"Casually" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... H—— G—— is a fascinating woman," I wrote. "She must have been a great beauty in her day, and she seems to be a figure in the rich, smart London set. She speaks quite casually of being invited to this or that palace for a chat and a cup of tea with one of the princesses or even with the Queen. During hours that she spent at the hospital she talked to me frankly and charmingly about many things connected with ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... him, but a maiden's pride permitted no question when Garth rode over as he did twice during the following week. When Garth remarked casually that his cousin was the same old chap he'd always been, and that he seemed to have nothing in his rollicking brain more serious than the breaking of a wild devil of a colt and a horse race which he had set his heart upon, Wanda bent her head a little over her book and gave no other sign of ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... in this place the subsequent appearance before the public of one of the personages casually mentioned ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... beginning of the third week in the early days of November, as the squad was returning from practice Tough said casually: ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... all in white enamel, and the cook does things by electricity, and when I go away in summer my friends have Italian villas—like the Watermans, on the North Shore, although all of my friends are not like the Watermans." She threw this last out casually, not as a criticism, but that he might, it seemed, withhold judgment of her present choice of associates. "And I have never known the world of good cheer that Dickens writes about—wide kitchens, and teakettles singing and crickets chirping and everybody ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... curious change of attitude toward her was the experience of that man or woman who came to know her even casually. Though at a first meeting she seemed to be all of her age, with better acquaintance she appeared to grow rapidly younger. So that it was not strange to hear her referred to as "the Milo girl," and not infrequently she was included at gatherings ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... knew about the volume was something which had casually dropped in conversation the day before, in the house of a friend where he was visiting; but that was sufficient to prejudice ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... of his life were answerable to what he saw of him, but chiefly, as it seemed, a divine influence aiding and directing the first steps that were to lead to great results, out of the mere thought of his mind, and casually, as it were, he put his hand upon the fact, and, in gentler terms and with a kind aspect, to inspire him with confidence and hope, asked him who he was, and whence he was derived. He, taking heart, spoke thus: "I will hide nothing from ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... reason for it arises whenever men, instead of doing nothing or beating about casually in the world, take to gathering fruits of nature which they may have uses for in future, or fostering their growth, or actually contriving their appearance. Such is man's first industrial habit, seen in grazing, agriculture, and mining. Among nature's products are also those of man's own purposeless ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... hand, occasionally lapsing into slumber. But—though, when they got the chance, they went willingly three times to the kirk—there were young men in the community so flighty that, instead of dozing at home on Saturday night, they dandered casually into the square, and, forming into knots at the corners, talked solemnly and ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... officials at Sibu, which serves to illustrate the superstitious beliefs of the Malays. A Chinese prisoner at Sibu had died, at least Johnson and Bolt both thought so, and they sent some of the Malay soldiers to bury the body on the other side of the river. A few days later one of them casually remarked to Johnson that they had often heard it said that the spirit of a man sometimes returned to his body again for a short time after death (a Malay belief), but he (this Malay) had not believed ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... surely, and unhurriedly, carrying him aimlessly along the resilient walkway, under the warm glow of the street lights. The people around him walked as casually and with seemingly as little purpose as he did. There was none of the brisk sense of urgency that he felt inside the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... glance even casually over a list of tavern signs without observing how frequently the numeral "three" is used. Various explanations have been offered for the propensity of mankind to use that number, one deriving the habit from the fact that primitive man divided ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... doing a right smart o' business this year," he began, very casually indeed, so that I knew this was important. Besides bells and coal smoke, the smell and crowded sounds of cattle rose in the air around us. "Hyeh's our first gather o' beeves on the ranch," continued the Virginian. "The whole lot's shipped through to ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... casually saw my first passenger, but regretted not also to have seen whether he came up by the coal-bin or the meat-safe. His name was Isidore Smith; so, to protect him from Smith, my father, being a conscientious man, baptized him into a liberty to say ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... visit from my late secretary," said the Vicomte, casually, and without looking up from his occupation of opening some letters. There was no reason to suppose that he had seen me glance towards the closing door, recognising him ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... came Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey' upon which Wesley has this comment:— 'I casually took a volume of what is called, "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy." 