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More "Devoid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was his name) was of so noble a temper that, being now nigh upon seventy years of age, and all but devoid of natural heat of body, he was yet receptive of the flames of love; and having at an assembly seen a very beautiful widow lady, Madonna Malgherida de' Ghisolieri, as some say, and being charmed with her beyond measure, was, notwithstanding ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of heat that is known, whether dormant or active, is only one arm of the gigantic force electricity. The most of our knowledge of electricity has been gained through its offspring, magnetism. A body entirely devoid of electricity, is a body dead. Magnetism is apparent in many things including the human race, and its presence in ...
— Advanced Chemistry • Jack G. Huekels
... air, where we may repose ourselves firmly and safely as in our chambers"! Of the latter he finds somewhat more difficulty in disposing,—"and here it is considerable, that, since our bodies will then be devoid of gravity and other impediments of motion, we shall not at all spend ourselves in any labour, and so, consequently, not much need the reparation of diet, but may perhaps live altogether without it, as those creatures have done, who, by reason of their sleeping ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... that a something as devoid of parts as is a mathematical point should yet appear to have parts and to be extended. On the other hand, if we allow the image to be extended, how can we refer it ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... birth presented a red and sensitive area upon the scalp corresponding in location with the fatal injury in the rider. The child is now an adult woman, and this area upon the scalp remains red and sensitive to pressure, and is almost devoid of hair. Mastin of Mobile, Alabama, reports a curious instance of maternal impression. During the sixth month of the pregnancy of the mother her husband was shot, the ball passing out through the left breast. The woman was naturally much shocked, and remarked ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... are fiber, albuminous elements, gelatinous substances, and flavoring matters. The albuminous elements are found only in the flesh. The gelatinous substance found in bones, skin, and tendons, is almost devoid of nutriment. In selecting material for stock, therefore, it is well to remember that the larger the proportion of lean meat used, the more nutritious will ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... thought. But it really seemed to make matters worse. It was hard that a man who on Monday would be bowling against Warner and Beldam, or standing up to Trott and Hearne, should on the preceding Tuesday be sent indoors like a naughty child by a man who stood five-feet-one in his boots, and was devoid of any sort of ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... the part of my lover. He thinks me not nice enough. I am obliged to feign a little reluctance, that he may not take quite a distaste to me. Will you believe it, that he turns my very constancy into a reproach, and declares, that a woman must be devoid of all delicacy, that, after a thing of that sort, could endure the sight of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... full; his lay Tells of the brightness of a peaceful day; A day not cloudless, nor devoid of storm, But sunny for the most, and clear ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... should have one advantage, which is by no means inconsiderable—I should find fellow-countrymen at Senegal, and that is not far away from those islands. I am quite aware that the group is said to be devoid of much interest, and wild, and unhealthy; but everything is curious in the eyes of a geographer. Seeing is a science. There are people who do not know how to use their eyes, and who travel about with as much intelligence as a shell-fish. But that's ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... more intelligent animal than the crab. The hole in which the lobster lodges has almost always two openings, he has said, through one of which it sometimes contrives to escape when the other is stormed by the fisher; whereas the crab is usually content, like the "rat devoid of soul," with a hole of only one opening; and, besides, gets so angry in most cases with his assailant, as to become more bent on assault than escape, and so loses himself through sheer loss of temper. And yet the crab has, he used ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... only incapable of the girding enmity which Taine detected and detested in Thackeray's treatment of Becky Sharp, but he is also devoid of the callous detachment with which Flaubert dissected Emma Bovary under the microscope. Daudet is never flagrantly hostile toward one of his creatures; and, however contemptible or despicable the characters he has called ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... plainly, but to an assertion that the main means of modification has been the preservation of races whose variations have been unintentional, that is to say, not connected with effort or intention, devoid of mind or meaning, fortuitous, spontaneous, accidental, or whatever kindred word is least disagreeable to the reader? It is impossible to conceive any more complete denial of mind as having had anything to do with organic ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... around, showing a pale countenance bedewed with tears, and totally devoid of any expression which he could connect with a consciousness of his presence. For a moment she stared vacantly at him, while he, with almost equal vacancy, regarded her. Then a thrill of surprise shook him. A sudden light of knowledge leaped up in ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... men will now see how much they will have it in their power, when Cholera comes, to pronounce, or to withhold sentence of desolation upon a community. The word Contagion will be the word of doom, for then the healthy will fly their homes, and the sick be deserted; but a countenance and bearing, devoid of that groundless fear, will at once command the aid, and inspire the hopes that are powerful to save in ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... achieved much glory for the Roman name. In the words of one who has interpreted the sentiment of those times with rare felicity, Rome could bear the pride of him of whom herself was proud. The old French noblesse, again, were not devoid of redeeming qualities. Their galling yoke would not have been borne from reign to reign, and through century after century, even by such seeming reconcilables as constituted the bulk of the French populace during the ante-Revolutionary ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... gazing steadfastly at the blank, heavy face, so utterly devoid of the enthusiasm the man was evoking in others. For one flitting instant he thought he saw behind the mask. The immobile face, the awkward gestures, the slipshod English became suddenly transparent, revealing the real man; a man of titanic ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... defects compensated by any high degree of merit in the delineation of the characters. With the exception of Leucippe herself, they are all almost wholly devoid of individual or distinguishing traits, and insipid and uninteresting to the last degree. Menelaus and Clinias, the confidants and trusted friends of the hero, are the dullest of all dull mortals—a qualification which perhaps ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... unconquered by the former. Though he well knew that his procrastination was disapproved, not only in his own camp, but by this time even at Rome, yet, inflexibly adhering to the same line of policy, he delayed through the remainder of the summer, in order that Hannibal, devoid of all hope of a battle, which he so earnestly desired, might now look out for a place for winter quarters, because that district was one of present, but not constant, supply, consisting, as it did, of plantations and vineyards, and all places planted ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... Lady of Quality and a Person of Inferior Station." Dublin, 1784. Though by no means devoid of "nonsense and romance," the little book is not altogether undeserving of Colonel Digby's encomium. The story is very slight, and concludes, quite unnecessarily and rather unexpectedly, with the death of the gentleman, just as his good fortune ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... a leader whom they both respected and admired those who had been loyal to Ko-tan rushed forward upon the faction that had surrounded Mo-sar. Fierce and terrible was the fighting, devoid, apparently, of all else than the ferocious lust to kill and while it was at its height Mo-sar and Bu-lot slipped unnoticed from ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rambled a while in the grounds without a purpose. Tides in her mind ebbed and flowed, and carried her to and fro like seaweed. She tried a path, paused, returned, and tried another; questing, forgetting her quest; the spirit of choice extinct in her bosom, or devoid of sequency. On a sudden, it appeared as though she had remembered, or had formed a resolution, wheeled about, returned with hurried steps, and appeared in the dining-room, where Kirstie was at the cleaning, like one ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inarticulate exclamation, like the oath of a man devoid of speech, he ripped the sheer and ribboned silk from his wife's breast, as savagely as though he were tearing the flesh itself, and laid his hand upon the bared bosom. There, too, was the unfluttering stillness of a ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... round and round With wildering limp dost come and go; Thy tale to me, devoid of sound, Bears the mute majesty of woe. In bounding pride of revelry, Seared by the cruel, burning blast, Thy fall instructive is to me As fall of States ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... of a cork and a gale of talk and laughter came to his ears. Wilbur stared at the picture, his face devoid of expression. The "Petrel" came on—drew nearer—was not a hundred feet away from the schooner's stern. A strong swimmer, such as Wilbur, could cover the distance in a few strides. Two minutes ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... are minute vegetable organisms devoid of chlorophyll and multiplying by repeated bipartitions. They consist of single cells, which may be spherical, oblong or cylindrical in shape, or of filamentous or other aggregates of cells. They are characterized by the absence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... "from the first had been an impatient sympathizer with the Confederacy, and he was quite devoid of the balance and good judgment that characterized Lord Lyons." "Quite unnecessarily, Seward helped him to make the trip[594]." A circumstance apparently not known to Bancroft was Mercier's consultation ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... was painfully slow and uncertain. "Our methods," as Myers afterward explained, "were all to make. In those early days we were more devoid of precedents, of guidance, even of criticism that went beyond mere expressions of contempt, than is now ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... us down at the hotel Bedford, Rue de L'Arend, where, although near one o'clock, we found a good supper waiting for us; and, as I was not devoid of an appetite, I did my share towards putting it ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... not lose Beauty? No, better still, Naughty; the prime favorite, Naughty. He looked into Naughty's eyes, and they seemed full of liquid reproach. Naughty had been his friend—supposititiously, and to abandon him now to the world, a cold place devoid of French lamb chops? A hard place for homeless dogs and men, alike! About to waive the temptation, Mr. Heatherbloom paused; the idea was capable of modification or ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... than his exclusion from the throne. Zeenut-on Nissa enjoys a pension of ten thousand rupees a-month, in her own right, under the guarantee of the British Government. I may here, as an episode not devoid of interest, give a brief account of her mother, who, for some years, during the reign of Nuseer-od Deen Hyder, presided over the palace at Lucknow. Before I do so I may mention that the King, Nuseer-od Deen Hyder, had been married to a grand-daughter ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... his heart. It is a patient, long-suffering, quiet, hopeless, shivering aspect. He is not desperate,—that, though its etymology implies no more, would be too positive an expression,—but merely devoid of hope. As all his past life, probably, offers no spots of brightness to his memory, so he takes his present poverty and discomfort as entirely a matter of course; he thinks it the definition of existence, so far as himself is concerned, to be poor, cold, and uncomfortable. It may be ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... intentional upsetting into the ditch of the old French lady in the carriage to be a joke. For a man who unconsciously has made so much fun for others as "the great lexicographer," Dr. Johnson seems to have been curiously devoid of a sense of humor. But he was a genuine Englishman of his time, a true John Bull, and the fun of the John Bull of that time, recorded in the novels and traditions, was ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... him how base in my eyes was the man who having a friend and understanding all that was meant by that sacred sentiment "friendship," was yet so devoid of generosity as to have recourse to deception; as though it were possible to ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... eminent Christian was nothing but an ordinary minister, who, when he was prepared for his profession, had never been allowed to see what are the historical difficulties of Christianity, lest he should be overcome by them. On the other hand, his sceptical opponents were almost devoid of the faculty for appreciating the great remains of antiquity, and would probably have considered the machinery of the Prometheus Bound or of the Iliad a sufficient reason for a sneer. That they should spend their time in picking the ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... around their loins, and as being BLACK. The land, rising somewhat from the shore, was covered with thick forests, which sent forth the sweetest fragrance to a great distance. They supposed it adjoined the Orient, and for that reason was not devoid of medicinal and aromatic drugs and gold; and being IN LATITUDE 34 Degrees N., was possessed of a pure, salubrious and healthy climate. They sailed thence westerly for a short distance and then northerly, when at the end of fifty leagues they arrived before a land of great forests, ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... entertaining any injurious thought or suspicion, whatever certainty our conjectures or our senses may seem to rely on; and as guarded in our tongue! We commit these faults only because in our hearts we are devoid of that true charity and simplicity, whereof St. Joseph sets us so eminent an example ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... to the strength and purpose of George Eliot's genius. No supreme literary creator has been devoid of this characteristic, however objective and impersonal he may have been. Homer, Virgil, Dante, Cervantes, Shakspere, Scott, were all earnest ethical teachers. The moral problems of life impressed them profoundly, and they showed a strong personal ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... the two rival generals from whom Napoleon had the most to fear. Two days after his arrival in Paris Napoleon said to Bourrienne, "I believe that I shall have Bernadotte and Moreau against me. But I do not fear Moreau. He is devoid of energy. He prefers military to political power. We shall gain him by the promise of a command. But Bernadotte has Moorish blood in his veins. He is bold and enterprising. He does not like me, and I am ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... perhaps, hardly inclined to make sufficient allowance for her difficulties, and insisted over and over again on the mischief which would arise to her from the habit of surrendering her judgment to these princesses. She told her that, though far from being devoid of virtues and real merit, "they had never succeeded in making themselves loved or esteemed by either their father or the public;[3]" and she added other admonitions which, as they were avowedly suggested by reports ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... beauty, of calm in which she lived, the liking and respect I felt for M. and Madame Darbois, and the free play of intelligence and taste I there discovered, made a deep impression on me and I could not forget. The ordinary life of society, so artificial, so devoid of real interest, this life that eats up hours and weeks and months in futilities, in nothings that come to nothing, all this became suddenly quite burdensome to me. I continuously thought of the adorable child ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... in Julia's body thrilled to mortal shock. She rallied her courage and endurance sternly; she must not betray herself. Anger helped her, for she knew him well enough to know that the situation for him was not devoid of a ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... the winds that blow From every region, to and fro, Devoid of heart, she cannot know The suffering ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... complaisant military chief who should act as his tool and then be cast away. His first choice, Joubert, was killed at the battle of Novi. Moreau seems then to have been looked on with favour; he was a republican, able in warfare and singularly devoid of skill or ambition in political matters. Relying on Moreau, Sieyes continued his intrigues, and after some preliminary fencing gained over to his side the Director Barras. But if we may believe the assertions of the royalist, Hyde de Neuville, Barras ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... see any immediate prospect of a change in such a direction being effected, nevertheless they lessen their interest in, and their respect for, the Crown of England and its attributes, and thus grow up comparatively devoid of any sound patriotism, even to their native country; and, above all, without any touch of that enthusiasm, which is ever ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... be a clear space at the bottom of the cup devoid of tea-leaves, it shows water, and that, in all probability, the letter is coming from abroad. If the symbol of the letter comes very near to a bird flying, it shows a telegram. If the bird is flying towards the consultant ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... cognizant of. It offers music, dim lights, relatively ambitious architecture, eloquence, formality and mystery, the caressing meaninglessness that is at the heart of poetry. Women are far more responsive to such things than men, who are ordinarily quite as devoid of aesthetic sensitiveness as so many oxen. The attitude of the typical man toward beauty in its various forms is, in fact, an attitude of suspicion and hostility. He does not regard a work of art as ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... rising in his seat. "Is it a hold up?" He looked around in all directions. But the desert seemed devoid of human life. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... to yours, for, as I have said, you have never known what life really means—never experienced its hardships, never beheld the bright face of danger, nor tasted the joys of the great free life in the open, the simple daily life devoid of the cares of civilized men, without which the life of a man can never be complete, be he what ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... to be, is taking a step forward. The Dominicans themselves do not escape the operation of this law, but are imitating the Jesuits, their irreconcilable enemies. They hold fiestas in their cloisters, they erect little theaters, they compose poems, because, as they are not devoid of intelligence in spite of believing in the fifteenth century, they realize that the Jesuits are right, and they will still take part in the future of the younger peoples ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... into the room and stopped to look about it. The walls were hung with black velvet, so arranged that windows and doors could be covered also, and the room was absolutely devoid of furniture, save for a low, circular divan in the centre of which stood the crystal sphere, supported, as I saw now, by ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... heartless and headstrong, but I didn't know you were quite so unmanageable and so unkind as this. I appeal to your better nature—for you HAVE a better nature—I'm sure you have a better nature: you're MY son, and you can't be utterly devoid of good impulses. I appeal confidently to your better nature to throw off this unhappy, designing, wicked girl before it is too late! She has made you forget your duty to your mother, but not, I hope, irrevocably. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... ungenial—a stranger might pass it without guessing that a wedding was toward. Except a few rude jests; except that there is an attempt to walk arm-in-arm (it is only an attempt, for they forget to allow for each other's motions); except the Sunday dresses, utterly devoid of taste, what is there to distinguish this day from the rest? There is the drunken carousal, it is true, all the afternoon and evening. There are no fete days in the foreign sense in the English labourer's life. There are the fairs and feasts, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... school of old, called Peripatetics, recommended the moderation of the passions, not their extirpation. The Stoics on the other hand contended that the model man, the sage, should be totally devoid of passions. This celebrated dispute turned largely on the two schools not understanding the same thing by the word passion. Yet not entirely so. There was a residue of real difference, and it came to this. If the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... among themselves, animated by ardent ambition, possessing none of the qualities which constitute the greatness and power of others, devoid of energy, equally wanting in military spirit and in the spirit of association, and respecting neither ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... things are for sale all the time. Scour the market, Matt, and you'll find Cappy Ricks isn't the only damned fool left in the shipping business. My boy, you'd be surprised at the number of so-called business men who are entirely devoid of imagination. Dozens of them still think the war will end this fall, but I'm willing to make a healthy bet that the fall of 1917 still finds them going to it to beat four ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... flushed; his nose—if a sketch of his features be de rigueur for a person of his pretensions—was artistically beautiful enough to have been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hence devoid of those knotty irregularities which often mean power; while the double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth was not without a looseness in its close. Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative mien, or his reflective ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... made of some interest to my friends and neighbor farmers in America as well as to myself. Therefore I beg the English reader to remember that I am addressing to them the notes that I may make by the way, hoping that its incidents and the thoughts it suggests will not be devoid of interest because they are principally intended for the ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... (the Maya) is pure Greek. Who brought the dialect of Homer to America? or who took to Greece that of the Mayas? Greek is the offspring of the Sanscrit. Is Maya? or are they coeval? . . . The Maya is not devoid of words ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... holy Angels love thee, And guard thy bed, and keep A blessed watch above thee. No spirit can come near Nor evil beast to harm thee: Sleep, Sweet, devoid of fear Where nothing ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... not for me at this time, and in this place, to take on myself to flutter before you the well-thumbed pages of Mr. Thackeray's books, and to tell you to observe how full they are of wit and wisdom, how out-speaking, and how devoid of fear or favour; but I will take leave to remark, in paying my due homage and respect to them, that it is fitting that such a writer and such an institution should be brought together. Every writer of fiction, although he may not adopt the dramatic form, writes in effect for the stage. He may ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... stood irresolute. Through the shading spectacles of green his eyes seemed devoid of any expression. His attitude remained unchanged, thumbs in the low-cut pockets of his wide-flapping trousers, shoulders meek ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... suspends animation, for who would work if there was no longer to be any connection between labor and the satisfying of our wants? Political economy has not treated of gifts. It has hence been concluded that it disowns them, and that it is therefore a science devoid of heart. This is a ridiculous accusation. That science which treats of the laws resulting from the reciprocity of services, had no business to inquire into the consequences of generosity with respect to him who receives, nor into its effects, perhaps still more ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... the Telegraph, had conceived it, and Kittrell had worked on it that day in sickness of heart. Every line of this new presentation of Clayton had cut him like some biting acid; but he had worked on, trying to reassure himself with the argument that he was a mere agent, devoid of personal responsibility. But it had been hard, and when Edith, after her custom, had asked to ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... day dawned. The household rose and met at the breakfast-table, devoid of any dread of the morning newspapers. Their talk was like the chirrup of birds. Temple and his father walked away together to chambers, bent upon actual business—upon doing something! I reflected emphatically, and compared them to ships with rudders, while I was at the mercy of wind, tide, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... though not devoid of inconsistencies, which will be apparent to any attentive reader, is craftily expressed; and was well devised to serve the purpose which the writer had obviously in view, namely, to frustrate any appeal which ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... child suddenly left in hands whose reputed severity has thoroughly frightened her; not daring to give offence by silence, but afraid at each word to give yet more fatal offence in speaking. Longer experience of a world in which even the first passion of love is devoid of tenderness—in which asserted equality has long since deprived women of that claim to indulgence which can only rest on acknowledged weakness—taught me but too well the meaning of this fearful, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... unpremeditated nature of the offence may be its extenuation, and that as a faithful picture of travel in regions where excursion trains are still unknown, and Travellers' Guides unpublished, the book may not be found altogether devoid of interest or amusement. Its object is simply to bring before the reader's imagination those scenes and incidents of travel which have already been a source of enjoyment to the writer, and to impart, perhaps, by their description, some portion of the gratification which has been ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... on board to receive the kings duty for anchorage and liberty to trade, all of whom seemed much pleased that we had no Portuguese on board, saying that it was the kings pleasure we should bring none of that nation, whom they considered as a people devoid of truth[331]. They complained of one Francisco de Costa, a servant of Don Antonio, who had often, and particularly the former year, abused their king Amar Malek, promising to bring him certain things out of England which he had never done, and supposed that might be his reason ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... had already shrunk into an inconsiderable knoll upon the plain behind us, before my attention began to be diverted to the companion of my drive. To the eye, he seemed but a diminutive, loutish, well-made country lad, such as the doctor had described, mighty quick and active, but devoid of any culture; and this first impression was with most observers final. What began to strike me was his familiar, chattering talk; so strangely inconsistent with the terms on which I was to be received; and partly from his imperfect enunciation, partly from the sprightly incoherence of the matter, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that," observed the one with spectacles, "and he assured me the fellow seemed absolutely devoid of nerves. Nothing under the sun can bother him. He banks on Jack, and knows the captain has confidence in his work; so you'll see how all the jeering and whooping and stamping on the boards of the grand-stand will fail to upset him. Jack says ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... that the fact of the boxes being filled makes all the difference, I say," continued the officer, "that the man who makes a remark such a the General made, is devoid of judgment." ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... of the women in this region are very pretty and characteristic, and many of the females are themselves not devoid of beauty, as beauty goes among the Mongols. Particularly do I notice one to-day, whose tiny, doll-like extremities are neatly bound with red, blue, and green ribbon; her face is a picture of refinement, her head-dress a marvel of neatness ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... as the floor of the valley itself, shone with a brilliant glare, even in the half light of the sunless day. They were not covered with soil, but seemed rather to be almost entirely metallic, copper in color. The whole visible landscape was devoid of any sign of vegetation, nor was there a single living thing ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... when it came time to part the next morning, and there was a suspicious dampness in the eyes of Mr. Henderson. Bob also, in spite of the happy life he thought lay before him, was not altogether devoid of emotion. He felt the separation more than he ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... is one of the most arduous that an army has ever been called upon to perform, being at a distance of something like 1200 miles from the real base of operations, on the sea, in a climate the conditions of which are trying, and amidst deserts devoid of all resources—even of those few which existed in 1884 when the British forces under Lord Wolseley advanced to Metammeh, and which have since been utterly destroyed by the complete devastation ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... speculation and political action: and he speaks with just reprobation of the preposterous idea in the philosophic politicians of the epoch, that society was at their disposal, independent of its past development, devoid of inherent impulses, and easily capable of being morally regenerated by the mere ...
— Burke • John Morley
... monotony like the exchange of men's and women's hats, are thought to be declining. America may rival that dulness, but in no other country of Europe, to say nothing of the East and Africa, could so colourless a crowd be seen—a mass of people so devoid of character in costume, or of tradition ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... having neither gun nor Maxims, with no roof to its trucks and no shutters to its loopholes, and being in every way inferior to the powerful machines I saw working along the southern frontier. Nevertheless it is a useful means of reconnaissance, nor is a journey in it devoid of interest. An armoured train! The very name sounds strange; a locomotive disguised as a knight-errant; the agent of civilisation in the habiliments of chivalry. Mr. Morley attired as Sir Lancelot would seem scarcely more incongruous. The possibilities of attack ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Strong Room, however, Lord Cochrane was detained for more than three weeks. It was partly underground, devoid of ventilation or necessary warmth, and, according to the testimony of Dr. Buchan, one of the physicians who visited him in it, "rendered extremely damp and unpleasant by the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... day was altogether devoid of interest or event. Overhead, the sun blazing wastefully and thanklessly through a rarefied atmosphere; underfoot the hot, black clay, thirsting for spring rain, and bare except for inedible roley-poleys, coarse ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... curiosity men of every rank and grade of life, of every species of renown. The prosecution was in charge of the United States District Attorney, George Hay—serious, humorless, faithful to Jefferson's interests, and absolutely devoid of the personal authority demanded by so grave a cause. He was assisted by William Wirt, already a brilliant lawyer and possessed of a dazzling elocution, but sadly lacking in the majesty of years. At the head and forefront ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... sense. It may, however, be explained to mean that paradise reaches to the moon, not literally, but figuratively; because, as Isidore says (Etym. xiv, 3), the atmosphere there is "a continually even temperature"; and in this respect it is like the heavenly bodies, which are devoid of opposing elements. Mention, however, is made of the moon rather than of other bodies, because, of all the heavenly bodies, the moon is nearest to us, and is, moreover, the most akin to the earth; hence it is observed to be overshadowed by clouds so as to be almost obscured. Others say that paradise ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... about his low extraction are alike devoid of foundation. His family was poor, and he was educated at the public expense, an advantage of which many honourable families availed themselves. A memorial addressed by his father, Charles Buonaparte, to the Minister of War states that his fortune had been reduced by the failure ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... [2] A totality of being is not the same as a personal God, but the very contrary. Nor is it any consolation to be told that this totality, though not personal, is "super-personal." Such a super-personal Absolute or Whole, to quote Dr. Ballard's penetrating criticism, "is devoid of just those elements which for human experience constitute personality. To our power of vision it matters nothing whether we say that the ultra-violet rays of the spectrum are super-visible or invisible. The pertinent truth is that they are not visible. So, too, that which ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the existence of the soul after death in the Biblical writings. All the rewards and punishments spoken of in the Bible, they say, refer to this world. His answer offers nothing new. Judah Halevi had already tried to account for this phenomenon, besides insisting that altogether devoid of allusion to the future world the Bible is not. Ibn Daud follows in Halevi's footsteps (cf. above, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... miles and miles of country without passing one hut; and when in the distance a human habitation appeared and gave promise of warmth and food, they found upon approach that it was deserted and devoid of everything. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... requested Signor Polizzi to allow me to examine the manuscript of Clerk Alexander, stating on what grounds I ventured to consider myself worthy of so great a favour. I offered at the same time to put at his disposal several unpublished texts in my own possession, not devoid of interest. I begged him to favour me with a prompt reply, and below my signature I wrote down all ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... a man devoid of honour, I shall not hesitate, for the Manor Cartier has been the home of domestic peace, and madame, who came to us a stranger, deserves well of the people of that ancient abode of chivalry- ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... limited, interest; because it was no outcome of feudalism or ecclesiasticism; because it has no tincture of chivalrous or mystic piety; because it implies no metaphysical determination; because it is pagan in the sense of being natural; because it is devoid of allegory, and, finally, because it ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... that all who approached Shelley displayed to yield to his dictate is a practical testimony to these qualities; for his earnestness was apt to take a tone of command so generous, so free, so simple, as to be utterly devoid of offence, and yet to constitute him a sort of tyrant over all who came ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... without any manufactured part save the thick lid that closes the orifice. Thus protected by the prudent industry of their mother, well out of reach in their distant, solid retreats, the Anthophora's larvae are devoid of the glandular apparatus designed for secreting silk. They therefore never spin a cocoon, but lie naked in their cells, whose inner surface has the polish ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... with her head tipped back in pillows; her usually gentle, soft old face looked hard and lined, and was a dark red, and the scanty gray hair, brushed back mercilessly from the temples, and devoid of the usual puffs and transformations, made her look her full sixty years. Her eyes were half-open, but she did not move them, her lips seemed very dry, and occasionally she muttered restlessly, and a third nurse, bending above her, leaned anxiously ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... wits' end. It was hopeless to treat him as a rational being. His wife was induced to accept a pension to leave him, and he himself was put in charge of a keeper. Several times he had to be kept in close confinement. He was, however, by no means devoid of brains, and in the autumn of 1741 he had sufficiently recovered to be entered as a student at the University of Leyden. His allowance was L300 a year, which he found so insufficient for the indulgence of his tastes that he was soon considerably ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... necessity, just as certain sins and certain crimes are still considered to be inevitable in the world; the alternative of avoiding them has never occurred to any one. Class-rooms have black desks, and bare, gray walls, more devoid of ornament than those of a mortuary chamber; this is to the end that the starved and famishing spirit of the child may "accept" the indigestible intellectual food which the teacher bestows upon it. In other words, every distracting element has to ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... too, had a long string of admirers, and no family acquaintance was more eagerly sought after than that of the Goodfellows. Suburbopolis, however, was by no means devoid of a galaxy of feminine beauty and well-developed male forms, who might have been seen of an evening leaving the handsome villas and terraces around the Park (for which ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... demeanor always frank and open, although he was quiet and did not often talk unless accosted. His voice was low and pleasant, and he had no bravado or swagger about him. His eye was light in color and singularly devoid of expression. Two features gave him a sinister look—his forehead, which was low and brutish, and his eye, which was cold and fish-like. His was a strong, well-keyed nervous organization. He was quick as a cat when in action, ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... reason for this disparity is that with the development of the mind of man throughout the ages there was conceived also his self-made religious systems, based on a subjective interpretation of the universe, and not on an objective one, devoid of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... for papa, He snaps when I offer him his offspring, Just as he snaps when I poke a bit of stick at him, Because he is irascible this morning, an irascible tortoise Being touched with love, and devoid of fatherliness. ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... delineation of Michiella's magic sway over him. (Leonardo, in fact, is your small modern Italian Machiavelli, overmatched in cunning, for the reason that he is always at a last moment the victim of his poor bit of heart or honesty: he is devoid of the inspiration of great patriotic aims.) If Michiella (Austrian intrigue) has any love, it is for such a tool. She cannot afford to lose him. She pleads for him; and, as Camilla is silent on his account, the cynical magnanimity ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... drawn by an elderly horse devoid of ambition or ideals. His head was sunk in dejection. He was gray at the temples, and slouched in the shafts in a loafing attitude, one forefoot negligently crossed in front of the other. He aroused himself reluctantly ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... without depth of soul: Rousseau was serious, fresh, full of pathos. Voltaire either had no creed, or thought one unimportant, and was actuated by malignant hatred against Judaism and Christianity: Rousseau had a firm creed, and spoke with decency of the religion which he rejected. Voltaire was devoid of taste for ancient literature, witty under a mask, a selfish sycophant to the ancient political regime: Rousseau never denied the authorship of his writings, was democratic in tastes, and was the means of exciting a love for antiquity. Finally rejecting ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... once. Somehow his brief words reassured her. She felt no agitation, was scarcely aware of shock. In his presence even the shadow of Death became devoid of all superstitious fears. In some fashion he ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... provisional Assembly of 1871-1875, but amended and amplified to some extent by the national parliament in subsequent years. Unlike the majority of constitutions that went before it in France, it is not orderly in its arrangement or comprehensive in its contents. It is devoid of anything in the nature of a bill of rights,[461] and concerning the sovereignty of the people it has nothing to say. Even in respect to many essential aspects of governmental organization and practice it is mute. It contains no provision respecting annual budgets, and it leaves untouched ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... certainly, even when pagans, a very religious people; otherwise how could they have embraced the doctrines of Christianity with that ardent eagerness which shall come under our consideration in the next chapter? A nation utterly devoid of faith of any kind is not apt to be moved, as were the Irish, perhaps beyond all other nations, at the first sight of supernatural truths, such as those of Christianity. And so little were they attached to paganism, so visibly imbued with reverence for the supreme ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... been her mother who spoke. 'Tis certain no person ever had the appearance of sweet simplicity more than Elizabeth Gunning; but whether 'twas wholly devoid of art—Ah, well, shall we dissect the rose? Best to enjoy ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... of the Isles, and regrets that he was not satisfied with recovering his own heritage of Ross, but was tempted by the pillage of Aberdeen, and he speaks of the Lowland army as "the Scots on the other side".[23] His narrative in the History is devoid of any racial feeling whatsoever, and in his Lives of the Bishops of Aberdeen he omits any mention of Harlaw at all. We have laid stress upon the evidence of Boece because in Aberdeen, if anywhere, the memory of the "Celtic ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... needless for us to say that these women are entirely devoid of personal attractions. They are generally thin maiden ladies, or women who perhaps have been disappointed in their endeavors to appropriate the breeches and the rights of their unlucky lords; the first ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "decarnate" means "away from the physical body," or "out of the flesh;" the term being the opposite of "incarnate," meaning "clothed with flesh, or embodied in flesh." We may also state here that the teachings of most philosophies of the life after death hold that the decarnate human soul is not entirely devoid of a body, but rather occupies a body composed of some ethereal substance; this ethereal body being called the "astral body," ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... to be done?" demanded Ogilvy, playing nervously with a gold pencil on the polished table. He was one of those Americans who in a commercial atmosphere become prematurely white, and today his boyish, smooth-shaven face was almost as devoid of colour as his hair. Even Leonard Dickinson showed anxiety, which was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Doctrine he presents, Although to Me it is Devoid of Sense. My unbelief in what he says does Make My Wife's Love for him only ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Huffy Husband • Mary B. Little
