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More "Apt" Quotes from Famous Books



... opinion, that there is not a more general and greater mistake, or of worse consequences through the commerce of mankind, than the wrong judgments they are apt to entertain of their own talents. I knew a stuttering alderman in London, a great frequenter of coffeehouses, who, when a fresh newspaper was brought in, constantly seized it first, and read it aloud to his brother ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... represented thirty men besides himself, in a voting population of 12,000—was not sensible to such considerations. By a miserable chicane, it had got into a position to do mischief, and it proceeded to do it, with as much alacrity and headlong zeal as rogues are apt to exhibit when the prize is great and the opportunity short. An election for the Legislature, held subsequently to that for the Convention, showing a public opinion decidedly adverse to it, the sole study of its members thenceforth seemed to be, how they could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... render it once to a person from whom we have received one. This is my own experience. But the wise man must guard against nothing more carefully than to exceed moderation in his charity. How easily, when Caius sees Cnejus lavish gold where silver or copper would serve, he thinks of Martial's apt words: 'Who gives great gifts, expects great gifts again.'—[Martial, Epigram 5, 59, 3.]—Do not misunderstand me. What could yonder poor thing bestow that would please even a groom? But the eyes of suspicion scan even the past. I have often ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... want somebody in there for a moment, for the poor dear's so heavy I can't turn him all alone. Aren't you strong enough to lend a hand? To be sure, at your time of life, one an't apt to be worth much in the arms. At all events, an't you coming in to see him? You're his own mother; and, I swan, you haven't been near him this ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... a bad thing to get punished will largely depend upon the punishment, but when you deserve to be punished, and some one else is at hand to receive it in your stead, then punishment is apt to become a farce. Just consider this: I deserve the whipping, but you are hired to take it for me. Perhaps you think this is a joke, but I am really in earnest. I am alluding to a practice which was actually once in vogue—though never to a great extent—in this ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... "It isn't apt to be the Codfish," returned Billie. "But whoever it is, I think we'd better be careful. We'll go up to it softly and look about a bit. Please don't any one speak until we're sure it's ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler

... a wholly charming lot," replied the girl. "Oh, that word 'lot' simply escaped me. Yet it does seem rather apt. Don't you think, Mr. Holmes, that the wearing of identical uniforms gives the young men rather ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock

... journals are apt to give local matters of interest precedence over affairs at a distance, and so it was that (though Angela usually glanced through a newspaper every day or two during her travels) she had never come upon Paolo di Sereno's name except in that old copy of the Illustrated ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... for the present,' weighting his voice on those last three words, as much as to say, 'Pretty soon you will be handcuffed.' 'Then,' said my master, 'I shall also insist on the presence of two persons, simply to use their eyes without any fear or favor. One is my gardener, a very honest man, but apt to be late in the morning. The other is a faithful servant, who has been with us for several years. Their names are Jacob Rigg and Betsy Bowen. You may also bring two witnesses, if you choose. And the miller's men, of course, will come. But order ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... Sunday newspaper conceivable in which we should all rejoice—all, that is, who do not hold that a Sunday newspaper is always and per se wrong. But some cause has, in many instances, brought it about that the Sunday paper is below, and not above, the standard of its weekday brethren. I mean it is apt to be more gossipy, more personal, more sensational, more frivolous; less serious and thoughtful and suggestive. Taking for granted the fact of special leisure on the part of its readers, it is apt to appeal to the lower and not to the higher part of them, which the Sunday leisure ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... curious or strange than a signpost. The only peculiarity I perceived in her was a slight hesitation in her utterance, a sort of preliminary stammer which passes away with the first word. When sharply spoken to, she was apt to lose her head at once; but her heart was of the kindest. She had never been heard to express a dislike for a single human being, and she was tender to every living creature. She was devoted to Mrs. Smith, ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... is filled with interesting facts about birds and animals and trees, and who is busy playing games with her companions or in making useful and beautiful things and in rendering active service to her home and community, is apt to have a healthy mind without thinking much about it. And she has a little rule for the blue times, which is "to smile and ...
— Educational Work of the Girl Scouts • Louise Stevens Bryant

... very man—not one of nature's clods— With human failings, whether saint or sinner: Endowed perhaps with genius from the gods But apt to take his temper from ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... was full, he took hold of the handles, and lifted away upon it. He found it very heavy. He made another desperate effort, and succeeded in raising it from the ground a little; but unluckily, as wheelbarrows are very apt to do when the load is too heavy for the workman, it tipped down to one side, and, though Rollo exerted all his strength to save ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott

... count for much in such a case," she urged. "And our little Molly is too apt to jump at conclusions. We cannot be too careful how we accuse others of sins which ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... first is a good one. It shows me exactly what I want to say. The mental strain is, of course, immense, and that forces you to go straight to your point; for the mind is not strong enough to indulge in flirtations, in excursions at a tangent, as the pen is apt to do." ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... Spoke in a huff by a poor monk, God wot, Tasting the air this spicy night which turns The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine! Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now! 340 It's natural a poor monk out of bounds Should have his apt word to excuse himself: And hearken how I plot to make amends. I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece ... There's for you! Give me six months, then go, see 345 Something in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns! They want a cast o' my office. I shall paint God in the midst, Madonna and her ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... the hydraulic mass from its rim much as a person in shock draws body fluids in from the outer limbs to the central body cavities. The analogy was apt, for until danger passed, the lab was knocked out, only its automatic functions proceeding as normal, while its consciousness hovered in interiorized, ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... the novel of terror; but the spirit and intention of the book are entirely different. Though Lytton expressly declares that his Zanoni is not an allegory, he confesses that it has symbolical meanings. Zanoni is apt to assume the superior pose of a lecturer elucidating an abstruse subject to an unenlightened audience. The impression of artifice that the book makes upon us is probably due to the fact that Lytton first ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... rather than continue them." With a happy combination of shrewdness and moderation he laid the blame upon the intrinsic nature of a proprietary government. "For though it is not unlikely that in these as well as in other disputes there are faults on both sides, every glowing coal being apt to inflame its opposite; yet I see no reason to suppose that all proprietary rulers are worse men than other rulers, nor that all people in proprietary governments are worse people than those in other governments. I suspect, therefore, that the cause is radical, interwoven in the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... localities, and never devoted himself to the study of the history of Scotland and its romantic legends." Somewhat similarly Thomas Campbell remarks of Burns, "he was the most un-Scotsmanlike of Scotchmen, having no caution." Rough national verdicts are apt to be superficial. Mr. Leslie Stephen, in a review of Hawthorne, has commented on the extent to which the nobler qualities and conquering energy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreigners, but from ourselves, by the "detestable lay figure" of John Bull. In like manner, the obtrusive ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... was the least worthy of the three. He was brilliant, "the king of culture," apt scholar in Renaissance art and immorality; brave, also, and chivalrous, so long as the chivalry involved no self-denial, for he was also thoroughly selfish, and his personal aims and ideas were mean. His reign was to be a reaction ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... expect Patty's Place will seem rather small after the Hall of the Kings at Karnak, but I never did like big places to live in. And I'll be glad enough to be home again. When you start traveling late in life you're apt to do too much of it because you know you haven't much time left, and it's a thing that grows on you. I'm afraid Maria ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... enclosed between two mighty ranges of grey mountains, which the fog represented. As we gazed around us and beheld these strange phenomena, our eyes met, and we read in each others countenance that embarrassment which the bravest and most light-hearted are apt to feel, when hemmed in by perils of which they cannot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... A seller not actually engaged in the business of selling for a livelihood, and who has not purchased or produced with the intention of selling, is apt to consider instead of this the market price, towards the determination of which those actually engaged in trade have cooeperated. Somewhat inaccurately, the amount of the cost of production is called by Adam Smith and Ricardo, "natural price," by J. B. Say, prix naturel, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... it would be too much trouble fur you to sort of drap a hint in the ear of the young man or his lawyer that the said indictment is apt to be revived, and that the said Dwyer is liable to be tuck into custody by you and lodged in the county jail sometime during the ensuin' forty-eight hours—without he should see his way clear durin' the meantime to get clean out of this city, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... plan will spring full fledged from the head of Jove, and this great and beneficial change in the lot of mankind will at once become an accomplished fact. There will be no need for keeping in touch with human nature, no call for patience and all that laborious upbuilding stone by stone which is so apt to discourage mankind and imperil the fruition of great reforms. No, sir; you—you must be this League, and we will all work to the end that tomorrow at latest there may be perfected this crowning ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... would blame me; but if we came on Bottles, he was inclined to be very easy in conversation, and, in spite of my warnings, would let slip words that would shock the old priest. But when a day begins too auspiciously, its luck is apt to change before the sun sets, as ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... clothing in a less tropical clime, was condemned bitterly by the white censors as causing nudity. A man or woman whose legs and body were covered with marvellous arabesques and gaudy pictures of palms and fish was not apt to hide them ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail of the room's belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place, where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit; and I became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways, you know, that there was something there somewhere that the man wanted me to discover for myself. I knew ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... to eat, I settled that he was some obscure man of letters or of medicine, perhaps a cholera doctor. In a short time the conversation turned upon early and late education, and Lord Holland said he had always remarked that self-educated men were peculiarly conceited and arrogant, and apt to look down upon the generality of mankind, from their being ignorant of how much other people knew; not having been at public schools, they are uninformed of the course of general education. My neighbour observed that he thought ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... no doubt are aware, the Maori fashion of salutation is to rub noses together. As long as they are pretty noses there cannot be much objection; but some of the Maori girls are themselves so pretty that mere rubbing is apt to degenerate and one's nose is liable to slip out of place. Maggie, the Maori guide, a very pretty woman and now at Shepherd's Bush, can tell all about it and ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... thirty I became a Censor at the Court. Above, the duty I owe to Prince and parents; Below, the ties that bind me to wife and child. The support of my family, the service of my country— For these tasks my nature is not apt. I reckon the time that I first left my home; From then till now,—fifteen Springs! My lonely boat has thrice sailed to Ch'u; Four times through Ch'in my lean horse has passed. I have walked in the morning with hunger in my face; I have lain at night with a soul that could not rest. ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various

... which occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears and environment, apparently without cause or explanation. She was a beauty in color, the blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as to earn for her the apt description, "peaches and cream." She was a beauty in the regularity of her features; and, if for no other reason, she was a beauty in the mere delicacy of the lines on which she was moulded. Quiet, low-voiced, stately, and dignified, she somehow had the knack of dress, and ...
— The Game • Jack London