'Sentimental'! what is that? It is not English: he might as well say, 'Continental' [!]. It is not sense. It conveys no determinate idea; yet one ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Yesterday Mrs. Staggchase had casually mentioned to Fred Rangely that her husband had gone to Feltonville; and at the St. Filipe Club in the evening, as they were playing poker, Rangely had excused the absence of Mr. Staggchase, who was to be of the party, by ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... wagons to Nijnieff, on the outskirts of the thing. I knew that to-night, in another ten minutes, I would be in the middle—the "very middle." As I waited there I recalled the pages of the diary of some officer, a diary that had been shown me quite casually by its owner. It had been a miracle of laconic brevity: "6.30 A. M., down to the battery. All quiet. 8.0, three of their shells. One of ours killed, two wounded. Five yards' distance. 8.30, breakfasted; K. arrived from the 'Doll's House'—all quiet there," and so on. This, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... asked him for some clothes. He lent me some duck things of his own, for those I had worn in the boat had been thrown overboard. They were rather loose for me, for he was large and long in his limbs. He told me casually that the captain was three-parts drunk in his own cabin. As I assumed the clothes, I began asking him some questions about the destination of the ship. He said the ship was bound to Hawaii, but that it had to land ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... fairly well primed with the family preoccupations, so that when Lady Verity-Stewart carried me off to her own little den on the pretext of showing me some new Bristol glass, and Sir Julius came smoking casually in her wake, I knew what to expect. They led up to the subject, of course, very diplomatically—not rushing at it brutally like Evadne, but nothing that the child said did they omit—with the natural exception of the bridesmaid's dress and the wedding present. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... said, "Shut up, Pop"—and rather casually at that—and she and me went on to speculate and then to argue about which buttons we ought to push, if ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... twenty-two centuries became obsolete, and perhaps it still survives in certain modern scientific developments. Moreover, the finest and most characteristic of the Hippocratic works either do not mention or but casually refer to these theories which are not essential to their main pre-occupation. Their task of observation of symptoms, of the separation of the essentials from the accidents of disease, and of generalization from experience could go on unaffected ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... by day the dangers thickened round them. One evening, soon after their arrival, William Hartley, a priest and afterwards a martyr, who was helping in the work, and had then just come back from a visit to Oxford, mentioned casually that Roland Jenks, the Catholic stationer and book-binder there, was again in trouble, having been accused by his own servant. Jenks was doubtless known to all Oxford men, indeed but three years before ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... arbitrary in the memories we make of places casually visited, dependent as they are upon our mood at the moment, or on an accidental interweaving of impressions which the genius loci blends for us. Of Forio two memories abide with me. The one is of a young woman, with very fair hair, in a light blue dress, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the Tube I carefully crumpled the paper up and threw it away, and in the middle of dinner I took care to remark casually to Araminta, "By the way, I suppose you put Little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... and I took a time when they were both together. At the breakfast-table I mentioned casually that the school was to have a sleigh-ride and supper the next Friday afternoon and evening, and that Paul Mayhew had asked me to go with him, I said I hoped it would be a pleasant night, but that I should wear my sweater under my coat, anyway, ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... the wall of the superstructure. A passenger was near us—the Martian whom Dr. Frank had called Miko. He was loitering here, quite evidently watching this girl come aboard. But as I glanced at him, he looked away and casually sauntered off. ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... his side. The talk at dinner had not put the distinguished specialist in a sympathetic light, but the younger man felt grateful for this act of cordiality. They chatted about St. Isidore's, about the medical schools in Chicago, and the medical societies. At last Dr. Lindsay suggested casually, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... it with the landlady, and was returning to pull his master's boots off, after drying himself by the kitchen fire, when glancing casually through a half-opened door, he was arrested by the sight of a gentleman with a sandy head who had a large bundle of newspapers lying on the table before him, and was perusing the leading article of one with a settled sneer which curled ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. From his writings indeed a system of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... on that, right away," Nirzav said. His eyes were wide with amazement, and he had begun to sweat; a man does not casually watch the beliefs of a lifetime invalidated in a ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... and fresh but masculine organ, just such a voice as, to Lyon's sense, such a 'fine man' ought to have had. It appeared from his remarks that he was a very straight rider, which was also very much what Lyon would have expected. Not that he swaggered, for his allusions were very quietly and casually made; but they were all too dangerous experiments and close shaves. Lyon perceived after a little that the attention paid by the company to the Colonel's remarks was not in direct relation to the ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... him with a sigh. "He is so fearless! What a splendid cavalry officer he would make! He makes me think of the regiment that went to the war from Marlborough." Her eye fell casually upon Pompey who was shutting the carriage gates. "What a waste of precious lives it was to be sure, just to free ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... his eyes on the great curve of Earth, answered casually, "There's one thing every space chick has to learn if he's going to be a Planeteer. There's always a way to do anything. To be a Planeteer, you have to be able to figure ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... of troops to guard an acquisition which he expected to find eminently useful in his future communications with France—Buonaparte steered eastwards; but, after some days, ran upon the coast of Candia to take in water and fresh provisions, and, by thus casually diverging from his course, escaped imminent danger. For Nelson, soon returning to Toulon, missed the shipping which had so lately crowded the harbour, and ascertaining that they had not sailed towards the Atlantic, divined ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... Home a group of them was seated about the fireplace in the main hall. A neat, ruddy, septuagenarian circle. They greeted him casually, with delicacy of feeling, as if he were merely approaching them at their bench ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... zeal, his ambition, were wonderful; but it was impossible to overlook the disadvantage from which that ambition and that zeal suffered in the fact that for the first sixty years of his life the writer had cultivated the art but casually and sporadically. He retained, in spite of all the labour which he expended, a certain stiffness, an air of the amateur, of which he himself was always ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... of cutting them all off, purely with a disposition to oppose this mysterious stranger. It had been in vain, however; the current running the other way, and the fiery eloquence of Peter proving too strong even for him. Now, to his surprise, from a few words dropped casually, this man ascertained that their greatest leader was disposed so far to relent, as not to destroy ALL the pale-faces in his power. Whom, and how many he meant to spare, Ungque could not tell; but his quick, practised discernment detected the general disposition, and his ruthless ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... At the conclusion of the reign of Attila, who died or was murdered about A.D. 453, the Huns were driven back into Asia, whence they once more invaded Europe a few years later; but, although we hear of them casually, in union with other tribes, more than a century afterwards (about 564), they never recovered their power in Dacia, and are of no further interest to us ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... The pieces were in perfect line and the gunners at their posts. The shots were fired at regular intervals and with cool deliberation. The gunners took their time, and seemed to be working very casually. I had expected to see them fairly excited: the men running under a hail of shells, teams brought up at a gallop as soon as a few salvoes had been fired, and the guns whirled off at full speed and lined up in battery again some hundreds of ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... wrastle that out with the coroner afterward, I expect," replied Dingwell casually. "Not thinking of ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... soon as he gets warmed up, it all comes back to him. He catches your step and away you go, a gay, adventurous, half-predatory couple. How quickly he falls into the old ways of jest and anecdote and song! You may have known him for years without having heard him hum an air, or more than casually revert to the subject of his experience during the war. You have even questioned and cross-questioned him without firing the train you wished. But get him out on a vacation tramp, and you can walk it all out of him. By the camp-fire at night, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... call myself the first Carpet Bagger." This expression casually let fall by Mr. J.G. Thompson, of this city, in a conversation with the writer, was so striking and so suggestive that I asked him to explain. He complied, and in so doing, gave the following extraordinary ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... that those to whom he surrendered it were watchful and