... articles in any place without alleging specific information. These writs were lawful and were specially justifiable in time of war. Their lawfulness was unsuccessfully disputed before the superior court of Massachusetts by a lawyer named Otis, an eloquent speaker, singularly devoid of moderation. His speech, in which rhetoric is more conspicuous than a knowledge of law, attacked the commercial legislation of parliament generally; it was much admired, and has been regarded by some Americans as the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... choice, further favoured a stock-model treatment. Such a comedy almost of necessity rejected the lyrical element in the older comedy—the chorus—and confined itself from the first to conversation, or at most recitation; it was devoid not of the political element only, but of all true passion and of all poetical elevation. The pieces judiciously made no pretence to any grand or really poetical effect: their charm resided primarily in furnishing occupation for the intellect, not only through ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... we are not so reckless of our true interest, so blind to utter helplessness—not to say so devoid of humanity, as to entertain the hostile designs, or to cherish the fiendish passions, which it seems have been, by the unthinking, so ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... have been in human nature, even at its lowest stages. A savage who is capable of living under such an organization, and of freely submitting to rules which continually clash with his personal desires, certainly is not a beast devoid of ethical principles and knowing no rein to its passions. But the fact becomes still more striking if we consider the immense antiquity of the clan organization. It is now known that the primitive Semites, the Greeks of Homer, the prehistoric Romans, the Germans ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... me say, rather, the second little occurrence that still lives in my memory, was entirely devoid of dramatic elements, but color again came to my assistance. This time it was yellow, instead of red. During the interim year my father made frequent journeys to Berlin. Once, say, in the month of November, the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... oval and broad; the outer margin convex, reflected backwards, and forming a thick lobe terminating close to the angle of the mouth; tragus short and curved inwards; muzzle devoid of hair; ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... beyond the confines of Thoresby Park, is one of the most placid and sleepy places I know. The stuccoed houses are perhaps devoid of picturesqueness, but the shallow Meden, which runs quietly beside the roadway, is crystal-clear, and from the wilderness on the farther bank one often sees pert black water hens slip gently from the shelter of the long ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... came right alongside at once in the most plucky manner, urged on as the men were by their leader, who seemed utterly devoid of fear. But the other boat rowed right round by the stern, and its occupants were damped on finding that unless they could mount by the fore or mizzen-chains, there was apparently no means of reaching the ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Platte, again, even away in here; briefly paused at a military post, and entered upon a stretch of sun-baked, reddish-white, dusty desert utterly devoid of vegetation. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... old chief, thinking that perhaps, his dear little people found life dull and devoid of incident with him, asked them if they were aweary of him. They, with golden truth indeed, answered that they had never been so merry, but that they were anxious as to their children at home. He answered that they were indeed right, and that the next morning they ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... to the pose and structure of the natural body, a delicate tact in the definition of muscle and articulation, an acute feeling for the qualities of flesh and texture. None of the creations of this period, moreover, are devoid of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... walls and bare flooring. The chairs and sofas are all cane-backed and cane-bottomed. Tables are not plentiful, and curtains are employed as adornments for some of the doors instead of the windows, which are also devoid of glass. An elegant gas chandelier is suspended from one of the cross-beams of the sloping roof, and a couple of unserviceable console tables, with their corresponding pier-glasses, complete the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... systematically repeats in a nonsensical fashion what another character whispers in his ear. If you fall asleep with people talking round you, you sometimes find that what they say gradually becomes devoid of meaning, that the sounds get distorted, as it were, and recombine in a haphazard fashion to form in your mind the strangest of meanings, and that you are reproducing between yourself and the different speakers ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... through a clear sea. We would have given all the tea in China for a lump of ice to melt into water, but no ice was within our reach. Three bergs were in sight and we pulled towards them, hoping that a trail of brash would be floating on the sea to leeward; but they were hard and blue, devoid of any sign of cleavage, and the swell that surged around them as they rose and fell made it impossible for us to approach closely. The wind was gradually hauling ahead, and as the day wore on the rays of the sun beat fiercely down from a cloudless sky on pain- ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Deutschland black bread to be divided among ten of us. This bread was made from ground vegetables mixed with rye flour. If you read Gerard's "Four Years in Germany" you will see that samples of this food were examined by a specialist and declared to be almost devoid of food value. It was planned to reduce our numbers by a ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... presence of others who could solve the problem with relative ease or accuracy. In such a situation the individual is hampered in his thinking by the presence of those who are more expert than he. His thinking is therefore futile for the present difficulty and is devoid ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... they instinctively clung to civilization was their regard for law and reverence for courts of justice. Yet these were of the simplest character and totally devoid of any adventitious accessories. An early jurist of the country writes: "I was Circuit Prosecuting Attorney at the time of the trials at the falls of Fall Creek, where Pendleton now stands. Four of the prisoners were convicted of murder, and three of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... mental condition and attitude of the officer who came down the hatchway. If he happened to be a humane person he would regret the loss of life, and show it, probably, by his actions. On the other hand, if he should be devoid of the finer feelings, and be a mere slave to duty, it is more than likely that he would shake his head discouragingly, to learn that the torpedo failed in its mission," was the captain's final word ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... to himself and his sister. The Queen had asked for this, as a test of Swedenborg's veracity; and she became pale with astonishment when every minute particular of her interview with her brother was reported to her. Swedenborg was a sedate man, apparently devoid of any wish to excite a sensation, engrossed in scientific pursuits, and remarkable for the orderly habits of his mind. The intelligent and enlightened German, Nicolai, in the later years of his life, was accustomed to find himself in the midst of persons whom he knew perfectly well, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... promenaders on the beach, and ensconce ourselves in the snug parlour of "mine host" Paddy White, whom we used to denominate the Falstaff of the island. Though from the land of shillelaghs and whiskey, Paddy is entirely devoid of that gunpowder temperament which characterizes his country; and his genuine humour, ample obesity, and originality of delivery, entitle him to honourable identification with "Sir John." Now, by the soul of Momus! who ever ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... have been framed on the main; they are lathed and plastered within, handsomely painted and boarded without; each has a cellar underneath, built with stones fetched also from the main: they are all of a similar construction and appearance; plain, and entirely devoid of exterior or interior ornament. I observed but one which was built of bricks, belonging to Mr.——, but like the rest it is unadorned. The town stands on a rising sandbank, on the west side of the harbour, which is very safe from all winds. There ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... d'Orleans, by telling him that the prisoner had uttered nothing which concerned him, and by representing the services he did M. d'Orleans with the King. Like a sagacious man, D'Argenson saw the madness of popular anger devoid of all foundation, and which could not hinder M. d'Orleans from being a very considerable person in France, during a minority that—the age of the King showed to be pretty near. He took care, therefore, to avail himself ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... seer who advised him to do so may have been a man of high integrity. They acted according to their beliefs. And so in the Middle Ages and afterwards men of kindly temper and the purest zeal for morality were absolutely devoid of mercy where heresy was suspected. Hatred of heresy was a sort of infectious germ, generated by the ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... were now presumed to be desirous to maintain the old republican form of government, and were anxious with more or less sincerity according to the character of the men. Cato and Brutus were thoroughly in earnest, not seeing, however, that the old form might be utterly devoid of the old spirit. Pompey was disposed to take the same direction, thinking that all must be well in Rome as long as he was possessed of high office, grand names, and the appanages of Dictatorship. Cicero, too, was anxious, loyally anxious, but anxious without confidence. ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... and no glass remained in those upstairs. In a room that had once been a kitchen and was now labelled in chalk "Officers' Mess" were an old bedstead, two mattresses, a wooden table, and three rickety chairs; but for these, and a piano in the dining-room upstairs, the house was absolutely devoid of furniture. Even the piano, which must have twanged out the tunes of at least three nations since the war began, had ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... dispassionate of men. The conduct of his life was guided by a philosophy based on Combe's "Constitution of Man," and I used to feel that the law of the land was a potent instrument in shaping his paternal affections. His method of seeking a wife was so far unique that it may not be devoid of interest, even at this date. From careful study he had learned that the age at which a man should marry was twenty-five. A healthy and well-endowed offspring should be one of the main objects in view in entering ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... boatmen shouted one to the other, calling for assistance. When I saw them thus dismayed, my horse being an intelligent animal, I arranged the bridle on his neck and took the end of the halter with my left hand. The horse, like most of his kind, being not devoid of reason, seemed to have an instinct of my intention; for having turned his face towards the fresh grass, I meant that he should swim and draw me after him. Just at that moment a great wave broke over the boat. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... was suited more for an age of mystical tendencies. Why, will you believe it, sir, my own lawyer, the man to whom I paid eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents for championing my cause, told me the defence was rubbish, devoid even of literary merit. What chance could a man have if his lawyer ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... living, and also the misnamed dead. In dreamlessness the true seer turns the light of consciousness back upon itself and in its own light sees the gloom of nothingness. Imagine for a moment the absolute non-existence of the vast world devoid of sight and sound. What remains a vast space. Imagine the vast space to be void of ether and the subtle seeds of creation. Perfect stillness reigns supreme over the ocean of universal space, beginningless and endless. What supports it? It is supportless, soundless, ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... was stimulated by ambition; and he might reasonably aspire, by the free suffrage of the Roman senate, to the throne of a detested and despicable rival. Valentinian, who supposed that every human breast was devoid, like his own, of friendship and gratitude, had imprudently admitted among his guards several domestics and followers of Aetius. Two of these, of Barbarian race were persuaded to execute a sacred and honorable duty, by punishing with death the assassin of their patron; and their intrepid courage ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... she left him, and as she returned to Orchard Street in the brougham, she applied to him every term of reproach she could bring to mind. He was selfish, and a coward, and utterly devoid of all feeling of family honour. He was a prig, and unmanly, and false. A real cousin would have burst out into a passion and have declared himself ready to seize Lord Rufford by the throat and shake him into instant matrimony. But this man, through whose veins water was ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... The hardiest and strongest became helplessly crippled. About the same time the strength of their draught animals began to fail. The small supply of provender they could carry with them had given out. The winter-bleached prairie straw proved devoid of nourishment; and they could only keep them from starving by seeking for the "browse," as it is called, this being the green bark and tender buds and branches of the cottonwood and other stunted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... secondly, from the pleasure and pain stimuli, which constitute the sole psychic quality produced in the transformation of energy within the apparatus. All other processes in the system, even those in the foreconscious, are devoid of any psychic quality, and are therefore not objects of consciousness inasmuch as they do not furnish pleasure or pain for perception. We shall have to assume that those liberations of pleasure and pain automatically regulate the outlet of the occupation processes. But in order to make possible ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... the horses and pontoons and waggons were disembarked, and the R.E. and Field Ambulances went off to enormous sheds on the wharf. We went off in a taxi in batches of five to the Convent de St Jeanne d'Arc, an enormous empty school, totally devoid of any furniture except crucifixes! Luckily the school washhouse has quite good basins and taps, and we are all camping out, three in a room, to sleep on the floor, as our camp kit isn't available. No one ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... it been possible, was now useless, as there was neither hill nor rising ground of any kind within the compass of our view, which was only bounded by the horizon in every quarter, entirely devoid of timber except a few diminutive gums on the very edge of the stream, might be so termed. The water in the bed of the lagoon, as it might now be properly denominated, was stagnant; its breadth about twenty feet, and the heads of grass growing in ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... an artful stroke.(1054) The ministers, devoid of all management in the House of Commons, consented that he should be heard at the bar of the House, and appointed to-morrow, forgetting the election for Middlesex is to come on next Thursday: one would think they were impatient to advance riots. Last Monday Wilkes demanded to examine Lord ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... those delightful women peculiar to England, restful to look at, restful to know. Her thick, glossy brown hair was coiled neatly in plaits, no matter what the fashion; her skin, devoid of powder, did not shine, even on the hottest day; her smile was a benison, and her teeth ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... another. Such a change of loyalty is, in times of war, called treason, and naturally evokes the resentment of the deserted side. Even as impartial judges, we are properly suspicious of such action, as denoting a vacillating nature, devoid of the true spirit of loyalty, or as indicative of a selfishness that follows its own personal advantage. And so far as that suspicion is well founded, we must condemn the traitor. But certainly, if a man experiences ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the reputation of being a good linguist. This reputation was soon confirmed by distinction in his classes, especially in Latin and Greek. Though his advantages had been superior to most of us, and his mental calibre was of a high order, he was always humble, utterly devoid of pride or vanity. No doubt he was firm as a rock on any question of conviction, but he was tender in the extreme, and full of sympathy with the struggling. He was such a strong man all round that he could afford to give every one justice, and such a gentleman ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... have the blinkers ever blotting out the vision of the world: to strain every sinew, and have the service accepted thanklessly; to be tortured with discomfort, and to work absolutely without reward—it was a life devoid of even the meanest compensations: loathsome, and in ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... remove their waste. For most of our cells lie at a distance from the stomach, lungs, and kidney. But in a small animal the circulatory system is often unnecessary and fails. Breathing and excretion take place through the whole surface of the body. The body of the frog is devoid of scales, so that the blood is separated from the surrounding water only by a thin membrane, and it breathes and excretes to a certain extent ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... photographs show rather the shape of his head, like that of an ancient philosopher. His varied, frank, gracious conversation, entirely that of a gentleman, reminded me of that of Oxford and Cambridge savants. The general tone was like his books, as is the case with sincere men, devoid of every trace of charlatanism. He expressed himself in English easily understood by a foreigner, more like that of Bulwer or Macaulay, than that of Dickens or Carlyle. I asked him for news of the committee, of ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... bear. Then there is the Indian Fig, with branches like battledores, joined by their ends; the Epiphyllum and Phyllocactus, with flattened leaf-like stems; the columnar spiny Cereus, with deeply channelled stems and the appearance of immense candelabra. Totally devoid of leaves, and often skeleton-like in appearance, these plants have a strange look about them, which is suggestive of some fossilised forms of vegetation belonging to the past ages of the mastodon, the elk, and the dodo, rather than to ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... of St Anthony are not very imposing, although not devoid of beauty. You cannot see the whole of the falls at one view, as they are divided, like those of Niagara, by a large island, about one third of the distance from the eastern shore. The river which, as we ascended, poured through a bed below the strata of calcareous rock, now rises above ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... delineations with a flint point on ivory and bone, of the mammoth, reindeer, and horse, are so masterly that these men stand forth as the spiritual ancestors of Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. And what is also remarkable is that the race which succeeded, that which discovered the use of metal, was devoid of the artistic sense, and their attempts at delineation are like the scribbling of ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... visiting various wrecks in succession. In all this work the value of the steam-tug is very conspicuous, for it can tow its boat again and again to windward of a wreck, and renew the effort to save life in cases where, devoid of such aid, lifeboats would be compelled to give in after the failure of their first attempt, in consequence of their being ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... pine away in her new place. The house where she had taken service as a maid of all work was what servants call "a barrack." A spendthrift and glutton, devoid of order as of money, as is often the case with women engaged in the occupations that depend upon chance, and in the problematical methods of gaining a livelihood in vogue in Paris, the depilator, who was almost always involved in a lawsuit of some sort, paid but little ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... a Society which has been caluminated as devoid of all sense of religion, law or morality, to sympathize with one whom calumny of a similar kind is about to drive from his native land, a land which he has adorned and enlightened in almost every branch of liberal literature, and of useful philosophy. The emigration of Dr. Priestley will ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... Parisians of the fifteenth century, and to enter with them, jostled, elbowed, pulled about, into that immense hall of the palace, which was so cramped on that sixth of January, 1482, the spectacle would not be devoid of either interest or charm, and we should have about us only things that were so old that they would ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... only pollywogs and minnows passed unadventurous lives, the mill race had dwindled to a trickling stream grown thick with watercress and yellow lilies, and what had once been the centre of vigorous and romantic life was now a back water eddy devoid alike of movement and ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... years: but at fifty, alas! or still later, where would he be? From the great Sabbath where thronged the people of far villages, he would be bringing home a strange woman for his youthful mistress, a woman hard, heartless, devoid of ruth, who would rob her of her son, her seat by the fire, her bed, of the very house which ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... which powers and the adoption of which methods would be denounced as the worst of crimes, even made the basis of an impeachment, should the mass of the populace be dissatisfied with his proceedings. It is easy to find fault, easy in positions devoid of public responsibility to think we see how errors might have been avoided, how powers might have been more successfully employed and greater results achieved. But the American Executive is surrounded ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... along at the rate of some five knots an hour. The minor damages had all been made good, excepting that done to the saloon skylight by the fall of the mizen-mast, and upon this job the carpenter, who was an ambitious man in his own way and not altogether devoid of taste, was taxing his skill to the utmost in an effort to make the new skylight both a stronger and a more handsome piece of work than its predecessor. The barometer was slowly but steadily rising; and everything seemed ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... was singularly devoid of action. First, there was a creature, like a huge black marten or a short-legged black fox, standing at a safe distance, while, partly hidden under a log, with hind quarters and tail only exposed, was a large porcupine. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... costumes of the women in this region are very pretty and characteristic, and many of the females are themselves not devoid of beauty, as beauty goes among the Mongols. Particularly do I notice one to-day, whose tiny, doll-like extremities are neatly bound with red, blue, and green ribbon; her face is a picture of refinement, her head-dress a marvel of neatness and skill, and her whole manner and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... you, a rich treasury of holy runes, but the maidenly staff of my strength the hero took from me, before whom I now bow. Despoiled of wisdom, though filled with desire to serve; rich in love, but devoid of power, oh, despise not the poor lover who can only wish ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... there is no way of access except by scaling the mud-wall: the vines are planted in trenches; a row on each side, and allowed to run over the elevated spaces between the trenches. In one garden pomegranates, a pomaceous tree, and mulberries, whose fruit is now ripe but quite devoid of flavour, occurred. A Zygophyllum, a beautiful Capparis, an Anthemis, Marrubium, Centaureoides 2, occurred as weeds, with Plantago, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... keeping with the masterful emphasis of those features. Her eyes stared frankly and unblushingly at the world, only softened at intervals by the glasses which were so used as to make them a most effective adjunct of her conversation. Socially, she was absolutely devoid of weakness or of shame. She found society extremely interesting, and she always struck straight for the desirable things in it, making short work of all those delicate tentative processes of acquaintanceship by which men and women ordinarily ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of popes and priests had led men to look upon the character of God, and even of Christ, as stern, gloomy, and forbidding. The Saviour was represented as so far devoid of sympathy with man in his fallen state that the mediation of priests and saints must be invoked. Those whose minds had been enlightened by the word of God longed to point these souls to Jesus as their compassionate, loving Saviour, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... irregularity of which seemed justified by Biblical example, for despite a century and a half of study and speculation the secret of Biblical verse had not been solved and to most critics even the Psalms appeared devoid of any pattern. Indeed, Cowley had declared that in their freedom of structure and abruptness of transition the odes of Pindar were like nothing so much as the ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... from his arms and his kisses, her heart heavy with grief because she longed to love and had nothing to love. She was beginning to suffer from the cold void that is formed about a woman by an unattractive, unfascinating girlhood, by a girlhood devoid of beauty and sympathetic charm. She could see that she aroused a sort of compassion with her long nose, her yellow complexion, her angular figure, her thin body. She felt that she was ugly, and that her ugliness was made repulsive by her ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... feature; too many courses, constructed, as I had observed, after photographs printed in the back pages of women's magazines; doubtless they possessed a certain artistic value as sights for the eye, but considered as food they were devoid of any inner meaning. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... it may wish to be, is taking a step forward. The Dominicans themselves do not escape the operation of this law, but are imitating the Jesuits, their irreconcilable enemies. They hold fiestas in their cloisters, they erect little theaters, they compose poems, because, as they are not devoid of intelligence in spite of believing in the fifteenth century, they realize that the Jesuits are right, and they will still take part in the future of the younger ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... architectural splendors, amid the bareness and baldness of the New World cities; for the grandeur of its ancient art, amid the poverty of the America of that day; for its impassioned music, in a land almost devoid of musical culture; and she had longed for the beautiful, sensuous, idle life of its people, through all the strain of a strenuous and overworked existence. Her vision had been fair, and at first she was much disappointed. In artistic or architectural magnificence ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... He was interested in his own thoughts, however, and went on—for, if he had been in the habit of stopping when his hearers failed to understand, or when they misunderstood, either he would have been silent most of the time in company or his conversation would have been as petty and narrow and devoid of originality or imagination as is the mentality of most human beings—as is the talk and reading that impress them as ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... not happy; she had been married fifteen years, and her fireside was devoid of a cradle. During the first years she had rejoiced at not having a child. Where could she have found time to occupy herself with a baby? Business engrossed her attention; she had no leisure to amuse herself with trifles. Maternity seemed to her a luxury for rich women; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the sense of touch. Not that you would like to encourage this bit of impudence after a look into his devil-may-care eyes; but you might easily imagine something much stronger than brown wrapping paper and not quite so passive as burnt clay. His clothes fit him loosely and yet were graciously devoid of the bagginess which characterises the appearance of extremely young men whose frames are not fully set and whose joints are still parading through the last stages of college development. This fellow, you could tell by looking at him, had been out of college from two to five ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... came, and, with address which lady Catherine would perhaps have admired, Archibald entered into conversation with the young baronet, if conversation that might be called, which consisted of a species of fashionable dialect, devoid of sense, and destitute of any pretence to wit. To Forester this dialect was absolutely unintelligible: after he had listened to it with sober contempt for a few minutes, he pulled Henry away, saying, "Come, don't let ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... practising an unfamiliar act of any sort makes it more pleasant for a time only, after which continued practice makes it automatic and neither pleasant nor unpleasant. The smoothest reactions, which should give the highest degree of pleasant feeling according to the theory, are simply devoid of ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... throw off the soul-images, afterwards going out towards them in a mood of speculative inquiry. The passive temperament, however, centrifugal and sensitive, most frequently feels first and sees afterwards, the visionary process being wholly devoid of speculation or mental activity. The one sees and thinks, the other feels and sees that, in a word, is the distinction between the ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... laying on of hands; but of febrile disturbances, an exact, though erroneous explanation is given, and paralysis of the hind legs of an animal is correctly referred to the pressure of a tumour on the spinal cord. Some of its aphorisms are not devoid of amusing significance: "Any disease, provided the bowels remain open; any kind of pain, provided the heart remain unaffected; any kind of uneasiness, provided the head be not attacked; all manner of evils, except it ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... used, has reference to the very nature of God as He is in Himself—that attribute which leads God always to do right. Justice, as an attribute of God, is devoid of all passion or caprice; it is vindicative not vindictive. And so the Righteousness and Justice of the God of Israel was made to stand out prominently as contrasted with the ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... maddening degree. There was absolutely nothing he could discover to occupy his mind. If there were books aboard, none was in evidence; beyond the report of Mr. Stranger's Manhattan night's entertainment the walls were devoid of reading matter; and a round of the picture gallery proved a diversion weariful ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... bald little blacksmith's apprentice as he is, having made some money and got out of durance, washes and dresses himself as a bridegroom and marries his master's daughter. What will be the issue of such marriages? Will they not be vile and bastard, devoid of truth and nature? 'They will.' Small, then, is the remnant of genuine philosophers; there may be a few who are citizens of small states, in which politics are not worth thinking of, or who have been detained by Theages' bridle of ill health; for my own case of the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... afforded by existence in the companionship of a being able to awaken the transports he now experienced. A new world seemed suddenly opened to him, full of love, hope, sunshine, of which he and Aveline were the sole inhabitants. Hitherto his life had been devoid of any great emotion. The one feeling latterly pervading it had been a sense of deep wrong, coupled with the thirst of vengeance. No tenderer influence had softened his almost rugged nature; and his breast continued arid as the desert. Now the ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... significant that a European or English business man rarely reaches middle age devoid of acquaintance with other matters; he always lets the breezes from other worlds of thought blow through his ideas, with the result that when he is ready to retire from business he has other interests to fall back ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... fancy or imagination in a way always beautiful, often lofty or even sublime. Failing this, there may be verse, rime, and meter, but not poetry. There is much in literature that is beautiful and sublime in thought and artistic in construction, which is yet not poetry, because quite devoid of the element of song, whereby poetry differs from the most lofty, beautiful, or impassioned prose. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... that the Erewhonians are superstitious, on account of the views which they hold of their professed gods, and their entirely anomalous and inexplicable worship of Ydgrun, a worship at once the most powerful, yet most devoid of formalism, that I ever met with; but in practice things worked better than might have been expected, and the conflicting claims of Ydgrun and the gods were arranged by unwritten compromises (for the most part in Ydgrun's favour), which in ninety-nine cases ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... things on either side of him while he stared straight forward. Even in that dark corner you could see they had the alligator-hue that one associates with cruelty. He had the massive shoulders and forward-stooping position as he sat cross-legged on the seat that suggest deliberate purpose devoid of hurry. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... small that it might as well have had none; and it had a mouth, too, but that was so capacious that the half of it would have been more than enough for a baby double the size. As for its eyes, they were large and black—black as two coals—and devoid of all expression save that ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Professor, were mates on a ship training school, which sailed from New York one year before. A terrific explosion at sea cast them adrift in mid-Pacific Ocean, and after five days of suffering they were cast ashore on an apparently uncharted island, without any food, and entirely devoid of any tools, implements ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... city; but it has none of the graces of architecture, which ought to keep pace with the refining manners of a people—or the outside of the house will disgrace the inside, giving the beholder an idea of overgrown wealth devoid of taste. Large square wooden houses offend the eye, displaying more than Gothic barbarism. Huge Gothic piles, indeed, exhibit a characteristic sublimity, and a wildness of fancy peculiar to the period when they ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... one rather vivid experience, my career as attendant at the targets was devoid of any particular incident. One afternoon, when I had just finished my preparations for the shooting, Captain Clifford Lloyd came up to me leading an iron-grey horse. "Come here," says he, "and mount this steed; and take her a mile or two down the beach." ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... scarcely make his small pipe heard in the thunder of those great organ tones. In the second place his verses were never written to please the public at all. They were written only for fine scholars, and even the titles of many of them cannot be explained by a person devoid of some Greek culture. So the little book, which appeared quite early in the Victorian Age, was soon forgotten. Being forgotten it ran out of print and disappeared. Then somebody remembered that it had existed. I have told you ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... a Lady of Quality and a Person of Inferior Station." Dublin, 1784. Though by no means devoid of "nonsense and romance," the little book is not altogether undeserving of Colonel Digby's encomium. The story is very slight, and concludes, quite unnecessarily and rather unexpectedly, with the death of the gentleman, just as ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... sand, which, drifted by the wind, has, in many instances, completely filled the narrow valleys. Upon either side of the Nile are vestiges of ancient forts. The land appears as though it bore the curse of Heaven; misery, barrenness, and the heat of a furnace are its features. The glowing rocks, devoid of a trace of vegetation, reflect the sun with an intensity that must be felt to be understood. The miserable people who dwell in villages upon the river's banks snatch every sandbank from the retiring stream, and immediately plant their scanty garden with melons, gourds, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... us to help them. The boatmen shouted one to the other, calling for assistance. When I saw them thus dismayed, my horse being an intelligent animal, I arranged the bridle on his neck and took the end of the halter with my left hand. The horse, like most of his kind, being not devoid of reason, seemed to have an instinct of my intention; for having turned his face towards the fresh grass, I meant that he should swim and draw me after him. Just at that moment a great wave broke over the boat. Ascanio shrieked out: "Mercy, my father; save me," and wanted to throw ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... lost a father has still the protection of friends, and of the law; he is something, and can do something,—has acknowledged rights and position; the slave has none. The law regards him, in every respect, as devoid of rights as a bale of merchandise. The only possible acknowledgment of any of the longings and wants of a human and immortal creature, which are given to him, comes to him through the sovereign and irresponsible will of his master; ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... if Cousin Betty would have allowed herself to be dressed like other people; if, like the women of Paris, she had been accustomed to wear each fashion in its turn, she would have been presentable and acceptable, but she preserved the stiffness of a stick. Now a woman devoid of all the graces, in Paris simply does not exist. The fine but hard eyes, the severe features, the Calabrian fixity of complexion which made Lisbeth like a figure by Giotto, and of which a true Parisian would have taken advantage, above all, her strange way of dressing, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... they ceased to trouble Germany; death relieved Otto of his most dangerous rivals, Archbishop Frederic of Mainz and his own son, Duke Liutolf. Then, in 960, arrived the long-delayed call from Rome. John XII, a dissipated youth of twenty-two, the son of Alberic (died 954) but devoid of his father's ability, invoked the aid of Germany to protect the temporal possessions against Berengar. Otto required no second summons. Descending upon Italy, he expelled his vassal, assumed the Italian crown at Pavia (961) and ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... necessity for observing strict economy in their erection, precluded picturesque grouping and well-studied designs. The quaint but dangerous architecture of 1666 was rapidly replaced by rows of plain, monotonous brick buildings, devoid of artistic merit. In Cheapside and some of the more important thoroughfares the houses erected during this period were of a somewhat better character, taller, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... himself had helped to commit. He had had no compunction about the robbery, for he had not been instructed in the great principles of truth and justice; nor would he, therefore, perhaps have had much remorse about accusing an innocent boy. But, though utterly devoid of principle, he had some remains of natural feeling and of gratitude. Tom Price had often given him a bit of his own bread and cheese; and once, when Dick was like to be drowned, Tom had jumped into the pond with his clothes on, and saved his life, when he was just sinking: the remembrance ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... strong-minded woman could help Miss Brown now. There was that in the room as we entered which was stronger than us all, and made us shrink into solemn awestruck helplessness. Miss Brown was dying. We hardly knew her voice, it was so devoid of the complaining tone we had always associated with it. Miss Jessie told me afterwards that it, and her face too, were just what they had been formerly, when her mother's death left her the young anxious head of the family, of ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a yellowish-gray color, with large black spots on the back, which become smaller and less frequent on the sides, and disappear entirely before reaching the belly. The finest quality of seal-skin in the eastern North American waters, which are devoid of fur seal, is that of the kos-se-gear, or fresh-water seal, which is found at or near the mouths of nearly all rivers emptying into the sea. This species of seal is marked very much like the common ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... have been but just," I replied politely. "It will be very vexatious if they are not discovered some day," added the Governor, in a tone which indicated that he was not devoid of vanity. ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... years; and if my son and my grandson will only follow my example, the race of Champdoce will again recover the proud position that it formerly held." Faithful to this idea, he wedded, in 1820, although his heart was entirely untouched, a young girl of noble birth but utterly devoid of beauty, though possessed of a magnificent dowry. Their union was an extremely unhappy one, and many persons did not hesitate to accuse the Duke of treating with harshness and severity a young girl, who, having brought her husband five hundred thousand ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... paused, compelled, perhaps, by a slight interruption. Dick had retired, closely followed by the major. Our guest certainly was not devoid of humor, and I was convinced, as I watched the play of his features, that he apprehended and appreciated the reason for their retirement. He lifted a plate from the table, inspected it closely, turned it over, ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... widely-credited myth about the moon which must be regarded as devoid of foundation. The idea that our satellite and the weather bear some relation has no doubt been entertained by high authority, and appears to be an article in the belief of many an excellent mariner. Careful comparison ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... how much should I rejoice to find in you a desire to forgo all the transitory fleeting pleasures of the world, and devote yourself entirely to heaven!—what raptures would not your innocent soul partake, when wholly devoid of all thought of sensual objects! you would be, even while on earth, a companion for angels and blessed spirits, and borne on the wings of heavenly contemplation, have your dwelling above, and be ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... difference between sympathy and allegiance; and unless a man has found conditions intolerable in the land of his birth, and this is the reason for his seeking a home in another land more to his liking and to his advantage, we cannot expect him to be devoid of sympathy for the land of his birth, especially in times of stress or of great need. We can expect him, however, and we have a right to demand his absolute allegiance to the land of his adoption. And if he cannot give this, then ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... beg or buy at low price from the slaughter houses, but ever with the inevitable seasoning of garlic, lacking which no Galician dish is palatable. Fortunate indeed is the owner of a shack, who, devoid of hygienic scruples and disdainful of city sanitary laws, reaps a rich harvest from his fellow-countrymen, who herd together under his pent roof. Here and there a house surrendered by its former Anglo-Saxon owner to the "Polak" ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... explain how it was that the Corsairs were able to possess themselves of this convenient territory, which was neither devoid of inhabitants nor ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... understanding of the import of his warning. She was far too handsome and too prematurely developed physically to be devoid of experience of the ways of the opposite sex. Like Ophelia she knew there were tricks in the world and she liked frank Ted Holiday the better for reminding her of them. "I won't do it," she promised. "That is, unless ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... when all four were so groggy that they could scarcely think, the job was done and checked. Clamer's moon was as devoid of life as any moon ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... entertainment of curious visitors absorbed a good share of the collector's daily duties. He was naturally proud of his treasures, and took a great delight in showing them to all who came. Utterly devoid of suspicion, he was a ready victim to designing persons. The following memorandum, which was found among his later papers, will show how he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... broke up to Mrs. Scott of Harden, where I made acquaintance with her beautiful kinswoman, Lady Sarah Ponsonby, whose countenance is really seraphic and totally devoid of affectation. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Harborough was between nine o'clock and ten o'clock that night," replied Mrs. Hamthwaite, with a smile that was not devoid of cunning. "I know, if ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... is long, the countries savage; there are no ancient histories to charm the present with memories of the past; all is wild and brutal, hard and unfeeling, devoid of that holy instinct instilled by nature into the heart of man—the belief in a Supreme Being. In that remote wilderness in Central Equatorial Africa are ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... world. For it is known unto me that Sohrab is sprung from Rustem the Pehliva, but from Rustem must it be hidden who it is that goeth out against him, then peradventure he will perish by the hands of this young lion, and Iran, devoid of Rustem, will fall a prey into my hands. Then we will subdue Sohrab also, and all the world will be ours. But if it be written that Sohrab fall under the hand of Tehemten, then the grief he shall endure when he shall learn that ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the woman who enjoyed the favour of Louis XIV. Madame de La Valliere suffered herself to be deceived by Madame de Montespan, but it was her own fault, or, rather, the effect of her extreme good nature. She was entirely devoid of suspicion at first, because she could not believe her friend perfidious. Madame de Montespan's empire was shaken by Madame de Fontanges, and overthrown by Madame de Maintenon; but her haughtiness, her caprices, had already alienated the King. He had not, however, such rivals as mine; ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... wools go to the weaving they are treated to a beauty-bath in the dye-room. Hanks of wool and skeins of silk are but neutral matters, coming to the factory devoid of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... to speak of beauty, this sea is no more to be compared to Tahoe than a meridian of longitude is to a rainbow. The dim waters of this pool can not suggest the limpid brilliancy of Tahoe; these low, shaven, yellow hillocks of rocks and sand, so devoid of perspective, can not suggest the grand peaks that compass Tahoe like a wall, and whose ribbed and chasmed fronts are clad with stately pines that seem to grow small and smaller as they climb, till one might fancy them reduced to weeds and shrubs far upward, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... looked about him with interest. Everything seemed to have become different and delightful; even the bare, prosaic yard of the barracks appeared no longer devoid of charm. He passed through the gate and went slowly along the high road towards the town. Then it was that the glad feeling of being in his native country asserted itself in full force. He realised that it was just the tender green of those ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... quantity and quality as much as animals vary in size. Idiots, maniacs and sleeping persons are the only classes of human beings who are devoid of intelligence and reasoning power. Idiots and maniacs also are often devoid of the common animal instinct that ordinarily promotes self- preservation from fire, water and high places. A heavily sleeping person ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... execution of general laws, it must be admitted opens the door to the allowance of questionable claims and presents to the legislative and executive branches of the Government applications concededly not within the law and plainly devoid of merit, but so surrounded by sentiment and patriotic feeling that they are hard to resist. I suppose it will not be denied that many claims for pension are made without merit and that many have been allowed upon fraudulent ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... December 4th in the steamer John Aull for New Orleans. As we passed Cairo the snow was falling, and the country was wintery and devoid of verdure. Gradually, however, as we proceeded south, the green color came; grass and trees showed the change of latitude, and when in the course of a week we had reached New Orleans, the roses were in full bloom, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of the wild children of the desert, for scarcely amongst the hills of Norway would you find figures and faces more essentially Gothic than those of the Maragatos. They are strong, athletic men, but loutish and heavy, and their features, though for the most part well-formed, are vacant and devoid of expression. They are slow and plain in speech, and those eloquent and imaginative sallies so common in the conversation of other Spaniards seldom or never escape them; they have, moreover, a coarse, thick pronunciation, and when you hear them speak, you almost imagine that ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... the opposite of the traditional flaxen. Even in the feeble street-lamplight, she appeared, with her finely chiseled features of an Oriental type, handsome enough to melt an anchorite, and in the beholder a flood of passion gushed up and expanded his heart—devoid of such a mastering emotion before. He believed this was love! Perhaps it was love—real, true, indubitable love—but there is a mock-love with so much to advance in its favor that it has won many a battle where the genuine feeling ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... neither cell-wall nor nucleus is an essential constituent of the cell, inasmuch as bodies which are unquestionably the equivalents of cells—true morphological units—may be mere masses of protoplasm, devoid alike of cell-wall or nucleus. For the whole living world, then, the primary and a mental form of life is merely an individual mass of protoplasm in which no further structure is discernible. Well, then, has protoplasm been called the "universal concomitant ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... killed again, and cutting up the game, stored it this time in a log cache. Again setting out on the hunt—for they were laying in their supply of deer meat for the winter—they again met with success; but as it was in a district devoid of trees, they simply covered the meat with brush; and while Meguir and his wife set off to haul the first lot of meat to camp, the three grandchildren set to work to haul in the last. On continuing their ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... point of attack is arbitrary government, and the first liberty to be secured is the right to be dealt with in accordance with law. A man who has no legal rights against another, but stands entirely at his disposal, to be treated according to his caprice, is a slave to that other. He is "rightless," devoid of rights. Now, in some barbaric monarchies the system of rightlessness has at times been consistently carried through in the relations of subjects to the king. Here men and women, though enjoying customary rights of person and property as against one another, have no rights at ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... field, confining herself usually to ministrations of mercy to the wounded, but ready if occasion required, to lead the troops into action and always manifesting the most perfect indifference to the shot and shell or the whizzing minie balls that fell around her. She seemed entirely devoid of fear, and though so constantly exposed to the enemy's fire never received ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... and in part occupied, by one of my countrymen. I allude to Mr. Irving's "History of Columbus," and "Chronicle of Granada;" the subjects of which, although covering but a small part of my whole plan, form certainly two of its most brilliant portions. Now, alas! if not devoid of interest, they are, at least, stripped of the charm of novelty. For what eye has not been attracted to the spot on which the light of that writer's ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... vessel bored on, with its frightful and ever-increasing velocity, through the ever-thinning stars, but it was not until the last star had been passed, until everything before them was entirely devoid of light, and until the Galaxy behind them began to take on a well-defined lenticular aspect, that Ravindau would consent to leave the controls and to seek his ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... he caught particular individuals with whom he was at variance, in the woods alone, he would murder them and attribute it to the savages. He had led, when in England, a most abandoned life, and after he was transported to this country, was so reckless of reputation and devoid of shame for his villainies, that he would often recount tales of theft and robbery in which he had been a conspicuous actor. The fearful apprehensions of increased and aggravated injuries after the taking of him prisoner, were well-founded; and subsequent events ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... a joy for all. To appreciate Science or Art requires some training, and no doubt the cultivated ear will more and more appreciate the beauties of Music; but though there are exceptional individuals, and even races, almost devoid of any love of Music, still they are happily ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... self-seeking motives which impel men not a trace. Ambition he had none—none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during which I have known him. As for vanity, I never saw a man so entirely devoid of it. His modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always underestimated his personal influence. A man less single-minded, vainer, more ambitious of success, might with the same gifts have achieved more for Ireland in thrusting ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... are heavy, our natures weak, Some pastime devoid of harm May we look for? "Puritan elder, speak!" "Yea, friend, peradventure thou mayest seek Recreation singing a psalm." If I did, your visage so grim and stern Would relax in a ghastly smile, For of music I never one note could learn, And my feeble minstrelsy would ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Bishop of Salamanca and the Procurator of the Exchequer, apparently of a droll mishap that had befallen the French Legate. It was a pale scholarly face that lay back on the white pillow under the purple skull-cap, but it was not devoid of the stronger lines of action. Giuseppe stood timidly at the door, till the Wardrobe-Keeper, a gentleman of noble family, told him to advance. He moved forward reverently, and kneeling down kissed the Pope's feet. Then he rose and proffered his request. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... in the accompanying sketch is especially appropriate for the den; it might be used in any other part of the house as well. It may be built of plain-sawed red oak, or of quarter-sawed white oak. The wood should be thoroughly seasoned and devoid of imperfections. ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor
... during the drive home. Landor seemed to be absent-minded. A sadder, more pathetic picture than he made during this memorable drive is rarely seen. "With me life has been a failure," was the expression of that wretched, worn face. Those who believe Landor to have been devoid of heart should have seen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... alike, with nothing whatever to distinguish either distance or direction—the same drifting ridges of sand stretching forth in every direction, no summit higher than another, no semblance of green shrubbery, or silver sheen of running water anywhere to break the dull monotony—a vast sandy plain, devoid of life, extending to the horizon, overhung ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... been written on the subject from time to time seems to me to be quite devoid of common sense. We all know what a delightful poet Mr. Sterry is, and how fondly he sings the praises of women. Probably he has been so engrossed in describing the grace of the girl that he has failed to look for the natural ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Nutter, I have an honest regard for her memory. If she was scant of brains, she was also devoid of guile—giggle and raspberry-jam were the leading traits of her character. And though she was slow to believe ill-natured stories, and made, in general, a horrid jumble when she essayed to relate news, except of the most elementary ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... gleamed the little light that was meant to keep Renwood's ghost from disturbing the slumbers of old man Grimes and his wife. She could not reach that light, that much she knew. Her feet were like hundredweights, her limbs almost devoid of power; Grimes' hut appeared to be a couple of miles away. With a last, breathless effort, she turned off the road and floundered through weeds and brush until she came to what proved to be the rear of the darkened house. Long, low, rangy it reached ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... was the writer, and the merchant told me, in answer to my inquiry that it was a man covered with a red cloak, whom he had taken for a Frenchman. I knew enough to convince me that the Unknown was not entirely devoid of generous feeling. In my new house I found all arranged in the best style; a shop, moreover, full of wares, finer than any I had ever had. Ten years have elapsed since then; more in compliance with ancient custom, than because it is necessary, do ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... of time, space, existence lies beyond our reach, yet some sort of solution of the infinite problem the human heart demands. We find in life a power for action, limited though this power may be. Life is action, and action is impossible if devoid of motive ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... gone by with that feminine nation now as much forgotten as many other great things,—like the Jesuits, the Buccaneers, the Abbes, and the Farmers-General,—had acquired an irresistible good-humor, a kindly ease, a laisser-aller devoid of egotism, the self-effacement of Jupiter with Alcmene, of the king intending to be duped, who casts his thunderbolts to the devil, wants his Olympus full of follies, little suppers, feminine profusions—but with Juno out of the way, be ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... surveys to justify the assertion that, instead of the strongly marked range of highlands represented by the British commissioners as constituting a part of their "axis of maximum elevation," the country in the vicinity of the Aroostook lying between its sources and the valley of the St. John is devoid of the character they have attributed to it. When properly represented upon a map it will appear as an extended undulating surface of moderate elevation above the level of the Aroostook River, sparsely interspersed with occasional ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... narrow, sunless defile he was nearing the point where the road connected with the open Highway; from there on the way was easy and devoid of peril. Suddenly his horse swerved and leaped furiously out of stride, stumbling, but recovering himself almost instantaneously. In the same second he heard the sharp crack of a firearm, far down the unbroken ravine to his left. A second ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... share in either its joys or sorrows. For the last ten years, I have not lived, but only dreamed of living. It may be true that there have been some unsubstantial pleasures here in the shade, which I might have missed in the sunshine, but you cannot conceive how utterly devoid of satisfaction all my retrospects are. I have laid up no treasure of pleasant remembrances against old age; but there is some comfort in thinking that future years can hardly fail to be more varied and therefore ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... were the men who gathered there; hairy, powerful, strong-voiced from combat with prairie wind and frontier distance; devoid of a superfluous ounce of flesh, their trousers, uniformly baggy at the knees, bearing mute testimony to the many hours spent in the saddle; the bare unprotected skin of their hands and faces speaking likewise of constant contact ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... base in my eyes was the man who having a friend and understanding all that was meant by that sacred sentiment "friendship," was yet so devoid of generosity as to have recourse to deception; as though it were possible ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... common notion that not only are the stains of human blood wrongfully shed ineffaceable, but a curse lights upon the ground, causing it to remain barren for ever. There is, for instance, a dark-looking piece of ground devoid of verdure in the parish of Kirdford, Sussex. Local tradition says that this was formerly green, but the grass withered gradually away soon after the blood of a poacher, who was shot there, trickled down on the place. But perhaps the most romantic tale of this kind was that known as the ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... been very fond of her mother; she had not been a loving or a dutiful daughter. A petulant child and an irritable, fault-finding young woman, who had often been devoid of sympathy for her parents, she now exhibited such an excess of grief over the death of her mother that her reason seemed to ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... conscious of not being overpowered with regret on hearing this latter statement of facts. And yet he was by no means devoid of generous impulse. He was quite honest, however deeply he might be mistaken, in deciding that it would be an unfortunate thing for Dolly if she married Griffith Donne. He thought he was right, and certainly if there had been no more good in his rival than he himself had seen on the surface, ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... blood was found in the veins nor was any found in the arteries or heart. Every organ of the body was found in perfect and healthy condition. The blood vessels were entirely devoid of any blood, and all the surgeons gave as their opinion that the girl had bled to death, for had life been extinct before bleeding began the blood vessels would not ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... wisdom or of charity and faith, hence no conjunction with the Lord, no reformation therefore or regeneration, and thus no salvation. Without that appearance, repentance for sins would clearly be impossible and in fact faith would; without that appearance, likewise, man is not man but is devoid of rational life like the beasts. Let him who will, consult his reason whether it appears otherwise than that man thinks from himself about good and truth, spiritual as well as moral and civil; then accept the doctrine that all good and truth are from ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... anchor, and launched a boat and went ashore, and saw no grass there. Great ice mountains lay inland, back from the sea, and it was as a [table land of] flat rocks all the way from the sea to the ice mountains; and the country seemed to them to be entirely devoid of good qualities. Then said Leif: 'It has not come to pass with us in regard to this land as with Bjarne, that we have not gone upon it. To this country I will now give a name and call it Helluland' (i.e., The ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... breeding-place of the Gannet in the South-West of England) or the Scilly Islands possess, or being able to produce the long list of birds which the indefatigable Mr. Gaeetke has been able to do for his little island, Heligoland, the avifauna of Guernsey and the neighbouring islands is by no means devoid of interest; and as little has hitherto been published about the Birds of Guernsey and the neighbouring islands, except in a few occasional papers published by Miss C.B. Carey, Mr. Harvie Browne, myself, and a few others, in the pages of the 'Zoologist,' ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... on the cab. "Can those possibly be young noblemen who made use of such coarse language, and who appear to be so utterly devoid of right feeling?" he thought to himself. "I hope that I shall not meet them again; but I think I should remember them, especially the youngest, who had on a naval uniform. His being a sailor will account for the activity he showed in unbuckling ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... interesting problem whether he was absolutely devoid of sense, or miserably wanting in spirit. Did he know his lady's ways and condone them, or was he a mere blind, doting fool? It was a point to be discussed over the teacups in snug little drawing-rooms, or with the aid of a cigar in the bow windows of clubs. ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... eternal principles, so the glory of the scientific method lies in its power to reveal the significance of the commonplace and to teach us that no slightest detail of our daily work is necessarily devoid of inspiration; that every slightest detail of school method and school management has a meaning and a significance that it is ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... a technical advance on flaking by blows or pressure, grinding and incidental polishing of flint implements are regarded as characteristic of the Neolithic period; and the practice may have started in areas devoid of flint, where it was necessary to utilize local material that could not be flaked like flint. In Europe generally, polished celts belong to the Megalithic or latest division of the Neolithic, but this implement appeared much earlier, and in a sense succeeded ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... exchange of men's and women's hats, are thought to be declining. America may rival that dulness, but in no other country of Europe, to say nothing of the East and Africa, could so colourless a crowd be seen—a mass of people so devoid of character in costume, or of tradition and pride ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... gunwale of a light little canoe, and idled about its margin, I named the sheltered little cove the Lost Lagoon. This was just to please my own fancy, for as that perfect summer month drifted on, the ever-restless tides left the harbor devoid of water at my favorite canoeing hour, and my pet idling place was lost for many days—hence my fancy to call it the Lost Lagoon. But the chief, Indian-like, immediately adopted the name, at least ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... look after the girls as they walked back along the slip, "nor is the sororial adjunct totally devoid of ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... each crueller than the other, so that it seemed as though each had made a vow to practise more exorbitant evils and cruelty than the other, in verification of the rule we have given above. 3. In the year 1529 there arrived a great tyrant accompanied by many men, devoid of any fear of God or any mercy on mankind; so great were the massacres, slaughter and impiety he perpetrated, that he surpassed all his predecessors. During the space of six, or seven years that he ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... mule in question, however, seemed to be possessed of gentle and kindly qualifications. He appeared to have reached that degree of culture that disarms viciousness and softens stubbornness into tractability. I believed the sober-looking animal devoid of tricks peculiar to his kind, such as attempting to run up dead walls in cities, and climb trees in the country, mistaking himself for a perpetual motion, and trying to kick Time through the front window ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... the play would contribute to the amusement of audiences to-day is to be doubted, although it is a striking dramatic curio. The play in the reading is scarcely exciting. It is surprisingly devoid of situation. Its chief characteristic is "talk," but that talk, reflective in its spirit of "The School for Scandal," is interesting to the social student. When the ladies discuss the manners of the times and the fashions of the day, they ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... devoid of all such lofty passions, and hence must present our observations in the flat, unimaginative, unemotional manner of a dentist pulling a tooth. It would not be going too far, in fact, to call us emotional idiots. What ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... over fifty: tall, pale, distinguished-looking, with something in his figure and bearing that reminded one of the statue of Sidney Herbert, which in 1880 still stood before the War Office in Pall Mall. He looked both delicate and melancholy. His face was curiously devoid of animation; but his most marked characteristic was an habitual look of meditative abstraction from the things which immediately surrounded him. As he walked down the steps of the club towards a brougham which was waiting for him, the man who had tried in ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... friends and relatives, and, swooping down on the habitation of the bride-elect, carries her off to his mountain-home and to a state of wedlock. But the most singular part of the whole affair is that, in spite of the appearance of violence, the matter is really devoid of any hostile feeling, and is, in fact, a perfectly amicable arrangement; for the husband afterward hands over to the bride's relatives the price that is considered a bride's equivalent in that part of the world, and both sides remain contented and on intimate and agreeable terms with each ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... like to talk. I am sure Jerrine will enjoy the cards and we will be glad to get them. Many things that are a comfort to us out here came from dear Mrs. ——. Baby has the rabbit you gave her last Easter a year ago. In Denver I was afraid my baby would grow up devoid of imagination. Like all the kindergartners, she depended upon others to amuse her. I was very sorry about it, for my castles in Spain have been real homes to me. But there is no fear. She has a block of wood she found in the blacksmith shop which she calls her "dear baby." A ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... one pressman, five or six compositors, two editors and a business manager. A few reminiscences of the trials and tribulations of the early newspaper manager, editor and compositor may not be wholly devoid of interest. ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... latitude in which he was sailing when the storm began to drive his ships southwestward to Aye-Aye, the Admiral, after a delay of only a few hours, steered north, until, toward nightfall, he reached a numerous group of small islands. Most of them appeared bare and devoid of vegetation. The next morning (November 15th) a small caravel was sent among the group to explore, the other ships standing out to sea for fear of shallows, but nothing of interest was found except ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... in a madhouse. His delight was to kick my shins with all his might, under the desk, not at all as an act of hostility, but as a gratifying and harmless pastime. Finding this, so far as I was concerned, equally devoid of pleasure and profit, I managed to get a seat by another boy, the son of a very distinguished divine. He was bright enough, and more select in his choice of recreations, at least during school hours, than my late homicidal neighbor. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... It is error consecrated by religious enthusiasm, which produces that ignorance, that uncertainty in which man ever finds himself with regard to his most evident duties, his clearest rights, the most demonstrable truths. In short, man is almost everywhere a poor degraded captive, devoid of greatness of soul, of reason, or of virtue, whom his inhuman gaolers have never permitted to see ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... ourselves day after day in comfort and pleasure. He to whose lot it has fallen to become host to-day provides meat and drink, and if it should cost him something more than usual, he makes up the loss by becoming on the next occasions the guest of others. In this manner we pass a life devoid of care, and feast, joke, and laugh with one another ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... faults of Southern slaveholders may be, and they are many, these are redeeming traits in their characters; nor are they so devoid of sympathy for their slaves, as is generally supposed in the North. I know that they are represented by a certain class in the North, as a set of tyrants, ruling their slaves with a rod of iron. All such representations are untrue, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... happened to change the opinion of members, since? On the contrary, they had now the clearest evidence, that all the arguments then used against the abolition were fallacious; being founded, not upon truth, but on assertions devoid of all truth, and ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... the command of Sir William Phipps, a sturdy colonist, whose life was not devoid of romantic episodes. Though his ambitions were of the lowliest,—his dearest wish being "to command a king's ship, and own a fair brick house in the Green Lane of North Boston,"—he managed to win for ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the chief topic of the Ecumenical Creeds, Luther remarks in the same tract: "Now, to be sure, we Christians are not so utterly devoid of all reason and sense as the Jews consider us, who take us to be nothing but crazy geese and ducks, unable to perceive or notice what folly it is to believe that God is man, and that in one Godhead there are three distinct persons. No, praise ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... failure of the above experiment an inclosure was made in the edge of an ordinary lake by stretching a stout net on stakes. This water was brown in color, and objects 4 feet beneath the surface were invisible. The bottom was gravelly and devoid of vegetation. ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... Gaff, whose visage was as devoid of expression as a fiddle figure-head, "your brother-in-law's name was Graham, ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... entire credit to the pleasing descriptions of the muses, we must admit, that the earliest ages of the world deserved the epithet of "golden" as exhibiting man devoid of those artificial wants which refinement and luxury have superinduced, and divested of those violent prejudices, that selfishness and that arrogance, which have filled the cup of human wo to the brim: we should see him inhabiting a tent of the simplest construction, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... remarkable for inquisitiveness than good-breeding—one of those who, devoid of delicacy and reckless of rebuff, pry into everything—took the liberty to question Alexander Dumas rather closely concerning his ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... they devoid in some strange manner of the gross weapons, the protective skin, adapted to the shocks and jolts of our rough and tumble civilisation. They seem prepared and designed to exist in a finer, a more elaborate, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... prosecute and make others prosecute the work of massacre almost with indifference. But the reign of terror presented an appearance all the more horrible, when it proceeded from the conservative side and was in some measure devoid of passion; the commonwealth seemed all the more irretrievably lost, when the frenzy and the crime on both ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Sacred Festival of its year, by sculpture such as this, I need scarcely point out to you that the hope is absolutely futile of advancing their intelligence by collecting within this building, (itself devoid absolutely of every kind of art, and so vilely constructed that those who traverse it are continually in danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind it together) examples of sculpture filched indiscriminately ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... to an inferior, not to an equal. She admitted his charm, but it was the charm of an irresponsible creature—the capricious attraction of a child or an animal. Her common sense, she told herself, would keep her from making a mistake such as Jane had made with her life; and, besides, she was utterly devoid of the missionary instinct which had lured Jane to destruction. "If I ever marry, it will be different from that," she thought passionately. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... in a very sensitive mood; the world seemed for the moment devoid of human sympathy, and the savageness and turmoil played upon his bare nerves. The artist himself shrank from contact with this overpowering display, and said that he could not endure more than a day or two of it. It needed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the depth of profanity to represent God as watching over conceptions in order to create souls so unfairly endowed, most of whom will never hear the Gospel message, and consequently cannot be saved, whilst the rest are destined to animate the bodies of savages and cannibals, devoid of moral consciousness? Is it not an act of sacrilege thus to convert God, Who is all Wisdom and Love, into a kind of accomplice of adulterers and lewd persons or the sport of Malthusian insults. Unconscious blasphemers are they who would ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... another, garden implements, rods, buckets, tins and tubs! A pleasant untidiness prevailed in the midst of irreproachably clean and correct surroundings, and the Mr. Foxleys having finished their breakfast up-stairs in the public dining-room—a bare, almost ugly apartment, devoid of anything in furniture or appointments to make it homelike, except a box of mignonette set in the side-window, looked longingly out at the little paved court-yard beneath. They had had the most delicious rasher ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... with the meaning of the word, used it the first time occasion offered. If he once heard a thing he seemed never to forget it, nor a man's name or face. If his wife wrote out a speech and read it to him a couple of times it was his for delivery in practically her words. He struck John as a man devoid of conscience, yet, at first blush, ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... said that Ma was pretty sick," his father was speaking on, his voice devoid of life or feeling. "But he said that she 'ud be all right if she went some place where the air ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and when those fellows rode up he tried to blurt out the whole situation. Good God, Le Gaire, aren't you even a soldier?" shaking the fellow savagely. "Haven't you ever learned what parole means? Damn you, are you totally devoid of all sense of ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... saturnine creature, devoid of humour and geniality, with a love for the grotesque and the terrible. The reader must himself furnish the counteracting qualities or Poe may become a dangerous comrade. We know along what perilous tracks and into what deadly quagmires his strange mind led him, down ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in his hands, and groaned aloud. He had never before conceived it possible—what he now found to be too true—that long habits of drunkenness can so utterly unhumanise a man as to reduce him to a mere callous self, looking upon all things outside self as dreamy and devoid of interest, with but one passion left—the passion for the ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... the notable exception of my father, I have less than the usual store of personal acquaintance with the "people who most influenced me." Of my grandfather, Moses Stuart, I have but two recollections; and these, taken together, may not be quite devoid of interest, as showing how the law of selection works in the mind of ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... Devoid of reason, thrall to foolish ire, I walk and chase a savage fairy still, Now near the flood, straight on the mounting hill, Now midst the woods of youth, and vain desire. For leash I bear a cord of careful grief; For brach I lead an over-forward mind; My hounds ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... no reply, as he glided noiselessly away, but her face, could he have seen it, was not devoid of expression. This was an act of generosity and deliberate courage of the very kind most apt to appeal to her nature, and within her secret heart there was rapidly developing a respect for this man, who with such calm assurance won his own way. He was strong, forceful, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... by small and slow increments, had grown at length to two hundred and fifty a year. Himself a small and slow person, he had every reason to be satisfied with this progress, and hoped for no further advance. He was of eminently sober mind, profoundly conscientious, and quite devoid of social ambition,—points of character which explained the long intimacy between him and Stephen Lord. Yet one habit he possessed which foreshadowed the intellectual composition of his son,—he loved to write letters to the newspapers. At very long intervals one of these communications achieved ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... be foolish!" he exclaimed. "And thank God that there are people in the world devoid of humor. My German friend was without humor. Only that fact enabled me to endure his prodigious collection of ailments. But for the heat I might even have revelled in them. He was asthmatic, without humor; dyspeptic, without humor. He had a bad cold in the head, without humor, and got up into ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... Academy in spite of conduct which would have "bilged" (Academy slang for the man who has to drop out) a dozen others, and who was the source of endless trouble for under-classmen over whom he contrived to exert a wholly malign influence. He seemed to be not only utterly devoid of principle and finer feeling, but to take a perfectly fiendish delight in corrupting the younger boys. His one idea of being "a man" seemed to lie in the infringement of every regulation of the Academy, and to induce others to do likewise. He had caused the president ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... though very bashful, is wholly devoid of modesty.