"Plain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unexpected action, then, the Bourbon cousins had forever lost their opportunity to dominate the young but spent and war-weakened Republic, or to use America as a catspaw to snatch English commerce for France. It was plain, too, that any frank move of the sort would range the English alongside of their American kinsmen. Since American Independence was an accomplished fact and therefore could no longer be prevented, the present object of the Bourbon cousins was to restrict it. The Appalachian ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... though no doubt very fine for entertaining, were dark and gloomy in the daytime. Our little friends of my own age seemed all to inhabit dim rooms looking into courtyards, where, however, we were bidden to unbelievably succulent repasts, very different to the plain fare to which we were accustomed at home. Both my brother and myself were, I think, unconscious as to whether we were speaking English or French; we could express ourselves with equal facility in either language. When I first went to ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... dowdy. Like her father and Millicent, she carried her head forward and had a tendency to look downwards, and her spine seemed flaccid. Ethel was beautiful, or about to be beautiful; Millicent was pretty; Rose plain. Rose was deficient in style. She despised style, and regarded her sisters as frivolous ninnies and gadabouts. She was the serious member of the family, and for two years had been studying for the Matriculation ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... boats crowded up in the long canal, as narrow as a ditch, which wound itself in a silvery line through the infinite sands. From his post on high he could see them as in a procession under a window, till disappearing in the plain. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... necessitated the mid-day halt, and at night they were glad to wrap themselves in a blanket in addition to the cloak. At last the summit of the pass was reached. In front of them rose another chain of mountains almost as lofty as that which they had climbed. Between these great ranges lay a plain varying in width. Several towns and small ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... entered the latter place, and why, having entered he should have crossed to the window, will be plain to those who have studied the conditions. The front chamber windows were tightly shuttered, the attic ones cumbered with boxes and shielded from approach by old bureaus and discarded chairs. This one only was free and, although darkened by the ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... Lord help ye, the bairn's no ten year auld; and, to be plain wi' ye, our powny reists a bit, and it's dooms sweer to the road, and naebody can manage him ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... recent issue, says: From a scientific point of view, the work done by the tides is of unspeakable importance. Whence is this energy derived with which the tides do their work? If the tides are caused by the moon, the energy they possess must also be derived from the moon. This looks plain enough, but unfortunately it is not true. Would it be true to assert that the finger of the rifleman which pulls the trigger supplies the energy with which the rifle bullet is animated? Of course it would not. The energy is derived from the explosion of gunpowder, and the pulling of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... impossible to say for certain whether Laurence's translation of the whole of the Book of Enoch had come under Byron's notice before he planned his new "Mystery," but it is plain that he was, at any rate, familiar with the well-known fragment, "Concerning the 'Watchers'" [[Greek: Peri ton E)grego/ron]], which is preserved in the Chronographia of Georgius Syncellus, and was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... who saw Tydides o'er the plain by Pallas led; With anger fill'd, the Trojan camp he sought; And Rhesus' kinsman, good Hippocoon, The Thracian councillor, from sleep arous'd; Awaking, when the vacant space he view'd, Where late had stood the horses; and his friends Gasping in death, and welt'ring in their blood, He ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... a great part of the grasses; and it was only in the immediate neighbourhood of the river that there was any appearance of verdure. The bed of the river became drier, and changed its character considerably. Charley stated, that he had seen a large plain extending for many miles to the south-west, and a high mountain to the north. Several emus, pigeons, and ducks were seen. Mr. Calvert found concretions of marl in the creek. John Murphy caught a great number of crawfish. For the first time since leaving the Condamine, we were visited by a thunder-storm. ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... handsome man with a seductive rent-roll to add to his attractions. But the moment the Prince began to cast admiring eyes at the young widow the General's fate was sealed. She had no fancy to go to her grave plain "Mrs Smith" when a duchess's coronet (and a Royal one to boot) was dangled ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... of no use at all to say I know nothing about it, because I have heard it mentioned, and that's the plain truth, Mr. Vancouver. And it will take a deal of rail, too, and that's another thing. And where do you think of getting the iron from, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... developing youngsters. Very soon they were pert and wide awake, looking upon the green world about them with calm eyes, and opening mouths only when food was to be expected. Mouthfuls, too, were no longer of the minute order; they were large enough for the parents themselves, and of course plain to be seen. Sometimes, indeed, as in the case of a big dragon-fly, the father was obliged to hold on, while the young hopeful pulled off piece after piece, until it was small enough for him to manage; occasionally, too, when ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... stable, and in a few moments appeared before the farmer's house with Nelly's horse, saddled and bridled, and called for Nelly, who quickly appeared at the door in a plain homespun dress. ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... twice a year and send a reminder to all who had not renewed. As the list grew larger, this plan seemed unsatisfactory to both the subscriber and the paper. Since people were at liberty to start a subscription at any time in the year, it was plain that a year's subscription would run out at the same time the following year, and since this was going on twelve months in the year, we began sending out bills each month to those subscribers whose subscriptions were about to expire. That system was ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan
... appointed time, Richard gave the command, and the whole body of the prisoners were brought out, and conducted to the plain beyond the lines of the encampment. A few were reserved. These were persons of rank and consideration, who were to be saved in hopes that they might have wealthy friends at home who would pay money to ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... ingenuity of this wonderful people, I outwardly preserved the calm demeanor which Almos' strong personality had made a characteristic. Indeed, Reon, who had been preparing an aerenoid for our use—such was the Martian name for these airships—was quite unaware of my astonishment, and it was plain that with the exercise of due care, when I spoke without the prompting of Almos' knowledge, there was no likelihood of anyone's having a ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... from between the rocks the marking was less regular and less clear, but plain enough in the damp, crusted earth which covered the mud in ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Lord Aberdeen's dispatch to Mr. Fox. I had cherished the hope that all possibility of misunderstanding as to the true construction of the eighth article of the treaty lately concluded between Great Britain and the United States was precluded by the plain and well-weighed language in which it is expressed. The desire of both Governments is to put an end as speedily as possible to the slave trade, and that desire, I need scarcely add, is as strongly and as sincerely felt by the United States as it can be by Great Britain. Yet it must not ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... nothing but skeletons with a covering of black leather. Some of the children were very young, many of them mere infants, clinging to the backs of the poor mothers, who had carried them over mountain and plain, through swamp and jungle, in blistering sunshine and pelting rain for many weary days. But prolonged suffering had changed the nature of these little ones. They were as silent and almost as intelligently ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... the table the latter went out and mounted his horse to ride to the post office, for Herman Brudenell's establishment was now reduced to so small a number of servants that he was compelled to be his own postman. To be plain with you, there were but two servants—old Jovial, who was gardener, coachman, and waiter; and old Dinah, his wife, who was cook, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Some wan-eyed exile's, wealth and sorrow's heir, Who sought a lone retreat for tears and prayer? Some brooding poet's, sure of deathless fame, Had not his epic perished in the flame? Or some gray wooer's, whom a girlish frown Chased from his solid friends and sober town? Or some plain tradesman's, fond of shade and ease, Who sought them both beneath these quiet trees? Why question mutes no question can unlock, Dumb as the legend on the Dighton rock? One thing at least these ruined heaps declare,— They were a shelter once; a man ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the bridle;—would lead him to the town,— Too late,—for life is ebbing,—the gallant steed is down! Ah! long I saw that horseman kneel by his charger's head, And when at last he left him, I knew the horse was dead. How fiercely as he passes that comrade on the plain, Remounted on the morrow, shall ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... upon these ghastly survivals of the hours of darkness, quickly reconstructed the crime which it was evident had been committed. The boatswain was known to have had money on him; but the youth, it was recalled, had begged his bed. It was therefore plain to the meanest understanding that the youth had murdered the boatswain for his money and thrown the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... of forty days. [42] The long night of his absence or death was the mournful season of distress and anxiety, till the messengers, who had been sent to the mountain tops, descried the first rays of returning light, and proclaimed to the plain below the festival ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... of them, to a place they could not leave. Week in, week out, he would be obliged to see her whether he would or no. And when her tired face rebuked his senses, she drew him by her tenderness; she held him by her goodness. There was only one thing for him to do—to clear out. It was his plain and simple duty. If it hadn't been for