vigilant. And yet when, a few hours later, on the same day, upon arriving at Antelope Springs, he was informed by the sergeant that he did not propose to take dinner there, the paymaster almost casually said to him, "Then you stay at the stage," and he himself went to a room at the station to warm himself. When, as he went from there to the dining room, he passed the stage and saw no one near it except a stock tender, a very conservative ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... believed the article was not written by one of the regular force, but was contributed from the outside by a young fellow who had been described to Godolphin as a sort of Ibsen crank. At the close, he spoke of certain weaknesses which the piece had developed in the performance, and casually mentioned that he would revise it at these points as he found the time; it appeared to him that it needed overhauling, particularly in the love episode; there was too much of that, and the interest during an entire act centred ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... noticed that her father and her aunt made several allusions which would have seemed mysterious and repellant to her the day before, but which now possessed an almost tragic interest. When before had she heard her aunt speak casually of a Mothers' Meeting and a Lending Library? These were common-place matters to the ordinary English girl; but to Lesley they possessed the elements of a romance. For was it not by means of hackneyed, common-place machinery of this kind ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... old brush is a disgrace to the table," was the comment Phyl's father had made on it once, just as though he were casually referring to some form of the Inevitable such as the state of ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... save the good things. The coxswain made a few comments which showed him to be a thoroughly ill-bred person, but further than this I was not persecuted. After we had rowed interminable distances through leagues upon leagues of doggedly resisting water a man in the bow remarked casually that he had several friends in Florida we might call upon if we kept it up a little longer, but the coxswain comfortably ensconced upon the hackamatack, was so deeply engrossed in the perusal of a vest pocket edition of the "Merchant of Venice" that he failed ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... waiting for?" Peter said to the motionless figures. With his words they seemed at once to spring to life. Mr. Zanti rolled his big body casually to the door and looked down the street, Stephen, smiling at ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... course of our conversation, the gentleman gave an amusing instance of the very sensitiveness which he condemned. I happened, casually, to speak of the Icelandic language. "The Icelandic language!" he exclaimed. "So you also in America call it Icelandic; but you ought to know that it is Norwegian. It is the same language spoken by the Norwegian Vikings who colonised Iceland—the old Norsk, which ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... would be taken from her. She had only spoken to him casually about her boy, but he had felt that the casual reference did not mean that she had a careless heart. The woman whose hand had held his for a moment would be tenacious in love. He felt sure of that, and sure that she loved her naughty boy with a ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... frequently, than on false claims to commendation. Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep; so that scarcely can two persons casually meet, but one is offended or diverted by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... two hours, until the sleeper finishes his sleep and awakens. The same thing is done when they call anyone downstairs, or when the door is shut; for they remain calling him in a very low tone for two hours, until he casually answers ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... several ray-guns are centered on you, Carse," he remarked casually. "Others, black, are on you. Earthlings would no doubt consider your emotions very creditable; I only suggest that you ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... 1748 made a haul of thirty men off the Old-Head of Kinsale, but lost his barge in doing so, "it blowed so hard." Byng, of the Sutherland, grumbled atrociously because in the course of his run up-Channel in '42 he was able to press "no more than seventeen." Anson, looking quite casually into Falmouth on his way down-Channel, found there in '46 the Betsey tender, then just recently condemned, and took out of her every man she possessed at the cost of a mere hour's work, ignorant of the fact that when pressing eight of those men the commander of the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... had had but little thought to spare for others. Doubtless he had made his first acquaintance with her—his first intimate acquaintance at least—during his three months' sojourn at F—, for I now recollected that he had once casually let fall an intimation that his aunt and sister had a young friend staying with them at the time, and this accounted for at least one-half his silence about all transactions there. Now, too, I saw a reason for many little things that had slightly puzzled me before; among the rest, for sundry ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... reverend gentleman was in evening clothes, while his hat and coat had a singularly secular, not to say fashionable, appearance; but, as he mentioned casually in the course of some extremely affable remarks, he had been