babes—sweet little things—and if the mother is taken they will be left without a home or a friend, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... lady described his conduct in leaving her alone and unprotected in a London hotel, to the neglect of his affectionate assurances and the shame and confusion of herself, in language which did no more than justice to the theme. ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... half in fact, the thread of an occult idea runs through this weird theme. You cannot, even at the end, be quite sure whether the author has been making fun of you or not. Perhaps, if the truth were told, he could not quite tell you himself. The tale all hangs about one of a group of friends ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... his own young pity in the solitudes of Fawley. But in a moment the man roused himself: the sad expression was gone. Had the girl's merry laugh again chased it away? But Lionel's attention was now drawn from Darrell himself to the observations murmured round him, of which Darrell was the theme. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... written during the war. But owing to the fact that several managers politely declined to produce it, it has not appeared on any stage. Now, perhaps, its theme is more timely, more likely to receive the attention it deserves, when the smoke of battle has somewhat cleared. Even when the struggle with Germany and her allies was in progress it was quite apparent ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was one of the first tragic operas to command great success, notwithstanding its dreadful theme and its light music, which is half French, half Italian. It is in some respects the predecessor of Verdi's operas, Rigoletto, Trovatore etc., which have till now held their own in many theatres because the subject is interesting and the music may well entertain us for an evening, {186} though ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... carry thoughts so sweet. The sun, with beaming rays, had scarcely shone Ere everywhere the joyous news had flown; At every fireside they were known, By every hearth, in converse keen, The busking was the theme. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... of all others. To think what particular thing it is that we wish to remember, is in fact to have remembered it already. It is an obstruse and difficult inquiry, into which it is not necessary now to enter. A more important inquiry, and one connected directly with our present theme, relates to the different kinds of memory, and their connection severally ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... dais distant, near it by my wish I seem; Homage to your Ring I render, and I make your praise my theme." ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... fear he would never have another. Marcus was a sprightly letter-writer, and must have been a quick observer, and Fronto's gentle claims that he made the man are worthy of consideration. As a literary exercise the daily theme, prompted by love, can never be improved upon. The way to learn to write is to write. And Pronto, who resorted to many little tricks in order to get his pupil to express himself, was a teacher whose ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... desire was strong enough in him to divert him from his course for an hour, save by his own initiative. His mother's letter had changed it all. A few hours before he had had a struggle with Soolsby, and now another struggle on the same theme was here. Fate had dealt illy with him, who had ever been its spoiled child and favourite. He had not learned yet the arts of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... day in the public room of this inn, ruminating over a beefsteak and a pint of port, when my imagination kindled up with ancient and heroic images. I had long wanted a theme and a hero; both suddenly broke upon my mind; I determined to write a poem on the history of Jack Straw. I was so full of my subject that I was fearful of being anticipated. I wondered that none of the poets of the day, in their researches after ruffian ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Mr Jevons, the butler from The Manor, so far descended from his pedestal as to volunteer "a comic item" in the shape of a recitation, bearing chiefly, it would appear, on the execution of a pig. The last remnant of stiffness vanished before this inspiring theme, and the audience roared applause as one man, whereupon Mr Jevons bashfully hid his face, and ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the tenantry are invariably the most independent and contented. On the estates of the Earl of Gosford, and other proprietors in the north, under the able superintendence of Mr Blacker, (whose conduct is the theme of universal approbation,) no leases are given until the tenant shows, by his industry and his exertions, that he deserves one; and then, after he has for some years cultivated his farm in a proper manner, and is taught to estimate the value of an improved system, he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... great intellect sinks to the level of an ordinary one, as soon as it is interrupted and disturbed, its attention distracted and drawn off from the matter in hand; for its superiority depends upon its power of concentration—of bringing all its strength to bear upon one theme, in the same way as a concave mirror collects into one point all the rays of light that strike upon it. Noisy interruption is a hindrance to this concentration. That is why distinguished minds have always shown such an extreme dislike to disturbance in any form, as something that breaks in upon and ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... further still, how I deal with the theme of the German character,—'Moral obligations such as no nation had ever yet made the standard of