Alice and for that old man he would have done it. But, because of them, it was his still plainer and simpler duty to stay where he was, to stick to her and see ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... hostess had provided what she thought was a very fine banquet, he left his staff to eat that and went out into the kitchen to help himself to a bowl of bread and milk. I suppose he would not be thought to have done that because he was a candidate for office and wanted to appear as one of the plain people, because that was after he had served in the office of President. But he stopped here in the town of Weston and was entertained here at the hotel. And many other great men passed through here and were entertained here from the time when we were colonies clear up to the time when the railroads ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... Why wouldn't I know? If I could see you why couldn't I see Clint Thayer and Tim Otis and Tom Hall? You were all as plain as daylight. Of course, Tom's out of it, anyway, but I guess losing a left tackle and a right half-back a week before the game would put rather a dent in our chances, what? And that's just what will happen if you make me go to ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... she mused. "It is little to my own credit to say it, but I doubt if this Allison had been just a decent, plain lass like Kirstin, I might have been left to overlook her and her sorrows, though I might have helped her when I knew her need. I will bide my time, and when it comes I will do what I can for Allison Bain, whatever her ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... two men, as in the case of a thousand others in the gold-camp, it seemed as if easy, unhoped-for affluence was to prove their undoing. On the trail they had been supreme; in fen or forest, on peak or plain, they were men among men, fighting with nature savagely, exultantly. But when the fight was over their arms rested, their muscles relaxed, they yielded to sensuous pleasures. It seemed as if to ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... for the parents to be visited at their residences by a constable in plain clothes, told the nature of the inquiry, and informed of the desire of the police to interview the children at the police station. When a parent and child attended at the time appointed the parent was informed that, either through ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... of those who have the everlasting gospel to preach, the voice may cease to sound, even in the valleys and over the goodly hills of Lebanon! Your infant seminary for training native preachers may droop, or disband; your congregations on the mountains, and on the plain, may be left without any one to break to them the bread of life; and your press may cease to drop those leaves, which are for the healing of the nations. All this may, yes, must occur, by a necessity as inexorable as the decree that commands all back to dust, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... in Rom. viii. 26, R. V., "And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." It is plain from this passage that the Holy Spirit is not merely an influence that moves us to pray, not merely an illumination that teaches us how to pray, but a Person who Himself prays in and through us. There is wondrous comfort in the thought that every ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... capitals, remarks, "There is sometimes a visible track, and sometimes none; most commonly we passed over wide sands. The country between Madrid and Toledo, I need scarcely say, is ill peopled and ill cultivated; for it is all a part of the same arid plain, that stretches on every side around the capital; and which is bounded on this side by the Tagus. The whole of the way to Toledo, I passed through only four inconsiderable villages; and saw two others at a distance. A great part of the land is uncultivated, covered with furze ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... plain, and everybody understood it the same way for the first forty years of your government. In 1793, in Washington's time, an act was passed to carry out this provision. It was adopted unanimously in the Senate of the United States, and nearly so in the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... today we ate fried tom-cod, baked potatoes, tomatoes, pickles, bread and butter, and rice pudding. I feel positive that nothing could have tasted better to our home folks in the States who have more fruit and vegetables than did this plain and homely meal to us, eaten with the heartiest appetites gotten out of doors while walking in the snow. The ice in the bay is getting firmer, and will continue to grow thicker all winter, being in the spring at breaking-up time many feet through, no doubt, as it was in Minnesota ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... on other souls may fall, Strike through, and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day. Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye, And seems design'd for thoughtless majesty: Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain, And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign. Heywood and Shirley[140] were but types of thee, Thou last great prophet of tautology. 