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More "Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as sure that "King Lear" has a plot. So, too, we say that "Robinson Crusoe" has little, almost no plot; that the plot is simple in "Treasure Island," and that "Les Miserables" has an intricate plot. A plot seems to demand more than a mere succession of events. Any arrangement of the parts of a narrative so that the reader's interest is aroused concerning the result of the series of events ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... first break of dawn, the fiend. Mere serpent in appearance, forth was come; And on his quest, where likeliest he might find The only two of mankind, but in them The whole included race, his purposed prey. In bower and field he sought where any tuft Of grove or garden-plot more ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... persisted the girl, "the outlook is improving, when you and I travel unmolested with a mere handful of men to guard us. Time was when a great and wealthy Archbishop might not stir abroad with less than a thousand men in ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... I once had a good friend who had foolishly given her heart to a handsome, high-spirited boy. She was a mere child and it was a very touching relationship: knightly devotion on his part and tender sighings on hers. Then the young heroine had the misfortune to become very jealous, and so far forgot poetry and deportment as to give her heart's chosen knight a box on the ear. It was only a little box, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... by surprise, for I seemed to have forgotten any other life than that I was then living; and dressing the most frightful wounds was as natural as eating. I felt no disgust, no shrinking, and mere conventional delicacy is withdrawn when the Angel of Death breathes ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... vice, which is now spreading like a subtle poison through all grades of society, that the present work is directed. The author is not a mere theorist. He speaks from experience—dark and bitter experience. The things he has seen he tells; the words he has heard he speaks again. Some of these scenes curdle the blood in the veins, even when remembered; some of these words, whenever whispered, recall incidents of singular ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... connoisseurs. Porcelain articles of this period are now extremely rare, and fetch enormous prices. In Japan I saw a small green Chinese bowl on three feet, with a cover, which had cost eleven hundred pounds. Compared to the Kang Hi vases, the finest porcelain that can be produced nowadays is mere rubbish. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Edwards, re-established himself and educated his large family after his great financial reverses in the period of the Revolutionary war, but the story of Colonel William Edwards is even a more striking illustration of this same power. He was born at Elizabeth, New Jersey, November 11, 1770. He was a mere child during the Revolutionary struggle. Before he was two years old the father removed to Stockbridge, Mass., and the boy grew up in as thoroughly a rural community as could be found. The school ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... sin. Sin is, in fact, nothing else than this derangement or disturbance: it is that in which wrong is done to the moral constitution under which we live. And let no one say that in such an expression we are turning our back on the personal world, and lapsing, or incurring the risk of lapsing, into mere legalism again. It cannot be too often repeated that if the universal element, or law, be eliminated from personal relations, there is nothing intelligible left: no reason, no morality, no religion, no sin or ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... difficult enough in the case of individuals, becomes mere guess-work when the action under analysis is that of a large body of men. Which one of many considerations urged upon the Convention carried with it the supreme weight of persuasion in this particular instance it is impossible ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... which took place when he was about eighteen years old, was the result, under God, of the mere sight in midwinter, of a dry and leafless tree, and of the reflections it stirred respecting the change the coming spring would bring. From that time he grew eminently in the knowledge and love of GOD, endeavoring constantly ...
— The Practice of the Presence of God the Best Rule of a Holy Life • Herman Nicholas
... the novel the writer's thought is tethered to probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination—free, lawless, immune to bit and rein. Your novelist is a poor creature, as Carlyle might say—a mere reporter. He may invent his characters and plot, but he must not imagine anything taking place that might not occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie. Why he imposes this hard condition ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... instruction, 'The battle fought in 1666.' There was of course more than one battle fought in 1666, but Herbert was only present in that of July 25th, the 'St. James's Fight,' represented in the manuscript—and it was his first action. But here again all is too vague for more than a mere guess. ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... themes of tragic interest, and at others on such as, from their light and social character, belong to comedy.10 Of the execution of these pieces we have now no means of judging. It was probably rude enough, as befitted an unformed people. But, whatever may have been the execution, the mere conception of such an amusement is a proof of refinement that honorably distinguishes the Peruvian from the other American races, whose pastime was war, or the ferocious sports that ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... passed us while we were at this camp, one coming from out of space, as it seemed, a mere speck, and growing to a full-fledged deep-sea vessel, with all sails set, scudding before the wind. The other two were gracefully beating their way out against the stiff breeze to the open waters beyond. What ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... The results, starting from an extremely low base, have been striking - growth averaged 7% in 1988-96. Because Laos depends heavily on its trade with Thailand, it fell victim to the financial crisis in the region in 1997, when growth was a mere 1.5%. Laos is a landlocked country with a primitive infrastructure. It has no railroads, a rudimentary road system, and limited external and internal telecommunications. Electricity is available in only a few urban areas. Subsistence agriculture accounts for half ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... when reared in a northern country, in the open air. Year after year it continued to degenerate, and to exhibit a smaller leaf and shorter stem, until the successors of what in the first year of trial had been rigorous plants, of some three to four feet in height, had in the sixth or eighth become mere weeds, of scarce as many inches. But while the as yet undegenerate plant had merely borne atop a few florets, which produced a small quantity of exceedingly minute seeds, the stunted weed, its descendant, was so thickly covered over in its season with its pale yellow bells, as to present ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... discourse Zarathustra opens his exposition of the doctrine of relativity in morality, and declares all morality to be a mere means to power. Needless to say that verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 refer to the Greeks, the Persians, the Jews, and the Germans respectively. In the penultimate verse he makes known his discovery concerning the root of modern Nihilism and indifference,—i.e., that modern man ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... used their immense leaves, some of which were twelve feet long and two and a half feet broad, to roof the flimsy shelters under which they hung their hammocks. I went into the woods, but in the tangle of vegetation it would have been a mere hazard had I seen any big animal. Generally the woods were silent and empty. Now and then little troops of birds of many kinds passed—wood-hewers, ant-thrushes, tanagers, flycatchers; as in the spring and fall similar troops of warblers, chickadees, and nuthatches ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... to ascribe their origin to so recent a date, but to derive it from a mere mechanic was more than our author's patience could endure. Accordingly he is not sparing of invective against those ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... organization of the Territory of Arizona in 1863, Arizona assumed jurisdiction over the slip, and built a prison there. Congress subsequently made a grant of land included in the slip to the "Village of Yuma," so that it is a mere question of jurisdiction, not involving the validity of any titles. The question of jurisdiction still remains unsettled, as it requires both an Act of Congress and Act of the State Legislature to change the ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... you why you deceived me, Lilian, but it was a low down trick to play on me, and it has turned out to be a damned cruel trick to play on that girl. I mentioned the engagement as a mere matter of course to somebody, and though I mentioned it confidentially, it started this slander about Malcolm Cromarty and Cicely Farmond conspiring to murder—to murder, Lilian!—the man of all men they owed most to. ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... Paul knew the weight of this article, and the necessity of teaching it, when he said, If Christ be not risen, our faith is vain. You see, then, that the thing which the apostles testified, and the thing for which they suffered, was the truth of the resurrection; which is a mere matter of fact. ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... that Phidias' statue must borrow gold from the sun, but since that is unproved, it is absurd to talk of a deficit. Moreover, gold cannot be borrowed from the sun. Therefore what Protagoras says is mere babble, and deserves no answer. On the other hand, will Phidias answer this question? 'When you have made Athene up there on the Parthenon, have ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... ineffectual, unless some will inform, and some will prosecute; but till we mitigate the penalties for mere violations of property, information will always be hated, and prosecution dreaded. The heart of a good man cannot but recoil at the thought of punishing a slight injury with death; especially when he remembers that the thief might have procured safety ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... exposition of an abstract conception. Philosophy has only herself to blame if abstractions are in the naif, ordinary mind opposed to realities, for it is unhappily true that nearly the whole of our current philosophy does consist of abstractions which are mere "Hirngespinnste," rooted in words and not in nature; philosophy itself has in art become a term of reproach from being associated with unreality. We must, however, distinguish between notions which are real but difficult to ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... an elastic stony axis, varying in length from eight inches to two feet. The stem at one extremity is truncate, but at the other is terminated by a vermiform fleshy appendage. The stony axis which gives strength to the stem may be traced at this extremity into a mere vessel filled with granular matter. At low water hundreds of these zoophytes might be seen, projecting like stubble, with the truncate end upwards, a few inches above the surface of the muddy sand. When touched or pulled they ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... mere effrontery of the replies. His father and his aunt (the latter of whom at any rate was a firm and confessed religionist, who had been responsible for converting Mr Clayhanger from Primitive Methodism to Wesleyan Methodism) did not trouble to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... majority, he little by little made the prospective man of capital the creature of his directions; in something less than two more years Rodman looked to find ample recompense for his expenditure and trouble. But that was a mere parergon; to secure Richard Mutimer was the great end steadily ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Kennedy, his clean-cut features betraying an earnestness which I knew indicated that he was leading up to something important, "there is a distinct place for science in the detection of crime. On the Continent they are far in advance of us in that respect. We are mere children beside a dozen crime-specialists in Paris, whom ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... shore they had reached. They pushed off again, and resumed their hopeless search for the camp. A new trouble now harassed them. From seeming to have no shore at all, the lake now seemed to have shrunk to a mere mud puddle. No matter in what direction they rowed, they would strike the shore within ten minutes, and always at a different place. Joe said that he had never dreamed that so much shore and so little lake could ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure; but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... I know. I've known something of the family for a long time. John Wade employed me long ago. The old millionaire had a son who went abroad and died there. His cousin, John Wade, brought home his son—a mere baby—the old man's grandson, of course, and sole heir, or likely to be, to the old man's wealth, if he had lived. In that case, John Wade would have been left out in the cold, or put off ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... it would not be recalled—for the excellent reason that he really knew nothing about the matter. It was a relief at all events to find that he had actually been examined with the rest and had not been suspected. Nevertheless, he had undoubtedly done the deed, of which the mere thought made him tremble in every joint. Or was it all a part of his drunken dreams? No, that, at least, could not be explained away. For a long time he moved uneasily from his barricade at the door to the window, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... there to prove it. The Revolutionists fought well on land. They invaded Canada and took the whole country except the walls of Quebec. They also fought well at sea; and Paul Jones, a Scotsman born, raided the coasts of Great Britain till nurses hushed children by the mere sound of ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... words to me. I am sure I never can sufficiently admire the mere courage of the woman and her presence of mind in danger. Immediately afterwards she said—and subsequently it seemed to me marvellous: "You are something more than the chorus to the play this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... says, "the close intercourse between the habitues of the coffee house, before it lost anything of its generous social traditions and whilst the issue of the struggle for political liberty was as yet uncertain, was to lead to something more than a mere jumbling or huddling together of opposites. The diverse elements gradually united in the bonds of common sympathy, or were forcibly combined by persecution from without until there resulted a social, political and moral force ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... properties, had been transferred to her: it was the only wedding present he could make. And the wedding cheques had of course all been deposited in her name. There were therefore no "business" reasons for communicating with her; and when it came to reasons of another order the mere thought ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... of burning the store meant more to each of them than a mere gratification at seeing him humbled and perhaps punished. If they had been sure he would be convicted of the crime, doubtless they would have been happy indeed. The case meant so much to them that they attended the trial; and their discomfiture at the result—at seeing Fred ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... slavery or on any other subject be displeasing to a majority of the people, no human power can prevent them from changing it within a brief period. Under these circumstances it may well be questioned whether the peace and quiet of the whole country are not of greater importance than the mere temporary triumph of either of the political ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... is not true: for it was stated originally, that Happiness is a kind of Working; now Working plainly is something that must come into being, not be already there like a mere ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... master the proper methods, so as to be able later to make real use of the turns on steep slopes. Judges are therefore urged to insist that the stemming turns and Telemarks are done correctly and in good style. Each turn should be short, well defined, and not a mere ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... "is the silliest old ass who ever escaped petticoats by the mere accident of sex. I tell you he is just the sort of idiot the Germans have been longing to get hold of and twist round their fingers. Before twelve months or two years have passed, you'll curse the name of that ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... help us; but books cannot make us men of the nineteenth century, and a power in it. A thorough knowledge of the world within us, as it stands related to the world without us, is something quite different from mere book-knowledge. This is an element of influence not only not confined to the bookmen, but often possessed in a transcendent degree by those whose devotion to books is altogether subordinate to other avocations. Our common-school ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a question of my holding out for a mere theory, Alice," Rachael said after a while; "I'm not saying that I'm all in the right, and that I will never see Warren again until he admits it, and everyone admits it—that isn't what I want. But it's just that I'm dead, so far as that old feeling is concerned. It is as if a child ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... shining and invincible. Through all the fine, divaricating ways of the new life, it grew ever more evident, there were for every one certain persons, mysteriously and indescribably in the key of one's self, whose mere presence gave pleasure, whose mere existence was interest, whose idiosyncrasy blended with accident to make a completing and predominant harmony for their predestined lovers. They were the essential thing ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... nearer. Why, this was but a girl—nay, unless his instinct was at fault, a Jewish girl—a glorious young Jewess, of that radiant red-haired type which the Russian Pale occasionally flowered with. What was she doing with this Christian Colossus? He tried vainly to see her left hand; the mere possibility that she might be Mrs. Wilhammer shocked his Semitic instinct. Wilhammer disappeared within—the relation was obviously intimate—but the girl still stood at the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... needed. The rate of exchange varied from place to place, and I was sometimes warned to put off visiting the money-changers until the next town. Of course the visitor stands to lose anyway, and I am sure that in the course of a long journey through China you would see your money vanish in the mere process of change, quite aside from ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... of the urine in parturition fever, but as a specific disease, associated with deranged liver or brain, it is practically unknown in cattle. As a mere attendant on another disease it demands ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... burst into tears and said, "Noble Achilles, if you are now minded to return, and in the fierceness of your anger will do nothing to save the ships from burning, how, my son, can I remain here without you? Your father Peleus bade me go with you when he sent you as a mere lad from Phthia to Agamemnon. You knew nothing neither of war nor of the arts whereby men make their mark in council, and he sent me with you to train you in all excellence of speech and action. Therefore, my son, I will not stay here without you—no, not ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... exceedingly pious, and extraordinarily zealous in praying. Their prayers, however, do not arise from the impulses and emotions of their hearts; but are subdued to mere matters of form, directed by bells, clocks or sun-dials. Their devotion is entirely mechanical, founded on external signs and old customs rather than ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... state-education by the inevitable claim of personal duty, like the Anglo-Saxons. Hence their need of a master, and the feeling of stability realized among them only under legitimacy and despotism. Shallow reasoners argue from the mere acknowledgment of this state of things that it is an ultimate public blessing when the man appears with wit and will enough to regulate and keep from chaos a society thus destitute of political training. But those who look deeper know that this political inefficiency is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Mere fancy's feints! How know the coffined what comes after them, Even though it whirl them to the Pleiades?— Turn to ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... shall not at once dismiss him, but leave it to himself to send in his resignation. Let him see if he will be able to reconcile himself to the new era, for a new era, I hope, is to dawn for Prussia—an era of toleration, enlightenment and true piety, that does not seek faction in mere lip-service and church-going, but in good and pious deeds. Religion is not an offspring of the church, but the reverse is true; the church is an offspring of religion, and the church therefore, ought to be subordinate to religion, and never try to place itself ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... of the fugitives returned on the following day, convinced that the prophet was a false one; but many judged it more prudent to allow a week to elapse before they trusted their dear limbs in London. Bell lost all credit in a short time, and was looked upon even by the most credulous as a mere madman. He tried some other prophecies, but nobody was deceived by them; and, in a few months afterwards, he was confined in a ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... daughter was increasing in beauty, the mother was increasing in poverty, and ran into debt on account of her daughter's virginity, as an alchemist will for the crucible in which his all is cast. As soon as his plans were arranged and perfect, one rainy day the said lord of Valennes by a mere chance came into the hovel of the two spinners, and in order to dry himself sent for some fagots to Plessis, close by. While waiting for them, he sat on a stool between the two poor women. By means of the grey shadows and half light of the cabin, he saw the sweet countenance of the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... in unravelling the mysteries; they were many and cunning, and thoroughly tried the first virtue of the Academical motto; still the sum of his finding with respect to the Prince was a mere theory—he was a Jew and rich—beyond this Demedes ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... good ear to his words; and as he ate his meat, he even tore it and rent it with his teeth, for mere vexation that his fat cattle should be slain to glut the appetites of those godless suitors. And he said, "What chief or what ruler is this, that thou commendest so highly, and sayest that he perished at Troy? I am but a stranger in these parts. It may be I have heard ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... thought he had made of the sacred record, I know not. The Greek text, rendered word for word, is simply this: "And his disciples hungered." And that the sentences above, taken either way, are not good English, must be obvious to every intelligent reader. An, as I apprehend, is here a mere prefix, which has somehow been mistaken in form, and erroneously disjoined from the following word. If so, the correction ought to be made after the fashion of the following passage from Bishop M'Ilvaine: "On a certain occasion, our Saviour was followed by five thousand men, into ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... will grow more used to the other boys, and gain more confidence in Fred. Things will right themselves, if we do not set them wrong. And now, mark me. You are not a mere child, who can plead the excuse of thoughtlessness for leading him into mischief; you know the greatness of the sin of disobedience, and the fearful responsibility incurred by conducing to it in others. Do not help to lead him astray for the ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wanted help from God more than she had ever in her life wanted it; and these evident signs of faith, of an established relation between earth and heaven, fell most gratefully upon her aching heart. The village of St. Mary's is a mere handful of houses, on a narrow stretch of sandy plain, lying between two forests of firs. Many years ago, hunters, finding in the depths of these forests springs of great medicinal value, made a little clearing about them, and built there ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... few words on the protest lately made by some naturalists against the utilitarian doctrine that every detail of structure has been produced for the good of its possessor. They believe that very many structures have been created for beauty in the eyes of man, or for mere variety. This doctrine, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory—yet I fully admit that many structures are of no ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley
... "Though more than mere suspicion has rested upon you," he went on, "you and your stepfather deserve the heartiest thanks of the nation for risking everything in order to be in a position to reveal this dastardly financial plot. That man there"—and he indicated the ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... battle-cry,— Freedom! or leave to die!" Ah! and they meant the word,— Not as with us 'tis heard, Not a mere party shout: They gave their spirits out; Trusted the end to God, And on the gory sod Rolled in triumphant blood. Glad to strike one free blow, Whether for weal or woe; Glad to breathe one free breath, Though on the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... been months previous, and no one in the breakfast-room would have imagined that anything had occurred to disturb the relations between the two gentlemen. He inquired politely after the ladies, expressed regret that they were indisposed, and changed the subject in a tone and manner natural to a mere acquaintance. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... order, signified to him that very morning: that he accordingly went thither, and dined with his uncle, in company with several other persons, to whom he related what had passed between the duke of Marlborough and him in the Park: that his being afterwards in Westminster Abbey was the effect of mere accident: that Mr. James Greenwood, his kinsman, who had lain that preceding night at his father's house, desired him to dress himself, that they might walk together in the Park; and he did not comply with his request till after much solicitation: that he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and incomprehensible manner. This appears to me as if a man were to tear down a building from the sure foundation on which it had rested for 1000 years, and imagine it could rest in true stability only on the mere ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... one should have sufficed to kill her. But that blessed saint, like a valiant athlete, took fresh courage and strength from the confession of her faith; all feeling of pain vanished, and ease returned to her at the mere utterance of the words, 'I am a Christian, and no evil ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... away from before my eyes, and I saw below me an immense plain. But already, by the mere breath of the warm soft air upon my cheeks, I could tell I was not in Russia; and the plain, too, was not like our Russian plains. It was a vast dark expanse, apparently desert and not overgrown with grass; here and there over its whole extent gleamed pools of water, like broken pieces of looking-glass; ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... grown-up men and women in child shapes, and by the time their bodies have grown big they won't enjoy anything at all. Master Augustus will be a dull young man, who hates everybody, and does not know how to get through the long, dreary day; and Miss Ruby will be a mere heartless woman, who only cares to please herself, and does not mind how unhappy she makes everyone else. And all this will be because their foolish father and mother let them have everything they wanted, and allowed them to go everywhere they liked, and that is not at all ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... fate to the God who had summoned him to His service; but he was well aware that he must not rest content with mere pious confidence, and therefore thought by day and night of escape. But the chain that bound him to his companions in suffering was too firmly forged, and was so carefully examined and hammered every morning and evening, that the attempt to escape would only have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this—Literature is not a mere Science, to be studied; but an Art, to be practised. Great as is our own literature, we must consider it as a legacy to be improved. Any nation that potters with any glory of its past, as a thing dead and done for, is to that extent renegade. ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... it: and it is not mere intellect, it is a sympathetic intellect; or else it is an intellect in perfect accord with an intensely sympathetic disposition;—the rarity of it makes it too precious to be parted with when once we have met it. I prize it the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... together. I tried to form a rearguard to bring up the stragglers, but the guard would not remain behind, nor the stragglers keep up with the main body; and I soon, finding that something more persuasive than mere words was requisite to maintain them in order, took the first opportunity of getting a stout cudgel, with which I soundly belaboured all those whom I found guilty of thus disobeying my commands. The Eastern does not understand the suaviter in modo;—behave ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... to arrive, yet it was a new country and no bridges. The streams might get up so as to be impassable, and the houses were consigned to me, and no one but myself to receive them. I thought I had better get back to San Francisco at once. What I was making in the mines was mere nothing to what I had at stake in the houses. Although, to tell the truth, I never left a place with more regret, as hard as the fare was. We were interested every day in the work for gold, and did ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... last of them and an untimely birth; but I have found mercy that I should be some one, if so I shall attain unto God. My spirit salutes you, and the love of the Churches which received me in the name of Jesus Christ, not as a mere wayfarer; for even those Churches which did not lie on my route after the flesh, went before me from city ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... unpleasant HAPPENED between me and Charles. Nothing happens. Something happens in my relationship to my dog. I pat him and he is pleased; he barks for joy when I go out. I cannot live with anybody with whom I am always on exactly the same even terms—no rising, no falling, mere stagnation. I am dead, but it is death without its sleep and peace. Fool, fool that I was! I cannot go on. What shall I do? If Charles drank I might cure or tolerate him; if he went after another woman I might win him back. I can lay ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... decided to close it down. It was a very visible brown streak a thousand yards away. The word was passed back to the '75's' in the rear. There was a 'tir rapide' over our heads. My word, the man who stands fast under a 'tir rapide,' be he Boche, French or British, is a man of mettle! The mere passage of the shells was awe-inspiring, at first like the screaming of a wintry wind, and then thickening into the howling of a pack of wolves. The trench was a line of terrific explosions. Then the dust settled down and all was still. Where were the ants who had made the nest? Were they buried ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... statement, however, must in a measure be modified. These pictures are letters and something more. Some of them are purely alphabetical in character, and some are symbolic in another way. Some characters represent syllables. Others stand sometimes as mere representatives of sounds, and again, in a more extended sense, as representatives of things, such as all hieroglyphics doubtless were in the beginning. In a word, this is an alphabet, but not a perfected alphabet such as modern ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... emperor, impatiently, when Count Bubna hesitated; "I must know all, and am not so cowardly as to be frightened by mere words." ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... myself and thought that I must be getting on well with the old General—first the offer of his library and now of his gun—and I thanked him for the interest which he had shown in me, a mere stranger. "A well-bred Southerner is never a stranger in the South," said he. "We are held together by an affection stronger than any tie that runs from heart to heart in any other branch of the human family. But," he added, sadly shaking his head, "I fear that this affection is weakening. ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... got none, sir," answered Bill. "I told you the truth, that we are mere ship-boys, and as to being spies as you seem to think, we had nothing to spy ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... governor of a town or fortress. In later times he has gradually sunk down to the rank of an officer of the court, who is trusted with the service of writs and certain police duties, but he is still of higher rank than the mere corchete or catch-poll. The title has also been given to inspectors of weights and measures in market-places, and similar ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... which has remained with her to this day, surviving all the airy philosophic theories of humanity which thought to supersede the old solid national temper. The English national temper is better fitted for traffic with the world than any mere doctrine can ever be, for it is marked by an immense tolerance. And this, too, Shakespeare has expressed. Falstaff is perhaps the most tolerant man who was ever made in God's image. But it is rather late in the day to introduce Falstaff ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... excessively small, many of them barely visible with the strongest lenses. The larger ones (Fig. 8) recall quite strongly the smaller species of oscillaria, and exhibit similar movements. Others are so small as to appear as mere lines and dots, even with the strongest lenses. Among the common forms are small, nearly globular cells; oblong, rod-shaped or thread-shaped filaments, either straight or curved, or even spirally twisted. Frequently they show ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... see more charm in beauty than in that of Marguerite. Excessively tall and thin, she had in the fullest degree the art of repairing this oversight of Nature by the mere arrangement of the things she wore. Her cashmere reached to the ground, and showed on each side the large flounces of a silk dress, and the heavy muff which she held pressed against her bosom was surrounded ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... that he designs that I should be married. I cannot marry without the approval of those who gave me life; and you know what the fury of my father would be if I were to confess my love for you—for he would assuredly not suffer me to be united to one whom he deems my inferior in that mere worldly rank for which I care nothing. Yet I cannot marry a man I do not love; and you are the only ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... there was much friendly strife with regard to the solving of hard arithmetical problems. This contest was no mere private matter. It was entered into with great zest by the men of both the villages concerned; the Catwickians and the Ristonians each backing their man to win. "A straw shows which way the wind blows," we say, and herein we ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... were trying to degrade and humiliate their people by putting them upon a level with the negro, she did not for a moment believe, despite what he had said. Neither did she imagine, even then, that he had any feeling for Mollie Ainslie other than mere gratitude for the service she had rendered, but supposed that his outburst was owing merely to anger at the slighting language used toward her by Cousin Hetty. Yet she felt a dim premonition of something dreadful about to happen, and was ill at ease during the evening ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... appropriated to such humane uses; both those to which he has prefixed his name, and several others which he wrote and gave away intirely. But, though the many imagined authors are not living, their names, and those performances will be omitted here; yet, in mere justice to the character of Mr. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... feelings are terribly mixed up with their personal appearance. It was some time before Mr. Mafferton would consent to be even tolerably at his ease, though I made a distinct effort to show that I bore no malice. It must have been the mere memory of the past that embarrassed him, for the other two were as completely unaware of his existence as they well could be in the same carriage. For a time, as I talked in commonplaces, Mr. Mafferton in monosyllables, and Mr. Dod and Miss Portheris in regards, the most sordid ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... simplicity and clearness made him hesitate to accept it. Was it possible that so complicated a phenomenon could have so simple and terrible an explanation? Was it possible that all these words about justice, law, religion, and God, and so on, were mere words, hiding the coarsest cupidity ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... She made no effort to withdraw her hand from Karl's; she was completely under his sinister, dominating influence. Karl's will seemed equally impotent; he could not shake off the mysterious obsession. This man was more than a mere physical presence; he was a part of their very selves—the weaker, sensual impulses against which they had fought, but which now seemed gaining the mastery. The struggle went on in the soul of each as Millar's voice fell melodiously ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... the well-known witticisms attributed to great judges are so tinged with personality—even tending to malignity—that no one possessing respect for human nature can read them without being tempted to regard them as mere biographical fabrications. But such a construction cannot be put upon the stories told of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, whose overbearing insolence to the Bar is well known. To a few friends like John Scott, Lord Eldon, and Lloyd Kenyon, Lord Kenyon, he ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... Sympson, who lived not far from the Lincolns at this period, left this description of "a mere spindle of a boy," in one of his earliest attempts to defend himself against odds, while waiting at the neighboring mill while ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... in one day are burdensome to the little folk. And mothers "enjoy the service far more when they are not disturbed by fidgety or drowsy children." "Then, too, much of the sermon is unintelligible to them. Why torture them by a mere form?" ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... a kind of charity of the dinner table and ballroom finer, I think, than the mere kindness of giving, finer because it requires discretion, nobler because it requires self-elimination. The more I saw of Miss Gore the more deeply was I impressed by her many amiable qualities. She had an ear for Jerry, but aware of my complete elimination by the rowdy upon my left, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... young widow of this old bachelor's life-long friend, the noted judge of that name, then some two years deceased. Constance and Anna were her step-daughters, the latter (if you would believe him) a counterpart of her long-lost, beautiful mother, whose rejection of the soldier's suit, when he was a mere lieutenant, was the well-known cause of his singleness. These Callender ladies, prompted by him and with a sweet modesty of quietness, had just armed a new field battery with its six splendid brass guns, and it was around these three Callenders that his ponderings now hung; especially around Anna ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... aspects of one and the same fact. Homo duplex, said the great Buffon: why not add Res duplex? Everything has two sides, even virtue. Hence Moliere always shows us both sides of every human problem; and Diderot, imitating him, once wrote, "This is not a mere tale"—in what is perhaps Diderot's masterpiece, where he shows us the beautiful picture of Mademoiselle de Lachaux sacrificed by Gardanne, side by side with that of a perfect ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... impressed Alfred greatly. He became certain Node would make the flying machine a success. Therefore, he built the platform on the barn longer that Node might get a better start. Alfred was strong in the belief that he could greatly aid Node with the clothes prop as before. But at the mere suggestion Node became angry. He threatened to abandon the flight if he caught sight of a clothes prop in Alfred's hands. Node knew full well once he was strapped in the machine Alfred could do anything he chose. He therefore determined that ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... would never have expected from savages. In her temporary charge of them during the nuns' annual retreat, she found no difficulty in enforcing silence; it was enough for them to know that their dear Mothers were spending the week with God; the mere fear of even slightly disturbing them, proved a sufficient restraint. If the Foundress occasionally happened to be absent for a short time on some errand of mercy, they were inconsolable until her ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... most works of this kind are well known to all experienced housekeepers, they being generally a mere compilation of receipts, by those who have no practical knowledge of the subject, and are consequently unable to judge of their correctness, or to give the necessary directions for putting the ingredients together in the right manner. A conviction ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... women angels of light, while there were others who had no hesitation in declaring that they were devils incarnate, though in neither case were they willing to grant them the same rights and privileges which they themselves possessed. Though many other facts of the same kind might be adduced, the mere existence of such discussion is enough to prove to the most undiscerning that woman's place in society was not clearly recognized, and that there were many difficulties to be overcome before she could consider herself free from ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... seas would be prevented. We are of the same opinion, only we do not think either the experiment fair or the result desirable. The very atmosphere of our country is pervaded by a conventionalism which, as is proved by what passes every day before our eyes, cannot be counteracted by mere external circumstances. The family in question would feel themselves to be only amateur Crusoes; they would be haunted by the idea, that they were surrounded, at a distance of only a day or two's travel, by the 'genteel' society of which they had formed a part; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... moment in a constitutional sense. It made the Parliament of Ireland subordinate to the Parliament of England; it reduced the Irish House of Lords from a position in Ireland equal to that of the House of Lords in England, down to the level of a mere provincial assembly. The occasion of the passing of this Act was the decision given by the Irish House of Lords in the celebrated cause of Sherlock against Annesley. It is not necessary for us to go into the story of the case ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... his complaint to make when you went to bed, that the sun had shone upon you in vain, when you had the opportunity of relieving some unhappy man. This, my lord, has justly acquired you as many friends as there are persons who have the honour to be known to you. Mere acquaintance you have none; you have drawn them all into a nearer line; and they who have conversed with you are for ever after inviolably yours. This is a truth so generally acknowledged that it needs no proof: ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... distinguished tenor, who had travelled all the way from Buda Pesth in haste, so that he might 'create' the chief role in the work of his friend Valdor, began to feel that there was something more in operatic singing than the mere inflation of the chest, and the careful production of perfectly-rounded notes. Valdor himself played the various violin solos which occurred frequently throughout the piece, and never failed to evoke a storm of rapturous plaudits,—and many were the half-indignant glances of the audience ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Provincial mansions of Philadelphia, especially its countryseats, as of the plantation houses of Virginia and the early settled communities farther south. In the city residences of Philadelphia, built in blocks as elsewhere, the halls were of necessity narrower, mere passageways notable chiefly for their well-designed staircases, which consisted for the most part of a long straight run along one side with a single turn near the top to the second-floor passageway directly above that to the rear of the house on the floor below. In a few of the earlier country ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... maintained by Jean-Francois Boissonade. The representative of Hellenism in modern letters was Courier, a brave but undisciplined artillery officer under Napoleon, who loved the sight of a Greek manuscript better than he loved a victory. PAUL-LOUIS COURIER DE MERE (1772-1825) counts for nothing in the history of French thought; in the history of French letters his pamphlets remain as masterpieces of Attic grace, luminous, light and bright in narrative, easy in dialogue, of the finest irony in comment, impeccable ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... their outward appearance exactly fitted every detail of the prophecy—that was another fact; and these two facts together seemed to point to a conclusion so irresistible that, shrewd and experienced as he was, Nam, was unable to set it down to mere coincidence. Therefore in the first rush of his religious enthusiasm he had accorded a hearty welcome to the incarnations of the divinities whom for some eighty years he had worshipped ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... the fugitives returned on the following day, convinced that the prophet was a false one; but many judged it more prudent to allow a week to elapse before they trusted their dear limbs in London. Bell lost all credit in a short time, and was looked upon even by the most credulous as a mere madman. He tried some other prophecies, but nobody was deceived by them; and, in a few months afterwards, he was confined ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... admit that proposition of a ransom [Footnote: 66] by auction; because it is a mere project. It is a thing new, unheard of; supported by no experience; justified by no analogy; without example of our ancestors, or root in the Constitution. It is neither regular Parliamentary taxation, ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... spread of education and with the great increase of literature among all civilized nations, more especially since the invention of printing and its vast multiplication of books, the making of volumes of selections comprizing what is best in one's own or in many literatures is no longer a mere matter of taste or convenience as with the Greeks, but has become something little short of a necessity in this world of many workers, comparatively few scholars, and still fewer intelligent men of leisure. Anthologies ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... interested in things themselves, but in their elusive, animating spirit. In the lyric poem, To Night, he does not address himself to mere darkness, but to the active, dream-weaving "Spirit of Night." The very spirit of the autumnal wind seems to him to breathe on the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... reached his prime in the underworld, of which he also was a native, without touching affluence, until his fortieth year. Nevertheless, he was a travelled man, and no mere nomad of the bush. As a mining expert he had seen much life in South Africa as well as in Western Australia, but at last he was to see more in Europe as a gentleman of means. A wife had no place in his European scheme; a husband was the last thing Rachel wanted; but a long ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... /Lucillius/ is a mere barbarism, the /l/ being doubled to indicate the long vowel: so we find ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... he was out of himself, a mere conquering male, unthinking, ruthless, exigent. Then the sweet strange touch of her cheek brought him back to the awful thing he had done. His reason worked with a lightning quickness. Terrified by his violence she would wrench ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... drifting and the pieces on the political chessboard bewilderingly disposed, outsiders came to look upon the Conference as a lottery. Unhappily, it was a lottery in which there were no mere blanks, but only prizes ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Fourteen hundred francs is of course a mere trifle, and they say that lawyers have to be well paid, and that it is because they are well paid that there are so many of them. I should have done better if I had been a lawyer—then she would ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... lamb, even in London; inveterate foes in the Ethnological Society and the Anthropological merging their fate in one Anthropological Institute. In 1915 the reluctance of the 'tall fair people who come from the north'—I borrow a phrase from Professor Ridgeway—to fraternize with mere brunettes, beyond Rhine and Danube, comes in its turn before the same ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Mere party issues never counted with me. I have read too much and seen too much. At my present time of life they count not at all. I used to think that there was a principle involved between the dogmas of Free Trade and Protection as they were preached by their respective attorneys. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... through a variety of chambers, differing in size and form, but essentially similar in character, and the attention is invited to the innumerable multitude of striking and fantastic objects which have been formed in the lapse of ages, by the mere dropping of water. Pendants hang from the roof, stalagmites grow from the floor like petrified stumps, and pillars and buttresses are disposed as oddly as in the architecture of a dream. Here, we are told to admire a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... wine,' he says. 'Tom,' he says, 'we've been frinds f'r years,' he says. 'We have,' says Tom. 'We've concealed it fr'm th' vulgar an' pryin' public,' he says; 'but in our hear-rts we've been frinds, barrin' th' naygur dillygates at th' convintion,' he says. ''Twas a mere incident,' says Mack. 'We've been frinds,' he says; 'an' I've always wanted,' he says, 'to do something f'r ye,' he says. 'Th' time has come,' he says, 'whin I can realize me wish,' he says. 'I offer ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... breakfast reading his letters, a note was brought to him, which, coming in the midst of a lively chronicle of home news from his sister Letty, almost stopped for the moment the beating of the Curate's heart. It took him so utterly by surprise, that more violent sentiments were lost for the moment in mere wonder. He read it over twice before he could make it out. It was from the Rector, and notwithstanding his wife's remonstrances, and his own qualms of doubt and uncertainty, this was what Mr ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... early Anglo-Saxon poetry was mostly warlike, for the reason that the various earldoms were in constant strife; but now the peace of good will was preached, and moral courage, the triumph of self-control, was exalted above mere physical hardihood. In the new literature the adventures of Columb or Aidan or Brendan were quite as thrilling as any legends of Beowulf or Sigard, but the climax of the adventure was spiritual, and the emphasis was ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... mouth. The eccentricities and shortcomings of the foreign bride were a priceless boon to the scanty population of the district; in castle and in peel tower little else for a time was talked of. To begin with, the mere fact that she was a foreigner, and that neither she nor any of her immediate followers could speak English, told heavily against the lady in the estimation of the countryside. Then, hardly anyone ever ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... came to the clergyman by mere chance, though he admits his belief that the habits of asceticism and meditation he had practiced for years may have made him in some way receptive to the vision, for as a vision, it seems, the thing first ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... on his Telluris Theoria Sacra, or Sacred Theory of the Earth, pub. about 1692, first in Latin and afterwards in English, a work which, in absence of all scientific knowledge of the earth's structure, was necessarily a mere speculative cosmogony. It is written, however, with much eloquence. Some of the views expressed in another work, Archaeolgiae Philosophicae, were, however, so unacceptable to contemporary theologians that he had to resign his post ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... "unintelligible moonshine," and so will probably hold their tongue. It is my fixed opinion that we are all at sea as to what is called Poetry, Art, &c., in these times; laboring under a dreadful incubus of Tradition, and mere "Cant heaped balefully on us up to the very Zenith," as men, in nearly all other provinces of their Life, except perhaps the railway province, do now labor and stagger;—in a word, that Goethe-and- Schiller's "Kunst" has far ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Thwackum with some warmth: "mere stubbornness and obstinacy! Can honor teach any one to tell a lie, or can any ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... self-assertive men who press forward to leadership in ordinary times, whether impelled by mere love of notoriety, personal ambition, or an honest desire to promote the welfare of their fellow-men, seldom become masters of the situation when a supreme emergency arises. They may set in motion great contending forces; they may precipitate conflicts whose ultimate ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... filled, the Germans almost immediately began to think about sleep. In truth, they all looked as though they had been up all of the night before, as probably they had. One of them, a mere youth certainly not yet out of his teens and the youngest in the party, yawned. The lieutenant saw it, and in a fit of apparently unreasonable anger said, in his ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... like Earnshaw, like Catherine. Having formed these beings, she did not know what she had done. If the auditor of her work, when read in manuscript, shuddered under the grinding influence of natures so relentless and implacable—of spirits so lost and fallen; if it was complained that the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes banished sleep by night, and disturbed mental peace by day, Ellis Bell would wonder what was meant, and suspect the complainant of affectation. Had she but lived, her mind would of itself have grown like a strong tree—loftier, straighter, wider-spreading—and ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... John Bull," to hold up Marlborough and Marlborough's wife to ridicule and to hatred. He depicted the great soldier as a low and roguish attorney, who was deluding his clients into the carrying on of a long and costly lawsuit for the mere sake of putting money into his own pocket. He lampooned England's allies as well as England's great general; he described the Dutch, whom the Tory ministers had shamefully betrayed, as self-seeking and perfidious traitors, for whose protection we were sacrificing ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... reversions to, and also perhaps more often than we suspect, magnifications of acts and psychic states that were at one time the fittest of which our forebears were capable.[9] However, all the pathological phenomena of today are not mere revivals of the acts and states of primitive man and his ancestors, but "they are often, on the other hand, grotesque variants and intensifications of phylogenetic originals that were more sane and simple if also more generic. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Shakespeare? It was indeed a characteristic of Professor Putnam, and one cause why his knowledge was becoming, had indeed become, at once so ample and so serviceable, that it was not an accumulation of facts disconnected or bound together by mere accidental associations, but an organic growth, every fibre of the most distant branch tracing itself back to the one trunk, and the sap from the living root ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... or leave to die!" Ah! and they meant the word, Not as with us 'tis heard, Not a mere party shout: They gave their spirits out; Trusted the end to God, And on the gory sod ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... exercise prescribed by the Rugby Union, in which fifteen men pit strength, speed, endurance, and every manly attribute they possess in a prolonged struggle against fifteen antagonists. There is no room for mere knack or trickery. It is a fierce personal contest in which the ball is the central rallying point. That ball may be kicked, pushed, or carried; it may be forced onwards in any conceivable manner towards the enemy's goal. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few rich families seized all authority, and while the fame and territory of the republic were extended, its dogeship became a mere figurehead. All real power was lodged in the dread and secret council of three.[11] Genoa was defeated and crushed in a great naval contest with her rival, Venice.[12] Everywhere tyrannies stood out triumphant. The first modern age of representative government ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... by reducing mere practice to art and method, in a way new at least to German painters. With Albrecht all was ready, certain, and at hand, because he had brought painting into the fixed track of rule and recalled it to scientific principles; without which, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the mere presence of a woman supplies a distinct want. She need not be clever, or very capable; she need have no great learning or experience. She merely has to be a woman—the more womanly the better. There are times when a man may actually be afraid for the want ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... these Herculean Efforts to vaporize his Income, he found himself at the age of 40 afflicted with Social Gastritis. He had gorged himself with the Pleasures of this World until the sight of a Menu Card gave him the Willies and the mere mention of Musical Comedy would cause him to break down and Cry ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... provision for the payment of L9,986, which represented claims fully investigated and recognized as justifiable before the union, and left the general question of indemnity for future consideration. Indeed, it is doubtful if the Conservative ministry of that day, the mere creation of Lord Metcalfe, kept in power by a combination of Tories and other factions in Upper Canada, could have satisfactorily dealt with a question which required the interposition of a government having the confidence of both sections of the province. ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... looked round, with an instant change in his face. The mere sound of Penrose's name seemed to act as a relief to the gloom and suspicion that had oppressed him the moment before. "You don't know how I miss the dear gentle little fellow," he ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... inches in diameter. The whole of the fan is made by machinery! An amazing machine cuts out each layer of paper of the proper size and shape, and when all the parts are ready, sticks them neatly together. Most Japanese toys—which really are Japanese, not mere imitations of Japanese designs—are made by hand; but this one ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... letters. I have endeavored to present the Christian character, and the duties required of the followers of Christ, in the light of God's word. I know, however, that I have done it with much imperfection. But, do not rest with the mere mechanical performance of the duties here recommended. Do not engage in any of them with the hope of meriting God's favor. Use them only as the means of promoting your spiritual progress; depending on the Holy Spirit, through the blood and merits of Christ, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... (EMU), but Denmark has decided not to join the 12 other EU members in the euro; even so, the Danish Krone remains pegged to the euro. Given the sluggish state of the European economy, growth in 2003 was a mere 1.1%. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... not much of a reader, and if she had been, there were no books within her reach but the Bible and a cookery book, on the former of which, for private reading, Jenny looked as a mere precursor of ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were killed before earth was reached. It was just as well for them, for the mere attempt to stand upright upon our planet would have broken every ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... evening," he remarked. "It's no matter of surprise that father says that I am so narrow-minded that I look at things through a tube and measure them with a clam-shell. I mentioned something last night about having nothing but tears, shed by all of you girls, to be buried in. But this was a mere delusion! So as I can't get the tears of the whole lot of you, each one of you can henceforward keep her own for herself, and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... underlying them, would be comprehensible to a mind like Cherubini's, in which, while the creative faculties were finely developed, the critical faculty was atrophied and its place supplied by a mere disciplinary code inadequate even as a basis for the analysis of his own works. On the other hand, it would be impossible to exaggerate the influence Les Deux Journees had on the lighter parts of Beethoven's Fidelio. Cherubini's librettist was also the author of the libretto from which Fidelio ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... cannot have too many women or wives, which, they say, assist their devotion—a sentiment which they pretend to have received from Mahomet himself by tradition. The fact is, the prophet was very fond of women. The Catholics would seem to think a priest better with absolutely no wife. This is a mere struggle between sensuality and asceticism. There is no love or affection in it. I showed Mohammed an empty bottle. He took a piece of paper and wrote: "The bottle is empty of wine, God fill it again." Such is Arab ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... an obligation of duty of the highest order by recognizing as independent states nations which, after deliberately asserting their right to that character, have maintained and established it against all the resistance which had been or could be brought to oppose it. This recognition is ... the mere acknowledgment of existing facts." [Footnote: Wharton's International Law ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... cattle stolen at will, settlers' homes burned over their heads, their hearths blown up by planted powder when they returned from any small trip, their horses run off—these things had seemed to him preposterous, mere shadows of facts. Now they were down to straight points before him, tangible, solid. He got them from the blue eyes of Tharon Last, the gun woman, and he had taken sides! He who had meant to keep so far out ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... fair England's territories, They will by violence tear him from your palace And torture him with grievous lingering death. They say, by him the good Duke Humphrey died; They say, in him they fear your highness' death; And mere instinct of love and loyalty, Free from a stubborn opposite intent, As being thought to contradict your liking, Makes them thus forward in his banishment. They say, in care of your most royal person, That if your highness should intend to sleep And charge that no man should disturb ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... this but a short distance when it broadened out to such an extent that the walls on either side could be seen but dimly. It still sloped upward, but at a very slight angle, and we had little difficulty in making our way. Another half-hour and it narrowed down again to a mere lane. ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... glad to hear the word "friend," but this was a mere form of expression with his Honour the Judge. He always said "friend" to lawyers' clerks, lackeys, and even to the parties to a suit whom it was his duty to tear to ribbons. Meyer, however, set forth his grievance quite confidently. He even sat down, though he ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... general shift in the mass would do it. So would the mere application of force at the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... the establishment to the Rhine did not allow of the cellars being excavated to a greater depth than 30 feet below the surface—a mere trifle when compared with the depth of many vaults in the Champagne. Any lower excavation, however, would have been attended with danger, and as it is, when the Rhine rose to an unusual height in March, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... person cannot pass through a wall by a mere operation of will. To go in or out of a room requires a passage; and, as the act was accomplished in the space of a few minutes, it was necessary, in the circumstances, that the passage should be previously in existence, that it should already have ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... he has nobody else to stand up for him," stuttered Roland, so excited as to impede his utterance. "We were both in the same office, and the shameful charge might have been cast upon me, as it was cast upon him. It was mere chance. Channing is as innocent of it as you, mother; he is as innocent as that precious dean, who has been wondering whether he shall dismiss him from the Cathedral. A charitable lot ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... watching the rapidly receding whaler through my glasses until she was a mere speck—alone on the ocean, 150 miles from land, Then the navigator came up, and with strangely mixed feelings of exultant joy and depressing ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... broad passageway between the boxes—a mere crack it would have been before. They turned into it, and, a few feet beyond, came to a larger square space with a box making a roof over it some ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... had seen the angry glance of her eyes, and the excited tone of her voice still rang in his ears. He guessed that, although she had come to Constantinople with the full intention of forgetting the accusations she had once uttered, the mere sight of him was enough to bring back all her virulent hatred. She still believed that he had killed his brother. That was clear from her words, and from the tone in which they were spoken. Whether the thought was a delusion, or whether she sanely believed ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... said mamma, "knew an artist to make such a study of another's face as Mr. Hart did of brother's. He was not content with a mere sitting from him now and then; he visited him at the house; he watched his face in company, and attended every occasion when he spoke in public, that he might model him, he said, in his best mood. Consequently the bust was the most perfect likeness that had ever been made of ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... for what they lost by being debarred from entering those circles of culture and amusement, the conditions of entrance to which were, not a love of and proficiency in art, but that ignoble and foolish one, the mere ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... floor with his thick lips, tumbling down and rolling over in the effort; for a pouched turkey has no wings with which to balance himself. So much hilarity in the family room drew the Pawnee servants. I saw their small dark eyes in a mere line ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... men who can call ladies by their Christian names. One day he met twenty-four duchesses walking on a red carpet, and he winked at them, and they were all delighted. It was so at first he appeared to her. Has a mere girl any protection against a man of that quality? and she was the very merest of girls—she knew it. It was not that she was ignorant, for she had read widely about men, and she had three brothers as to whom she knew ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... the oppressive Minister is printed in Ramusio's Collection Achmach. But the c and t are so constantly interchanged in MSS. that I think there can be no question this was a mere clerical error for Achmath, and so I write it. I have also for consistency changed the spelling of Xandu, Chingis, etc., to that hitherto adopted in our text ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... wake up again until the spring has again brought out the green things for his delectation. To be sure tradition has it that the ground hog comes to the mouth of his burrow on Candlemas Day and looks for his shadow that he may figure out how much longer he may sleep. But that I take to be a mere literary furnishing, like the chuck part of the animal's name, brought from England with the pioneers and adapted to use in this country. Probably it is said in England of the dormouse, which also sleeps winters, as does ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Damascus, must be as clay in the hands of a potter. The Syrians marvel how the Franks can walk, so difficult is it to bend their joints. Moreover, they know the difference between him who comes to the Bath out of a mere idle curiosity, and him who has tasted its delight and holds it in due honor. Only the latter is permitted to know all its mysteries. The former is carelessly hurried through the ordinary forms of bathing, and, if any trace of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... thing. Things that must be done and quickly. Perhaps it sounds nothing much—a mere bit of a map. But maps are like lamps to men in the dark. And they must be accurate. To me, therefore, the most inaccurate, absent-minded mortal before the war that ever breathed, it is all a source of ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... faintly. "Store-shelves are full. People are carrying last year's stock with no call for it. It has always seemed to me, Eastman, that a liberal policy to workmen brought its own reward. They are large consumers. Cut them down to mere food and shelter, and clothes are the first to go. In decent times your workman is ashamed ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... most part a throng of men without defensive armour. For inasmuch as the general was elsewhere, many sailors and servants in the Roman camp, in their eagerness to have a share in the war, mingled with that part of the army. And although by their mere numbers they did fill the barbarians with consternation and turn them to flight, as has been said, yet by reason of their lack of order they lost the day for the Romans. For the intermixture of the above-mentioned men caused the soldiers to be thrown into great ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... to her, her little fluttering hands held out appealingly. "And do not misunderstand me. The thing may seem wrong in your eyes, as this young woman says, but if you will listen patiently to my explanations I am sure you will see that it was a mere eager over-sight—the fault of absent-mindedness, hardly the sin of covetousness, and surely not a crime. I am making ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... way. Per Baccho! I would as soon be shot in the hand with an escopette ball as drink the quantity of wine and eat the quantity of food that I have seen even women and children dispose of, as if it were mere pastime, on these railway journeys. I think it must be either this or the frost that accounts for the extraordinary prevalence of red noses in Russia, and it even occurred to me that the stations are painted a fiery red, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... difficulty—for the narrow thoroughfares were much fuller of rubbish, and much less freed from smoke and fiery vapour, than the wider—until he reached a part of it with which he had once been well acquainted. But, alas! how changed was that familiar spot. The house he sought was a mere heap of ruins. While gazing at them, he heard a voice behind him, and turning, beheld Mr. Bloundel and his son Stephen, forcing their way through what had once been Maiden-lane. A warm greeting passed between them, and Mr. Bloundel gazed for some time in silence upon the wreck ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... courts were trying to administer the statutes, but the courts were impotent. The statutes were mere printed words. For the rank and file of the bad men were raiding and murdering under the guidance of new leaders who furnished them with food and ammunition, notified them of the movements of the officers, procured perjured ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... a woman—young by her step, light and quick as the antelope's, graceful by her movements, charming by her outlines which a poor, thin woolen wrapper imperfectly shrouded. She enchanted by the mere contour; it was her weird burden which appalled the watcher. In one hand, suspended horizontally, lengthwise parallel to her course, she held what seemed by shape and somber hue to be ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... remonstrance useless, and unwilling to waste time returned to his labours. Just at that moment there came a fearful crash, the stout timbers and beams were rent, as if composed of mere touchwood. The ship broke in two. The sea, rushing through the stern ports, swept every one out of the cabin, and the ribald songs and jests of those within were in a moment changed for ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... when the movement in favour of "self-determination" is almost world-wide, and is especially active in India, this book comes as a welcome exposition of the ideals which have inspired the great leaders of Indian thought. It is not a mere statement of India's claim to self-government, but a sympathetic study of eleven leaders whose influence and personality have gradually led to that development of India which will make self-government possible. The influence of Western thought—in ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... the world. I interviewed the Chief-of-Staff, General Lebediff, as to his orders for suppressing the revolters and went downstairs to find the vestibule empty except for my "monks." No one who was not there could believe the absolute transformation that the mere presence of a few English soldiers had on this critical situation. In revolutions every rule and safeguard of society is uprooted; the people feel as in an earthquake, nothing is secure, everyone ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... railleries—often in nothing else. The stage character of the tailor is stereotyped from generation to generation; his goose is a perennial pun; and his habitual melancholy is derived to this day from the flatulent diet on which he will persist in living—cabbage. He is effeminate, cowardly, dishonest—a mere fraction of a man both in soul and body. He is represented by the thinnest fellow in the company; his starved person and frightened look are the unfailing signals for a laugh; and he is never spoken to but in a gibe ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... surprise, on getting down early the next morning, and eagerly opening the newspapers, there was not a word about the arrest! There was a column of mere padding about "The Styles Poisoning Case," but nothing further. It was rather inexplicable, but I supposed that, for some reason or other, Japp wished to keep it out of the papers. It worried me just a little, for it suggested the possibility that there might be further ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... beings there were a few tents and huts, but in face of the searching wind canvas seemed quite porous, and the huts were badly built and had a hundred openings to the bitter air. But up at the Bluff conditions were terrible. The trenches had disappeared under repeated bombardments, and had become mere chains of shell holes in which the men stood up to their thighs in liquid mud. When the C.O. arrived to take over the headquarters' dug-out he found it blown to pieces. Within lay the bodies of the previous occupants—four ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... said, "after a great American. To my mind, the greatest—Theodore Roosevelt. His championship of the cause of votes for women at a time when mere politicians were afraid to commit themselves is enough in itself to gain him ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... lowered tones. Barbara, between Vandeman and myself, continued to show an almost feverish attention to Vandeman. It was plain enough from where I sat that nothing Ina Vandeman could say gave the lad any less interest in his plate. But I suppose with a girl, the mere fact of some other girl being allowed to show intentions counts. Did the flapper get what was going on, as she looked proudly across at her handiwork, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... abandoned his claim to the reward. Had he looked abashed or mortified, Jenny felt that she might have relented, but the braggart was as all-satisfied, as confident and boastful as ever. Nevertheless, as his eye seemed to seek hers, she was constrained, in mere politeness, to add her own to her father's condolences. "I suppose," she hesitated, in passing him, "that this is a mere nothing to you after all that you did last night that was really ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and no mention was made in the English Press of the fact that on the day of the postponement of the coronation, owing to the illness of the King, the organ of the "disloyalists"—the Freeman's Journal—ended its leading article with the words "God Save the King," which were a mere expression of the feelings of the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... allotted for reduction of passage money, and until further notice no new members or associates can be elected except by special vote of the Council. This is as it should be, otherwise the meeting would be largely one of mere "trippers," instead of genuine representatives of British science. The Council have taken every precaution to render the Montreal Meeting one of real work, and no mere holiday; from respect to itself as well as to its hosts, the Association is bound ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... some of the reasons. Mary had just returned from guiding her dear papa in a pleasant shady walk, and now, throwing off her bonnet, and putting on her apron, she prepared to lay the cloth for dinner; for as they had only one servant, and that was a mere country girl, to do the drudgery of household work, Mary assisted by performing a thousand little offices, which Harriet was too haughty ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... shoulder of ground, later called Mount Independence, raised its bulk out of the surrounding forest. The formidable promontory on which the French had built Ticonderoga twenty years before, commanded a great sweep of the lake. For mere foot-soldiers, without artillery or explosives, to attack these ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... accompany his father on his cruise in the West Indies to break up piracy in those waters. When, two years later, Captain Porter entered the Mexican navy he appointed his son a midshipman. He acquitted himself gallantly in more than one fight with the Spanish cruisers. While still a mere boy he was made a midshipman in the United States navy. As a lieutenant he saw plenty of active service in the war with Mexico, and, at the beginning of the Civil War, was one of our most trusted officers. In command of the Powhatan he covered the landing of the reinforcements ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... "fooling with running water," the mere trickle here in question had to be dragged out of its cradle to make it run at all. It remained for me to find out by experience that even that weakling, imprisoned and grown to a pool, though of only ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... accomplishment of this great, beneficent, and necessary work for civilization, that I find the greatest pleasure in accepting your election as a member of this Academy, and find cause for gratification beyond that of mere personal ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... her all; and that all meant far more than mere earthly love. To her he was something that must be cherished as a priceless gem entrusted to her care, and his honor was more sacred to her than her own. Therefore all personal considerations must be passed over, and she must ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... above the union. This great difference, the butternut being so much smaller, was no doubt the cause of a shortage of food supply elaborated through the bark circumference which limited the top to a mere growth of leaves, not leaving sufficient additional supply for ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... the Po to the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean, the most serene republic was mistress of the whole coastline, and Italy and Greece seemed to be mere suburbs of Venice. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... vital facts about plants and animals may be interesting and may possess a certain intellectual value, but nothing more. The investigation of man and of men and of human life is regarded by the majority as a mere cultural exercise which has no further result than the recording of present facts and past histories; but it is far otherwise. Science and evolution must deal with mere details about the world at large, and with human ideals and with ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... or less). What he was supposed to accomplish was stated thus in the London Pall Mall Gazette, issue of December 2: "Dr. Luys then showed us how a similar artificial state of suffering could be created without suggestion—in fact, by the mere proximity of certain substances. A pinch of coal dust, for example, corked and sealed in a small phial and placed by the side of the neck of a hypnotized person, produces symptoms of suffocation by smoke; a tube of distilled water, similarly placed, provokes signs of incipient hydrophobia; ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... daikwan (another term for "deputy") was often given. These daikwan were selected from among the members or vassals of a shugo's family to act provisionally as shugo-dai. As for the jito, from the middle of the Kamakura epoch their posts became mere sinecures, the emoluments going to support their families, or being paid over to a temple or shrine. Occasionally the office was sold or pawned. The comparatively small areas of land within which the jito officiated soon came to be recognized as ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... haste to abase himself. "It is mere snobbery our making so much of London. A kind of despicable cant, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... nodded. "After all these years! Once," she went on in a triumphant voice, "our fields of vision were so small that our differences of opinion loomed up like insurmountable barriers. Now the differences are mere specks on our broadened outlooks. Oh, I know," she went on as if inspired, "I've been a long journey, simply to come back to Bob again. But it hasn't been in vain. There was no short cut to the perfect understanding that is Bob's ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... was, not that they were passively resigned, but that they were actively and thoroughly cheerful. Even her busy hands, which of their own thinness alone might have besought compassion, plied their task with a gay courage that made mere compassion an unjustifiable assumption of superiority, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... at these words, and answered, "I tell you again that Siegfried is a king far nobler and richer and higher than any other king on earth. Think you that my brothers would have given me to a mere vassal to ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... laughing, "a little fellow, about as big as I am. You could soon manage poor Francois; he would be a mere child in the grasp of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... it will not do to stifle this conviction. Comprehensive endeavours must be made to educate and enlighten; to touch the heart as well as to train the intellect. And it must not be forgotten, that education involves very much besides mere book-learning—the mechanical duties, namely, of everyday life. Something of the latter is to be tried in the City Hospice and Soup-kitchen just opened near the foot of Holborn Hill. Though fitted up in an old house, it is a training institute ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... and Systole are not mere arbitrary processes. They usually represent an earlier pronunciation which had passed out of vogue ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... had remained mere wretched patchwork, his logic came to an end wherever bold reliance upon the intuitive process was needed to supply missing links in the ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... Thus measured it is not less truly important, but it may be important in a lower degree. On the other hand, and for exactly the same reason, nothing that is real is unimportant. The "failures" are not mere mistakes. We see them, in St Augustine's words, as "scholar's faults which men ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... man having a marked tendency to depressing, morbid ideas, to rid himself of them. Dr. Hinkle helps the sufferer to gain that confidence and cheer which result from knowledge of certain immunity from dreaded ills and positive assurance of recovery by mere regulation of food or employment along the lines of simple, ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... yourselves by ever rubbing against other people's elbows? You are all heaped up to such a degree that you no longer have the amount of air needful for a man's lungs. Your largest stretches of land, what you call your big estates, are mere clods of soil where the few cattle that one sees look to me like lost ants. But ah! the immensity of our Niger; the immensity of the plains it waters; the immensity of our fields, whose only ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... passages have been embodied in our version: but the translator did not give all, for the same reasons that prompted Pere Premare to give none—"they are full of allusions to things unfamiliar to us, and figures of speech very difficult for us to observe." They are frequently, moreover, mere repetitions or amplifications of the prose parts; and being intended more for the ear than the eye, are rather adapted to the ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Cumberland, &c.; but, as all must see who take the trouble to reflect, not likely to repay the trouble; seeing that every thing which offers a picture, when viewed from a station nearly horizontal, becomes a mere map to an eye placed at an elevation of 3000 feet above it; and so thought, in the sequel, the Aetna party. The sun, indeed, rose visibly, and not more apparelled in clouds than was desirable; yet so disappointed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... this reason, or for others which escape me, the Banded and the Silky Epeirae think it wise to produce durable work and to strengthen their toils with a cross- ribbon. The other Epeirae, who are put to less expense in the fabrication of their maternal wallet—a mere pill—are unacquainted with the zigzag binder and, like the younger Spiders, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... forts. It is quite certain that if the Versaillais do attack they are repulsed, as they make no progress whatever; but do they attack, that is the question? I am rather inclined to think that these attacks and repulses are mere inventions. It seems evident to me that the generals of the National Assembly, who are now busy establishing batteries and concentrating their forces, will not make a serious attempt until they are certain of victory. In the meantime they are satisfied to complete the ruin of ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... of the water. It was a close shave, but once more we were safe; and the doctor, in the exuberance of his gratitude, said that night: "If William wants a glass eye I'll send to New York to get him one." But when William learned that the glass eye was a mere matter of looks and would in no wise improve his vision, he lost interest in it. Looks do not count for ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... melancholy." This passage in Milton possesses an excellence far superior to that of mere description: it is spoken in the character of the melancholy Man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety. The Author makes this remark, to rescue himself from the charge of having alluded with levity to a line in Milton: a charge than which none could be more painful to him, except perhaps that ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... phrenologists, by acknowledging no spiritual substance, virtually deny that ancient doctrine, "It is not in flesh to think, or bones to reason," [42] and make the mind either a material substance, or a mere mode without ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... for he knew how to attract both the high and the low. His sermons were life-pictures; and this gave them their charm, their power, their practical effect. The doctrine of Christ, designed for all nations and all ages, is so simple, and can be traced back to such a few principles, that by a mere repetition, paraphrase, or exclusive explanation of these only, the most dexterous orator, obliged to appear so often, must become dull and cold; but infinitely rich, and ever new, is life surveyed in the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... the Germans seemed also, on the occasion, to have broken down. General von Ditfurth's order of the day bears witness to this: "It seemed to me that the infantry at certain points was confining its action to a mere defensive.... I cannot protest too strongly against such an idea, which necessarily results in destroying the spirit of offensive in our own troops and in arousing and strengthening in the mind of the enemy a feeling ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... said Peter, reducing the bits to smaller size and dropping them into the empty nail keg that served as his wastebasket. "A lifeless thing without a soul, mere clockwork. I have got the idea now. I am to build a bridge and make a road. Every way I look I can see a golden-flame tongue of inspiration burning. I'll rewrite that thing and animate it. Take ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the face of fashion, bigotry, and conservatism—so liberal, so eloquent, so brave—is a model for every young man, who, like the orator, would devote his talents to the best interests of the race, rather than to his personal ambition for mere worldly success. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Wood. Mere levity and youthfulness of blood, a malady incident to young men; physicians call it caprice. Nothing else. He that slighted her knew her value: and 'tis odds, but, for thy sake, Margaret, John will yet go to his grave ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... stand by an employee who had suffered at the hands of murderous ruffians, because of his sympathy with law enforcement, and the promotion of the moral welfare of his community. But the Assistant Superintendent of the C. P. R., under whom Mr. Smith worked, was not moved by such consideration, a mere sentimental consideration he would probably call it. He preferred to cooeperate with the rum ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... of them of more or less value; those yielding the best results, however, requiring a considerable length of time for their execution, and involving so large an amount of manipulatory skill as to render them fairly impracticable to a chemist at all pressed for time, and receiving but a mere trifle for the results. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... by mere appearances, the Jesuits were nowadays dispossessed of all influence in Rome. They no longer officiated at the Gesu, they no longer directed the Collegio Romano, where they formerly fashioned so many souls; ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... but Frank could not help having it repeated. It was a mere formal necessity to ask them, and had been accepted as such; but there was some amazement when Cecil brought home Lady Tyrrell and Miss Vivian to lunch and spend the afternoon. It might be intended as one of her demonstrations; for though it was understood that any ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with all the more eagerness as it seemed so long delayed, so urgently needed. Still, they made their yearly journeys to Jerusalem, and participated in the great convocations, which, in outward splendour, eclipsed memories of the past; but they realized that the glory had departed, and that the mere husk of externalism could not long resist the incoming tides of militarism, of the love of display, and the corrupting taint of the worst aspects of Roman civilization. When the feasts were over, these pious hearts turned ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... doubts Sangara on account of having brought no letters. Nothing can be believed in this land unless it is in black and white, and but little even then; the most circumstantial details are often mere figments of the brain. The one half one hears may safely be called false, and the other ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... the shadow of a clump of sumach, hungrily regarded the "roasting ears" which Pinetop had just rolled in the ashes. A malarial fever, which he had contracted in the swamps of the Chickahominy, had wasted his vitality until he had begun to look like the mere shadow of himself; gaunt, unwashed, hollow-eyed, yet wearing his torn gray jacket and brimless cap as jauntily as he had once worn his embroidered waistcoats. His hand trembled as he reached out for his share of the green corn, but weakened as he was by sickness and starvation, the defiant humour ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Hertzog replied that it was a principle in law that a delegate is not to be regarded as a mere agent or mouthpiece of his constituents, but, on the contrary (when dealing with public affairs), as a plenipotentiary—with the right, whatever his brief might be, of acting to the ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... reflectors, for lamp shades, for the soles of boots and shoes, which have been heretofore patented as designs, and to this class might be added, with great propriety, that class of so-called "mechanical" patents, granted for mere changes of form, such as plowshares, fan blowers, propeller blades, and ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... have been that of half-waking in trance; or, perhaps, a shade nearer the lightest form of trance-sleep. To increase the force of the scene, they appear to have exhibited some degree of trance-perceptive power. But, without this, the mere aspect of such persons is wonderfully imposing. If the pure spirit of Christianity finds a bright comment and illustration in the Madonnas and Cherubim of Raffaelle, it seems to shine out in still more truthful vividness from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... like the solemn fool that I was, first with one and then with another; and all the while I told myself, like the prophet that "I did well to be angry"; and that I would shew her that no man, of my ability, could depend upon any mere woman for his content. Yet the pain ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... sometimes the subjects are weak in intellect and in a condition similar to cretinism. Kaufmann quotes a case in a weakly boy of twelve whose penis was but 3/4 inch long, about as thick as a goose-quill, and feeling as limp as a mere tube of skin; the corpora cavernosa were not entirely absent, but ran only from the ischium to the junction of the fixed portion of the penis, suddenly terminating at this point. Nothing indicative of a prostate could be found. The testicles were at the entrance of the inguinal canal ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality which some temptation may not overtop, or undermine ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... that they were then in. The informer went on to say that Sir Clement Smith and the Recorder, who were present, laughed at the prayer. But inasmuch as the informer had not been present himself, and that what he had laid before the court was mere hearsay evidence, little attention ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... "Nay, love, these are mere words to me. Rich or poor, high or low, noble or ignoble, thou only hast my heart. It beats and throbs only for thee. I have thought upon thee, dreamed upon thee, loved thee. I can not marry Don ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... thought to deprive the poor of souls. They have liked to think that they would forever bear their cross in peace. Yet when anarchism comes and touches the souls of the poor it finds not dead blocks of wood or mere senseless cogs in an industrial machine; it finds the living, who can pray and weep, love and hate. No matter how scared their souls become, there is yet a possibility that their whole beings may revolt under wrong. When the anarchist deifies even the veriest ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... about matters connected with the war, and he always, as far as one could judge, deeply impressed such visitors. I do not think that the warmth with which some of them spoke about him after such pow-wows when I ushered them out, was a mere manifestation of politeness. He was gifted with a special bent for diplomacy, and he prided himself with justice on the skill and tact with which he ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... matter of mere history, this devoted blade had drawn nobody's blood; since, in the six years that followed their enlistment, the Looe Die-hards had never been given an opportunity for a brush with their country's hereditary foes. How, then, did ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... by aspiring to my cousin's hand," answered Harry. "Were he a man of family I should say nothing, of course; but he is, sir, a mere adventurer. His father is a common boatswain—a warrant officer—not a gentleman even by courtesy, and his mother, for what I know to the contrary, might have been a bum-boat woman, and his relations, if he had any, are probably ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... some other reasons which you have omitted to state. In the first place, his Lordship has no grandmother. Now the author—and we may believe him in this—doth expressly state that the 'British' is his 'Grandmother's Review;' and if, as I think I have distinctly proved, this was not a mere figurative allusion to your supposed intellectual age and sex, my dear friend, it follows, whether you be she or no, that there is such an elderly lady ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Do all you can for them, and they will slide back again; give them work, and if they are willing to take it at all, they soon lose their positions. Some belong to the pseudo-social class and are mere parasites feeding on society. Others are anti-social, ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... of Port Said is that connected directly or indirectly with the transshipment of vessels to and from the Red Sea by way of Suez. The town contains nothing of interest, and is a mere sandy plain. The languages spoken are French and Arabic. There are, counting the floating population, some eight thousand people here, not more, composed of every possible nationality; while the social status is at as low an ebb as it can possibly be. The region ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... I shall," said West; "for I'm horribly sorry for the poor fellow. He couldn't withstand the temptation to buy the diamonds for a mere nothing and sell ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... the way towards what I regarded as the natural solution of the immediate problem. "Come," I said, "the idea of a marriage between Banks and your sister doesn't appear so unreasonable. The Bankses are evidently good old yeoman stock on the father's side. It is a mere accident of luck that you should be the owners of ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... patriot I shall devote myself with anxious solicitude. It will be my desire to guard against that most fruitful source of danger to the harmonious action of our system which consists in substituting the mere discretion and caprice of the Executive or of majorities in the legislative department of the Government for powers which have been withheld from the Federal Government by the Constitution. By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... on the 27th of July. The country which, when we passed up, looked as if the hard winter frosts had passed over it, had now assumed a new face, so much of vernal freshness had been given to it by the rains. The Platte was exceedingly low—a mere line of water among the sandbars. We reached Laramie fort on the last day of August, after an absence of forty-two days, and had the pleasure to find our friends all well. The fortieth day had been fixed for our return; and the quick eyes ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... encouraging smile to Tom, turned away. He meant to go to the engineer's office before his return to town, now that his affairs with Grogan were settled. As he swung back the door in the board fence, he stumbled over a mere scrap of humanity carrying a dinner-pail. The mite was peering through the crack and calling to Cully at the horse-trough. He proved to be a boy of perhaps seven or eight years of age, but with the face of an old man—pinched, weary, and scarred all over with suffering and pain. ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... now supreme lord of Japan, the mikado, for whom he acted, being a mere tool in his hands. Yet one great conflict had still to be fought by the shogun's younger brother, whose romantic story we have ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and Arsenal; with innumerable glimpses of other and scarcely less prominent buildings, which unite in forming this wonderful maze of sacred and royal edifices. It would be very difficult, if at all practicable, to convey by mere verbal description a correct and comprehensive idea of the strange mingling of architectural styles here prevailing. The churches present, no doubt, the most picturesque effects, but this is not owing to any grandeur in their proportions. None of them ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... cut both ways. You could trade with it, using it as a bribe, bartering vote for vote; that was one edge. Or you could threaten with it, promising nay for nay, and thus compel some member to save your bill to save his own; that was the other edge. A mere bribe from the lobby owned but the one edge; it was like a cavalry saber; you might make the one slash at a required vote, with as many chances of missing as of cutting it down. Every argument, therefore, pointed to a seat; whereat Patrick ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... humour so that his sallies surprised by their unexpectedness. He knew how to appropriate opportunity, and saw the humour of a situation. A reputation for wit is thus gained not only by what is said, but by the mere indication of the ridiculous. This it is impossible to reproduce, and the celebrity of Selwyn as a wit must be allowed to rest on the opinion ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... Byron would, at this time, have been selected as the object of them. A seniority of two years gives to a girl, 'on the eve of womanhood,' an advance into life with which the boy keeps no proportionate pace. Miss Chaworth looked upon Byron as a mere schoolboy. His manners, too, were not yet formed, and his great beauty was still in its ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... talents and accomplishments accompanied by the modesty with which our young student spoke of his pursuits. Nor was he a mere recluse, though his health appeared feeble; for he entered with zest into conversation on the various topics of European interest suggested by a visit from foreigners, while he did not hesitate to expose, with patriotic zeal, the follies and abuses which opposed the march of civilisation in his ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... smiled a little. He did not again attempt to speak, yet, for all that, Donna heard the man-call to the woman that belonged to him, the mate for whom he had been destined when the world was first created. There are in this world personalities so finely attuned to each other that mere words are unnecessary to express the feelings of each for the other when first they meet. Between certain rare souls the gulf of convention may be bridged by a glance; the divine miracle of a pure and holy love, leaping to life in an instant, can suffer no defilement ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... bodies. Thus a new world, as it were, was revealed for human thought and speculation. We learned that our globe was not, as we had supposed, the centre of the universe. It was assigned its place far from that centre, and was known to be no more than a mere atom, lost amid an incalculable number of other globes. The revelations of the telescope proved that those who formerly were considered wise actually knew nothing. Quickly following these discoveries, extraordinary narratives of excursions ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... buffaloes. For many years no one dreamed that there was any end to the supply of buffaloes. And so both east and west they were killed for their skins, which sold for a few cents, for their horns, for a supply of steak, or for mere sport; and then one day people woke up to find that the buffalo had disappeared, not in one settlement only, as they had supposed, but everywhere. There are a few remaining, carefully cared for by the ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... before him into the valley. And craning forward I looked too, and saw far in the distance a white speck—a mere speck—moving rapidly on the cross road to Montgeron, and then we lost him behind a ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... regards the circumstances and needs of each other would have been fatal objections to any such scheme. The claim of the colonists seems to imply a misapprehension of the character of parliament; for parliament is not a mere meeting of delegates, it is an imperial assembly, and its sovereignty is neither derived from the perfection of its constitution nor lessened by its imperfection. Taxation is an attribute of sovereignty, and parliament had a right to tax the colonies because the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... can be no strong races—the qualities of courage and resolution in both men and women, of scorn of what is mean, base and selfish, of eager desire to work or fight or suffer as the case may be provided the end to be gained is great enough, and the contemptuous putting aside of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and worry. I do not know whether I most pity or most despise the foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand that the only things really worth having in life are those the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... notwithstanding their pretence of great expenditure, there was, so he was informed, little outward show for it.(125) Fault was found with them, not only for failing to build houses according to the articles of agreement, but for their humane treatment of the "mere Irish," instead of driving them forth to perish in the narrow districts set ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... attachment formed by him to a young lady of Quebec, during his residence there. It is said that the lady preferred a wealthier suitor, and that he never again became heart-whole. This, like the other story above mentioned, rests upon mere rumour, and is entitled to the credence attached to other rumours of a similar nature. His name is perpetuated in this Province by that of the stately Palace of Justice on Queen Street West, Toronto; also, by the name of a township in ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... scarcely listening. He kept saying "well?" and "what else?" mechanically, without the least curiosity, and by mere ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... year following lived more than two months in Dublin, I am able to speak to a few points, which as a mere traveller I could not have done. The information I before received of the prices of living is correct. Fish and poultry are plentiful and very cheap. Good lodgings almost as dear as they are in London; though we were well accommodated (dirt excepted) for two guineas and a-half a week. ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... never been taught to think for herself; the duty of obedience, which had been early inculcated upon her by a severe father, had grown easy by habit; and she was glad to save herself the trouble of relying upon her own resources. She is, therefore, the mere echo of her husband's sentiments; she believes him to be "the greatest wight on ground," and would as soon think of contradicting the scriptures, as any thing that he says. This acquiescence gratifies the vanity of her husband; he thinks her an admirable wife, but to every ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... precious possession and her sole support she refused at once, tho' frightened at her own boldness. The stranger, however, was rather insistent and asked if she would rent the cow, then, for fifty francs an hour? Was there ever a queerer offer? Of course fifty francs was a gold-mine to Mere Gavin, so she accepted, and was fairly overcome when the man laid down three hundred francs on the table and told her to keep them for him. Then he drove the cow away over the hills while Mere G. sat staring stupidly at her gold. After a time he came ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... original independence. During an extended period at the middle of the fifteenth century Sweden even had a king of her own. None the less, there was a form of union, and at times the preponderance of Denmark tended to reduce the northern nations to the status of mere dependencies. The union with Sweden lasted only a century and a quarter. Under the leadership of Gustavus Vasa the Swedish people, in 1523, effectually regained their independence, although in accordance with the Treaty of Malmoe, in 1524, certain of the southernmost ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... ribbons and plumes, and flew a flag before his dwelling with the initials of the North American Trading and Transportation Company on it—a defunct Alaskan corporation. We could not learn the origin thereof; the flag and the letters were plainly home-made. It was probably a mere imitation of a flag he had seen years ago at Tanana, copied without knowledge of the meaning of the letters, as the Esquimaux often copy into the decoration of their clothing and equipment the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... the air, in the same manner that fishes come to the top of the sea, then we should behold the true earth and the true heaven and the true stars. Our earth is everywhere corrupted and corroded; and even the land which is fairer than the sea, for that is a mere chaos or waste of water and mud and sand, has nothing to show in comparison of the other world. But the heavenly earth is of divers colours, sparkling with jewels brighter than gold and whiter than any snow, having flowers ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... scrupulously investigated facts and characters: we do not ask to be credited on our mere word only. Although we have not encumbered our work with notes, quotations, and documentary testimony, we have not made one assertion unauthorised by authentic memoirs, by unpublished manuscripts, by autograph letters, which the families ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... be unable to decide definitely for an hour or so yet, unless he regains consciousness in the meantime. It may be a fracture of the skull or a mere concussion." ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... was Victor Nevill's mother—I began to feel that I had been too harsh with Mary. My remorse grew, giving me no rest, until recently I determined to find her. But I might never have succeeded had not mere chance helped me. I was struck by your resemblance to Mary when I first met you ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... passed off better than could have been hoped. The full-grown, grave-looking man was so different from the mere youth whom Mrs. Murrell had been used to scold and preach at, that her own awe seconded the lectures upon quietness that had been strenuously impressed on her; and she could not complain of his reception of his ''opeful son,' in form at least. Owen held out his hand to her, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... officer with behaving rudely, and attempting to take by violence the calf which he had refused as a present, we had reason to suspect that he purposely sought this quarrel, and had more important objects in view than the mere captiousness of his temper. What these motives might be we had then no means of determining, or even guessing at; but we afterwards found, by letters which fell into our hands when in the South-Seas, that he had dispatched an express ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... ease now. Poverty and anxiety can throw even a Napoleon out of gear, but Richard Royson was hard as granite in some ways, and the mere decision to go to South Africa had driven the day's distempered broodings from ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... of the man was not very interesting. He watched him in mere idleness while waiting for the girl to bring the supper Donald had ordered. If there had been anyone else in the room Neal would not have wasted a second glance on the unobtrusive stranger. Yet, as he watched the man he became aware of something about him which was attractive. ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... that, something in the mere sound of the words seemed to reveal more clearly to her heart what had befallen her, and for the first time she began to cry and to remember. She remembered all Maurice's tenderness for her, all his little acts of kindness. They seemed to pass ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... expected to see Big Swinton step forward, but he did not. His revenge was not to be gratified by mere insubordination. The man who did at last step forward was an insignificant fellow, who had been nicknamed Spitfire, and whose chief characteristics were self-will and ill-nature. He did not lack courage, however, for ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... belong to the field,—not a drop of it,—and it ought not to be allowed to show itself within the reach of the roots of ordinary plants. It has fallen on other land, and, presumably, has there done its appointed work, and ought not to be allowed to convert our soil into a mere ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... old times again, to be flying through space," remarked Jack. "My! but we aren't making half the speed of which the projectile is capable. Why, we're only going about twenty miles a second," and he spoke as if that was a mere nothing. ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... Nicholas's nature still showed supreme? Or was it a question of fate—and of first and last? Had Dudley come upon her in the red sunset, in the little shanty beside the road, would she have gone out to him in the mere leaping of youth and womanhood? Was it the moment, after all, and not the man? Or was it something more unerring still—more profound—the prophetic call of individual to individual, despite the specious pleading of the race? But she put the thought ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... them. But in process of time they grew more cruel to all sorts of men, nor could any one escape from one or other of these seditions, since they slew some out of the hopes of gain, and others from a mere custom of slaying men. They once attacked a company of Romans at Emmaus, who were bringing corn and weapons to the army, and fell upon Arius, the centurion, who commanded the company, and shot forty of the best of his foot soldiers; but the rest of them were ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... No surface of madrepores is more sensitive to a touch than a Cabinet full of Spirits to a chilling syllable of failure. To regain my lost position, therefore, I said hastily, 'But can it be Effie?' (It was a mere hap-hazard name; I know no 'Effie.') The Medium went to the Cabinet and returned with the answer, 'She says she's Effie, and she wants to see you.' Of course, I went with alacrity to where the curtains of the Cabinet stood open, and there, just within it, saw a Spirit whom ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... of an office were a mere pretext. He spent his time at M. Roque's house, where he had begun not only by sounding the praises of their friend, but by imitating his manners and language as much as possible; and in this way he had gained Louise's confidence, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... Market-place, in the time of the Romans. There is also to be seen in this town, a Mosaic pavement discovered only a few years since, wonderfully beautiful indeed, and near ten feet square, though not quite perfect, being broken in the night by some malicious people, out of mere wantonness, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... like it before," commented Dick, "and maybe it's worth more to them than to us. It was only a mere guess of ours, after Colonel Snow undertook to interpret it to us, that there might be anything behind it, and it was only because it had evidently come from an Arctic country that we even thought of ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... would have but little bearing upon one so different from it as English. This would be a just objection if Schopenhauer treated literature in a petty spirit, and confined himself to pedantic inquiries into matters of grammar and etymology, or mere niceties of phrase. But this is not so. He deals with his subject broadly, and takes large and general views; nor can anyone who knows anything of the philosopher suppose this to mean that he is vague and feeble. It is true that now and again in the course of these essays ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... precious child's disaster and miraculous rescue from death, she urged, that same child, as a matter of fact, being as gay and chipper as though a header from the stern of a crowded launch into a more crowded river was a mere daily ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... unjust war as not only immoral, but as one of the greatest of crimes—murder on a large scale. Such are all wars of mere ambition, engaged in for the purpose of extending regal power or national sovereignty; wars of plunder, carried on from mercenary motives; wars of propagandism, undertaken for the unrighteous end of compelling men to adopt certain religious or political ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... Friends, credulous incredulity is a strange matter. But when a whole Nation is smitten with Suspicion, and sees a dramatic miracle in the very operation of the gastric juices, what help is there? Such Nation is already a mere hypochondriac bundle of diseases; as good as changed into glass; atrabiliar, decadent; and will suffer crises. Is not Suspicion itself the one thing to be suspected, as ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was nothing like it ever seen! Where we swept by squads of scampering English, the mere wind of our passage laid them flat in piles and rows! Then we plunged into the ruck of Fastolfe's frantic battle-corps and tore through it like a hurricane, leaving a causeway of the dead stretching ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... refuse to remove his hat when other heads were bared, and little better to refuse to pledge in company the name of Pitt, because he preferred Washington, cannot admit of a doubt; but that he deserved to be written down traitor, for mere matters of whim or caprice, or to be turned out of the unenvied situation of "gauging auld wives' barrels," because he thought there were some stains on the white robe of the constitution, seems a sort ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... they may come to this, to scout the whole gospel to be nothing but a heap of delusions, and a cunningly-devised fable, or but mere notions and fancies. ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... constantly increasing. He was then released, but was not for some two years permitted to approach the Court. Meantime, men of not half his descent, but with an unblushing brow and unctuous tongue, had become the favourites at the palace of the Prince, who, as said before, was not bad, but the mere ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... conventional silly stuff, but Roxane was probably not very critical; of Catcott's brother, the Rev. A. Catcott, who had a fine library and was the author of a treatise on the Deluge; of Smith, a schoolfellow; of Palmer an engraver, and a number of others—mere names for the most part. Baker, Thistlethwaite and a few more were contemporaries of the poet, but the rest of the circle consisted mainly of men who had reached middle age—dullards, perhaps, who condescended to clever adolescence, whom Chatterton certainly mocked ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... made his capture for the mere pleasure and glory of such a novel chase. The flesh of the NANDOU is highly esteemed, and Thalcave felt bound to contribute his ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Admirals," authorized by the Star Chamber and confirmed in their authority by 10 and 11 William III., c. 25, had already asserted a de facto jurisdiction on the spot, for it is hardly credible that the mere wantonness of legislative invention can have produced such a tribunal. To anticipate for a moment: the Act provided that the master of the first ship arriving from England with the season should be admiral of the harbour; to the masters ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), but Denmark has decided not to join the 12 other EU members in the euro; even so, the Danish Krone remains pegged to the euro. Given the sluggish state of the European economy, growth in 2003 was a mere 1.1%. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... successive Governors of Australia—in the beginning, be it remembered, the continent was one colony—were captains in the Navy. Governing in those rough days was not a mere master-of-the-ceremonies appointment, and Phillip, Hunter, King, and Bligh, if they made mistakes, considering their previous training, the populations they governed and the times in which they lived, amply justify Palmerston's ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... dispelled by the clear daylight of scientific knowledge. In our own country, footmarks on rocks and stones are by no means of unfrequent occurrence. Some of them, indeed, although associated with myths and fairy tales, have doubtless been produced by natural causes, being the mere chance effects of weathering, without any meaning except to a geologist. But there are others that have been unmistakably produced by artificial means, and have a human ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... from Japan, I learned that during my absence Nalini had been stricken with typhoid fever. I rushed to her home, and was aghast to find her reduced to a mere skeleton. She ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... of the Memoirs. In a literary point of view, they are beneath criticism. They are as shallow, flippant, and affected, as Barere's oratory in the Convention. They are also, what his oratory in the Convention was not, utterly insipid. In fact, they are the mere dregs and rinsings of a bottle of which even the first froth was ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the lane, this time at so fast a clip that the faces of the spectators who lined the course were a mere ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... confederation of the German States in 1820, constitutional freedom made little or no progress in Germany. The only advance made in Prussia was in 1823, when the Provincial Estates, or Diets, were established. These, however, were the mere shadow of representative government, since the Estates were convoked at irregular intervals, and had neither the power to initiate laws nor grant supplies. They could only express their opinions concerning changes in the laws pertaining ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... tedious days. Occasionally, when she would stumble and fall, she was cuffed and kicked by the nearest of the frightful men. Long before they reached their journey's end her shoes had been discarded—the soles entirely gone. Her clothes were torn to mere shreds and tatters, and through the pitiful rags her once white and tender skin showed raw and bleeding from contact with the thousand pitiless thorns and brambles through which she had ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and at each flash clapping his hands and shouting, unconscious of danger, and stirred to ecstasy. David, too, felt all the poetic elevation, and natural awe, in the presence of the crashing storm; but he felt something more. To him the thunder was not a power to tremble before, not a mere subject for poetic contemplation. Still less was it something, the like of which could be rubbed out of glass and silk, and which he had done with when he knew its laws. No increase of knowledge touching the laws of physical phenomena in the least affects the point ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... down to the essence of what appears on the surface as a mere trick of speech. It may seem far-fetched to say, but it is none the less the actual fact, that Ulysses is a Nobody, and a very active one to Polyphemus. That is, he has shown himself the negative power which overwhelms the giant, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... reached in the social problems presented by the times. In the old days of the struggle between the orders the question of privilege had sometimes overshadowed the purely economic issue, and although a close scrutiny of those days of turmoil shows that the dominant note in the conflict was often a mere pretext meant to serve the personal ambition of the champions of the Plebs, yet the appearance rather than the reality of an issue imposes on the imagination of the mob, and political emancipation had been thought a boon even when hard facts had shown that its ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... with their conscience and all religion, which was the very foundation of the rising of his spirit against them; though, according to their explication of the text, this was what they should have done, and so have pacified the ruler's wrath. It is but a mere shift to tell the world, that it is only in lawful matters they are to yield; the yielding must surely correspond to the rising of the spirit spoken of. But with such deceitful shifts are they forced to cover over a doctrine, which, if presented in its native dress, would not meet with such ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... one might know from his speaking that he is not an Englishman. The English place the accent oftener on the adjectives than they do on the substantive, which, though undoubtedly the most significant word in any sentence, has frequently less stress laid on it than you hear laid on mere epithets. On the stage they pronounce the syllables and words extremely distinct, so that at the theatres you may always gain most instruction in English elocution ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... comprehend how he should dare to commit such a wrong," persisted Mr. Knight. "He must have known that his marriage with you was legal, according to the laws of the State in which it occurred, and the mere fact of his leaving the country could not annul it. If he had assumed a name while he was here, it would not seem so inexplicable, but all the papers which you hold go to show that he married you under his own ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... and begged the "All the Year Round" publisher to send you directly four weeks' proofs beyond the current number, that are in type. I hope you will like them. Nothing but the interest of the subject, and the pleasure of striving with the difficulty of the forms of treatment, nothing in the mere way of money, I mean, could also repay the time and trouble of the incessant condensation. But I set myself the little task of making a picturesque story, rising in every chapter with characters true to nature, but whom the story itself should express, more ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... existence of this extraordinary fact, and had also made known which of them was in possession of the legs yesterday—and this would, of course, indicate where the guilt of the assault belongs —but as this would be mere hearsay evidence, these revelations not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... our nerves deceive us that I even thought it grated against my teeth as I opened my mouth to give it passage. At any rate the choking was gone, only now I felt as though I were quite empty and floating on air, as though I were not I, in short, but a mere shell of a thing, all of which doubtless was caused by the stench of those burning roots. Still I could look and take note, for I distinctly saw Zikali thrust his huge head, first into the smoke of what I will call my fire, next into that of Saduko's fire, and then lean back, blowing the stuff in ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... and has the best practice here; besides being courted by everybody who is anything. I am confident that the Hunters, and those people, call him in for mere trifles, just to cultivate his friendship. I know that Laura Hunter is fairly wild about him—and she is a chronic dyspeptic, luckily," my step-mother added ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... in the liberty of Christians! Can anything be more pitiable than the sight of so many, who should be the choosers and creators under God of their own spheres of utility and happiness, self-degraded into mere slaves of propriety and custom, their true natures undeveloped, their hearts cramped and shut up, each afraid of his neighbor and his neighbor of him, living a life of unreality, deceiving and being deceived, and forever walking in a vain show? Here, now, we have just left ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... purifying of the life from the desire of mere sense pleasures. It means the noble manhood which claims for itself the privilege of chastity and ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... I know! We witch-doctors read hearts. But do not weep, Little Flower. Why should you for such as I, a black man, a mere savage cheat, as your father named me? Yet I have not been altogether a cheat, O Imba, though sometimes I used tricks like other doctors, for I have a strength of my own which your white people will never understand, because they are ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... commercial. But we felt that credit was due the honest people of Ludlow, who preferred the music of the sweet-toned bells to sordid business; and, as the maid said, the bells did not awaken anyone who was used to them—surely a fit reward to the citizens for their high-minded disregard of mere ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... inspired one. Dr. Johnson, the friend of that wretchedest of lewd fellows, Richard Savage, and of that gay man about town, Topham Beauclerk,—himself sprung from an amour that would have been disgustful had it not been royal,—must also have felt something more in respect of Rousseau than the mere repugnance of virtue for vice. We must sometimes allow to personal temperament its right of peremptory challenge. Johnson had not that fine sensitiveness to the political atmosphere which made Burke presageful of coming tempest, but both of them felt that there ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... in a mood of lethargy not to be fathomed by mere affection. Not only did he turn away at the mere suggestion of eating, but he feebly hid his face ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Duryodhana thus weeping, Karna in great grief approached them both and said, 'Ye Kuru princes, why do you thus yield to sorrow like ordinary men, from senselessness? Mere weeping can never ease a sorrowing man's grief. When weeping can never remove one's griefs, what do you gain by thus giving way to sorrow? Summon patience to your aid to not gladden the foe by such conduct. O king, the Pandavas only did their duty in liberating thee. They that reside ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... unknown. Huet, the theologian, indeed, supposes that it is founded on the history of the reception of the Angels by Abraham. This is a bold surmise, but entirely in accordance with his position, that the greatest part of the fictions of the heathen mythology were mere glosses or perversions of the histories of the Old Testament. If derived from Scripture, the story is just as likely to be founded on the hospitable reception of the Prophet Elijah by the woman of Zarephath; and the miraculous increase of the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... day, his exasperation growing upon him, he was heard in a public place saying sardonically, "that it would be the very luckiest thing for Lieut. D'Hubert, because the next time of meeting he need not hope to get off with the mere trifle ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... confident of just treatment. Our aim was also to secure good laws wherever the National Government had power, notably in the Territories, in the District of Columbia, and in connection with inter-State commerce. I found the eight-hour law a mere farce, the departments rarely enforcing it with any degree of efficiency. This I remedied by executive action. Unfortunately, thoroughly efficient government servants often proved to be the prime offenders so ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Stuart interest, which seemed confirmed by his long visit to the Jacobite Baron of Bradwardine. When, therefore, he came to his cave with one of Glennaquoich's attendants, the robber, who could never appreciate his real motive, which was mere curiosity, was so sanguine as to hope that his own talents were to be employed in some intrigue of consequence, under the auspices of this wealthy young Englishman. Nor was he undeceived by Waverley's neglecting all hints and openings for an ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... be silent, it may be for his sake, who did not want to be made a mere wonder of, but more probably for their sakes, that the holy thing might not evaporate in speech, or be defiled with foolish talk and the glorification of self-importance in those for whom a mighty wonder ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... met Miss Carson and her mother by chance in Paris, at the rooms of Father Paul, where they had each gone on the same errand, and since that meeting his whole manner toward the two worlds in which he lived had altered so strangely that mere acquaintances noticed the change. ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... much in du Bousquier's relations with others. And yet in him, as in the chevalier, symptoms appeared which contrasted oddly with the general aspect of their persons. The late purveyor had not the voice of his muscles. We do not mean that his voice was a mere thread, such as we sometimes hear issuing from the mouth of these walruses; on the contrary, it was a strong voice, but stifled, an idea of which can be given only by comparing it with the noise of a saw ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... disguised solemnity, the prolonged futility of her search might have been grotesque to a more ironic eye; but Maggie's provision of irony, which we have taken for naturally small, had never been so scant as now, and there were moments while she watched with her, thus unseen, when the mere effect of being near her was to feel her own heart in her throat, was to be almost moved to saying to her: "Hold on tight, my poor dear—without TOO MUCH terror—and it will ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... is very doubtful whether a flower-bud has ever been found actually on a leaf. Mere adhesion of the pedicels of the leaf, such as happens in Ruscus, in Helwingia, Erythrochiton hypophyllanthus, and a few other plants, is, of course, not really to be considered in the light of an actual growth from ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... not one of the other children, for the part of Mamilius? some one may ask. It was not mere luck, I think. Perhaps I was a born actress, but that would have served me little if I had not been able to speak! It must be remembered that both my sister Kate and I had been trained almost from our birth for the stage, and particularly in the important branch of clear articulation. Father, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... prayer. He prays without ceasing, not by uttering without cessation the language of prayer, but by living holily. Every act of every hour, which is done conscientiously is a prayer, as well as the words we speak, and is more pleasing to God, for the reason that practice is better than mere ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... and contains some authors (Leo Diaconus, Johannes Lydus, Corippus, the new fragment of Dexippus, Eunapius, &c., discovered by Mai) which could not be comprised in the former collections; but the names of such editors as Bekker, the Dindorfs, &c., raised hopes of something more than the mere republication of the text, and the notes of former editors. Little, I regret to say, has been added of annotation, and in some cases, the old incorrect versions have ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... them, probably during the gradual upheaval of the country, and the hollow became afterwards the receptacle of the comparatively modern freshwater beds A, B, C, and D. They may well represent a silted up river-channel, which remained for a time in the state of a lake or mere, and in which the black peaty mass B accumulated by a very slow growth over the gravel of the river-bed A. In B we find remains of some of the same plants which were enumerated as common in the ancient lignite in 3 prime, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... log-cabin in the backwoods of Iowa. In 1852, the family removed to Kansas, where the father of young Cody, two years later, became a martyr to the Free State cause. From the moment the family was thus deprived of its support, the only boy, though a mere child, at the age of nine years, commenced his career. As a collaborator in the preparation of this work, he has been prevailed upon to relate all the incidents of his life, so far as they confined ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... symphony and overture, and suite and sonata, were interchangeable; but that does not at all concern us here. The symphony or sonata or quartet form is what these early groups of movements led up to. That these groups of movements originated in the theatre is quite probable; this is indicated by the mere fact that the word "overture" was frequently used to describe them. When the fugue was in its fullest maturity composers were turning overtures out in vast quantities. Our own Arne tried his hand at them, and no one looking at his would dream that the ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... him as he went, and must have known from his gait what was the nature of the answer he had received. But yet she went quickly upstairs to inquire. The matter was one of too much consequence for a mere inference. Mary had gone from the sitting-room, but her stepmother followed her upstairs to her bed-chamber. "Mamma," she said, "I couldn't do it;—I couldn't do it. I did try. Pray do not scold me. I did try, but I could not do it" Then she threw herself into the arms of the ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... the police! I'll give him to the police!" he broke out in a sudden flame at Keith's glance of inspection. "He thinks he has been very smart in taking from me all the papers. He thinks no one will believe me on my mere word, but I've got a paper ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... whole race of chroniclers. They, like Bede, were monks and priests. They lived in monasteries, and wrote in Latin. One after another they wrote, and when one laid down his pen, another took it up. Some of these chroniclers were mere painstaking men who noted facts and dates with care. But others were true writers of literature, who told their tales in vivid, stirring words, so that they make these times live again for us. The names of some of the best of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... poems of knights and ladies, we find fair maidens fighting in arms like men, or travelling dressed as pages, and nobody ever thought the worse of them. Therefore this foolish charge of the English against Joan the Maid was a mere piece ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... wanderer, I came upon a lake, set in a land Which has no fear of wolves. A fisher folk Live there in houses stilted over the water, And the stars walk like spectres of white fire Upon the misty waters of the mere. Ay, if they have no wolves, they have the fear All as thou hast; the sedges in the night Shudder, and out of the reeds there comes a cry Half chuckling, half bewailing; but, as I think, It is the mallard calling. Now among This haunted folk, I markt a man who went With shining eyes, and ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... The great contribution of Pestalozzi lay in that, following the lead of Rousseau, he rejected the religious aim and the teaching of mere words and facts, which had characterized all elementary education up to near the close of the eighteenth century, and tried instead to reduce the educational process to a well-organized routine, based on the natural and orderly development of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... is; the mere grace that we are given life at all is generous payment in advance for all the miseries of ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... running with them in the sense that you think. They're not anything to me beyond mere entertainment. Oh, I like them, of course. Lane Cross is a dear in his way, and so is Gardner Knowles. They have all been nice ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... (i.e., by the teachings of earlier thinkers which represent things other than they are); instead of believing others, observe for thyself! The idola fori, which arise from the use of language in public intercourse, depend upon the confusion of words, which are mere symbols with a conventional value and which are based on the carelessly constructed concepts of the vulgar, with things themselves. Here Bacon warns us to keep close to things. The idola specus are individual ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... great relative modification of organs when compared with those previously discussed. The head is very much broadened, but the semicircular markings, which occur also on the heads of previously described bird figures, are well drawn. The wings are mere curved appendages, destitute of feather symbols, but are provided with lateral spurs and have knobs at their bases. The body is rectangular; the tail-feathers are numerous, with well-marked symbolism. Perhaps the most striking appendages to the body are the two well-defined extensions of ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... said, sarcastically, "that a mere head-covering, elegant in its day, could make more hostility than an idle head? I will tell you the silly secret of it. When I came from the obscurity of the forest, sensitive, and anxious to make my way, and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... are three of us; and, as there are only six of them, we ought not to have much trouble. John will be a match for one. Methinks you and I can each make short work of a man when they first come up; and with but three of them against two, it will be mere child's play." ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... listlessly about. They could see that this conduct had lulled to rest any suspicion of their captors that they might attempt an escape. The sentry no longer kept in their immediate vicinity, and although he retained his gun in his hand, did so as a mere form. The others went about their business, several of them absenting themselves for hours together; and at one time but three men, including the ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... the old school, Sir Anthony had stood his ground up to the last. The War had cost him dear. His only son was killed in the first months. His only grandson fell in the battles of the Somme. His substance, never fat, had shrunk to a mere shadow of its former self. The stout old heart fought the unequal fight month after month. Stables were emptied, rooms were shut up, thing after thing was sold. It remained for a defaulting solicitor to ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Darien, or the Forty-five—were still either failures or defeats; and the fall of Wallace and the repeated reverses of the Bruce combine with the very smallness of the country to teach rather a moral than a material criterion for life. Britain is altogether small, the mere taproot of her extended empire; Scotland, again, which alone the Scottish boy adopts in his imagination, is but a little part of that, and avowedly cold, sterile, and unpopulous. It is not so for nothing. I once seemed to have perceived in an American boy a greater readiness of sympathy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (subjunctive) are often used, regardless of their original meaning, as mere interjections. Translate: come now, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... not mean a mere cessation from wrong doing, and starting anew in the way of goodness, drowning in the past the evil done. On the contrary, as by sin we turned our backs on God to go into a far-off country, to spend there our substance, so by contrition must we turn main, retrace our steps, and ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel
... most striking manner noting the forced amalgamation of the Patriarchal Tradition with the incongruous Scheme of Pantheism. This and the connected tale of Io, which is but the sequel of the Prometheus, stand alone in the Greek Mythology, in which elsewhere both Gods and Men are mere Powers and Products of Nature. And most noticeable it is, that soon after the promulgation and spread of the Gospel had awakened the moral sense, and had opened the eyes even of its wiser Enemies to the necessity of providing some solution of this great problem of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... turned to her, her little fluttering hands held out appealingly. "And do not misunderstand me. The thing may seem wrong in your eyes, as this young woman says, but if you will listen patiently to my explanations I am sure you will see that it was a mere eager over-sight—the fault of absent-mindedness, hardly the sin of covetousness, and surely not a crime. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... with Hellenistic thought. As the Church declined the ancient State appeared, a State which knew no Church, and was the greatest force on earth, bound by no code, a law to itself. As there is no such thing as right, politics are an affair of might, a mere struggle for power. Such was the doctrine which Venice practised, in the interest of a glorious and beneficent government, and which two illustrious writers, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, made the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... was not long before her strength began to fail. She stumbled once or twice, and he put a supporting hand under her elbow. As they neared the edge of the pines it became evident that the road dwindled to a mere mountain-path winding steeply upwards through the snow. The sun shone dazzlingly upon the ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... show, in a conspicuous instance, what that kind of patriotism amounts to, in the man who aspires to 'the helm o' the State,' while there is yet no state within himself, while the mere instincts of the lower nature have, in their turn, the sway and sovereignty in him. He will show what that patriotism amounts to in one so schooled, when the hire it asks so disdainfully is withheld. And he will ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle towards him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood; but when he tried to grasp at it, it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the business he had ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... the house, I should have suspected a mere vulgar intrigue. That, however, was out of the question. The man's business was a small one, and there was nothing in his house which could account for such elaborate preparations, and such an expenditure as they were at. It must then be something out of the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... die. Let them keep her at home'? If it came, on those two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help me! A mere poor signal-man on this solitary station! Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... poetry. Bernard Shaw is in much the same condition; indeed, in attempting to do justice to Shakespeare's poetry, he always calls it "word music." It is not difficult to explain this special attachment of the mere logician to music. The logician, like every other man on earth, must have sentiment and romance in his existence; in every man's life, indeed, which can be called a life at all, sentiment is the most solid thing. But if the extreme logician turns for his emotions ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... arrangement seems to give tolerable satisfaction. At all events it has secured to Sungei Ujong since the war an amount of internal tranquillity which is not possessed by the adjacent States which are still under native rule, though probably the dread of British intervention and of being reduced to mere nominal sovereignty, being "pensioned off" in fact, keeps the Rajahs from indulging in the feuds and exactions of former years. Since my visit the Datu Klana died of dysentery near Jeddah in Arabia in returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... climbing. At times they came on perpendicular precipices, and had to make long detours to surmount them. After some hours' labor they reached the snow. They were now near a shoulder between two lofty peaks, and after an hour's climbing stood on its crest. The Aztecs were now mere spots, far ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... a housekeeper; she was NOT a mere upper-servant in her own family, and Julia was gratified that, in this instance, her fastidious brother could ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... batch of books has come, Creelman's novel, Eagle Blood, among them. Evidently it is a story written to prove the intellectual and commercial ascendency of Americans over mere Anglo-Saxons. The heroine and a few romantic details are thrown in as a bait to the "average reader." Alas for the "average reader"! How many crimes of this sort are committed in his name! We can never ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... paper-royal, brand-new boards, and best Fresh bosses, crimson ribbands, sheets with lead Ruled, and with pumice-powder all well polished. These as thou readest, seem that fine, urbane Suffenus, goat-herd mere, or ditcher-swain 10 Once more, such horrid change is there, so vile. What must we wot thereof? a Droll erst while, Or (if aught) cleverer, he with converse meets, He now in dullness, dullest villain beats Forthright on handling verse, nor is the ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... inefficiency and uncertainty had destroyed all public confidence in it. Under the executive government, the authority of the legislative council had been exercised by a very few individuals, representing a mere clique in the capital, frequently opposed both to the government and to the Assembly, and considered by the people hostile to their interests. In the lower chamber, the loss of public influence by the ministry had introduced absolute legislative chaos, and even the control over expenditure, ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... in sixteen fathoms, on good ground, on the south side of these islands. Sending our boat on shore, we found some of them sunken islands, having nothing above water but the trees or their roots. All these islands were a mere wilderness of woods, but in one of them we found a tolerably good watering place; otherwise it was a very uncomfortable place, having neither fruits, fowls, or any other refreshment for our men. We ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... and abandoning the point which could be of no use to him. "Of course not. But, dearest Marchesa, since you have judged for us—and there is no one else to judge—do you not think that you might leave the rest in my hands? The mere question to be asked, you know, in the hope of a final answer—the mere technicality of love-making, with which you can only be familiar from the woman's point of view, and not from the man's, as I am. Not that I have ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... enthusiastically, "you are a great poet! You have called an uncreated being out of the void. How much more godlike that is than if you had only ferreted out the mere facts! Indeed, the mere facts are rather commonplace and ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... was a very noble device, for the mere name of Chancery, and the high repute of the fees therein, and low repute of the lawyers, and the comfortable knowledge that the woolsack itself is the golden fleece, absorbing gold for ever, if the standard be but pure; consideration of these things staved ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... not be easily effected; an union founded upon interest, and cemented by dependence, is naturally lasting; but confederacies which owe their rise to virtue, or mere conformity of sentiments, are quickly dissolved, since no individual has any thing either to hope or fear for himself, and publick spirit is generally too weak to combat with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... himself primarily to a study of the habits and of the life-histories of birds, beasts, fish, and reptiles, and who can portray truthfully and vividly what he has seen, could do work of more usefulness than any mere collector, in this upper Paraguay country. The work of the collector is indispensable; but it is only a small part of the work that ought to be done; and after collecting has reached a certain point the work of the field observer with the gift for ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... steadily on higher and higher round curves and sharply turning angles and elbows, till at last at a dizzy height the foremost horseman rode in between two masses of rock surmounted by ruined buildings. Then on across a hideous gap of several hundred feet deep, a mere split in the rock bridged with the trunks of pine-trees, but awful to contemplate, and making the travellers hold their breath till they were across, and amid the gigantic ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... way and exploded violently; one remembers when the entire gun fell over and propelled the bomb in the direction of battalion headquarters; above all, one remembers the loathing and contumely with which the mere arrival of the trench mortar in any part of the trenches was greeted. Then there was no attempt at camouflage; one's sole endeavour was to avoid being killed by ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... he? Who would dare put him to such a test? Has personal experience not fully convinced us that the mere examination of the insect can tell us nothing about its particular industry? The baskets on its legs and the brush on its abdomen will certainly inform us that it collects honey and pollen; but its special art will remain an utter secret, notwithstanding all the scrutiny ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... can not object to any one's interpreting the Bible as he or she thinks best; but I do object that such interpretation go forth as the doctrine of this convention, because it is a mere interpretation and not even the authority of the Book; it is the view of Miss Brown only, which is as good as that of any other minister, but that is all. For my part I reject both interpretations. Here ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Why should she keep the place secret? She fears that I should follow her? Could she not anywhere keep me off by her mere bidding? Have I been brutally importunate? What secret can exist that she might not disclose to me—that she was not bound to disclose? I thought her incapable of a breath of falsehood, and she must have deceived me from the ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... exploration of the Nile when they came to the countless windings and difficulties of the marshes; the river is like an entangled skein of thread. Wind light; course S. 20 degrees W. The strong north wind that took us from Khartoum has long since become a mere breath. It never blows in this latitude regularly from the north. The wind commences at between 8 and 9 A.M., and sinks at sunset; thus the voyage through these frightful marshes and windings is tedious and melancholy beyond description. Great numbers of hippopotami ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... was accustomed to look on Uncle James as a mere sluggard. I pictured ants raising their antennae scornfully at the sight of him. I was to learn that not sloth but a deep purpose dictated his movements, or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... to be conversed with before being admitted into fellowship. 4. That brother Craik and I have each of us the care of two churches. At the first sight it appears as if the work is thus divided, but the double number of meetings, etc., nearly double the work. 5. The mere ruling, and taking care, in general, of a large body of believers, irrespective of the other work, takes much more time, and requires much more strength, than the taking care of a small body of believers, as we, by grace, desire not to allow known ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... generations, had very much exhausted the Macedonians, and, even in the course of his own reign great numbers had fallen, in the naval engagements with the Rhodians and Attalus, and in those on land with the Romans. Mere youths, therefore, from the age of sixteen, were enlisted; and even those who had served out their time, provided they had any remains of strength, were recalled to their standards. Having, by these means, filled up the numbers of his army about the vernal equinox, he drew ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... fragment of the letter, and smoothed it out carefully and reverently as he would a relic. Tears had gathered in his eyes, but he was not ashamed of them, for no one saw them; but they eased his heart, and helped to strengthen his resolve. It was a mere fragment that had been spared by the flame, but Armand knew every word ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... great waterfall somewhere on ahead," replied Don; and a few yards farther on they came once more upon the edge of the river, which here ran foaming along at the bottom of what was a mere jagged crack stretching down from high up the mountain, and with precipitous walls, a couple of ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... pursuits seemed to him frivolous. He was jealous of Agassiz, and of the fame and influence he had attained in this country, and was in the habit of spitefully asserting that the Professor spoke bad French, and was a mere icthyologist, who would not dare in Europe to set up as an authority in so many sciences as he did here. Even the amiable Professor Guyot, the most unassuming man in the world, who then lived in Cambridge, was also an object of this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... be regarded as a system which in the experience of mere than thirty years has at no time so commanded the public judgment as to give it the character of a settled policy; which, though it has produced some works of conceded importance, has been attended with an expenditure quite disproportionate to their value and has resulted ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... Under her mother's suggestion, she had been misjudging him. He had not been guilty of mere scheming. She was profoundly glad. The act of apology to him, performed in her own mind, gave her a ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... a monarchy—that it is no necessary effect of republican institutions, but the reverse. Our quarrel, therefore, is not with the declaration of rights, but that this celebrated declaration should be regarded, in the instance of one class in the community, as a mere rhetorical flourish, and should thus be deprived of its ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... of casting succeeded? People were reduced to mere conjecture. However, there was every reason to believe in its success, as the mould had absorbed the entire mass of metal liquefied in the furnaces. Still it was necessarily a long time impossible ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... aim, in the parents' minds, to bring their children up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. It is evident that this is a much greater task, and yet more natural and beautiful, than mere instruction in formal ideas or words in the Bible or in a catechism; that it is not and cannot be accomplished in some single period, some set hour, but is continuous, through all the days; that it pervades not only the spoken words, but the actions, organization, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... les regles aient lieu a un age trop jeune, quoiqu'en general les menstrues commencent entre la 13e et la 15e annee, la constitution de la jeune fille y jouant un certain role. Si la fille a atteint cet age et qu'elle n'ait pas encore ses regles, la mere ne saurait etre trop soigneuse; il est probable que la fille est pale et maigre, et que son teint montre cette couleur livide qui nous fait craindre qu'elle ne devienne sous peu la victime de la ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... thanked the gracious deities who, in spite of Straton's precepts, were no mere figments of human imagination and, as if he had become a child again, poured forth his overflowing heart with mute gratitude to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... simultaneous transformation from invited guest to parasite and hanger-on; he could not bring himself to quit dinners so excellently served for the Spartan broth of a two-franc ordinary. Alas! alas! a shudder ran through him at the mere thought of the great sacrifices which independence required him to make. He felt that he was capable of sinking to even lower depths for the sake of good living, if there were no other way of enjoying the first and best of everything, of guzzling ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... of any society but the Royal now—I find the latter takes up all my disposable time...Take comfort from me. I find 53 to be a very youthful period of existence. I have been better physically, and worked harder mentally, this last twelve month than in any year of my life. So a mere boy, not yet 40 like you, may look ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... like either in Heaven Or upon earth for knavery or craft:— Out of the field my cattle yester-even, 445 By the low shore on which the loud sea laughed, He right down to the river-ford had driven; And mere astonishment would make you daft To see the double kind of footsteps strange He has impressed wherever he did ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... had ceased to pay interest, had added that she was in the same boat with many of the best people; which ought to have been a consolation, had she needed any. But this loss of the means of living had seemed a mere trifle beside her other griefs; indeed, it acted as a spur rather than a bludgeon. The same pride which had prompted her to continue to dance bade her bestir herself to make a living. Upon reflection, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... must be so strong that it can, if it will, disregard the limitations of the constitution. The question is, How to compel a government, holding such powers, having an army, a navy, and a national treasury at command, to obey the requirements of a mere piece ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... level than that on which they had been so cruelly precipitated,—though persons of a not very original cast of mind might have found it difficult to say how; and the Duke of Sutherland has been ingenious enough to fall on exactly the one proper expedient for supplementing their ruin. All in mere circumstance and situation that could lower and deteriorate, had been present as ingredients in the first process; but there still remained for the people, however reduced to poverty or broken in spirit, all in religion that consoles and ennobles. Sabbath-days ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... transported by the mere physical intoxication of new motherhood, a potion more exciting, so her much experienced physician said, than any wine ever fermented. She hung over her sleeping baby, poring upon the exquisite fineness of the skin, upon the rosy little mouth, still sucking ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... and hardihood, and to powers of muscular exertion and endurance. These differences, notwithstanding all the exceptions and irregularities connected with them, are obviously, where they exist, deeply seated and permanent. They depend very slightly upon any mere external causes. They have, on the contrary, their foundation in some hidden principles connected with the origin of life, and with the mode of its transmission from parent to offspring, which the researches of philosophers have never yet been ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... that half the population were Copperheads, and that they had no souls. It is pleasantly situated on the swells of a fine undulating country, drained by the headwaters of the Monocacy. It has no special natural advantages,—owing its existence, probably, to the mere fact that several important roads found it convenient to meet at this point, to which accident also is due its historical renown. The circumstance which made it a burg made it likewise ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... found; but it was in the lower ranks of the party which opposed the authority of Rome, in such men as Hooper, Latimer, Rogers, and Taylor. Of those who had any important share in bringing the Reformation about, Ridley was perhaps the only person who did not consider it as a mere political job. Even Ridley did not play a very prominent part. Among the statesmen and prelates who principally gave the tone to the religious changes, there is one, and one only, whose conduct partiality itself can attribute to any other than interested motives. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who think the tendency of our policy has been too sentimental. I don't believe in doing business on sentimental principles. But I contend that mere money-making is not the sole end of existence. We have been associated with many of you for several years, and we cannot help feeling a considerable interest in you. After all, life is not so very long. Another twenty or thirty years will see us all ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... furnishes many surprises, as St. Paul knew, and, when not more than ten miles from the shelter of the Cretan coast, it came on to blow from the southwest with such violence that we were unable to beat up to the shelter of the Cretan highlands, and under a mere rag of canvas had to run before the wind, wherever it might drive us. I was the only one on board who knew anything of the Archipelago, and I had to decide the course, which it was possible to vary only a point or two either way, for the yacht would only run free, or, under favorable weather, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... the man who knows what can't be done. When he begins to let hope take the place of information in this regard, he becomes a conservative. When prejudice takes the place of hope, the mere conservative graduates into a tory, or a justice of the supreme court. It's all a matter of the chemistry ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... on—no dull, leaden rain, no mere monotonous deluge, but a living, singing fountain, crowned with such rainbows as hang roses and stars in the fine mist of samite waterfalls, irradiated by gleaming shafts of ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... of his sermon which struck me in a very particular manner: he said, "That there were some people who gained something in return for their souls; if they did not get the whole world, they got a part of it—lands, wealth, honour, or renown; mere trifles, he allowed, in comparison with the value of a man's soul, which is destined either to enjoy delight, or suffer tribulation time without end; but which, in the eyes of the worldly, had a certain value, and which afforded a certain pleasure and satisfaction. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... fasting, mortification of the flesh, abstinence from wine, from women, and from favourite dishes, are the only passports to rising in office, prosperity in trade, recovery from sickness, or a happy marriage with a beloved maiden. Nor will mere faith without works be efficient. A votive tablet of proportionate value to the favour prayed for, or a sum of money for the repairs of the shrine or temple, is necessary to win the favour of the gods. Poorer persons will cut off the queue of their hair and offer that up; ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... human nature that he could regard Tickell with any other feelings than hostility and jealousy. Tickell's omission of the Drummer from Addison's works was, in all probability—such at least is the impression which the letter makes on me—a mere pretext for the gratification of personal spite. There is nothing to justify the interpretation which he puts on Tickell's words. All that Steele here says about Addison he had said publicly and quite as emphatically ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... Moreover, I was amazed that since the President had said he considered the treatment of the women "shocking," he had pardoned them without stating that he did so to correct a grave injustice. I felt certain that the high-spirited women in the workhouse would refuse to accept the pardon as a mere "benevolent" act on the ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... Arthur's Seat, and hear the church bells begin and thicken and die away below him among the gathered smoke of the city. He will not break Sunday to so little purpose. He no longer finds pleasure in the mere output of his surplus energy. He husbands his strength, and lays out walks, and reading, and amusement with deep consideration, so that he may get as much work and pleasure out of his body as he can, and waste none of his energy on mere impulse, or such flat enjoyment ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be answered easily enough. If she replied truthfully, she would relate a tragic history of a winter of lonely despair lived out in the beautiful old house, which to its solitary owner was like a body without a soul, a mere empty shell which had once held something ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Corporation official, whom Bunning knew as well as he knew the Mayor, an official who, indeed, was known all over the town, and familiar to everybody, from the mere fact that he was always attired in a livery the like of which he and his predecessors had been wearing for at least two hundred years. This was Spizey, a consequential person who, in the borough rolls for ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... as from that glass saloon on the Great Western, which sheltered male and female alike from the fresh air. Are the sexes really races, each with its own code of morality, and their mutual love a mere device of Nature to keep things going? Strip human intercourse of the proprieties, and is it reduced to this? Her judgment told her no. She knew that out of Nature's device we have built a magic that will win us immortality. Far more mysterious than the call of sex to sex is the ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... a thing is so, or say it is not so, what evidence has the reader that it is proved or demonstrated? My mere assertions are not expected to be taken in preference to another's; of such proof, we have more than enough. Most people have not the time, patience, or ability, to set down quietly with close observation, and investigate the subject thoroughly. Hence it has been found easier ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... humour; and whose fall would, at a moment of less confusion, have created a deep and melancholy sensation. But he fell amid the roar and tempest of battle, when there was occasion for other thoughts and other feelings than those of mere individual grief. ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... practically left Lionardo his sole heir after Gismondo's life-tenancy of a moiety. It does not, however, seem to have been executed, for Michelangelo died intestate. Probably, he judged it simplest to allow Lionardo to become his heir-general by the mere course of events. At the same time, he now displayed more than his usual munificence in charity. Lionardo was frequently instructed to seek out a poor and gentle family, who were living in decent distress, poveri ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... faith without works," believing without doing, "is dead?" And are not too many, as I said just now, afraid of the thought of God; so afraid of it that they wish to allow the Son of God as little share as possible in the management of this world? Have not too many a belief without works; a mere belief that there is one God and not two, which hardly, from one year's end to another, makes them do one single thing which they would not have done if they had believed that there was no God at all? Fear of the law, fear of the policeman, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... of several other American cities. The truth was that they were interested by her expression—an elusive expression telling of a soul that was being moved to its depths by experience which usually finds and molds mere passive material. This expression was as evident in her mouth as in her eyes, in her profile as in her full face. And as she sat there on the edge of the bed twisting up her thick dark hair, it was this expression that ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... preach into the ears of the able and rich and powerful the great truth that neglect of the sufferings of their fellows, indifference to the great bond of brotherhood which lies at the base of Christianity, and blind, brutal and degrading worship of mere wealth, must—given time and pressure enough—eventuate in the overthrow of society and the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... while coarse and cruel humor has almost disappeared from contemporary literature, coarse and cruel wit abounds; even refined men cannot help laughing at a coarse bon mot or a lacerating personality, if the "shock" of the witticism is a powerful one; while mere fun will have no power over them if it jar on their moral taste. Hence, too, it is, that while wit is perennial, humor ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... not entrust your son with a full knowledge of his superiority over other boys. Let him discover this as he proceeds. The love of excellence is far beyond the love of excelling; and if he should once be bewitched into a mere ambition to surpass others I need not urge that the very quality of his knowledge would be materially injured, and that his character would receive a stain of a more serious ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... had no other motive than mere curiosity," Alban answered, "I think I should go on. But I have a more urgent purpose in view. All that I have done thus far, has been done in Emily's interests. My object, from the first, has been to preserve ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... literature, and music; and must have nurtured in his life a love for goodness and truth in every form. In short, through the curriculum the latent powers constituting the life capital of every normal child are to be stimulated and developed to the end that his life shall be more than mere physical existence—to the end that it shall be crowned with fullness of knowledge, richness of feeling, and the victory of worthy achievement. This is the right of every child in these prosperous and enlightened times,—the right ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... the very air of France that communicates the love of style. Precision, clarity, the cleanly and crafty employment of material, a grace in the handling, apart from any value in the thought, seem to be acquired by the mere residence; or if not acquired, become at least the more appreciated. The air of Paris is alive with this technical inspiration. And to leave that airy city and awake next day upon the borders of the forest is but ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... robe, walking in the greatness of his strength." Also Gregory says in a Homily on the Ascension (xxix): "It is to be noted that we read of Elias having ascended in a chariot, that it might be shown that one who was mere man needed another's help. But we do not read of our Saviour being lifted up either in a chariot or by angels, because He who had made all things was taken up above all things by ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... needs. Even the superiority of the enemy cannot absolve from the performance of this requirement. On the contrary, it must stimulate to the utmost military efforts and the most strenuous political action in order to secure favourable conditions for the eventuality of a decisive campaign. Mere numbers count for less than ever in modern fighting, although they always constitute a very important factor of the total strength. But, within certain limits, which are laid down by the law of numbers, the true elements of superiority ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... the knight, "he died when I was a mere child—thou hast heard me say so twenty times; but thou wouldst lead the old man away from the tender subject. Well, though I am not blind, I can shut my eyes and follow. Ben Jonson I knew, and could tell ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... own account. But he was never so foolish as to think that peaceful trade could go on without a fighting navy to protect it. So he built men-of-war; though he used these for trade as well. Men-of-war built specially for fighting were of course much better in a battle than any mere merchantman could be. But in those days, and for some time after, merchantmen went about well armed and often joined the king's ships of the Royal Navy during war, as many of them did against the Germans in our ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... especially absorbing was the matter of lighting; catching the high lights and shadows. This was the first time the "bridge of lights" was used on any stage. Lighting has always been to me more than mere illumination. It is a revelation of the heart and soul of the story. It points the way. Lights should be to the play what the musical accompaniment is to the singer. A wordless story could be told by lights. Lights should ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... happened to me worth telling, was by no means correct, and that I have found out my mistake in the process of writing it; yet, on the other hand, it must be granted that my story could never have reached the mere bulk required if I had not largely drawn upon the history of my friends to supplement my own. And it needs no prophetic gift to foresee that it will be the same to the end of the book. The lives of these friends, however, have had so much to do with all that is most precious ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... a domestic tone, closely imitated as it is from Grimalkin. Imitated, we say, for we have never been able fully to believe that this mew is the bird's original note. We shall ever incline to the impression that it is an acquired dialect, picked up in the mere wantonness born of a conscious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... say the same of all France," replied the other with a deep sigh, as if saddened at the mere thought of bloodshed; "and yet it is whispered that the war is likely to break out again. Has the rumour ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... in time, and in earnest, there will be an end of our hopes and of our armies in Germany: three such mill-stones as Russia, France, and Austria, must, sooner or later, in the course of the year, grind his Prussian Majesty down to a mere MARGRAVE of Brandenburg. But I have always some hopes of a change under a 'Gunarchy'—[Derived from the Greek word 'Iuvn' a woman, and means female government]—where whim and humor commonly prevail, reason very seldom, and then only ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... position, Huxley expressly disclaimed any desire for a mere compromise to smooth over a difficulty. He supported what appeared to be the only workable plan under the circumstances, though it was not his ideal; for he would not have used the Bible as the agency for introducing ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... unconnected with themselves. No one ever really knew, however (unless perhaps the Dauntreys), what had become of the youth with hair en brosse, and wasp waist so slim that the body seemed held together by a mere ligament. He was gone: that was all, and his small place in the household was more than filled by a German couple, an ex-officer with an adoring wife, both of whom spent half their days in bed, testing ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... colour and carving as though it had been only yesterday cut out of the quarry instead of four thousand years ago. It was my first glimpse into the mysterious East. It made the wonderful story of Joseph and Moses not a mere narrative in a book, but a living reality standing out from the far past like a view in a stereoscope. Every time I passed it—and I did so at all hours—I paused to enter into this reverie of the olden time. The daylight changed it into a pillar of cloud, casting the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... with its labyrinth of cromlechs and stone circles, a very city of dead years. There is something awe-inspiring in the mere massiveness of these piled and ordered stones, the visible boundaries of invisible thoughts; that awe is deepened by the feeling of the tremendous power lavished in bringing them here, setting them ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... vestry again met, and the report was read; but the meeting exclaimed against so extensive a proposal, imputing mere motives of self-interest to the surveyor. "Popular clamour," says Telford, "overcame my report. 