[5] Everyone is familiar with the shocking inconvenances of children in speech and act, with the charming ways in which they innocently disregard the conventions of modesty their elders thrust upon them, or, even ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... real necessities are, and limiting our sense of want by such knowledge. Otherwise there is little hope for us; for, as soon as we admit imaginary and factitious needs, we become the slaves of mere fancy, the sport of mere human opinion, and devoid of all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... remark helped to clear the atmosphere for the Allies at least, and then our attention was once more directed toward the river, for around us there had sprung up a perfect bedlam of screams and hisses and a seething caldron of hideous reptiles, devoid of fear and filled only with hunger and with rage. They clambered, squirmed and wriggled to the deck, forcing us steadily backward, though we emptied our pistols into them. There were all sorts and conditions of horrible ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... grounds without a purpose. Tides in her mind ebbed and flowed, and carried her to and fro like seaweed. She tried a path, paused, returned, and tried another; questing, forgetting her quest; the spirit of choice extinct in her bosom, or devoid of sequency. On a sudden, it appeared as though she had remembered, or had formed a resolution, wheeled about, returned with hurried steps, and appeared in the dining-room, where Kirstie was at the cleaning, like one charged with ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there is the Indian Fig, with branches like battledores, joined by their ends; the Epiphyllum and Phyllocactus, with flattened leaf-like stems; the columnar spiny Cereus, with deeply channelled stems and the appearance of immense candelabra. Totally devoid of leaves, and often skeleton-like in appearance, these plants have a strange look about them, which is suggestive of some fossilised forms of vegetation belonging to the past ages of the mastodon, the elk, and the dodo, rather ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... of these vast prairies is a high tableland, devoid of water, its soil mixed with clay and sand, but producing the grass peculiar to the other plains region. Toward the southeastern extremity, at the foot of an isolated mountain, is a salt lake of considerable dimensions, several ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... face when he stood facing the angry crowd of track-graders with the ax in his hand, and she had seen very much the same tenacity and steadfastness stamped on the faces of successful men. Her father was one, and he was a man who had scarcely been educated, and was certainly devoid of any complexity of character. Stirling had made his mark by smashing down opposition, and, when that was not possible, grimly holding on and bearing the blows dealt him. There was, as she recognized, something to be said in favor of that kind ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... for them in the universal demoralization! The glorious veterans of Solferino and Sebastopol were but a handful, incorporated in the ranks of the newly raised troops, too few in number to make their example felt. The four corps that had been got together and equipped so hurriedly, devoid of every element of cohesion, were the forlorn hope, the expiatory band that their rulers were sending to the sacrifice in the endeavor to avert the wrath of destiny. They would bear their cross to the bitter end, atoning with their life's blood for ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... is format and imperturbably grave, utterly devoid of heartiness or impulsiveness; and the cordiality which distinguishes the intercourse of American friends appears to the native gentleman boisterous and vulgar. I never saw Karlee laugh; and if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... breathe suggestions of mystery, cruelty, pomp, and power. In the sciences and in the industrial arts the ancient Egyptians were highly cultivated. Much Egyptian literature has come down to us, but it is unsystematic and entirely devoid of style, being without lofty ideas or charms. In art, however, Egypt may be placed next ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... and the shed for the fire engine were solidly built, had iron roofs, and were painted at the right time. In the tool house carts, ploughs, harrows, stood in perfect order, the harness was well cleaned and oiled. The horses were not very big, but all home-bred, grey, well fed, strong and devoid of blemish. ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... knew but little of him and saw him only in his serious moods might have thought him lacking in that peculiarly human quality, humour. But neither was he an ascetic nor devoid of that element of innocent appreciation of the ludicrous and that keen enjoyment of a good story which seem essential to a complete man. His habit was sobriety, but he relished a joke that was free of all taint of ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... in its school matches has this peculiarity. However badly it may seem to stand, there is always something up its sleeve. In this case it was a professional, a man indecently devoid of anything in the shape of nerves. He played the bowling with a stolid confidence, amounting almost to contempt, which struck a chill to the hearts of the School bowlers. It did worse. It induced them to bowl with the sole object of getting the conversationalist at the ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... Church shall rule. He prefers the State, because it has more rational aims, uses more appropriate means, has abler rulers, produces verifiable results, and has generally 'less nonsense about it.' The clergy are 'male old maids'; often very clever, charitable, and of good intentions, but totally devoid of real wisdom or force of mind or character, and capable on occasions of any amount of spite, falsehood, and 'gentle cruelty.' It is impossible to accept the claims of the priesthood to supernatural authority. If ultimately a division has to be made, human reason will ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... detachment at the redoubts on Breed's Hill; but such was the imperfect state of discipline, the want of knowledge in military science, and the deficiency of the materials of war, that the movement of the troops was extremely irregular and devoid of every thing like concert—each regiment advancing according to the opinions, feelings, or caprice, ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... simple, the evil so great and so glaringly evident that the only possible explanation of its continued existence was that the majority of his fellow workers were devoid of the power of reasoning. If these people were not mentally deficient they would of their own accord have swept this silly system away long ago. It would not have been necessary for anyone to teach them ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... violent, yet his speech was simple, devoid of the pompous phrases of passion. Anger lit up his eyes with a strange fire; he seemed young again—he loved, and ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... Val d'Arno—in speaking of a famous colleague, declared, "Oh, X——! Why, X—— is merely a collector." The implication is, of course, that the one who loves art truly and knows it thoroughly will find full satisfaction in an enjoyment devoid alike of envy or the desire of possession He is to adore all beautiful objects with a Platonic fervour to which the idea of acquisition and domestication is repugnant. Before going into this lofty argument, I should perhaps explain the collection of my scornful friend. He would ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... identified as a follower of mine, you can invent some story to account for your presence in my force. When I remember that botanical lecture you once delivered, also some other matters, I am convinced that you are not devoid of imagination." ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... and priests had led men to look upon the character of God, and even of Christ, as stern, gloomy, and forbidding. The Saviour was represented as so far devoid of sympathy with man in his fallen state that the mediation of priests and saints must be invoked. Those whose minds had been enlightened by the word of God longed to point these souls to Jesus as their compassionate, loving Saviour, standing with outstretched ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... he has seen the females carry their young to the water-side and there wash their faces, in spite of resistance and cries. They are gentle and affectionate in captivity—full of tricks and pettishness, like spoiled children, and yet not devoid of a certain conscience, as an anecdote, told by Mr. Bennett will show. It would appear that his Gibbon had a peculiar inclination for disarranging things in the cabin. Among these articles a piece of soap would especially attract ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... a rare interest, because it penetrates behind the facts of trade to the laws of trade, studies general conditions, and continually deals with the situation from the point of view of large intelligence. No human being is so entirely devoid of interest to his fellows as the trader who barters one commodity for another without any comprehension of higher values or wider connections; on the other hand, few men are more interesting than the great merchants ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... cistern had many secrets. What did another one matter? His foot was on the lintel—he heard a rustle close at his side—before he could dart back—ere he could look or scream, two powerful hands were around his throat. He was not devoid of courage or strength, and resisted, struggling for breath. He merely succeeded in drawing his assailant out into the light far enough to get a glimpse of a giant and a face black and horrible to behold. A goblin from the cistern! And with this idea, he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... fate. The misery, thus avenged, is forgotten; all the long agony of centuries, all the sunless hours, all the darkness of a land's despair. For that sadness was hidden; it was but the exceeding bitter lot of the poor, devoid of that dramatic interest which illumines one immortal hour of pain. Yet he who would estimate aright the Terror, who would fully understand the Revolution, must reflect not only upon the suffering of those who fell victims to an outburst of insensate frenzy, but also ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... the unknown land where perfect satisfaction dwelt, yonder, behind the horizon. And now that age was stealing upon him his torment seemed to increase, as if he were in despair at finding himself unable to try the possibilities of the unknown, before he ended a useless life devoid of happiness. ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... life-like transcript from several phases of society. Devoid of literary affectation and pretense, it is a wholesome American novel well worthy of the popularity ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... interscapular area, and a connected area extending laterally onto each shoulder are so lightly furred that the skin shows through conspicuously. In one male of this series a strip approximately four millimeters wide extending along the mid-dorsal line from between the shoulders to the rump is mostly devoid of hair. These sparsely-furred areas are less evident in live animals than in study skins and specimens in alcohol, because the back of the head in life lies against the depression between the shoulders and conceals most of the ...
— A New Subspecies of Bat (Myotis velifer) from Southeastern California and Arizona • Terry A. Vaughan
... soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subjects to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, I would see before me vacuity, nothing, would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent, or that, perhaps, a malady of the brain was hindering its development. Sometimes I would depend upon my father's arranging everything for me. He was so powerful, in such favour with the people who 'really counted,' that he made it possible for ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Sunday of suspense had come. The Sundays of good young ladies little resembled those of a century later, though they were not devoid of a calm peacefulness, worthy of the "sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright." The inhabited rooms of the old house looked bright and festal; there were fresh flowers in the pots, honey as well as butter on the breakfast table. The Major and Palmer were ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... made friends of the "Mammon of unrighteousness." One hot Sunday, when I was in command at chapel, the somnolent tones of the chaplain, who, as usual, was pouring forth a stream of mere words—words almost devoid of thought, lulled a large number of my fifteen hundred boys and girls into the land ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... shouted one to the other, calling for assistance. When I saw them thus dismayed, my horse being an intelligent animal, I arranged the bridle on his neck and took the end of the halter with my left hand. The horse, like most of his kind, being not devoid of reason, seemed to have an instinct of my intention; for having turned his face towards the fresh grass, I meant that he should swim and draw me after him. Just at that moment a great wave broke over the boat. Ascanio shrieked out: "Mercy, my father; ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... as we have said, in the most conspicuous spot of the cemetery, Sand's grave must be looked far in the corner to the extreme left of the entrance gate; and a wild plum tree, some leaves of which every passing traveller carries away, rises alone upon the grave, which is devoid ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... never, before or since, met any woman so totally devoid of the moral sense as Beatrice. Yet she had a heart that was not bad; indeed it was a tender heart. But there was no moral sense ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... A: This book is beautifully executed, undoubtedly, but being little more than a thin folio pamphlet devoid of typographical embellishment—it has been thought by some hardly fair to say this of a press which brought out so many works characterized by ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... not so devoid of common sense as to give credit to what the priests said, though they affirmed in the most solemn manner the truth of their assertions. He, however, sent twelve very learned and sensible gentlemen into the Piedmontese ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... the emigration of the granulated cells is a very obvious supposition, scarcely to be denied; and naturally cells with a plentiful store of reserve material are eminently suited for this purpose. The lymphocytes on the contrary, incapable of emigration, are almost totally devoid ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... conspiracy of silence," he declared. "This man could not have committed suicide. The pistol found on the desk was fully loaded. The clothing is devoid of powder stains. Moreover, a most careful search has failed to reveal any other weapon. Now, someone entered this room and fired the shot. Yet all those clerks maintain that no one has been in here and that they heard no shot, although the door stood open all ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... long silence between the two men. Monty sat where Trent had been earlier in the night at the front of the open hut, his eyes fixed upon the ever-rising moon, his face devoid of intelligence, his eyes dim. The fire of the last few minutes had speedily burnt out. His half-soddened brain refused to answer to the sudden spasm of memory which had awakened a spark of the former man. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... alone; for the Sikh, when he enters Imperial service, leaves his wife behind in her own village. His one-roomed hut was saturated with heat, and almost devoid of light. It contained a chair, a strip of matting, and a low string-bed, with red cotton quilt and legs of scarlet lacquer. Mud walls and floor alike were scrupulously clean. Sacred vessels, for cooking and washing, were ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... to witness the operation, which was not devoid of excitement. The great beast plunged savagely when they tightened the girths, and closed his teeth obstinately against the bit; but the farmer held firmly to his nose and shut off his wind. They led him out ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... most excelled.' (Euripides, Antiope.) —I mean that which was best in any art, while he was entirely ignorant of what was best for himself and for the state, because, as I think, he trusts to opinion which is devoid of intelligence. In such a case should we not be right if we said that the state would be full of anarchy ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... as part of the day's sport. As some of them passed by, laughing, singing, and dancing, Richard Assheton remarked, "I can scarcely believe these to be the same people I so lately saw in the churchyard. They then seemed totally devoid of humanity." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... had expected to thrill to her first sight of the New York sky-line, crossing on the ferry in mid-afternoon, but it was so much like all the post-card views of it, so stolidly devoid of any surprises, that she merely remarked, "Oh yes, there it is, that's where I'll be," and turned to tuck her mother into a ferry seat and count the suit-cases and assure her that there was no danger of pickpockets. Though, as the ferry sidled along the ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... without preparation, is a law-breaker, a breaker of the laws of super-nature. Those who break Nature's laws lose their physical health; those who break the laws of the inner life, lose their psychic health. "Mediums" become mad, suicides, miserable creatures devoid of moral sense; and often end as unbelievers, doubters even of that which their own eyes have seen. The disciple is compelled to become his own master before he adventures on this perilous path, and attempts to face ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... your Eulogium on Lincoln I have not much to say. If he pleases you, well enough, you're easily satisfied. I take it that he is a disgrace to the Chair he occupies; and to judge from his conversations, he is devoid of all sense of refinement & etiquette; to look at his executive powers as displayed thus far, he had better be a Bey than helmsman of the "Old Ship"; and what of his efforts at speeches? In the language of Logan, "I appeal to any white man" to say if they ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... patients, and the old and young ladies I like exceedingly, and she loves dearly, and they, as the saying is, take to her very extraordinarily, if it is extraordinary that people who see my sister should love her. Of all the people I ever saw in the world my poor sister was most and thoroughly devoid of the least tincture of selfishness—I will enlarge upon her qualities, poor dear dearest soul, in a future letter for my own comfort, for I understand her throughly; and if I mistake not, in the most trying situation that a human being can be found ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... witch-pricking, became a trade, and a set of mercenary vagabonds roamed about the country provided with long pins to run into the flesh of supposed criminals. It was no unusual thing then, nor is it now, that in aged persons there should be some spot on the body totally devoid of feeling. It was the object of the witch-pricker to discover this spot, and the unhappy wight who did not bleed when pricked upon it was doomed to the death. If not immediately cast into prison, her life was rendered miserable by the persecution of her neighbours. It is recorded of many poor ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... alas! her thoughts are gone, She nothing sees—no sight but one! The maid, devoid of guile and sin, I know not how, in fearful wise, So deeply had she drunken in That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, That all her features were resigned To this sole image in her mind: And passively did imitate That look of ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... defences of Gaza are immensely strong, and these were in addition strengthened by every conceivable human device. The town stands in the midst of a chain of sandy ridges, inside which is a smaller ring, with a wide stretch of open country absolutely devoid of cover between the two. The extreme niceness of the position lay in the fact that any one ridge was well within range of most if not all of the remainder. Without much difficulty, the infantry captured two of these outer ridges—Mansura and Shalouf—and immediately prepared for ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... I am to know is yet a secret; but if I do not know before she comes back, what I yet have no means of discovering, she will make my dullness a pretence for a fortnight's ill humour, treat me as a creature devoid of the faculties necessary to the common duties of life, and perhaps give the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Sin) got to Egypt, and did sow Gardens of gods, which every year did grow Fresh and fine deities. They were at great cost, Who for a god clearly a sallet lost. Ah, what a thing is man devoid of grace, Adoring garlic with an humble face, Begging his food of that which he may eat, Starving the while he worshippeth his meat! Who makes a root his god, how low is he, If God and man be severed infinitely! What wretchedness can give ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... accomplish in this city, it has done little as yet. Indeed, I do not perceive what principle of strength or power it possesses, sufficient to force its way through the world, and into the hearts of men. It allows not the use of the sword; it resorts not to the civil arm; it is devoid of all that should win upon the senses of the multitude, being, beyond all other forms of faith, remarkable for its simplicity, for its spiritual and intellectual character. Moreover, it is stern and uncompromising in its morality, requiring the strictest purity of life, and making virtue to consist ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... of such dishonor, produces a double portion of indignation at the discovery of their profligacy, because it supposes, in the first place, that something like imposture must have been practised upon us in securing our affections, or what is still more degrading, that we must have been materially devoid of common penetration, or we could not have suffered ourselves to become the dupe of ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... country's shores, and whose clouds of canvas occasionally loomed upon us in the distance. What were our "light afflictions" compared with those of the multitudes crowded into their stifling steerages, so devoid of conveniences and comforts! Speed on, O favored coursers of the deep, bearing swiftly those suffering exiles to the land of ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... great mystery the room itself was devoid of anything out of the ordinary. The walls were panelled in white with touches of a pale grey colour; there were a few pictures, not many. The two windows were hung with a bright chintz of a somewhat old-fashioned design which matched the coverings of chairs and sofa, but the ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... political condition at the time of the discovery. There were numerous populous cities, well built of stone and mortar, but their inhabitants were at war with each other and devoid of unity of purpose.[1] Hence they fell a comparatively ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... round, fresh-coloured, and clean to the point of polish. His yellowish grey hair, well flattened and shining, grew far back on his forehead. And this, combined with small blue eyes, clear as a child's, a slight inward squint to them, produced an effect of permanent and innocent surprise not devoid of pathos. In character he was guileless and humble-minded. The spectacle of cruelty or injustice would, however, rouse him to the belligerent attitude of the proverbial brebis enrage. He believed ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... the long-wished-for time was really come, packing up actually commencing, and that her waking would find her under a different roof from that which she had never left. She did not know till now that she had any attachments to the place she had hitherto believed utterly devoid of all interest; but she found she could not bid it farewell without sorrow. There was the old boatman with his rough kindly courtesy, and his droll ways of speaking; there was the rocky beach where she and her brother had often played on the verge of the ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the little thing he said, which was not so many things, must then have been something peculiarly tactless! This girl was not, like some of us, devoid of humour—that much is clear: laughter lived in her as in its home. What had he said? Whatever it was, he "did not mean it." But that is frequently the sting of stings. Spontaneity which hurts us ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... Being soundless, and devoid of perfume, the Desert's message reached him through two senses only—sight and touch; chiefly, of course, the former. Its invasion was concentrated through the eyes. And vision, thus uncorrected, went what pace it pleased. The Desert ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... marks of favour, had already made the astronomer his chaplain. The engrossing nature of Bradley's interest in astronomy decided him, however, to sacrifice all other prospects in comparison with the opening afforded by the Savilian Professorship. It was not that Bradley found himself devoid of interest in clerical matters, but he felt that the true scope for such abilities as he possessed would be better found in the discharge of the scientific duties of the Oxford chair than in the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... hurriedly, in the manner of one committing an abomination. 'Fore God! I had done no evil, nor had I wronged any man, nor did I contemplate evil; yet was I aware of evil. Why? I do not know, save that there goes much dignity with dollars, and being devoid of the one I was destitute of the other. The person I sought practised a profession as ancient as the oracles but far more lucrative. It is mentioned in Exodus; so it must have been created soon after the foundations of the world; and ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... to death, without any additional torture. Others were imprisoned, scourged, and then put to death; while others again were tortured for days, weeks, and even months, with the most frightful torments. Again, some came to their martyrdom totally devoid of any previous virtue; some even loaded with sin, and unbaptized: but they received a baptism of blood—which made them pure, and deserved for them the high honors of heaven. Nevertheless, the glory that surrounds such is far inferior to that which ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... might be thought that they intended it as a mark of dignity attached to their studies, but most philosophers, stoics as well as peripatetics, concur in this opinion. I must confess I had some doubt about discussing this matter, lest I might seem diffident of its truth; for who can be so devoid of sense and knowledge as to find art in architecture, in weaving, in pottery, and imagine that rhetoric, the excellence of which we have already shown, could arrive at its present state of grandeur and perfection without the direction of art? I am persuaded that those of the contrary opinion ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... conditions. But no change has been established beyond question, nor does the photograph show the slightest difference of structure or shade which could be attributed to cities or other works of man. To all appearances the whole surface of our satellite is as completely devoid of life as the lava newly thrown from Vesuvius. We next pass to the planets. Mercury, the nearest to the sun, is in a position very unfavorable for observation from the earth, because when nearest to us it is between us and the sun, so that its dark hemisphere is ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... presented at the time when Ruby Brand slept in it; but we can tell, from personal experience, that, at the present day, it is a most comfortable and elegant apartment. The other rooms of the lighthouse, although thoroughly substantial in their furniture and fittings, are quite plain and devoid of ornament, but the library, or "stranger's room", as it is sometimes called, being the guest-chamber, is fitted up in a style worthy of a lady's boudoir, with a Turkey carpet, handsome chairs, and an elaborately ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... imposes obligations upon mankind. We have ceased to look upon the hermit as a holy man, but rather as one devoid of courage. It is not the stone and the stained windows; it is the text of our daily work, that the physical being of the ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... is to a model or pattern, because a law presents something as a guide to human conduct. In this sense, a man may set a law to himself, meaning a plan or model, and not a law in the proper sense of a command. So a rule of art is devoid of a sanction, and therefore of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... companion."— Such, surely, was not exactly playing that part in the Greek cause which he had taught the world to look for. It is true, that the accounts received there of the Greek affairs were not then favourable. Everybody concurred in representing the executive government as devoid of public virtue, and actuated by avarice or personal ambition. This intelligence was certainly not calculated to increase Lord Byron's ardour, and may partly excuse the causes of his personal inactivity. I say personal, because ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... was Wolsey's indifference to all but political matters. In spite of the foundation of Cardinal College in which he was now engaged, and of the suppression of some lesser monasteries for its endowment, the men of the New Learning looked on him as really devoid of any interest in the revival of letters or in their hopes of a general enlightenment. He took hardly more heed of the new Lutheranism. His mind had no religious turn, and the quarrel of faiths was with him simply one factor in the ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... encouraged, and protected. Sheep also do well on the mountains; and a breed of hardy ponies in much repute all over the Archipelago, runs half-wild, so that it appears as if this island, so barren-looking and devoid of the usual features of tropical vegetation, were yet especially adapted to supply a variety of products essential to Europeans, which the other islands will not produce, and which they accordingly import from the other ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... drop of water. Yesterday—or was it the day before? He couldn't remember clearly he was so tired—the rock basin had been literally swarming with paramecia and other forms of life. Today, following the appearance of the ghost, the water from the basin was as devoid of life ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... to benefit his fellows, to lift them out of the bondage of fear, and sin, and ignorance. After reading Hume, and Godwin, and Wollstonecraft, he had decided that Christianity as defined by the Church of England was a failure: it was only an organized fetish, kept in place by the State, and devoid of all that thrills to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... shy as a girl the next morning at the thought of coming downstairs to meet mademoiselle. Nor was I quite devoid of some little fear. Would she be sorrowful, resigned, pathetic, angry, or what? It was impossible ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... there were revels kept; Devoid of fear, they ate, they drank, they slept. No friendly voice like that of ancient Rome Was sent to give them warning of their doom: No airy warriors to each other clung, Such as 'tis said o'er destin'd Sion hung, ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... on my father's hand, as it moved so gently over his coat. It must have been some gesture, smooth and imperceptible. For suddenly, my father's languor left him, suddenly his lips curled back in a smile devoid of humor, and he leapt at the lantern. He leapt, and at the same instant, as perfectly timed as though the whole matter had been carefully rehearsed, Brutus' great bulk had streaked across the deck, ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... hungry bellies, and the lively movements of our ship, consequent on a rising malevolent sea—I think we managed to enjoy a fair amount of fun, whether it was genuine or not is another point, nor would I like to vouch for its being altogether devoid of irony. "Father Christmas" paid us his customary visit anyway, in his mantle of snow—fancy snow within fifteen degrees of the line!—which merry, rubicund, and very ancient man was ably personated by a gigantic marine, the necessary barrel-like proportions being ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... toning down a little, but still betraying malevolence of a very advanced order in her voice and expression. "I see nothing derogatory in the idea of a young girl devoid of fortune taking a——" ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... hopeless to treat him as a rational being. His wife was induced to accept a pension to leave him, and he himself was put in charge of a keeper. Several times he had to be kept in close confinement. He was, however, by no means devoid of brains, and in the autumn of 1741 he had sufficiently recovered to be entered as a student at the University of Leyden. His allowance was L300 a year, which he found so insufficient for the indulgence of his tastes that he ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... had been inflicted upon Dupont, he who had shuffled off the allegiance which he owed to his Emperor, and whose cowardice had surrendered into captivity the legions intrusted to his command[6]. Weak, indolent, irresolute, devoid of character and resources, he never had the wish or the ability of becoming any thing else than the pliant functionary of the court and ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... is a narrative poem not devoid of animation, especially where the author forgets his Spenser. But in the second canto he feels compelled to introduce an absurd allegory, in which the nymph Dissipation and her henchman Self-Imposition conduct the hero to the cave of Discontent. This is how Mickle writes when ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... The town itself was a dreadful spectacle with, as a French observer noted, "big holes made by bombs, cannon balls, splinters, barely covered graves, arms and legs of blacks and whites scattered here and there, most of the houses riddled with shot and devoid of window-panes." ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... must end us: that must be our cure, To be no more? Sad cure; for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion? And who knows, Let this be good, whether our angry Foe Can give it, or will ever? How he can Is doubtful; that he never will is sure. Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire Belike through impotence, or unaware, To give ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of medicine, and having acquired a true knowledge of it, we shall thus, in travelling through the cities, be esteemed physicians not only in name but in reality. But inexperience is a bad treasure, and a bad fund to those who possess it, whether in opinion or reality, being devoid of self-reliance and contentedness, and the nurse both of timidity and audacity. For timidity betrays a want of powers, and audacity a lack of skill. They are, indeed, two things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes its possessor really ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... so close a one, however, as to acquaint him with my proximity. I wanted to see what the chap was up to; and also being totally unarmed and ignorant as to whether or not he carried dangerous weapons, I determined to go slow for a little while. Moreover, the situation was not wholly devoid of novelty, and it seemed to me that here at last was abundant opportunity for a new sensation. As he had entered, so did he walk cautiously along the narrow bowling alley that serves for a hallway connecting my drawing-room and library with ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... scenes in which one of the characters systematically repeats in a nonsensical fashion what another character whispers in his ear. If you fall asleep with people talking round you, you sometimes find that what they say gradually becomes devoid of meaning, that the sounds get distorted, as it were, and recombine in a haphazard fashion to form in your mind the strangest of meanings, and that you are reproducing between yourself and the different speakers the scene between Petit-Jean and The Prompter. [Footnote: ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... is pure from every pollution, and whose soul is conscious of no evil, and who has lived well and justly.' Such is the proclamation made by those who promise purification from sins. But let us hear whom the Christians invite. 'Whoever,' they say, 'is a sinner, whoever is devoid of understanding, whoever is a child,' and, to speak generally, 'whoever is unfortunate, him will the kingdom of God receive.' Do you not call him a sinner, then, who is unjust and a thief and a house-breaker and a poisoner, a committer of sacrilege ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... for the kind lady knew what even Cecil might have acknowledged to be extenuating circumstances, but she now felt completely alienated and distanced by the forbidding reserve of her step daughter, of whom she was not altogether devoid of awe. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... his word, and James was forced to go. When he showed the photograph, Mrs. Pritchard-Wallace looked at it with a curious expression. It was the work of a country photographer, awkward and ungainly, with the head stiffly poised, and the eyes hard and fixed; the general impression was ungraceful and devoid of charm, Mrs. Wallace noticed the country ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... were in Joan Strong, daughter of many generations of north country yeomen, the possibilities of tragedy, a leaven of that passionate resistless force, which when once kindled is no more to be governed than the winds. Narrow she was, devoid of imagination, and uneducated, yet, married to the man whom she had boldly and persistently sought after, she would have been a faithful housewife, after the fashion of her kind. But with the tragedy in her home, the desertion of the man whom she had selected for her husband, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... ce'tainly appreciate the honor you did me in stopping to take me on." His slight drawl was quite devoid of concern. ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... with grief because she longed to love and had nothing to love. She was beginning to suffer from the cold void that is formed about a woman by an unattractive, unfascinating girlhood, by a girlhood devoid of beauty and sympathetic charm. She could see that she aroused a sort of compassion with her long nose, her yellow complexion, her angular figure, her thin body. She felt that she was ugly, and ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... "the faith of Abraham was imputed to him for righteousness." This is truly beautiful for it is certain that all of that holy patriarch's actions were strictly righteous; yet, not seeing them as such, and being devoid of the love of them, and divested of selfishness, his faith was founded on the coming Christ. He hoped in Him even against hope itself, and this was imputed to him for righteousness, (Rom. 41: 18, 22,) a pure, simple and genuine righteousness, wrought by Christ, and not a righteousness wrought ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... hope that can last is hope that is not wholly centred in ourselves, but has some thought for others and our service to them. Work devoid of inspiration and ideals, work done merely for one's self, study pursued with only a degree as an end or for the sake of "pay" as a teacher, turns school and college into a market-place, a place of barter, where in exchange for so much energy ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... aside, so far as our search for Jeremiah himself and his doctrine is concerned, and we do so the more easily that they are largely devoid of the style and the spiritual value of his undoubted Oracles and Discourses. They are more or less diffuse and vagrant, while his are concise and to the point. They do not reveal, as his do, a man fresh from agonising ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... want to see the strangers? O devoid of all decency! Must I so lame and old husk the rice alone? May evil befall thee and the strangers! May they never find favour! May they be pursued with swords! I am old. I am old. There is no good in strangers! ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... plate-armor emerged on the deck. In his gauntleted hand he carried a heavy steel mace. With this uplifted he moved toward his enemies, silent save for the ponderous clank of his footfall. It was an inhuman, machine-like figure, menacing and terrible, devoid of all expression, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... grandfather was quite different, entirely devoid of impetuosity, even-tempered, amiable, very handsome. He too had worked his way up from straightened circumstances; in fact, it was only when he was getting on for twenty that he had taught himself to read and write, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... caste argument aside then, as inconsistent with the practice of those who employ it, as devoid of any justification in theory, and as utterly mischievous if its logical consequences were carried out, let us turn to the other class of objectors. To these opponents, the Education Act is only one of a number of pieces of legislation ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... not like this plan. He had never done much direct cribbing, as that species of deception made him uncomfortable and seemed devoid of the high qualities of dignity that should attend the ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... obtained permission to stand near the prisoner at the trial. The counsel for the prosecution did all he could, and the counsel for the defense not much—at least Dawtie's friends thought so—and the judge summed up with the greatest impartiality. Dawtie's simplicity and calmness, her confidence devoid of self-assertion, had its influence on the jury, and they gave the uncomfortable verdict of "Not Proven," ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... colonnades, and the magnificently decorated and finished rooms of the villa, until he came to the chamber of Claudia, his sister-in-law. Claudia was a woman of the same fashionable type as Valeria, good-looking, ostentatious, proud, selfish, devoid of any aim in life save the securing of the most vapid pleasure. At the moment, she was stretched out on a thickly cushioned couch. She had thrown on a loose dress of silken texture. A negress was waving ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... to supply women old and young with outmoded, viciously respectable, viciously sentimental fiction. A few new novels get into the Library every year. They must, however, be "innocuous," that is to say, devoid of original ideas. This, of course, is inevitable in an institution presided over by a committee which has infinitely less personal interest in books than in politics or the price of coal. No Municipal Library ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... girl could not hold you ... une nullite, cette pauvre petite fille, qui n'a que sa figure ... shy, inexperienced, devoid ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... plateau, as also the summits of the first mountains they had seen before alighting, were devoid of vegetation, scarcely so much as a blade of grass being visible. Since they could not account for this by cold, they concluded that the most probable explanation lay in the tremendous hurricanes that, produced by the planet's rapid rotation, frequently swept along its surface, like the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... point his mind was made up. He must remain in York for the present, prepared at a moment's notice to repair to Bolsover, should the dreaded summons come. With that exception, as I have said, his mind was open, and utterly devoid of ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
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