... comely enough, but she was aged and worn, as sailors' wives are apt to be, by many sorrows. Many a sad day had she had already; for although John Hawkins, port-admiral of Plymouth, and patriarch of British shipbuilders, was a faithful husband enough, and as ready to forgive as he was to quarrel, yet he was obstinate and ruthless, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... has to work out the expenses of his capture, and the reward paid for the same. In the list of offences and punishments for the month of December, we see some very curious items; and, not knowing anything of the peculiar circumstances of each case, they are apt to strike one as being somewhat arbitrary. For instance, 'for refusing to work,' a man had 'bread and water for three days;' a second, 'for insubordinate conduct'—much the same thing, we should suppose, as 'refusing to work'—had the very severe punishment of 'bread and water, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... Apt in all ways of speech, he quickly learned to soften and subdue his howl till it was mellow and golden. Even could he manage it to die away almost to a whisper, and to rise and fall, accelerate and retard, in obedience to her own voice and ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... felt by Sainte-Croix for his fellow-prisoner did not last long, and the clever master found his pupil apt. Sainte-Croix, a strange mixture of qualities good and evil, had reached the supreme crisis of his life, when the powers of darkness or of light were to prevail. Maybe, if he had met some angelic soul at this point, he would have been led to God; he encountered ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general handling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to ideality, but in the case in question it arises independently of the author's will, and is altogether apart from his intention. Words and their ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... English captain were a new man on the station, and unacquainted with the existence of the shoal, as was most likely—well, then he was apt to lose his ship and all on board of her, if he chased too far and too hard. The problem resolved itself into this: if the Mellish could maintain her distance from the pursuer until it was necessary to come ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... nothing but their fees), he who knew on whom the king intended that the grant should fall, took all upon him, so that those who were disappointed laid the blame chiefly if not wholly upon him. He was apt to talk very imperiously and unmercifully, so that his manner of dealing with people was as provoking as the hard things themselves were; but upon the whole matter he was a true Englishman and a sincere protestant, and what has passed at court since his disgrace ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... no' height of fortune from which a man may not fall; and it is usually the proud, the ostentatious, and the contemptuous who do fall, since they create envy, and are apt to make social mistakes. Galileo continued to exasperate his enemies by his arrogance and sarcasms. "They refused to be dragged at his chariot-wheels." "The Aristotelian professors," says Brewster, "the temporizing Jesuits, the political churchmen, and that timid but respectable body who ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... no little skill to have maintained himself as a plausible impostor up to the time when Margaret of Burgundy received him—even though he met no one in whose interest it was to pose him with inconvenient questions. So apt a pupil would then have had little difficulty in assimilating the instructions of Margaret; and, after a couple of years' training with her, in at least supporting his role with plausibility. That Perkin himself told this story is not very conclusive, since the confession was produced under circumstances ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... Hoss proved a reasonably apt pupil. At the end of an apprenticeship covering a fortnight he matriculated into a regular driver, with a badge and a cap to prove it and a place on the night shift. Red Hoss felt impressive, and bore ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... they are the easiest prey imaginable. Undoubtedly a man like Zaluski, with his easy nonchalance, his knowledge of the world, his genuine good-nature, and the background of sterling qualities which came upon you as a surprise because he loved to make himself seem a mere idler, was apt to eclipse an ordinary mortal like James Blackthorne. The curate perceived this and did not like to be eclipsed—as a matter of fact, nobody does. It seemed to him a little unfair that he, who had hitherto been made much of, should be called to play second fiddle ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall

... to Peter's self-righteous demand is twofold. First, he owns and reiterates the truth that all labourers in his kingdom will be rewarded; and next corrects the abuse of that principle into which a self-pleasing human heart is apt to fall. In the discourse recorded at the close of the nineteenth chapter, he teaches the cheering truth that the Lord will richly reward the services of his people, and in the subsequent parable gives to them and us a solemn admonition against the error into which Peter had ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... be apt to refuse such an offer as that, Mr. Pettigrew, but are you sure you prefer me ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger

... Indeed, there was a reciprocity implied and expressed; and I think your actions and carriages ought to be suitable. But I see it will be necessary for me now a little to magnify my office, which I have not been apt to do. I have been of this mind, I have been always of this mind, since I first entered upon my office. If God will not bear it up, let it sink!—but if a duty be incumbent upon me, to bear my testimony to it, (which in modesty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... libertinage of thought; whereas the other woman, the governess of Flora de Barral, was, as you may have noticed, severely practical—terribly practical. No! Hers was not a rare temperament, except in its fierce resentment of repression; a feeling which like genius or lunacy is apt to drive people into sudden irrelevancy. Hers was feminine irrelevancy. A male genius, a male ruffian, or even a male lunatic, would not have behaved exactly as she did behave. There is a softness in masculine nature, even the most brutal, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... in getting accurate information with regard to payments. The heads of typing schools and colleges are apt to give too rosy a picture, and the individual clerk has usually a somewhat narrow experience and is inclined to be pessimistic. A man whom I interviewed (in place of the manager, who was engaged), at ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... himself as little as they ever thought of him. But M. Bergson evidently regards Plato or Kant as persons who did or did not prepare the way for some Bergsonian insight. The theory of evolution, taken enthusiastically, is apt to exercise an evil influence on the moral estimation of things. First the evolutionist asserts that later things grow out of earlier, which is true of things in their causes and basis, but not in their values; as modern Greece proceeds out of ancient ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... incapable of seeing more than one side of any question involving the interests of himself and his church. When his cause was a just one, who so fond as he of appealing to the majesty of the law. When he wished to pervert the law to his own purposes, who so apt at enjoining a disregard therefor.[7] There is abundant reason for believing that he was the original instigator of the Gourlay prosecutions. They were at all events carried on by his satellites, and fostered by his fullest concurrence and approval. Their object was to drive Mr. Gourlay out of ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... meats have been discussed, the feast winds up by the celebrated maple omelet. Whatever Soyer or Brillat Savarin might say, it is a pleasant dish, though too rich to be partaken of copiously, and according to every hygienic principle, very apt to be difficult of digestion. It consists of eggs pretty well boiled and broken into maple syrup, slightly diluted and piping hot. After a meal of this kind, exercise is indispensable, and it is the custom to get up a series of dances until the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... confident enough to confess that, with five little children in the house, there wasn't a great necessity for laying up against a rainy day, and with stockings at a dollar and a half a pair, one was apt to get the nine stitches, or a pretty comfortable multiple of them, every Wednesday when the wash came in; and how these different kinds of lives, coming together with a friendly friction, found themselves not so uncongenial, or so incomprehensible to each other, ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... Miss Gussie held the reins of household government, and no doubt worthily. Those firm, capable white hands of hers looked as though they might be equal to a good many emergencies. She talked little, leaving the conversation to Aunt Lucy and myself, though she occasionally dropped in an apt word. Toward the end of the meal, however, she caught hold of an unfortunate opinion I had incautiously advanced and tore it into tatters. The result was a spirited argument, in which Miss Gussie held her own with such ability that I was utterly ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... that such would be its effect, at which time, I believe you held a different view. Nevertheless, I opine that you exaggerate the degree of the popular agitation. It would be natural, that being a comparatively recent resident, you should be less apt to judge the temper of the Stockbridge people, than ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... aroused. It is a sad fact that many people have been argued into long nervous illnesses by would-be kind friends whose only intention was to argue them out of illness. Even the kindest and most disinterested friends are apt to lose patience when they argue, and that, to the tired brain which they are trying to relieve, is a greater irritant than they realize. The radical cure for nervous fears is to drop resistance to painful ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call

... and then, with great confusion and concern, asked if Mr. Pickle suspected the rabbit's identity. The young gentleman, assuming a mysterious air, pretended ignorance of the matter, observing that he was apt to suspect all dishes of that kind, since he had been informed of the tricks which were commonly played at inns in France, Italy, and Spain; and recounted three passage in Gil Blas, which we have hinted it above, saying, he did not pretend to be a connoisseur in animals, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... it has happened, but it really seems that, while his Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke of Bedford may dream; and as dreams—even his golden dreams—are apt to be ill-pieced and incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach to me, but took the subject-matter from the crown-grants to his own family. This is "the stuff of which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... the book will be apt to read it through, not as much for its real value as for its quaint style and sometimes ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various

... for we were permitted almost unrestrained freedom of action within the limits of the building to which we had been assigned. So great were the number of slaves who waited upon the inhabitants of Phutra that none of us was apt to be overburdened with work, nor were our masters ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... travel unarmed through trailmen country! We're apt to meet hostile bands of the creatures—and they're nasty with ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... never permitted to come and go without being well improved by the joke-loving Thomas. If a customer sent for a pint of brandy on that day, he would be very apt to get four gills of vinegar; or, if for a pound of sugar, half a pound of New Orleans mixed with an equal weight of silver sand. That was a smart child who could come into his store on the occasion, ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur

... many threads in a skein, there are apt to be knots. Rastignac trembled for Delphine's money. He stipulated that Delphine must be independent and her estate separated from her husband's, swearing to himself that he would repay her by trebling her fortune. As, however, Rastignac said nothing of himself, Nucingen ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac

... Their family vault is in Dunfermline Abbey, where his great ancestor lies under the Abbey bell. It has been noted how Secretary Stanton selected General Grant as the one man in the party who could not possibly be the commander. One would be very apt to make a similar mistake about the Earl. When the Scottish Universities were to be reformed the Earl was second on the committee. When the Conservative Government formed its Committee upon the Boer War, the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... people; excursionists pour in by thousands, German bands and organs seem to spring up under one's feet at every step. The sun blazes in the windows of the houses on the Marine Parade all day, and the fine, dry, chalky dust from the Downs is apt to be irritating to delicate throats; but for all that, Brighton in August is delightful, at least to children. Then they may pass an almost amphibious existence without danger of catching cold. Foremost in every mischief, bravest in every danger, most fortunate in every escapade, was Bertie. ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... sort of parade by which most of us deem it necessary to grace our important doings. We have house-warmings, christenings, and gala days; we keep, if not our own birthdays, those of our children; we are apt to fuss ourselves if called upon to change our residences and have, almost all of us, our little state occasions. Mr. Harding had no state occasions. When he left his old house, he went forth from it with the same quiet composure as though he were merely taking his daily walk; now that he re-entered ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... back again through the City by Guildhall, observing the ruines thereabouts, till I did truly lose myself, and so home to dinner. I do truly find that I have overwrought my eyes, so that now they are become weak and apt to be tired, and all excess of light makes them sore, so that now to the candlelight I am forced to sit by, adding, the snow upon the ground all day, my eyes are very bad, and will be worse if not helped, so my Lord Bruncker do advise as a certain cure to use greene spectacles, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... Dorry, you mustn't be hungry till the bower is ready!" cried the little girls, alarmed, for Dorry was apt to be disconsolate if he was kept waiting for his meals. So they made haste to build the bower. It did not take long, being composed of boughs hung over skipping-ropes, which were tied to the very poplar-tree where the fairy lived who had recommended ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge

... custodian, with Bentley, of Hal Willett's unconscious confidences—compelled to see a young girl's rapturous love lavished upon a man so saturated with the incense of feminine idolatry as to be more than apt to underrate the priceless boon of ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... the people? were they uncommon too? Part of one's impression is apt to come from the human side ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... Indian lands are strongly tempted to infringe at will upon the reserved rights and the property of Indians, and thus are apt to become so arbitrary in their dealings and domineering in their conduct toward them that the Indians become disquieted, often threatening outbreaks and periling the lives of frontier ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... perpetual recurrence of the striking antithesis which happened at Brussels before Waterloo, when the roll of the distant cannon at Quatre Bras mingled with the music of the duchess's ball. The coldest reserve is apt to melt rapidly, and the most skillful coquetry is brought to bay, when opposed to pleading urged possibly for the last time. Those were days of rebuke and blasphemy to "the gentlemen of England who sat at home at ease;" and even the Foreign Office "irresistibles" ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... gravely agreed Brice. "But safer sleeping quarters when one gets there. Up North, one can take a chance, and sleep in the open, almost anywhere except on a yellow-jacket's nest. Down here, I've heard, rattlesnakes are apt to stray in upon one's slumbers. Out in the country, at least. There aren't any rattlesnakes in the Royal Palm's gardens. Besides, there's music, and there's the fragrance of night jasmine. Altogether, it's worth the difference of ten ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... Uncle Dick; "since you are so apt at learning, you may as well go on and pick up our words, for I quite despair ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... Miss Underwood's proposition will save us an immense amount of boredom which is the usual concomitant of engagements and honeymoons. That sort of thing, you know," he added, his lip curling just perceptibly, "is apt to get a little monotonous ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... to a sense of what was due to his guests, as regarded the family of a man who was known to have spoken disparagingly of them all. Moreover, if the truth must be owned, Mary was not altogether free from the prejudices of her caste; and, proud of her father's noble extraction, was apt to pout her pretty lip on mention of "the people at Lexley Park;" for the General, who had no secrets from his girls, had foolishly permitted them to see certain letters addressed to him by the eccentric Sir Laurence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... all a certain similarity in those characteristics and habits of thought that pertain to the material things of life. We are all imitative, and therefore we tend to imitate each other; but the inferior is more apt to imitate the superior than vice versa. Particularly are we prone to imitate those actions and qualities by which others have attained material success. So it is to be expected, it is already a fact, that the methods whereby a few great nations attained ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... Beaconsfield group with some frequency. It was easy enough to run down from London or over from Welwyn (home of G.B.S.) or from Oxford or Cambridge. It was most conveniently central. Gilbert's brethren of the pen were especially apt to appear at all seasons and always found friendly welcome. For he continued to call himself neither poet nor philosopher but journalist. Father O'Connor had tried to persuade him, as he neatly puts it, to "begin to print on handmade paper with gilt edges." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Caske, "people will be apt to think that everybody who has a little bit of money ought to do as he does. But, if that were the case, where should I be, for instance?" and Mr. Caske swelled ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... apt in mechanical pursuits and fertile in invention. We cover a vast extent of territory rich in agricultural products and in nearly all the raw materials necessary for successful manufacture. We have a system of productive establishments more than sufficient ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson

... time, its age, the mode of nutrition [v.03 p.0163] and the influence of external factors on its growth. Even when used in conjunction with purely morphological characters, these physiological properties are too variable to aid us in the discrimination of species and genera, and are apt to break down at critical periods. Among the more characteristic of these schemes adopted at various times may be mentioned those of Miquel (1891), Eisenberg (1891), and Lehmann and Neumann (1897). Although much progress has been made in determining the value and constancy ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... turned to the child whom I mentioned at the beginning of the story, and who was gazing at him, as children are apt to gaze at strangers, with his rosy mouth ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... not taken much to do with the horses of late years; he knew that they were thoroughly well cared for under Heppner's superintendence, and the deputy sergeant-major was rather apt to resent any interference with his department. But he would have failed in his duty if he had not, in spite of this, kept himself informed of all that concerned the horses; if, in fact, he had not been individually acquainted with each one ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... Kuni-chi is the only drawback to this otherwise apt solution. We generally shall find Polo's Oriental words much more accurately expressed than this would imply—as in the next chapter. I have hazarded a suggestion of (Or. Turkish) Chong-lt-chi, "Keeper of the Big Dogs," which Professor Vambery ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... playing with his kite in the garden. Somehow or other it would never mount properly, unless his father was there to help him. It was apt to fly up a little way, and then to fall into a bush or fence, and there to perch like a big bird, until Walter and his friends rescued it with difficulty. But on a windy day when his father took him into the open fields, away the kite would sail, until Walter grew anxious lest it should disappear ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... hill-country take care of itself, as all the rest of us always do. But some allowance must naturally be made for his peculiar temperament and for his particular state of health. Consumptive people are apt to take a somewhat hectic view of life in every way; they lack the common-sense ballast that makes most of us able to value the lives of a few hundred poor distant savages at their proper infinitesimal figure. At any rate, Ernest Le Breton, as a matter of fact, rightly or wrongly, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... any trouble," she replied. "Just sport—you looked so funny sitting up there in your pajamas; and, besides, a material fact such as that hold-up is apt to be more convincing to the police, to say nothing of the Constant-Scrappes, than any mere story we ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs

... Bush is the more apt when we consider the rapid growth of the work. At first so very small as to seem almost insignificant, and conducted in one small rented house, accommodating thirty orphans, then enlarged until other rented premises became necessary; ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... Interests are made the most of; so soon as your Patriotic "Union of Reich's Princes" is ready! In March, 1744, the Reich side of the Affair was likewise getting well forward ("we keep it mostly secret from the poor Kaiser, who is apt to blab"):—and on May 22d, 1744, Friedrich, with the Kaiser and Two other well-affected Parties (only two as yet, but we hope for more, and invite all and sundry), sign solemnly their "UNION OF FRANKFURT;" famous little Fourfold outcome of so much diplomatizing. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... a romance writer. I mean no more than that I partly owe to you my existence during great part of the time which I have employed in composing it: another matter which it may be necessary to remind you of; since there are certain actions of which you are apt to be extremely forgetful; but of these I hope I shall always have a ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... were full of good sense; but as opposition is only apt to increase love in the hearts of men, and especially of kings who hate being contradicted, this king begged, the very next day, for the hand of the Princess Mutinosa. It was granted ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various

... towards the weak sisterhood of evident brides, and both our friends felt a lurking fondness for Niagara at the last moment. I do not know how much of their content was due to the fact that they had suffered no sort of wrong there, from those who are apt to prey upon travellers. In the hotel a placard warned them to have nothing to do with the miscreant hackmen on the streets, but always to order their carriage at the office; on the street the hackmen whispered to them not to trust the exorbitant ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... A broad river swept rapidly by, and along the banks wild carabao rolled and splashed, making queer diminutive sounds, not in keeping with their ungainly size. Piang was careful to keep out of sight, as they are apt to be dangerous when their ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... since become famous), I do not know. In the case of the Schroeder girl, however, it was the smallpox. Now what is smallpox? Everybody has seen persons who have been afflicted with smallpox, and has considered the expression, "the devil has threshed peas on his or her face," more or less apt. At least the expression has become proverbial. In this case, however, the proverbial phrase, if applied, would have been mere glossing over, for the Schroeder girl had, not pits the size of peas, but scars half as broad as your hand, a spectacle, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... and I didn't see why I should deprive myself of this pleasure in order to seem not to mind Mrs. Peck. I mounted accordingly and saw a few figures sitting or moving about in the darkness. The ocean looked black and small, as it is apt to do at night, and the long mass of the ship, with its vague dim wings, seemed to take up a great part of it. There were more stars than one saw on land and the heavens struck one more than ever as larger than the ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James

... jealousy did not concentrate itself on her husband and Miss Brent: Amherst had never shown any inclination for the society of other women, and if the possibility had been suggested to her, she would probably have said that Justine was not "in his style"—so unconscious is a pretty woman apt to be of the versatility of masculine tastes. But Amherst saw that she felt herself excluded from amusements in which she had no desire to join, and of which she consequently failed to see the purpose; and he gave ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... geological record; for, I repeat, it is absolutely necessary, from the nature of things, that that record should be of the most fragmentary and imperfect character. Unfortunately this circumstance has been constantly forgotten. Men of science, like young colts in a fresh pasture, are apt to be exhilarated on being turned into a new field of inquiry, to go off at a hand-gallop, in total disregard of hedges and ditches, losing sight of the real limitation of their inquiries, and to forget the ...
— The Past Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... In trouble with her chimneys because they smoked; in trouble with her maids who did not obey her; and worst of all in trouble with herself; for she had good sense and good principle, but she had let her temper go too long undisciplined, and it was apt to break forth sometimes against those she loved, and would cause her ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart

... see me electioneering, I goes fixed for the purpose. I've got a suit of deer-leather clothes, with two big pockets. So I puts a bottle of whiskey in one, and a twist of tobacco in t'other, and starts out. Then, if I meets a friend, why, I pulls out my bottle and gives him a drink. He'll be mighty apt, before he drinks, to throw away his tobacco. So when he's done, I pulls my twist out of t'other pocket and gives him a chaw. I never likes to leave a man worse off than when I found him. If I had given ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... the long journey by night from Regent Street to Wandsworth High Street alone with Maudie; and, though Miss Dymond practically effaced herself, it wasn't—with a girl of Maudie's temperament—the same thing at all. For Maudie in company was apt to be a little stiff and ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... life. Against melancholy he recommended constant occupation of mind, a great deal of exercise, moderation in eating and drinking, and especially to shun drinking at night. He said melancholy people were apt to fly to intemperance for relief, but that it sunk them much deeper in misery[1316]. He observed, that labouring men who work hard, and live sparingly, are seldom or never ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... with so much art Is but a barb'rous skill; 'Tis like the pois'ning of a dart, Too apt before to kill. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... "Franz was very apt to grunt when his wife summoned him in this manner, and, at any rate, never would go as she requested; but little Franz, the son, who was very like his mother, and had got exactly her turn-up nose and sharp eyes, would scamper forward ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... merely superficial effect, and in no way modified the temperament and life of the people in inner Asia Minor. They remained a robust, hardworking race, attached to their fields and woods, loutish and slow of understanding, unskilled in war, and not apt in defending themselves in spite of their natural bravery. The Lydians, on the contrary, submitted readily to foreign influence, and the Greek leaven introduced among them became the germ of a new civilisation, which occupied an intermediate place between ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... King Ethelwulf, "they are apt to learn how to fight; but you must make them learned, as kings should be, so as to rule wisely and well when the Danes have killed me and they are ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn

... cholera doctor. In a short time the conversation turned upon early and late education, and Lord Holland said he had always remarked that self-educated men were peculiarly conceited and arrogant, and apt to look down upon the generality of mankind, from their being ignorant of how much other people knew; not having been at public schools, they are uninformed of the course of general education. My neighbour observed that he thought the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... mushrooms are barns, cellars, closed tunnels, sheds, pits, greenhouses, and regular mushroom houses. Total darkness is not imperative, for mushrooms grow well in open light if shaded from sunshine. The temperature and moisture are more apt to be equable in dark places than in open, light ones, and it is largely for this reason that mushroom ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... mist extends? What part of the mist appears most beautiful? Why? To what is it compared? How does this comparison affect our impression of (1) the colour of the mist; (2) the height of the mist? Does the comparison make the meaning clearer? Is the comparison apt? Is ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education

... biblical, and practical requirements can be met by one weak woman, they are met by Mrs. Lincoln. And to the varied and extensive range of knowledge she adds an acquaintance with Milton and with Confucius, as shown by the apt quotations on her titlepage. The book is intended to satisfy the needs and wants of the experienced housekeeper, the tyro, and of the teacher in a cooking-school. In its receipts, in its tables of time and proportion, in its clear and minute directions about every detail of kitchen ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln

... scraggy white whiskers, and condemned to the continuous use of language. Old Cal was so obscure in his chosen profession that he wasn't even hated by the cowmen. And when a sheepman don't get eminent enough to acquire the hostility of the cattlemen, he is mighty apt to die unwept ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... you thought so much of Lola!" he exclaimed. "She wasn't the kind of child a stranger'd be apt to get attached to. I hope you don't think I'd do anything mean? That isn't my style! All is, I'm her father, and a father ought to have some say-so. Now aint ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... with a PASSIERSCHEIN, which franked me inside the town, and up to the insurgents' outposts. The difficulty was how to cross the neutral ground and the two opposing lines. Broad daylight was the safest time for the purpose; the officious sentry is not then so apt to shoot his friend. With much stalking and dodging I made a bolt; and, notwithstanding violent gesticulations and threats, got myself safely seized and hurried before the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... little faith, as the surest means of securing more experiments. Moreover, I am not certain, on the whole, that the simplicity of the operation is not in favour of the sincerity of the parties; for, were deception deliberately planned, it would be apt to call in the aid of more mummery, and this, particularly, in a case in which there was probably a stronger desire than ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... which the Inhabitants of the Island of Hispaniola, in their own proper Idiom, term Hammacks. The Men are pregnant and docible. The natives tractable, and capable of Morality or Goodness, very apt to receive the instill'd principles of Catholick Religion; nor are they averse to Civility and good Manners, being not so much discompos'd by variety of Obstructions, as the rest of Mankind; insomuch, that having suckt in (if I may so ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas

... first in importance. Its character, though capable of much enrichment, reminds us of how much devotional beauty the Prayer Book has from ancient sources. In our jealous zeal for more beauty we are, perhaps, apt to underrate much that we already possess. God won't give us more than we have until we have learnt to value that which ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes

... quality, however, little apt to be commended where our own feelings and interests are concerned. Still, the general fairness of the work was admitted in England, with the qualification, of (p. 204) course that a perfectly trustworthy history could not come from this side of the water. A few malignant ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... mere libertinage of thought; whereas the other woman, the governess of Flora de Barral, was, as you may have noticed, severely practical—terribly practical. No! Hers was not a rare temperament, except in its fierce resentment of repression; a feeling which like genius or lunacy is apt to drive people into sudden irrelevancy. Hers was feminine irrelevancy. A male genius, a male ruffian, or even a male lunatic, would not have behaved exactly as she did behave. There is a softness in masculine nature, even ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... afterward, and pushed the exploration farther, and still others. It seemed probable that the lad, driven back by the smoke and gas, had taken refuge in some remote portion of the mine; and the portion that he would be apt to choose, they thought, would be the portion with which he had been most familiar. They therefore extended the search mainly in ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... is more attached to his home than the sailor. There are few among them who are not married. And by a kind of special grace they are apt to enjoy their short happiness as if it were for eternity, indifferent as to what the morning ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... but after some days changes to vinegar. These people give this wine, and the small quantities of amber which is thrown up on their coasts, for bits of iron, the bargains being made by signs; but they are extremely alert, and are very apt to carry off iron from the merchants without ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... sir, my niece—a fine girl, but Quixotic, a little fanciful and apt to take up whims, but a fine girl for ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... be cooped up here, while others are having all the fun. Now you may go as soon as you please, but look here, my boy," he added in quite a different tone; "take care of yourself; a knock on the head, such as you have had, is very apt to make one giddy, and giddiness is an awkward mishap at a critical moment; take my advice, and remain quietly below ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... stepped up to thee more straightforwardly, and told thee the trade ill suiteth thee, having little fire, little fantasy, and little learning. Furthermore, that one poet, as one bull, sufficeth for two parishes, and that where they are stuck too close together they are apt to fire, like haystacks. I have known it myself; I have had my malignants ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... part we have seen him play in Delaware Bay, at New York, before Rhode Island, in the Channel, and now at Gibraltar. The utmost of skill, the utmost of patience, the utmost of persistence, such had Howe; and having these, he was particularly apt for the defensive operations, upon the conduct of which chiefly must ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... as secondary rulers of their destinies. By their influence they were, in all likelihood, originally fixed in their present tracks; and by their influence, exerted in an opposite sense, they may, in some cases, be eventually ejected from them. Careers so varied, as can easily be imagined, are apt to prove instructive, and astronomers have not been backward in extracting from them the lessons they are fitted to convey. Encke's comet, above all, has served as an index to much curious information, and it ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... secret soul she was glad to get past the barn without John seeing her. She would not have permitted him to stop her, or delay her visit, but a discussion with her husband was apt to hold surprises and she to become confused and angry, and worsted in the manner of her insistence. To get away without having to explain put her in ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... great trick, once one knows it; with an ordinary safe, that is, such as you're apt to find in a private home. Have you ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... Harum, "I'm apt to speak in par'bles sometimes. I guess you'll git along after a spell, though it mayn't set fust rate on your stomech till you git used to the diet. Say," he said after a moment, "if you'd had a couple o' thousan' more, do ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... come this way," said the senator's son. "They would be more apt to go away from the ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer

... will not bear, I own, A pressure analytic; But bard whose weight is fourteen stone, Is apt to thump the critic.) ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... Malus seboldii. It is very attractive when in bloom, and the fruit as it ripens takes on a rich warm color that is very interesting. Okabena is promising a light crop, which may be advantageous, as when this variety bears freely the apples are apt to be undersized. A Thompson seedling is promising a full crop as well as most of the other common varieties. The Wealthy on Malus baccata is bearing ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... keep a clean saucepan, or pot on the back of the stove to receive all the clean scraps of meat, bones, and remains of poultry and game, which are found in every kitchen; but vegetables should not be put into it, as they are apt to sour. The proper proportions for soup are one pound of meat and bone to one and a half quarts of cold water; the meat and bones to be well chopped and broken up, and put over the fire in cold water, being brought slowly to a ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson

... becoming a professional actress; for, although Walker did not at all care for the stage or its concomitants, still he did not wish to throw any obstacles in the way of his adopted child's prosperity. Margery, therefore, was allowed to pursue the bent of her inclinations, and such an apt pupil was she that in a little over eighteen months her debut was announced in the papers, and a crowded house showered floral and other trophies on the beautiful debutante. Offers of engagements from different cities came flowing in, and before long Miss Margery Montague was announced to appear ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer

... imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great tenderness even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later—oftener soon than late—is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the porch of things; Apt at life's lore, incurious what life meant. Dextrous of hand, she struck her lute's few strings; Ignobly perfect, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... of any other color; he might have gilded the thorns, by way of allegorizing human life, but if they were to be painted at all, they could hardly be painted any tiling but green, and green all over. People would have been apt to object to any pursuit of abstract harmonies of color, which might have induced him to paint his ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... to be done had to be done quickly, for Ignacio was a cunning fellow, and wouldn't be apt ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair

... famous for its beautiful scenery and its terrible storms. People who see it in the summer time think only of the beautiful scenery. But if they should happen to pass that way in midwinter they would be very apt to meet an unpleasant reminder of ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown

... be washed and placed in a basin of cold water the night before they are required for use, and should remain in soak about ten or twelve hours. If left longer than this during hot weather they are apt to turn sour. ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich

... so as to absorb the oil during the process of painting. They are very useful for some kinds of work, and many painters choose them; but unless you have some experience with the working of them, they are apt to add another source of perplexity to the difficulties of painting, so you had better not experiment with them, but use ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... there are some persons in Britain who do not know precisely what a typhoon is. If they saw or felt one, they would not be apt to forget it. Roughly speaking, a typhoon is a terrific storm. Cyclopaedias, which are supposed to tell us about everything, say that the Chinese name such a storm "Tei-fun," or "hot-wind." No-fun would seem to be a more appropriate term, if one were to name it from results. One ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... and turn a little pale. He was a plucky boy enough, but the roar of a lion heard for the first time in the solemn bush veldt at night is apt to shake the nerves ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard

... always returned to the vessel at night. The carpenter, however, was one of those who was left on board of the ship, as he also acted in the capacity of assistant lightkeeper, being, besides, a person who was apt to feel discontent and to be averse to changing his quarters, especially to work with the millwrights and joiners at the rock, who often, for hours together, wrought knee-deep, and not unfrequently up to the middle, in water. Mr. Watt having about this time made a requisition for another hand, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and salt, and a little ketchup, and serve. This dish is very much better if made the day before it is wanted for table, as the fat can be so much more easily removed when the gravy is cold. This should be particularly attended to, as it is apt to be rather rich and greasy if eaten the same day it is made. It should be served in rather a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... all formally prepared festivals, are apt to go off a little heavily. Such, however, was not the case with this, for every appearance of premeditation and preparation vanished with this meal. It is true the family did not quit the grounds, but, with this exception, ease ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... Lossie House, was a good woman, who did not stand upon her dignities, as small rulers are apt to do, but cultivated friendly relations with the people of the Sea Town. Some of the rougher of the women despised the sweet outlandish speech she had brought with her from her native England, and accused her of mim mou'dness, or an ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... glum the next morning, as they who stay over-long at the supper flagon are apt to be. He had been at work an hour on his bark-heaps when I came out into the open, and it was only by a good deal of diplomacy and some material help in sorting his faggots that he was got into a better frame of mind. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... "Ay," answered Henry Warden, apt and armed for controversy, "but it should be borne in the heart, not scored with the fingers in the air. That very impassive air, through which your hand passes, shall as soon bear the imprint of your action, as the external action shall avail the fond bigot ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... mountain sheep started up from their shelter behind an upthrust rock and ran ahead of me. I followed them, partly because they ran in the direction I was going, and partly because they are apt to select the ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... became impressed with the idea that the camp fire ahead of him was that of friends instead of enemies—that the assistance which he so sorely needed was thus placed within his reach. He had learned, long before, that one is apt to miscalculate the distance when placed as he was; but, making allowance for all that, he was confident that the camp fire was not more than a mile away. Yielding to a natural curiosity to learn its meaning, he shortened the hour which he had intended to devote ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... been presumed. The mistake has proceeded from not attending with due care to the mischiefs that may be occasioned by obstructing the progress of government at certain critical seasons. When the concurrence of a large number is required by the Constitution to the doing of any national act, we are apt to rest satisfied that all is safe, because nothing improper will be likely TO BE DONE, but we forget how much good may be prevented, and how much ill may be produced, by the power of hindering the doing what may be necessary, and of keeping affairs in the same unfavorable posture ...
— The Federalist Papers

... are apt to be exaggerated, and on Friday, two days after the disaster, we find this estimate reduced to $250,000,000. A few more days passed and these figures shrunk still further, though it was still largely conjectural, the means of making ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... earliest possible hour, solely for their benefit. For the rest, he felt a vast benefit from his new intercourse with men; there could not have been a better maturing agency for him at this time; and the interval served as an apt introduction to ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... afterwards became one of the foremost lawyers of the State, had made the acquaintance of Lincoln at the County Clerk's office and proposed to study law with him. He was at once accepted as a pupil, and his days being otherwise employed he gave his nights to reading, and as his vigils were apt to be prolonged he furnished a bedroom adjoining the office, where Lincoln often passed the night with him. Mr. Hay gives this account of the practice of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... city swept away by the sea, a beautiful country devastated by an active volcano—these are not the sort of things you see every day of the week. And when you do see them, no matter how many other wonders you may have seen in your time, such sights are rather apt to take your breath away. Atlantis had certainly this effect on the breaths of ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit

... clearer, since I commenced the experiment to which you allude, than before; but I doubt whether I can better endure a "laborious investigation." A little rest or exercise, perhaps less than formerly, restores vigor. I am sometimes tempted to break my day into two, by sleeping at noon. But I am not so apt to be cloyed with study, or reflection, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... perceive just what would capture an audience in such a stress, to step between footlights and curtain, tell the people that honest facts had never been more crazily twisted into falsehood and slander, and explain the true situation in a brief, apt speech, dignified and amusing? Certainly something had to be done and done this instant. But not that, ah, no! Or if that, not done by him, the actor. She could never imagine such a manoeuvre attempted on a boat of her father's, whose ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... lemonade, gave me a drug, which causes such a dead sleep, that it is easy to dispose of those who have taken it; for that sleep is so profound, that nothing can dispel it for the space of seven or eight hours. I have the more reason to judge so, because naturally I am a very bad sleeper, and apt to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... individuals so preserved have, they say, come to inherit such a liking and such useful habits of mind, and that at last (finding this inherited tendency thus existing in themselves, distinct from their tendency to conscious self-gratification) they have become apt to regard it as fundamentally distinct, innate, and independent of all experience. In fact, according to this school, the idea of "right" is only the result of the gradual accretion of useful predilections ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... Corson, betrothed to me these three years and more; you have been buried in the waters of baptism and had your washings and anointings in the temple of the most high God. Is it not so? Your eyes were anointed that they might be quick to see, your ears that they might be apt at hearing, your mouth that you might with wisdom speak the words of eternal life, and your feet that they might be swift to run in the ways of the Lord. You accepted thereby the truth that the angel of God had delivered to Joseph Smith the sealing keys of power. You accepted ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... of secrecy, and with an air of mystery; in developing which, the influence of the powers of darkness is referred to. The truth probably is, that the agency of witches and demons was often made to account for the sudden disappearance of individuals and similar incidents, too apt to arise out of the evil dispositions of humanity, in a land where revenge was long held honourable—where private feuds and civil broils disturbed the inhabitants for ages—and where justice was but weakly and irregularly executed. Mr. Law, a conscientious but ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... nation who are best qualified to rule have a right to rule, they themselves being the judge of their qualifications, England or Russia would be justified in attempting to impose their sovereignty on the United States, if they thought they could give us a better government than we are apt to give ourselves. Unless the doctrine is vigorously maintained that governments 'derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,' and not from the conceit of an aristocracy as to its own capacity, then we of the North ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... the painfully refined, whose sentiments become articles of faith. The spirit in which he could write that he was "much revived by having an opportunity of abusing Whistler to a knot of his special admirers" is a spirit apt to be misconstrued. He was not a dogmatist, even about Whistler. "The house is full of pretty things," he wrote, when on a visit; "but Mrs. ——'s taste in pretty things has one very bad fault: it is not my taste." And that was the true attitude of his mind; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not fail to be sometimes represented in the conduct of so gifted a child. An old lady who visited his mother, and was characterized in the family as 'Aunt Betsy', had irritated him by pronouncing the word 'lovers' with the contemptuous jerk which the typical old maid is sometimes apt to impart to it, when once the question had arisen why a certain 'Lovers' Walk' was so called. He was too nearly a baby to imagine what a 'lover' was; he supposed the name denoted a trade or occupation. But his human sympathy resented Aunt Betsy's manner as an affront; and he ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... freighted Americans. Englishmen may consent to have their boots pulled off, but Yankees would be apt to remonstrate." ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... fictitious, and false,—by everything which takes the man from his house, and sets him on a stage,—which makes him up an artificial creature, with painted, theatric sentiments, fit to be seen by the glare of candle-light, and formed to be contemplated at a due distance. Vanity is too apt to prevail in all of us, and in all countries. To the improvement of Frenchmen, it seems not absolutely necessary that it should be taught upon system. But it is plain that the present rebellion was its legitimate offspring, and it is piously fed by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... spirit. Does that lofty carriage, do those averted eyes, and that sullen lip, speak of self-abasement? Woman, dwelling in and for her affections, is prone insensibly to indulge the risings of jealousy. A female writer says, "Our sex are apt to be more aristocratic than men." The aristocracy of claiming attention, friendship, promptly and unremittingly manifested, the aristocracy, in a word, of the heart, who can doubt that this sex often does cherish. Counsel, therefore, calls them to ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... proofs of conspicuous gallantry were given, and many anecdotes might be quoted which testify to the bravery of both officers and men. But the discipline of the Portuguese was not equal to their courage. The soldiers and sailors were always ready to follow their officers, but the officers were apt to have ideas of their own with regard to the duty of obedience. The {168} insubordination of Albuquerque's captains during his first expedition against Ormuz was imitated on many other occasions. Even the most severe examples failed to establish perfect discipline, and it was ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens

... nervous little sound of a throat being apologetically cleared. Jasper Weeks, the small wiper from the engine room detail, the third generation Venusian colonist whom the more vocal members of the Queen's complement were apt to forget upon occasion, seeing all eyes upon him, spoke though his voice was ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... But the wise man must guard against nothing more carefully than to exceed moderation in his charity. How easily, when Caius sees Cnejus lavish gold where silver or copper would serve, he thinks of Martial's apt words: 'Who gives great gifts, expects great gifts again.'—[Martial, Epigram 5, 59, 3.]—Do not misunderstand me. What could yonder poor thing bestow that would please even a groom? But the eyes of suspicion ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of the little Pontellier boys took a tumble whilst at play, he was not apt to rush crying to his mother's arms for comfort; he would more likely pick himself up, wipe the water out of his eyes and the sand out of his mouth, and go on playing. Tots as they were, they pulled together ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... recently asking just what I eat, that it may be a help to some of them if I set down here just what I ate today. I ate no breakfast at all. Sometimes I go for weeks without eating breakfast. This is especially apt to be the case if I am engaged in writing a magazine article or a book. I find my brain is much clearer and that I can work much better when I eat no breakfast. But I do drink one or two cups of very weak tea. I use just enough tea to color the water. Now I do not ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle

... at any reason, good or bad, that brings me to Oxford. A great deal of Cherwell water has flowed under Magdalen Bridge, since I was an undergraduate here, and I have a feeling of nostalgia, when I think of Oxford and come to Oxford. The reminiscences of one's younger days are apt to have in older times an ironical tinge, but that is not for any of you to-day to consider. I am glad to know that of the fifty odd members of the Civil Service who are going out this autumn, not less than half are Oxford men, nearly all of them, Oxford bred, and ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... make folks think the place is haunted and Styles has savage dogs on his farm near by, and that keeps the curious away. I want you to watch the mill, too, if you can. But keep out of all danger. If any of the gang try to trap you shoot them down, for if they catch you they won't be apt to let you get away alive. If you wish get ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... Wonderful Visit." Artists should feel, and if necessary be told, that they are on their honour to do their best. That will do. If they flatter themselves that they are messengers from the Father of Light whenever they put pen to paper, they are apt to take any emotional hubble-bubble in themselves as a sign that the Spirit has been brooding upon the waters, and pour out; though a short time afterwards they may let loose a spate flowing in a quite different direction. Sincerity of the moment is not sincerity; those ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... any other island or continent in the known world; the most experienced seaman frequently sailing past it, and not a few suffering shipwreck every year upon its numerous shoals and rocks. For not only is the land itself low, and thus apt to be run against by vessels which may have approached in stormy weather too near to put about, but for many miles round, reefs of sunken rocks stretch out into the sea in every direction; insomuch, that even the approach to the principal anchorage is no more than a narrow ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... regularity of thought which must discover the speaker to be a man of sense, at the same time he appears a man given up to caprice. For my part, when I hear the delirious mirth of an unskilful talker, I cannot be so barbarous as to divert myself with it, but am rather apt to pity the man than laugh at ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... l. 222. The younger love, or Cupid, the son of Venus, owes his existence and his attributes to much later times than the Eros, or divine love, mentioned in Canto I. since the former is no where mentioned by Homer, though so many apt opportunities of introducing him occur in the works ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... this we of America are apt to glorify ourselves too much,—to overlook the origin of those elements that made us great. When exulting over our victories in war and our still more glorious triumphs in peace, our progress and our prosperity, ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... she would never, never forget it. The spirit of human courage seemed to live up there with the eagles. For long after, when she was moved by a Fourth-of-July oration, or a band, or a circus parade, she was apt to remember that ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... said I, "I should be afraid that the horse would run away with you; so I will by no means let you mount." "Will you let me look in his mouth?" said the man. "If you please," said I; "but I tell you, he's apt to bite." "He can scarcely be a worse bite than his master," said the man, looking into the horse's mouth; "he's four off. I say, young man, will you warrant this horse?" "No," said I; "I never warrant horses; the horses that I ride can always warrant themselves." "I wish you ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... to analyse the feelings of our hero towards Emma Phillips, we should hardly be warranted in saying that he was in love with her, although at seventeen years young men are very apt to be, or so to fancy themselves. The difference in their positions was so great, that, although our hero would, in his dreams, often fancy himself on most intimate terms with his kind little patroness, in his waking thoughts ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... at once. As he tacked to and fro round the tables, with a nod here and a word there, she got a sort of ensemble effect—a tall man, possibly thirty, broadshouldered, somewhat stooped, as tall men are apt to ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... in other communities, the man who is the most anxious to secure office is very apt to be left in the lurch. Now, it happened that Fletcher was by no means a favorite in the band. He was sly and sneaking in his methods, currying favor with the captain, even at the expense of manliness and self-respect, and there were serious doubts as ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... Prisoner at the bar, you have been found guilty by a jury, after a very long and careful consideration of your remarkable and strange case, of a very serious offence; an offence which squeamish moralists are apt to call robbing the widow and orphan; a cant phrase also, with which I hesitate to soil my lips, designates this offence as swindling. You will permit me to remark that the very fact that such nauseous and improper ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris

... an Englishman, who does not affect the reputation of a Codrus, could not acquire without many self-combats, appears in a Frenchman a matter of preference and convenience, and till one has lived long and familiarly in the country, one is apt to mistake principles for customs, and character for manners, and to attribute many things to local which have their real source in moral causes.—The traveller who sees nothing but gay furniture, and gay clothes, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... when Fannius was elected, was in a fair way now of being chosen consul, having a numerous company of supporters. And it was generally believed, if he did obtain it, that he would wholly ruin Caius, whose power was already in a declining condition; and the people were not so apt to admire his actions as formerly, because there were so many others who every day contrived new ways to please them, with which the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... and takes on with majesty the glory which lies behind all innocence, but which our eyes can never see. Your happiness seems in that mist of light to be removed and permanent; the common world in which you are moving passes, through this trick of the lens, into a stronger world more apt for such a sight, and one in which I am half persuaded (as I still look upon the picture) blessedness is not a rare adventure, but ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... children. A safe answer seems to be: No books weak in social ideals should be furnished, provided we do not lose reading children by their elimination. If such books are the best a child will read, and we take them away, causing him to lose interest in reading, he is apt to come ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... lessons from two undistinguished professors named Gegenbauer and Finsterbusch. But it all amounted to very little. There was the regular drilling for the church services, to be sure: solfeggi and psalms, psalms and solfeggi—always apt to degenerate, under a pedant, into the dreariest of mechanical routine. How many a sweet-voiced chorister, even in our own days, reaches manhood with a love for music? It needs music in his soul. Haydn's soul withstood the ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... Paris than in New York. Indeed, we may sneer, as we often do, at the primitive customs of the lowly, and at their absurd phrase of "keeping company." It makes a delightful jest. But beneath it is a greater regard for the rights of a man or woman in love than one is apt to find higher in the ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... about on that eventful night; but I can guess that it was about angels, about bright faces and sweet smiles, and that they were very pleasant dreams. At any rate, he slept very soundly, as tired boys are apt to sleep, even when they are anxious about getting up ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... An apt definition of organic chemistry is that it is "the study of the hydrocarbons and their derivatives." This description, although not absolutely comprehensive, serves as a convenient starting-point ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... men, nor any falling off in that tenderness and respect which men universally accord to women. There is not the slightest interruption of family ties. Whether husband and wife vote together or oppositely excites no interest and no animosity, although naturally families are apt to have the same party affiliations. The system has not operated to take women from their homes, nor has it tended to make them in any ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... though this is so, nevertheless they must be appealed to, and must even be led to think it possible that they, who have hitherto been under an obligation to us, may now put us under an obligation to them. Those, again, who are influenced by hope (a class of people much more apt to be scrupulously attentive) you must take care to convince that your assistance is at their service at any moment, and to make them understand that you are carefully watching the manner in which they perform the duties they owe you, and to allow no mistake to exist as to your clearly ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... The crew lolling about with folded arms, smoking their pipes or spinning yarns. I forgot that some of them would be employed in spinning very different sorts of yarns to what I fancied, and that chief mates are not apt to allow man to spend their time with their arms folded, doing nothing. On and on sailed the ship. The atmosphere was becoming sensibly warmer. I supposed that we should soon get into a tropical climate, and that then I might find it disagreeably hot even down below. But ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... revolt at their cowardice, their indecision, or whatever it was that held them like a group of wooden figures safe on shore while the man whose life was worth all theirs put together exposed himself to needless peril. That he was really in danger she felt sure. She knew that Murray was apt to lose himself in his dreams; perhaps some visionary mood had blinded him to the menace of that mounting ice-ridge it front of the glacier, or had he madly chosen to stand or fall with this structure that meant so much to him? She would ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... from modern conditions, and from modern frames of mind, is essential to an adequate appreciation of what has been said. Looking at these events through the distorting medium of an altogether different social atmosphere, one is apt to attribute them to the operation of lawless desire, and so have done with it. This, however, is to overlook the fact that we are dealing with a society in which sexual symbols were common in religious ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... Chester and work there now? I don't like the thoughts of it. If I go to Chester and work there, I can't be my own man; I must work under a master, and perhaps he and I should quarrel, and when I quarrel I am apt to hit folks, and those that hit folks are sometimes sent to prison; I don't like the thought either of going to Chester or to Chester prison. What do you think ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... would," answered the major; "a little fresh air would greatly restore me. These fits are apt to unman me for a time, but I quickly recover, and soon resume the command of my ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... various interpretations of commentators, who, though they all agree as to the moral pregnancy and sublimity of the passage, frequently differ as to its precise meaning. A metrical translation of these odes in English is apt to remind us of the metrical versions of the Hebrew Psalms. A part of one chorus in Aeschylus, which forms a distinct picture, has been given in rhythmical prose; three choruses of Sophocles and two of Euripides have, not without misgiving, been ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... which they are built; while the other's theory, derived from common notions, and superficial observation, will be more agreeable, because better adapted to the comprehension of the hearers. Thirdly, the judgment of the multitude is apt to be biassed by that surprise which is the effect of seeing an artist foiled at his own weapons, by one who engages him only ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... may be sure of his life; but nothing can give security before God. The last words are strikingly illustrated by Calvin, who says: "There is an antithesis in this sentence, inasmuch as God had promised that He would be the protector of His people. But as hypocrites are always apt to appropriate to themselves the promises of God, without having either repentance or faith, the prophet here declares, that the eye of God would be upon them, not to protect them, as was His custom, but rather to add punishments ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... officer's kepi, and a young, clean-shaven face, and he also noticed that Amanda bent still lower over the trellis of the verandah. A young girl in love—especially when her love is clouded by danger—is apt to imagine that she sees her lover's figure everywhere. The officer slackened his pace as his eyes fell upon her, and under the balcony itself he halted and looked up. Amanda retired hastily from the verandah, closing the windows behind her as she entered the room, and the ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... She boldly contended that doubt, mockery, nay unbelief itself, if associated with such a wealth of knowledge, such absolute honesty, and such high courage, must be more pleasing to God than the humility of the pious, which was apt to be a mask for lack of capacity to think logically, and often enough—there were plenty of examples—a mask for cowardice ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... at once clear that there are four terms in the syllogism, "light" being used both in a real and in a metaphorical sense. But if the sophism takes a subtle form, it is, of course, apt to mislead, especially where the conceptions which are covered by the same word are related, and inclined to be interchangeable. It is never subtle enough to deceive, if it is used intentionally; and therefore cases of it must be collected from actual ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer

... established order of things and partly from the easy ability of each to shift his share of the blame for what his instincts condemn, onto the shoulders of others. Reforms left to the collective conscience of such a community are apt to languish. Such is man's nature that the most unnatural and abnormal conditions come to be tolerated by common acquiescence, until something—an event without or a stirring of his soul within—startles his better self into a realisation of ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... to credit Scott with whatever enchantment invests Scotland in the eyes of the English, and of foreigners. And doubtless a large portion of it is due to him, but perhaps not quite so much as we are apt to fancy. We commonly suppose that it was he who first discovered the Trossachs and Loch Katrine, and revealed them to the world in 'The Lady of the Lake.' Yet they must have had some earlier renown, enough to make Wordsworth, travelling two years before the appearance even of Scott's ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... service of Christ. We have found out its uncertainty in many cases at home; we have found it out in still more frequent cases in the mission field. Unless we keep a very careful record of the after-life of those whom we train, and a very honest one, we are apt to ignore the failure, a failure which we cannot properly afford, and consequently we cannot know what we are really doing by our training. We ought to know the truth in this matter, both for our encouragement and our admonition. Happily here, we think, we can find an easy ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen

... to excuse himself on the encouragement Lady Mary's levity had given to his hopes; observing that when a woman's behaviour was very light, his sex were not apt to imagine there was any great fund of virtue; nor could it be expected that any one else should guard that honour of which she ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... and from the general cyclopadia with more or less full information on every conceivable topic to the more distinctive family cyclopadia which covers the life of the household. Where there are children in the family the cyclopadia which covers the field they are most apt to be interested in—such as "The Library of Work & Play" or "The Guide Series" to biography, music, pictures, etc. —is the best one to begin with. After they have learned to go to it for information which they want, they will desire a more general cyclopadia ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others

... much more a laborious achievement than a natural gift, and it is all the more remarkable that he should so often have attained to what seems such an easy perfection in both. Always a hasty writer,[16] he was long in forming his style, and to the last was apt to snatch the readiest word rather than wait for the fittest. He was not wholly and unconsciously poet, but a thinker who sometimes lost himself on enchanted ground and was transfigured by its touch. This ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... that so hard, that they leave an incurable wound behind them. Many men are undone by this means, moped, and so dejected, that they are never to be recovered; and of all other men living, those which are actually melancholy, or inclined to it, are most sensible, (as being suspicious, choleric, apt to mistake) and impatient of an injury in that kind: they aggravate, and so meditate continually of it, that it is a perpetual corrosive, not to be removed, till time wear it out. Although they peradventure that so scoff, do it alone in mirth and merriment, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... and orator Cicero succeeded in gaining a place beside Demosthenes. His strongest point is his style; there he is clear, concise and apt, perspicuous, elegant and brilliant. He commands all moods, from playful jest to tragic pathos, but is most successful in the imitation of conviction and feeling, to which he gave increased impression by his ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... more readily dissoluble when fatiguing) and many advantages over no marriages at all, which do not increase the population, so depleted by the Great War. When they spoke in this admirably civic sense, Neville was apt to say "It doesn't want increasing. I waited twenty minutes before I could board my bus at Trafalgar Square the other day. It wants more depleting, I should say—a Great Plague or something," a view which Kay and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... many questions; and, inasmuch as they had been taught well and trained in every art and science, they answered with propriety and perfect ease. The Shah struck with admiration bitterly regretted that Almighty Allah had not vouchsafed to him sons so handsome in semblance and so apt and so learned as these twain; and, for the pleasure of listening to them, he lingered at meat longer than he was wont to do. And when he rose from table and retired with them to his private apartment he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... the panegyrics always ended: "A fine girl, sir!" Every man felt a particular gratitude to Bela. It was a place to go nights. It combined the advantages of a home and a jolly club. Up north men were apt to grow rusty and glum for the lack of ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... from that of the other fire-festivals by the privacy and domesticity which characterize it; but, as we have already seen, this distinction may well be due simply to the rough weather of midwinter, which is apt not only to render a public assembly in the open air disagreeable, but also at any moment to defeat the object of the assembly by extinguishing the all-important fire under a downpour of rain or a fall of snow. Apart from ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... now, but wait till a man comes along. You're just getting to the age, Jan, when a woman is most apt to make a fool of herself over a man. And, remember this, I'd much rather my children were brought up simply with my people in Guernsey than that they should grow up with all sorts of false ideas ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... London: he observed, that a man stored his mind better there, than any where else; and that in remote situations a man's body might be feasted, but his mind was starved, and his faculties apt to degenerate, from want of exercise and competition. No place, (he said,) cured a man's vanity or arrogance so well as London; for as no man was either great or good per se, but as compared with others not so good or great, he was ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... include the man who sent them to a woman he afterwards killed, for the simple purpose of marrying an accomplished lady of means, who is also a listener with him at the recital. It is one of the rules in reading aloud second-hand love-letters, never to have these conditions present, for they are apt to induce distress in both parties. Had I been consulted with full details presented for my consideration, I know I should have advised ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... earth," he had said. Was that true? And if it were, might not Fraser push us over the wall? But instantly logic came to my rescue. Fraser had brought us here, and he could have brought us for but one thing: to question us. Would he be apt to do us harm before those questions were asked? And besides, would Fraser's brilliantly subtle mind stoop so low as to destroy enemies by pushing them over ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby

... I forget the furious passion into which this too apt quotation threw my unprincipled applicant. She lifted up her voice and cursed me, using some of the big oaths temporarily discarded for conscience sake. And so she left me, and I never ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... remained for three years in Europe, his stay having been prolonged by political excitement in his own State of South Carolina. Commerce is apt to knock the insularity out of people; distance from one's own distinctive locality gives a wider range to the vision, and the retired merchant foresaw ruin in his State's politics, and from the viewpoint of all Europe ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... thing." So, she now adopted a manner that was if anything too kindly. Her pose, her mask, behind which she was concealing her swollen and still swelling pride and sense of superiority, as yet fitted badly. She "overacted," as youth is apt to do. She would have given a shrewd observer—one not dazzled by her wealth beyond the power of clear sight—the impression that she was pitying the rest of mankind, much as we all pity and ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... each other, together with their total inoffensiveness as regarded the outside world; and we are delighted to say this, for we see so many of the multitudinous sides of human nature dark and depraved, that we are apt to think there is no bright side at all. Nor shall we let slip the opportunity of saying, at the risk of being considered very simple, that of all the gifts of felicity bestowed, as the Pagan Homer tells, upon mankind by the gods, no one is so perfect and beautiful as ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... The world is apt to judge of everything by the success; and whoever has ill fortune will hardly be allowed a good name. This, My Lord, was my unhappiness in my late expedition in the Roebuck, which foundered through perfect age ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... think with you that there is an excess of romantic sentiment in his character; and that kind of thing is apt to become exaggerated into eccentricity or foolishness. I suppose he can't help it, living so much within ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... enterprise. He had been in such a state of mental excitement since he had first thought of the scheme, that it was almost an impossibility for him to get along ten minutes without speaking of it to some one; and when he told the story he was more apt to speak of the theatre as he hoped they could arrange it than as it would probably be. But it must not be supposed that either Ben or Paul were indifferent to the matter; they were almost as much excited about it as Johnny was, though they were not as eager ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis

... the preceding article that the dependence of the nations goes back a good deal further than we are apt to think; that long before the period of fully developed intercommunication, all nations owed their civilization to foreigners. It was to their traffic with Gaul and the visits of the Phoenician traders that the early ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... together in a party. The suggestion, by the way, that people should give up "partisanship" often comes from people who do not by any means intend to give up their own partisanship,—they wish other folk to come over to their own way of thinking. We are all apt to wish that others would only be reasonable enough to agree ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson

... that they should be afraid of speaking their thoughts, nor lovesick romanticists, apt to be swayed wholly by sentiment, and she could trust Alec to see the folly of rushing into a union that might imperil his career. In the depths of her heart she confessed herself proud and happy at the prospect of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... flower sprang up from the blood, of the same colour {with it}, such as the pomegranates are wont to bear, which conceal their seeds beneath their tough rind. Yet the enjoyment of it is but short-lived; for the same winds[66] which give it a name, beat it down, as it has but a slender hold, and is apt to fall by reason ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... in the same proportion as the density of the steam. In all pumps a good deal of the effect is lost from the imperfect action of the valves; and in engines travelling at a high rate of speed, in particular, a large part of the water is apt to return, through the suction valve of the pump, especially if much lift be permitted to that valve. In steam vessels moreover, where the boiler is fed with salt water, and where a certain quantity of supersalted water has to be blown out of the boiler from time to time, to prevent ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... largely the thought of Lise, the spectacle of Lise—often perhaps unconsciously present that dominated her conduct; yet reinforcing such an ancestral sentiment was another, environmental and more complicated, the result in our modern atmosphere of an undefined feminism apt to reveal itself in many undesirable ways, but which in reality is a logical projection of the American tradition of liberty. To submit was not only to lose her liberty, to become a dependent, but also and inevitably, she thought, to lose ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... spirit of acquisition than of economy; you would rather make new things than patch the old. Your continuity is not large enough. You find it at times difficult to bring the whole strength of your mind to bear upon a subject and hold it there patiently in writing or speaking. You are apt to seize upon fugitive thoughts and wander, unless it be a subject on which you have so drilled your intellect as to become master ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... portico. "This is the country of complexions," the Baroness continued, addressing herself to Mr. Wentworth. "I am convinced they are more delicate. There are very good ones in England—in Holland; but they are very apt to be coarse. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... to the painfully refined, whose sentiments become articles of faith. The spirit in which he could write that he was 'much revived by having an opportunity of abusing Whistler to a knot of his special admirers,' is a spirit apt to be misconstrued. He was not a dogmatist, even about Whistler. 'The house is full of pretty things,' he wrote, when on a visit; 'but Mrs. -'s taste in pretty things has one very bad fault: it is not my taste.' And that was the true attitude of his mind; but these eternal differences ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... There is hardly a branch of human learning to which he did not at one time or another give his eager attention, and he was engrossed in turn by the study of architecture—the foundation-stone of all true art—sculpture, mathematics, engineering and music. His versatility was unbounded, and we are apt to regret that this many-sided genius did not realise that it is by developing his power within certain limits that the great master is revealed. Leonardo may be described as the most Universal Genius of Christian times-perhaps ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell

... so familiar that we are apt to overlook the strangeness of them in the history of religious evolution. The cult of ancestral spirits begins in the lowest barbarism, just above the level of the Australian tribes, who, among the Dieri, show some traces of the practice, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... complain? If the worthy gentlemen cheat occasionally, can we reasonably be angry? But in travelling through these countries, English people, who don't take into consideration the miserable poverty and scanty resources of their country, and are apt to brag and be proud of it, have their vanity hurt by seeing the representatives of every nation but their own well and decently maintained, and feel ashamed at sitting down under the shabby protection ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... given me many a ride upon his wagon Among the dusty scents of sun and hay. He showed me how to snare the bulky trout That lurked under the bank of yonder brook. Indeed, he taught me many a country craft, For I was apt to learn, and, as I learnt, I loved the teacher of that homely lore. Deep in my boyish heart he shared the glad Influence of the suns and winds and waves, Giving my childhood what it hungered for— The rude ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... pleasure to exchange pistol-shots with him. But with this hatred there was mixed a certain degree of fear. Always victorious wherever he fought, the remarkable person whom Wildrake was now approaching had acquired that influence over the minds of his enemies, which constant success is so apt to inspire—they dreaded while they hated him—and joined to these feelings, was a restless meddling curiosity, which made a particular feature in Wildrake's character, who, having long had little business of his own, and caring nothing about that which he had, was easily ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... space of a minute, assume first the appearance of a lofty peak, then swell out at the top, and resemble a mighty mushroom, next split into several parts, and finally settle down into a flat tableland. Occasionally, though not very often that semblance of water is produced which Europeans are are apt to suppose the usual effect of mirage. The images of objects are reflected at their base in an inverted position; the desert seems converted into a vast lake; and the thirsty traveller, advancing towards it, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... points out some of the evils to which a well-educated boy, on first going to service, is exposed from the profligacy of his fellow-servants; "The Mimic," the drawback of vulgar acquaintances; "Barring Out," the errors to which a high spirit and the love of party are apt to lead, and so forth. In the final paragraph stress is laid upon what every fresh reader must at once recognise as the supreme merit of the stories, namely, their dramatic faculty, or (in the actual words of the "Preface"), their art of "keeping alive hope and fear and curiosity, by ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to others his own strong point. Love was not Paul's strong point. The observing student can detect a beautiful tenderness growing and ripening all through his character as Paul gets old; but the hand ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond

... dollars to go on, Harry and Nelly, of course, had to look about for more capital; and that was why they chose me to go in with them. I didn't have any capital except a rich father, but I suppose they thought that was the same thing. People are so apt to—though I never found it the same thing at all. Then, too, Nelly and I were bosom friends, and they naturally wanted to give me the first chance. Their original plan had been to have the bubble held in four equal shares, taking in Morty Truslow as the fourth. ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne

... was not a good man, but apt opportunity led him farther astray than, in the depths of his heart, he ever intended to go. His feet were treading the paths of his own domains. His ancestral home, Dean Tower, raised its dark red walls before him. Some of the bitterness was gone from his thoughts. Visions of the wealth, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... saw him with her own eyes. You must ask Mr. Cunliffe about all that; my memory is apt to be treacherous about details. I know Leah saw him with his hand in his brother's desk, and though Eric vowed it was only to put a letter there,—a very impertinent letter that he had written to his brother,—still the cheque was gone, and, as they heard afterwards, cashed ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... wished to do so, but that he had disallowed it, and he easily convinced me that this improvisation would have been the ruin of her fine talent. I also agreed with him when he said that he had warned her against making impromptus too frequently, as such hasty verses are apt to sacrifice wit ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the members of the aristocracy made it impossible for any clique to control again the electoral machinery. As the sheriffs and justices were no longer so closely allied with the executive as they had been in the Restoration period, false returns of Burgesses and other electoral frauds were apt to be of less ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... your bag by seeing after it myself, Meredith," he began. "Remembered the mistakes Sally's brother is apt to make, you know, Madge; and thought he might demand the post bag, or something of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Blot in the 'Scutcheon' to 'The Ring and the Book' is not so marked as is the mauvais pas that lies between 'Amos Barton' and 'Daniel Deronda.' But difficulty is not obscurity. One task is more difficult than another. The angles at the base of the isosceles triangles are apt to get mixed, and to confuse us all—man and woman alike. 'Prince Hohenstiel' something or another is a very difficult poem, not only to pronounce but to read; but if a poet chooses as his subject Napoleon III.—in whom the cad, the coward, the idealist, and the sensualist ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of a placid and easy, perhaps lazy, disposition; but his placidity rested like the ice of a mountain lake on deep and dangerous water. It was hard to ruffle him or even to move him; but when moved he was apt not to return to the position he had left, nor to be quite natural to the ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... especially, Good Sense, because where you do not go yourself, you do not object to another's going, if he will. You are really liberal. You, Old Church, are of use, by keeping unforgot the effigies of old religion, and reviving the tone of pure Spenserian sentiment, which this time is apt to stifle in its childish haste. But you are very faulty in censuring and wishing to limit others by your own standard. You, Self-Poise, fill a priestly office. Could but a larger intelligence of the vocations ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... impose a fine of one dollar for killing song-birds for food as it is to provide for a fine of three hundred dollars. A fine that is too small fails to impress the prisoner, and it begets contempt for the law and the courts! A fine that is altogether too high is apt to be set aside by the court as "excessive." In my opinion, the best fines for wild life slaughter ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... themselves to any country; producing a numerous progeny both from roots and seeds, and by no means nice as to soil or situation; it is not long before it becomes a weed in the garden, from whence it is apt like the Hyacinthus racemosus, already figured, to pass into the ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... objection to your being friends with him," conceded Ellen, "but it musn't go beyond friendship, remember. I'm always suspicious of widowers. They are not given to romantic ideas about friendship. They're apt to mean business. As for this Presbyterian man, what do they call him shy for? He's not a bit shy, though he may be absent-minded—so absent-minded that he forgot to say goodnight to ME when you started ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... all I ask. Your story is apt to run away with you. Up hill and down dale you go, through Scythia and Machlyene, off again to Bosphorus, then back to Scythia, till ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... for an hour, as quiet folk are wont to do. I trembled to think of the ruined purses this day's performances might result in. I could not help reflecting bodingly upon the intemperate zeal with which middle-aged men are apt to surfeit themselves upon a seductive folly which they have tasted for the first time. And yet I did not feel that I had a right to be surprised at the state of things which was giving me so much concern. These men had been taught from infancy to revere, almost to worship, the holy places whereon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... took, with a most reverential expression, a long, deep draught each. The next part of the ceremony with them was somewhat curious; but the rapt expression of the worshippers took away the effect which such an evolution would be apt to produce on a fastidious stomach if connected with an uninterested head. In short, these dignitaries, without moving a muscle of the face, or a joint of the body, after a few seconds, and with great solemnity, ejected what had been swallowed upon the ground. It seemed as if given forth in ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... intolerable, and especially in the holy month of Ramadan. Even in ordinary times, when swine enter the city, the Moslems gather up their robes, turn their backs and shout, "hub hub," "hub hub," and if the hogs do not hasten along, the "hub hub," is very apt to become a hubbub. On the 28th of that holy month, a large herd entered Beirut on the Damascus road. The Moslems saw them, and forthwith a crowd of Moslem young men and boys hastened to the fray. A few days before, the Maronite ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... all were prominent men and all of them mental workers of high caliber. That didn't appear peculiar because it is the man of high mentality who is most apt to crack." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... as yet," he rejoined, unable to control his voice as completely as his hand. "And the proof of it is the impunity with which her agents deceive her—in this case, for instance, of Dillon's injury. Dr. Disbrow, who is Mr. Truscomb's brother-in-law, and apt to be influenced by his views, assures you that the man will get off with the loss of a finger; but some one equally competent to speak told me last night that he would lose not only ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... their stock in the life of the race all funded in the individual. Being a man of letters, Byles Gridley naturally rather undervalued the literary acquirements of the good people of the rural district where he resided, and, having known much of college and something of city life, was apt to smile at the importance they attached to their little local concerns. He was, of course, quite as much an object of rough satire to the natural observers and humorists, who are never wanting in a New England village,—perhaps ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... war one with another. As in the twelfth century, we read of Coeur de Lion in Palestine, and in the thirteenth, of St. Louis in Egypt, so in the fourteenth do we read the sad tale of Poitiers and Cressy, and in the fifteenth of Agincourt. People are apt to ask what good came of the prowess shown at Ascalon or Damietta; forgetting that they should rather ask themselves what good came of the conquests of our Edwards and Henries, of which they are so proud. If Richard's prowess ended in his imprisonment in Germany, and St. Louis died in Africa, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... from the seat into which he had rather fallen than thrown himself, he ran out of the room with a precipitation of step which he was apt to use upon occasions of irritable feeling, and which was certainly more eager than dignified, especially as he muttered while he ran, and seemed as if he were keeping up his own passion, by recounting over and over the offence ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... Cabinets since Italy entered the war, and President Wilson was burning to associate his name and also that of his country with the vastest and noblest enterprise inscribed in the annals of history. And each one moved over his own favorite route toward his own goal. It was an apt illustration of the Russian fable of the swan, the crab, and the pike being harnessed together in order to remove a load. The swan flew upward, the crab crawled backward, the pike made with all haste for the water, and the load remained where ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... has been taken by the world to mean sanctimoniousness and not sanctity, and is a term of contempt rather than of admiration on their lips. And even those of us, who have got beyond thinking that it is a title of honour belonging only to the aristocracy of Christ's Kingdom, are too apt to mistake what it really does mean. It may be useful to say a word about the Scriptural use and true meaning of that much-abused term. The root idea of sanctity or holiness is not moral character, goodness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... flattery in the compliments I beg to offer to Mr. JAMES FORBES for a very diverting evening. Perhaps the last Act dragged a little, but in any case after the orgy he had given us we were ripe for reaction. With most imported plays one is apt to doubt whether the humour is novel in its essence or merely a matter of unfamiliar form, common enough in its place of origin. But the humour of Mr. FORBES, or at least the best of it, is something more than ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various

... foot-lights. In operatic performances, however, the words are of very inferior importance to the music; the composer quite eclipses the author. A musician has been known to call a libretto the "verbiage" of his opera. The term was not perhaps altogether inappropriate. Even actors are apt to underrate the importance of the speeches they are called upon to deliver, laying the greater stress upon the "business" they propose to originate, or the scenic effects that are to be introduced into the play. They sometimes describe the words of their parts as "cackle." ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... organization that made them leaders in boyish pastimes and sports. If there was any perceptible difference between the two, it was that Elwood Brandon was a little more daring and impetuous than his companion; he was apt to follow out his first impulses and venture upon schemes without deliberating fully enough. Both were generous, unselfish, and either would have willingly risked his ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis

... cautiously, not sending the lever quite home, so as to avoid a click, and nodded. Then we slipped our knife-sheaths round to the hip—for a shot in the dark is apt to wound only and cause a red-mouthed charge—and then ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... nor the images of any thing without the mind 44 This more fully explained 45 In what sense we must be understood to see distance and external things 46 Distance, and things placed at a distance, not otherwise perceived by the eye than by the ear 47 The IDEAS of sight more apt to be confounded with the IDEAS of touch than those of hearing are 48 How this comes to pass 49 Strictly speaking, we never see and feel the same thing 50 Objects of SIGHT twofold, mediate and immediate 51 These hard to separate in our thoughts 52 The received accounts ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... "my good neighbour, that this custom is at least idle, and may be prejudicial if it leads to excess in the use of liquor, which is apt enough to take place without such conversation. But I think, when it hath not this consequence, it is a thing indifferent, affords a unanimous mode of expressing our good wishes to our friends, and our ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... he said very gently, "putting down your pistol? Those things are so apt to go off unexpectedly, and at the moment you appear to be aiming at my uncle's ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... thing, however, is, that individuals will attempt assassination—of Representatives of the People. Representative Collot, Member even of Salut, returning home, 'about one in the morning,' probably touched with liquor, as he is apt to be, meets on the stairs, the cry "Scelerat!" and also the snap of a pistol: which latter flashes in the pan; disclosing to him, momentarily, a pair of truculent saucer-eyes, swart grim-clenched countenance; recognisable as that ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... and the troop of children at present in the Hall nursery were quite beyond the powers of any grown-up brother to recognise or identify. It was vaguely understood that "the girls" knew all the small fry by head and name, but even the Squire himself was apt to get puzzled. With such a household, and with an heir impending over his head like Jack, it may be supposed that Mr Wentworth's anxiety to get his younger boys disposed of was great. Cuthbert and Guy were arrows in the hand of the giant, but he had his quiver so full that the best thing he could ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... of his first schools, and the lessons obtained from it were widely useful. They suggested the difficulties that had to be overcome, wherever the alphabet was spread before the Aborigine. Children made bright pupils, but, as they grew up, were apt to go back on what they had learned. The reason was not far to seek. An educated native found himself out of touch with his uneducated fellows; education made a barrier. He was not the equal of the Europeans, and could form no ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... convinced that the "manifestations" were a fraud, wrote to Mrs Browning for an expression of her opinion. The reply, as might be expected, declared the writer's belief in the genuine character of the phenomena; such manifestations, she admitted, in the undeveloped state of the subject were "apt to be low"; but they were, she was assured, "the beginning of access from a spiritual world, of which we shall presently learn more perhaps." A letter volunteered by Browning accompanied that of his wife. He had, he said, to overcome a real repugnance ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... was needed to reach this conclusion, nor any particular care or trouble on the part of the Emperor and his marshals, nor was there any need of that special and supreme quality called genius that people are so apt to ascribe to Napoleon; yet the historians who described the event later and the men who then surrounded Napoleon, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... good effects from your journey, that of the 19th, which I have just received, together with Mr. Oswald's conversation, has very much revived me. I send away the messenger, for fear of the delays which Cabinets are so apt to cause; but I hope you will hear from us again very soon, with authority to offer the Independence as unconditionally as you can wish. Mr. Oswald says that Dr. Franklin is much inclined to confide in you; if so, ask him at once in what manner we ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... here, where, I do think, she must hatch out tories, same as a hen does chickens, they are so thick about there. Then there's Josh Rose courting that up and a coming sort of girl you saw at Howard's t'other day, when you called with Harry for a drink of water. Now wouldn't the fellow be apt to let out secrets there that we could get hold of, and put us on some good scent? Ah! that's it; so now up the river for Howard's, as a ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... reported by the inhabitants; but I do not consider that, in these cases, the proofs of a pure previous vaccine disease have been satisfactorily established; when vaccination has been carried on for some time, from the same stock of lymph, the disease is apt to degenerate and become spurious, from which cause we require a frequent renewal of lymph from England, in order to keep it in continuous and successful operation; the spurious disease, on the fifth day, generally shews itself in the form of a small ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... are ready to believe that because they have made money in the stock market all can do likewise. Most superstitions arise through generalization from too few instances: those who have several times met misfortune on the thirteenth day of the month are apt to say that the thirteenth is always an unlucky day. Such reasoning as this shows the weakness of inductive argument: a conclusion is worthless if it is drawn from ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... overcome Miss Alicia's prejudices and dislike; or to convince the spoilt girl that she had not done her a cruel injury by marrying Sir Michael Audley. The truth was that Lady Audley had, in becoming the wife of Sir Michael, made one of those apparently advantageous matches which are apt to draw upon a woman the envy and hatred of her sex. She had come into the neighborhood as a governess in the family of a surgeon in the village near Audley Court. No one knew anything of her, except that she came in answer to an advertisement ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... imitation. As matter of fact, imitation of ends, as distinct from imitation of means which help to reach ends, is a superficial and transitory affair which leaves little effect upon disposition. Idiots are especially apt at this kind of imitation; it affects outward acts but not the meaning of their performance. When we find children engaging in this sort of mimicry, instead of encouraging them (as we would do if it were an important means of social control) we are more likely to rebuke them as apes, monkeys, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... times as much as a photograph can show as regards planetary detail. This, though not generally known, is perfectly true, and it may be explained thus: We know that in terrestrial photography the camera will reveal many details which the eye is apt to overlook; and, by very long exposures, even celestial photography will give a similar result. In planetary photography, however, exposures must be very short, and the picture obtained is so very tiny that it cannot ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... to say about pigs requiring air, let us hope to some purpose. Certainly, departmental professors have an uphill task before them in out-of-the-way regions. These poor people are said to be extremely frugal as a rule, but too apt to squander their years' savings at a paternal fte, wedding or any other festivity. Generations must elapse ere they are raised to the level of the typical French peasant. On the score of health they may compare favourably with any ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... great in many ways—great as an orator, musician, philosopher, politician, financier, and great and wise as a practical leader. Lovers of beauty are apt to be dreamers, but this man had the ability to plan, devise, lay out work and carry it through to a successful conclusion. He infused others with his own animation, and managed to set a whole cityful of lazy people building a temple grander far in its rich simplicity than the world ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... afternoon, so that you can go home and practice such necessary things as entering or leaving a room correctly. Most young men are extremely careless in this particular, and unless you rehearse yourself thoroughly in the proper procedure you are apt to find later on to your dismay that you have made your exit through a window onto the fire-escape instead of ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... purposes, but is also very useful, and, indeed, absolutely necessary, as rendering possible the division of labor. If men did not render mutual assistance to each other, no one would have either the skill or the time to provide for his own sustenance and preservation: for all men are not equally apt for all work, and no one would be capable of preparing all that he individually stood in need of. Strength and time, I repeat, would fail, if every one had in person to plow, to sow, to reap, to grind corn, to cook, to weave, to stitch and perform the other numerous ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... tell, that he had often designed to leave the University, and decline all study, which he thought did impair his health; for he had a body apt to a consumption, and to fevers, and other infirmities, which he judged were increased by his studies; for he would often say, "He had too thoughtful a wit; a wit like a penknife in too narrow a sheath, too sharp for his body." But his Mother would by no means allow him to leave the University, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... pity we have no larger vessel to bring our water from the spring," said Hector, looking at the tin pot; "one is so apt to stumble among stones and tangled underwood. If we had only one of our old bark dishes we could get a good supply ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... town for any one to think of attacking her. But in the absolute isolation in which of her own choice she lived, in her state of exhaustion and nervous excitement brought on by several weeks of sleepless nights and moral suffering, her imagination was apt to welcome the most unreasoning terrors. She exaggerated the animosity of those who did not like her. She told herself that suspicion was on her track: the veriest trifle was enough to ruin her: and there was nothing ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... at home in Sunday-school, Nor yet a social tea, And on the day he gets his pay He's apt to spend it free; He ain't no temperance advocate, He likes to fill the can, He's kind of rough, and, maybe, tough, The Regular Army man; The r'aring, tearing, ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... he was never tired nor sleepy, as people are apt to be who dance all night; but before the summer was ended Fairyfoot found out the reason. One night, when the moon was full, and the last of the ripe corn rustling in the fields, Robin Goodfellow came for him as usual, and away they went to the flowery ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... exclusively occupied our attention throughout the foregoing chapter admits of apt and powerful illustration. Its vast importance will be a sufficient apology for the particular disquisition which follows, and might have been spared, but for the plain challenge of the famous Critic to ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... bullets. Such a feat to my knowledge had never been done before, and on that particular morning I felt a very 'tall man of my hands' indeed. The only thing I feared was, that should I ever come to tell the story nobody would believe it, for when a strange tale is told by a hunter, people are apt to think it is necessarily a lie, instead of ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... overcome. "She will never get over it, I fear," he sighed, the tears coursing down his furrowed cheeks. "One bereavement is apt to tread closely upon the heels of another, and she will probably soon follow her sister. But oh if I only knew that she had been washed from her sins in the precious blood of Christ, that she had accepted His invitation, 'Come unto me,' so that death would be but falling asleep ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley

... allowance for the faults of this my present work, but those which are given of course to human frailty. I will not trouble my reader with the shortness of time in which I writ it, or the several intervals of sickness. They who think too well of their own performances, are apt to boast in their prefaces how little time their works have cost them, and what other business of more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to ask the question, why they allowed not a longer time to make ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... We are apt to judge the culture of a people by the skill they display in works of arts. The article on which the Mound Builder lavished most of his skill was the pipe. This would show that with them, as with the modern ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... would choose to marry, of yourself. It is not, indeed, to be supposed that you would wish to marry any one till you were asked: a girl's affections should never be won unsought. But when they are sought—when the citadel of the heart is fairly besieged—it is apt to surrender sooner than the owner is aware of, and often against her better judgment, and in opposition to all her preconceived ideas of what she could have loved, unless she be extremely careful and discreet. Now, I want ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... He was apt; he was a high-school graduate who only needed to apply himself to produce results. And Forsythe produced them. As he had promised, he took a meridian observation that day, and in half an hour announced the ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... Dryads to select A region thus supremely fair! So apt were mortals to erect In such a place ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... articles of commerce the diamond is the least liable to depreciation. Panics that shake empires and topple trade into the dust seldom lower the cost of this king of precious stones; and there is no personal property that is so apt to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... substituted for it to make good an earlier loss I shall now never know. I put it into my pocket, wondering what I should do with it; the question what you shall do with counterfeit money in Italy is one which is apt to recur as I have hinted, and in despair of solving it at the moment I threw the false franc out of the car-window; it was the false franc I have ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... going to drink any more," said Mr. Gerzson at last, "for it is apt to make me sleepy and I don't want to sleep to-night. About midnight the coachman will arrive with the fresh relay of horses. Won't your ladyship rest a little ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... visitors. That it should be so regarded is no doubt a proof of national inferiority, and perhaps immorality; but while the general sentiments of the nation continue as at present, an instance of this kind cannot be considered as a proof of individual baseness. An Englishman is apt to pronounce every man a scoundrel, who, in making a bargain, attempts to take him in; but he will often find, on a closer and more impartial examination, that the judgment formed by this circumstance alone in France, is quite erroneous. One of our ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... a dangerous trade or a foreign clime. Again, take the case of the introduction of a giant Cephalopod or fish amongst a population of Molluscs and Crustacea. The toughest, the speediest, the most alert, the most retiring, or the least conspicuous, will be the most apt to survive and breed. In hundreds or thousands of generations there will be an enormous improvement in the armour, the speed, the sensitiveness, the hiding practices, and the protective colours, of the ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... was the name of a young gentleman who was a devoted admirer of Miss Burgoyne. Miss Burgoyne had, indeed, on one occasion introduced the young man to him; but he had paid little heed; most likely he regarded him with the sort of half-humorous contempt with which the professional actor is apt to look upon the moon-struck youths who bring bouquets into the stalls and languish about stage-doors. However, he told the house-porter to ask the gentleman to ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... strawberries should be one of the very hardest products to can with good results. The canning itself is simple—all berries are quickly and easily canned—but strawberries always shrink, are apt to turn a little brown, and, what distresses us most of all, they float to the top ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... bidden reveal to mankind. Conversing thus, they reach the second stream, of whose waters Beatrice bids her friend drink, and after that renovating draught Dante realizes he has now been made pure and "apt for ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... like you," said he, returning the pressure of his hand. "There is something about you that fills a long vacant place in my heart. I will do all I can to teach you the Russian language, but at the same time, if I find you apt, I will teach you even more than that, for there is much more to be ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold

... ball young men and women keep very much to their own particular small circle and are not apt to meet outsiders at all. Under these circumstances a gentleman should be very careful not to introduce a youth whom he knows nothing about to a lady of his acquaintance—or at least he should ask her first. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... sheltered the waifs. Decidedly, murder will out, and there come times when the left and right hands of a man are forced into confession to each other about their most secret actions. A political campaign is apt to bring such a situation into the lives of the aspiring candidates. The little coons set up a musical wail that passed for a cheer and marched away munching the contents of a huge box of candy that Polly had sent ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... execute discipline rigorously according to the formula, on the principle, Be rid of the tares at all hazards; never mind the wheat. This course was naturally favored by some of the minor Presbyterian sects, and was apt to be vigorously urged by zealous people living at a distance and not well acquainted with details of fact. (2) To attempt to provide for all cases by stated exceptions and saving clauses. This course was entered on by the Methodist Church, but without ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... to go his own way. The old bear told him it wouldn't do to jump over a precipice, but, somehow, he couldn't believe it and jumped. 'Twas the last thing he ever did. It's often so with the young. Their own way is apt to be rather steep and to end suddenly. There are laws everywhere,—we couldn't live without them,—laws of nature, God, and man. Until we learn the law and how to obey it, we must go carefully and take the advice of older heads. We couldn't run a school without laws in it—laws that ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... freely own to you, that I think it a most amazing thing, that the Ladies (at least those who make any Pretensions to Virtue and Goodness) should ever be seen at the last of these Places; where they find themselves so scandalously treated. I am apt to think, that very few of 'em have read Mr. Collier's 'View of the Stage'; if they had, they would there see the Corruptions of the Plays set in so clear a Light, that one would believe, they should never after be Tempted to appear in a Place where Lewdness and Obscenity ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous









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