conduct, are laid down by the ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... vanity than to a desire to find favour with Lord Hunsdon. But she was seldom far from Anne Percy, whose propinquity he could enjoy even if debarred communion. And Lady Mary frequently made Anne the theme of her remarks, in entertaining the poet; whose covert admiration she too detected and encouraged, although not without resentment. Miss Percy was undeniably handsome and high-born, but alas, quite lacking in fashion, in style, in ton. Not that Lady Mary despaired of her. If she could ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... North, these sympathizers found themselves in a sort of cul-de-sac when Richmond had been taken. Lee had yielded, Johnston was yielding, and the very same "butcher" Grant, "ruthless" Sherman, and "Yahoo" Lincoln, whose savageries and imbecilities had been the theme of annual moral-pointing, were reading the world a lesson of moderation and self-forgetfulness in victory, such as almost seemed to shrink from the plentitude of a triumph which was a humiliation to some of their countrymen. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... again, I was seized with a sort of fury: I pounced upon all the toccatas and fugues that I had hammered out, as well as a beautiful copy of forty-five variations of a canonical theme that the organist had written and done me the honour of presenting to me,—all these I threw into the fire, and laughed with spiteful glee as the double counterpoint smoked and crackled. Then I sat down at the piano and tried ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... such portentous aspect of affairs, may now be worth giving. It is not now to Jordan that he writes, gayly unbosoming himself, as in the First War,—poor Jordan lies languishing, these many months; consumptive, too evidently dying:—Not to Jordan, this time; nor is the theme "GLOIRE" ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Athelney," the fisherman said, "a good hiding-place truly; for, as you see, it rises high over the surrounding country, which is always swampy from the waters of the Parrot and Theme, and at high tides the salt water of the sea fills all these waterways, and the trees rise from a broad sheet of sea. No Dane has ever yet set foot among these marshes; and were there but provisions to keep them alive, a ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... is impossible to express the admiration and enthusiasm which your late despatches have excited in the breasts of all ranks of people. You are now the theme of every conversation, the toast of every table, the hero of every woman, and the boast of every Englishman. When Dumaresq waited on Lord St. Vincent, his lordship squeezed his hand in the greatest rapture, exclaiming, "I knew it,—I knew ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... was the spiritual story of a young Roman's soul, a priestlike artistic temperament, born in the haunted twilight between the setting sun of pagan religion and philosophy and the dawn of the Christian idea. The theme presented many fascinating analogies to the present time; and in the hero's "sensations and ideas" Henry found many correspondences with his own nature. In him, too, was united that same joy in the sensuous form, that same adoration of ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... ancestral portraits of knight and dame, long since gathered to their rest, were placed masterpieces of the Italian and Flemish art, which generation after generation had slowly accumulated, till the Beaufort Collection had become the theme of connoisseurs and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... festering wound on an otherwise healthy body: the immorality of France is like a scrofulous taint that poisons the whole life-current. One gets weary and heartsick with the old eternal song, the everlasting theme, which is sung and told and dramatized and written about and painted—that flies in your face at every corner and stares up at you from every inch of printed paper, every square of colored canvas, in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... to bestow so many upon him; but Miss Milbourne had already turned to her neighbor on the other side and plunged into conversation. "Is it not strange that Egypt should be waking from her sleep of centuries?" she said; and—while the gentleman whom she addressed took up the theme readily—Mrs. Lancaster rose and sauntered round the group to where Victor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... not dwell further upon a tolerably obvious theme. I must pass to the more serious literature. The Wit had not the smallest notion that his attitude disqualified him for succession in the loftiest poetical endeavour. He thinks that his critical keenness will enable him to surpass the old models. He ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... mountain of books that have been written about Jesus Christ. Not only have the writers written about him above every other figure in history, but in like degree the artists have painted him and the musicians have sung about him. He is the most fertile theme of all literature and art, and the gifts that genius have heaped about his feet are an incomparable testimony to the adoration that ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... upon you to contrast Nature and Fortune, you could not have chosen a happier theme upon which to descant, for both have made a trial of their strength on the subject of your Memoirs. What Nature did, you had the evidence of your own eyes to vouch for, but what was done by Fortune, you know only from hearsay; and hearsay, I need not tell you, ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... crossed the floor to where the master-tuner sat, and squatting down beside him began picking up tuning forks and striking one against the other. Each