30 Even I, a dunce of more renown than they, Was sent before but to prepare thy way; And, coarsely clad in Norwich drugget, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... "Well, you force plain speaking. While I command the Kansas I am responsible for the well-being of the ship, her crew, and her passengers. I could never forgive myself if I left those men to the mercy of the Indians. I cannot permit either you or Tollemache ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... "For he did claw at himself, and leap about over the ice like a playful puppy, save from the way he growled and squealed it was plain it was not play but pain. Never did I see ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... poem of Marathon, the story of the nameless clown, the mysterious holder of the ploughshare, is not less inspiring. The unknown champion, so plain in his heroic magnitude of mind, so brilliant as he flashes in the van, in the rear, is like the incarnated genius of the soil, which hides itself in the furrow and flashes into the harvest; and it ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... to speak of the immediate objects of the understanding as things existing in the mind. 'Nor is there anything in this but what is conformable to the general analogy of language; most part of the mental operations being signified by words borrowed from sensible things; as is plain in the terms COMPREHEND, reflect, DISCOURSE, &C., which, being applied to the mind, must not be taken in their ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... appears that the person of Lord Nelson (although he was not as described, a little man, but of the middle height and of a frame adapted to activity and exertion) did not find favour with the lady; and I presume not to dispute her taste, but in his plain suit of black, in which he alone recurs to my memory, he always looked what he was—a gentleman. Whatever expletives of an objectionable kind may be ascribed to him, I feel persuaded that such rarely entered into his conversation. He was, it is true, a sailor, and one of a warm and generous ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... rendered friendly assistance in the repairs which the somewhat shattered condition of the ship rendered necessary. He also provided means to enable MM. d'Urville and Lesson to make an excursion, full of interest, beyond the Blue Mountains into the plain of Bathurst, the resources of which were as yet ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Convention sat nearly one hundred members of the Mountain, now exclusively designated as Jacobins—extreme radicals in thought, word, and deed—disciples of Rousseau—counting among their number Danton, Robespierre, Carnot, and St. Just. Between the two factions of Mountainists and Girondists sat the Plain, as it was called, the real majority of the house, which had no policies or convictions of its own, but voted usually according to the dictates of expediency. Our tactful, trimming Abbe Sieyes belonged to the Plain. At the very outset the Plain was likely ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... and plan the dedication; not have a formal service. So then, Billy, you can have your fox-trotting and a good time to all of you, bless you, my children." As he spoke he smiled at the entire group with the most delightful interest and pleasure. He was dressed in a straight black coat with a plain silk vest cut around a white collar that buttoned in the back, and his dull gold mane was brushed down sleek and close to his beautiful head. Not a flash of expression in his strong face showed that he felt any resentment or dismay at thus having ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of Carian, or Caraiam, there is a great desert which continues for two days and a half, without any inhabitants, at the end of which desert there is a large plain, in which great multitudes meet for traffic three days in every week. Many people come down from the great mountains, bringing gold, which they exchange for five times its weight of silver; on which account, many merchants come here from foreign countries with silver, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... the types suitable for different stages. They are, however, very often interchangeable; and many stories can be told successfully to all classes. A vitally good story is little limited in its appeal. It is, nevertheless, a help to have certain plain results of experience as a basis for choice; that which is given is intended only for such a basis, not in the ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... since he was last at the island, in 1774, two ships had been twice in Oheitepeha Bay, and had left animals in the country. These, on farther inquiry, were found to be hogs, dogs, goats, one bull, and a ram. That the vessels which had visited Otaheite were Spanish, was plain from an inscription that was cut upon a wooden cross, standing at some distance from the front of a house which had been occupied by the strangers. On the transverse part of ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... up. Here and there men and women are sleeping on valuable rugs, which look strange in the bare shelters. Most of the women knitted, and some wove on little "fegir" looms. The dullness of their existence matches the tragedy of it. The food is so plain that it doesn't want cooking—being mostly bread and water; but sometimes a few rags are washed, and there is an attempt to try and keep warm. Yet I have heard an English officer say that nothing pleases a Russian more than to ask, "When is there ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... he could know for certain whether to believe that maid's story or not! Was Esther in plain language "that kind of girl"? The thought that he might never know the truth goaded him to fury. If she was all he wanted to believe her, how could one account for that detestable picture of her nestling close to Holliday, her head on his shoulder? How explain her disappearance? ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... twelve days I have received for the various objects of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution, in smaller donations, sixty-four pounds fifteen shillings sixpence two farthings, also a donation of one hundred and fifty pounds, and one of three thousand pounds. Is not this a plain proof that God is both able and willing to help simply in answer to prayer? Is not human reason confounded by such instances? When I first began to write these exercises of my mind about another Orphan House, I knew not that on January 4, I should receive a donation of three thousand pounds; yet ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... shoulder, and with feelings of considerable pride. Before night I started two deer in a brushy place, and they leaped high over the oak bushes in the most affrighted way. I brought my gun to my shoulder and fired at the bounding animal when in most plain sight. Loading then quickly, I hurried up the trail as fast as I could and soon came to my deer, dead, with a bullet hole in its head. I was really surprised myself, for I had fired so hastily at the almost flying animal that it was little more ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... chatter-boxes! That's what they are! So I must slam the door in the face of that poor boy, eh! Well, I won't! Just when he's settling down a bit, from the good influence Dolores has over him! And they're all jealous of her, that's what. Just plain jealous!" And the gesture with which he underlined the spiteful words seemed to include Roseta among the envious. "Well, it's my affair, and so long as I don't worry, they needn't. Let them talk their tongues off. That boy is what amounts to a son to me. Why, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... morning he reached a vast plain near the river Irtish, on which a village of about two hundred wooden huts was built around a factory. When introduced into the clerks' office, a young man who was writing jumped up and threw himself into his arms: he also was a Pole from Cracow, a well-known poet, and sent ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... plain: we must start down the river the next day, if people who could not be deceived were going to crop up at this rate: an unpalatable disappointment, for we had hoped to have a week in St. Louis. The Southern was a good hotel, and we could have had a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the other, ran till we reached the dust-heap, where he flung the idolatrous confectionery on to the middle of the ashes, and then raked it deep down into the mass. The suddenness, the velocity of this extraordinary act, made an impression on my memory which nothing will ever efface." Such is a plain unvarnished account of the kind of way in which numbers of people were brought up in the 'fifties and 'sixties of the last century. Can it be wondered that those who had such a childhood should grow up with an absolute ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... rich cities set in the sand, then Scandalion; at length after a long night of watching a soft hill showed, covered with verdure and glossy dark woods, Carmel, shaped like a woman's breast. Making this hallowed mount, in the plain beyond they saw Acre, many-towered; and all about it the tents of the Christian hosts, and before it in the blue waters of the bay ships riding at anchor, more numerous than the sea-birds that haunt Monte ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... remarked recklessly. "I think all this beauty is just as good for the mind as bare plastered walls and plain geometry." ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... senses than one. His hand had guided her, slowly, yet surely, to the heights of calm. She saw her life now as a desolate valley lying between two peaks. One was sunlit, yet opaline with the mists of morning; the other was scarcely a peak, but merely a high and grassy plain upon which ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... waves the heavy grain, The threat'ning storm some, strongly, rein; Some teach to meliorate the plain, With tillage-skill; And some instruct the shepherd-train, Blythe ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... he could find. It was a pattern Unyoro march, of only two hours' duration. On arrival at the end we heard that elephants had been seen close by. Grant and I then prepared our guns, and found a herd of about a hundred feeding on a plain of long grass, dotted here and there by small mounds crowned with shrub. The animals appeared to be all females, much smaller than the Indian breed; yet though ten were fired at, none were killed, and only one made an attempt ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... city against its overflow, were solidly set. But a few hundred feet from the turning basin, was Bayou Bienvenu, which runs into Lake Borgne, part of Lake Pontchartrain, and one of the refuges of Lafitte in the brave days when smuggling was more a sport of the plain people than it is now with European travel restricted to the wealthy. So through Bayou Bienvenu a small excavator was sent to cut a passage into the turning basin, to allow the mighty 22-inch dredges to get in and work outwards towards the lake ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... be content with piecemeal legislation, because to attempt too much might be to alienate the sympathies of the majority; to keep our political eye, so to speak, on the ebb and flow of public opinion—since it is public opinion that is the final court of appeal; to tolerate abuses until it is quite plain a great number of people are anxious to have the abuse removed; and above all to settle down in easy contentment under political defeat, and make the best of accomplished