'These fractures,' exclaimed the vestrymen, 'have been there from time immemorial;' and there were some otherwise sensible persons, who remarked that professional men always ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... not at all sure that the Vicar maligned himself. A model clergyman, like a model doctor, ought to think his own profession the finest in the world, and take all knowledge as mere nourishment to his moral pathology and therapeutics. He only said, "What reason does Bulstrode ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... talk of the King's family. He says many of the musique are ready to starve, they being five years behindhand for their wages; nay, Evens, the famous man upon the Harp having not his equal in the world, did the other day die for mere want, and was fain to be buried at the almes of the parish, and carried to his grave in the dark at night without one linke, but that Mr. Hingston met it by chance, and did give 12d. to buy two or three links. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... reason, my boy. The worthwhile man is the man who thinks in time. Thinking afterward doesn't mend broken things,—or take out inkstains. Of course, the broken glass is a mere trifle, that could have been easily replaced. But the engraving itself is ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... soon enough," I replied. But it seemed as if they never would, for what promised to be an attack along our whole line dwindled down to a mere exchange of shots. Hour after hour went by, and yet they never advanced beyond a certain point except when a company or so would dash forward and a sharp skirmish would break forth for a moment or two, and then die away again. But far over to our left the sound of the battle came rolling ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... Io, back in her Philadelphia apartment, sent out for a copy of the New York Patriot. Greatly to her disgust she found herself headlined, half-toned, described; but with very little about the occasion of her testimony, a mere mention of the strike and nothing whatsoever regarding the police brutalities which had so stirred her wrath. Io discovered that she had lost her taste for publicity, in a greater interest. Her first thought was to write Banneker indignantly; ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... "Figaro-Scaramouche," and on Thursday morning the "Courrier Nantais" came out with an article of more than a column of praise of these brilliant improvisers, for whom it claimed that they utterly put to shame the mere reciters of ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... had gone on easily enough. But he did neither. He was courteous and cold. Partly was his coldness real; he could not look on her as other than the daughter of his enemy's house, ward of the man who had schemed to kill him, will-o'-the-wisp who had lured his son to disaster. Partly was it mere absence; M. Etienne's plight was more to him than mademoiselle's. When she spoke not, he turned impatiently ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... people bore themselves in and about them; the movement of armed men, and the homecoming look of wounds; tales of births, and marriages and deaths; the chase with its multitudes of men and dogs; all the noise, the dust, the excitement of mere living. These, to Fionn, new come from leaves and shadows and the dipple and dapple of a wood, would have seemed wonderful; and the tales they would have told of their masters, their looks, fads, severities, sillinesses, would have been ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... Roxane was probably not very critical; of Catcott's brother, the Rev. A. Catcott, who had a fine library and was the author of a treatise on the Deluge; of Smith, a schoolfellow; of Palmer an engraver, and a number of others—mere names for the most part. Baker, Thistlethwaite and a few more were contemporaries of the poet, but the rest of the circle consisted mainly of men who had reached middle age—dullards, perhaps, who condescended to ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... the crusher that he had been holding in reserve. "Vaniman, you may be able to tell me in the morning, if not now, how it happens that all your specie bags were filled with—not with the gold coin that ought to have been there, but with"—Starr advanced close to the cashier and shook a big finger—"mere metal disks!" He shouted ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... if I were in your shoes. But believe me, you can do more, being a mere woman, so to speak, than many a ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... praise—too much, I am afraid. But my conscience told me I had not been thoughtful for grandmamma lately, not as thoughtful as I might have been certainly. This feeling troubled me on one side, and on the other I was dying with curiosity to know what it was granny was thankful about. The mere fact of a letter having come from that 'horrid, selfish, ungrateful man,' as I still called him to myself, though I would not speak of him so to grandmamma, could not be anything to be so thankful about—at least not to be thankful for me. ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... white and remarkably tapering. Her features were almost too perfect; her beauty was sensuous, insolent and dazzling. Withal her presence intimated tremendous primal charm and the mystery of undiscovered potentialities. And she was royal! No mere upstart of an impostor could have assumed that perfect hauteur, ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... he had, and feared God, and served the Forsytes, and kept a vegetable diet at night. And, buying a copy of John Bull—not that he approved of it, an extravagant affair—he entered the Tube elevator with his mere brown-paper parcel, and was borne down into the bowels ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... see, Dandy, that Nancy Stair is different from other women and has been raised in a strange way. I'm no saying it's either a good way or a bad. I am saying that it's far from the accepted way women are bred up generally. It's no mere talent she has—for in a woman that's not harmful and frequently helps to entertain the children, as they come along; but with a girl, raised by men, whose name is ringing throughout the kingdom, who baffles ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... mercy and grace, thereby becoming stronger in faith and more zealous in life. The indifferent were roused to earnest thought by the solemn events which were taking place around them. Speculative infidels even, became alarmed at the practical results of their theories. Mere worldly politicians trembled at the spectacle of unprincipled millions wielding power that affected the destinies of Europe, and recognised the necessity of religion to save the State at least, if not to save the soul. Men of property, from ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... saw it all. Watts' offer had been a trap! A mere trap to get him into trouble, probably ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... followed upon the most momentous discovery of historico-philological science, the discovery and appreciation of the soul of the people. For this discovery prepared the way for a coming scientific view of history, which was until then, and in many respects is even now, a mere collection of materials, with the prospect that new materials would continue to be added, and that the huge, overflowing pile would never be systematically arranged. The people now understood for the first time that the long-felt power of greater individualities and wills was ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... sensitive; whilst whatever concerned her love, or seemed to oppose her wishes in the slightest degree, brought her to tears and hysterical sobs, and her friends became ever more and more aware how violent and exclusive her love was to Major R. The mere glimpse of him, the sound of his steps, the tone of his voice, shook her whole frame. All earlier affectionate relationships had lost their ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Grandmamma with a sad expression on her face, "I do not mind telling you, as my most intimate friend, that all this seems to me a mere pretext on his part for living alone, for strolling about from club to club, for attending dinner-parties, and for resorting to—well, who knows what? She suspects nothing; you know her angelic ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... a dour Scotch look ate an enormous meal in solemn silence, and then they went off and played tennis! Their wedding took place three days ago!! The third had been there a fortnight, and seemed very jaded and bored, while the last were mere children, and only married yesterday! She was too sweet, and got crimson when she poured out his tea, and asked him if he took sugar? I suppose up till now they had only been allowed ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... Proudfoot. "Yes—if you see anything funny about them. For my part, I couldn't laugh at them if I tried to. The mere thought of plunging into cold water almost gives ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... taking so great a freedom. If the case is taken into court, the editor complains that nobody asked him to rectify the mistake; but ask for redress, and he will laugh in your face and treat his offence as a mere trifle. The paper scoffs if the victim gains the day; and if heavy damages are awarded, the plaintiff is held up as an unpatriotic obscurantist and a menace to the liberties of the country. In the course ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... it seems familiar.' She began to sing it, and suddenly broke off with laughter. 'Why, it's "Tommy make room for your Uncle!"' she cried aloud, so that the soul of Gideon was filled with bitterness. 'Andante patetico, indeed! The man must be a mere impostor.' ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Ashby had much to talk of, but Dolores was too prudent to waste time on mere explanations. There was yet very much to be done. Above all, they must now consider how they were to get out of the castle. After all, as far as she could see, their position had changed little, if at all, for the better. The enemy would rally. They would be attacked. No defence was possible. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... Alp roses and the Iva make a garden for one short month of the roughest rocks in the Grisons. Only that which lives and of which the life is beautiful can reconcile us to those surroundings which would otherwise offend our sense of harmony, or oppress us with a dullness even more deadly than mere ugliness ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... generic aspect is a graver sin than the cursing which expresses a mere desire; while the cursing which is expressed by way of command, since it has the aspect of a cause, will be more or less grievous than backbiting, according as it inflicts an injury more or less grave than the blackening of a man's good name. Moreover this must be taken as applying to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... declension. These are our little AMOURS PROPRES, my daughter: your father must respect himself. Thank you, yes; just a leetle, leetle, tiny - thanks, thanks; you spoil me. But, as I was saying, Richard, or was about to say, my daughter has been allowed to rust; her aunt was a mere duenna; hence, in parenthesis, Richard, her distrust of me; my nature and that of the duenna are poles asunder - poles! But, now that I am here, now that I have given up the fight, and live henceforth ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the animated form, the body instinct with vitality, changing and changing as time sweeps along, till the spirit that gave it vigor and comeliness, and power and beauty, is called away, and it becomes at last mere dust and ashes. And then again, when the pipe itself falls from the teeth, or the table, or the mantel, or the shelf—as fall it surely will, sooner or later—and is broken, and the fragments are thrown out of the window, or swept out ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... the rocks, then returned. It was nine o'clock. The moment had arrived for the appearance of Jeanne and Pierre. He resumed his patrol of the cliff, and with each moment his nervousness increased. What if Jeanne failed him? What if she did not come to the rock? The mere thought made his heart sink with a sudden painful throb. Until now the fear that Jeanne might disappoint him, that she might not keep the tryst, had not entered his head. His faith in this girl, whom he had seen but ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... language is in vogue. Madame Carouge, whose personality is the pivot upon which the story revolves, is a native of southern France, and is the proprietor of the Hotel Beauregard. Her husband, who married her as a mere child and carried her away from a life of poverty and neglect, has died before the opening of the story and bequeathed all his property to his young and handsome wife. "Ah, but I do not owe him much," the beautiful woman said: "he has wasted my youth. I am eight-and-twenty, and I have not yet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... up mere creatures of impulse. Where are those high qualities which are necessary to give them their proper influence over the minds and actions of the other sex? Where is that powerful sense of the duties of their calling and position, that is necessary to create confidence in the breast ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... wider areas, than in Romanesque churches. [13] In the second place, the pillars supporting the ribs were themselves connected by means of flying buttresses with stout piers of masonry outside the walls of the church. [14] These walls, relieved from the pressure of the ceiling, now became a mere screen to keep out the weather. They could be built of light materials and opened up ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... of affectation about her. Her eyes were a trifle red and swollen and she seemed in the grip of something more than mere excitement. But in her dress there was no ostentation—it was somber, but not black. And she came straight to Carroll—her eyes meeting his squarely—and they mutually acknowledged Evelyn's ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the central government and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, UN sanctions on the downsized Yugoslavia, and a Greek ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... profanity with no satisfactory result. His language, whether eloquent or fiery, beat upon an unresponsive ear. But being in that condition that demands sympathy, he found the mere talking a relief, and presently drifted into a recital ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... clearly the connection of events and of successive eras with one another; that through the interest awakened by the natural, unforced view gained of this unity of history, and by such illustrative incidents as the brevity of the narrative would allow to be wrought into it, the dryness of a mere summary should be, as far as possible, relieved; and that, finally, being a book intended for pupils and readers of all classes, it should be free from sectarian partiality, and should limit itself to well-established judgments and conclusions on all matters subject ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... detail, but becoming fuller as it comes nearer to our own time. That is my first purpose. In fulfilling it I have had to cover much well-trodden ground. But I hope I have avoided the aridity of a mere compendium of facts. ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... wire surrounded by shell-lac took exactly the same quantity of electricity from a charged body as the same wire in air. The experiment offered to me no proof of the truth of the supposition: for it is not the mere films of dielectric substances surrounding the charged body which have to be examined and compared, but the whole mass between that body and the surrounding conductors at which the induction terminates. Charge depends upon induction (1171. 1178.); and if induction ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... eight knots, her taut rigging humming like an Aeolian harp with the sweep of the wind through it. For several minutes after Enderby had left me I stood gazing in admiration at the brilliant, exhilarating scene; then, for the mere pleasure of stretching my legs a bit, after being for so long cramped within the confined limits of the life-boat, I started upon a vigorous tramp fore and aft the weather side of the deck, between the wheel grating ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... partiality of my friends is accustomed to dignify with the title of my "study," to endeavor to write a preface, and introduce myself in a becoming manner to my readers. I was the more anxious to do this properly, because, although a mere countryman, a sort of cowhide shoe, as I may say, and therefore lacking that gloss, which, like the polish on a well-brushed boot, distinguishes and illustrates the denizens of our metropolis in an eminent degree, as I know from personal experience, having been twice ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... year had expired for which the sheriffs of these counties were commissioned, and no new commissions had been issued. Hence the sheriffs of those counties, in receiving and transmitting the ballots, must have acted under their former commissions, since a mere appointment without a commission, and a compliance with the requisites prescribed by law, could not, in our opinion, give any authority as sheriff ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... of the shanty, and left it about two rods distant from the window. The moment night set in the wolves in packs would attack the carcass. At first we would step outside and fire into them with buck shot from double-barrelled shotguns, but we found they were so wary that the mere movement of opening the door to get out would frighten them, and we had very limited success for the first few nights. Another difficulty we encountered was shooting in the dark. If you have never tried it, and ever do, you ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Ferrara, whom the Pope regarded as a contumacious vassal, and whose affairs were still the subject of debate, a place was specially reserved in the treaty. He, as I have already observed, had been taken under the Imperial protection; and a satisfactory settlement of his claims was now a mere question of time. On the evening of the same day, the Pope bestowed on Charles the Sword of the Spirit, which it was the wont of Rome to confer on the best-beloved of her secular sons at this festival. The peace was publicly ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the whole, but seldom does Refuge of people who have neither wit nor invention of their own Refuse more gracefully than other people could grant Repeating Represent, but do not pronounce Rochefoucault Rough corners which mere nature has given to the smoothest Scandal: receiver is always thought, as bad as the thief Scarcely any body who is absolutely good for nothing Scrupled no means to obtain his ends Secrets Seeming frankness with a real reserve Seeming openness is prudent Self-love draws a ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... instead of the ledge they expected they struck four feet of rotten rock, so porous that when air was put on it to force the water back great air bubbles blew up all through the lot, forcing the men out of the other caissons and trenches. But this was a mere dull detail, to be met by care and ingenuity like the others. And at last, forty feet below street level, they reached bed-rock. Forty-six piers had to be driven to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... responsibility for any follies to which her rejection might drive him. Such threats, as a rule, no longer move the feminine imagination; yet Justine's pity for all forms of weakness made her recognize, in the very heat of her contempt for Wyant, that his reproaches were not the mere cry of wounded vanity but the appeal of a nature conscious of its lack of recuperative power. It seemed to her as though she had done him irreparable harm, and the feeling might have betrayed her into too great a ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... in his father's shop, he found mere craftsmanship irksome, and he begged to be allowed to enter a studio. This was a great disappointment to the father, even a distress, because he could see no very quick nor large returns in money for an ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... venture to think you are wrong, for we possess a divine joy, a soul medium, a very gift of God and we call it,—music, sir. To such as have ears, music is the speech of Gods, of the Infinite, soaring far above mere words, revealing the unconceived, speaking forth ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... columns and one shows a distribution almost entirely within the city and in towns that rely upon your city for buying facilities, your business can digest all of its influence. If the other has as much circulation, but only one third of it is in local territory, mere bulk cannot establish its value to you—it's another case of the big steak—you pay for more than you can digest. That part of its influence which is concentrated where men and women can't get your goods after you get their ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman
... WARRIOR DEAD! from their portfolios; so Zara good-naturedly gave way and struck up ROBERT, TOI QUE J'AIME! which she had added to her repertory while in England. No one could understand a word of what she sang; but the mere fitting of the foreign syllables to the appropriate notes was considered a feat in itself, and corroborative of the high ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... this before, but now as he looked at the dreary desolation of the rocks it seemed almost incredible that children could be born and grow to manhood and womanhood and live their lives here, forever fighting for mere existence, and die at last without ever once knowing the comforts that we who live in kindlier ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... the glory of the eminently sensible spring sun appeared to centre in her hair—and violet-clad; and the gown, like most of her gowns, was all tiny tucks and frills and flounces, diapered with semi-transparencies—unsubstantial, foam-like, mere violet froth. As she came starry-eyed through the gardens, the impudent wind trifling with her hair, I protest she might have been some lady of Oberon's court stolen out of Elfland to bedevil us poor mortals, with only a moonbeam for the changeable heart ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... the reward of persistence. One of the paintings which made Titian famous was on his easel eight years; another, seven. How came popular writers famous? By writing for years without any pay at all; by writing hundreds of pages as mere practise-work; by working like galley-slaves at literature for half a lifetime with no ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... state quite sensibly why it is as important as it is. And yet even that is not easy. If I were to state the mere fact from the history books, numbers of people would think it equally trivial and remote, like some war of the Picts and Scots. The points perhaps might be put in this way. There is a certain spirit in the world which breaks everything ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... As a mere matter of military comprehension and judgment of the strategic situation, the letter puts Mr. Lincoln head and shoulders above both his military subordinates. Halleck saw its force, but would not order it to be carried out. McClellan shrank from the decisive vigor of the plan, though he ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... in reconstructing the topography of the ancient city. [15] The architecture of Rome has been reproached with some justice for bestowing its finest achievements on buildings destined for amusement, or on mere private dwellings. But if from the amphitheatres, the villas, the baths, we turn to the roads, the sewers, and the aqueducts, we shall agree with Frontinus in deeply admiring so grand a combination ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... high destiny he aspired to—if he had been fit to be a judge, he would not have fallen. That he did fall is proof enough that he was not fit. God did not intend it. My father's aspirations were not the call of a stern vocation, they were mere poetic ambition. If he had ever by great ill-fortune lived to be made Deemster, he would have found himself out, and the island would have found him out, and you yourself would have found him out, and all the world would have been undeceived. As a poet ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... And now! Now hickory and maple, oak and cottonwood, stood shivering in three feet of water on what had been a league of dry land. We stood dismayed at the crumbling edge of the hill, and one hundred and seventy pairs of eyes were turned on Clark. With a mere glance at the running stream high on the bank and the drowned forest beyond, he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... concern the welfare of human beings living in societies. There can, therefore, be no study more widely important or more generally interesting. I fear, however, that by many persons social hygiene is vaguely regarded either as a mere extension of sanitary science, or else as an effort to set up an intolerable bureaucracy to oversee every action of our lives, and perhaps even to breed us as ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... strangely granted at strange hours—plus impetravi quam fuissem ausus—and I was placed in the very centre of the wheel. This very remarkable fulfilment of a wish, and many like it, though due to mere chance, naturally made an impression on me, for no matter how strong our eyesight may be, or our sense of truth, we are all dazed when coming out of darkness into light, and all the world is in that condition now. No matter how completely we exchange the gloom of supernaturalism for the sunlight ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... not too young... Reason can only go hand in hand with the riper age of second youth... she must be decked out in classical draperies, severe yet suggestive... she must be rouged and painted... for she is a mere idol... easily to be appeased ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... twaddling trade apothegms and ridiculous banqueteering solemnities, surely they were aware that this had no bearing upon their own jobs? He suspected that it was all a feverish anodyne to still some inward unease. Since they must (not being fools) be aware that these antics were mere subtraction of time from their business, the obvious conclusion was, they were not happy with business. There was some strange wistfulness in the conduct of Big Business Dogs, he thought. Under the pretence of transacting affairs, they were ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... life? What may I dare to hope hereafter? Angela had never even heard of Kant; she only asked what it all meant; and the Knight of Malta was silent under the steady yellow light of the six wax torches. Perhaps the white cross on his cloak was the answer, but the emblem was too far from words for mere humanity to understand it. She wished they would take him away, for he was not her father, and she would be far better able to pray alone in her own room than in the stately presence of that one master whom all living things ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... better to observe them in Nature herself or under the teaching of the real sun. In the study of a kitchen and scullery in an old house in Toledo (Fig. 288) we have an example of the many things to be considered besides the mere shapes of shadows of regular forms. It will be seen that the light is dispersed in all directions, and although there is a good deal of half-shade there are scarcely any cast shadows except on the floor; but the light on ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... that his was an extraordinary and entirely different character from that of any of our Presidents; and that upon his death thousands who had opposed him and bitterly hated him but a few years before, were altering their opinion and speaking of him in admiration—with more than the mere respect which custom pays to the dead. This has gone on, and other unusual signs have been given of the world's esteem for him. So much we can say; and leave the determination of his place in our history for a later ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... his or her character, and this fact should prove that the principles of the art of graphology are based on scientific grounds, or at least that the rules on which the student works are regular and not, as some suggest, mere guess-work or coincidence. ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... continued Fraisier. "Ah! my dear madame, you little know what a red robe means! It is bad enough to have a plain black gown against you! You see me here, ruined, bald, broken in health—all because, unwittingly, I crossed a mere attorney for the crown in the provinces. I was forced to sell my connection at a loss, and very lucky I was to come off with the loss of my money. If I had tried to stand out, my professional position would ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... of the building and began to edge himself along. Martin and the boatswain followed. Martin looked up. The window they had just climbed through was a mere black blot, the window that was their objective was a mere outline overhead and a few feet to one side. No betraying light hazarded them, there on the shed. The warehouse behind them, and the building against which they crouched, combined to drape them in black ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... employer's suspicions were aroused, and that he had that morning demanded a settlement in full or the immediate release of the herd. They had laughed the matter off as a mere incident that would right itself at the proper time, and flashed as references a list of congressmen, senators, and bankers galore. But Morris's employer had stood firm in his contentions, refusing to be overawed by flattery or empty promises. What would be the result remained ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... trained and trusted priesthoods, who knew the secrets of ritual and all that was comprised in the ius divinum; and by passive obedience to these authorities he gradually began to deaden the sense of religio that was in him. And this tendency was increased by the mere fact of life in a city, which as time went on became more and more the rule; for, as I pointed out, the round of religious festivals no longer exactly expressed the needs and the work of that agricultural life in which it ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... noble-hearted men, but never yet to one whose whole life was that of a sharp bargain-driver, and who clung with a sort of semi-idiotic grasp to all that came thus into his temporary possession. I have seen many erected to statesmen,—statesmen,—but never one to mere politicians; many to true orators, but never to mere demagogues; many to soldiers and leaders, but never to men who were not willing, when necessary, to risk all in the service of their country. No, you will find ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... his hands until his knuckles cracked. An exultant smile lighted up his face, and his eyes flashed back the firelight. Baree drew a deep breath—a mere coincidence; but it was a tense moment ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... him desirous of having instrumental music to cheer him; "but," says St. Bonaventure, "decorum did not allow him to ask for it, and it was God's pleasure that he should receive this agreeable consolation by means of an angel. The mere sound, which was marvellously harmonious, raised his mind so entirely to God, and filled his soul with so much delight, that he thought himself in the enjoyment of the joys of the other world. His intimate companions perceived it, and they frequently ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... upon the news of it, gave up a great shout, though the king was then actually at dinner in the camp."[235] To the speculators of human nature, who find its history written in their libraries, how many plain lessons seem to have been lost on the mere politician, who is only such in the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... four great provinces, to dominate the Black Sea, to set up the most brilliant court in Europe, and to make all the arts flourish in the midst of war—anyone expressing such an idea would have passed for a mere dreamer. Peter the Great built the Russian Empire on a foundation firm ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... do it on the sly?" he asked, hoping to detect a little confusion in her answer, such as might indicate a little deeper interest than the mere study; but not a bit of it; she answered ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... be very careful. Cappy always declared that any clerk can negotiate successfully a charter at the going rates in a stiff market, but skippers are, in the final analysis, the Genii of the Dividends. And Cappy knew skippers. He could get more loyalty out of them with a mere pat on the back and a kindly word than could Mr. Skinner, with all his threats, nagging and driving, yet he was an employer who demanded a full measure of service, and never permitted sentiment to plead for an incompetent. And his ships were his pets; in his affections they occupied a position ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... most important point of consideration, for all such as hesitate in their choice betwixt the two countries; and is well worthy the most serious attention of those who are desirous of emigrating to one or the other of them, with a view to become mere agriculturists. ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... hand a superb signet ring. He carried a heavy, gold-mounted stick. His face was curiously divided against itself. The fine calm forehead and the deep setting of the widely separate eyes gave an impression of intellectual power and balance. But the lower part of the face was mere wreckage; the chin quivering and fallen, from self-indulgence, the fine lines of the nose coarsened by the spreading nostrils; the mouth showing both the soft contours of sensuality and the hard, fine line of ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... roughened; nodes enlarged, flattened; internodes short; tendrils intermittent, short, bifid or trifid. Leaves irregular in outline; upper surface pale green, pubescent; leaf entire with terminus acute; petiolar sinus narrow; basal sinus shallow when present; lateral sinus medium in depth or a mere notch. Flowers self-fertile, ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... strange to see with what a fury we fell to. The men had now nothing to expect; the mere idea of great sums inspired them with disinterested ardour. Mats were slashed and disembowelled, the rice flowed to our knees in the ship's waist, the sweat ran in our eyes and blinded us, our arms ached to agony; and yet our fire abated not. Dinner came; we were too weary to eat, too hoarse ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of mere scholars to precedence in the commonwealth of letters which they set up so formally themselves and which others so readily bow to, are partly owing to traditional prejudice: there was a time when learning was the only ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... above all, that quick and exact insight, which is natural to them, the results are often prodigious. To Mother Sainte-Perpetue, a woman of the coolest and strongest intellect, the management of the vast transactions of the community was mere child's play. No one knew better how to purchase a depreciated property, to restore it to its former value, and then sell it with advantage; the price of stock, the rate of exchange, the current value of the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Commander McLaurin, and conducted him joyfully to the Central Government Group. Beside the great buildings, a battered, scarred interstellar ship lay, her rear section a mass of great patches, rudely applied, and rudely made, mere ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... the convulsions of Dame Gossip, that the wisdom of our ancestors makes it a mere hammering of commonplace to insist on such reflections. Many of them, indeed, took the union of the Black Goddess and the Rosy Present for the composition of the very Arch-Fiend. Some had a shot at the strange conjecture, figuring her as tired of men in the end and challengeing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... where discovers evidence of highly respectable research, is not designed exclusively for the use of mere biblical critics. It is true the author has constant recourse to the Hebrew and to ancient translations and commentaries, &c. in the explanation of difficult passages: but he does it with such clearness ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... Annatock, who was the best hunter in the tribe; she also had a nephew about twelve or fourteen years old, named Peetoot, who was very fond of Edith and extremely attentive to her. Kaga had also a baby—a mere bag of fat—to which Edith became so attached that she almost constituted herself its regular nurse; and when the weather was bad, so as to confine her to the house, she used to take it from its mother, carry it off to her own igloo, and play with it the whole day, much in the ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... utter disorganization. Physiologists have long wondered at this phenomenon, which overturns their systems and upsets all theories; it is in fact a thunderbolt working within the being, and, like all electric accidents, capricious and whimsical in its course. This explanation will become a mere commonplace in the day when scientific men are brought to recognize the immense part which ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... without the tradition of an aristocracy; in most of the States there was practically manhood suffrage. Men were popular, not because they had rendered the country great services, but because they were good farmers, bold pioneers, or shrewd lawyers. Smooth intriguers, mere demagogues, were not likely to gain the confidence of the West, but a positive and forcible character won their admiration. It was a people stirred by men like Henry Clay, great public speakers, leaders in public assemblies, impassioned advocates of the oppressed in other lands. It was a people ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... Martyrdom of Hugh is attributed by Matthew Paris to 1225. Chaucer puts a version in the mouth of his Prioress. No doubt the story must have been a mere excuse for Jew-baiting. In America the Jew becomes "The Duke" in a version picked up by Mr. Newells, from the recitation of a street boy in New York. The daughter of a Jew is not more likely than the daughter of a duke ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... commandments, whose proper work is only by showing the soul its sin against this law, to kill, and there leaves him stark dead, not giving him the least life, or support, or comfort, but leaves the soul in a helpless and hopeless condition, as from itself, or any other mere creature. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you, field, or line, or staff, Showed they were fit for more than mere parade; Their motto: "Victory or an epitaph," And well they ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... day when conversing with one of these gentlemen, he asked, all of a sudden: "Say, Hughes, have you a brother?" I answered: "Yes, I had two, but I think they are dead. I was sold from them when a mere lad." "Well," said he, "if you have a brother he is in Cleveland. There is a fellow there who is chief cook at the Forest City Hotel who looks just like you." I grew eager at these words, and put the same question to him that I did to the man on the ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... is a question that might be as much disputed as the beauty of Diane de Poitiers, and yet half the interest of architecture consists in the sincerity of its reflection of the society that builds. In mere time, by actual date, the old tower represents the second crusade, and when, in 1150, Saint Bernard was elected chief of that crusade in this very cathedral,— or rather, in the cathedral of 1120, which was burned,—the workmen were probably setting ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... Kaiser. The captain, acting through the helmsman, chief engineer, gunnery officer, and executive officer, can get very excellent information as to what is going on, and can have his orders carried out with very little delay; but the mere space occupied by an army of 870,000 men, and the unavoidable dispersion of its units ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... this Dorothy you speak of, Marian? I have forgotten. Oh, yes—we quarrelled—over some woman,—and I went away. I left you for a mere heiress, Marian. You! And five days, ago while I lay abed, wounded, they told me that you, were to marry Ormskirk. I thought I would go mad.... Eh, I remember now. But what do these things matter? Is it not of far greater importance that the sunlight turns ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... convent gate The birds, God's poor who cannot wait, From moor and mere and darksome wood Came flocking ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... principles. If, however, it remains, it rather outstrips everything else." "Only sophistically and to outward seeming would the Jew be able to remain a Jew in civic life; if he desired to remain a Jew, the mere semblance would therefore be the essential thing and would triumph, that is, his life in the State would be only a semblance or a passing exception to the rule and the nature of things" ("The Capacity of modern Jews and Christians to ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... conceptions, and in awakening their dormant and wholly untrained powers of observation and of manipulation. It is difficult to over-estimate the magnitude of the obstacles which are thrown in the way of scientific training by the existing system of school education. Not only are men trained in mere book-work, ignorant of what observation means, but the habit of learning from books alone begets a disgust of observation. The book-learned student will rather trust to what he sees in a book than to the witness of ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... opportunity as the husband to bring those inducements to bear? and, if so, what is the separation? Or if, as we are told, women will merely reflect their husbands' political opinions, why should they dispute about them? The mere suggestion of a difference deep enough to quarrel for, implies a real difference of convictions or interests, and indicates that there ought to be an independent representation of each; unless we fall back, once ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... said the Quaker; 'but thou knowest that thine own people do not, as we humbly endeavour to do, confine themselves within the simplicity of truth, but employ the language of falsehood, not only for profit, but for compliment, and sometimes for mere diversion. I have heard various stories of my neighbour; of most of which I only believe a small part, and even then they are difficult to reconcile with each other. But this being the first time I ever beard of his receiving a stranger within his dwelling, made me express some ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the angle, and counted that a day gained when she knew by Richard's strong singing that he yet lived. His songs told her more than that: they were all of love, and if her name came not in her image did. She knew by the mere pitch of his voice—who so well?—when he was occupied with her and when not. Mostly he sang all the morning from the moment the sun struck his window. Thus she judged him a light sleeper. From noon to four there was ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... to get a footing on the bank), you are confronted by a wall of vegetation. Lithe lianas, starred with flowers, coil up the stately trees, and then hang down like strung jewels; they can be counted only by myriads, yet they are mere superfluities. The dense dome of green overhead is supported by crowded columns, often branchless for eighty feet. The reckless competition among both small and great adds to the solemnity and gloom of a tropical forest. Individual struggles with individual, and species with species, to monopolize ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... learned to play the fool In various (unaccepted) verses There was, I found, one golden rule For poets who would line their purses. "If ye," it ran, "to wealth would mount, For silk attire would change your tatters, Mere quantity will never count; Quality is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... cluster of islands are, as I have said, the most skilled fishermen of all the Malayo-Polynesian peoples with whom it has been my fortune to have come in contact. The very poverty of their island homes—mere sandbanks covered with coconut and pandanus palms only—drives them to the sea for their food; for the Ellice Islanders, unlike their more fortunate prototypes who dwell in the forest-clad, mountainous, and fertile islands of Samoa, Tahiti, Raratonga, &c., live almost exclusively upon ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... one is sufficiently alive to its advances, is susceptible of cure from a warm climate. In the event of its assuming any decided shape, IT WOULD BE MY DUTY to go to Italy without delay. It is not mere health, but life, that I should seek, and that not for my own sake—I feel I am capable of trampling on all such weakness; but for the sake of those to whom my life may be a source of happiness, utility, security, and honour, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... joined her mistress, and the latter, with a mere, "I thank you, monsieur," turned and hastened on her way. Soon the footsteps of her attendants died ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... how sadly, do these feelings of Washington—his humiliating sense of the great responsibility laid upon him when he assumed the office of the chief magistrate of the republic—contrast with the eager aspirations of mere politicians to sit in the seat of that illustrious and conscientious man! How the spectacle illustrates the words ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... workman who could find no employment owing to his advanced years, and who lived with his paralytic wife in a tiny little room. Their wretchedness could not be pictured. He himself had gone up that morning to make a personal investigation. Their lodging was a mere hole under the tiles, with a swing window, through whose broken panes the wind beat in. Inside, stretched on a mattress, he had found a woman wrapped in an old curtain, while the man squatted on the floor in a state of stupefaction, no longer finding sufficient ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... interrupted,—"that will do; don't say hard words to one of your best friends. If you will continue to be true to Poll, not as the sailor was in the song, but constant and steadfast in all sorts of weather, and without any regard to that mere material point of eventually getting her for your own, why then I am your fast friend to the end, and will do everything that I can to soften your woes and lighten your pathway; and all the reward I desire for my labors is the pleasure of knowing ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... tuition which he had from the first adopted. From the moment that he undertook to cultivate and inform the youthful intellect, this became itself an active instrument in the attainment of knowledge—not, as is so often the case, the mere idle depositary of encumbering words. It was little that he required to be gained by rote, for he regarded all acquisitions as useless in which the understanding had not the chiefest share. He was pleased to communicate facts, and anxious to discover, from examination, that the principles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... the papers?" inquired "Happy Tom." He had attached himself to O'Neil at the moment of his stepping ashore, and now followed him to headquarters, with an air of melancholy satisfaction in mere physical nearness ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... "'The Imitation of Jesus Christ.' Strive to convert yourself to the holy Catholic, apostolic, and Roman Church, and you will see how empty your words are. Hear me, Felix; marriage is not, the Church says, the affair of a day, the mere satisfaction of our own desires; it is made for eternity. What! shall we be united day and night, shall we form one flesh, one word, and yet have two languages, two faiths in our heart, and a cause of perpetual dissension? Would ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... not be pleased, she was certain, for during the month that she had been at the Double R—riding out almost daily with him—he had forced her to see that he had taken a liking to her—more, she herself had observed the telltale signs of something deeper than mere liking. ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hastily concealed fork sticking out of the bosom of his coat, as if he had stabbed himself. Mrs. Micawber put on her brown gloves, and assumed a genteel languor. Traddles ran his greasy hands through his hair, and stood it bolt upright, and stared in confusion on the table-cloth. As for me, I was a mere infant at the head of my own table; and hardly ventured to glance at the respectable phenomenon, who had come from Heaven knows where, to put ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... close of the last century. We are first conducted into an antiquated-looking low cellier, the roof of which is sustained with rude timber supports, and here bottles of wine are being labelled and packed, although this is but a mere adjunct to the adjacent spacious packing-room provided with its loading platform and communicating directly with the public road. At the time of our visit this hall was gaily decorated with flags and inscriptions, the day before having been the fte of St. Jean, when the firm entertain the ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... Sepoy reports, fresh regiments are pouring in from all quarters; and they boast that they are going to drive us out of the country. Our troops are still at Meerut, and a force is gathering at Umballah; but they are after all a mere handful." ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... by companies from mere inanition, and lying stretched in the road to the Portage, whither they were striving to drag their exhausted frames. Soup made of the bark of the slippery elm, or stewed acorns, were the only food that many had subsisted on ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... sheet, even if only a mile across, we lose depth; first, because it is almost impossible to get the surface without a breeze on some part of it; and, again, because we look along it, and get a great deal of sky in the reflection, which, when occupying too much space, tells as mere flat light. But we may have the beauty of extent in a very high degree; and it is therefore desirable to know how far the water goes, that we may have a clear conception of its space. Now, its border, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... mission.[1883] But there is no doubt whatever that the doctors and masters of Paris were henceforward firmly resolved that if ever they obtained possession of the damsel they would not let her go out of their hands, and certainly would not send her to be tried at Rome, where she might escape with a mere penance, and even be enlisted as ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... ploughman's, and each will grow up quite naturally in his new circumstances. Exercise makes the muscles; education, argument, and the exchange of opinion the mind. "It is impression that makes the man, and compared with the empire of impression, the mere differences of animal structure are inexpressibly unimportant and powerless." Change continues through life; everything mental and physical is in flux; why suppose that only in the propensities of the new-born infant is there something ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... travellers on the curly road looked like mere shades. Coat collars went up and hands were pocketed. Little camp fires began to twinkle here and there on the hillsides. We came to a large open space where many fires blazed, respectfully encircling a French aeroplane section. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... and turned over the other to the charge of Jasper. Nor was it until Christie's commands were literally complied with that he deemed it proper, after fitting ablutions, to join the party in the spence; not for the purpose of waiting upon them, as a mere modern reader might possibly expect, but that he might have his share of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... of this description is the most disagreeable thing in existence, and is rendered only the more so, from any talent or natural acuteness it may happen to possess, since that never fails to give a spice of sin to what would otherwise be mere folly. The thinking mind shudders at the airs of infantine coquetry and malicious sneers, which are merely ludicrous to another stander-by; but how any person can be either indifferent to such a waste and perversion of human nature, or behold it with pleasure, is inconceivable. ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... he saw at once, would as a mere object of precious metal be worth a tremendous sum. It was of raw gold, apparently unalloyed—as befitted its office of carrying the water from the roof of the Ka'aba and throwing it upon Ishmael's grave, where pilgrims have for centuries ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... I can hardly call his life at Fort Douglas anything more than a mere existence. A blow stuns, but one may recover. Repeated failure gradually benumbs hope and willpower and effort, like some ghoulish vampire sucking away a man's life-blood till he faint and die from very inanition. The blow, poor Eric had suffered, when he lost Miriam; ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... sofa, she raised her limbs, I lifted her clothes, and tearing open my trowsers threw myself on her. My fingers for an instant touched her cunt, a rapid probe, and then my prick! My God! it was not standing, not a bit of swell or stiffness was in it, it was as a sucked gooseberry, a mere bit of dwindling, flexible, skinny gristle, a piece of loose, flabby flesh, and ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... to the case of children living in the same house with prostitutes; but the danger is hardly less when the children have an opportunity of observing their own parents engaged in sexual acts, or even in the mere preparation for such acts. Forel[77] quotes the report of an experienced physician to the effect that the children of peasants who have watched the copulation of animals often attempt to perform such acts with one another, when bathing, or when ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... length along the flowery sward I saw So sweet and fair a lady pensive move That her mere thought inspires a tender awe; Meek in herself, but haughty against Love, Flow'd from her waist a robe so fair and fine Seem'd gold and snow together there to join: But, ah! each charm above Was veil'd from sight in an unfriendly cloud: Stung ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... state in which the old man had been wandering dissolved. His eyes narrowed to mere slits behind the beetling brows. The cold steel of the mountaineer, the mountaineer who weighs his words, was ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... worked in the fields or lounged idly about the hut doors. It was a charming scene. You felt that here, perhaps, one great mystery of life had been solved; for happiness was on every face, and the mere joy of living was a sufficient reason for existence. And, when he returned, the village was a pile of cinders, smoking still; here and there were lying the dead and wounded; on one side he recognised a chubby boy with a great spear wound in his body; on another was a woman with her face blown ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... good! You mean the mere sight of her transformed Louis into the classic shote," added Portlaw, laughing louder as Hamil, still smiling through his annoyance, went over the side. And a moment later the gig shot ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... known as Sacculina (Fig. 2). In its early stages this creature is free-swimming and looks not unlike other young crabs. But it soon attaches itself to another crab and begins to live at the expense of its host. Then it commences to undergo remarkable changes and finally becomes a mere sac-like organ with a number of long slender root-like processes penetrating and taking nourishment from the body ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... distance to put me in the right course. How changed is their conduct in this respect from what it was at no very remote period, when a Christian hardly dared be seen in the streets, and when the Turk, for mere sport, thought nothing of drawing a pistol and shooting at any Frank whom he happened to observe looking out of his window; and not only the foreign merchant, but even the consul, was obliged to have a guard of janissaries to attend him from his house to his office. At that time, too, the wealthy ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the cherry stage before they began to talk beyond mere passing remarks. Then the ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... member, who had not subscribed the engagement, should sit till further order of parliament.[c] The attempt, however, though it failed of success, produced its effect. It served to countenance a belief that the sitting members were mere tools of the military, and supplied the royalists with ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... dealings of Divine Goodness to my soul. The impression passed away with this remark deeply imprinted in my mind, that if ever a like concern should come to be matured, I should date the first intimation of it from this time. I was apt to view it for a long, time as the mere workings of the enemy on my mind, and when it has come before my view, I have often secretly said, "Get thee behind me, I will not be tempted with such a thing." By these means I put it from me, as it were, by force, not thinking it worthy of notice and often ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... gesture of his hand that swept away such trivialities like mere cobwebs that annoy but do not obstruct the vision. "All this is nothing! It is the complications with men—the relations with people—that weary and sicken and break the heart! I've tried to put up a clean record, a straight ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... not the history of decline, but of the original creations of genius, which have been copied in every succeeding age, and which probably will never be surpassed, except in some inferior respects,—in mere mechanical skill. The Olympian Jove of Phidias lives perhaps in the Moses of Michael Angelo, great as was his original genius, even as the Venus of Praxiteles may have been reproduced in Powers's Greek Slave. The great ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Shears, in a gratified voice, "that there was nothing to compel him to give me this paper and thus make himself known. It was a mere schoolboy prank on his part, which gave me ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... of calcareous earth, of a few hundred yards in length, which discovers itself near the broken surface of the water. It is not for the most part pure, for broken pieces of the granite are mixed with it in various proportions. Some parts are a mere mass of these broken pieces cemented together by the calcareous matter; whilst others are an almost perfect chalk, and are capable of being burnt into excellent lime. Broken sea shells and other exuviae of marine animals are apparent throughout the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... indeed been denied that the Sinae of Ptolemy really represented the Chinese. But if we compare the statement of Marcianus of Heraclea (a mere condenser of Ptolemy), when he tells us that the "nations of the Sinae lie at the extremity of the habitable world, and adjoin the eastern Terra Incognita," with that of Cosmas, who says, in speaking of Tzinista, a name of which no one can question the application to China, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... "Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," on the "Index," the wiser plan was adopted of paying no attention to it. Occasionally, however, the subject was broached by some incautious novitiate, and then the custom was to treat the Copernican Theory as a mere hypothesis, and its ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... to give a formal challenge and decide the question of this territory by battle, as on a former occasion, when both sides claimed the victory; pursuit not being allowed beyond the frontier of Argos or Lacedaemon. The Lacedaemonians at first thought this mere folly; but at last, anxious at any cost to have the friendship of Argos they agreed to the terms demanded, and reduced them to writing. However, before any of this should become binding, the ambassadors were to return to Argos and communicate with their people and, in the event ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... not so inquisitive or patriotic in regard to treaty rights and violations, as to dally from mere curiosity in Sierra Leone. My chief object was employment. At twenty-eight, after trials, hazards, and chances enough to have won half a dozen fortunes, I was utterly penniless. The Mongo of Kambia,—the Mahometan convert of Ahmah-de-Bellah,—the pet of the Ali-Mami of Footha-Yallon,—the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... a moment, and gain my native land, America. There, we shall be safe. For rest assured they will search for us. Who knows but even now the officers of the law are upon our track? Your family is all-powerful—I am a mere nobody—we should be crushed if they discover us. They would bury you in a gloomy cloister, and I should be tried as a common thief, or as a vile assassin.' My only answer was: 'Let us go! ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... same author. The title is suggestive of military manoeuvres, but it's only a term for obeying quickly, which is hard to do sometimes. Gregory of the Foretop, Abbot's Cleeve, and Going for a Soldier, are three books containing several stories suitable to mere grown-up young people,—so the sooner they grow up the better for the sale of the books. They are all edited by J. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... glove on or off, with a quill or a bad steel pen, drunk or sober, calm or agitated, in full daylight or dusk, etc., etc., all this is a dead letter to them, and they have a bias toward suspicion of forgery; and a banker's clerk, with his mere general impression, is better evidence than they are. But I am an artist of a very different stamp. I never reason a priori. I compare; and I have no bias. I never will have. The judges know this and the pains and labor I take to be ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... England. Such a prospect, there can be no doubt, tore his sullen soul with bitter recollections, and made him resolve, more sternly than ever, that the haughty island should groan beneath no yoke but his own. The mere subjugation of England by Spanish arms, and the occupation of its throne by a Spaniard, not himself, were insufficient to glut the hatred, and avenge the insulted majesty of Philip. For his own hands and his ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... pre-occupied mind. He did not know that in the hasty calculations of Townsend all the component parts of this system of props and fetters were necessary one to another. He removed the brick and the cathedral fell and there followed a catastrophe compared to which the World War is a mere incident. If he had pulled the north pole out of the earth the sequel could hardly have ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Nations, Fill up the vastest Heaven—that of God's Patience With Human Will most grossly reptiling In insincerities, worse than negations; And for what blessing are the earth's laudations? The grace to soul to scorn to be mere thing. ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... to families who paid the highest figures, as the fruit was carefully selected, the smaller berries being served up to the evening customers, who, viewing them by an indifferent light, were unable to form a judgment as to their size and appearance, and with whom the mere strawberry-flavor was sufficient. My mother called our attention to one circumstance,—that all the fruit was sold at retail prices, and that, if there was any profit in the business, these people got the whole ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... a situation like ours, catch up every word, and meditate on it closely. Had he said "soon," I would have regarded his words as a mere attempt at consolation; but now I believed him, and grew more contented. Hardly was this officer gone, when one of the sailors was brought to me. The man was not a little astonished to see what a pleasant apartment I had, and feasted his eyes on ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... money from her, by seizing on her eunuchs, digging up the apartments of her house at Fyzabad, and putting her own person under restraint. This, he said, he knew was not an act of our government, but the mere advice of Hyder Beg Khan, to which the Vizier had been induced to attend. He added, that the old Begum had resolved rather to put herself to death than submit to the disgrace intended to be put upon her; that, if such a circumstance should happen, there ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... writes:—"By desire of Emma I have attempted new words to the old nonsense of Tartar Drum; but with the nonsense the sound and spirit of the tune are unaccountably gone, and we have agreed to discard the new version altogether. As you may be more fastidious in singing mere silliness, and a string of well-sounding images without sense or coherence—Drums of Tartars, who use none, and Tulip trees ten foot high, not to mention Spirits in Sunbeams, &c.,—than we are, so ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... help thinking the poor man's head a little turned; and, as nothing was found in the kettledrum, and other musical instruments brought for the use of the Duke's band of foreigners, he nourished some slight hope that the whole plan might be either a mere jest, or that the idea of an actual conspiracy ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... been touched by what Marie had just said. He was reflecting upon her words. There was truth in them. Taken singly, those slender flames, those mere specks of light, were modest and unobtrusive, like the lowly; it was only their great number that supplied the effulgence, the sun-like resplendency. Fresh ones were continually appearing, farther and farther away, like ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... that Jehovah has decided on the rejection of his people. This shows that they have advanced to a new conception of what Jehovah is. To them he is something more than the mere national deity indissolubly linked to the fortunes of his people, pledged to advance them in the world, and doomed when they fall to fall himself along with them. He is first of all a moral ruler; ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... boasting from the father's tenderness, and some weak indulgence of the daughter's whims from her mother; but there was either never any ground for this, or else Mrs. Kenton, in keeping her husband from boasting, had been obliged in mere consistency to set a guard ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... assign any sufficient reason for this conduct. Mere indolence seems sometimes to be the chief reason for it, oftener vanity; the sense of importance in finding everything in the household arranged with exclusive reference to itself appears to be the motive for it; and this may sometimes be observed to ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... next station is situated. He is also told if there is any probability of getting employment in the district and is given the names of employers in want of men. These institutions are a combination, of the casual ward and the labour bureau, differing, however, from the casual ward in rejecting all mere wanderers and ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... such honest, decorous mourners as my kinswoman: yet are Widows, like the Hebrew, a proverb and a byeword amongst nations. From the first putting on of the sooty garments, they become a stock joke—chimney-sweep or blackamoor is not surer—by mere virtue of their nigritude. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that the interests of commerce and ship owning were of infinitely greater value than that of mere shipbuilding, they did not propose to lose them, while the latter industry should endeavor to gain a new life. Regardless of any such consideration as that which solely actuated our investigators, Parliament at once abolished the prohibition to purchase ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... of red-tiled roofing, a cistern, and a clothes-line on which a petticoat flapped, and in a small iron bedstead, facing the light, Kate lay delirious, her stomach enormously distended by dropsy. From time to time she waved her arms, now wasted to mere bones. She had been insensible for three whole days, speaking in broken phrases of her past life—of Mrs. Ede, the potteries, the two little girls, Annie and Lizzie. Dick, she declared, had been very good to her. Ralph, too, had been kind, and she was determined that the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... the race, if progress is to be made. The man who asserts himself as free from race trammels is snuffed out as a factor—a blighted blossom fallen to earth and trodden under foot. To the student of biological evolution, the individual is as a mere pin point on the chart of community advance, for surely society grows according to evolutionary law. "As certainly as Nature gives the poor child its chance of a good life, so certainly do the circumstances of slum environment rob it forthwith of its birthright—it is not ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... majority of them, in a single State, can exercise their right of sovereignty as against the will of the nation legitimately expressed. When such a contingency arises, it is for a moment difficult to get rid of our habitual associations, and to feel that we are not a mere partnership, dissolvable whether by mutual consent or on the demand of one or more of its members, but a nation, which can never abdicate its right, and can never surrender it while virtue enough is left in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, and free, and that its aim should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends. Under his practical leadership an unorganized and heterogeneous series of community school systems was reduced to organization and welded together into a state school system, and the people ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... on the people, so far as it is felt, is salutary, and their moral character will, I should think, bear a comparison with that of any heathen nation in the world. The person who should spend his days in teaching them mere human science, (though he might undermine their false tenets,) by neglecting to set before them brighter hopes and purer principles, would, I imagine, live to very little purpose. For myself, sure I am, I should at last suffer ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... informed him of the many men and women who have died of cancer. A large number of these individuals had reached a period in life where they could just afford to relax from their struggles for mere sustenance; men and women who had reached a calm lake after journeying through troubled and tortuous waters; who had fought the "good fight," and had won the just reward of resting after their labors. But no, the Lord must trouble them for ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... of newspaperdom is that nothing which happens to a reporter in the line of his work is or can be "big news." The mere fact that he is a reporter is enough to blight ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... had all of mere earth been compos'd And no water nor fire been within it enclos'd, It could ne'er have produc'd for a huge multitude Of all kinds of ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... comment. But he was conscious that it would not be at all pleasing to him to know that Linford Pratt held any official position at Normandale. Foolish as it might be, mere inspiration though it probably was, he could not get over his impression that Eldrick's clerk was not precisely trustworthy. And yet, he reflected, he himself could do nothing—it would be utter presumption on his part ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles to the south of us. He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and choleric. His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly amusement. Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy the parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... He uses people. He looks on people as mere material. He doesn't care for their feelings. He doesn't care what happens to them. If he gets out of them what he wants it's enough. After that they may go to perdition, and he wouldn't stretch out a ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... conditions of the skin due to contact with deleterious substances such as caustic, chemical irritants, iodoform, etc., are included under this head, but the most common causes are the rhus plants—poison ivy (or poison oak) and poison sumach (poison dogwood). Mere proximity to these plants will, in some individuals, provoke cutaneous disturbance (rhus poisoning, ivy poisoning), although they may be handled by others ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... productive: of the latter, one part is pure, the other impure. The pure part consists of arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing. Arts like carpentering, which have an exact measure, are to be regarded as higher than music, which for the most part is mere guess-work. But there is also a higher arithmetic, and a higher mensuration, which is exclusively theoretical; and a dialectical science, which is higher still and the truest ...
— Philebus • Plato
... old buildings in such towns as Pont Audemer, Lisieux, and Bayeux, must, we should think, convince the most enthusiastic admirers of the archaic school, that the mere isolated reproduction of these houses in the midst of modern streets (such as we are accustomed to in London or Paris) is of little use, and is, in fact, beginning at the wrong end. It might occur to them, when examining the details of these buildings, and picturing ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... there is one veiled figure and one voice distinguishable. This voice outlives the rest at every strophe, and contrives to add a supplemental antiphonic phrase that recalls in turn the favourite melodies of the opera. Camillo hears it, but takes it as a delusion of impassioned memory and a mere theme for the recurring melodious utterance of his regrets. Michiella hears it. She chimes with the third notes of Camillo's solo to inform us of her suspicions that they have a serpent among them. Leonardo hears it. The trio is formed. Count Orso, without hearing it, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... here, has got a just an' valid claim fer two rounds of drinks to the total value of two dollars an' four bits, leavin' a dollar an' four bits still owin' to me. The case is now closed, owin' to any testimony the defendant, here, might introduce, would be mere hearsay an' therefore irrelevant an' immaterial, he havin' admitted he wasn't here at the time. Now, gentlemen of the jury, ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... difficult to form any very decided opinion upon the architectural merits of the third and grandest of the Sassanian palaces, the well known "Takht-i-Ehosru," or palace of Chosroe's Anushirwan, at Ctesiphon. What remains of this massive erection is a mere fragment, which, to judge from the other extant Sassanian ruins, cannot have formed so much as one fourth part of the original edifice. [PLATE XXVIII., Fig. 1.] Nothing has come down to our day but a single vaulted hall on the grandest scale, 72 feet wide, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... clean-run and bright as silver. There are other chances of the angler's life scarcely less sad than this. When a hook breaks just as the salmon was losing strength, was ceasing to struggle, and beginning to sway with the mere force of the stream, and to show his shining sides—when a hook breaks at such a moment, it is very hard to bear. The oath of Ernulphus seems all too weak to express the feelings of the sportsman and his wrath against the wretched tackle-maker. Again, when the fish is ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Buddha did teach that mere prayers without any effort to overcome our evils is of no more use than for a merchant to pray the farther bank of a swollen stream to come to him without seeking any means to cross, which merely differs in words from the declaration ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... no doubt, the earliest decoy or shield under which the ancient fowler got near his birds with the crossbow or gun. It was sometimes a mere framework of wood, covered with painted canvas to represent a horse or cow, or was a real animal trained to feed and move in a natural manner in the midst of the fowl. In the first instance, the fowler carried the framework in front of him, and made his shot through an opening; in the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... of the South African War came as if to add the one thing wanting to the entire success of the most magnificent Coronation in all history. Preparations went on apace from the beginning of Spring, 1902. The mere material evidences of the coming event transformed busy and commercial London into a forest of boards and poles and platforms. Westminster Abbey was changed inside and out and a special entrance was made for the King and Queen Alexandra to enter through, and so made as to harmonize ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... history, despite the scornful self-possession of which I knew her capable, she was an unprotected girl—in years, I believe, a mere child—whom Fate had cast in my way. At her request, we had booked passages for her brother and herself to Egypt. The boat sailed in three days. But Karamaneh's beautiful eyes were sad; often I detected tears on the black lashes. Shall I endeavor to describe my own tumultuous, ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... his hands and eyes, "Lord help you! Dymock," he said, "but you are clean demented. I verily believe, that the child is nothing mere than the offspring of a begging gipsy, and that if her mother had been hanged, she would only ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... the regular defence. I took no chances on his discovering the secret. I am confident he thinks, now, I disarmed him by a mere accident." ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... of whom you have heard speak, are only children beside him. He is like a great tree; the rest are only little plants crushed under men's footsteps as they walk. You know Onontio, the famous chieftain of Quebec; you know that he is the terror of the Iroquois, his mere name makes them tremble since he has desolated their country and burned their villages. Well, there are beyond the seas ten thousand Onontios like him. They are only the soldiers of this great captain, our great king, of whom I ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... Spirit of the Lord will make the people hungry to hear more of the word, and will make the word charming to their souls. When the minister gets a message direct from the Spirit, then presents it under the anointing of the Spirit, it will have beauty, sweetness, and a freshness that no power of mere human words, no trick of oratory, nor beauty of illustration, can give. If you will bear this in mind and drink of the Spirit before you come before your congregation, give the Lord a chance to use you as an avenue through which to speak, you will ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... all clear whether after such a long run—three miles in such heat—he would not have dropped dead anyway. Such cases were of daily occurrence, too numerous to mention. The slight blow he had received—a mere push as defendant had stated under oath—was probably nothing more than a mere ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... a child in the simplicity of his selfishness, as far as his art was concerned, but in all matters aside from it he was chaotically generous. His formlessness was sometimes almost distracting; he presented himself to the author's imagination as mere human material, waiting to be moulded in this shape or that. From day to day, from week to week, Maxwell lived in a superficial uncertainty whether Godolphin had really taken his play, or would ever produce it; yet at the bottom of his heart he confided in the promises which the actor ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... understand how wise and reasonable the conduct of Agrippina really was, we must also remember that Nero was four years older than Britannicus, and that, therefore, in the year 50, when Nero was adopted, Britannicus was a mere lad of nine. As Claudius was already sixty, it would have been most imprudent to designate a nine-year-old lad as his only possible successor, when Nero, who was four years his senior, would have been better prepared than Britannicus to take up the reign. There is ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... obnoxious Jenny meant by shaking her toe, whether defiance or mere departure, I never could ascertain, but her going away was an unmistakable subject of satisfaction; and the pause made on the last 'oh!' before the final announcement of her departure, had really a good deal of dramatic and musical effect. Except the extemporaneous chaunts in our ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... saidst, what thou didst, and how many times thou rebelledst against my Father and me; yet I left thee not as thou seest this day, but came to thee, have borne thy manners, have waited upon thee, and, after all, accepted of thee, even of my mere grace and favour; and would not suffer thee to be lost, as thou most willingly wouldst have been. I also compassed thee about, and afflicted thee on every side, that I might make thee weary of thy ways, and bring down ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... omit prayers for what I could not always count sufficient reason: he had a horror at their getting to be a matter of course, and a form; for then, he said, they ceased to be worship at all, and were a mere pagan rite, better far left alone. I remember also he said, that those, however good they might be, who urged attention to the forms of religion, such as going to church and saying prayers, were, however innocently, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... indeed, for the imprisoned priests could now mutually forgive each others' sins. There was a little cranny in the top of the door, which might be utilised for a mere occasional whisper; but when a regular confession was to be made, the door of communication could be opened for an inch or two. The one drawback was that the vexatious door insisted on creaking, as if it were a Protestant door desirous of giving warning of Popish ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... this great, gray, sad city is a mere hum in the distance now, for it is nearly midnight. I shall mail this letter to you—post it, I should say, since I am in London—and then I shall wait in my dim rooms for the dawn. And as I wait I shall be thinking ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... entered the lists against police court reporters and female adventurers. The novel is no longer the exclusive work of a professional author. Amateurs have attempted it to pass the time which hung heavily on their hands; to put into form their dreams or experiences; to gratify a mere literary vanity. The needy nobleman has made profitable use of his name on the title-page of a novel purporting to give information concerning fashionable life. But the most remarkable characteristic of novel-writing has been the important part taken by women. They have ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Socialist Manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks, who, by all manners of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances; ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle toward him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood; but when be tried to grasp at it it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... history of Rouen is lost in obscurity; our materials are reduced, we may almost say, to the mere list of bishops, until the time when the north-men shewed themselves in this country. From the year 841, when they appeared for the first time at the mouth of the Seine, until the year 912, the period of the treaty ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... volubility made him, all through that excited day, the constant center of an assenting crowd. As night came on, the groups of men all gathered about his store. By that time every one among them was convinced that Emerson Mead had killed young Whittaker. At first this theory had been a mere guess, a hazard of probability. But it had been asserted and repeated and insisted upon so many times during the day that every man on the west side of the street had finally adopted it as his own original ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... I've heard all about you. We're very proud of you, my dear. Very. You've been doing so well—oh, I've heard—and your striking out into business quite alone was about the most courageous thing I know of. Why, the mere thought of such a thing takes ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... my possessions and this was to prove a matter indeed vexatious. Upon the steamship proper, the crush of prospective travellers, of their friends and relatives and of others who presumably had been drawn by mere curiosity, was terrific. I, a being grown to man's full stature, was jammed forcibly against a balustrade or railing and for some moments remained an unwilling prisoner there, being unable to extricate myself from the press or even ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... three is utterly different from the other, and yet all are alike in that they are the products of a modern civilization. Mildred and John are without that compulsive force which is known as the sexual passion. If they have it at all, it has been diluted by tradition and so-called culture into a mere sensation. Agnes's passion is an arrested one, so that what there is of it is easily diverted into ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... wrote that you are to stay with him and mother and that Sara's father has arranged matters so that money pinch will not add to your burdens. We three are still mere kids in years so I suppose we shall get over our griefs to some extent. Let me keep at least a part of my old faith in you, Pen. In spite of the Hades you are destined to live through, keep that fine, sweet ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... what we shall find out," said Paul thoughtfully. "I have a very strong belief that he is the fellow who sold the watch. If he is, poor Alexander can have had but small chance of escape. Did you ever see such a diabolical face? Of course it may be a mere fancy, but I cannot rid ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... She meant just what she said. I believe the Porter family own, or did own, Goat Island, and, I suppose, the other bank, and, therefore, the American Fall. The joke—I do dislike to have to explain jokes, especially to you cool, unsympathising Bostonians—is the ridiculousness of any mere human person claiming to own such a thing as the Niagara Falls. I believe, though, that you are quite ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... hesitated about the matter of the flag," says another writer. "He regarded its color as above everything important. The question of white or tricolor was to him a vital thing. He said: 'Kings have their private points of personal honor like mere citizens. I should feel myself to be sacrificing my honor, since I was born a king, if I made any concessions on the subject of the White Flag of my family. With respect to other things I may concede; but as to that, never, never! ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... has as yet perfected its proper types or not; and whether it is to be judged in itself, or in relation also to the audience,—this raises another question. Be that as it may, Tragedy—as also Comedy—was at first mere improvisation. The one originated with the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those of the phallic songs, which are still in use in many of our cities. Tragedy advanced by slow degrees; each new element that showed itself was in turn ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... see his letter until it should be handed out to him from the general "W" pile. He waited patiently. The fortunate owners of lock boxes took out their letters with a proud air while the distributing was still going on. Others, who had mere open boxes, drew close and tried to read inverted superscriptions with poor success. Others who never had either letters or papers, but who came in at this hour from force of habit, stood near the stove or leaned on the counters and spoke of the weather and swapped feeble ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... mein Herr; some modifications must be made in the connections—mere matters of detail. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... polished, in preference to the simplicity of the true sublime. The judgment of that age, as has been already noticed, is always to be referred rather to the head than to the heart; and a poem, written to please mere critics, requires an introduction and display of art, to the exclusion of natural beauty.—This explains the extravagant panegyric of Lee ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... Marian Barber? Her hair was drawn high upon her head, and topped with a huge cluster of false puffs, which made her look several years older than she had appeared in the afternoon, while her gown of blue satin was cut rather too low for a young girl, and had mere excuses in the way of sleeves. To cap the climax, however, it had a real train that persisted in getting in her way every time she ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... the ruin of the Assyrian empire, and were ready to dispute with her the dominion of Asia. Scarcely half a century had elapsed from the fall of Nineveh, when "Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldaeans, was slain, and Darius, the Median, took the kingdom." From that time Babylonia sank into a mere province of Persia. It still, however, retained much of its former power and trade, and as we learn from the inscriptions of Bisutun, as well as from ancient authors, struggled more than once ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... his son, Diadumenia'nus, whom he took as partner in the empire. 25. Macri'nus was fifty-three years old when he entered upon the government. He was of obscure parentage; some say by birth a Moor, who, by the mere gradation of office, being made first prefect of the praetorian bands, was now, by treason and accident, called to ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... her house; not, however, that I date the happiest days of my life from this period, but this served to prepare me for them. Though that sensibility of heart, which enables us truly to enjoy our being, is the work of Nature, and perhaps a mere effect of organization, yet it requires situations to unfold itself, and without a certain concurrence of favorable circumstances, a man born with the most acute sensibility may go out of the world without ever having been acquainted with his own temperament. This was my case till ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... How wonderful it is, that after all I have suffered, I am made something of at last; I am the luckiest person in the world—so strong and fine; and how white, and what a length! This is something different to being a mere plant and bearing flowers. Then I had no attention, nor any water unless it rained; now, I am watched and taken care of. Every morning the maid turns me over, and I have a shower-bath from the watering-pot ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the doctor, moving the relics carefully with the butt of his rifle for fragments that were fully defined as to shape to fall together as mere dust and hide portions below. "There's another skull," continued the examiner, "crushed in more than the first. A finely-preserved specimen, for, in spite of that hole, it shows the shape of the relic—a low forehead, retreating very ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... shows that she has every confidence in you. If the girl were a year or two older, I should say it would be quite out of the question for her to attempt to make her way back to Gibraltar, under your protection; but as she is still a mere child, and as you possess her mother's confidence, I don't see that this matters ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... to its Northern possessions, did not possess the means to defend them against the ambition of European Powers, more especially France. It was due also to the policy of the United Provinces, who considered Belgium as a mere buffer State which they could use for their own protection and whose ruin, through the closing of Antwerp, was one of the conditions of their own prosperity. Up to the War of the Spanish Succession, England played a less prominent part in the various ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... young ladies here have seen better plays than our own girls; and they have heard more beautiful songs than they. These actresses, you see here now, formed once, despite their youth, part of a company belonging to renowned families, fond of plays; and though mere children, they excel any troupe composed of grown-up persons. So whatever we do, don't let us say anything disparaging about them. But we must now have something new. Tell Fang Kuan to sing us the 'Hsn Meng' ballad; and let only flutes and Pandean pipes be used. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... thought of that," said I. "I shall make a distinction in his favour. I shall give him an order for two coats. Surely that means more to him than a mere settlement." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... the new-rich must have some sort of a fad, if they are to make themselves count for anything, and people will go to hear good music, even when they know it is a mere social bribe. Hofman could fill a Bowery dance-hall with the elect; you only have to lead them to the latest architectural vagary on Fifth Avenue. They are bound to be there, for, even while they scoff, they like to keep an eye on Mrs. Lloyd Avalons for fear she may ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... hurled 'non placet' At Post-Magister's head: At the mere glance of Pottius Fierce Radicalis fled: And Parvus Mariensis— So they who heard him tell— Uttered but one false quantity, ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... contagious enthusiasm. Rowe presents to his reader the Restoration Shakespeare: the original genius, the antithesis of Jonson, the exception to the rule and the instance that diminishes the importance of the rules. Shakespeare "lived under a kind of mere light of nature," and knowing nothing of the rules should not be judged by them. Admitting the poor plot structure and the neglect of the unities, except in an occasional play, Rowe concentrates on Shakespeare's virtues: ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... which the body had been brought from the back room, was a fog of smoke and a blabber of voices. McFluke had not been idle at the bar, and the coroner's jury was three parts drunk. The members had not yet agreed on a verdict. But the delay was a mere matter of form. They always liked to stretch the time, and give the territory a good run ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... ended, however, for the measure had to pass a second Parliament, although this was a mere matter of form. The elections took place in the autumn of 1920. On Jan. 26, 1921, without debate, the law was sanctioned by the new Parliament and two days later it was promulgated by the King. It gives complete, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... arms, her quick straining of him, he all unprepared even for the mere physical yielding that alone saves such an embrace from awkwardness, found him lost. Annie felt it and stiffened, and the moment had gone never to come back. In after years, when Annie had magnified it to ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the Connemara district of Galway, and almost under the shadow of the Twelve Pins, there stands by the wayside a small rude monument of uncut stones, a mere heap, surmounted by a rough wooden cross. Such stone heaps as this are common on the west coast, and originate in the custom of making a family memorial, each member of the family, or, in some cases, each friend attending the funeral, contributing a stone to the rude monument. ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... confidence, however, in the manner in which I have executed my purpose. Indeed, so little was I satisfied with my production, that I laid it aside in an unfinished state, and only found it again by mere accident among other waste papers in an old cabinet, the drawers of which I was rummaging in order to accommodate a friend with some fishing-tackle, after it had been mislaid for ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... champion, a hypnotic force nor a begetter of amateur theatricals. Neither did his exterior suggest the sort of man in whom women are willing to pardon a generous measure of mental deficiency. He had subsided into mere Mr. Appin, and the Cornelius seemed a piece of transparent baptismal bluff. And now he was claiming to have launched on the world a discovery beside which the invention of gunpowder, of the printing-press, and of steam locomotion were inconsiderable trifles. Science had made bewildering strides ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... illustration but it does illustrate. We must work if we are to dig up the roots of evil things and get a better growth in their stead and anything which attempts to substitute for this a denial of the reality of the evil, a mystical religious attitude and a mere formula of faith, no matter how oft repeated or how sincerely accepted, or indeed no matter how efficacious in certain selected regions among certain selected groups, is on the whole not a contribution to ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... often been argued that no light is thrown, from the admitted changes of domestic races, on the changes which natural species are believed to undergo, as the former are said to be mere temporary productions, always reverting, as soon as they become feral, to their pristine form. This argument has been well combated by Mr. Wallace;[929] and full details were given in the thirteenth chapter, showing that the tendency to reversion in feral {416} animals and plants has been greatly ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... show his own distrust of himself. He would shake that opinion of his invincible prowess, which he had hitherto endeavoured to impress on the natives, and which constituted a great secret of his strength; which, in short, held sterner sway over the mind than the display of numbers and mere physical force. Worse than all, such a course would impair the confidence of his troops in themselves and their reliance on himself. This would be to palsy the arm of enterprise at once. It was not ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... Becker's preference for the latter hypothesis seems to be due to the discovery of gold and silver in the igneous rocks adjacent to the vein, and yet, except in immediate contact with it, these rocks contain no more of the precious metals than the mere trace which by refined tests may be discovered everywhere. If, as we have supposed, the fissure was for a long time filled with a hot solution charged with an unusual quantity of the precious metals, nothing would be more natural than that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... I, "if you must throw me out of anything, do it out of your monoplane. It would be so much more distinguished than out of a mere taxi. And at least, I should have flown first! For you would have to take me up before you could dash me down. And so my dream would have ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ago, it was thought in Massachusetts that the pursuing of slaves was criminal. I thank God, it is not yet decided that the escaping from slavery is criminal. It is a mere question of property under this act. This law has recognized certain property in slaves, claimed in a certain manner, in the free States. It is a mere question of property. The Southern man has certain property in his slave. That property we do not here recognise. But if ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... "No, a mere transitory effect; they have folded their arms and gone to sleep again. I am, of course, gratified by your favourable appreciation of my effort, but I differ with you as to its result. The surging waves of Northern ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... indubitable signs of want and absence of foresight, as did ours in these Virginia, Norfolk, and Harper's Ferry affairs? Not this or that minister or secretary, but all of them ought to go to the constitutional guillotine. Blindness—no mere short-sightedness—permeates the whole administration, Blair excepted. And Scott, the politico-military adviser of the President! What is the matter with Scott, or were the halo and incense surrounding him based on bosh? Will it be one more illusion ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... head stuck as far under her wing as she can get it, the flamingo dozes away, during the long sultry hours of day, as comfortably and happily as if she was a little wren snugly curled up inside of its cosey nest. It is not mere situation which makes us happy. Some people enjoy life in cottages, others in palaces, and some birds sit in a pile of hard sticks and think themselves quite as cosey as those which ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... her hand in the contra-dance at the state ball. It was her first public appearance since the late Duke's death, and with the laying off of her weeds she had regained something of her former brilliancy. At the moment he had hardly observed her: she had seemed a mere inanimate part of the pageant of which he formed the throbbing centre. But now the sense of her nearness pressed upon him. She seemed close to him, ingrown with his fate; and with the curious duality of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... of no evil, conscious only of the happy earth and sweet human life in the midst, and of the steady diurnal change from day and light-blue sunshine into spangled and deep-blue night, Milton was figuring and mapping out those other infinitudes which outlay and encircled his conception of all this mere Mundane Creation. Deep down beneath this MUNDANE CREATION, and far separated from it, he was seeing the HELL from which was to come its woe; all round the Mundane Creation, and surging everywhere against its outmost firmament, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... down, and then replied: "Well, I haven't a bad heart, as you know. Five hundred francs more or less will not inconvenience me. If I flew into a temper just now it was because the mere idea of being robbed and imposed upon puts me beside myself. But if it's a question of charity, why, then, do as you suggest. It must be understood, however, that I won't mix myself up in anything; I wish even to remain ignorant of what you do. Choose a ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... seemed rather to plume herself that she had made a stir in her little world. Yet the curious habitants came to know that the young man had gone, and after a few years his having once lived there had become a mere memory. But whenever the Little Chemist set foot inside the tall porch he remembered; the Avocat was kept in mind by papers which he was called upon to read and alter from time to time; the Cure never forgot, because when the young man went he lost ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Marner had lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end towards which the ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... is beggars' food, but it will do you good,' and she poured out a liberal portion on a plate. From the bag she drew out a piece of brown bread and put it in the soup unnoticed; then as he moved up to eat and she saw his worn grey face, mere skin and bone, pity so moved her that she took out a piece of sausage and laid it ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... centuries cannot have been a rise in the price of wool relatively to that of grain, because statistics show that the price of wool fell during the fifteenth century, and failed to rise as rapidly as that of wheat in the sixteenth century. Thirdly, a mere comparison of the relative prices of grazing and agricultural products cannot explain the fact that conversion of open-field land to pasture continued throughout the seventeenth century in spite of prices which made it profitable for landowners at the same time to convert ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... that shape, that charming face, that hair, those lovely speaking eyes, that wounding softness in his tender voice, had power to conquer Sylvia; and can this be a sin? Oh, heavens, can it? Must laws, which man contrived for mere conveniency, have power to alter the divine decrees at our creation?—Perhaps they argue to-morrow at the bar, that Myrtilla was ordained by heaven for Philander; no, no, he mistook the sister, it was pretty near ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... seven miles, which was the drive from Hartfield to Box Hill, is surely rather a generous estimate of the actual distance. But Leatherhead certainly has a river and a "Randalls," and Mr. Lucas has been told that it has an "Abbey Farm." That may be a mere coincidence; but, if so, it is the more striking when one turns to the parish registers, and finds in them the uncommon name of Knightley. Mr. Knightley, in 1761, raised the pulpit of the church, and erected a new reading-desk and seat for the clerk, and it was "hereby ordered that the thanks ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... huskily, "I have in some degree complied with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Yellow Shanks, which it is sometimes called, is a mere depression in the ground, without any lining. Sometimes, however, it is placed at the foot of a bush, with a scanty lining of withered leaves. Four eggs of light drab, buffy or cream color, sometimes of light brown, are laid, and the breast of the female is found to be ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... major, you scarcely do me justice. Half-a-dozen heads a day! That's nothing. How do you think I could keep the country in order by such simple means? People would look upon me as a mere milksop. Put it down as a hundred, and you would be quite ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... some of the offenders, the people rose, drove him away, and by force of arms prevented the execution of the law. Washington then called for troops from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, and these marching across the state by a mere show of force brought the people to obedience. Leaders of the insurrection were arrested, tried, and convicted of treason, but were pardoned ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... the pagodas, pavilions, bridges, and palaces; for you will see them for yourselves. The streets of the cities in the south and some in the north are no better than mere lanes; and the crowds of people hustling through them fill them about full, and make you think the place is vastly more populous than it really is. As a set-off to this idea, you will wonder what has become of the women, for you rarely ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... a harmless, a useful, and I will add, gentlemen, a comforting article of domestic furniture? Why is Mrs. Bardell so earnestly entreated not to agitate herself about this warming-pan, unless (as is no doubt the case) it is a mere cover for hidden fire—a mere substitute for some endearing word or promise, agreeably to a preconcerted system of correspondence, artfully contrived by Pickwick with a view to his contemplated desertion, and which I am not in a condition to explain? And what does this allusion to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... a rapid exchange of which Bob could make little—talk of flood water, of "plugging" and "pulling," of "winging out," of "white water." It made no sense, and yet somehow it thrilled him, as at times the mere roll of Greek names used to arouse in his breast vague emotions of grandeur and the ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the letters of the first word, viz. in the first 'E;' also in the 'N,' the second part being short; and a slight defect in the letter 'A.' With respect to the second word, the first six letters were very perfect: the others, with the exception of the 'M,' mere strokes; but in number sufficient to make up the word: and they had the appearance of having been perfect. I can assure you they were anything but obscure, and required very little stretch of the imagination. In the first word ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... large dark eyes expressed some interest in the contents, though, in her character of mere interpreter, she threw into her tone as much as she could of mechanical passiveness. She read the short epistle on to its concluding sentence, which idly requested Anna to ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... "I guess he'll chuck that when he's Don Juan's son-in-law; the old snake-charmer will never tolerate a mere bookman in his drawing-room. His blue Spanish blood would all turn green, ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... The singer must feel the mood of each song, and must sing as he feels, if he is to perform with real expression. This is a much more vital matter in song interpretation than the mere mechanical observation of ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... neglect of the children may be such as cannot be placed on paper for general reading. For instance, on last August Bank Holiday I was on Hampstead Heath. The East Heath was crowded with a noisy, turbulent, good-tempered mob, enjoying, as a London crowd always does, the mere presence of a multitude. There was a little rough horse-play and the exchange of favourite witticisms, and there was some preaching and a great singing of irreverent parodies; there was little drunkenness ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... Again with regard to the episode of the ignition of his bed twice in the same night, without visible cause, he says that this portent may have come about by some supernatural working; but that, on the other hand, it may have been the result of mere chance. He tells another story of an experience which befell him when he was in Belgium.[273] He was aroused early in the morning by the noise made outside his door by a dog catching fleas. Having got out of bed to see to this, he heard the sound as of a key being softly ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... master me with the small-sword; with which he would pink me four times to my three. As for the sabre, I could knock him to pieces with it; and I could leap farther and carry more than he could. This, however, is mere egotism. This Frenchman, with whom I became pretty intimate—for we were the two cocks, as it were, of the depot, and neither had any feeling of low jealousy—was called, for want of a better name, Le Blondin, on account of his complexion. He was not a deserter, but had come in from the Lower ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the last word she saw one of the soldiers, a mere boy, lick his lips and give a sort of tragic wink at his companions. A ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... my arms and looked at him. A strange contrast we must have made, this huge, black tyrant with the royal air, for to do him justice he had that, at whose nod hundreds went the way of death, and I, a mere insignificant white boy, for in appearance, at any rate, I was ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... are not many in number, but all of them show the most delightful freshness and originality. Like her great fellow countryman, Grieg, she aims to give her music a distinctive style of its own, and not make it a mere imitation of the usual models. Her andante for piano and orchestra and her orchestral scherzo are excellent works, which meet with frequent performance, while her suite is another example of striking beauty. ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... vaunted not its capabilities in vain. I cannot remember having seen elsewhere so promising a "ducking-point." Imagine a low, marshy peninsula, verging landward into stunted woods, full of irregular water-courses and stagnant pools—tapering off seaward into a mere spit of sand, on which reeds and bent-grass scarcely deign to grow, towards the extreme point, just where the neck is narrowest, are the "blinds"—ten or twelve in number—a long gunshot apart, in which the "fowlers" lurk, waiting for their prey. On either side ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... the first day's espionage being a piece of evidence so incomplete, he had hoped to command himself until more solid proof of his wife's guilt were forthcoming. But jealousy was too strong for such prudence, and the sight of Monica as she uttered her falsehood made a mere madman of him. Predisposed to believe a story of this kind, he could not reason as he might have done if fear of Barfoot had never entered his thoughts. The whole course of dishonour seemed so clear; he traced it from Monica's earliest meetings with Barfoot at Chelsea. Wavering between ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... that this statement indicates that Eusebius was not personally acquainted with the work in question, but speaks of it from mere hearsay. Dr. Lightfoot replies— ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... water trickled down these courses, leaving enough room for a path or even a roadway to be beaten out by which men and rations and stores could be got forward unobserved by the Turk. Their banks were honeycombed with crude dug-outs (mere scrapings in the ground with a waterproof sheet or blanket for covering) in which men sought protection from shell-fire and relief from ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... is neither mere fancy nor is it ridiculous. It colours the whole of our relations to one another; it gnaws at my feelings, and then I torment her, make you angry, and lead ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... had bidden the light-hearted Danvers good-night. "Standing practically alone against the might of Burroughs' millions—holding his scant forces by sheer force of character, yet downed by the mistaken attitude of a mere slip of ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... do this with the utmost purity, who should in the highest degree approach each subject by means of the mere mental faculties, neither employing the sight in conjunction with the reflective faculty, nor introducing any other sense together with reasoning; but who, using pure reflection by itself, should attempt to search out each essence purely by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... eyes had the thing come to me. And you will say that it is little marvel, considering the seclusion of all my life and particularly that of the past few months, that the first sweet maid I beheld should have wrought such havoc, and conquered my heart by the mere flicker of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... you have escaped all these traps, you will be amazed that your judges have been set against you either by bigots or by the women they love. Ah! Sir, save yourself from such a hell, if you can. 'Tis damnation in this world to have to go to law; and the mere thought of a lawsuit is quite enough to drive me to the ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere (Poquelin)
... my best friends to believe I had gone to the dogs and enlisted. However, to relate my Yeomanry adventures, which included a charge by six of us upon a whole army, would be to stray from my point, which is to describe what I saw at the Military Exhibition. I was lame (oh, dear no, not the gout, a mere strain) and took a friend, an amiable young man, with me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... to my mind, is what Mr. Colwyn's discoveries really represent," replied Galloway. "He has built up a very ingenious and plausible reconstruction, but let us discard mere theory, and stick to the facts. What do they amount to? Apart from Penreath's statement in the gaol that he saw the body ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... as she had done on that last night in the balcony of the old inn; and then he sang what he had composed, from first to last, in a voice that just filled her ears when it was loudest, and still echoed in her heart when it sank to a mere breath. When he was silent at last there were tears in her eyes, and she kissed his hand as it lay passive on the silent strings of the lute, while he bent down over her and his lips touched ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... impression which is shown, by the anecdote I have elsewhere recorded of Longfellow, to have been shared by one who might have been supposed to know him well for years. But Emerson was not cold or disposed to make mere subjects of analysis of his friends, as Longfellow thought; he was an eager student of men as of nature, but superficial men he tired of and dropped, nothing being to be learned from them, though where he found what he looked for in a character he never tired ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... HUSBAND IS EFFECTED FROM WITHIN, BUT WITH HIS MORAL WISDOM FROM WITHOUT. That wisdom with men is two-fold, rational and moral, and that their rational wisdom is of the understanding alone, and their moral wisdom is of the understanding and the life together, may be concluded and seen from mere intuition and examination. But in order that it may be known what we mean by the rational wisdom of men, and what by their moral wisdom, we will enumerate some of the specific distinctions. The principles constituent of ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Church at Peele Newton, his parish in Hampshire. It would therefore sometimes happen that he was driven to ask his brother for money. The hundred pounds which had been borrowed from Mr. Neefit had been sent down to Peele Newton with a mere deduction of L25 for current expenses. Twenty-five pounds do not go far in current expenses in London with a man who is given to be expensive, and Ralph Newton was again in ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... opinion of their prowess, we might have suspected that, now we were on the open beach with no advantage of situation, they would certainly have charged us. But we presumed (and we were not mistaken) that this was mere ostentation; for, notwithstanding the pomp and parade they advanced with, Mr. Brett had no sooner ordered his men to halt and face about, but the enemy stopped their career and never dared to ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... every Italian city. When the young Frederick grew up he was drawn into a long struggle with the Papacy which ended in the overthrow of the Imperial authority. From this time the quarrel of Guelfs and Ghibelins for the most part became mere family feuds resting on no principles. Charles of Anjou was adopted as Papal champion; the republics of the North were in effect controlled by despots for a brief moment. Rome revived her republicanism under the leadership of Rienzi. In the general chaos the principle interest ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... insisted the professor angrily. "Will one mere private detective restore my L6000 Japanese 4-1/2 per cent. bearer bonds? Is the return of my irreplaceable notes on 'Polyphyletic Bridal Customs among the mid-Pleistocene Cave Men' to depend on a solitary director? I demand that the police shall be called in—as many as are available. ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... position," and shrinking from the turmoil and dirt of some walks of life, without spreading among the uncultivated a contempt for culture and increasing their confidence in the rule of thumb. The mere "going to college" is recognized as a sign of pecuniary ease, and of a desire for social advancement, but not as preparation for the kind of work which the bulk of the community is doing, and thus makes mental culture seem less desirable, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... her these were no mere words of a song. She tried to consecrate all her singing to God's service. It was a real ministry. She strove always to sing the very words of the Bible, as she observed that persons could not with decency object to them, though they might have ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... hence Massinger's still more awful tragedy of "The Unnatural Combat," has been justly deemed unfit for a modern stage. Independent of this disgusting circumstance, it may be questioned Whether the horror of this tragedy is not too powerful for furnishing mere amusement? It is said in the "Companion to the Playhouse," that when the piece was performing at Dublin, a musician, in the orchestra, was so powerfully affected by the madness of OEdipus, as to become himself actually delirious: and though ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... a love which was almost a mania—a love which held him true to it, amidst all the distractions which come to a wealthy and dissipated young man. He had ambition, but his ambition was secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which concerned the old life and history of the city. He yearned to see this new underworld which his ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said the doctor. "It's a mere stream just about here, though I daresay it's pretty big after rain. Good-night. You will wake up your ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... Daniel liked to wander in the woods with musket and fishing-rod, and was never so happy as when alone in the wild forest. The story is told that while a mere lad he wandered one day into the woods some distance from home and built himself a rough shelter of logs, where he would spend days at a time, with only ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... were the sign manual of such quattrocento painters as Gozzoli and Pinturicchio; and to these men he, for whom these works of art were created, assigned the painting and adornment of the Vatican. We will come to him directly. It was for Michelangelo to make the creations of these artists mere colored bubbles and froth, when seen against the immensity and intellectual grandeur of his future masterpieces in the Sistine. But that was afterwards. We are concerned with the Pope for whom these chairs and this bed were made. Yes, a Pope, my friends—no ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... state of opinion there, and of the impression made by passing events on those most competent to judge of them. He was thus enabled to introduce into his work many interesting particulars, not to be found in other records of the period. His range of inquiry extended beyond the mere doings of the Conquerors, and led him to a survey of the general resources of the countries he describes, and especially of their physical aspect and productions. The conduct of his work, no less than its diction, shows the cultivated scholar, practised in the art of composition. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... Wood-Thrush, and the Veery (Turdus Wilsonii) are our peers of song. The Mocking-Bird undoubtedly possesses the greatest range of mere talent, the most varied executive ability, and never fails to surprise and delight one anew at each hearing; but being mostly an imitator, he never approaches the serene beauty and sublimity of the Hermit-Thrush. The word that best expresses my feelings, on hearing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... police held up the traffic to let us pass. Five hundred men take some time passing; to delay for that time the taxi of some impatient War Office official, bulging with critical despatches, gave one an importance never to be acquired in civil life. For a mere editor not even a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... clear. Shaw's "plan" had matured. He had taken Doris away. And—this was the staggering phase of the episode—she seemed to have gone willingly. At least she had made no protest, though a mere word, even a look of appeal from her, would have enlisted Sam's help, and no doubt stopped the whole proceeding. Why hadn't she uttered that word? The answer to this, too, seemed fairly clear. Doris had become a fatalist. She had ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... may have been written by a contemporary of S. Mark, and probably was written by one who lived immediately after his time.—Who sees not that this single piece of evidence is in itself sufficient to outweigh the testimony of any codex extant? It is in fact a mere trifling with words to distinguish between "Manuscript" and "Patristic" testimony in a case like this: for (as I have already explained) the passage quoted from S. Mark's Gospel by Irenaeus is to all intents and purposes a fragment from a dated manuscript; ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... calm the princess by soft words. Daughter, said she, you know well you was alone in this apartment; how then could any man come to you? This must be mere fancy or a dream; for—Here the princess interrupted her, and was so far from hearkening to what she said, that she flew out into such extravagances as obliged the queen to leave her, and retire, in great affliction, to inform her lord in what ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... more than grateful for her kindness and went on full of hope. As he approached the castle he could see that it was surrounded by many giants, and as soon as they saw him they ran out to seize him, but they went unarmed for they saw that he was a mere boy. As they approached he touched those in front with his sword, and one by one they fell dead. Then the others ran away in a panic, and left the castle unguarded. Benito entered, and when he had told the Princess of his errand, she was only too glad to escape from her ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... melted, Stands almost a skeleton; The sole difference it presenteth To the tree-trunks near it is, That it moves as well as trembles, Slow and gaunt, a living corse. Oh! thou venerable elder Who, a reason-gifted tree, Mid mere natural trees here dwelleth.— ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... he objected, would have been promptly taken possession of by the detective, and as promptly put in a condition where he could do no harm, for Blake felt that he was too near the end of his trail to be put off by any mere side issue. But the coin and the curt explanation that the merchant must be seen at once admitted Blake to ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... closely the features of Roese, who was of his own squadron, and whom he rather liked,—noticing the melancholy face,—he felt pity for the poor fellow. It was really a hard thing to spend Christmas in jail for what probably was a mere oversight, or for what, according to Roese himself, he had not even committed. ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... Nations will be a natural, nameless league of human hearts. The broad sympathies and discerning insight needed for the healing of earthly woes cannot flow from a mere intellectual consideration of man's diversities, but from knowledge of man's sole unity-his kinship with God. Toward realization of the world's highest ideal-peace through brotherhood-may yoga, the science of personal contact ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... They sang all the four verses and paused. There was no clapping of hands, for a reverential hush had been cast over the audience by the sacred music. Instead of the inevitable applause that follows mere entertainment, a gentle but eager request for more secured the repetition of the delightful duet. This occurred again and again, till every one in the car—and some had never heard the tune or words before—must have learned them by heart. Fatigue was forgotten, miles had been ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... hear His Majesty of Gypsydom aright?' he said, as soon as his hilarity allowed him to speak. 'Is the humble bed of a mere painter to be made for him by the representative of the proud Aylwins, the genteel Aylwins, the heir-presumptive Aylwins—the most respectable branch of a most respectable family, which, alas! has its ungenteel, its bohemian, its vulgar offshoots? Did ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the weary little head resting on her sister's shoulder. "Yes," she agreed gladly, comforted greatly by Esther's tone. Esther herself did not feel at all inclined for games or jollity, or anything of the sort, but the mere pretending helped her. Penelope and Angela strolled on ahead, linked arm in arm. Guard trotted along slowly between the two couples, as though determined to be prepared for any more attacks, and so they reached home ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... to a mood vastly removed from her apparent levity with the rancher and his son. A grave and inward-searching thought possessed her, and it had to do with the uplift, the spiritual advance, the rise above mere personal welfare, that had strangely come to her through Bent Wade. From their first meeting he had possessed a singular attraction for her that now, in the light of the meaning of his life, seemed to Columbine to be the man's nobility and wisdom, arising out of his travail, ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... Master not least dear, Holy, and blameless, yet refused assent Of full belief, until he could content Mere human senses. In your piety, As you are one in name, industriously So copy them: but ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that your next-door neighbour may be a stranger, but there are no strangers in a vast crowd. They all seem to have some relationship, or rather, perhaps, they do not rouse the sense of reserve which a single unknown person might. Still, the impulse is not to be analysed; these are mere notes acknowledging its power. The hills and vales, and meads and woods are like the ocean upon which Sindbad sailed; but coming too near the loadstone of London, the ship ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... since the capture of their rajah, and the subjugation of their country, have led a wandering, piratical life; they represent their force at about twenty-five boats, of which three are now joined by the Illanuns, as a matter of mere convenience. Beyond the usual formalities, this meeting had nothing to distinguish it; one party retired to their boats, while the other went to their respective houses, and every thing betokened quiet. In the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... "I am not a lawyer, I am a mere soldier, and probably, therefore, I do not quite comprehend the value of certain words; I ought to have said the wishes, and not the will, of the people. As for what you do me the honor to say, I presume you mean ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... before I could answer, you must not expect a mere stiff maiden answer from Miss Byron: she is above all vulgar forms. She and her cousins have too much politeness, and, I will venture to say, discernment, not to be glad of your acquaintance, as an acquaintance— But, for the rest, you must ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... transgression of all (James 2:10), because the object of the entire Law is the spirit of obedience to God. On the question proposed by the lawyer the Shammaites and Hillelites were in disaccord, and, as usual, both schools were wrong: the Shammaites, in thinking that mere trivial external observances were valuable, apart from the spirit in which they were performed, and the principle which they exemplified; the Hillelites, in thinking that any positive command could in itself be unimportant, and in not seeing that great principles are essential ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... done under similar circumstances) they gravely abused their position to build up huge fortunes for themselves. During the fifteen years following the battle of Plassey (1757) there is no denying that the political power of the British in India was a mere curse to the native population, and led to the complete disorganisation of the already decrepit native system of government in the provinces affected. It was vain for the directors at home to scold their servants. There were only two ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... in November 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the center and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, UN sanctions on Yugoslavia, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... "'That the soul is mere darkness, unless it be illuminated by God; that men are incapable even of praying well, unless God teaches them that prayer which alone ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... Much of this, no doubt, was exaggeration, this talk of a graveyard, of a doubled street, of murders, of the legal killings which served as arrests, of the lynchings which once passed as justice. There was a crude story of the first court ever held in Ellisville, but of course it was mere libel to say that it was held in the livery barn. Rumour said that the trial was over the case of a negro, or Mexican, or Indian, who had been charged with murder, and who was himself killed in an attempt at lynching, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... establishing points of approach makes it far more baffling to speak or write about music than about the other arts. Music is sufficient unto itself. Endowed with the insight of a Ruskin or a Pater, one may say something worth while about painting. But in music the line between mere statistical analysis and sentimental rhapsody must be drawn with exceeding care. If the subject matter be clearly presented and the analyses true—allowance being made for honest difference of ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... flickering light of a tallow candle made the darkness but the more visible; a rude table and settles made out of rough planks, were all the furniture the cabin could boast; there was no ladder to reach the loft which was to be her sleeping room; the only window, without sash or glass, was a mere opening in the side of the cabin; the rain beat in through the cracks in the door and through the open window, and trickled through the roof, which was like a sieve, while the wind blew keenly through a hundred seams and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the middle of the sixteenth century America took on a value of its own, and ceased to be regarded as a mere obstacle, in the path of trade. After the conquest of Mexico and Peru, the New World, found to be rich in silver and gold, was thought to be a new Indies indeed. To the idealizing mind of the age America already spelled opportunity; ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... if I were to spread the report in town that a poor neighbour of mine, that's you, Horace, was just making his living, that he himself had told me so, what would you say? Horace, what are you working for? It's something more than a mere living." ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... those in the world who possess natural riches, or who are in natural poverty. Remember, that the Bible is a revelation of heavenly truth, for man's eternal salvation; and that its teachings must have primary regard to what is spiritual, and refer to man's internal state rather than to his mere worldly condition. Remember, that the Lord, while on earth, said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, (not the poor in this world's goods,) for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And we may, without violence to even the letter of the ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... wasn't that. I had a rub down and borrowed some slacks. Ferrara brewed grog and pretended to make me welcome. Now I come to something which I can't forget; it may be a mere coincidence, but—. He has a number of photographs in his rooms, good ones, which he has taken himself. I'm not speaking now of the monstrosities, the outrages; I mean views, and girls—particularly girls. Well, standing on a queer little easel right ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... young gravedigger an erroneous idea of the fear that his presence inspired. There was small likelihood of his overtaking them before they reached the safety of the other side of the fence, but they seemed to him so little to realize this that, for the mere pleasure of pursuit, the young gravedigger pounded on, brandishing his arms and roaring his threats. By the time Margery and Willie made the fence they had so far outdistanced the bees that Willie had courage to face ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... extra monthly amount given as well to the maids, allowances are, with the addition again of that of eight taels for school expenses, we recently spoke about, piled to be sure one upon another. The thing is, it's true, a mere trifle, and the amount only a bagatelle, but it doesn't seem to be quite proper. But how is it that your mistress didn't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and designed to show that "une guerre maritime est plus a redouter pour l'Angleterre que pour la France," besides affording curious confirmation of Lord Dundonald's opinions, is a document very memorable in itself. Its main idea was that in naval warfare victory is to be obtained, not by mere numbers, but by superiority in ships and guns. "In the present condition of our marine," said its author, "we must give up fleet-fighting. The English can arm more fleets than we can, and we cannot maintain a ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... said a reliable witness, "I have seen the Spaniards, long after the Conquest, amuse themselves by hunting down the natives with blood hounds, for mere sport, or in order to train their dogs to the game. The most unbounded scope was given to licentiousness. The young maiden was torn remorselessly from the arms of her family to gratify the passion of her brutal conqueror. The sacred houses of the Virgins of the Sun ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... it's dreadful to think of, but it was hunger, sir. Bread came too late. Both men are mere skeletons to look at. They have kept themselves close for weeks now, and nobody knew how bad off they were. I don't wonder it upset you, sir. We all feel it a bit, and I just dread to tell ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... a queer little object she never has seen, It has eyes big as saucers, all glazy and green; A mere speck of a nose, scarcely raised from its face, And a mouth that ...
— Fishy-Winkle • Jean C. Archer
... put," Sir Giles answered indulgently. "Time will show, if such an entirely unimportant person as my nephew Arthur is likely to be assassinated. That allusion to one of the members of my family is a mere equivocation, designed to throw me off my guard. Rank, money, social influence, unswerving principles, mark ME out as a public character. Go to the police-office, and let the best man who happens to be off duty come ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... and told him, in a few words, what had happened. He was not so surprised as I thought he would be, for he was an old man, and knew more of all that was taking place in the country, than was possible for me, a mere boy." ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... purposely been using the word English and not British, for it does not in the least apply to the Scotch. There is, for a humorous lecturer, no better audience in the world than a Scotch audience. The old standing joke about the Scotch sense of humour is mere nonsense. Yet one finds ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... Gandharba-Sena, addressing the king in Sanskrit, urged him to perform his promise. He reminded his future father-in-law that there is no act more meritorious than speaking truth; that the mortal frame is a mere dress, and that wise men never estimate the value of a person by his clothes. He added that he was in that shape from the curse of his sire, and that during the night he had the body of a man. Of his being the son of Indra ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... to her elbow, only to sink listlessly back on the very hard bed. After all, why worry over problems to which there seemed no answer? Why fret over the silence of the man she loved when she had curtly refused his offer of companionship; for there always comes a time when mere man, subjected to the unsatisfactory daily menu of snubs and refusals, tense moods, and moody silences, will refuse it, and clear for a diet, which, although somewhat lacking in salt and spice, will have the advantage of being substantial, ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... for, and answer in your own mind, all the arguments that can be urged on either side, and write them down in an elegant style. This will prepare you for debating, and give you an habitual eloquence; for I would not give a farthing for a mere holiday eloquence, displayed once or twice in a session, in a set declamation, but I want an every-day, ready, and habitual eloquence, to adorn extempore and debating speeches; to make business not only clear but agreeable, and to please even those whom you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... another kind of happiness, had been aware of a secret voice whispering within him that she was right and had chosen wisely for him; but this was when he had realised that he lived in a prison, and had begun to admire the sumptuous adornment of its walls. For a while the mere external show of power amused him, and his imagination was charmed by the historic dignity of his surroundings. In such a setting, against the background of such a past, it seemed easy to play the benefactor ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... not been studying Jurisprudence much more than a year before it began to weigh very heavily upon me. The mere sight of the long rows of Schou's Ordinances, which filled the whole of the back of my writing-table, were a daily source of vexation. I often felt that I should not be happy until the Ordinances were swept from my table. And the lectures were always so dreary that they positively made me ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... could it be done? The globe composed of the cubes had but to transport the prisoners to the base of the Cone, press against that base, and open to let the prisoners free—and in the heart of the white-blue column they would be hurled outward from the Moon, into space. The mere prospect of such horror caused the perspiration to break forth anew on the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... foreknowing the future; and expect that those whose ambition incites them to endeavour after a share in the government of their country, should give better proofs of their qualifications for that high trust, than mere specimens of their memory, their rhetorick, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... to dash loose objects about, tearing limbs off trees and hurling them aloft as if they were mere splinters. A cocoanut crashed down, striking the ground near Piang; another fell, and yet another. Then the rain came in torrents. It fell unevenly as if poured by mighty giants from huge buckets. The ground beneath Piang was swaying, undulating. A tree crashed to the ground, tearing ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... villein but in that of the originally meaner "landless man." The possession of his little homestead with the ground around it, the privilege of turning out his cattle on the waste of the manor, passed quietly and insensibly from mere indulgences that could be granted or withdrawn at a lord's caprice into rights that could be pleaded at law. The number of teams, the fines, the reliefs, the services that a lord could claim, at first mere matter ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The other children about the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed the glove not an inch from one of his big tusks, then marched around the tank and ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... that in the time of Augustus the toga had disappeared amongst the lowest plebs, and greatly Augustus was shocked at that spectacle. It is a very curious fact in itself, especially as expounding the main cause of the civil wars. Mere poverty, and the absence of bribery from Rome, whilst all popular competition for offices drooped, can alone explain this remarkable revolution ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... in the late operations in China. The affairs of India became the subject of discussion again in the house of commons on the 2nd of March, when Mr. Roebuck moved for a select committee to inquire into the causes which led to the late war in Affghanistan; but it ended in mere words: the motion was rejected by a majority of one hundred ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the works of Shakspeare in which a direct copy, even to matters of detail, appeared to have been made; and, in spite of all attempts to gloss over and palliate, it was impossible to deny that an unblushing act of mere piracy seemed to have been committed, of which I never could bring myself to believe that Shakspeare had been guilty. The readiness to impute this act to him was to me but an instance of the unworthy manner in which he had almost universally been treated; and, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... without regard to its population, in the senate of the United States. The senate, as it stands, as it was meant to be in the Constitution, is the strongest safeguard which the fundamental law established against centralization, against the tyranny of mere majorities, against the destruction of liberty, in such a diversity of climates and conditions as we have in our vast continent. It is not a mere check upon hasty legislation; like some second chambers in Europe, it is the representative ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... does not possess any single word wherewith to sum up the various categories of things (made by nature or made by man, intended solely for the purpose of subserving by mere coincidence) which minister to our organic and many-sided aesthetic instincts: the things affecting us in that absolutely special, unmistakable, and hitherto mysterious manner expressed in our finding them beautiful. It is of ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... world would probably have been just as rational if the famous ape-like progenitor of man had chanced to become his offspring-assuming an original environment favorable for such transformation. Some criterion besides the mere external and accidental "struggle for existence" and "survival of the fittest" must be furnished to account for a progressive evolution. Does the phrase "survival of the fittest" say much more than that those who happen to survive are the fittest, or that their survival proves their fitness? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... said that the statute confers the guardianship, in case of intestacy, on the nearest agnates; but by intestacy here must be understood not only complete intestacy of a person having power to appoint a testamentary guardian, but also the mere omission to make such appointment, and also the case of a person appointed testamentary guardian dying ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... many a one does not point out these great cities as his most beautiful pearl, but, on the contrary, names some small, by no means remarkable town, for it is his home—the home where those he loves reside. Nay, sometimes it is but a country-seat—a small cottage hidden among green hedges—a mere spot that he hastens towards, while the railway ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... defeat." But he did not allow Jubei to turn questioner in his turn. Swiftly he shifted the argument. He, the cleric, considered Jubei of small account. He would prove to him what a fool he was by the interpretation of a mere thirty-one syllables of poetry. This should be the test of intelligence. The Knight's Way (Budo[u]) had its inner and cryptic meaning expressed in verse. So had the Way of the Buddha (Butsudo[u]). ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... of shadow crossed his face, as he answered, 'One nightin the woodswhere it was a mere little point of light ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Emily; he is fitting up her apartment in a style equally simple and elegant, which, however, you must not tell her, because she is to be surprized: her dressing room, and a little adjoining closet of books, will be enchanting; yet the expence of all he has done is a mere trifle. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... at the house. Young women and young men, all sorts of young men, clever men, men who have done something or who are doing things, men of her own class, gentlemen. She can gauge him by them. They will show him up for what he is. And after all, he is a mere boy of twenty-one. Ruth is no more than a child. It is calf love with the pair of them, and they will grow ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... penguin. This is the first of its kind that we have seen since January last, and it may mean a lot. It may signify that there is land somewhere near us, or else that great leads are opening up, but it is impossible to form more than a mere conjecture ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... is thrown off, it may seem strange to hear one speak of a "half-pupa," and of stages intermediate between the larva and pupa. But the external changes of form, though rapidly passed through, consisting apparently of a mere sloughing off of the outer skin, are yet preceded by slow and very gradual alterations of tissues, resulting from the growth of cells. An inner layer of the larva-skin separates from the outer, and, by changes ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... I said, kissing his profane lips; for I had learned long since never to argue with him. "I am too good to be a mere household drudge. It's an economic waste of superior ability. That's why I am going to be your secretary and save you time and money enough to get and keep a ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... beyond. Then it took three days of constant labor to get through five miles of felled timber and drifted wood. Some of the trees reached quite across the stream, and were four feet in diameter. To add to the difficulties of the pioneers, the country all around was overflowed, except a mere strip a few inches out of water on the very bank. Still they persevered, and the way was opened through to ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... to be looked upon as something more than a mere toy. Its ingenuity and scientific accuracy give it an educational value which is not to be measured by the roughness of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... told of her adventures. But, far more interesting to both than the details of these mere happenings, each revealed to the other the longings, the love, the hopes and fears, that had filled his and her heart during the unhappy ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... battle-cry,— "Freedom! or learn to die!" Ah! and they meant the word, Not as with us 'tis heard, Not a mere party shout: They gave their spirits out; Trusted the end to God, And on the glory sod Rolled in triumphant blood. Glad to strike one free blow, Whether for weal or woe; Glad to breathe one free breath, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... journey—up the Ottawa, across Lake Nipissing, and down the French River—but at length the friar stood on the shores of Lake Huron, the first of white men to see its waters. From the mouth of the French River the course lay southward for mere than a hundred miles along the east shore of Georgian Bay, until the party arrived at the peninsula which lies between Nottawasaga and Matchedash Bays. Three or four miles inland from the west shore of this peninsula stood the town ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... opinion commonly received, but, like many others, indebted for its prevalence to mere want of examination, that a translator should imagine to himself the style which his author would probably have used, had the language into which he is rendered been his own. A direction which wants nothing but practicability to recommend ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... and again worked until evening, and by that time had made sufficient progress in their simple movements to begin to feel that there was after all something more in it than they had fancied. For the first hour it had seemed to them a sort of joke—a mere freak on the part of their young chief; but they were themselves surprised to find by the end of the day how rapidly they were able to change from their rank two deep into the solid formation, and how their spears rose and fell together at the order. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... their eyes from the reflecting mirrors of Anthemius; they were astonished by the noise which he produced from the collision of certain minute and sonorous particles; and the orator declared in tragic style to the senate, that a mere mortal must yield to the power of an antagonist, who shook the earth with the trident of Neptune, and imitated the thunder and lightning of Jove himself. The genius of Anthemius, and his colleague Isidore the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... which all are aware of the universal, possessed by it and a part of it, all members of one body, all notes in one tune, and therefore all the more intensely themselves, for a note is itself, finds itself, only in a tune; otherwise it is mere nonsense. ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... by choice and conscience doth Throw out her full force on another soul, The conscience and the concentration both Make mere life love. For life in perfect whole And aim consummated is love in sooth, As nature's magnet heat rounds ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Mariana stoops, at the ghostly counsels of her spiritual guide, that she may twine her life with that of the execrable hypocrite who has wronged her sex so deeply. That, amid the general impunity, the mere telling of some ridiculous lies to the disguised Duke about himself, should draw down a disproportionate severity upon Lucio, the lively, unprincipled, fantastic jester and wag, who might well be let pass as a privileged character, makes the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Dodds had not mentioned that cricket match during the last few days, Hal had not forgotten his promise to get him included in it if possible. Consequently, Dodds's careless inquiry as to whether he intended to come over as a mere spectator disconcerted him very much. However, he swallowed his disappointment, and said that he had ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... of Unitarianism defined. Unitarians not Infidels. Explaining the Bible and Explaining it away. Unitarianism not mere Morality. Unitarianism Evangelical Christianity. Unitarianism does not tend to Unbelief. ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... the House, and again from the House to his own rooms in Pall Mall, his mind was busy with the speech that he was to make at the dinner. He had only to respond to the toast of the guests; few words and simple would be expected. He was thus the more resolved on a great effort; the surprise that the mere attempt at an oration would arouse should pave the way for the astonishment his triumph must create. He had no rival in the programme; the Chairman was Dick Benyon, the great gun an eminent Colonial Statesman who relied for fame on his deeds rather than his words. With his curiously minute calculation ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... home and his children; and the image of Henry, when a bright-eyed, curly-headed, happy child, came up so vividly before him, that it was only by an effort that he kept the tears from gushing over his face. For years he had cherished, in mere self-justification, the bitterest feeling towards his wife; and hundreds of times had he given expression to these feelings in words that smote the heart of Cara with crushing force. Only a little while before he had spoken of her, in the presence of Wilkinson, in a hard and unforgiving ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... not like Bertha's,—mere summer rain which sprang to her eyes with every passing emotion, and fell in sun-broken showers that freshened and brightened her own spirit. Madeleine seldom wept, and when the tears came, they sprang up from the very depth of her true heart, in a hot, bitter current which was less like the bubbling ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... out. And yet the ikon is untouched; it's whole. That's all I have to say. It's the plain, simple statement of fact. Yet you come here with your arguments and try to get away from those facts by mere reasoning. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... people; they had erected stills, and produced a powerful corn spirit from the native merissa; their entire time was passed in gambling, drinking, and fighting, both by night and day. The natives were ill-treated, their female slaves and children brutally ill-used, and the entire camp was a mere slice from the infernal regions. My portion of the camp being a secluded courtyard, we were ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... initiative, Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and required him to proclaim Henry V. king, and to undertake the government during the new sovereign's minority. It is doubtful whether Louis Philippe had at this time formed any distinct resolve, and whether his answer to Charles X. was inspired by mere good nature or by conscious falsehood; for while replying officially that he would lay the king's letter before the Chambers, he privately wrote to Charles X. that he would retain his new office only until he could safely place the Duc de Bordeaux ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... three days and died of the wounds mortifying and the nervous exhaustion brought on by cramps and convulsions. In many cases the corpses were left to feed the kites and crows; and this added horror to the death. Moslems care little for mere hanging. Whenever a fanatical atrocity is to be punished, the malefactor should be hung in pig-skin, his body burnt and the ashes publicly ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... does not know how he got there, and he resolutely declines to accept Captain Niblett's version as the mere offspring of a disordered imagination. He also denies the truth of a statement circulated in the town that night that, instead of replying to a leading question in the manner plainly laid down in the Church Service, he ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... out of mere curiosity," he went on. "And pray don't answer me unless you can answer without betraying any confidence which may ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... apostolic Father, he here edits and annotates letters which have long since been discredited by scholars of all classes, and which he himself confesses to be apocryphal. The Acts of Martyrdom of Ignatius—which he also acknowledges to be a mere bundle of fables—he treats with the same tender regard. Nor is this all. He gives these acts, or large portions of them, in Latin and Greek, as well as in Coptic and Syriac; and annotates them in addition. He supplies, likewise, English translations. It may be argued, that the publication ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... an occasional table beside the glass that he drained on entering; and forthwith set his back to a fire which seemed in keeping with the advanced hour, and doubly welcome in an apartment so vast that the billiard table was a mere item at one end, and sundry trophies of travel and the chase a far more striking ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... to the utmost of the poor power within, in accordance with the high principles enshrined in either heart. Yet what a mockery that forgetting seemed, now that it was laid before them naked and bare! The heart turning sick to faintness at the mere sight of each other, the hands trembling at the mutual touch, the wistful eyes shining with a glance that too surely spoke of ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... differ from those already in existence in that they are not intended for School use, or for Examination purposes; and that their aim is to educate, rather than to inform. The enumeration of mere details will be avoided, except in so far as they illustrate the working of general laws, and the development of principles; while the historical evolution, both of the literary and scientific subjects, will be kept in view, ...
— Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Publications July, 1890 • John Murray
... obviously destined to figure among her sources of national well-being and centers of culture into dead towns that paralyze her effort and hinder her progress. In a word, Belgium had had no political existence for her own behoof. She was not an organic unit in the sodality of nations, but a mere cog in ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... which I had to go was very high. In winter it was covered with snow, and the sheep needed no watching from above. If I were to see sheep dung or tracks going down on to the other side of the mountain (where there was a valley with a stream—a mere cul de sac), I was to follow them, and look out for sheep; but I never saw any, the sheep always descending on to their own side, partly from habit, and partly because there was abundance of good sweet feed, which had been burnt in the ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... me off from the spot on which we were standing. At the same time down came a deluge of rain—not in mere drops, but in regular sheets of water. It wetted us to the skin in a few moments. Larry, now seizing my other arm, dragged me forward. As we looked back for a moment, we observed the sea rising in a mountain billow, hissing and foaming, and approaching the shore. It was but the first, however, of ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... atrocious foggy gray; never in order, never combed, Bean thought. The brows were heavy, and still curiously dark, which made them look threatening. The eyes were the coldest of gray, a match for the hair in colour, and set far back in caverns. The nose was blunt, the chin a mere knobby challenge, and between them was the unloveliest moustache Bean had ever been compelled to observe; short, ragged, faded in streaks. And wrinkles—wrinkles wheresoever there was room for them: across the ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... also that for a time he was so confounded by the apparition of his enemy as to be unable to bring his mind to work properly on the subject. 'Let him do his worst,' he kept on saying to himself; 'let him do his worst.' But he knew that the brave words, though spoken only to himself, were mere braggadocio No doubt the man would do his worst, and very bad it would be to him. At the moment he was so cowed by fear that he would have given half his fortune to have secured the woman's silence,—and the man's. How much better would it have been had ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... fossil-shells and bones of animals imprisoned there, which tell us that creatures, all in some way unlike any we now know, once lived and died, and are still to be found, not in their ancient forms in rushy mere of tangled jungle, but in "graves of ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... Mexia, who somewhat burned to wipe out the memory of his lost battery at the river's mouth. And as blind Fortune's dearest favor flutters often to the lackey while the master snatches vainly, so it befell in this case, for Mexia's chance raid, a piece of mere bravado to which De Guardiola had given grudging consent, was productive of results. Bravado for bravado, interchange of chivalric folly, of magnificence that was not war,—forth to meet the Spaniard and his company must go no greater force ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... words, and answered, "I tell you again that Siegfried is a king far nobler and richer and higher than any other king on earth. Think you that my brothers would have given me to a mere vassal to ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... not be a very severe penance for an island on which the rainfall averages 124 inches per year; but when vegetation suffers from the cruelty of four almost rainless months, promises and slights amount to something more than mere discourtesy. How genuine the thanksgiving to the soft skies after an incense-stimulating shower. Insects whirl in the sunshine. Among the pomelo-trees is a cyclone of scarcely visible things. Motes and specks of light dance in disorderly figures, to be detected as animated objects only by gauzy ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... overview: At independence in September 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the center and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... nothing more significant than the increasing social discontent regarding the present status of the home. Criticism of our family conditions comes both from the enemies and from the friends of the home. A radical and vigorous school of thought finds in the family of today a mere social and moral anachronism, to be pushed aside as quickly as possible. Another group of thinkers, on the other hand, sees in the changes that are already taking place in the conditions of family life, a hopeless deterioration. In such ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... association, though Charley's face used to haunt him in his sleep. Excitable, eager, there was an elemental adaptability in the baker, as easily leading to Avernus as to Elysium. This appealed to Charley, realising, as he did, that Maximilian Cour was a reputable citizen by mere accident. The baker's life had run in a sentimental groove of religious duty; that same sentimentality would, in other circumstances, have forced him with equal ardour into ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and looked below at the house—a doll's house; at the toy corrals and tiny sheds and stables. Slim, walking down the hill, was a mere pigmy—a short, waddling insect. At least, to a girl unused to gazing from a height, each object seemed absurdly small. Flying U coulee stretched away to the west, with a silver ribbon drawn carelessly through it with many ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... that he should strike Imogen in her page's dress, not recognizing her; he is ever too quick—a mere creature of impulse. More characteristic still is the way he forgives Iachimo, just ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... friends who have helped me, I desire especially to express my obligation to Edward S. Curtis, whose wonderful volumes of The North American Indian have been an inspiration, and whose Indian pictures for this book of mine possess a solid value in art and ethnology far beyond the mere illustration of text. ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... of it? why doesn't it grow bigger with the rest of the tree? when does the tree 'consolidate itself'? when is it finally consolidated? and how can there be always marrow in it when the weary frame of its age remains a mere scarred tower of war with the elements, full of ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... unionism will ever become popular enough to endanger the foundations of the American political and social order, I shall not pretend to predict. The practical dangers resulting from it at any one time are largely neutralized by the mere size of the country and its extremely complicated social and industrial economy. The menace it contains to the nation as a whole can hardly become very critical as long as so large a proportion of the American voters are ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... anchored opposite the point where the cliffs are mentioned in the charts as thirty feet high. In the morning, accompanied by the native troopers Jemmy and Jackie, I went north-westerly over slightly timbered grassy plains, and reached in about a mile a waterhole, and in about another mile a narrow mere, which I called Woods Lake, extending northerly and southerly at least for a mile or so in an unbroken sheet of water. I went southward along the edge of Woods Lake to a clump of box and tea-trees, and while I ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... dry clothing laid out before it. He began to undress, casting his coat into one corner of the room, with a gesture of exasperation, and his waistcoat into another. He tugged at his bootlaces angrily, muttering to himself meanwhile mere scraps of speech in which the words 'beer,' and 'waste,' and 'guzzling beasts,' were audible. When he had stripped completely, he gave himself a lusty towelling from head to foot, and then struggled into the warm, dry raiment prepared for him. As at the completion ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... nothing, a mere tag of poetry as familiar to every schoolboy as his ABC, but if the timely mention of it was a sign that the cloud was dispersing further, what would be the next train of thought to emerge from darkness and oblivion? Had Philippa been more vigilant ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... Island, and, I suppose, the other bank, and, therefore, the American Fall. The joke—I do dislike to have to explain jokes, especially to you cool, unsympathising Bostonians—is the ridiculousness of any mere human person claiming to own such a thing as the Niagara Falls. I believe, though, that you are quite equal to it—I ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... exceeding some 20 miles is a severe handicap to the progressive development of wireless telegraphy in this field. It is a totally inadequate radius when the operations of the present war are borne in mind. A round journey of 200, or even more miles is considered a mere jaunt; it is the long distance flight which counts, and which contributes to the value of an airman's observations. The general impression is that the fighting line or zone comprises merely two or three successive stretches of trenches and other defences, representing a belt five ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... exhibition the "Stovepipes" were not mere street corner ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious occupation was the separating of citizens from their coin and valuables. Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks without noise ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... reality—"they neither marry nor are given in marriage." Her warm and living thoughts spent themselves on one theme only—the redressing of a spiritual balance. She was no longer a beggar to her husband; she had the wherewithal to give. She had been the mere recipient, burdened with debts ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... delicately suggesting that I appeared to be much exhausted, and that a glass of wine would do me good. Like most youngsters, however, I was too proud to yield to the weakness which had momentarily overpowered me, so, rallying with an effort, I murmured that it was a mere nothing, and turned the subject by asking his permission to muster my men in the waist that I might ascertain exactly who were the missing ones. The permission was at once accorded, and I then discovered that, of the entire crew of the Dolphin, the surgeon, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... Dante Alighieri taught to it the might of that vulgar tongue in which the child babbles at its mother's knee, and the orator leads a breathless multitude at his will to death or triumph. Teofilo of Empoli discovered for it the mysteries of colour that lie in the mere earths of the rocks and the shores, and the mere oils of the roots and the poppies. Arnoldo of Breccia lit for it the first flame of free opinion, and Amatus of Breccia perfected for it the most delicate and exquisite of all instruments of sound, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... sharp retort. "Garson's my monaker. I shot English Eddie, because he was a skunk, and a stool-pigeon, and he got just what was coming to him." Vituperation beyond the mere words ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... to hear the stingless little native bees humming before I could see them; and as to knowing which tree had honey in it, unless I saw the bees, that was quite beyond me, while a mere toddler would point triumphantly to a 'sugar-bag' tree, recognising it as such by the wax on its fork, black before rain, ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... the gratitude which he professed to the Count of Gouvon and his family, the prudence with which he marked his prospects, the industry with which he profited by opportunity, all faded quickly into mere dead and disembodied names of virtues. His imagination again went over the journey across the mountains; the fields, the woods, the streams, began to absorb his whole life. He recalled with delicious satisfaction how charming the journey had seemed to him, and thought ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... much roasting,' thus writes our Autobiographer, 'I was what you might name calcined. Pray only that it be not rather, as is the more frequent issue, reduced to a caput-mortuum! But in any case, by mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar with many things. Wretchedness was still wretched; but I could now partly see through it, and despise it. Which highest mortal, in this inane Existence, had I not found a Shadow-hunter, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... terrorized. Peasants were shot on mere information, women were imprisoned, attempts were made to obtain revelations ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... bare earth, and a reason suggested for the rule was that if they touched the earth they might make themselves invisible and so escape. The sagacious author of The Striped-petticoat Philosophy in the eighteenth century ridicules the idea as mere silly talk. He admits, indeed, that the women were conveyed to the place of execution in carts; but he denies that there is any deep significance in the cart, and he is prepared to maintain this view by a chemical analysis of the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... horror upon the lifeless body of the otter and cried out, "This creature which you mistook for an otter, and which you have robbed and killed, is my son, Oddar, who for mere pastime had taken the form of the furry beast. You ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... will agree that there is something about it striking and dignified which is obviously not concerned with mere size, is largely independent of elaboration of detail and may therefore be safely attributed to its satisfactory proportions and broad effects of light and shade. Its plan is quite simple consisting of a nave and choir with north and south aisles, a transept not projecting ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... so. The rogue deserves the pillory or branding, but, as he was almost forced into it, and was the mere instrument in the hands of another, it is not a case for hanging him. He might be shipped off to the plantations as a ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... occasionally "Dear Will." They were missives such as a wife might write to a husband long absent, yet upon a mission of deep interest to both. Keith could not fully determine what this mission might be, as the persons evidently understood each other so thoroughly that mere allusion took the place of detail. Twice the name Phyllis was mentioned, and once a "Fred" was also referred to, but in neither instance clearly enough to reveal the relationship, although the latter appeared to be pleaded for. Certain references caused the belief that these letters had been mailed ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... reader will perceive, in these two conversations, lasting perhaps two hours, this slip of a girl, in mere idle curiosity, had touched with her silly chatter the vital, the vulnerable points of Jerry's philosophy of life. Fate had not been fair to me or with him. Less than a year; remained of Jerry's period of probation. In December the boy was to go out into the world. And through an unfortunate ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... was of a naked girl, small, finely made, sitting on a great naked horse. The girl was young and tender, a mere bud. She was sitting sideways on the horse, her face in her hands, as if in shame and grief, in a little abandon. Her hair, which was short and must be flaxen, fell forward, divided, half covering ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... I debated with myself whether the case warranted me or not in sending for Mr. Gryce. As yet there was nothing to show that the girl had come to any harm. A mere elopement with or without a lover to help her, was not such a serious matter that the whole police force need be stirred up on the subject; and if the woman had money, as she said, ready to give ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... memory for this hurried, stealthy evening is J.Y. Copeman, cousin of Charles. 'J.Y.'—for he never carried any graver appellation than mere initials—once a rising lawyer in Vancouver, was now our quartermaster. The gayest and most debonair figure in the division, known and popular everywhere, he was also an incredibly efficient quartermaster. Possibly the same qualities make for success ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... belong to the other, and being employed to explain social customs and physical appearances in actual experience. In the light of such story-telling even the Polynesian creation myth may become a literal genealogy, and the dividing line between folklore and traditional history, a mere shift of attention and no actual change in the conception itself of the nature of the material universe and the relations between gods ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... almost as much of the physical condition of the world at different epochs as they do of its animal and vegetable population. When Robinson Crusoe first caught sight of the footprint on the sand, he saw in it more than the mere footprint, for it spoke to him of the presence of men on his desert island. We walk on the old geological shores, like Crusoe along his beach, and the footprints we find there tell us, too, more than we actually see in them. The crust of our earth is a great cemetery, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... knew Kiddie well enough to be assured that there was some special meaning in this sudden disappearance. It was not a mere playful fancy. Kiddie had gone away intentionally, making no sound, leaving no sign. Clearly he wanted to test ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... formed among the friends of constitutional freedom, for the relief of those, who were arrested on mere suspicion, or on a charge of violating the restrictions on the press; but who were believed to be unjustly suspected, and who had been found entirely innocent, even in the eye of the law, rigid as were its ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... detail that one can become fully sensible of their extraordinary magnificence. Vast streets of almost interminable length, lined by insignificant two-story houses with green roofs and yellow walls; vast open squares or ploschads; palaces, public buildings, and churches, dwindled down to mere toy-work in the deserts of space intervening; countless throngs of citizens and carriages scarcely bigger than ants to the eye; broad sheets of water, dotted with steamers, brigs, barks, wood-barges and row-boats, still infinitesimal in the distance; long rows of trees, forming ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... spirit will not enter here To haunt the holy gloom; I gaze into a mirror mere, A ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... boldness of color. His attempts to express the gay and mirthful, as for instance in the masquerade music of "Traviata" and the dance music of "Rigoletto," are dreary, ghastly, and saddening; while his ideas of tenderness are apt to take the form of mere sentimentality. Yet generalities fail in describing him, for occasionally he attains effects strong in their pathos, and artistically admirable; as, for example, the slow air for the heroine, and the dreamy song for the gypsy mother in the last act of ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... Other forms of these nursery traditions exist, indeed, not only in Italian, but in most European and some Asiatic and African languages. But their classical shape in literature is that which Charles Perrault gave them, in his Contes de ma Mere l'Oie, of 1697. Among the 'early French editions' which Sir Walter knew, probably none were older than Dr. Douce's copy of 1707, now in the Bodleian. The British Museum has no early copy. There was an example of the First Edition sold in the Hamilton sale: another, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... problem. A tree with gifts, Santa Claus coming down the chimney, a treat of candy and nuts—these and many other schemes have been tried with a greater or less degree of success. But the criticism is often made that the true significance of the celebration of the birth of Christ is lost in the mere idea of bartering Christmas presents. "She didn't give me anything last year, so I'm not going to ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... probability of the success of this movement, there is at present some difference of opinion. While a very few pass it by with a slur as a mere temporary sensation of little or no consequence, it is generally regarded as a work of growing strength and importance, both by its advocates and opposers. Petitions and remonstrances are both being circulated with activity, and ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... upon me eloquently as I knelt on the path and made my examination—an examination which that first glimpse when Forsyth came staggering out from the trees had rendered useless—a mere matter of form. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... run the light brigantine down the beach of Algiers and man her for a cruise in Spanish waters? The little ship will hold but ten oars a side, each pulled by a man who knows how to fight as well as to row—as indeed he must, for there is no room for mere landsmen on board a firkata. But if there be a fair wind off the land, there will be little rowing; the big lateen sail on her one mast will span the narrow waters between the African coast and the Balearic Isles, where a convenient look-out may be kept ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... said la Peyrade, humbly, "more than I could dare ask for myself; but, for the result which we both seek, I must tell you frankly that something more is needed. Madame Thuillier has not changed her nature to instantly change back again on the mere assurance by others of your compliance. It is necessary that she should hear from your own lips that you accede to my suit, and that you do so with eagerness,—assumed, indeed, but sufficiently well assumed to induce ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... to me that during the first twenty minutes they hit a single living thing except the four dragoon horses. The walls of the houses on both sides of the street were filled with bullet marks. A curious kind of shallow furrow appeared about halfway down the street. At first it seemed a mere line drawn on the ground. Then it deepened into a little trench with a ridge of dust ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... the voice of the sheikh. "Get up, you lazy sons of dogs!" he was exclaiming in an angry tone. "You have been deceiving me, I find, by passing yourselves off as people of importance, when you are mere servants of servants. Get up, I say;" and he began to enforce his commands by kicks and blows. We sprang to our feet, and Ben, doubling his fists, would have knocked the sheikh down had ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... cloud of dust into the eyes of the rubberneck," and "his foul purpose is foiled." This attempt at piety is also shown in a series of films depicting Bible stories and the Passion Play at Oberammergau, forecasting the time when the moving film will be viewed as a mere mechanical device for the use of the church, the school and the library, as well as ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... and Cloudy, with rain on the Latter part. At 10 departed this Life Jno. Rearden,* (* John Reading.) Boatswain's Mate; his Death was occasioned by the Boatswain out of mere good Nature giving him part of a Bottle of Rum last night, which it is supposed he drank all at once. He was found to be very much in Liquor last night, but as this was no more than what was common with him when he could get any, no farther ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... wall. Fred took advantage of the opportunity and examined him narrowly as to his knowledge of German East and ways of getting there. He was in an aggravating mood that made at one moment a very well of information of him, and at the next a mere garrulous ass. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... is, as its title imports, a plantation sketch dealing with that sort of life in Virginia just after the Civil War. While it is a mere story and hardly a dramatic one, it throws light on the Negro as a constituent part of the southern society of that day. As a student at Harvard before the War a southerner comes into contact with a fellow ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... out of the woods. His relations with the Tractarians had leaked out, and the Record was beginning to be suspicious. If Mrs. Shuttleworth's opinion of him were to become general, it would certainly be a grave matter. Nobody could wish to live and die a mere Archdeacon. And then, at that very moment, an event occurred which made it imperative to take a definite step, one way or the other. That event was the publication ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Devonshire, at what is called a revel. Our mess gave a purse towards the games. We put forward a Cumberland man belonging to the regiment, in the full confidence that he would be the victor of the day; but a youth, a mere youth, threw not only our champion, but all who dared to oppose him. I was stung for the honour of Cumberland; I was loath to see the hero carry his laurels so easily from the field. I accoutred myself in the wrestler's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... found but one end to every vista, and that end grew momentarily in importance until she felt that at all costs he who glowered from afar must learn the falsity of his own imaginings and so restore her peace of mind to her. She looked upon her American friend as a mere means towards that end, a tool to quickly accomplish that which her impatience could no longer delay. So she leaned suddenly forward and ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... has considered, first, the mere fact of the duration of the trial, which they find to have commenced on the 13th day of February, 1788, and to have continued, by various adjournments, to the said 17th of March. During that period the sittings ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... most unscrupulous of self-asserters, the pampered darling of every kind of sophisticated luxury, should thus lift up his voice on behalf of the wage-earners, is an indication that a state of society which seems proper and inevitable to dull and narrow minds is, when confronted, not with any mere abstract theory of Justice or Political rights, but with the natural human craving for life and beauty, found to be an ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... result of these Herculean Efforts to vaporize his Income, he found himself at the age of 40 afflicted with Social Gastritis. He had gorged himself with the Pleasures of this World until the sight of a Menu Card gave him the Willies and the mere mention of Musical Comedy would cause him to break down and Cry like ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... which had employed a greater quantity before. The gold and silver which would go abroad would not go abroad for nothing, but would bring back an equal value of goods of some kind or other. Those goods, too, would not be all matters of mere luxury and expense, to be consumed by idle people, who produce nothing in return for their consumption. As the real wealth and revenue of idle people would not be augmented by this extraordinary exportation of gold and silver, so neither would their consumption be much augmented by it. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... baby too, as soon as we can. You won't get mad if I tell you something?" said Sol, with a half-apologetic laugh. "Mrs. Sol was rather down on you the other day, hated you on sight, and preferred your brother to you; but when she found he'd run off and left YOU, you,—don't mind my sayin',—a 'mere boy,' to take what oughter be HIS place, why, she just wheeled round agin' him. I suppose he got flustered, and couldn't face the music. Never left a word of explanation? Well, it wasn't exactly square, though ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... understood by the commercial people than some other sides of the art. Some of the best of the William S. Hart productions show appreciation of this quality by the director, the photographer, and the public. Not only is the man but the horse allowed to be moving bronze, and not mere cowboy pasteboard. Many of the pictures of Charles Ray make the hero quite a bronze-looking sculpturesque person, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... the timely appearance of Raphael, in the character of a traveler's guide, leading Helon, a young man of her own nation and kindred who has been living unknown at Babylon, protected by the same angel, and destined to be her husband; and to the mere idea of whose existence, imparted to her in a mysterious and vague manner by Raphael, she has remained ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... decoration of the Legion of honor. No man offered a finer image of those old Republicans, incorruptible friends to the Empire, who remained the living relics of the two most energetic governments the world has ever seen. Though the Baron di Piombo displeased mere courtiers, he had the Darus, Drouots, and Carnots with him as friends. As for the rest of the politicians, he cared not a whiff of his cigar's smoke for ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... must go to the spring on a Sunday during service-time, to clean it out and to enlarge the opening. Each must take a spade, hoe, rake, a cake of bread, and a hymn-book with her. But if too much rain falls, the spring must be closed up to a mere crevice, and this ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... to say, that you intend to appropriate five hundred pounds for the mere act of shooting the old dog, when I ran as much risk ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
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