time he did that some city sound or other distinguished itself for a moment, exactly as the theme appears in music; only some of the vibrations seemed to jar against others instead of blending with them, and when that happened the ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... fugitive question or two, offered indifferently at first, then with shy persistence and curiosity, knowing nothing of the senseless form flung face downward across the sheets in a room close by. And thereafter the murmured burden of the theme was Siward, until one, heavy eyed, turned from the white dawn silvering the windows, sighed, and fell asleep; and one lay silent, head half buried in its tangled gold, wide awake, thinking vague thoughts that had no ending, no beginning. And at last a rosy bar of light fell across the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... himself placed at the outset of his western career, and it is difficult to see how anything short of actual experience could have made his error manifest. The purity of his life was proverbial, and was the theme of comment among his survivors for years after his death. He foresaw that his adopted country was destined for a glorious future. "The flourishing cities and towns of this Dominion," says one of has eulogists, "are enduring monuments to his foresight; and the waters of the beautiful lake that bears ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... His hold on her hand relaxed. He was thinking of a new theme. When he laughed in turn it startled her. She had never heard ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... And now to my theme, "Should the Country Roadsides be Planted and Why." The present high cost of living, and in fact the cost of living at any time is a fruitful and serious problem. Our vast natural resources during the century gone, of forests, of game, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... preparation pregnant with the future, the remote correspondence, the questions, as it were, which to a deep musical sense are asked in one passage, and answered in another; the iteration and ingemination of a given effect, moving through subtile variations that sometimes disguise the theme, sometimes fitfully reveal it, sometimes throw it out tumultuously to the daylight,—these and ten thousand forms of self-conflicting musical passion—what room could they find, what opening, for utterance, in so limited a field as ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Warkworth entered into it, but already invested with the passionless and sexless beauty of a world where—whether it be to us poetry or reality—"they neither marry nor are given in marriage." Her warm and living thoughts spent themselves on one theme only—the redressing of a spiritual balance. She was no longer a beggar to her husband; she had the wherewithal to give. She had been the mere recipient, burdened with debts beyond her ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... foresight of this diplomatist—who had actually gone to China in the Long Vacation, and of his own initiative and out of his own head had evolved these concessions, which were soon to be ratified by a special commission which was coming from China—was a theme on which Mr. Parkinson Chenney spoke with the greatest eloquence. And everybody listened respectfully, because he ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... most incomparable delight it is so to melancholise and build castles in the air.' Religious considerations have little to do with Burton's melancholy, and remorse or fear apparently nothing. Hence his book, although its theme be sadness, never shadows the spirit, but, on the contrary, from his dark, Lethean poppies, his readers are made to extract an element of joyful excitement, and the anatomy, and the cure, of the evil, are ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... and had he spoken to her of their future life and mutual duties, how she would have kindled to the theme! She would have knelt at his feet on the floor of the carriage, and, looking up into his face, would have promised him to do her best,—her best,—her very best. And with what an eagerness of inward resolution would she have ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... upon your lute you will weave a theme Which the world will harken and know; For every note of the song will teem With a great soul's overflow— You will speak the meaning within a dream And the pain ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... about?" The wife, not being ready of speech, to rid herself of the embarrassment, resorts to the mimic art, and, without opening her mouth, tells with simple gestures all that is in her mind. Bringing her right hand to her heart, with a corresponding glance of the eyes she shows that the theme is to be love. For emphasis also she curves the whole upper part of her body towards him, to exhibit the intensity of her passion. To complete the mimic story, she makes with her left hand the sign ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... now pass on from this curiously attractive theme of Celtic calligraphy to its contemporary styles of France, Germany, Spain, and Italy, only remarking by the way that no other style of its time had so marked an influence on the local scriptoria into which it was introduced as this same Celtic of Ireland. It ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... heard his complete vindication, and listened with ardour to the praises which Louise heaped on her gallant protector. On the other hand, the minstrel, who felt the superiority of Catharine's station and character, willingly dwelt upon a theme which seemed to please her, and recorded her gratitude to the stout smith in the little song of "Bold and True," which was ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
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