reforms, not because we like them, but because a Parliamentary ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... The Nymph under all plain sail, our prize following in our wake, glided on past Southsea Castle—the yellow beach, the green expanse of the common, the lines of houses and cottages beyond the Postdown hills rising in the distance, the batteries of Gosport and Portsmouth ahead, the masts of numberless vessels ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give Him glory because the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him who made the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and fountains of waters" (Rev. xiv. 6, 7). I cannot forbear noticing the coincidence of the plain meaning of the words of this prophecy with the views advocated in this Essay: first, in respect to calling the gospel "[oe]onian" and thus asserting its applicability to the future age; next, in its announcement of the gospel in connection with the advent of "the hour of ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... his army across the Shenandoah, and burning the bridge at Port Republic, Jackson could easily have escaped Fremont, and have met Shields in the Luray Valley with superior force. But the plain where the battle must be fought was commanded by the bluffs on the left bank of the Shenandoah; and should Fremont advance while an engagement was in progress, even though he could not cross the stream, he might assail the Confederates in flank ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... a plain brown dress, And she is a steady spinner; To see her, quiet as a mouse, Going about her silver house, You would never, never, never guess The way she ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the reason, sir, which makes it necessary to abandon the use of constitutional language for a new vocabulary, and to substitute, in the place of plain, historical facts, a series of assumptions. This is the reason why it is necessary to give new names to things; to speak of the Constitution, not as a constitution, but as a compact; and of the ratifications by the people, not as ratifications, but ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... stream, fringed with willows and poplars, and were making preparations for storming the houses, or rather fortresses, in the Place de l'Eglise. Their skirmishers had fallen back with the same caution that characterized their advance, and the wide grassy plain, dotted here and there with a black form where some poor fellow had laid down his life, lay spread in the mellow, slumbrous sunshine like a great cloth of gold. The lieutenant, knowing that the street was now to be the scene of action, had evacuated the courtyard ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to take an American newspaper in my hand again. There were the clear open face of the plain-spoken Tribune, the sprightly columns of the Times, and the more dignified columns of the Washington journals. There were also many other familiar papers on the table, and they were all touched before I left. It was like a cool spring in the wide desert. For I confess that I love ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... very soon after you went away," said Faith. "He said that he was no better, and that to be no better was to be worse." It was plain that she thought more than she said. Faith had little experience, but there is an intuitive skill in some eyes to know what they have ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... night, no horse of hers had been so conducted, and we had led the creature with its rider into the great flat-bottomed boat; so that she was on a higher level than the rest of us, and could better see what was passing, though it was plain to all that our soldiers were ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of times, I am no [v]sprinter, and in the great mountain of clothes one wears up there in the cold Arctic night, no man can make much speed. Besides, the way was that uneven it was a case of hands and scramble more often than plain running over the sharp, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... so sharp is found in youth or age That can distinguish truth from treachery? Falsehood puts on the face of simple truth, And masks i' th' habit of plain honesty, When she in heart intends ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... may think that a merchant is no fitting match for you," he suggested. "I am nothing but a plain merchant, and my I people have been in the same business for four generations. As far as wealth goes I might perhaps satisfy your people, but for the rest I am but a prosaic fellow, with neither noble blood, nor the brain of ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... Cyprian. Previous to his baptism, he studied the scriptures with care, and being struck with the beauties of the truths they contained, he determined to practise the virtues therein recommended. Subsequent to his baptism, he sold his estate, distributed the money among the poor, dressed himself in plain attire, and commenced a life of austerity. He was soon after made a presbyter; and, being greatly admired for his virtues and works, on the death of Donatus, in A. D. 248, he was almost unanimously elected bishop ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... He pointed down at the prints of his boots where he had left the rocks of the steep hillside for the sand of the level; and he even made a print beside the clearest track to show the sheriff that he had really come down there as he climbed. But it was plain that Starr's mind was not on the matter ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... framed that the jurors must by their verdict tell an apparent falsehood, or commit a great injustice. When it was a capital offence in England to steal forty shillings, and evidence made it plain that the accused had actually stolen eight or ten times that value, you all know how often the jurors brought in a verdict of "stealing thirty-nine shillings."