dining in a country house, and had not thought it worth while changing before he left. After breakfasting he dressed himself in an equally secular suit of tweeds and went ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... words, Cummings; but it doesn't mean anything," Worth said casually. "You know where that bank stock is and who put ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... I, with others, sometimes tag with satire, and with not being warm enough for this poor world;—I too,—though I know its meltings to-me-ward. Then I learned that the newspapers had announced the death of your mother (which I heard of casually on the Rock River, Illinois), and that you and your brother John had been with her in Scotland. I remembered what you had once and again said of her to me, and your apprehensions of the event which has come. I can well believe you were grieved. The best son is not enough ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... speak of her, always with the liveliest expressions of boundless devotion. These remarks were repeated to the good woman, and seemed all the more sincere to her as they appeared to have been made quite casually, and she never suspected they were carefully calculated ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Vera seriously. She then bought casually Mr. Punch on the Continong, and left orders for books by Plato, Herbert Spencer, and various other thoughtful writers, to be sent to her without loss ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... known the wound Which rankled in Tattiana's breast, And if Tattiana mine had found— If the poor maiden could have guessed That the two friends with morning's light Above the yawning grave would fight,— Ah! it may be, affection true Had reconciled the pair anew! But of this love, e'en casually, As yet none had discovered aught; Eugene of course related nought, Tattiana suffered secretly; Her nurse, who could have made a guess, Was ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... like an animal, and therein differing, Aristotle says, from History, which treats not of one Action, but of one Time, and of all the events, casually connected, which happened to one person or to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the above, but which Simson made great use of, as the human agency which he was determined to find somehow. We had examined the ruins very closely at the time of these occurrences; but afterwards, when all was over, as we went casually about them one Sunday afternoon in the idleness of that unemployed day, Simson with his stick penetrated an old window which had been entirely blocked up with fallen soil. He jumped down into it in great excitement, and called me to follow. There we ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... Warwick Street a more congenial scene. There were generally some young men there, who seemed delighted with the ladies, listened with enthusiasm to Imogene's singing, and were allowed to smoke. They were evidently gentlemen, and indeed Mr. Rodney casually mentioned to Endymion that one of the most frequent guests might some day even be a peer of the realm. Sometimes there was a rubber of whist, and, if wanted, Mrs. Rodney took a hand in it; Endymion sitting apart and conversing with her sister, who amused him by her ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... true to form. He drifted in and out casually, always idle and degage and elegant, he continued his irregular conferences with ill-assorted companions, he worshipped discreetly and evidently without the faintest hope, he seemed more than ever a ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... while, he said he must go up-stairs and do some writing; and then he casually dropped the fact that he was an editor, and that he had come to Boston to get an engagement on a newspaper; he implied that he had ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... casually, saw it was me, and motioned inside. "How about some Bartok, Paul? Or would you rather soothe your nerves ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... resemblance between the steppes of Tver and the great Sahara is at times startling. There is in both that roll as of the sea—the great roll that heaves unceasingly round the Capes of Good Hope and Horn. Looked at casually, Tver and Sahara's plains are level, and it is only in crossing them that one realizes the gentle up and down beneath ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... nothing horrible could happen so near them! Yet he seemed to have no intention of leaving Westhope. Then, perhaps, he had not drawn the short lighter, after all. At the moment when suspense, momentarily lulled, was once more rising hideous, colossal, he casually mentioned that he was leaving by the night train. The reason was obvious. The shock of relief ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... was that Ellen had a new interest in life. Those words sown casually in her thoughts at the show were bearing remarkable fruit. She had pondered them well, and weighed her chances, and come to the conclusion that it would be a fine and not impossible thing to win Arthur Alce from ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... in the day, however, looking casually seaward—what was this that M. Peyron, to his great surprise, descried far away on the dim southern horizon? A low black line, lying close to the water? ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... and looked at it casually, though the muscles on his closed jaws stood out in a manner that was not wholly pleasant to look upon. It was, however, with unfathomable eyes that he ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... long-lanced Achaeans: a careless fit succeeds to one of spleen, and vanity well spangled, pretty baubles, stars and trinkets and trifles, fill their cycle, to magnetize with folly that rolling world the brain: another twist, and love is lord paramount, a paltry bit of glass, casually rose-coloured, shedding its warm blush over all the reflective powers: suddenly an overcast, for that marplot, Disappointment, has obtruded a most vexatiously reiterated morsel of lamp-black: again ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... slightest conception of what it meant. He imagined that a philosopher was one who made the best of a bad job, and he had never heard the word used in any other sense. He had great potential intellectual curiosity, but nobody had thought to stimulate it by even casually telling him that the finest minds of humanity had been trying to systematise the mysteries for quite twenty-five centuries. Of physical science he had been taught nothing, save a grotesque perversion to the effect that gravity was a force which ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... have managed to get complete control of their respective communities and have naturally become instruments of oppression and fraud. They have elaborate ceremonies of initiation, are terrible to women and uninitiated males, and religion usually enters only casually and subordinately into their activities, chiefly in the form of magical ceremonies. A partial exception, in regard to this last point, occurs in the case of the Areoi society of Tahiti, which, as it ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... advantage. He was a most original and interesting liar upon all subjects upon which he was ignorant and which came up incidentally. He gave me a very interesting account of an interview between his father and Queen Victoria, and mentioned casually that his father had walked across the Thames without ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... afford to throw a day or so away on her. At any rate, I will let her make the game. I must wait a day or so to send on the Grindlay check," the wanderer mused, smiling genially upon the head porter. Major Alan Hawke casually inquired, upon ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... shut, and Janet turned to Radmore: "Your friend has made a conquest of Jack!" She spoke with a touch of rather studied unconcern, for she had been a little taken aback last evening when Timmy had told her casually of his own and his godfather's call at The ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... not at any considerable depth below it. Their first appearance is on the immediate surface of the burnt ground, the same as in the case of fire-weed, and at a time when there were no seeds to be distributed, except such as must have come from the southern hemisphere, or been casually picked up by birds, and taken their slim chances of survival after passing through the natural "gristmills" of the birds. And even this supposition, would only account for the appearance of a single stramonium plant or two, not for a thick bed of it covering the entire ground. ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... effect. I was very soon on my feet again, and glanced at Bjaaland; whether he had seen my tumble, I am not certain. However, I pulled myself together after this unfortunate performance, and remarked casually that it is not so easy to forget what one has once learnt. No doubt he thought that I had managed the "Telemark swing"; at any rate, he was polite enough to let me ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... became a trifle more disdainful, but he did not answer. Instead, he stole a glance to right and left to mark how his fellows were closing about her. At the same moment he casually slipped his foot forward through the grass for ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... and arouse him. His aunt guessed too, that he had passed the night as the guests of the Intendant always passed it, and knowing his temper and the regard he had for her good opinion, she brought the subject of the Intendant into conversation, in order, casually as it were, to impress Le Gardeur with her opinion of him. "Pierre Philibert too," thought she, "shall be put upon his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... good looking bachelor minister. The female Thompsons and Smalls was "my dear-in'" each other more'n ever, but there was a chill setting in round them piazza thrones, and some of the sarcastic remarks that was casually hove out by the bosom friends was pretty nigh sharp enough to shave with. As for Milo and Eddie, they still smoked together behind the barn, but the atmosphere on the quarter-deck was affecting the fo'castle and there wa'n't quite so many "old mans" and "dear boys" ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... common with her husband, was almost entirely shunned by them. There may, perhaps, have been a higher consideration than that of a good settlement to cause an English woman in this instance to marry a dark mulatto; but I was always of opinion, and she confirmed this by hints dropped casually, that the consideration of a fortune had more to do with the alliance than love. This gentleman kept a good house, and had many servants. His wife being fond of amusements, he hired a box for her use at the Eagle Theatre, which she always attended alone, the etiquette of the ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... the national point of view. They were a wonderfully uncomplex people, with the perfect ease which only those at the bottom of the social ladder who have not started to climb at all, and those who have reached the top, like these, can have. They were casually friendly when the strangers pleased them, and completely unimpressed with their intrinsic worth if they did not. They seemed to see in a moment the shades in people, and only to select the best. And when Tamara came to talk ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... turned and came upon a small group of shops with monotonous panelled display windows inserted in the concrete walls. Here I found my tailor and going in I promptly laid down his notice and my clothing card. He glanced casually at the papers, punched the card and then looking up he remarked that my new suit had been waiting some time. I began explaining the incident in the mine and the stay in the hospital; but the tailor was either disinterested or ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... Durnovo going to be leader of the expedition?" she inquired casually, after a few moments' silence; and Jack, looking up with a queer smile, met her glance for ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... to get some money," I remarked casually, as we drank, in the hope Nelson would take it as an explanation of why I had let him ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... is Clarence Hale," answered Morris, boldly, taking the name of a young man of respectable family whom he had met casually. ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... Chisholm that he put his first questions—casually, as if they were very ordinary ones, and yet with an atmosphere of meaning behind them ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... Mrs. Fairfield looked at each other. They knew that to say a word to Patty by way of warning would be likely to precipitate the breakdown that they feared, so they were careful to speak very casually ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... speak, we are told, and since this person undergoes many changes of mood and purpose, we shall let his eyes tell us all they will about his different manners of looking. At first he but looks momentarily (as from lack of time) or casually (as from lack of interest). He glances. Soon he makes a business of looking, and fastens his eyes for a long time on something he admires or wonders at. He gazes. Presently he looks with a blank, perhaps a rude, expression and with eyes ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... not very clever, nor very animated, nor had she apparently the energy of her brother; but she was guided by a high principle of right and wrong; her temper was sweet, and her faults were fewer in number than her virtues. Those who casually met Mary Bold thought little of her; but those who knew her well loved her well, and the longer they knew her the more they loved her. Among those who were fondest of her was Eleanor Harding; and though Eleanor had never openly talked to her of her brother, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... at last to cease lamenting the pitiful gray shabbiness of American fiction? We say that we have no faith in it, and we judge it by the books and stories that we casually read. If we are writers of fiction ourselves, perhaps we judge it by personal and temperamental methods and preferences, just as certain groups of American poets of widely different sympathies judge the poetry of their contemporaries to-day. Let us affirm our faith anyhow in our ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... expect to stay?" asked Jimmie, casually, while Jennie was clearing the table. Aunt Rachel was in the kitchen. She prided herself on never being "a burden on any one." Doubtless, some of her friends would have preferred that she be. Most of us have a skeleton we do not ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... went to tea at the Gallands' with the other officers, for it was part of his cultivation of greatness to keep aloof from his subordinates. His meetings with Marta happened casually when he went out into the garden. Only once had he made any reference to the "And then" of their ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... pleasing and amusing thought. He recalled the young man's name. It was Tucker. He was a clean-faced, athletic, likable-looking chap. And an idiot would have guessed the truth, Alan told himself. The young engineer was more than casually interested in Mary Standish; he was in love. It was not a discovery which Alan made. It was a decision, and as soon as possible he would remedy the unfortunate omission of a general introduction at their table ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... at his appearance, her evident dismay, not unnatural in an age wherein skepticism and infidelity were marvelously mingled with credulity and superstition, her clear conviction that it was not himself in mortal blood and being, did go far to establish the fact, that she had been deceived either casually or—which was far more probable—by foul artifice, into the belief that her beloved and plighted husband was ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... as a guard-house. While busied in sketching this singular relic, we were saluted gracefully by an old chevalier de St. Louis, who was passing, and whose distinguished air would have become the person of Coligni himself. On casually inquiring the name of this gentleman, we learnt that he had been one among the many imprisoned during the reign of terror, and would have fallen by the guillotine, had the fall of Robespierre happened ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes |
