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Familiar   Listen
adjective
Familiar  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to a family; domestic. "Familiar feuds."
Synonyms: familial.
2.
Closely acquainted or intimate, as a friend or companion; well versed in, as any subject of study; as, familiar with the Scriptures.
3.
Characterized by, or exhibiting, the manner of an intimate friend; not formal; unconstrained; easy; accessible. "In loose, familiar strains." "Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar."
4.
Well known; well understood; common; frequent; as, a familiar illustration. "That war, or peace, or both at once, may be As things acquainted and familiar to us." "There is nothing more familiar than this."
5.
Improperly acquainted; wrongly intimate.
Familiar spirit, a demon or evil spirit supposed to attend at call.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Familiar" Quotes from Famous Books



... was being translated into food and drink and clothing by experts who could distinguish infallibly between elevenpence-halfpenny and a shilling. Rachel was such an expert. She forced her thoughts down to the familiar, sane, safe subject of shopping, though to-night her errands were of the simplest description, requiring no brains. But she could not hold her thoughts. A voice was continually whispering to her—not Louis Fores' voice, but a voice within ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... good-natured, so open, so familiar, that gradually these horrible doubts were forgotten. He was generous, obliging, ready to talk to the humblest about anything as long as they cared ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... against a tree-box by the curb, dragged down once more by that dreaded feeling of detachment, he heard familiar voices close beside him. Leaning forward, he saw Eliphalet Hopper and Mr. Cluyme. It was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... saw the same man at Mr. Milburn's the day he was taken sick. He looked at me a low, familiar look, and muttered something evil. Mary knew him too well. Oh, do not take me back to Princess Anne. I ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... brought Wales and the defunct United States Watch Co. into the Auburndale picture. Another plausible link between Fowle and Wales involves a patent[25] Wales received for a pulley. This, the now familiar device of interlocking conical sections so commonly used in variable speed V-belt drives, was assigned to G. E. Lincoln of Boston, Massachusetts. George E. Lincoln was treasurer of the Mammoth Vein Consolidated Coal Co. at Boston in 1865, ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison

... account of the momentous changes through which the empire has been called to pass. It would be impossible to state in detail the sources from which I have derived the material for this work. I place first and as most important a residence of several years in Japan, during which I became familiar with the character of the Japanese people and with the traditions and events of their history. Most of the works treating of Japan during and prior to the period of her seclusion, as well as the more ...
— Japan • David Murray

... weather of our own personal adventures. It is not the self-conscious art of a Loti or a D'Annunzio; it is that much more penetrating and imaginative suggestiveness which arrests us by its vague beauty and terror in Lear or Macbeth. This subtle inter-penetration between humanity and the familiar Stage of its "exits and entrances" is only one portion of the weight of "cosmic" destiny—one can use no other word—which bears so heavily upon us as we read these books. In other writers one feels that when one has gone "full circle" with the principal characters, and has noted ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... It was a middle-aged man who spoke—David M'Kie, the familiar good spirit of the village of Whunnyliggate, and indeed of the whole parish. Wherever sickness was, there ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... who has been at all familiar with the forest and meadows in the spring, knows the Violet. There are a good many sisters in this charming family, but none, perhaps, in our latitude, that are more beautiful than the Viola Rotundifolia, or Yellow Violet, with roundish leaves, lying close to ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth

... fished again, and once more the familiar words began to fall from its lips—"'You are far ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain

... stopped before the window of a picture-dealer's shop and immediately her eyes fell on a familiar portrait; it was the same one of Emil Lindbach as had appeared in the illustrated paper, Bertha was as delighted as if she had met ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... presented in at once so systematic and succinct a form, the successive manifestations of life on the earth set forth in so clear an order, or traced so vividly from the earliest organisms deep-buried in its stratified crust, to the familiar forms that now adorn and ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie

... with the downfall of Foxy, but, my dear Ned, I have to record a sadder and more humiliating downfall than that—the abject and utter collapse of my noble self. I have once more played the fool, and played into the hands of the devil, mine own familiar ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor

... the right point of view of history. The qualities abide; the men who exhibit them have now more, now less, and pass away; the qualities remain on another brow. No experience is more familiar. Once you saw phoenixes: they are gone; the world is not therefore disenchanted. The vessels on which you read sacred emblems turn out to be common pottery; but the sense of the pictures is sacred, and you may still ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... this visit of inspection. On landing—hundreds of people of all ages and colours, crowded round to kiss His Majesty's hands—paternally extended on both sides to rows of devoted subjects, who, under no other circumstances, could have come in such familiar contact with royalty. To this ceremony the Emperor submitted with the greatest possible good humour and affability, his equanimity not even being ruined by familiarities such as I had never before seen taken ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... to persuade our fellow-sinners, which God has left behind us, to follow after, that they may partake with us of grace. We are saved by grace; let us live like them that are gracious. Let all our things, to the world, be done in charity towards them; pity them, pray for them, be familiar with them, for their good. Let us lay aside our foolish, worldly, carnal grandeur; let us not walk the streets, and have such behaviours as signify we are scarce for touching of the poor ones that are left behind; no, not with a pair of tongs. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... out for a long walk alone, pondering what was the matter with him. Had that little witch dropped the old familiar poison into his veins after all? Certainly some women made life vivacity and pleasure, while others—his mother or Mrs. Watton, for instance—made ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... with one who is wise and feareth God. Be seldom with the young and with strangers. Be not a flatterer of the rich; nor willingly seek the society of the great. Let thy company be the humble and the simple, the devout and the gentle, and let thy discourse be concerning things which edify. Be not familiar with any woman, but commend all good women alike unto God. Choose for thy companions God and His Angels only, and flee from ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis

... a weekly class at which a short lecture would be given on the works of some famous composers, with musical illustrations. A few of the selections could be played by the pupils themselves or by Miss Fanny, and others could be rendered by a gramophone. The main object was to make the girls familiar with the best compositions and cultivate ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... A comparison more familiar to the British reader might be made to the philabeg or short petticoat worn by the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... swift, sweeping curve he shot toward the bank, the brutes immediately converging to head him off. The slight, familiar scraping on the ice told him that Fred and Jennie were at his heels. He kept on with slackening speed until close to the shore, and it would not do to go any further. An ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis

... make the trip. As you approach the mouth of the Willamette you meet more arable land, and the shores of this river are generally lower, and often alluvial, like the Missouri and Mississippi bottoms; and here you find cattle, sheep, orchards, and fields; and one who is familiar with the agricultural parts of California notices here signs of a somewhat severer climate, in more substantial houses; and the evidence of more protracted rains, in green and luxuriant grasses at a season when the pastures of California have ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... more articles than I had ordered. After dinner, as I sat "trifling" with my cold brandy and water, an individual entered, a short thick dumpy man about thirty, with brown clothes and a broad hat, and holding in his hand a large leather bag. He gave me a familiar nod, and passing by the table at which I sat, to one near the window, he flung the bag upon it, and seating himself in a chair with his profile towards me, he untied the bag, from which he poured a large quantity of sovereigns upon the table and fell to counting them. After counting ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... fence with a gouty old man, who knows not, I dare say, a trick of the sword which was not familiar in the days of old Vincent Saviolo! or, as a change of misery, to hear him read one of those wildernesses of scenes which the English call a play, from prologue to epilogue—from Enter the first to the final Exeunt omnes—an unparalleled horror—a penance ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... as if all this were familiar ground to her mind. "But I am the nearest member of society—the one whose business it is to attend to this mistake. It's my contribution," she ended with a ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... and presumption get the better of their discretion and prudence. What I am going to tell you I did not hear myself, but it was reported to me by a female friend, as estimable for her virtues as admired for her accomplishments. She is often honoured with invitations to Talleyrand's familiar parties, composed chiefly of persons whose fortunes are as independent as their principles, who, though not approving the Revolution, neither joined its opposers nor opposed its adherents, preferring tranquillity and obscurity to agitation and celebrity. Their number is not much ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... park, now a sparkling fairy garden, she was suddenly made conscious that a familiar figure was hastening along a crosspath in her direction; a comfortable-looking, middle-aged figure that moved with a stately stride. For an instant Elizabeth was possessed with a perverse feeling of irritation, as though he were guilty of the restrictions laid upon her. That he was ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... own, especially in the purely mechanical departments; and again, when similarly employed in that apartment devoted, in the British Museum, to the domestic utensils of the ancient Egyptians. The identity of the more common contrivances which I witnessed, with familiar contrivances in our own country, I regarded as altogether as conclusive of an identity of mind in the individuals who had originated them, as if I had actually seen human creatures at work on them all. One class of productions ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... these direct efforts to win Italy to their side, or at least to keep her from going over to the enemy, the Germans have been busy since early in August with their Press Bureau, which has pursued methods there similar to those they have made us familiar with here. But in Italy they have been more guarded and less truculent, and they have not, like the preposterous Bernstorff and his associates, assumed that the public they were addressing was not only ignorant of the simplest facts of recent ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... without effort," ought properly to be termed "incredible" propositions. Now I cannot see that the class "Incredible propositions" is, as this definition asserts, identical with the class which I have termed "Relatively inconceivable" propositions. For example, it is a familiar observation that, on looking at the setting sun, we experience an almost, if not quite, insuperable difficulty in conceiving the sun's apparent motion as due to our own actual motion, and yet we experience no difficulty ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... in her room till morning, for she was afraid of sleep. Those unlit roads down which, if she slept, the Thing would surely hunt her, were ten times more terrible than the white-washed, familiar room where it merely watched ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair

... strange locality and new scenes, the influence of strangers, the abandonment of all responsibilities and duties, and the atmosphere of obedience, routine, and discipline are all beneficial. An insane person will generally make a greater effort for a stranger than for a familiar relative. Discipline, in the form of orders of the physicians, and exact obedience is very often very salutary. There is a feeling with some that all discipline is cruel. This is not so, for the conduct of an insane person is not all insane, but frequently ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various

... evidently attributable to the increased prostitution that has taken place, with regard both to Europeans and other native tribes, whom curiosity has attracted to the town, but whom the Adelaide tribe were not in the habit of meeting at all, or, at least, not in such familiar intercourse prior to the arrival of the white people. This single cause, with the diseases and miseries which it entails upon the Aborigines, is quite sufficient to account for the paucity of births, and the additional number of deaths that ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... no time for more. The astonishment of both was extreme, as may well be supposed, and that of Guy was much increased when he heard another familiar voice shout— ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... uniform liquids which when solidified are the well-known substances brass and bell-metal. These substances are for all practical purposes new metals. The difference in the appearance of brass and copper is familiar to everyone; brass is also much harder than copper and much more suitable for being turned in a lathe. Similarly, bell-metal is harder, more sonorous and more brittle than either of its components. It is almost ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the denunciation. He passed the winter in building and beautifying a Persian Antioch in the neighborhood of Ctesiphon, assigning it as a residence to his Syrian captives, for whose use he constructed public baths and a spacious hippodrome, where the entertainments familiar to them from their youth were reproduced by Syrian artists. The new city was exempt from the jurisdiction of Persian satraps, and was made directly dependent upon the king, who supplied it with corn gratuitously, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... physician, and practiced a little before he went into Wall street. I always had a leaning to the study. There was a skeleton hanging in the closet of my father's study when I was a boy, that I used to dress up in old clothes. Oh, I got quite familiar ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... answered by those to whom it was addressed. Varney gave his largesse with an affectation of complaisance and humility. Raleigh bestowed his with the graceful ease peculiar to one who has attained his own place, and is familiar with its dignity. Honest Blount gave what his tailor had left him of his half-year's rent, dropping some pieces in his hurry, then stooping down to look for them, and then distributing them amongst the various claimants, with the anxious face and mien of the parish beadle dividing a ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... England, (which God forbid) we shall no longer deserve to be esteemed a civilized people; because, when the customs of uncivilized nations, and the uncivilized customs which disgrace our own colonies, are become so familiar as to be permitted amongst us with impunity, we ourselves must insensibly degenerate to the same degree of baseness with those from whom such bad customs were derived; and may, too soon, have the mortification ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet

... of the teaching trade: A school teacher saw a man on the car whose face was vaguely familiar. "I beg your pardon," she said, "but aren't you the father of two ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... familiar with the works of Bourget will recognize here again his well known antipathy for the United States of America. Mark Twain in the late 1800's felt obliged to rebut some of Bourget's prejudice: "What Paul ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... dwelt—or even lingered—in Chicago, Illinois, are familiar with the region known as the Loop. For those others of you to whom Chicago is a transfer point between New York and California there is presented this ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... is new; America's duty is familiar. Throughout the 20th century, small groups of men seized control of great nations...built armies and arsenals..and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world. In each case, their ambitions of cruelty and murder had no limit. In each case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... not sufficiently familiar with the English language to be properly instructed in the full-time day schools ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous

... will not essay to tell you with what feelings), I knew we were nearing London. I wonder where were you, beloved, that even that I rade in at Aldgate? I looked longingly down the Minories, but I could see no familiar face." ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... returned Eve, steadily. "These gentlemen, having become familiar with better things, in the way of the tastes, and of the purely agreeable, cannot discredit their own knowledge so much as to extol that which their own experience tells them is faulty, or condemn that which their own experience ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... illumination, they are brought so near to God that they have no need to fear at all, or to put any restraint upon their words or thoughts when addressing Him. They have considered awe to be superstition, and reverence to be slavery. They have learnt to be familiar and free with sacred things, as it were, on principle. I think this is really borne out by facts, and will approve itself to inquirers as true in substance, however one man will differ from another in the words in which he would express ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... of this officer would seem familiar," she argued within herself; "just as if I had seen him somewhere ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... toad-flax, blue and pink phlox, glossy May apple; high up on the hillside, the fire pink and wintergreen; and, down by the sandy shore, great beds of blue wild lupin, and occasionally stately spikes of the familiar moth mullein. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... men of talent are almost invariably recognized and crowned in their own days; because they always deal with ideas in a measure already familiar to the multitude. But, alas for the sensitive child of genius! The bold explorer of untrodden paths must cut away the underbrush that others may follow him; he must himself create the taste in the masses, by which he is afterward to be judged. His bold, daring, and original ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... it all a dream? No! here are the familiar rocks, the distant snow-peaks, the schoolhouse, the spring below. An hour ago I was the poor schoolmistress of Red Gulch, with no ambition nor hope beyond this mountain wall; and now—oh, it must be a dream! But here is the letter. Certainly this ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte

... Those who are familiar with the writings of Marx know that, in strange contrast with the fundamental principles of that theory of social evolution which he so well developed, he lapsed at times into the Utopian habit of predicting the sudden transformation of society. Capitalism was to end in ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... by a nightmare—by the terrible dream of a scaffold, and on it the man who had been her husband, with all the attendant horrors familiar to an age when public executions still gratified its human, or inhuman interest—was unable to get relief by confiding her trouble to others. She dared to say no more than what she had already said to Uncle Mo, as she knew he was in communication ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... the honour to return to your Royal Highness the State paper[63] which your Royal Highness entrusted to me. I have not presumed to keep a copy of it, but my memory is familiar with its contents, and in case hereafter there may be any opportunity formed to forward the views of your Royal Highness in this respect, I may perhaps be permitted, if necessary, again ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... and his business associates as he knew them, familiar with their operations as he was and knowing that they represented the power of almost unlimited capital, Jefferson Worth realized that they would plan to share in every dollar of wealth that The King's Basin lands could be made to produce. Already, his trained mind saw how easily, with the vast ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... consisting of a simple disk of iron, not unlike a circular saw without any teeth, were used for cutting those narrow vertical lines, technically known as fingering, familiar to those so happy as to have had careful grandmothers, and to have inherited their decanters and wine-glasses. The revival of this style, like that of the rich old pattern in plate known as the "Mayflower," is a compliment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... of the hardest things in the world to recite lines with which your audience is familiar and put sufficient new meaning in them to hold their attention. It is so easy to fall into a sing-song chant, particularly with a long speech. But Lois did it. She gave each word its proper stress and the soft mellow quality of her voice gained her ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill

... he said; for, to render it justly, might be to render it offensive; but, in addition to calling old Van Tassel by a great many names that were as unusual as they were quaint, he called him by several that would be familiar to the ears of most of my readers, besides being perfectly well merited. I allowed his humour to find vent; and, giving the attorney to understand he should hear further from us, I succeeded in getting my companion to the wagon, without coming to blows. I could see that ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... Ambrose, pattered ahead as if every twig in the bush was familiar to her. She did not strike down to the river until they had gone a good way around the side ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... vaguely conscious of defeat. He felt that he was nonplussed by a pair of soft round eyes like the eyes of a kitten, and the dignified repose of a pair of demure red lips. Both eyes and lips, as well as shoulders and golden hair, were strangely familiar and strangely strange ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... the only way he could, firmly and decisively. Unscrupulous lawyers might hold out delusive hopes to these newly found heirs if they should fall into their clutches; but the probate judge knew the law of the land and the temper of the courts on this familiar topic. No, his attention had been given to Adelle herself and to her request for his advice upon what she should do with the property that had been given her in the due process of the law. He realized that he was called ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... windows closed. The noise of the city had become familiar and akin to the image of her boy. She sat ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... moving platform, whose possibilities have been exhibited to all the world in a sort of mean caricature at the Paris Exhibition. Let us imagine the inner circle of the district railway adapted to this conception. I will presume that the Parisian "rolling platform" is familiar to the reader. The district railway tunnel is, I imagine, about twenty-four feet wide. If we suppose the space given to six platforms of three feet wide and one (the most rapid) of six feet, and if we suppose each platform to be going four miles an hour faster than its slower ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... with our emotions are the close inter-relations of mind and body seen. All are familiar with the fact that the emotion of anger tends to find expression in the blow, love in the caress, fear in flight, and so on. But just how our organism acts in producing an emotion is less generally understood. Professor James and Professor Lange have shown us that emotion not ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... wonderful scenery. Everything will wear a new face—God, man, self, the garden, the sky, the sea! We shall look at all things through love-eyes, and it is amazing in what new light a great love will set familiar things! Commonplaces become beautiful when looked at through the lens of Christian love. When we "walk in love" our eyes are anointed with ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... travelled from Egypt along the southern shores of the Mediterranean. With the Moors it crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and the Spaniard has carried it over the Atlantic. The reader of the sacred volume will find many a familiar passage illustrated in the customs of Mexico. The genius of the Arab has shaped many a thought for the brain of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... in thought; and the poor, 25 Familiar with him, made an inn of his door: He gave them the best that he had; or, to say What less may mislead you, they took it away. [9] Thus thirty smooth years did he thrive on his farm: The Genius of plenty preserved him from harm: 30 At length, what to most is a season of sorrow, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... very good old fellow, in his familiar way; and having stirred the vestry fire, he looked round the shelves of registers for a particular volume. 'Here you are, you see,' he said, taking it down and turning the leaves. 'Here you'll find yourself, as large as life. Amy, daughter of William ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... fitting here that I should say something about that Abominable Curse of Negro Slavery, which was then so Familiar and Unquestioned a Thing in all our Colonies, that its innate and Detestable Wickedness was scarcely taken into account in men's minds. Speaking only by the Card, and of that which I saw with my own eyes, I don't think that Maum Buckey was any crueller than other slave-owners of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... delighted in came to her recollection. When Dan discoursed about such things he was at the high-water mark of pleasure, his countenance glowed, and enjoyment of the subject was expressed in all his person. Beth's better nature revolted, but alas! she had become so familiar with such subjects by this time that, although she loathed them, she could not banish them. Life from her husband's point of view was a torment to her, yet under the pressure of his immediate influence it was forced upon ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... upon scenes similar to those with which they were familiar in France. Villages burned and destroyed, houses deserted, orchards and crops wasted, and a country destitute of inhabitants, all having fled to the mountains to escape the invader. They did not ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... right angles, like a nigger minstrel of the old school about to ask Mr. Bones why a chicken crosses the road, and he was staring before him with a smile so fixed and pebble-beached that I should have thought that anybody could have guessed that there sat one in whom the old familiar juice was plashing up against the back ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... step, like a blown leaf: the loose wooden latch rises at the touch of a familiar hand; familiar feet, that have trodden every inch of that poor log floor, lead the way; and then all at once, like a bundle of Chinese crackers, intermingled with shrieks and groans and deep, vehement ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... small house of our own, where I am much more comfortable, and live greatly cheaper. He is a friend of Mrs. Percival's; about my age, an Oriel man, and a very superior person. I think the chances are, we shall go home together.... I cannot tell you of all the other people I have become familiar with; and shall only mention in addition Bingham Baring, eldest son of Lord Ashburton, who was here for some weeks on account of a dying brother, and whom I saw a great deal of. He is a pleasant, very good-natured ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... engineer was wandering, in the aimless and preoccupied manner of one whose mind is not on his task, through one of the city parks, he saw just ahead a man whose figure seemed familiar. With aroused interest he quickened his pace. There was no mistaking that form, so strongly upright, so instinct with vigorous power; nor those broad shoulders and the finely poised head. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... or less ephemeral books, which appear, do their work, and pass on out of sight. They are light, but they make up for their lack of weight by the speed and ease with which they move. Owing to them the use of books is becoming less and less limited to a class, and more and more familiar to the masses. The book nowadays is in motion. Even the classics, the favorites of other days, have left their musty shelves and are moving out among the people. Where one man knew and loved Shakespeare a century ago, a thousand know and love him to-day. The literary blood is circulating and ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... himself either some wondrous enchanter," thought he, "or, at any rate, minister or familiar to some mighty wizard, who hath his dwelling-place in this ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... make as good an attempt as most men at replying intelligently to Mrs. Ascher even when she talks of "values," atmospheres, feeling and sympathy, though her use of these familiar words conveys only the vaguest ideas to my mind. I can, after a period of intense mental effort, understand what Ascher means by exchanges, premiums, discounts and bills, though he uses these words in unfamiliar ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... He had six guns, six trunks, and endless coats of different warmth. In the twinkling of an eye cigar-cases, pipes, photographs, writing-paper (of his own monogram), and masses of etceteras were spread about in his salon, as if he could not even look in his mirror without having these familiar objects before his eyes. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... excused himself, turning to seek his friends. As Benson entered the reading room once more he came upon Eph and another whose face was decidedly familiar. It was ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham

... good will in the world, he could not talk; but as the wine reached his head also he began to laugh at her remarks, and to look at her with such an expression of adoration in his chocolate eyes that Sally grew more and more at ease and more and more familiar with the passing of each minute, and the increasing effect of the wine she had taken. She sparkled, less in her speech than in her exhilarated and exhilarating manner. She was all ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... imperfect, adore my own Perfect," he says in his superb "Essay on the Oversoul." Besides this psychological, or soul state, Theosophy cultivated every branch of sciences and arts. It was thoroughly familiar with what is now commonly known as mesmerism. Practical theurgy or "ceremonial magic," so often resorted to in their exorcisms by the Roman Catholic clergy, was discarded by the Theosophists. It is but Jamblichus alone who, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... intelligence as to which she was secretly so complacent, did not amicably rule her mother, the unavoidable inference was that she was either a clumsy or a wicked girl, or both. She indeed felt dimly that she was a little of both. But she did not mind. Sitting there in the small, familiar room, close to the sewing-machine, the steel fender, the tarnished chandelier, and all the other daily objects which she at once detested and loved, sitting close to her silly mother who angered her, and yet in whom she recognized ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... thousand men. General Hill might have stiffened the back of the forlorn Admiral, but Hill himself was no better. Vetch spoke for going on. He knew the St. Lawrence waters for he had been at Quebec and had actually charted a part of the river and was more familiar with it, he believed, than were the Canadians themselves. What pilots there were declared, however, that to go on was impossible and the helpless captains of the ships were of opinion that, with the warning of such a disaster, they could not disregard this counsel. Though the character ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... WOULD she say now? For those things were only trifles, after all," Mrs. Salisbury sighed, in all honesty. "But NOW, why, the world is simply being turned upside down with these crazy new notions!" And again she paused, surprised to hear herself using another old, familiar phrase. "Ma used to say that very thing, too," said Mrs. ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris

... Intelligence; and the necessary consequence of this great revolution is, that it has become the duty and the delight equally of every citizen to cultivate his faculties. The prince of all philosophy has told you in an immortal apophthegm, so familiar to you all, that it is now written in your halls and chambers,—'Knowledge is power.' If that memorable passage had been pursued by the student who first announced this discovery of that great man to society, he would have found an oracle not less ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... hesitated. It seemed to Herr Haase, for a flattering instant, that the captain's eyes sought his own, as though in recognition of a familiar and favorable spirit. He ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... outlook touches great problems of life in very many ways. I have also tried to convince that it is far more than merely a school subject, limited entirely to a curriculum extended over a few years. This is the common misunderstanding arising from the familiar use of the word "education." As opposed to this narrow conception, I understand sex-education, the larger sex-education, to be a collective term designating all organized effort, both in and out of schools, toward instructing ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow

... and which everybody makes a point of offering to one, if a chap goes ashore for a minute; while, on board, we've nothing now to do but to check off the freight as it comes alongside before it's lowered in the hold, and look out at the unchanging picture around us, which is so familiar that I believe I could paint it with my eyes shut if I were an artist. Talk of the beauty of Beyrout, indeed! To my taste, it's the most monotonous hole I was ever in in my ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... culture. It was enough for them to know that Jesus came from Nazareth and was unlettered; this produced in them violent scorn and antipathy. They were still further offended because He used none of the shibboleths with which they were familiar. Nor could they conceive of any life as satisfactory but the kind of life they lived, and that was a life of social complexity, ruled by conventional usages and maxims, and essentially artificial in ideal and practice. Jesus, therefore, turned from them to the simple and natural people, fishermen, ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson

... him nearer to Castellamare, but to take him farther out from the shore. The nearest land to him now was an island, but what island he could not say. As his eyes wandered around, they saw nothing that was familiar. A mountain appeared over the land astern, and the smoke on its summit showed that it must be Vesuvius; but it had a different appearance altogether from that with which he was familiar. He could form no idea of the ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... occasionally assuming a wreath or garland of bays, emblematic of authorship. In the "Accounts of the Revels in 1573-74," a charge is made for "bays for the prologgs." Long after the cloak had been discarded it was still usual for the prologue-speaker to appear dressed in black. Robert Lloyd, in his "Familiar Epistle to George Colman," ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... had a long walk and talk with Rebecca, whom he thought looking pale and thin, though she was holding bravely to her self-imposed hours of work. She was wearing a black cashmere dress that had been her aunt Jane's second best. We are familiar with the heroine of romance whose foot is so exquisitely shaped that the coarsest shoe cannot conceal its perfections, and one always cherishes a doubt of the statement; yet it is true that Rebecca's peculiar and individual charm ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... exploitation of the soil by the raising of unrotated crops of corn and wheat in sparsely settled farming communities; the intensive culture of the denser farm settlement; and finally the manufacturing organization with city and factory system.[11:2] This page is familiar to the student of census statistics, but how little of it has been used by our historians. Particularly in eastern States this page is a palimpsest. What is now a manufacturing State was in an earlier decade an area of intensive ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... the scene is shifted to a long, low range of cells in a dark corridor in the city of Cartagena. The door of one is open; and within stand two cloaked figures, one of whom we know. It is Eustace Leigh. The other is a familiar of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Ronald saw the old trees of which he had dreamed so often, the stately cedars, the grand spreading oaks, the tall aspens, the lady beeches, the groves of poplars—every spot was familiar to him. In the distance he saw the lake shining through the trees; he drove past the extensive gardens, the orchards now bare and empty. He was not ashamed of the tears that rushed warmly to his eyes when the towers and turrets of Earlescourt ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... It is a familiar line of thought to find Grant, Sherman, and Lincoln and others, deified in the American press, as men "miraculously risen" in storm and stress to preserve the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... perfectly satisfied with his position in the Empire as Inspector-General of the Fleet, stands to attention when talking to the Emperor in public, and on formal occasions addresses him as "Majesty" like every one else. Only in private conversation does he allow himself the use of the familiar Du. The Emperor has a strong affection for him, and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... not a time for strictly grammatical negatives, and I am afraid that the girl's characteristically familiar speech, even when pathetically corrected here and there by the influence of the convent, endeared her the more to him. And when she said, "And now, Mr. Edward Brice, sit over at that end of the sofy and let's talk," they talked. They talked for an hour, more or less continuously, ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... progress, often pausing to rest, but after an hour had elapsed, I gained a height, whence the little valley out of which I had climbed seemed like a deep, dark gulf, though the inaccessible peak of the mountain was still towering to a much greater distance above. Objects familiar from childhood surrounded me; crags and rocks, a black and sullen brook that gurgled with a hollow voice deep among the crevices, a wood of mossy distorted trees and prostrate trunks flung down by age and storms, scattered among the rocks, or damming the foaming waters of the little brook. The objects ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... nature which attracted most attention.... Regulating consumption wisely was the chief practical problem in mediaeval economics.'[2] The great practical benefits of such a treatment of the problems relating to the acquisition and enjoyment of material wealth must be obvious to every one who is familiar with the condition of the world after a century of classical political economy. 'To subordinate the economic order to the social order, to submit the industrial activity of man to the consideration ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... Kingston, and winging lightly along the familiar Portsmouth Road, with its dark pines and purple gleams of heather, I began to feel an exhilaration scarcely short of treacherous to my principles. We were now putting on speed, and running as fast as most trains on the South-Western, yet the sensation was far removed ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... not a breath stirring. The long fields, the fallows, with hedges and coverts, melted into a light mist, which hid all the distant view. I moved in a narrow twilight circle, myself the centre; the road was familiar enough to me; at a certain point there is a little lodge, with a road turning off to a farm. It is many years since I visited the place, but I remembered dimly that there was some interest of antiquity about the house, and I determined to explore it. The ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... theories, based on a gratuitous assumption, are confronted in limine with a formidable obstacle which must be absolutely got rid of before they can be thought entitled to a serious hearing. It is a familiar and a fatal circumstance that the Gospel of S. Mark has been furnished with its present termination ever since the second century of the Christian aera.(24) In default, therefore, of distinct historical evidence ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... this epistle; but the quantity I am certain you won't complain of. 'Tis like throwing the dice—a mere game at hazard; like all gamblers, I am always in hopes the last will prove a lucky cast. Pray, in what consists the pleasure of a familiar correspondence? In writing without form or reflection your ideas and feelings of the moment, trusting to the partiality of your friend every imperfect thought, and to his candour every ill-turned phrase. Such are the letters I love, and such I request of those ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... astonishing how much a bright child will absorb from being brought up in the atmosphere of good books, being allowed to constantly use them, to handle them, to be familiar with their bindings and titles. It is a great thing for children to be brought up in the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... gossip Quickly? comming in to borrow a messe of Vinegar: telling vs, she had a good dish of Prawnes: whereby y didst desire to eat some: whereby I told thee they were ill for a greene wound? And didst not thou (when she was gone downe staires) desire me to be no more familiar with such poore people, saying, that ere long they should call me Madam? And did'st y not kisse me, and bid mee fetch thee 30.s? I put thee now to thy Book-oath, deny it if thou canst? Fal. My Lord, this is a poore mad soule: and she sayes vp & downe the town, that her eldest son is like you. She ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... of the Pope, leaving the whole country bordering on the Adriatic and the province of Umbria in a manner embalmed by a life of sanctity and extraordinary self-denial. Pius IX., from early youth, was familiar with the history of this saint, whose noble birth and distinguished abilities opened to him the way to worldly fame and prosperity, but who, nevertheless, chose the cross, becoming a Capuchin, and having no other ambition in the seclusion of the cloister than to be a worthy ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... neat Volume of 300 pages, with numerous Embellishments. It is written in a familiar, popular style, and is well suited to the Juvenile, ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... he had left off, from force of habit he first gave the leader's usual three sharp taps upon his music desk, and then—so queer a thing is an audience—those people, brought to their feet in an agony of terror, of fire, panic, and sudden death by a woman's cry, now at that familiar tap, tap, tap, broke here and there into laughter. By sixes and sevens, then by tens and twenties, they sheepishly seated themselves, only turning their heads with pitying looks while the ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... understanding is so universal, that believers are said to be "light in the Lord." Their perceptions of truth are not mere gleamings and streaks of divine radiance thrown across the obscurity of the mind, but all is light. Nor is it merely new light diffused over objects familiar to the thoughts, but a discovery of new scenes. The soul, in a sense, changes its hemisphere, emerges from darkness, ascends to the summits of Pisgah, and contemplates the ineffable glories of a new creation. "If any man be in Christ, he ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... other people, preferring, to the harsh consonants of technical phrases which sound "like insults" or have the air of "a magical invocation, which make certain scientific works read like so much gibberish," the "naive and picturesque appellation, the familiar, trivial name, the popular, living term which directly interprets the exact signification of the habits of an insect, or informs us fully of its dominant characteristic, or which, at ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. Whether in florid impotence he speaks And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad, Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad, In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. His wit all see-saw, between that and this, } Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, } And he himself one vile antithesis. } Amphibious ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope



Words linked to "Familiar" :   retainer, playmate, intimate, tovarisch, disembodied spirit, informed, beaten, unfamiliar, friend, close, everyday, playfellow, spirit, common or garden, tovarich, long-familiar



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