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Tame   /teɪm/   Listen
Tame

verb
(past & past part. tamed; pres. part. taming)
1.
Correct by punishment or discipline.  Synonyms: chasten, subdue.
2.
Make less strong or intense; soften.  Synonyms: moderate, tone down.  "The author finally tamed some of his potentially offensive statements"
3.
Adapt (a wild plant or unclaimed land) to the environment.  Synonyms: cultivate, domesticate, naturalise, naturalize.  "Tame the soil"
4.
Overcome the wildness of; make docile and tractable.  Synonyms: domesticate, domesticise, domesticize, reclaim.  "Reclaim falcons"
5.
Make fit for cultivation, domestic life, and service to humans.  Synonym: domesticate.  "The wolf was tamed and evolved into the house dog"



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"Tame" Quotes from Famous Books



... cropt prentice that sweeps his master's shop in the morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But there are two things, that you will see very strange; which are, wanton wives with their legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about their necks. But hold, I must examine you before I go further; you look ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... in the deep green-wood grew. Ah! had they come to light when nature Was a wonder-loving, story-telling child!— The misty morn of ages had gone by, The dreamy childhood of the race was past, And in its tame and reasoning manhood, In the daylight broad, and noon-day of all time, This world hath sprung. The poetry of truth, None other, shall her shining lakes, and woods, And ocean-streams, and hoary mountains wear. Perchance ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon

... the amiable and unfortunate LESBIA, that an Insult upon a Woman in her Circumstances, is as infamous in a Man, as a tame Behaviour when the Lie or a Buffet is given; which Truth, I shall beg leave of her to illustrate by ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... pleasure; though what the education of a boy in the train of a female can tend to, save to ingraft foppery and effeminacy on conceit and arrogance, it passes my knowledge to discover. But I blame you more directly for having taken little care to guard him against the perils of his condition, or to tame and humble a spirit naturally haughty, overbearing, and impatient. You have brought into your bower a lion's cub; delighted with the beauty of his fur, and the grace of his gambols, you have bound ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... a nest of gib cats," said old Macklin. "And I feel it coming over me at nights up at my cottage. How's a man to sleep, knowing the whole place so scandalously overstocked—the birds that tame they run between your legs—and no leave to use a gun, even to ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... for my friend's menagerie," exclaimed Mr Hooker. "Here is a young mias, and I hope to tame and civilise it, though at present its manners are far from cultivated. We killed the mother, who now hangs to the bough of a tree. Potto Jumbo soon afterwards caught the young gentleman by ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... the way to tame the wildest life, Thou knowest the way to bend the great and proud: I think of that Armada whose puffed sails, Greedy and ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies

... much too tame for Drake. So in 1567, when he was twenty-two, he sailed with Hawkins, who was already a famous Sea-Dog, to try his fortune round the Spanish Main, (that is, the mainland of northern South America and of the lands ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... they said, but I went away 'cause I thought the conversation would hurt my morals. They would all steal, when they were boys, but darned if I ever stole. Pa has stolen over a hundred wagon loads of water-melons, one deacon used to rob orchards, another one shot tame ducks belonging to a farmer, and another tipped over grindstones in front of the village store, at night, and broke them, and run, another used to steal eggs, and go out in the woods and boil them, and the minister was the worst ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... human enthusiasm could not know greater bounds. Faint echoes must have reached the distant, nearly empty circus big-top. Yet the breathless thousands had caught, as yet, but the first tame pageantry of this glimpse of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... in my hand as tame As a pear late basking over a wall; Just a touch to try and off it came; 'Tis ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... O Ranch; at least they seemed so to "Whitey," otherwise Alan Sherwood. Since he and his pal, "Injun," had had the adventures incidental to the finding of the gold in the mountains, there had been nothing doing. So life seemed tame to Whitey, to whom so many exciting things had happened since he had come West that he now had a taste ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart

... temper, which was the cause of her instability, often occasioned her bitter reflections; and as it was a source of trouble to herself, excited the anxiety of her mother, who frequently said to her, "There's a wide world will tame thee." Her own words in reference to this stage of her history were, "They never turned me out of class, but from my thoughtlessness and giddiness, I am sure, I was not a proper Methodist." Still the ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... second, is it? The Forlorn Chances! I guess you've got him dead to rights, though. Boots is for the under dog every time. I guess coaching the first and having his pick of the players wouldn't make any sort of a hit with Boots. It would be too tame. Boots likes to take three discarded veterans, two crips and a handful of green youngsters and whittle them into a bunch that will make us sweat and toil to score on. And, what's more, he does it! Bet you ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... distant force, which, so far as she personally was concerned, was a force for good. Owing to the war, farming was booming all over England, and she was in the boom, taking advantage of it. Yet she was ashamed to think of the war only in that way. She tried to tame the strange ferment in her blood, and could only do it by reminding herself of Hastings's wounded son, whose letter he had showed her. And then—in imagination—she began to see thousands of others like him, in hospital beds, or lying dead in trampled fields. Her mood ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... husband, to oppose such a pair of wills? Rumors of the wild doings at Storm were not lacking in that gentler community, nor was the Kildare blood what she would have chosen to mix with her own. But there is among this type of women always the rather touching belief that it needs only matrimony to tame the wildest of eagles into a cooing dove. Kildare, moreover, was one of the great landowners of the State, a man of singular force and determination, and, when he chose to exert it, of a certain virile charm. When Mrs. Leigh realized that, ever since her daughter had been ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... will make the prettiest husband in the world; you may fly about yourself as wild as a lark, and keep him the whole time as tame as a jack-daw: and though he may complain of you to your friends, he will never have the courage to find fault to your face. But as to Mortimer, you will not be able to govern him as long as you live; for the moment you have put him upon the fret, you'll fall ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... coat, instead of being smooth like a horse's, was shaggy like a young bear's. She had a long tail, which had never been cut, and such a deal of hair in her mane and over her eyes that it gave her quite a fierce countenance. In fact, among the mild and tame Devonshire beasts, the little Shetland pony looked almost like a wild animal. But in reality she was the gentlest creature in the world. Before she had been many days with them, she began to know the children quite ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock

... your wild oats while you're young," that's what you are told; Don't believe the foolish tongue—sow 'em when you're old. Till you're threescore years and ten, take my humble tip, Sow your nice tame oats and then . . . ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... shot, and often made long trips on horseback through the forests and sage bush. Having a fondness for all sorts of animals, on one such expedition she captured a bear cub, with which she returned to her cabin and set herself to tame. While thus employed, she was visited by a wandering violinist, who, falling a victim to her charms, begged a lock of her hair as a souvenir of the occasion. Thereupon, Lola, always anxious to oblige, struck a bargain with him. "I have," she ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... were now wet to the skin: and of all situations, I believe a damp one to be the least favourable to jocularity. I confess a certain partiality for adventures, when they are not carried too far. There is nothing I detest like a monotonous wearisome Quaker's journey, with every thing as tame, and dull, and uniform, as at a meeting of broad-brims; but to be overtaken by darkness and a deluge in the middle of a maple-swamp, to be unable to go three steps on one side without falling into the Tennessee, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... at the golden sun riding high in the dark blue sky, down over the stately oaks and massive boulders of the valley where quail flocked like tame geese. He had no wish to leave his paradise, and as the youngest and hardiest of the priests, he knew that he would be ordered to take ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... like a docile child, while I worked at Scudder's notes. When he came back we dined together, and in common decency I had to let him pump me. I gave him a lot of stuff about lion hunts and the Matabele War, thinking all the while what tame businesses these were compared to this I was now engaged in! When he went to bed I sat up and finished Scudder. I smoked in a chair till daylight, for I could ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan

... and exhausted his powers of growling and raging, he went to sleep. In the morning, Titus brought him merely some fresh water and a cake of barley-bread; but in the afternoon, thinking it was now time for his pupil—who was tolerably tame after his unwonted exercise and fasting—to begin his studies, he brought with him the great book he had prepared for his use, and placed it open on the desk, which now stood before the horizontal opening between the bars already described. All the morning had been ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... another pause, and Grace felt that she was compelled to say something. "Major Grantly has been very good to me," she said, and then she hated herself for having uttered words which were so tame and unwomanly in their spirit. Of course her lover's father would despise her for having so spoken. After all it did not much signify. If he would only despise her and go away, it would perhaps ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... which he retired when the weather grew sultry in the lower country. Colonel William Byrd, a planter on the James River, has told us all about this summer house of the governor. One of his stories is, that when he visited there a tame deer, frightened at seeing him, leaped against a large mirror in the drawing-room, thinking that it was a window, and smashed it into splinters. It is not likely the governor thanked ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... ye bring flame to burn my Shrine Who am myself a flame, Bring death to tame this charm of mine That death can never tame? Will ye bring fire to harm my head Who am myself a fire, Bring vengeance for your Lovers dead Upon the ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... 2: In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... As well ask whether the wild wolf or the tame dog is the happier animal. The truth would seem to be that wolf and dog alike can be thoroughly happy each in its own way; whereas each would be as thoroughly miserable, if forced to live the life of the other. In one of his most brilliant passages Andrew ...
— Progress and History • Various

... their beauty, as for their fairness and soundness. Indeed, I have no faith in the selected lists of pomological gentlemen. Their "Favorites" and "Non-suches" and "Seek-no-farthers," when I have fruited them, commonly turn out very tame and forgetable. They are eaten with comparatively little zest, and have no real tang nor smack ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau

... was all green and refreshing. A pretty stream was humming past the willows, its banks covered with the poppy in full flower, a blaze of colour, magenta, white, scarlet, pink and blue picked out with hedges of roses. The birds were as tame as in the Garden of Eden; magpies came almost to our feet; the sparrows took no notice of us; the falcons knew we would not molest them; the pigeons seemed to think we could not. All was peaceful, and ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... to control her quick anger, but it would now and then assert itself in spite of her, and Embury delighted to liken her to Katherine, and declared that he must tame her ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells

... tame and uneventful," said Mr. Daddles, "compared with one my uncle made in these ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... trees were ranges of stables and kennels, and on the grass-plat in front of the windows was a row of beehives. A tame doe lay on the little green sward, not far from a large rough deer-hound, both close friends who could be trusted at large. There was a mournful dispirited look about the hound, evidently an aged animal, for ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... the fire in a half doze, watching out of the corners of his eyes the tame raccoon, which snuggled back against the walls of the teepee, his shrewd brain, doubtless, concocting some mischief for the hours of darkness. I had already recited a legend of our people. All agreed that I had done well. Having been generously praised, I was eager to earn some more compliments ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... close to the house, and had become familiar, but not tame. They kept up a regular romp with Noble. They would come down from the maple trees with provoking coolness; they would run along the fence almost within reach; they would cock their tails and sail across the road to the barn; ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... but she repulsed me again and again. I have given it up, and shall not try it again, unless you will tame her for me." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... course he could not quite measure up to the high standards of David and William, even though he kept a store and sold candy, for he could neither kill a bear, nor play the fiddle, nor shoot a gun—much less turn hand-springs or tame a wild horse, but we liked him notwithstanding his limitations and were always glad when ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... sure of being in the right. Besides, in my controversies, I had a great help from the language in which I wrote. For one can scold and call names with a much better grace in Latin than in French or any tame modern tongue. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... into our eyes at this adventure." Are we become as Hebrew Elijahs, then; so that the wild ravens have to bring us food? Truth is, there was nothing miraculous, as Wilhelmina found by and by. It was a tame raven,—not the soul of old George I., which lives at Isleworth on good pensions; but the pet raven of a certain Margravine, which lost its way among the intricate roofs here. But the incident was touching. "Well," exclaimed Wilhelmina, "in the Roman Histories I am now reading, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... sailing vessel, and regretfully returned to San Francisco—a voyage in every way delightful, but without an incident: unless lying two long weeks in a dead calm, eighteen hundred miles from the nearest land, may rank as an incident. Schools of whales grew so tame that day after day they played about the ship among the porpoises and the sharks without the least apparent fear of us, and we pelted them with empty bottles for lack of better sport. Twenty-four hours afterward these bottles would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... ran on, "yo' better marry Burke and tame him. There ain't nothing as tames a man ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... animals is so altered by confinement that they will not breed even with their own females, so that the negative results obtained from crosses are of no value; and the antipathy of wild animals of different species for one another, or even of wild and tame members of the same species, is ordinarily so great, that it is hopeless to look for such unions in Nature. The hermaphrodism of most plants, the difficulty in the way of ensuring the absence of their own, or the proper working of other pollen, are obstacles of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... vigorously to the work of removing blemishes. He does not seem to have suspected, what we are strongly inclined to suspect, that the whole piece was one blemish, and that the passages which were meant to be fine were, in truth, bursts of that tame extravagance into which writers fall when they set themselves to be sublime and pathetic in spite of nature. He omitted, added, retouched, and flattered himself with hopes of a complete success in the following year; but, in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... Constitutions seem tame to us now, but to speak of a constitution at Turin on January 18, 1848, was almost as audacious as it would be to speak of it at St. Petersburg at the present time. Europe stood at the brink of a precipice, but knew it not. The news had only just spread of the first symptom of revolution—the ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... a tame Fox and set his platter of food before him, this creature of a thousand tricks confines himself to tugging with all his might at the leash which keeps him a step or two from his dinner. He pulls as ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... our ponies and sledges were up and over the tide crack, and beneath us soft and yielding snow, very different from the hard wind-swept surface of the frozen sea, which we had just left. Really it was rather prosaic and a tame entrance. But the Barrier is a tricky place, and it takes years to ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... you won't, eh?" stormed the captain, his feminine air and aspect completely lost in a mien of scowling ferocity. "By the living—but what's the use of swearing! Down with him to the sweat box, and if that don't tame him we'll try ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown

... be tame enough before I have done with you," muttered Jost, and he bit his lips until ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri

... Fly up every vacation. Take a tame plane to a tame government resort and catch my quota of two tame fish. Great sport! If I got married, I'd be entitled to four tame fish. But that's not what I want. I want what my father used to talk about. I want to drive into the country, without a permit, mind you; just to drive ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch

... this of benumbing your adversary at the start by an outright electric shock of untruth? But a man must be supported by a powerful sense of sincerity to be capable of a statement so royally false that the truth itself shall look tame and rustic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... were in the boatswain's cabin one afternoon teaching the starling to speak a fresh sentence—the bird having got quite tame and learnt to talk very well already, saying "Bad cess to ye" and "Tip us yer flipper," just like Tim Rooney, with his brogue and all; when, all at once, we heard some scrambling going on in the long-boat above ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... unworthy of your fathers! Whither, oh mother, hast thou bestowed the might over the sea and the storm? Oh, tame art of the sorceress, brewing balsam-drinks only! Awake once more, bold power! arise from the bosom in which thou hast hidden thyself! Hear my will, ye doubting winds: Hither to battle and din of the ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... he is a man whose acquaintance any one would very impatiently covet for his conversation: on the contrary, I agree that his humour is fantastical, and his manners not of the pleasing cast; but there is nothing so savage and inhuman, which a little care, attention, and complaisance may not tame into docility. I must repeat to you some verses upon the subject: I have got them by heart, because they contain a little advice, which you may accommodate, if you please, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Orsi, "consented to the idea, and Parquin and I got into the boat. The vessel was lying in the stream. Thelin was with us. As we were walking to the cigar-shop, the major remarked a boy sitting on a log of wood and feeding a tame eagle with shreds of meat. The eagle had a chain fastened to one of its claws. The major turned twice to look at it, and went on without saying a word. On our way back to the boat, however, we saw the boy within two yards of the landing-place. The major went up to him, and ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... instead of straggling along a concrete pavement at rare intervals, held captive by the hand that was in Jane's, she might always have the right to race willy-nilly across the grass—chase the tame squirrels to shelter—even climb a tree). But more earnestly did she covet a house beyond the precipice. Were there not trees there? and rocks? Without doubt there were Johnnie Blake glades as well—glades bright ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... a very tame burglar who would have continued at his work after the lights had warned him that the inmates of the house were aroused; but Toby did not think of that. He saw that Aunt Olive had armed herself with the ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis

... muscular power and energy were superior to anything of the kind that Mr. Mellish could artificially produce, longed for swift motion and violent exercise, and, even with an expert partner, could hardly tame herself to the quietude of dancing as practised in London. When waltzing with Lucian she felt as though she were carrying a stick round the room in the awkward fashion in which Punch carries his baton. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... Caught the old dangling almanacks behind, And up they flew, like banners in the wind; Then gently, singly, down, down, down, they went, And told of twenty years that I had spent Far from my native land:—that instant came A robin on the threshold; though so tame, At first he look'd distrustful, almost shy, And cast on me his coal-black stedfast eye, And seem'd to say (past friendship to renew) "Ah ha! old worn-out soldier, is it you?" Through the room ranged the imprison'd humble bee, And bomb'd, and bounced, and straggled ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield

... sold to the immigrants at three dollars per bushel, while the finest beef cattle in the world bring from eight to ten dollars per head. Butter, cheese, and even milk, you can not obtain at all, for they are too lazy to tame their cows. A few Americans, who own large ranchos, have American plows, and are doing better than the rest. Many ranchos have been abandoned, and their owners have gone to the mines. This state ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... numbers and of the burning grievance of the tithes. Politically they were a source of great strength to the Government. When the Presbyterians condemned the American War, the Catholic leaders memorialized the Government in favour of it as warmly as the tame majority in Parliament. ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... domestic animals there must be no hostilities. If not amity, at least neutrality must obtain. But the other animals—the squirrels, and quail, and cottontails, were creatures of the Wild who had never yielded allegiance to man. They were the lawful prey of any dog. It was only the tame that the gods protected, and between the tame deadly strife was not permitted. The gods held the power of life and death over their subjects, and the gods were ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... not to be the fashion to encourage country doctors to be tame cats," said Lady Belstone, viciously; "but he pretends to like the innovations, and gets round young John; and inquires after ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... among the nettles by the wall— lean, brown beasts, with Homeric chines, and two or three of them huge as the Boar of Calydon. I was minded to let off my gun at 'em, but refrained upon two considerations—the first, that if they were tame, to shoot them might compromise our welcome here, and perhaps painfully, since the dimensions of the pigs appeared to argue considerable physical strength in their masters; the second, that if wild they might be savage enough to defend themselves ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... ain't worth a cuss. I don't say he ain't good fer some people, but he ain't our style. [Mr. Finlayson would doubtless agree with that.] He means well, but he ain't eddicated up to the West. You remember how we got the boys all corralled up nice an' tame when you was here. Well, he's got 'em wild. Couldn't reach 'em with a shotgun. He throwed hell fire at 'em till they got scart an' took to the hills till you can't get near 'em no more'n mountain ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... these little animals can fly without resting. At first, it seemed weary, but soon recovered, and flew gaily about. When far out at sea, cut off from every other society than that of our shipmates, any guest from land, even a bird, is welcome. Ours soon became a general favourite, and was so tame, that it would hop on our hands and take the flies we offered him without any symptom of fear. He chose my cabin to sleep in at night; and at sunrise flew again upon deck, where he found every one willing to entertain him, and catch flies for his subsistence. But our hospitality proved fatal ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... half-brothers. And herein we get a glimpse of the magic of chemical combinations. That mysterious property in matter which we call chemical affinity, a property beside which human affinities and passions are tame and inconstant affairs, is the architect of the universe. Certain elements attract certain other elements with a fierce and unalterable attraction, and when they unite, the resultant compound is a body totally unlike either of the constituents. Both substances have disappeared, ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... would have been improved by a little more soap and water, and a good stiff broom, that did not really matter, as he was generally sitting outside on a bench beside a beehive, with a black-and-white Manx cat upon his knee, and a tame jackdaw hanging in a wicker cage by the window, exactly like a coloured frontispiece in a Christmas number ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... peered into the rolling, surging mass of dust, out of which there arose such a hubbub of sounds as to make the noise of battle tame ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... procession which he followed. But the strangest part of it was the household animals which crowded amongst the feet of the goblins. It was true they had no wild animals down there—at least they did not know of any; but they had a wonderful number of tame ones. I must, however, reserve any contributions towards the natural history of these for a ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald

... instruments in projecting the outlines, I do not pretend to have wholly avoided this snare; nor, I regret to say; has the lithographer, in all cases, been content to abide by his copy. My drawings will be considered tame compared with most mountain landscapes, though the subjects comprise some of the grandest scenes in nature. Considering how conventional the treatment of such subjects is, and how unanimous artists seem to be as to the propriety of exaggerating those features which should predominate in the landscape, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... Atkinson testifi'd, That he exchanged a Cow with a Son of Susanna Martin's, whereat she muttered, and was unwilling he should have it. Going to receive this Cow, tho he Hamstring'd her, and Halter'd her, she, of a Tame Creature, grew so mad, that they could scarce get her along. She broke all the Ropes that were fastned unto her, and though she were ty'd fast unto a Tree, yet she made her escape, and gave them such further trouble, as they could ascribe to no ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... The tame cattle are in size and other respects about the same as in the Netherlands, but the English cattle and swine thrive and grow best, appearing to be better suited to the country than those from Holland. They require, too, less trouble, expense and attention; for it ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... religious patience is, not unusually, a rather depressing thing. It is so restrained, so pious, that it tends to deprive life of natural and unaffected joy. If it is patient and submissive in affliction, it is also tame and mild in cheerful surroundings. It issues too frequently in a kind of holy tolerance of youthful ebullience and vivid emotions. It results in the kind of character that is known as saintly, and is generally accompanied by a strong deficiency in the matter of humour. Life is regarded ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... I should have sat swelling, and been reserved: he was right not to ask me—So be quiet, Harriet—And yet, perhaps, you would be as tame to a husband's mistress, as you seem favourable to ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... impressed upon him. He began to understand there was a certain humiliating shame attached to an attack upon a creature weaker than himself, unless there was a reason for it. He looked chiefly to his master for decisions in the matter. Snowshoe rabbits, young and half grown, were very tame in this month of August, and ordinarily he would have destroyed many of them in a day's travel. But unless Jolly Roger gave him a signal, or he was hungry, he would pass a snowshoe unconcernedly. This phase of Peter's development interested Jolly Roger greatly. ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... close-hauled, down the Channel, spray in the eyes and the shrouds thrilling musically, in much less time than the average man would have taken to transfer his Gladstone bag and his rugs from the train to a sheltered place on the promenade-deck of the tame ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... not said, father, while death may be sought otherwise, that I will never do this last? Nor will I do the first. I am not all of the tame breed of you Iceland folk—other and quicker blood runs in my veins; nor will I be sold in marriage to a dotard as a mare is sold at ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... learn that thus it fares with age, When pleasure, wealth, or power the bosom warm; This baffled hope might tame thy manhood's rage, And disappointment of her sting disarm. But why should foresight thy fond heart alarm? Perish the lore that deadens young desire! Pursue, poor imp, the imaginary charm, Indulge ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... had spoke, that cool'd her Courage in an instant: for I let her know her Tittle-Tattle would be all in vain; and that I was resolv'd I would be absolute. Shall I be ty'd by such a one as she? No, Love, I scorn it. And for her Tongue, let me alone to tame it: Winter is coming on and then I'll make her keep her breath to warm her hands; for she shall have from me no other firing. Let her rail on, and see what she can get by't; whilst thee and I delight our selves in Pleasures; I'll be no Slave to that which I possess: Come, thou art mine, and shalt ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous

... of his solitary hut-life were upon him besides, and gave him a savage air that no dress could tame; added to these were the influences of his subsequent branded life among men, and, crowning all, his consciousness that he was dodging and hiding now. In all his ways of sitting and standing, and eating and drinking,—of brooding about in a high-shouldered reluctant style,—of taking ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... the game, Because of a treaty he came, For old Johnnie Bull, Will have his hands full, The bellicose Germans to tame. ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens

... you caught any more of those things?' 'Only four or five,' said the old man; 'they are getting scarce, though this used to be a great neighbourhood for them.' 'And what do you do with them?' said I; 'do you carry them home and play with them?' 'I sometimes play with one or two that I tame,' said the old man; 'but I hunt them mostly for the fat which they contain, out of which I make unguents which are good for various sore troubles, especially for the rheumatism.' 'And do you get your living by hunting these creatures?' I demanded. 'Not altogether,' said the old man; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... disaster was powerless to tame, reported to Halleck that, on the whole, the results of the battle were favourable to the Federal army. "The enemy," he wrote, "largely reinforced, assailed our position early to-day. We held our ground firmly until 6 o'clock P.M., when the enemy, massing ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... Louis Philippe tempted Louis Napoleon to make a second attempt to invade France. He did it in a rash way almost certain to end in failure. Followed by about fifty men, and bringing with him a tame eagle, which was expected to perch upon his banner as the harbinger of victory, he sailed from England in August, 1840, and landed at Boulogne. This desperate and foolish enterprise proved a complete failure. The soldiers ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... He had nothing more to say, although as he was considering what to do next he said over again a few of the more salient things that he had said before. He hoped he had made an impression, but he would have liked to end up on a note rather less tame than this. With Cicely so meek and quiet, however, and his indignation against her, already weakened by having been spread over a fortnight, having now entirely evaporated by being expressed, as ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... the gain—Heaven knew it was nothing to her—but that she thought it wrong and inconsistent in him to wish to spare the poor child's pride, which was unchristian enough already. 'Nay,' he said sadly, 'mortifications from without do little to tame pride; nor did I mean to bring her here that she should turn cook and confectioner to pamper the appetite of Baillis ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... forgotten them again. Last winter she made up her mind to marry. Her husband, she said, must speak well. He must know the proper thing to say, and say it prettily. Otherwise she would not marry. I assure you what I say is perfectly true, for I have a tame sweetheart who lives at court, and she ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... They took big fish off my hook And put little ones on, while I was away Getting a stringer, and made me believe I hadn't seen aright the fish I had caught. When Burr Robbins, circus came to town They got the ring master to let a tame leopard Into the ring, and made me believe I was whipping a wild beast like Samson When I, for an offer of fifty dollars, Dragged him out to his cage. One time I entered my blacksmith shop And shook as I saw some horse-shoes ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... rubbing herself caressingly against the abandoned woman. Willingly the gentle animal allowed the little child to suckle it. The next day the doe came back again, and Genovefa thanked God from the depths of her heart. She found roots, berries, and plants, to support herself, and every day the tame doe came back to her, and at last remained ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... of Pango Dooni knows the lion's cub from the tame dog's whelp. You shall keep your word. Though the sun ride fast towards noon, faster shall we ride in the Neck of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... while the formidable thunder of Porthos' laughter was ringing in his ears, "I am very unfortunate. De Guiche treats me with coldness, D'Artagnan with ridicule, Porthos is too tame; no one will settle this affair in my way. And I came to Porthos because I wished to find a sword instead of cold reasoning at my service. How my ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... with his incomprehensible fatuity. And through it all he had been the most innocent little gentleman alive. Oh, yes, he was pathetic enough in his way. He himself was only an instrument in the hands of irrepressible Nature who couples wild soul with tame, hot blood with cold blood, genius with folly, and makes her sport of their unhappy offspring. And Nature was playing a glorious game with Frida ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... the two hosts. The Indians, exulting in their temporary triumph, looked with confidence to the morrow to complete it. The Spaniards, on the other hand, were proportionably discouraged. They were not prepared for this spirit of resistance in an enemy hitherto so tame. Several cavaliers had fallen; one of them by a blow from a Peruvian battle-axe, which clove his head to the chin, attesting the power of the weapon, and of the arm that used it. *13 Several horses, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... enchanting tongues Persuasive, virgin majesty with mild And sweet allayed, yet terrible to approach, 160 Skilled to retire, and in retiring draw Hearts after them tangled in amorous nets. Such object hath the power to soften and tame Severest temper, smooth the rugged'st brow, Enerve, and with voluptuous hope dissolve, Draw out with credulous desire, and lead At will the manliest, resolutest breast, As the magnetic hardest iron draws. Women, when nothing else, beguiled the heart Of wisest Solomon, and made him build, ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton

... on his back, and he growled menacingly as he advanced toward them. But there Jack Danby was in his own element. There had never been an animal yet, wild or tame, that he had ever seen, with which he could not make friends. He dropped to one knee now, while the others watched him, and spoke to the dog. In a moment the savagery went out of the bulldog, who, as it seemed, was really little more than ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland

... considered. "There is Loiusa," he said, "a rather fine specimen of the timber-wolf. I got her two years ago in exchange for some Arctic foxes. Most of my animals get to be fairly tame before they've been with me very long; I think I can say Louisa has an angelic temper, as she-wolves go. ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... says nothing of his putting to sea in a boat, meaning to go over in person, and being driven back by the weather. The story is probably no more than one of the picturesque additions to reality made by men who find truth too tame for them. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... processes of tragic effect with no ordinary subtlety and power. Faustus, the hero, is a mighty necromancer, who has studied himself into direct communion with preternatural beings, and beside whom Friar Bacon sinks into a tame forger of bugbears. A Good Angel and a Bad Angel figure in the piece, each trying to win Faustus to his several way. Lucifer is ambitious to possess "his glorious soul," and the hero craves Lucifer's aid, that ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... Lincoln's calm strength and sure judgment had at that time not yet reached their full development. As for Stanton, a man of much narrower mind, but acute, devoted, and morally fearless, kept in the War Department as a sort of tame tiger to prey on abuses, negligences, pretensions, and political influences, this was one among a hundred smaller erratic doings, which his critics have never thought of as outweighing his peculiar usefulness. His departmental point of view can ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... to this point his pen stopped. What he had written was very smooth, but very tame and cold. However, nothing better presented itself; he changed his position, sat back in his chair, and searched himself, but could find nothing. It was not always so. Some months ago there would have been no difficulty, and he would not have known when to come to an end. The same thing ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... that troublesome little ape to be caged, till it suited the purposes of his proprietors (as Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap might surely be called, for they had caught him, however they might fail to tame him) to let him loose upon society, to amuse and astonish it by his antics?—That was the question occupying the thoughts of Mr. Gammon, while his calm, clear, gray eye was fixed upon Titmouse, apparently ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... be made perfect in the flesh. What wonder if, when they took into account the whole course of the white man's dealings with them, they should have become convinced that the missionaries were sent before to tame their spirits so that the colonists might follow and ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... speaking. He would have had to overcome his tendency toward what I want to call the old-fashioned "gold and velvet" of his words, a very definite haze hanging over them of the ill effect of the eighteen-ninety school, which produced a little excellent poetry and a lot of very tame production. Poetry is like all art, difficult even in its freest interval. Brooke must rest his claim to early distinction perhaps upon the "If I should die" sonnet alone, he would certainly have had to come up considerably, to have held the place his too numerous personal admirers ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... farmyard life was wonderful there—bantams, speckled and top-knotted; Friesland hens, with their feathers all turned the wrong way; Guinea-fowls that flew and screamed, and dropped their pretty-spotted feathers; pouter pigeons, and a tame magpie; nay, a goat, and a wonderful dog, half mastiff, half bull-dog, as large ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous

... too, throw my work down and run away? Ay, Will, there's that hot blood within me that sweeps me out every now and then from within tame walls and from stupid people, and makes me know it is true, the old tale of some wild, gypsy blood brought home by a soldier Hathaway for wife. But there is this difference, if you please, sir; I throw down my work because I have fought ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin

... you're good for nothing as a husband, for you are chicken-hearted, and don't know how to manage a wife." The Old Boy was forced to acknowledge that it was true. After they had talked awhile about women and marriage, the Old Boy said, "If you are really such a bold man as you pretend, and could tame the most hellish[60] woman that exists, I will show you a way by which you can turn your courage to better account than by subduing a violent woman. Do you know the ruins of the old castle on the mountain? A great treasure ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... said, in a tense, vibratory tone. "Speak to me!"—and she glowered upon him. "I am no kitten, like Amy. I am no tame tabby, like Carolyn, sending out written invitations. Throw a few ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... Jesus inquired. My dogs! If I'd had a Thracian he never would have suffered that the sheep killed each other. A Thracian would have awakened me. My dogs are of the soft Syrian breed given to growling and no more. The wild ram might have become tame again, and would doubtless have stayed with me as long as I had the ewe; but he might have refused to serve any but she. No man can say how it would have ended if I had not killed him in my anger. So thou wast left, Jesus remarked, without a serviceable ram. With naught, ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters call "life." But, if so, the view from the other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more. In that direction, my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... and young wolves and the cubs became acknowledged, if not particularly respected, members of the family. But Ab's dream was too much for sudden realization. Not all at once could the wild thing become a tame one. As the cubs grew and their teeth became longer and sharper, there was an occasional conflict and the arms of Bark and Beech-Leaf were scarred in consequence, until at last Ab, though he protested hardly, was compelled to give up his pets. Somehow, he was not in the mood for killing ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... interested in novels, must needs talk with some one; she honoured Adela with much of her confidence, seeming to forget and forgive, in reality delighted to recount her London experiences to her poor tame sister-in-law. Alice, too, had been at moments introduced to her husband's kitchen; she threw out vague hints of a wonderful ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... person the citadel and the batteries, in order to encourage and animate his people by his exhortation and example, he retired out of the reach of danger to a distant plantation, where he remained a tame spectator of the destruction in which his principal town and citadel were involved. Next morning, when he ought to have exerted himself in preventing the disembarkation of the English troops, who had a difficult shore and violent ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... relaxations were of this intimate kind. [Footnote: Here, too, work was disturbed by his natural history researches. He writes apologetically to Mr. Hudson as to some mistake in a letter: 'I can plead as a disturbing cause three young brown owls, quite tame; one barks, and two whistle, squeak—between a railway guard and a door-hinge. The barker lets me get within four or five feet before he leaves off yapping. He worries the cuckoo into shouting very late. I leave the owls unwillingly, late—one ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... commerce, would, in less than a hundred years, spread its empire from Cape Comorin to the eternal snow of the Himalayas; would compel Mahratta and Mahommedan to forget their mutual feuds in common subjection; would tame down even those wild races which had resisted the most powerful of the Moguls; and, having united under its laws a hundred millions of subjects, would carry its victorious arms far to the cast of the Burrampooter, and far to the west of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... atrocious acts without indignation, and can behold suffering virtue without sympathy. Therefore they are considered as sober, dispassionate men. But they have their passions, though of another kind, and which are infinitely more likely to carry them out of the path of their duty. They are of a tame, timid, languid, inert temper, wherever the welfare of others is concerned. In such causes, as they have no motives to action, they never possess any real ability, and are totally destitute of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... physical constitution, with which the mental is closely allied, Mr. Aiken is deliberate, to a degree which some have greatly mistaken for indolence. But with a commanding person, and strong will this habitual absence of excitement was never tame, but rather impressive. He seldom rose above the even tenor of his discourse, but never fell to commonplace, was generally interesting and occasionally eloquent. His sermons were not hasty compositions, without a purpose, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... was there for a little while this afternoon," he answered. "It's rather tame yet, they're still fussing ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... this region is oppressive, or perhaps dull and tame, without life or stir—desolate, in fact. What if I should tell you that it bubbles, like a caldron over the bottomless pit, with griefs and sins!—that in lives condemned to perpetual imprisonment on these bare rocks, feeding on themselves, traits intensifying, the loneliness, the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... not afford them much enjoyment. However, he said, he would tell it if they so wished. The curate begged that he do so; and, seeing the interest of all, the stranger mentioned by way of introduction that while his was a true story, many a story of fiction would seem tame and less strange in comparison. And while all of the company expectantly turned their eyes toward the strange traveler in Moorish garb, he began the ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... was a tame flower," returned the child, "and that would have been error. If it had been a wild one I would have ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... them to our own in peace. Some of them have possessed certain harshly masculine traits which we can admire; some of them have showed broad and virile intelligence, the qualities of a general, a diplomatist, or even of a statesman. There have been, and are, so-called tame Indians; but such were not worth taming. As a whole, the red tribes have resisted all attempts to lift them to the civilized level and keep them there. Roger Williams, and the "apostle," John Eliot, were their friends, and won their regard; but neither ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... There were also several stablemen, all much interested in the idea of taming the fiery steeds of the desert. The first look was disappointing. They were thin, scraggy animals, apparently all legs and manes. Long tails they had, and small heads, but anything so tame and sluggish in their movements could hardly be imagined. One could scarcely get them to canter around the courtyard. We were all rather disgusted, as sometimes one sees pretty little Arab horses in Paris. I don't know what became of them; ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... man in such possessions as make up their wealth, that is, in wild beasts. At the time when he came to the king, he still had six hundred tame deer that he had not sold. The men call these 55 reindeer. Six of these were decoy-reindeer, which are very valuable among the Finns, for it is with them that the Finns trap the wild reindeer. He was among the first men ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... abounded, the waters swarmed with fish, some of them big enough to nearly drag the fishers into the sea, while whales could be heard spouting and nosing about the rocks at night; birds fat and tame and willing to be eaten covered all the bushes, and such droves of wild hogs covered the island that the slaughter of them for months seemed not to diminish their number. The friendly disposition of the birds ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... this! but oh! that all the rest Of his dire reign had thus been spent in jest! And all that time such trifles had employ'd In which so many nobles he destroy'd! He safe, they unrevenged, to the disgrace Of the surviving, tame, patrician race! But when he dreadful to the rabble grew, Him, who so many lords ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... that country at that time. Under this floor was a family of huge rats that I had been unable to exterminate, and I had found it easier and cheaper to feed them than to have them gnawing into my stores in my absence. So they had become quite tame, and in the evenings, keeping at a safe distance, however, they would visit me. I had no fear of them, and rather ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... The Indians brought otter-skins, and several kinds of fish, and bread made of acorns, to trade. Among them were several who had come to live among these Indians when the missions were broken up, and who spoke Spanish fluently. They informed us that they were called by the Spaniards mansitos, (tame,) in distinction from the wilder tribes of the mountains. They, however, think themselves very insecure, not knowing at what unforeseen moment the sins of the latter may be visited upon them. They are dark-skinned, but handsome and intelligent Indians, and live principally ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... if I married were, I would not wish to thrive If that I could not tame The veriest ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... anybody or anything. He even laughed at the oni, who, were demons living in the clouds or on lonely islands in the sea. Momotar[o] was also very kind to birds and animals, so that they were very tame, and became his friends, knew him ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... determination. I resolved that, while I had life, I would never be deserted by this spirit. Oppressed, annihilated I might be; but, if I died, I would die resisting. What use, what advantage, what pleasurable sentiment, could arise from a tame surrender? There is no man that is ignorant, that to humble yourself at the feet of the law is a bootless task; in her courts there is no room for ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... eight, and he was a good enough walker, although boats and horses had combined to prevent him, he confessed, from getting over fond of Shanks' mare. To men who delight in the motions of a horse under them, the legs of a man are a tame, dull means of progression, although they too have their superiorities; and one of the disciplines of this world is to have to get out of the saddle and walk afoot. He who can do so with perfect serenity, must very nearly have learned with St Paul in whatsoever ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... bravery and her real and deep religious instinct saved her from altogether sinking into inertia and despair. She had to arouse herself. Other women had faced situations equally as impossible and unbearable as hers, and the best of them had not allowed themselves to be whipped into tame and abject submission. Even at the worst they had snatched the great chance to live their own lives in their own way. As for her, surely there must be some way out of this snarl, some immediate way that led to honorable ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... temporary provisional lodging. This net-work of cellars has its immemorial population of prowlers, rodents, swarming in greater numbers than ever; from time to time, an aged and veteran rat risks his head at the window of the sewer and surveys the Parisians; but even these vermin grow tame, so satisfied are they with their subterranean palace. The cesspool no longer retains anything of its primitive ferocity. The rain, which in former days soiled the sewer, now washes it. Nevertheless, do not trust yourself too much to it. Miasmas still inhabit it. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... writers have been most interested either in finding out how to make government express the common will, or in how to prevent the common will from subverting the purposes for which they believe the government exists. According to their traditions they have wished either to tame opinion or to obey it. Thus the editor of a notable series of text-books writes that "the most difficult and the most momentous question of government (is) how to transmit the force of individual opinion into public action." ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... with any farther differentia? Is there any such? and if there be, where is the representative of this? It may be said that the generic man exists nowhere in an ideal unity—that if considered at all, he must be abstracted from the various sorts of men, black and white, tame or savage. So if we would know what a great man or a good man means, we must look to some specific line in which he is good, and abstract our general idea. And that is very well, provided we know what we are about; provided we understand, in our abstracting, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... the death of those two, the Dwarf and the Mistress. For no otherwise mightest thou live, or I escape from death in life. But as to the dastard who threatened me with a thrall's pains, I heeded him nought to live or die, for well I knew that thy valiant sword, yea, or thy bare hands, would speedily tame him. Now first I knew that I must make a show of yielding to the King's Son; and somewhat how I did therein, thou knowest. But no night and no time did I give him to bed me, till after I had met thee as thou wentest to the Golden House, before the adventure of fetching the ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... being Ratu Pope Seniloli, a grandson of king Thakombau, and one of the high chiefs of Mbau. Upon meeting Ratu Pope every native dropped his burdens, stepped to the side of the wood-path and crouched down, softly chanting the words of the tame, muduo! wo! No one ever stepped upon his shadow, and if desirous of crossing his path they passed in front, never behind him. Clubs were lowered in his presence, and no man stood fully erect when he was near. The very language addressed to high chiefs is different from that used in conversation ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... kind enough to admit in your letter that "from this (the aforementioned) standpoint of course the appearance of Russia among the allies is an anomaly and must be explained on other grounds." Anomaly is a rather tame word to characterize the meaning of this appearance of Russia. I should hardly designate it ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... remark, "Caricature is so ugly." Well, certainly pure caricature is the villain of art, and the popular draughtsman, like the popular actor, should, to remain popular in his work, always play the virtuous hero. If the leading actor must play the villain, he takes care to make up inoffensive and tame. So the villain caricaturist need not be "ugly"—but then he cannot be strong. Nor is it left to an actor—unless he be the star or actor-manager—to remain popular by being tame and pretty in every part. So is the caricaturist, if he is not the star, liable ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... from the war He found, with keen rebuke lie thus assail'd; "Ye wretched Greeks, your country's foul reproach, Have ye no sense of shame? Why stand ye thus Like timid fawns, that in the chase run down, Stand all bewildered, spiritless and tame? So stand ye now, nor dare to face the fight. What! will ye wait the Trojans' near approach, Where on the beach, beside the hoary deep, Our goodly ships are drawn, and see if Jove Will o'er ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... of the currant is due perhaps to its origin, for it grows wild round the northern hemisphere, its chief haunts being the dim, cold, damp woods of the high latitudes. You may tame, modify, and vastly change anything possessing life; but original traits are scarcely ever wholly eradicated. Therefore the natural habitat and primal qualities of the currant indicate the true lines of development, its capabilities and limitations. ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... religious and civil wars, the whole of the people had deteriorated and become ungovernable, having lost all taste for art and knowledge, and holding only rude force in any esteem; brute strength ruling in the place of the laws. The observant Taikosama perceived that, in order to tame these rough natures, he must accustom them to the arts of peace, and thus secure prosperity to the country, and safety for himself and his successors. With this in view he recalled the Cha-no-yu society anew into life, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... ways of man with a maid be strange, yet simple and tame To the ways of a man with a horse, when selling ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... of worry wrinkles on her face when the maid admitted a caller half an hour later. Oliver Dustin was the name on the card. He was a remittance man, a tame little parlor pet whose vocation was to fetch and carry for pretty women, and by some odd trick of fate he had been sifted into the Northland. Mrs. Mallory had tolerated him rather scornfully, but to-day she smiled ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... fellow-men, and sees that all their misery and shame come from self-will; he looks within, and finds that all which makes him miserable, angry, lustful, greedy after this and that, comes from the same self-will. And he asks himself: How shall I escape from this torment of self?—how shall I tame my wayward will, till it shall become one with the harmonious, beautiful, and absolute Will which made all things? At least I will try to do it, whatever it shall cost me. I will give up all for which men live— wife and child, the sights, scents, sounds of this fair earth, all things, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... minute must be lost. After dinner he took his coat off and did the heavy work of the garden, under the merciless oversight of the Widow Jequier, his sister-in-law, the cash-box ever by his side. He chatted with his tame corbeau, but he never smiled. In the winter he did fretwork. On the stroke of two he went downstairs again and disappeared into the cramped and stuffy bureau, whose window on the street was framed by the hanging wistaria blossoms; and at ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... numerous, and in such large clusters, that I secured no less than eleven at one time, by using both hands. Small kangaroos appeared to be plentiful enough, but we were not so fortunate as to shoot one. The natives one day brought down to us a live opossum, quite tame, and very gentle; this turned out to be new, and has since been described by Mr. Gould under the name of ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... fields. In these scarcely a tree grows excepting a few willows, and an occasional clump of bananas and of oranges. The city of Lima is now in a wretched state of decay: the streets are nearly unpaved; and heaps of filth are piled up in all directions, where the black gallinazos, tame as poultry, pick up bits of carrion. The houses have generally an upper story, built, on account of the earthquakes, of plastered woodwork; but some of the old ones, which are now used by several families, are immensely large, and would rival in suites of apartments the most magnificent ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... by a wolf's head in stone. Over the gate on each side leaned a rowan-tree, with trunk and branches aged and gnarled amidst their fresh foliage. He crossed the burn to look through the gate, and pressed his face between the bars to get a better sight of a tame rabbit that had got out of its hutch. It sat, like a Druid white with age, in the midst of a gravel drive, much overgrown with moss, that led through a young larch wood, with here and there an ancient tree, lonely amidst the youth of its companions. Suddenly from ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... Church of England: he had been a duke's chaplain, and Hazlitt loathed dukes: he had been a Radical, and was still (though Hazlitt does not seem to have thought him so) a Liberal, but his Liberalism had been Torified into a tame variety. Again, Crabbe, though by no means squeamish, is the most unvoluptuous and dispassionate of all describers of inconvenient things; and Hazlitt was the author of Liber Amoris. Accordingly there is much that is untrue in the tissue of denunciation which ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... repeated. We shall, however, give the reader a single verse of a song which Swiss feeling has rendered so celebrated, and which is said often to induce the mountaineer in foreign service to desert the mercenary standard and the tame scenes of towns; to return to the magnificent nature that haunts his waking imagination and embellishes his dreams. It will at once be perceived that the power of this song is chiefly to be found in the recollections to which ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... the eggs hatched, and a nestful of young doves grew up. They were so tame that they sat on the shoulders of St. Francis and ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin

... had bestowed upon Kathie the young bear she had befriended in the woods, and which, chained in the stable-yard, had grown large and fat and tame. Laura had found it a rather awkward pet, less tractable to her teachings than she had supposed it would be; but the forester promised that the animal should have the best of care, and be taught all that a tame bear ought ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... after sunrise. Her raft, built of papyrus, was boat-shaped and graceful as a swan. Pepi was at the long-handled sweep in the stern. Masanath sat in the middle, which was heaped with nets, throw-sticks, and bows and arrows. A pair of decoy birds, tame and unfettered, stood near her, craning their small heads, puzzled at the movement of the boat which was undecipherable since they were motionless. Nari sat in the prow, her hands folded, her face quite expressionless. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... Arab improvisatore would have seemed tame beside Manetho's nervous exaltation. Save for the tingling satire of the violin-strings, his rhapsody might easily have lapsed to madness. From this point, however, his rapture somewhat abated, and he began to descend towards prose, his ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... thought all these schemes very tame. Why should the People of France be led to think that the era of a new religion would mean an era of milk and water, of pageants and of fireworks? Let every man, woman, and child know that this was an era of blood and ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... Jolly Beggars there is more than hideousness and squalor, there is bestiality; yet the piece is a superb poetic success. It has a breadth, truth, and power which make the famous scene in Auerbach's Cellar, of Goethe's Faust, seem artificial and tame beside it, and which are only matched by ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... asked, if he was so insular in his ideas, why had he taken an American wife, and she a widow? He had been charmed by her vivacity. She lifted him out of the gloom in which he had lived so long. If she had been tame and prosaic, she would have worn the weeds of widowhood again in a short time. She made him comfortable; she surrounded him with the brightest people she could find; he was not allowed to mope indoors, and Sir Stuart Fernborough and his sprightly American wife attended all the important social ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... her heart and brain needed more than this, she was cheerful in spite of their hunger. Almost all of God's favorites among women, before their life-work is given them, pass through such hunger,—seasons of dull, hot inaction, fierce struggles to tame and bind to some unfitting work the power within. Generally, they are tried thus in their youth,—just as the old aspirants for knighthood were condemned to a night of solitude and prayer before the day of action. This girl was going through her probation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... altogether unfriendly, although they were shy at first; but red caps and hawks' bells had their usual effect. There were signs of warfare, in the shape of bone-tipped arrows; there were tame parrots much larger than those of the northern islands; they found pottery and rough wood carving, and the unmistakable stern timber of a European vessel. But they discovered stranger things than that. They found human skulls used as household utensils, and gruesome fragments of human bodies, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... mortifying for the Capitaine and the Lieutenant; the former made an effort to be complimentary and entertaining across the table, but the latter looked quite crestfallen, and hardly raised his eyes from his plate. When we retired to the drawing-room, matters went a little better. The tame gazelle was brought in for Mademoiselle Marie to see; and while the General and the Commandant had a long discussion on military affairs, the rest of us sported with the pretty creature and made pleasant plans ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... lofty lay To grace Eliza's golden sway; And called to life old Uther's elfin-tale, And roved through many a necromantic vale, Portraying chiefs who knew to tame The goblin's ire, the dragon's flame, To pierce the dark, enchanted hall Where Virtue sat in lonely thrall. From fabling Fancy's inmost store A rich, romantic robe he bore, A veil with visionary trappings hung, And o'er his Virgin Queen the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... see much bravery about it," he said. "It isn't as if the lion was a wild one in his native forest. This one was tame." ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.

... shall not take your time tonight to tell you of the great difficulties which I have encountered while trying to tame this animal, since I found him in the wilds of Africa. Observe, I beg of you, the savage look of his eye. All the means used by centuries of civilization in subduing wild beasts failed in this case. ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini

... silky-haired drooping ears, and generally wearing tufts of hair on their legs and tail, somewhat like the feathering of a spaniel, which makes them look rather clumsy. They cannot stand the heat of the plains at all well, and are difficult to tame, but fleet and plucky, hunting ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis



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