[166] They preferred to tell what seemed to be a lie, rather than kill a man for stealing fifteen ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... world was not right without her; the sunlight was thin; the season of bursting buds was but a pale, lack-lustre imitation of spring. And as the long, hot days dragged by and the verdure died on hill and plain and dusty mountainside, he asked himself "When will she ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... were rows of telegraph poles, indicating the position of other roads, on which they could distinguish the black, crawling lines of other marching regiments. In many places the troops had left the highway and were moving in deep columns across the open plain. To the left and front a cavalry brigade was seen, jogging along at an easy trot in a blaze of sunshine. The entire wide horizon, usually so silent and deserted, was alive and populous with those streams of men, pressing onward, onward, in long ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... brave combatants striking one another and shouting at the top of their voices, the field of battle became awful, resembling the slaughter-ground of creatures (of Rudra himself). The Earth, O Bharata, covered with blood, looked beautiful like a vast plain in the season of rains covered with the red coccinella. Indeed, the Earth assumed the aspect of a youthful maiden of great beauty, attired in white robes dyed with deep red. Variegated with flesh ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... an accent suggestive of the common people, a mannish, highly colored style of elocution peculiar to herself, rising above modesty in the choice of words and fearless in calling things baldly by their plain names. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Oklahoma consists of a gently undulating plain, that gradually ascends from an altitude of 511 feet at Valliant in the southeast to 1197 feet at Oklahoma City, and 1893 at Woodward, the county seat of Woodward county, in the northwest. The principal mountains are the Kiamichi ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... resident of a small town in Venezuela, that there, April 17, 1886, had fallen hailstones, some red, some blue, some whitish: informant said to have been one unlikely ever to have heard of the Russian phenomenon; described as an "honest, plain countryman." ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... to Hebrew and borrowed some words from Hebrew. Hebrew was known by learned people, but the language which the Son of God learned from His blessed mother and His foster father was Aramaic, and He spoke the Galilean dialect of that language. From a few words preserved in the Gospels, it is plain that the gospel was first preached in that tongue. In the 7th century after Christ, the Mohammedan conquerors, who spoke Arabic, began to supplant {2} Aramaic by Arabic, and this is now the ordinary language of Palestine. As many people who spoke Aramaic were ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... secret scheme, which Deacon Meakin was unconsciously furthering by his ultra tidiness. He might, at least, have promised to bring her some chestnuts. But he had done none of these thoughtful things. He had been just plain—boy! Girls? Were there any she might visit uninvited? Aunt Eunice was very particular about that. She had explained that the Turner girls, Sophronia Walker, and even the Clackett sisters, Mercy and Lucinda, had many household duties to perform. Especially ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... that preceded his printed lecture, Mr. Watson complained with some natural resentment, though with no petulance, that his poem, King Alfred, starred as it was from the old armories of literature, received scarcely any critical comment, and attracted no attention. But the reason is plain enough—King Alfred, as a whole, is a dull poem, and is therefore not provocative of eager discussion. The critics and the public rose in reverence before Wordsworth's Grave, because it is a noble work of art. Its author did not have to ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... I observed that all the cavaliers put themselves, as it were, in position, their left hand locked in the right of their valseuse, before making a start, omitting the preliminary paces that get you well into the swing. It was all plain sailing then, and swift sailing, too; the rest of the performance was completed with perfect unanimity, much to my own satisfaction, and, I trust, not to the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... prisoner and confined him in the Wartburg castle at Eisenach. During the nine months of his confinement he translated the Bible into German.[54] Luther took great pains to make the language so pure and plain that it could be understood by the common people, to whom he appealed. He was never ashamed of his humble origin. When he came to be the honored friend and trusted adviser of princes and kings, he was wont to say, "I am a peasant's son; my father, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... that they had only acted in accordance with their conscience, whilst Lucar, more outspoken than the rest, asserted that "they had done in the matter like honest men and true and faithful subjects." Such plain speaking ill suited the judges, who thereupon condemned the offenders to a fine of 1,000 marks apiece and imprisonment until further order. Eventually five out of the eight were discharged (12 December) on payment of a fine of L220, and ten days later ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... him. He thought of the time when he had a home—a happy, cheerful home—and of those who peopled it, and flocked about him then, until the forms of his elder children seemed to rise from the grave, and stand about him—so plain, so clear, and so distinct they were that he could touch and feel them. Looks that he had long forgotten were fixed upon him once more; voices long since hushed in death sounded in his ears like the music of village bells. But it was only for an instant. The ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... edition of the "Quadrupeds," there are a fair number of those famous tail-pieces which, to a good many people, constitute Bewick's chief claim to immortality. That it is not easy to imitate them is plain from the failure of Branston's attempts, and from the inferior character of those by John Thompson in Yarrell's "Fishes." The genius of Bewick was, in fact, entirely individual and particular. He had the humour of a Hogarth in little, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... licked, fur 'z I ever see, Are 'bout ez mad 'z they wal know how to be; 150 It's better than the Rebs themselves expected 'fore they see Uncle Sam wilt down henpected; Be kind 'z you please, but fustly make things fast, For plain Truth's all the kindness thet'll last; Ef treason is a crime, ez some folks say, How could we punish it in a milder way Than sayin' to 'em, 'Brethren, lookee here, We'll jes' divide things with ye, sheer an' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... think so?—I know it. I feel it down to my butes. Eastport harbure? Yea! An arter that we hev all plain-sailin." ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... this war of the Balkan Christians, in so far as it is an attempt to resist the use of force in those relationships. Of course, I do not try to estimate the "balance of criminality." Right is not all on one side—it never is. But the broad issue is clear and plain. And only those concerned with the name rather than the thing, with nominal and verbal consistency rather than realities, will see anything paradoxical or contradictory in Pacifist approval of Christian resistance to the ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... recognized or elected. The people do, indeed, owe the king honour and loyal service, but only on the condition that he holds inviolable his oath. The ruler who breaks this is a tyrant, and for him there was no place in mediaeval political theory. This conception was expressed in very plain and even crude terms by Manegold in the eleventh century when he said that the king was in the same relation to the community as the man who is hired to keep the pigs to his master. If the swineherd fails to do his work the master turns him off and finds ...
— Progress and History • Various
... provinces, and republics. That the Spanish Government was secretly dealing with the emperor and other German potentates for the extension of his universal empire appeared from intercepted letters of the king—copies of which were communicated—from which it was sufficiently plain that the purpose of his Majesty was not to bestow peace and tranquillity upon the Netherlands. The names of Fuentes, Clemente, Ybarra, were sufficient in themselves to destroy any such illusion. They spoke in blunt terms of the attempt of Dr. Lopez to poison Queen Elizabeth, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... clear knowledge of their nature and relation to ourselves, the dutifulness or cosmic emotion thereby aroused would have remained purely moral and historical. As science would not in the end admit any myth which was not avowed poetry, so it would not admit any piety which was not plain reason and duty. But man, in his perplexities and pressing needs, has plunged, once for all, into imaginative courses through which it is our business to follow him, to see if he may not eventually reach his goal even by those ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... that Howe, whose whole eloquence consisted in cutting personalities, named nobody on this occasion, and contented himself with declaiming in general terms against corruption and profusion. It was plain that the enemies of Somers were at once urged forward by hatred and kept back by fear. They knew that they could not carry a resolution directly condemning him. They, therefore, cunningly brought forward a mere speculative proposition ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... furnishes of the unfortunate Queen Caroline. From the close of 1814 till Her Royal Highness's return to England the author was never absent from her for a single day. All is humourously and artlessly told, and the plain truth finds its way at once to the reader's heart and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... you?" he demanded in plain English, "and what do you want?" The traders called back that they were Englishmen come for beaver. Again the crafty Frenchman must have laughed; for he knew very well that all English ships except those of the Hudson's Bay Company were prohibited by law from coming ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... with which the recipient was well acquainted, but as to which we are reduced to guessing. When, however, all such insoluble difficulties are allowed for, which after all in absolute bulk are very small, there should (if the present version is at all worthy) be enough that is perfectly plain to everyone, and generally of the ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero |
