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More "Nil" Quotes from Famous Books



... carefully within the law, neglected nothing that could sap little Ginx's vitality, deaden his instincts, derange moral action, cause hope to die within his infant breast almost as soon as it was born." Every pauper was to them an obnoxious charge to be reduced to a MINIMUM or NIL. The Baby's constitution alone prevented his ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... upon calico, and another sovereign went by-and-by at the bootmaker's, leaving the damsel with just twenty shillings out of her quarter's wage; but as the need of pocket-money at Kingthorpe, except for the Sunday offertory, was nil, she felt herself passing rich in the possession of that last remaining sovereign. She would have liked to spend it all upon Christmas gifts for her young friends at The Knoll; but this fond wish she relinquished with a ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... himself. A friend of mine—I call him my friend for brevity; he is now, I understand, in Demerara and (most likely) in gaol—was the previous occupant. I defended him, and I got him off too—all saved but honour; his assets were nil, but he gave me what he had, poor gentleman, and along with the rest—the key of his chambers. It's there that I propose to leave the piano and, shall we ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... which restricted the destructive tendencies of the Tigris and Euphrates and developed to a high degree their potentialities as fertilizing agencies. The greatest of these canals appear to have been anciently river beds. One, which is called Shatt en Nil to the north, and Shatt el Kar to the south, curved eastward from Babylon, and sweeping past Nippur, flowed like the letter S towards Larsa and then rejoined the river. It is believed to mark the course ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... vniquement ayme de Dieu, colomne de la foy, sorty de la race de Inda, etc. Les limites de cet Empire touchent a la mer Rouge, et aux montagnes d'Azuma vers {72} l'Orient, et du coste de l'Occident, il est borne du fleuue du Nil, qui le separe de la Nubie, vers le Septentrion il a l'AEgypte, et au Midy les Royaumes de Congo, et de Mozambique, sa longueur contenant quarante degre, qui font mille vingt cinq lieues, et ce depuis Congo ou Mozambique qui sont au Midy, iusqu'en AEgypte qui est au Septentrion, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... a wheelwright's, and a Young Men's Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a loft): the whole forming a back lane. No audacious hand had plucked down the vane from the central cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty and stuck at N-Nil: while the score or two of pigeons that remained true to their ancestral traditions and the place, had collected in a row on the roof-ridge of the only outhouse retained by the Dolphin, where all the inside ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... of one, Harry, who thinks very ill of me—nay, of two; and they are both in this room. Do you remember how you used to teach me that terribly conceited bit of Latin—Nil conscire sibi? Do you suppose that I can boast that I never grow pale as I think of my own fault? I am thinking of it always, and my heart is ever becoming paler and paler. And as to the treatment of others—I wish ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... be relieved by the exertions of reverie, as above described; as when it is misplaced on an object, of which the lover cannot possess himself; it may still be counteracted or conquered by the stoic philosophy, which strips all things of their ornaments, and inculcates "nil admirari." Of which lessons may be found in the meditations of Marcus Antoninus. The maniacal idea is said in some lovers to have been weakened by the action of other very energetic ideas; such as have been occasioned by the death of his favourite child, or by the burning ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... leg cut off without its hurting him. If it did not take his breath away and lay him out as flat as the Queen of Sheba was knocked over by the splendors of his court, he must have rivalled our Indians in the nil admarari line. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Turkish lady of position, flirted with her, it was said, while on horseback outside her motor when caught in the crush at Kasr-el-Nil bridge. There had been a meeting or two in the back of shops, and then he had boasted, lightheartedly, of a design to take tea in ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... the thymus, we are a good deal at sea. The latest opinion about the results of extirpation even in young and growing animals is that they are nil. Yet there is a certain justification for proclaiming the thymus the gland of childhood, the gland which keeps children childish and sometimes makes children out of grown-ups. There is a quantity of data for that proposition. In the first place, the curve of rise of growth of the gland ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... Solymaeae tollite nymphae, Nil mortale loquor; coelum mihi carminis alta Materies; poscunt gravius coelestia plectrum. Muscosi fontes, sylvestria tecta, valete, Aonidesque deae, et mendacis somnia Pindi: Tu, mihi, qui flamma movisti pectora sancti Siderea Isaiae, dignos accende furores! Immatura ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... occasionally took at night. What could be easier than quietly to dissolve one or more of those powders in Mrs. Inglethorp's large sized bottle of medicine when it came from Coot's? The risk is practically nil. The tragedy will not take place until nearly a fortnight later. If anyone has seen either of them touching the medicine, they will have forgotten it by that time. Miss Howard will have engineered her quarrel, and departed from the house. The lapse of time, and her absence, ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie

... time. It has now been lost. He sent it to Caesar, having been bold enough to say in it whatever occurred to him should be said in Cato's praise. We may imagine that, had it not pleased him to be generous—had he not been governed by that feeling of "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," which is now common to us all—he might have said much that was not good. Cato had endeavored to live up to the austerest rules of the Stoics—a mode of living altogether antagonistic to ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... speech,—very affecting and all, true no doubt; altho no one knew the character of this believing penitent either in point of veracity or judgment.—By the testimony of his land-lady in Court, one would not form the best opinion of him; but de mortuis nil nisi bonum. ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... "De mortuis nil nisi bonum: of the dead nothing but the bones. If he had lived he would certainly have beaten me. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... named Francois Tonsard, commends himself to the attention of philosophers by the manner in which he had solved the problem of an idle life and a busy life, so as to make the idleness profitable, and occupation nil. ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... abroad to render "Caesar's things" to foreign Caesars, demand such total bankruptcy that we must needs repudiate the just debts of home creditors, whose chimneys smoke just beyond the fence that divides us? De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a traditional and sacred duty to departed workers; but does it exhaust human charity, or require contemptuous crusade against equally honest, living toilers? Are antiquity and foreign birthplace imperatively essential factors in the award of praise for even faithful and noble work? ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... but in everything. The place seems absolutely rotten. It's bad enough losing all our matches, or nearly all. Did you hear that Ripton took thirty-seven points off us last term? And we only just managed to beat Greenburgh by a try to nil." ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... native attendants pointed out an extensive weir, 200 feet long and five feet high; they said it was the property of a family, and emphatically remarked, "that white men had stolen it and their country;" the Yow-ew-nil-lurns were the original inhabitants. "Tapoe," the Mount Napier of Mitchell, is an isolated hill of volcanic formation; the crater is broken down on the west side to its base. The great swamp is skirted by low hills and well grassed open forest land; the natives are still the undisputed occupants, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... carried out in the spring; for although, as we shall endeavour to show later, the scenery is then at its best, still, since it is not the season, only one or two hotels are open in each resort, and society is "nil." ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... Muriel—to offer them in person. "It will be so delightful to have a chatelaine at Heronsmere at last," she had gushed. Presumably, recognising that her daughter's chance of acquiring the coveted position was now reduced, to nil, she had decided—with the promptness of a good general—to accept the fact and adapt her tactics to the altered situation. With mathematical foresight she argued that when Coventry was married Heronsmere would undoubtedly become the centre of a considerable amount of entertaining, and from ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... he said, "that between me and the Unconditioned, the Absolute, scarcely a hair's breadth intervenes. To gasify metals, I only need to find the means of submitting them to intense heat in some centre where the pressure of the atmosphere is nil,—in ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... clothes were built along such lines that I never suffered from this pressure. I felt only a certain tightness in the joints of my fingers, and even this discomfort soon disappeared. As for the exhaustion bound to accompany a two-hour stroll in such unfamiliar trappings—it was nil. Helped by the water, my movements were ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... of Bristol's seeking me there; and, eager as I was to give them substance, found them but airy—ultimately was forced to admit them to be nil. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... once my men discovered a fire had been started in a mysterious way, which they succeeded in putting out. Only for prompt work it would have at least disabled the bomber so that its usefulness for the present would be nil." ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... constantly with us, and one time so sharp an epidemic of small-pox that every man of us, will he nil he, had to submit to the inoculation then newly introduced as a preventive against that most horrible disease. Some of us believed, and rightly I think, that as good a preventive as any against this or any ailment was the keeping of the body in the fittest possible condition, and to that ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... replied the other, with a shrug, "de mortuis nil nisi bonum; but as touching beauty, in what sense do you ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... protector, Senor Pomponio de Vergara y Puyarola, that his labours need not be otherwise than purely formal. To every one of the intelligent queries on the part of a paternal government it had been his custom, therefore, to append the magic word NIL. Banking system—NIL. Meat export—NIL. Cotton industry—NIL. Agriculture—NIL. Canal traffic—NIL. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... nonsensical hot-gospelling rant, Alderman and Sheriff STUART KNILL was elected Lord Mayor, while BEAUFOY MOORE was, so to speak, no MOORE, and, in fact, very much against his will and wish, was reduced to NIL. WILLY-KNILLY he had to cave in. Mr. Punch congratulates the Lord Mayor Elect, but still more does he congratulate the City Fathers on rising above paltry sectarianism, so utterly unworthy of time, place, and persons, and for standing up, in true English fashion, for freedom of worship ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various

... round of the Divisional Cup Competition, we beat the Divisional Mechanical Transport Column 3—0, and got into the semi-final, when, however, we were badly beaten by the 4th Leicesters at Bishop's Stortford, by 3 goals to nil. In a Brigade paper chase which was held on December 26th, Pvte. Allen of E Company ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman

... out the bellam and restoring order in the launch we found that the casualties were nil, and proceeded to compare notes. Brown, it appeared, had joined the Naval Division, been to Antwerp, Gallipoli and France, and then been transferred for gunnery duties to the rivers of Mesopotamia, and was now Lieut. R.N.V.R. in the Dalhousie stationed at Basra. His occupation, when I came ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell

... Samson replied, "The difference between the two sorts of madmen is, that he who is so will he nil he, will be one always, while he who is so of his own accord can leave off being one ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... "Nil habuit Codrus. Quis enim hoc negat? et tamen illud Perdidit infelix totum nihil."—Juvenal, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... been taken away from it, only the colour and the race of the men had changed. The nationality of all of them, however, was the same—they were all subjects of the mighty French Empire or Democracy, and in France race prejudice is practically nil. Therefore Ouk, who worked in a munition factory, found himself regarded with curiosity and with interest, though not with prejudice. Thus it happened that Madame Maubert found herself gazing at Ouk one evening, from behind the safe security ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... sickening with the fumes of chloroform. They fairly sent my head a-reeling, but their effect upon the burglar seemed to have been nil. ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin

... Walsham, that I think your chances of success are absolutely nil. At the same time, there is just a faint possibility that you may get ashore alive, escape from the French, discover a pathway, and bring me the news; and, as the only chance of the expedition being successful now depends ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... theory of political economy, looked at the position of the Russian peasant simply from the point of view of capital, wages, and rent. He would indeed have been obliged to admit that in the eastern—much the larger—part of Russia rent was as yet nil, that for nine-tenths of the eighty millions of the Russian peasants wages took the form simply of food provided for themselves, and that capital does not so far exist except in the form of the most primitive ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... "picking up the various doles at funerals and commemoration masses, where such needy miserables were always to be found."[1] Such students would not be likely to have many or perhaps any books. "The stock of books possessed by the YOUNGER scholars seems to have been almost nil. The inventories of goods, which we possess, in the case of non-graduates contain hardly any books. The fact is that they mostly could not afford to buy them.... The chief source of supplying books was by purchase from the University sworn stationers, who had ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... radium, or radium chloride, is a minute salt crystal, so rare and costly to obtain that it may be counted as about three thousand times the price of gold in the market. But of the action of PURE radium, the knowledge of ordinary scientific students is nil. They know that an infinitely small spark of radium salt will emit heat and light continuously without any combustion or change in its own structure. And I would here quote a passage from a lecture delivered by one ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... looked at it, and the first thing he did was to try to discover what object, if any, such a hole could have. He got a piece of candle, and by enlarging the aperture a little was able to examine what lay beyond. The result was nil. The trunk-room, although heated by steam heat, like the rest of the house, boasted of a fireplace and mantel as well. The opening had been made between the flue and the outer wall of the house. There was revealed, however, on inspection, only the brick of the chimney on one side ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... prisco et natus ab Inacho, Nil interest, an pauper, et infima De gente, sub dio moreris, Victima nil miserantis Orci. * * * * * ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... we were to do in the immediate future was settled for us; for four days out of the six during which we were at One Ton the weather made travelling southwards, that is against the wind, either entirely impossible or such that the chance of seeing another party at any distance was nil. On the two remaining days I could have run a day farther South and back again, with the possibility of missing the party on the way. I decided to remain at the Depot where we were certain ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... the which that right for love Upon a cros, our soules for to beye, First starf, and roos, and sit in hevene a-bove; For he nil falsen no wight, dar I seye, That wol his herte al hoolly on him leye. And sin he best to love is, and most meke, What nedeth feyned loves ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... of affairs, disturbing enough in itself, was rendered still more disquieting by the fact that, except for the Boy Scouts, England's military strength at this time was practically nil. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... carucarum et carectarum nil quia per firmarium. Item pro eorum duspot (xij'd) nil, causa predicta. Item pro eorum forlot (iiij'd) ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various

... likely to be useful to him at the present moment. For the amount of money that he required was large—larger, indeed, than he cared to verify with any strictness, and the security that he could offer, almost nil. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... this time once more within sound of the rumble of the guns. But that didn't upset the H.L.I., whose 16th and 17th Battalions met in the final of the Brigade Football Tournament, which was won in easy style, 5 goals to nil, by the Chamber of Commerce boys. Four days later they defeated the 32nd Divisional Supply Column in the semi-final of the Divisional Tournament, and then two days after that, meeting the 2nd Royal Inniskillen Fusiliers ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various

... itaque multa ex Taciti operibus deessent, ut Nicoli voluntati morem gereret Poggius, nil omisit intentatum, ut per Monachum nescio quem e Germania Tacitum erueret. MEHUS, Praefat. ad Lat. ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... dramatic misdemeanor on the part of the author, since it is wantonly stretched out into five acts, when it could properly be compressed into three. A strict compliance with the old maxim, "De mortuis nil desperandum nisi prius," (I haven't quite forgotten my Latin yet,) would oblige me to refrain from abusing it, now that it is happily dead; but, as another proverb puts it, "The law knows no necessity," and I therefore can do as I choose. Here, then, is its corpse, exhumed as a warning to those ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various

... when I find it convenient, I do not suppose that those who projected and made the line allowed me to enter into their thoughts; the debt of my gratitude is divided among so many that the amount due from each one is practically nil. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... que ronge un volcan souterrain, Grece qu'on connait trop, Sardaigne qu'on ignore, Cites de l'Aquilon, du Couchant, de l'Aurore, Pyramides du Nil, Cathedrales du Rhin! Qui sait?— ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... mater, tu lac vitamq. dedisti, Vae mihi; pro tanto munere saxa dabo! Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem bonus Angel[us] ore, Exeat ut Christi Corpus, imago tua. Sed nil vota valent; venias cito, Christe; resurget, Clausa licet tumulo, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... ports of arrival—two at Liverpool, one at Milford, and one at Gravesend—but without result. If, as seemed likely, the man had contrived to ship himself on board the Hussar brig, bound for Barcelona, or the Mary Harvey barque, for Rio, the chances of bringing him to justice might be considered nil, or almost nil; for Mr. Rogers had some hope of the Hussar being overtaken and spoken by a frigate which happened to be starting, two days later, to join our fleet ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... a volume of republished essays coming out with Chatto and Windus; I wish they would come, that my wife might have the reviews to divert her. Otherwise my news is NIL. I am up here in a little chalet, on the borders of a pinewood, overlooking a great part of the Davos Thal, a beautiful scene at night, with the moon upon the snowy mountains, and the lights warmly shining in the village. J. A. Symonds is next door to me, just at the foot ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... relative delineated with all those faults by which we must own that even our near relatives have been made imperfect. It is a general conviction as to this which so frequently turns the biography of those recently dead into mere eulogy. The fictitious charity which is enjoined by the de mortuis nil nisi bonum banishes truth. The feeling of which I speak almost leads me at this moment to put down my pen. And, if so much be due to all subjects, is less ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... spare him, and after at length obtaining leave to return to Europe for that purpose—it was hard, we repeat, when hostilities did at last break out in America, that his energies should have been so cramped by the passive attitude of his superior. Remembering, however, the maxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, the editor has refrained from transcribing aught reflecting on the memory of that superior when he could do so consistently with truth, although he feels acutely that the death of Sir Isaac Brock—hastened as he believes it was by the defensive policy and ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... "there is no such a fine bit of Latin anywhere as nil desperandum. You never know what course a battle may take. Old Nap thought he had won Waterloo; but he had not. Cheer up, my dears! Look how young Mark Strong takes it. Well, captain, he added, leaving the cabin and joining him, what ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... dock-people had generously charged me "nil" for dues. I had letters for France from the highest authorities to pass the Rob Roy as an article entered for the Paris "Exhibition;" and when the douane and police functionaries came in proper state at Boulogne to appraise her value, and to fill up the numerous forms, certificates, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... nil ultra, and here I found I might set up my pillar; for although there was a door out of it to a back pair of stairs which led to it, yet that was kept locked. So that finding I had now followed my keeper's direction to ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... personally I saw no reason to expect any declaration of solidarity from his Majesty's Government that would entail an unconditional engagement on their part to support Russia and France by force of arms. Direct British interests in Servia were nil, and a war on behalf of that country would never be sanctioned by British public opinion. To this M. Sazonof replied that we must not forget that the general European question was involved, the Servian question being but ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... name of the place, isn't it?"—this with a sweet smile at the major, who was blushing like a schoolboy, and thoroughly unhappy. When detached from the racecourse or the card-table, his command of language was nil. He would rather have encountered a wild beast than a bishop's wife, and Mrs. Ocklebourne ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... while standing over their tombs? De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Take them for all in all, they were men whom we delight to honour. Here are some of their memorials, dated so far back as 1657. Here too is the resting-place ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... published in Kilkenny—the native town of the young rebel, who in this instance played his first trick on the government—referred to his supposed decease in terms which showed that the rule de mortuis nil nisi bonum found acceptance with the editor. The following are the words of the obituary notice which appeared in the Kilkenny Moderator on or about the 19th ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... saepe ducentos, ut magnum, versus dictabat, stans pede in uno: cum flueret lutulentus, erat quod tollere velles; garrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem, scribendi recte; nam ut multum, nil moror.' ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... be judged differently by different people, according to the opinion they have of the permanent and supreme value of his work. He simply accepts the position as he finds it. "Here am I," he may have said to himself, "with a brain teeming with art work of a high and lasting kind; my resources are nil, and if the world, or at least the friends who believe in me, wish me to do my allotted task, they must free me from the sordid anxieties of existence." The words, here placed in quotation marks, do not actually occur ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... maximus hres Corpore, progressus cm pubertatis ad annos Esset, res gessit multas iuueniliter audax, Asciscens comites quo spar sibi iunxerat tas, Nil tamen iniust commisit, nil tamen vnquam Extra virtutis normam, sapientibus qu Ac ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed

... how far these different kinds of restraint operate upon the community as a whole in the prevention of deliberate crime. Clearly the fear of pecuniary loss through actions brought to judgment in the civil courts is practically nil. Most persons who set out to commit crime have no bank account, the absence of one being generally what leads ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... might have been any age from fifteen to eighty. His education had been somewhat hurried, but there was no doubt as to his mechanical ability. He took to a car like a young duck to water. He talked motor, thought motor, and would have accepted—I won't say with enthusiasm, for Alfred's motto was 'Nil admirari'—but without hesitation, an offer to drive in the greatest race in the world. He could drive really well, too; as for belief in himself, after six months' apprenticeship in a garage he was prepared to vivisect a six-cylinder ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... Commencement for that year by Mr. George Osborne. The first English oration was made by Mr. Jedidiah Huntington, in the year 1763, and the first English poem by Mr. John Davis, in 1781. The last Latin syllogisms were in 1792, on the subjects, "Materia cogitare non potest," and "Nil nisi ignis natura est fluidum." The first year in which the performers spoke without a prompter was 1837. There were no Master's exercises for the first time in 1844. To prevent improprieties, in the year ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... admiring, At some small distance, all he saw within This strange saloon, much fitted for inspiring Marvel and praise; for both or none things win; And I must say, I ne'er could see the very Great happiness of the 'Nil Admirari.' ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... 250—had not reappeared, but the conditions for its re-appearance were highly favourable. The earth was all water, the vegetation all slime, the air half steam, and the difference between wet and dry bulbs almost nil. Thoroughly dispirited for the first time, I was meditating how to escape, when H. M. Steamship "Torch" steamed into Clarence Cove, and Commander Smith hospitably offered me a passage down south. To hear ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... injustos ira molesta Dei; Quem neque praemeditans latuit Nero, funera cujus Distulit adversa in tempora longa vice. Occidit ergo miser, Divumque hominumque favore, Traduxitque illuc sors malesuada virum. Nil gravius pugnare Deo, pugnare feroci Fortunae. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... from profound thought to imbecility; but in this case its suggestion was nil. That something had happened, that some change had taken place, was as patent to Loder as the darkness of the curtain or the band of light that crossed the floor, but what had occasioned it, or what it stood for, he made ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... est ad nos neque pertinet hilum, quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur. et velut anteacto nil tempore sensimus aegri, ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis, omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris, in dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum omnibus ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... canal, a shallow ditch in the mud. Magnificent mountains rush down on every side to the water, in which stunted willow trees with myriad roots—like mangroves—find an amphibious existence. We passed through their groves, hooting as though we were leaving Liverpool, and out into the eau-de-nil waters of ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... of a recently-arrived draft of 100 men, to parade moderately strong, and Gen. Kemp was well satisfied with our "turn-out." It was, however, to be regretted that the only soldier to whom he spoke happened to be a blacksmith, for which trade we had the previous day sent to Brigade Headquarters a "nil" return. The cricket match was a great success, and thanks to some excellent batting by Lieut. Langdale, we came away victorious. The light training which we carried out each day now included a very considerable amount of bomb throwing, ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... rain continued to fall heavily throughout the day, which could not under the circumstances, have increased the cheerfulness of the party. The Leader, however, closes the entry in his Diary with "Nil Desperandum" merely marking the day of the week in parenthesis as ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine

... Merito rector cohibere modo. Nam cur tantas lubrica uersat Fortuna uices? Premit insontes Debita sceleri noxia poena, 30 At peruersi resident celso Mores solio sanctaque calcant Iniusta uice colla nocentes. Latet obscuris condita uirtus Clara tenebris iustusque tulit 35 Crimen iniqui. Nil periuria, nil nocet ipsis Fraus mendaci compta colore. Sed cum libuit uiribus uti, Quos innumeri metuunt populi 40 Summos gaudent subdere reges. O iam miseras respice terras Quisquis rerum foedera nectis. ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... Conventionality, and the Charybdis of License. The labour his writing cost him was enormous. "I shall never again make so great a sacrifice for the younger generation," he says in a letter, "I am amazed to note how insignificant, how almost nil is the effect produced, in comparison to the cost, in vitality to me. Or perhaps it is I who am in error. Perhaps one must have reached middle age, or the Indian Summer of life, must have seen much, heard much, felt and produced much ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... is a constant which varies from 1.3 to 2 in various qualities of iron and steel. For ductile iron or mild steel it may be taken as 1.5. For a statical load, range of stress nil, [Delta] 0, k{max.} K, the statical breaking stress. For a bar so placed that it is alternately loaded and the load removed, [Delta] k{max.} and k{max.} 0.6 K. For a bar subjected to alternate tension and compression ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... Profits Nil in a Static Society.—We shall see that if labor and capital can move about in the system of groups so freely that each agent is as productive in one place as it is in another, there will be no product anywhere in excess of wages and interest. Labor and capital then create ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... "Nil desperandum, Didums duce, then!" said Fred. "I propose Monty for leader. Those against the motion take their shirts off, and see if they can lick me! Nobody pugnacious? The ayes have it! ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... but they occupy an important place both in the elaborate religious ceremonies and in the daily life of the Navaho. They are the sweat houses, called in the Navaho language co'tce, a term probably derived from qaco'tsil, "sweat" and [)i]nc[)i]nil'tce, the manner in which fire is prepared for heating the stones placed in it when it is used. The structure is designed to hold only one person at a time, and he must crawl in and squat on his heels with his knees drawn ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... Bubindam occisi A.D. 1690. Decanus et Capitulum maximopere etiam atque etiam petierunt, ut haeredes Ducis, monumentum in memoriam parentis erigendum curarent. Sed postquam per epistolas, per amicos, diu ac saepe orando nil profecere, hunc demum lapidem statuerunt; saltem ut scias hospes ubinam ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various

... small wood through which her path lay. Dot's anger had wholly left her, but her fear remained. A terrible sense of responsibility was upon her, and she was utterly at a loss as to how to cope with it. Her influence over this man she believed to be absolutely nil. She had not the faintest notion how to deal with him. Lady Carfax would have known, she reflected, and she wished with all her heart that Lady ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... infausta Valachria terris, Oceanus tumidis quam vagus ambit aquis. Nulla ubi vox avium, pelagi strepit undique murmur, Coelum etiam larga desuper urget aqua. Flat Boreas, dubiusque Notus, flat frigidus Eurus, Felices Zephyri nil ubi juris habent. Proque tuis ubi carminibus, Philomena canora, Turpis in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... formerly known as Mademoiselle Lange. She it was who became the famous Du Barry, mistress of Louis XV. Here also dwelt Hebert, editor of the foul Pere Duchesne. Both perished on the scaffold. We cross the Cour and leave by the Rue Damiette (L.), turn again L. and descend the Rue du Nil to the Rue des Petits Carreaux. This we follow to the L., and continue down it and the busy and picturesque Rue Montorgeuil, noting (L.) No. 78, the curious house at the sign of the Rocher de Cancale. 72-64 were part of the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... Nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre Errare ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... ALPHA}: whereas the Judaical rites were abolished, whereupon Zanchius noteth,(193) that the Apostle doth not so much speak of things by-past, as of the very nature of all rites, Definiens ergo ipsos ritus in sese, dixit eos nil aliud esse quam umbram. If all rites, then our holidays among the rest, serve only to adumbrate and shadow forth something, and by consequence are unprofitable and idle, when the substance itself is clearly set before ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... oritur multo gratissima: namque Plotius et Varius Sinuessae, Virgiliusque, Occurrunt; animae, quales neque candidiores Terra tulit, neque queis me sit devinctior alter. O qui complexus, et gaudia quanta fuerunt! Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... nature-mystic, then, to be wholehearted in defence of his master principle. Homo sum, et humani a me nil alienum puto—so said Terence. The nature-mystic adopts and expands his dictum. He substitutes mundani for humani, and includes in his mundus, as did the Latins, and as did the Greeks in their cosmos, not only the things of earth ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... are lacking in power; hence they are not able to control fermentation if food be ingested to the amount usually taken in health. The power to oppose fermentation by the digestive juices ranges all the way from nil to the resistance usual to a man of ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... fit—Imagination. It is the great defect, I think, of some of our best modern writers. They are marvellously FIT and terribly little NASCITUR. It is why I can never concede the highest palm in her craft to G. Eliot. Her writing is glorious—Imagination limited—Dramatism—nil! ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... heart will doubtless prompt you to tell me that no clergyman could be safe in his parish if he were to allow the opinion of chance parishioners to prevail against him; and you would probably lay down for my guidance that grand old doctrine "Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa." Presuming that you may do so, I will acknowledge such guidance to be good. If my mind were clear in this matter, I would not budge an inch for any farmer,—no, nor for any bishop, further than he might by law compel me! But my ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... fortune acquired by insignificant people, but there is no example of a person so destitute of all talent (excepting that of low intrigue), as was Cardinal Dubois, being thus fortunate. His intellect was of the most ordinary kind; his knowledge the most common-place; his capacity nil; his exterior that of a ferret, of a pedant; his conversation disagreeable, broken, always uncertain; his falsehood written upon his forehead; his habits too measureless to be hidden; his fits of impetuosity ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... purpose he left me a permit, vilely scrawled in Dutch. I mentally reserved to myself the decision as to keeping the rendezvous. We sat down to breakfast together, although, as he could speak no English and I could speak no Dutch, the conversation was nil. He was pleased with the cigarette I offered him, and observed me with some curiosity, probably never having seen anything approaching an English lady previously. Before he left, I complained, through an interpreter, of the insobriety ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... be observed that the "Gopis" here personify the five senses. Lassen says, "Manifestum est puellis istis nil aliud significar quam ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... capture of Dongola and in the subsequent pursuit were: British, nil. Native ranks: killed, 1; ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... said, handing the candle to the stranger, "and turn sharp to the right, and then to the left, and you will come to an iron door, which rises and falls like a portcullis. The handle is of no use, but on the ceiling you will see the motto, 'Nil desperandum,' which you must take as counsel offered to yourself. Press the space in the centre of the D, and the door ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas

... scalp is more commonly over the whole of that region and is relatively free from inflammatory symptoms; the scales are of a greasy character and the itching is usually slight or nil. On the other hand, in eczema of this region the parts are rarely invaded in their entirety; there may be at times the characteristic serous or gummy oozing; inflammatory symptoms are usually well-marked, the scales are dry and the itching is, as a rule, a prominent symptom. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... at these suicides, too, how common they are, you can't fancy! People spend their last halfpenny and kill themselves, boys and girls and old people. Only this morning we heard about a gentleman who had just come to town. Nil Pavlitch, I say, what was the name of that ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... an appreciation of the grim humor which had called upon him so early in his week to fulfill his oath, and a grinding resentment at the Fate which had thrust him into a position where he should show so impotent before those eyes. As far as personal fear went, it was nil. He was as oblivious to possible pain, possible death, as though he were now merely recalling a dream. Such contingencies had been decided the moment he swallowed the scarlet syrup. Fear had been annihilated in him because the most he had to lose was this next six days. He was too good a gambler ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... dispatches and wrangle about data and the relative accuracy of their observations. Herriott will lecture for hours on celestial mechanics and propound some fool theory about a hidden body, which doesn't exist, and its possible influence, which would be nil, on the inclination of the earth's axis. After wasting four hours without a single constructive idea being put forward, they will gravely conclude that the sun rose fifty-three seconds earlier at the fortieth north parallel than it did yesterday and correspondingly ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... appear to do so. Congress appointed a Tariff Commission of which the Chairman was secretary of the wool manufacturers' association, and after a report the tariff act of 1883 was passed. The net results were almost nil. Some rates were lowered, while others were raised with a definite protectionist purpose. The average rates for the next seven years, 1884-1890, were 45 on dutiable (an increase of nearly 2 per cent) and 30 on free and dutiable (unchanged as compared with ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... sent him by Shu Kofa, while Ama Wang, on his side, sought to gain over Shu Kofa by making him the most lavish promises of reward. But that minister proved as true to his sovereign as Wou Sankwei did to the Manchu. The result of the long correspondence between them was nil, but it showed the leaders of the Manchus in very favorable colors, as wishing to avert the horrors of war, and to simplify the surrender of provinces which could not be held against them. When Ama Wang discovered that there was no hope of gaining over Shu Kofa, and thus paving ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... mining company, to the engineer. But nothing came of it; the engineer explained that he was obliged to start work from the south because that was nearest the sea, and saved the need of an aerial railway, reduced the transport almost to nil. No, the work must begin that way; no more to ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... a walk" - as one would take a pill or a draught - seems likely soon to become the only form of outdoor existence possible for too many inhabitants of the British Isles. But a walk without an object, unless in the most lovely and novel of scenery, is a poor exercise; and as a recreation, utterly nil. I never knew two young lads go out for a "constitutional," who did not, if they were commonplace youths, gossip the whole way about things better left unspoken; or, if they were clever ones, fall on arguing and brainsbeating on politics or metaphysics from the ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... more to the proud Hercules, who, having come to Cadiz from the east, and seen the wide Atlantic sea, he thought this was the end of the world and that there was no more land. So he set up his columns with this inscription "Ultra Gades nil" or "Beyond Cadiz there is nothing." But as human knowledge is ignorance in the sight of God, and the force of the world but weakness in his presence, it was very easy, with the power of the Almighty and of your grandparents, to break and scatter the mists and difficulties ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... would, after all, have been nil, had not the following few remarks been made one day ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... a trifle," Freydis replied, "although it is the only magic I can perform in an enclosure of buttered willow wands. Now, then, you see for yourself that I am not going to take orders from you. So the figure you have made, will you or nil you, must limp about in all men's sight, for not more than a few centuries, to be sure, but long enough to prove that I am not going to ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... suppose thou hast a living breath, Howbeit we know not from whose lungs 'tis blown, Thou man of fog! Parent of many children—child of none! Nobody's son! Nobody's daughter—but a parent still! Still but an ostrich parent of a batch Of orphan eggs,—left to the world to hatch Superlative Nil! A vox and nothing more,—yet not Vauxhall; A head in papers, yet without a curl! Not the Invisible Girl! No hand—but a handwriting on a wall— A popular nonentity, Still call'd the same,—without ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... scholastic philosophy; the alternative of surrender and suicide is exemplified by Avicenna and his followers when they declared that that which is true in theology may be false in philosophy, and vice versa; and by Sanchez in his famous defence of the thesis "Quod nil scitur." ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... from what I had seen, that the amount of spirits consumed would produce some comical effects. I was quite disappointed. I wondered also whether the procession down the jetty was to be carried out in the clothes in which they arrived, which were nil. It would have been a quaint experience to have seen a whole naked tribe arriving at quite a respectable English settlement. But, no. Their coverings had been carefully carried by the swimmers on the top of their ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... Cui non immerito fertur data forma triformis, Nam pars prima leo, pars ultima cauda draconis, Et mediae partes nil sunt ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... cure, the duration of the treatment varying with the number of strictures, the tightness, and the extent of the fibrous tissue-changes in the esophageal wall. Mortality from the endoscopic procedure is almost nil, and if gastrostomy is done early in the tightly stenosed cases, ultimate cure may be confidently expected with careful ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... attribute to him that which he gave no sign of harbouring? Why must she be mysteriously conscious of his inner being, rather than take him ingenuously for what he seemed? She had instruction and wit, but she was only a girl; her experience was as good as nil. Mallard repeated that to himself as he looked at Mrs. Baske. To a great extent Cecily did, in fact, inhabit an ideal world. She was ready to accept the noble as the natural. Untroubled herself, she could contemplate ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... kinsmen do not heed his will; The friends who loved him once, now stand afar; His sorrows multiply; his strength is nil; Behold! his character's bright-shining star Fades like the waning moon; and deeds of ill That others do, are ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... would not satisfy everybody. Neatness and cleanliness do not always prevail among poor folks in France, any more than in England. But, alike, young and old are neatly and wholesomely dressed. Beggars are almost nil, and the prevailing aspect is one of unforgettable well-being, independence, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... utterly destroy it. The clause stipulates that there must be a majority of all the legal voters; and as there are hundreds who cannot be induced to go to the polls, you can easily see, if this amendment carries, it will make the Act as good as nil. Maltby could not have been elected had it not been for the help he received from the association, and he will do anything to retain their good will; for it is only by their favor he ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... vulnere est. Fortunam[281] citius reperias quam retineas. Cravissima est probi hominis iracundia. Homo totiens moritur, quotiens amittit suos. Homo vitae commodatus, non donatus est. Humanitatis optima est certatio. Iucundum nil est, nisi quod reficit varietas. Malum est consilium quod mutari non potest. Minus saepe pecces, si scias quod nescias. Perpetuo vincit qui utitur clementia. Qui ius iurandum servat, quovis pervenit. Ubi peccat aetas maior, male ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... Lansing, "it might be best to shift the centre of gossip. De mortuis nil nisi bonum—which is simple enough for ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... to the bank and get some more." He hadn't even fooled himself this time. His chances at the bank were nil. Less than nil. His very presence there could tip the balance of their decision. Loans could be called; the doors ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman

... damage from the artistic point of view is almost nil; it simply calls for some work by ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... Nocturnaque quiete docet; nulloque labore Hic tantum parta est pretiosa scientia, nullo Excutitur studio verum. Mortalia corda Tunc Deus iste docet, cum sunt minus apta doceri, Cum nullum obsequium praestant, meritisque fatentur Nil sese debere suis; tunc recta scientes Cum nil scire valent. Non illo tempore sensus Humanos forsan dignatur numen inire, Cum propriis possunt per se discursibus uti, Ne forte ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... opus exegi: quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignes, Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas. Cum volet illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi,— Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis Astra ferar: nomenque erit indelebile nostrum. Quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, Ore legar populi; perque omnia saecula fama Si quid habent ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the Sudan Type: military; civilian government suspended and martial law imposed after 30 June 1989 coup Capital: Khartoum Administrative divisions: 9 states (wilayat, singular - wilayat or wilayah*); A'ali an Nil, Al Wusta*, Al Istiwa'iyah*, Al Khartum, Ash Shamaliyah*, Ash Sharqiyah*, Bahr al Ghazal, Darfur, Kurdufan Independence: 1 January 1956 (from Egypt and UK; formerly Anglo-Egyptian Sudan) Constitution: 12 April 1973, suspended following ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... good cousin Craiglethorpe," pursued Lady Geraldine, "and nil the little note-book, which will soon turn to a ponderous quarto. I shall have a copy, bound in morocco, no doubt, from the author, if I behave myself prettily; and I will earn it, by supplying valuable information. You shall see, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... openings for such work almost nil. To obtain a market would demand business training which has not been part of their tradition, which while it tempts, both intimidates and revolts them. Certain desperate ones would branch out in spite of all—but they do not know how, dare ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... lumpy ridges, hogbacks, and barren buttes arose on all sides like waves in a sea. So numerous were they that unless riders passed directly by the sheepmen's hiding place the chances of discovery were almost nil. At one spot only was it visible, and that was a place where the edges of two hogbacks failed to ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... a party of a hundred and fifty men should produce about two hundred cantars (20,000 lbs.) of ivory, valued at Khartoum at 4,000 pounds. The men being paid in slaves, the wages should be nil, and there should be a surplus of four or five hundred slaves for the trader's own profit—worth on an average five to ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... alijs nationibus mittatur, vel donetur eisdem. In hyeme, nisi diuites sint, lac iumentinum non habent. Millium cum aqua decoquunt, quod tam tenue faciunt, qud non comedere sed bibere possunt. Et vnus quisque ex eis bibit cyphum vnum vel duos in mane, et nil plus in die manducant. In sero vnicuique parum de carnibus datur, et brodium de carnibus bibunt. In state autem, quia tunc habent satis de lacte iumentino carnes rar manducant, nisi fort donentur eis, aut venatione aliquam bestiam ceperint, siue auem. [Sidenote: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... is marked in proportion to the severity and duration of the febrile phenomena, being slight or (nil) in febricula, and excessive ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... He advised the Romans, Consiliis armisque sua moderamina summa Arbitrio tractare suo: nil juris in hac re Pontifici summo, modicum concedere regi Suadebat populo. Sic laesa stultus utraque Majestate, reum geminae se fecerat aulae. Nor is the poetry of Gunther different from the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... by singleness and simplicity. He can do nothing with "double" men, who do things only "by half," giving one part to Him and the other part to Mammon. It is like offering the stock of a gun to one man and the barrel to another; and the effect is nil. No, the entire gun! ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... cannot ascribe that pre-eminency to it upon any other account than that of its thinking, the only supposed difference. But allow it to be by some other way which is above our conception, it must still be creation; and these men must give up their great maxim, EX NIHILO NIL FIT. If it be said, that all the rest of matter is equally eternal as that thinking atom, it will be to say anything at pleasure, though ever so absurd. For to suppose all matter eternal, and yet one small ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... as they passed on, and I wondered what would be the first steps taken. But I did not forget my promise. My duties were about nil, and as soon as I had seen the men staring over the bulwarks, and noted that the sham repairs to the rigging were steadily going on, I ran down the companion-way, and breathlessly told ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... a career, it by no means the more necessarily follows that, once engaged, he would not have persevered in it consistently and devotedly to the last; nor that, even if reduced to say, with Cicero, "nil boni praeter causam," he could not have so far abstracted the principle of the cause from its unworthy supporters as, at the same time, to uphold the one and despise the others. Looking back, indeed, from the advanced point where we are now arrived through the whole of his past career, we ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... mostly of the plank type, the coverings scant, the comfort nil. Be it remembered that this is the treatment meted out to those who are supposed to be Casual poor, in temporary difficulty, walking from place to ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... would have felt small apprehension. Learned in the perils of the woods, heavy-booted, sturdy-legged, a native, like Joe Lorey, for example, would, she felt quite certain, have been able to effect her rescue. But the chances, she decided, were practically nil, with this untrained "foreigner" as her companion. She had been told that "bluegrass folks" were lacking in strong nerves and prone to panic if real danger threatened. Barefooted as she was, there was little she, herself, could do. She knew that she would quickly ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... with the air of a man who had money in both pockets, "I shall soon be in better chambers than these." The harmless bravado drew a reply from Johnson which touched the chord of proper pride. "Nay, sir," said he, "never mind that. Nil te quaesiveris extra," implying that his reputation rendered him independent of outward show. Happy would it have been for poor Goldsmith could he have kept this consolatory compliment perpetually in mind, and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... the bizarre about every thing I saw—but then the world is made up of all kinds of persons, with all modes of thought, and all sorts of conventional customs. I had travelled, too, so much, as to be quite an adept at the nil admirari; so I took my seat very coolly at the right hand of my host, and, having an excellent appetite, did justice to the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... DE MAYIS Notarius Veneciarum hoc exemplum exemplari anno ab incarnatione domini nostri Jesu Christi Millesimo trecentesimo quinquagesimo quinto mensis Julii die septimo, intrante indictione octava, Rivoalti, nil addens nec minuens quod sentenciam mutet vel sensum ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... his lack-lustre eyes rested but a moment on the schooner in the bay. He had not been long enough away from the world to be other than faintly interested in the arrival, and his recollections of the night before were nil. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... matter cannot possibly be established by the police. The incident is regrettable, but the emergency was dealt with—in time. It represents a serious deficit, unfortunately, and your own usefulness, for the moment, becomes nil; but we shall have to look after you, I suppose, and hope for better ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... Birchites at having beaten their opponents was unbounded, and when, a short time later, the latter retired with a score against them of one to nil. Jack Vance was seized by a band of applauding comrades, who, with his head about a couple of feet lower than his heels, carried him in triumph across the playground, and staggered half-way up the steep garden path, when Acton happening to tread ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... the gas is given till unconsciousness is reached, the unpleasant taste of the ether being thus avoided and the induction period shortened. The mortality from nitrous oxide is small, and from the gas and oxygen in expert hands nil. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... concentrated essence of feminine witchery. Intuition strong, logic weak, and the two qualities so balanced as to produce an indefinable charm; will-power large, but docility equal, if a man is clever enough to know how to manage her; knowledge of facts absolutely nil, but she is exquisitely intelligent in spite of it. She has a way of evading, escaping, eluding, and then gives you an intoxicating hint of sudden and complete surrender. She is divinely innocent, but roguishness saves her from insipidity. ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... victory, Parthian dart, and Homeric laughter; quos deus vult and nil de mortuis; Sturm und Drang; masterly inactivity, unctuous rectitude, mute inglorious Miltons, and damned good-natured friends; the sword of Damocles, the thin edge of the wedge, the long arm of coincidence, and the soul of goodness in things ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... land in which a good amount of the previous year's rainfall had been conserved. The rainfall during the growing period was 322 points, distributed as follows:—May, 210; June, 60; July, 12; August, nil; September, 37; October, 3 points. Under ordinary conditions such a rainfall would mean utter failure of a wheat crop, yet in this case a yield of 14 bushels per acre ...
— Wheat Growing in Australia • Australia Department of External Affairs

... telling of the history of a too brief sojourn in the paradise of the blacks the old man took but little part, for his English was NIL. The members of the party knew it by rote, and some of them could make themselves understood. Pieced together—for the story came out bit by bit—it ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... here is delightful—rather cold now, but will be perfect in hot weather—so airy and cheerful. I think I shall stay on here all the time the expense is nil, and it is very comfortable. I have a friend in a farm in a neighbouring village, and am much amused at seeing country life. It cannot be rougher, as regards material comforts, in New Zealand or Central Africa, but there is no barbarism or lack of refinement in the manners of ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... Travels through Lower Hungary or on Bright's Spanish authority, whatever that may have been. His knowledge of the strange history of the Gypsies was very elementary, of their manners almost more so, and of their folk-lore practically nil. And yet I would put George Borrow above every other writer on the Gypsies. In Lavengro and, to a less degree, in its sequel, The Romany Rye, he communicates a subtle insight into Gypsydom that is totally wanting in the works—mainly philological—of Pott, Liebich, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... rare and costly to obtain that it may be counted as about three thousand times the price of gold in the market. But of the action of PURE radium, the knowledge of ordinary scientific students is nil. They know that an infinitely small spark of radium salt will emit heat and light continuously without any combustion or change in its own structure. And I would here quote a passage from a lecture delivered by one of our prominent scientists in 1904. "Details concerning the behaviour of several ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... the 10th of January, and thus far the opportunities for skating that had come to the young people of that section of country where Scranton was located, had been almost nil; which would account for the enthusiasm of the lads when Thad announced how rapidly the thermometer was giving promise of ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson

... of Sicily, And of D'Israeli ... forti nil difficile, Is likewise mine. Pygmalion was a fool Who should ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... reed[FN231] of rede to every land, * Whose driving causeth all the world to thrive; Nil is the Nile of Misraim by thy boons * Who makest misery smile with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... custodes carucarum et carectarum nil quia per firmarium. Item pro eorum duspot (xij'd) nil, causa predicta. Item pro eorum forlot ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various

... themselves were slightly fuddled. We nudged each other and pricked up our ears, for we had already canvassed the question of security, surrounded as we were by ruffians who looked quite ready to dispose of babes in the wood. They discussed our 'portable property' which was nil; one decided, while the other believed, that we must have money in our pockets. The first remarked that, whether or no, we were unarmed; the other wasn't so sure about that - it wasn't likely we'd come there to be skinned for the asking. Then ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... Grand-I-Vert, named Francois Tonsard, commends himself to the attention of philosophers by the manner in which he had solved the problem of an idle life and a busy life, so as to make the idleness profitable, and occupation nil. ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... the division in a new spot would almost certainly be detected by the aeroplanes in the morning. The possession of a large and efficient aeroplane corps reduces the surprises of war very nearly to nil, and proportionately increases the importance of preparedness and ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... education had been somewhat hurried, but there was no doubt as to his mechanical ability. He took to a car like a young duck to water. He talked motor, thought motor, and would have accepted—I won't say with enthusiasm, for Alfred's motto was 'Nil admirari'—but without hesitation, an offer to drive in the greatest race in the world. He could drive really well, too; as for belief in himself, after six months' apprenticeship in a garage he was prepared to vivisect a six-cylinder engine ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... the chances of Bristol's seeking me there; and, eager as I was to give them substance, found them but airy—ultimately was forced to admit them to be nil. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... sole jugales (u) Vivimus; eloquium deficit omne focis. Hoc demum accipias, multa fuligine fusum Ore sonaturo; non cute, corde valet. Pollenti stabilita manu, [(w) Deus almus, eandem Omnigenis animam, nil prohibente dedit] Ipsa coloris egens virtus, prudentia; honesto Nulus inest animo, nullus in arte color. Cur timeas, quamvis, dubitesve, nigerrima celsam Caesaris occidui, candere (x) Musa domum? (y) Vade salutatum, nec sit tibi causa pudoris, (z) Candida quod nigra corpora pelle geris! ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... lost sight of. A report of his death was put into circulation, and a loyal journal published in Kilkenny—the native town of the young rebel, who in this instance played his first trick on the government—referred to his supposed decease in terms which showed that the rule de mortuis nil nisi bonum found acceptance with the editor. The following are the words of the obituary notice which appeared in the Kilkenny Moderator on or about the ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... defect, I think, of some of our best modern writers. They are marvellously FIT and terribly little NASCITUR. It is why I can never concede the highest palm in her craft to G. Eliot. Her writing is glorious—Imagination limited—Dramatism—nil! ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... conditions were no longer the same. In those old Pretoria days I had known the Transvaal by heart; the number, value and disposition of the British forces; the characters of the Boer leaders; the nature of the country. But my knowledge of the Dardanelles was nil; of the Turk nil; of the strength of our own forces next to nil. Although I have met K. almost every day during the past six months, and although he has twice hinted I might be sent to Salonika; never once, to the best of my recollection, had he ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... human efficiency, not the one that retards it. An education for honors, ease, medals, degrees, titles, position—immunity—may tend to exalt the individual ego, but it weakens the race, and its gain on the whole is nil. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... only in footer but in everything. The place seems absolutely rotten. It's bad enough losing all our matches, or nearly all. Did you hear that Ripton took thirty-seven points off us last term? And we only just managed to beat Greenburgh by a try to nil." ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... added, "should now become your motto: "Inveni portum. Spes et fortuna valete; Nil mihi vobiscum est: ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... higher plains of Mongolia and Tibet, they present the same general characteristics of land surface, climate, flora and fauna, and the same nomadic populations of pastoral or hunting tribes. In them the movement of peoples reaches its culminating point, permanent settlement its nil point. Here the hunting savage makes the widest sweep in pursuit of buffalo or antelope, and pauses least to till a field; here the pastoral nomad follows his systematic wandering in search of pasturage ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... is almost nil, and so I am very well off. I begin to see the charms of capitalism. To pull down the stove in the servants' quarters and build up there a kitchen stove with all its accessories, then to pull down the kitchen stove in ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... that scoundrel Zametov does? Why did he insult me, I ask you? Look at these suicides, too, how common they are, you can't fancy! People spend their last halfpenny and kill themselves, boys and girls and old people. Only this morning we heard about a gentleman who had just come to town. Nil Pavlitch, I say, what was the name of that ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... mind as for one second he clung to the rail. Vain regrets were followed like lightning by a momentary resignation to fate. In the minds of most men hope would undoubtedly have perished right there. But Captain Bourne was made of better stuff. "Nil desperandum" is the Englishman's soul; and soon he found himself crawling carefully hand over hand towards the after end of the vessel. Suddenly in the darkness he bumped into something soft and warm lying out on the quarter. It proved to be his passenger, resigned and mute, with no ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... this act be foregone how shall we proceed? Thou knowest well all evidence that can be obtained anent every one implicated with that 'bosom serpent, Mary,' should be gotten wil or nil." ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... coercent vincula, nec proprios arcet Medicina bacillos? heu pietas, heu prisca fides! neglectus alumnus Tutorem in vacua tristis desiderat aula: interea Tutor sub judice municipali litigat, et jurat nil se fecisse nefandum, obtestans divos: nec creditur obtestanti. quid referam versos equites iterumque reversos subgraduatorum pellentes agmina ferro, inque pavimentis equitantes undique turmas? proh pudor! o mores, o ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... and he may not have been present at all; at least Col. Stewart, who was there and was acquainted with every one of note in the army, asserts positively that there was no such man along; nor has any other American account ever mentioned him. His military knowledge was nil, as may be gathered from his remark, made when the defeats of Braddock and Grant were still recent, that British regulars with the bayonet were best fitted ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... obstetrician with her horns, certainly a skilled surgeon may hazard entering the womb with his knife. If large portions of an organ,—the lung, a kidney, parts of the liver, or the brain itself,—may be lost by accident, and the patient still live, the physician is taught the lesson of nil desperandum, and that if possible to arrest disease of these organs before their total destruction, the prognosis and treatment thereby acquire ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... schoolmen," said he. "As the schoolmen labored most intellectually and scientifically—practical result, nil, so these labor harder than other men—result, nil. This is literally 'beating the air.' The ancients imagined tortures particularly trying to nature, that of Sisyphus to wit; everlasting labor embittered by everlasting ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... see now that the national love of a lord is less subservience than a form of self-love; putting a gold-lace hat on one's image, as it were, to bow to it. I see, too, the admirable wisdom of our system:—could there be a finer balance of power than in a community where men intellectually nil, have lawful vantage and a gold-lace hat on? How soothing it is to intellect—that noble rebel, as the Pilgrim has it—to stand, and bow, and know itself superior! This exquisite compensation maintains the balance: whereas that period anticipated by the Pilgrim, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... LETTER ALPHA}: whereas the Judaical rites were abolished, whereupon Zanchius noteth,(193) that the Apostle doth not so much speak of things by-past, as of the very nature of all rites, Definiens ergo ipsos ritus in sese, dixit eos nil aliud esse quam umbram. If all rites, then our holidays among the rest, serve only to adumbrate and shadow forth something, and by consequence are unprofitable and idle, when the substance itself is clearly set before us. 4. That reason, Col. ii. 20, doth no less irresistibly infringe ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... consolation to reflect that the New York critics did everything in their power to push along a project that would have been of great value to this metropolis. It was foredoomed to failure, because it depended upon the iniquity known as "quick returns." De mortuis nil nisi bonum. (I think ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... the current theory of political economy, looked at the position of the Russian peasant simply from the point of view of capital, wages, and rent. He would indeed have been obliged to admit that in the eastern—much the larger—part of Russia rent was as yet nil, that for nine-tenths of the eighty millions of the Russian peasants wages took the form simply of food provided for themselves, and that capital does not so far exist except in the form of the most primitive tools. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... not in farming nor on selections—it was far away with the last new rush in Western Australia or Queensland, or perhaps buried in the worked-out ground of Tambaroora, Married Man's Creek, or Araluen; and by-and-by the memory of some half-forgotten reef or lead or Last Chance, Nil Desperandum, or Brown Snake claim would take their thoughts far back and away from the dusty patch of sods and struggling sprouts called the crop, or the few discouraged, half-dead slips which comprised the orchard. Then their conversation would be pointed with many ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... your connection, and my connection, with the matter cannot possibly be established by the police. The incident is regrettable, but the emergency was dealt with—in time. It represents a serious deficit, unfortunately, and your own usefulness, for the moment, becomes nil; but we shall have to look after you, I suppose, and hope for ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... state of affairs, disturbing enough in itself, was rendered still more disquieting by the fact that, except for the Boy Scouts, England's military strength at this time was practically nil. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... witchery. Intuition strong, logic weak, and the two qualities so balanced as to produce an indefinable charm; will-power large, but docility equal, if a man is clever enough to know how to manage her; knowledge of facts absolutely nil, but she is exquisitely intelligent in spite of it. She has a way of evading, escaping, eluding, and then gives you an intoxicating hint of sudden and complete surrender. She is divinely innocent, but roguishness saves her from insipidity. Her looks? ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... life, when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to that sort of tranquillity. But a young man should be ambitious to shine, and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and, like Caesar, 'Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.' You seem to want that 'vivida vis animi,' which spurs and excites most young men to please, to shine, to excel. Without the desire and the pains necessary to be considerable, depend upon it, you never can be so; as, without the desire ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... there was much of the bizarre about every thing I saw—but then the world is made up of all kinds of persons, with all modes of thought, and all sorts of conventional customs. I had travelled, too, so much, as to be quite an adept at the nil admirari; so I took my seat very coolly at the right hand of my host, and, having an excellent appetite, did justice to the good cheer ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... daughter of Nil the Lame? I thought your face was familiar! Why, I had my ears pulled by him many ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... Gifted with rare perspicacity, moderation, and keen judgment, he maintained his attitude of impartial observation. By temperament and habit he was an aristrocrat—placet Hispana nobilitas—he confessed, admitting also that de populo nil mihi curae, yet he sided with the comuneros against the Crown. While deploring their excesses, he sympathised with the cause they defended, and he lashed the insolence and the rapacity of the Flemish favourites with all the resources of invective and sarcasm of which ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... constitution, he might set up some plea in explanation of his ethical vagaries. He might urge, for instance, that the high culture of which his books are all so redolent has utterly failed to imbue him with the nil admirari sentiment, which Horace commends as the sole specific for making men happy and keeping them so. For, as a matter of fact, and with special reference to the work we have undertaken to discuss, Mr. Froude, though ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... seemed a very strange bird, such as had never before built his nest at Oxford. I was very young, but I looked even younger than I was, and my knowledge of the manners of society, particularly of English society, was really nil. Few people knew what I was working at. Some had a kind of vague impression that I had discovered a very old religion, older than the Jewish and the Christian, which contained the key to many of the mysteries that had ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... Schonberg ad Bubindam occisi A.D. 1690. Decanus et Capitulum maximopere etiam atque etiam petierunt, ut haeredes Ducis, monumentum in memoriam parentis erigendum curarent. Sed postquam per epistolas, per amicos, diu ac saepe orando nil profecere, hunc demum lapidem statuerunt; saltem ut scias hospes ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various

... Hom. in Ez., 9, 1: "Sicuti qui a fide recedit, apostata est, ita qui ad perversum opus, quod deseruerit, redit, ab omnipotente Deo apostata deputatur, etiamsi fidem tenere videatur; unum enim sine altero nil prodesse valet, quia nec fides sine operibus nec ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... it at the bottom of a hole to put one's finger in, looking like a mere spot in the middle of a great white panel; to accumulate so much patient and delicate workmanship on almost imperceptible accessories, and all to produce an effect which is absolutely nil, an effect of the most complete bareness ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... "Safeties" still improve, And their riders develope more skill; And it's oh! for the records of yesterday! To-morrow they'll all be nil! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various

... circumuoluuntur, atque in rota mouentur; ac frequenter sic submerguntur. Scille enim atque Caribdi merito asi[mi]latur, uelim periculositate perfecta tristique [-teque MSS.] nautis malum ibi subministratur. Ad hoc eurippum ipsi peruenientes, repentino ceperunt in eum delabi cursu; quumque nil preter mortem [Quumque uelut propter mortem R2] sperantes, et quia iam quasi tetris essent abyssi faucibus deuorandi, tunc sanctus Columba prefati pulueris de tumba beati Kerani assumpti aliquid assumens, mare in ipsum immisit. Res mira ac nimium ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous

... offer them in person. "It will be so delightful to have a chatelaine at Heronsmere at last," she had gushed. Presumably, recognising that her daughter's chance of acquiring the coveted position was now reduced, to nil, she had decided—with the promptness of a good general—to accept the fact and adapt her tactics to the altered situation. With mathematical foresight she argued that when Coventry was married Heronsmere would undoubtedly become the centre of a considerable amount of entertaining, and from every ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... Cladibus, si res caderent eadem Qua mora surgunt; sed humant repentes Alta ruinae. Nil diu felix stetit; inquieta Urbium currunt hominumq; Fata: Totq; vix horis jacuere, surgunt Regna quot annis. Casibus longum dedit ille tempus, Qui diem regnis satis eruendis Dixit: elato populos habent mo- menta sub ictu. Parce crudeles, moriture Publi, Impio divos onerare questu, ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski

... all, Ivan soon discovered that, in winter, regimental duties were practically nil. Half the privates of his regiment had been dismissed to their native villages. The rest, though nominally in barracks, and paraded once or twice a month (very badly), were wont to eke out their half-pay (supposed to be whole, but actually shared with ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... Roger. "She says she's going to plant a dogwood tree there in the spring. We intend to put up a little stone for him, and I'm trying to think of an inscription, I thought of De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum, but that's ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... be the epigrammatic expression of some sentiment in special favour with the bearer of it. As a matter of course, allusive mottoes, like allusive arms, afford curious examples of medival puns. Igive a few characteristic examples:—"Vero nil verius" (nothing truer than truth, or, no greater verity than in Vere)—VERE; "Fare, fac" (Speak—act; that is, a word and blow)—FAIRFAX; "Cave" (beware)—CAVE; "Cavendo tutus" (safe, by caution, or by Cavendish)—CAVENDISH; ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell

... after repeated importunities. You will, I trust, pardon this egotism. As you had touched on the subject I thought some explanation necessary. Defence I shall not attempt, 'Hic murus aheneus esto, nil conscire sibi'—and 'so on' (as Lord Baltimore said on his trial for a rape)—I have been so long at Trinity as to forget the conclusion of the line; but though I cannot finish my quotation, I will my letter, and entreat you to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... had generously charged me "nil" for dues. I had letters for France from the highest authorities to pass the Rob Roy as an article entered for the Paris "Exhibition;" and when the douane and police functionaries came in proper state at Boulogne to appraise her value, and to fill up ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... to the engineer. But nothing came of it; the engineer explained that he was obliged to start work from the south because that was nearest the sea, and saved the need of an aerial railway, reduced the transport almost to nil. No, the work must begin that way; no more ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... how vain The task to name the splendid hues that in that vest obtain! Go, view the rainbow and recount the glories of the sight And number all the radiances that in its glow unite, And then, when they are counted, with pride be it confessed They're nil beside the splendor of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... colony—more exactly, 78 out of 250—had not reappeared, but the conditions for its re-appearance were highly favourable. The earth was all water, the vegetation all slime, the air half steam, and the difference between wet and dry bulbs almost nil. Thoroughly dispirited for the first time, I was meditating how to escape, when H. M. Steamship "Torch" steamed into Clarence Cove, and Commander Smith hospitably offered me a passage down south. To hear was to accept. Two days afterwards ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... that makes me want it. I want it for the sheer beauty; I want it for the tremendous panorama the sight of it unfolds in my mind. I imagine what happened from the hour the stone was mined to the hour it came into my possession. To me—to all genuine collectors—the intrinsic value is nil. Can't you see? It is for me what Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin would be to you if you had fallen on it for the first ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... too, good times, when the troopers would trek across the Delta to the Barrage du Nil, a pleasant spot where the Nile divides into its delta streams and canals. Here they would bivouac for the night beneath shady plantations of lebbak trees in beautiful gardens. In the daytime they swam their horses in the river. A jolly form of amusement there was the blanket-tossing of intruding ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... and restoring order in the launch we found that the casualties were nil, and proceeded to compare notes. Brown, it appeared, had joined the Naval Division, been to Antwerp, Gallipoli and France, and then been transferred for gunnery duties to the rivers of Mesopotamia, and was now Lieut. R.N.V.R. in the Dalhousie ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell

... "The difference between the two sorts of madmen is, that he who is so will he nil he, will be one always, while he who is so of his own accord can leave off being one whenever ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... long days' journeys; but their value, as animals of transport, is almost nothing. Again, on the other hand, if we load them with an excessive weight, they will soon come to a standstill; and in this case, as in the first, their value as beasts of transport is almost nil. What then, is that moderate load by which we shall obtain the largest amount of "useful effect"? this is a problem which many of the ablest engineers and philosophers have endeavoured to solve; and the formulae—partly based on theory and partly on experiment—which ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... "De Mortuir Nil Nisi Bene!" exclaimed Thugut. "We are under many obligations to these excellent traitors, for they have enabled us to render the Hungarians submissive, just as the traitors who conspired here at Vienna two years ago enabled us to do the same thing ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... quad magister dicit. Vos voluntas laetus audire ut Fellsgarthus liquebat Rendleshamus ad pedemballum super Saturdaium durare," (Saturday last). "Nos obtenebanus unum goalum ad nil quod non erat malum. Ego debeo nunc concludere. Ego sum vestrum fideliter Perceius Granum agrum." (Percy flattered himself he knew the correct Latin for ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... for permission to see this set of papers, and the signing and counter-signing I had to go through before I could see that set of papers, and the extent of circumlocution and idiocy I had to encounter in a general way before I could complete my investigation. The result was nil; and after working like a galley-slave I found myself no better off than before I began my search. Your extracts from Matthew's letters put me on a new track. I concluded therefrom that there had been a marriage, and that the said marriage had been ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... drink their nil Upon the slopes of Tmolus? Or trowsered robbers spoil at will The bounties ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... creature; an acquisition supposed to develop in no less impossible successors! Though the snow-ball, slowly rolling, at last becomes an enormous sphere, it is still necessary that the starting-point shall not have been NIL. The big ball implies the little ball, as small as you please. Now, in harking back to the origin of these acquired habits, if I interrogate the possibilities I obtain zero as the only answer. If the animal does not know its trade thoroughly, if it has to acquire something, all ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... every reason to be satisfied with her progress and to congratulate herself upon the judgment she had displayed in continuing to raise sheep for their fleece when the price of wool was nil, practically, and every discouraged grower in the state, including the astute Neifkins, was putting in "black-faces" that were better for mutton. Now a protective administration was advancing the price ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... sum tam callidus vsu. aeuo rarissima nostro simplicitas Viderit vtilitas ego cepta fideliter edam. Prosperum et foelix scelus, virtus vocatur Tibi res antiquas laudis et artis Inuidiam placare paras uirtute relicta. Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra Homo sum humanj a me nil alienum puto. The grace of God is woorth a fayre Black will take no other hue Vnum augurium optimum tueri patria. Exigua res est ipsa justitia Dat veniam coruis uexat censura columbas. Homo hominj deus ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... ducatos octo pro tribus tabulis ex nuce cornisate (?) ad continenda nomina librorum e per le cornise de tre banchi vechi ex nuce die supradicta; nil omnino restat habere ut ipse sua manu affirmat, computatis in his illis LX bononenis qui superius scribuntur. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... Rede and fraternity are lodging over that way. The whole Camp had better be changed at once, and entrusted to good experienced hands and honest men. Perhaps Sir Charles may turn into a Diogenes in vain—'nil desperandum.' There are now and then honest men to be ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello

... over Shu Kofa by making him the most lavish promises of reward. But that minister proved as true to his sovereign as Wou Sankwei did to the Manchu. The result of the long correspondence between them was nil, but it showed the leaders of the Manchus in very favorable colors, as wishing to avert the horrors of war, and to simplify the surrender of provinces which could not be held against them. When Ama Wang discovered that ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... he was the king's favorite, and always accompanied him when he went hunting. He was obedient to every word of the king's, but of a rather uncertain temper towards the rest of the world. However, de mortuis nil nisi bonum; there he lay dead in the passage. Sapt put his hand on the beast's head. There was a bullet-hole right through his forehead. I nodded, and in my turn pointed to the dog's right shoulder, which was shattered ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... the following day, for which purpose he left me a permit, vilely scrawled in Dutch. I mentally reserved to myself the decision as to keeping the rendezvous. We sat down to breakfast together, although, as he could speak no English and I could speak no Dutch, the conversation was nil. He was pleased with the cigarette I offered him, and observed me with some curiosity, probably never having seen anything approaching an English lady previously. Before he left, I complained, through an interpreter, of the insobriety of my ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... a noble and accomplished thing. Pliny would have loved it who said: "Ea est stomachi mei natura ut nil nisi merum atque totum velit," which signifies "such is the character of my taste that it will tolerate nothing but what is absolute and full." ... It is no use grumbling about the Latin. The nature of great disasters calls out for that ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... We waited till we were all in our bags, and then we had one. I was greatly disappointed; it was not half so good as I had thought. But I am glad I tried it, as I shall never do so again. The effect was nil; I felt nothing, either in my ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... est Grotius, majus quo doctior orbis Nil habuit; credo, nil habiturus erit: Gallia quem stupuit, stupuit quem Suecia, verus Qui Phoebus Delphis, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... fact of the matter is, Mr. Rattar, that, as you yourself said, the direct evidence is practically nil, and one is forced to go a good deal by one's judgment of the people ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... lack-lustre eyes rested but a moment on the schooner in the bay. He had not been long enough away from the world to be other than faintly interested in the arrival, and his recollections of the night before were nil. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... philosophy; the alternative of surrender and suicide is exemplified by Avicenna and his followers when they declared that that which is true in theology may be false in philosophy, and vice versa; and by Sanchez in his famous defence of the thesis "Quod nil scitur." ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... The French, the pope, and the Devil were all one to him; and when he embarked as senior chaplain he took a hatchet with which to break down the graven images of Louisbourg. In the end Whitefield warmed up enough to give the expedition its official motto: 'Nil desperandum Christo Duce.' The 'Never Despair' heartened the worldlings. The 'Christ our Commander' appealed to the 'Great Awakened.' And the whole saying committed him to nothing particular concerning the issue ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... him. He was at Titicaca when last heard of. So goodness only knows when he may get the letter, which "asks him to come home at once, but only gives to him such information about the Will as has already been given to every member of the testator's family." And that is nil. I dare say we shall be kept waiting for months before we get hold of the estate which is ours. It ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... her death:—for, among friends" (here he lowered his voice, and looked round the kitchen), "she was very whimsical, expensive, ill-tempered, and, I'm afraid, a little—upon the— flightly order—a little touched or so;—but mum for that—the lady is now dead; and it is my maxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum. The young squire was even then very handsome, and looked remarkably well in his weepers; but he had an awkward air and shambling gait, stooped mortally, and was so shy and silent that he would not look a stranger in the face, nor open his mouth before company. Whenever he spied a ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... Carolinian Convention repealed its ordinance nullifying the Tariff, and agreed to the collection of the duties now imposed. It followed this concession by another ordinance nullifying the Force Bill. The practical effect of this was nil, for there was no longer anything to enforce. It was none the less important. It meant that South Carolina declined to abandon the weapon of Nullification. Indeed, it might plausibly be urged that ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... about 280,000 babies under one year of age perish in the United States, according to estimates based on census figures. Outside of accidental deaths, which are but a small per cent., the mortality should be practically nil. It is natural for children to be well, and healthy children do not die. If an army of about 280,000 of our men and women were to perish in a spectacular manner each year it would cause such sorrow and indignation that a remedy would soon be found. But we are so ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... superiority of which all were compelled, sometimes reluctantly, to admit, no arrangement was made by which Morse and his co-proprietors benefited financially. The gain in fame was great, in money nil. It was, therefore, with mixed feelings that Morse wrote to his brother from ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... prisco natus ab Inacho, Nil interest, an pauper, et infima De gente sub divo moreris, Victima nil miserantis Orci."—Hor. Carm., lib. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various

... greatest point of danger—greater, even, than the danger of coming to the planetoid, or the danger of waiting nineteen days for the coming of the supply ship. If the ones who remained within suspected anything—anything at all!—then his chances of coming out of this alive were practically nil. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Egone ut, quod ad me adlatum esse alienum sciam, Celem? Minime istuc faciet noster Daemones. Semper cavere hoc sapientes aequissimum est, Ne conscii sint ipsi maleficiis suis. Ego, mihi quum lusi, nil moror ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... now advance many steps, without spying eyes to track and denounce him. Her own helplessness struck her with the terrible sense of utter disappointment. The possibility of being the slightest use to her husband had become almost NIL, and her only hope rested in being allowed to share his fate, whatever it might ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... you did not think at nil. I suppose you would have left me in ignorance forever, if I had ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... strange army, ragged and war-worn after the long siege, entered the town by the south gate. They had fought as crusaders, for to many of them Catholic Louisbourg was a stronghold of Satan. Whitfield, the great English evangelist, then in New England, had given them a motto—Nil desperandum Christo duce. There is a story that one of the English chaplains, old Parson Moody, a man of about seventy, had brought with him from Boston an axe and was soon found using it to hew down the ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... a constant which varies from 1.3 to 2 in various qualities of iron and steel. For ductile iron or mild steel it may be taken as 1.5. For a statical load, range of stress nil, [Delta] 0, k{max.} K, the statical breaking stress. For a bar so placed that it is alternately loaded and the load removed, [Delta] k{max.} and k{max.} 0.6 K. For a bar subjected to alternate tension and compression of equal amount, [Delta] 2 f{max.} and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... a perfect gas naturally becomes much greater as the solution becomes more diluted. It then imitates gas in some other properties; the internal work of the variation of volume is nil, and the specific heat is only a function of the temperature. A solution which is diluted by a reversible method is cooled like ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... communication has ever been made from beyond the gate of death—and even such supposed phenomena are inextricably intertwined with quackeries and deceits—it is an abnormal and not a normal thing. The scientific evidence for the continuance of personal identity is nil; the only hope lies in the earnest desire of the ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... juggen, wol he nele he (will he nil he!) After the kynges counseil, And the comune like. And Spiritus prudentiae, In many a point shall faille, Of that he weneth will falle, If his wit ne weere. Wenynge is no wysdom, Ne wys ymaginacion. Homo proponit, et Deus disponit, And governeth alle good vertues." Vol. ii. p. 427., ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various

... do, miracles or fruitless deeds, You're a man, man, man, if you do them with a will; And no matter how you loaf, cursing wealth or mumbling creeds, You are nothing but a noise, and its weight is nil. ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... understand?" was the reply. "Lady Helena is always talking to me about cultivating what she calls 'elegant repose.' Poor, dear grandmamma! Her perfect idea of good manners seems to me to be a simple absence—in society, at least—of all emotion and all feeling. I, for one, do not admire the nil ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... nonexistence, nonsubsistence; nonentity, nil; negativeness &c. adj.; nullity; nihility[obs3], nihilism; tabula rasa[Lat], blank; abeyance; absence &c. 187; no such thing &c. 4; nonbeing, nothingness, oblivion. annihilation; extinction &c. (destruction) 162; extinguishment, extirpation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Shat-el-Hie, a little above its confluence with the Euphrates. Chaldaean cities appear likewise to have existed at Hymar, ten miles from Babylon towards the east; at Sherifeh and Im Khithr, south and south-east of Hymar; at Zibbliyeh, on the line of the Nil canal, fifteen miles north-west of Niffer; at Delayhim and Bisrniya, in the Affej marshes, beyond Niffer, to the south-east; at Phara and Jidr, in the same region, to the south-west and south-east of Bismiya; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... space, but most of them weren't designed for that type of work. Suit One—a light, easily manipulated, almost skin-tight covering, was the real spacesuit. It was perfect for work in interstellar space, where there was a microscopic amount of radiation incident to the suit, no air, and almost nil gravity. For exterior repairs on the outside of a ship in free fall a long way from any star, Spacesuit One was ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... expelled from the university, in spite of his indifference toward "new" ideas. The children are continually harassed by their father, who bemoans the fact that he has given them an education. Besides, another sadness troubles him: Nil, his adopted son, whom he has had taught the trade of a mechanician,—an alert and industrious fellow,—wants to marry Polya, a girl without a fortune. The father is beside himself, for, if Nil marries, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... [203-2] Nil tam difficilest quin quaerendo investigari possiet (Nothing is so difficult but that it may be found out by seeking).—TERENCE: ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... historical consciousness, they saved themselves from enthusiasm; for, in opposition to Goethe, it was maintained that history would no longer kindle enthusiasm. No, in their desire to acquire an historical grasp of everything, stultification became the sole aim of these philosophical admirers of "nil admirari." While professing to hate every form of fanaticism and intolerance, what they really hated, at bottom, was the dominating genius and the tyranny of the real claims of culture. They therefore concentrated and utilised all their forces in those quarters where a fresh and vigorous movement ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... these digestive juices are lacking in power; hence they are not able to control fermentation if food be ingested to the amount usually taken in health. The power to oppose fermentation by the digestive juices ranges all the way from nil to the resistance usual to a man ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... for me! Do you think the kindness has missed its due effect? No, no, I am glad,—(knowing what I now know,—what you meant should be, and did all in your power to prevent) that I have not received the picture, if anything short of an adequate likeness. 'Nil nisi—te!' But I have set my heart on seeing it—will you ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... in ignorance of what their enemies were at, that I could not resist the desire to make a little sortie. You must feel, dear Maud, that our motive was your safety—the safety, I mean, of my mother, and Beulah, and nil of you together—and you ought to be ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... principle, De mortuis nil, nisi bone 'em!" suggested Miss Hurribattle, with such perfect gravity that neither Miss Prowley nor the clergyman suspected the jocular atrocity that was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... that young scamp Mercury says that we do nothing, and leave all the duties of Olympus to him. Will you believe it, he actually says that our influence on earth is dropping down to nil. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... sternly (not to say with indignation) looked on at the flying waiter while he set the clean glasses round, directed a valedictory glance towards Mr. Grewgious, conveying: 'Let it be clearly understood between us that the reward is mine, and that Nil is the claim of this slave,' and pushed the flying waiter before him ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... likely soon to become the only form of outdoor existence possible for too many inhabitants of the British Isles. But a walk without an object, unless in the most lovely and novel of scenery, is a poor exercise; and as a recreation, utterly nil. I never knew two young lads go out for a "constitutional," who did not, if they were commonplace youths, gossip the whole way about things better left unspoken; or, if they were clever ones, fall on arguing and brainsbeating on politics ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... thing between himself and his protector, Senor Pomponio de Vergara y Puyarola, that his labours need not be otherwise than purely formal. To every one of the intelligent queries on the part of a paternal government it had been his custom, therefore, to append the magic word NIL. Banking system—NIL. Meat export—NIL. Cotton industry—NIL. Agriculture—NIL. Canal traffic—NIL. Teak ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... doubtless prompt you to tell me that no clergyman could be safe in his parish if he were to allow the opinion of chance parishioners to prevail against him; and you would probably lay down for my guidance that grand old doctrine "Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa." Presuming that you may do so, I will acknowledge such guidance to be good. If my mind were clear in this matter, I would not budge an inch for any farmer,—no, nor for any bishop, further than he might by law compel me! But my mind is not clear. I do ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... data and the relative accuracy of their observations. Herriott will lecture for hours on celestial mechanics and propound some fool theory about a hidden body, which doesn't exist, and its possible influence, which would be nil, on the inclination of the earth's axis. After wasting four hours without a single constructive idea being put forward, they will gravely conclude that the sun rose fifty-three seconds earlier at the fortieth north parallel than it did yesterday and correspondingly ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... Indorum[{2}] fruimur his quinque figuris. 0. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Prima significat unum: duo vero secunda: Tercia significat tria: sic procede sinistre 4 Donec ad extremam venies, qua cifra vocatur; [{3}][Que nil significat; dat significare sequenti.] Quelibet illarum si primo limite ponas, Simpliciter se significat: si vero secundo, 8 Se decies: sursum procedas multiplicando.[{4}] [Namque figura sequens quevis signat decies plus, ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous

... addition to the amount now available in Splitrock Pond. This project is one of the most attractive in the Rockaway Basin, as the damages which would be caused by flooding would be, comparatively speaking, nil. The property is, however, now owned by the East Jersey Water Company, and is prized highly as a ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton

... at having beaten their opponents was unbounded, and when, a short time later, the latter retired with a score against them of one to nil. Jack Vance was seized by a band of applauding comrades, who, with his head about a couple of feet lower than his heels, carried him in triumph across the playground, and staggered half-way up the steep garden path, when Acton happening to tread on a loose pebble brought the whole procession to ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... in this particular bakehouse is comparatively nil. The ovens have to be started on Sunday morning; but this the master does himself, and puts in the ferment, so that there is only the sponge to be made in the evening—a brief hour's job, taken on alternate Sundays by the foreman and the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... it is,—a small place about six hundred miles from Petrograd, apparently the centre of a barren, swampy district, population thirty thousand, birth rate declining, industries nil. Cheerful ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... gastritis and what was said to be spinal meningitis. She had some convulsions then. Had both walked and talked when she was about 16 months of age. During childhood she had a severe strabismus and at 8 years of age was operated upon for it. Vision has always been practically nil in one eye. Several diseases of childhood she had in mild form. After she was 2 years of age she had no more convulsions, or spasms, or attacks of any kind. From the standpoint of general nervousness Hazel ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... possible, which will utterly destroy it. The clause stipulates that there must be a majority of all the legal voters; and as there are hundreds who cannot be induced to go to the polls, you can easily see, if this amendment carries, it will make the Act as good as nil. Maltby could not have been elected had it not been for the help he received from the association, and he will do anything to retain their good will; for it is only by their favor he can hope ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... extending to such a distance. In the Homeric sense, as allusive to the hurling of the ponderous chermadion, the figure is correct and expressive.' And here, as everywhere, we see the Horatian parenthesis upon Homer, as one, qui nil molitur inepte, who never speaks vaguely, never wants a reason, and never loses sight of a reality, amply sustained. Here, then, is a local resource to the British tourist besides the imported one of the bull-dog. And it is remarkable that, except where the dogs are preternaturally ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... back local warfare had gone on. Not for nothing had he said "crocodiles" to those orchestral scramblings in the bass of an imperially inspired oratorio; and Schafs-Kleider, receiving certain mysterious grants in aid (for its own funds were nil), had started to sink shafts at a lower level on the outskirts of the town; and after many failures had secured at one point a trickle of water which tasted suspiciously like the real article, and was declared by interested experts ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... I know not; but the famous "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" always appeared to me to savour more of female weakness than of manly reason. He that has too much feeling to speak ill of the dead, who, if they cannot defend themselves, are, at least, ignorant of his abuse, will not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... doctor had felt his pulse for the last time, he cried out suddenly, "I have made a statement of my affairs, the liabilities are numerous—the assets nil; but I rely on the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... I was drunk myself and that he heard me tumbling up the stairs to bed. Which is a lie. I did see it, and it was drunk. I heard it hiccough! I wouldn't say it was drunk if it wasn't. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, Quinny, and it would be a very dirty trick to slander a poor bogey that can't defend itself. It looked very like its descendant, Lord Middleweight, and it had the same soppy grin that he has when he thinks he's said something ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... certainly, for I never transmitted a single copy till October, when I gave one to a boy, since gone, after repeated importunities. You will, I trust, pardon this egotism. As you had touched on the subject I thought some explanation necessary. Defence I shall not attempt, Hic murus aheneus esto, nil conscire sibi—and "so on" (as Lord Baltimore [4] said on his trial for a rape)—I have been so long at Trinity as to forget the conclusion of the line; but though I cannot finish my quotation, I will my letter, and entreat you to believe me, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... difference,' replied Vandeloup, airily; 'I turned my acquaintances into friends long ago, and then borrowed money off them; result: my social circle is nil. Friends,' went on M. Vandeloup, reflectively, 'are excellent as friends, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... I,—with all my heart. I wish you knew; I wish you knew. I would that all the world knew. But we shall live through it, no doubt. And if we do not, what matter. 'Nil conscire sibi,—nulla pallescere culpa.' That is all that is necessary to a man. I have done nothing of which I repent;—nothing that I would not do again; nothing of which I am ashamed to speak as far as the judgment of other men is concerned. ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... suffrage, and a "good time" as seen from the standpoint of the average society girl or woman were absolutely nil. ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... very trifling indeed. The conclusion seems to be justified that if the metal could be still further cooled until it reached the theoretical "absolute zero," or absolutely heatless condition, the electrical resistance would also be nil. So it appears that the heat vibrations of the molecules of a pure metal interfere with the electrical current. The thought suggests itself that this may be because the ether waves set up by the vibrating molecules conflict with the ether strain which is regarded by ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... generation, the complexion of the local group is liable to be completely changed; though in practice the changes in one direction are no doubt counterbalanced by changes in the other, so that the net result may be nil, when the original differences were small. But we cannot suppose that the group was often evenly balanced; and a change in the rule of descent would in that case have important results for the local group and in any case for the ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... he said calmly. "That is undignified, and we must meet this in a dignified and fair spirit. As I said, I took no action at that time, for the evidence was absolutely nil. However, since the affair of the poisoning I am compelled to take some notice of an accusation that has been brought ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman

... hominis vera facie, pulchroque colore Nil datur in corpus praeter simulacra fruendum Tenuia, quae vento spes captat saepe misella. Ut bibere in somnis sitiens cum quaerit, et humor Non datur, ardorem in membris qui stinguere possit, Sed laticum simulacra petit, frustraque laborat, In medioque sitit torrenti flumine potans: ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... young scamp Mercury says that we do nothing, and leave all the duties of Olympus to him. Will you believe it, he actually says that our influence on earth is dropping down to nil. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... "stationary waiter" looked through them. Finally, it will be remembered the "stationary waiter" left the room, casting a glance which indicated "let it be understood that all emoluments are mine, and that Nil is the reward of this slave." Still, Dickens wrote the book as a detective story; he wrote it as The Mystery of Edwin Drood. And alone, perhaps, among detective-story writers, he never lived to destroy his ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... again. If a man wishes to prove he was in neither of two places, A and B, on a given day, his witnesses for each place must be prepared to answer for the whole day. If they can only prove that he was not at A in the morning, and not at B in the afternoon, the evidence of his absence from both is 'nil', because he might have been at B in the morning and ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley

... proposed to pursue his crazy journey, stretch out his leg, and feel for a resting-place for his foot. Rowland had measured with a glance the possibility of his sustaining himself, and pronounced it absolutely nil. The wall was garnished with a series of narrow projections, the remains apparently of a brick cornice supporting the arch of a vault which had long since collapsed. It was by lodging his toes on these loose brackets and grasping ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... So goodness only knows when he may get the letter, which "asks him to come home at once, but only gives to him such information about the Will as has already been given to every member of the testator's family." And that is nil. I dare say we shall be kept waiting for months before we get hold of the estate which is ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... I shall be met by many with the squeamish proverb, De mortuis nil nisi bonum; though I am not disposed at this moment to enter on a discussion of the merits of this received axiom. Shakspeare tells us "The evil that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... et collibus istis, O pueri,' Marsus dicebat et Hernicus olim 180 Vestinusque senex, 'panem quaeramus aratro, Qui satis est mensis: laudant hoc numina ruris, Quorum ope et auxilio gratae post munus aristae Contingunt homini veteris fastidia quercus. Nil vetitum fecisse volet, quem non pudet alto 185 Per glaciem perone tegi, qui summovet Euros Pellibus inversis; peregrina ignotaque nobis Ad scelus atque nefas, quaecumque ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... would take a pill or a draught - seems likely soon to become the only form of outdoor existence possible for too many inhabitants of the British Isles. But a walk without an object, unless in the most lovely and novel of scenery, is a poor exercise; and as a recreation, utterly nil. I never knew two young lads go out for a "constitutional," who did not, if they were commonplace youths, gossip the whole way about things better left unspoken; or, if they were clever ones, fall on arguing and brainsbeating on politics or metaphysics from the ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... other, with a shrug, "de mortuis nil nisi bonum; but as touching beauty, in what sense do you ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... made by R 34, exceedingly bad weather was encountered, and the airship passed through several blinding snowstorms; nevertheless the proposed flight of some seventeen hours was completed, and though at times progress was practically nil owing to the extreme force of the wind, the station was reached in safety and the ship landed without any contretemps. This trial run having been accomplished in weather such as would never have been chosen in ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale

... the bellam and restoring order in the launch we found that the casualties were nil, and proceeded to compare notes. Brown, it appeared, had joined the Naval Division, been to Antwerp, Gallipoli and France, and then been transferred for gunnery duties to the rivers of Mesopotamia, and was now Lieut. R.N.V.R. in the Dalhousie stationed at Basra. His occupation, ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell

... the damp. You must laugh sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers in Hamlet. Shows the profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren't joke about the dead for two years at least. De mortuis nil nisi prius. Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary notice they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... with a perfect gas naturally becomes much greater as the solution becomes more diluted. It then imitates gas in some other properties; the internal work of the variation of volume is nil, and the specific heat is only a function of the temperature. A solution which is diluted by a reversible method is cooled like a ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... Defendants who are served now, at 8 o'clock p. m., of the last day of the term, ask to plead to the merits, which is denied by the court on the ground that the offer comes too late, and therefore, as by nil dicet, judgment is rendered for Pl'ff. Clerk assess damages. A. Lincoln, Judge ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... those there," said Roger. "She says she's going to plant a dogwood tree there in the spring. We intend to put up a little stone for him, and I'm trying to think of an inscription, I thought of De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum, but that's a ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... "Here it is,—a small place about six hundred miles from Petrograd, apparently the centre of a barren, swampy district, population thirty thousand, birth rate declining, industries nil. Cheerful sort of spot ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... in the City or elsewhere, but none, as he finally decided, likely to be useful to him at the present moment. For the amount of money that he required was large—larger, indeed, than he cared to verify with any strictness, and the security that he could offer, almost nil. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the elevator, Curtis fathomed Marcelle's stock of information as to the addresses of neighboring ministers of the Protestant Episcopal Church. It was nil. He appealed to the attendant when the elevator came up, but that worthy thoughtfully tickled his scalp under his cap, and suggested a consultation with the taxi-driver. Indeed, to further the quest, he went with them to the door, and, while Lady Hermione ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... risk is slight. Under esophagoscopic bouginage the prognosis is favorable as to ultimate cure, the duration of the treatment varying with the number of strictures, the tightness, and the extent of the fibrous tissue-changes in the esophageal wall. Mortality from the endoscopic procedure is almost nil, and if gastrostomy is done early in the tightly stenosed cases, ultimate cure may be confidently expected with ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... never taken the trouble to tell her that he knew Willi! She was sorry to remember how often she had dissuaded her mistress from getting something at the Stores that could be got elsewhere, some little thing on which the tiny commission she received would have been practically nil, or, worse still, overlooked. Her commission had been often overlooked of late unless she kept a very sharp look-out on the bills, which Mrs. Otway had a tiresome habit of locking ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... aspires to be complete must comprise, in addition to imaginative works, all these branches of intellectual activity. Comprising all these branches, it cannot avoid comprising works of which the purely literary interest is almost nil. ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett

... thanks are also due to the Very Rev. Canon Gildea, D.D., M.R., who has kindly read through this book for the "Nil obstat"; and to the courteous Curator of the Library and Museum at Boulogne for permitting us to make a sketch of Caligula's famous tower and lighthouse, which was called Turris Ordinis or Turris Ardens by the Romans, and Nemtor or ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming

... the work in this particular bakehouse is comparatively nil. The ovens have to be started on Sunday morning; but this the master does himself, and puts in the ferment, so that there is only the sponge to be made in the evening—a brief hour's job, taken on alternate Sundays by the foreman and the second hand. The "undersellers," my informant told ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... Town Crier of November, 1877; a skit upon Mr. Collis's foolish speech. Beyond this censure, however, nil de mortuo. It is to be regretted that the worthy Vicar's remains were not buried in the church, so that persons approaching the grave with a laudable purpose might meet the reverend gentleman's views, and "walk ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby

... my head and pulled the lobe of my ear in the hope of loosening an argument to confront her with, not that I disagreed with her entirely, but because I instinctively desired to oppose her as pleasantly disagreeably as I could. But the result was nil. ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... render "Caesar's things" to foreign Caesars, demand such total bankruptcy that we must needs repudiate the just debts of home creditors, whose chimneys smoke just beyond the fence that divides us? De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a traditional and sacred duty to departed workers; but does it exhaust human charity, or require contemptuous crusade against equally honest, living toilers? Are antiquity and foreign birthplace ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... man feels that he is utterly corrupt and worthless, and he will curse any teacher that caused him to believe otherwise. Free will is not created by assertions. Let the apostles of free will only try, and they will find out that their freedom is nil. Catholics denounce Luther for having declared the free will of man to be nothing than a word without substance: we hear the sound when the word is pronounced, and grasp its grammatical meaning, but we do not realize ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... LETTER KAPPA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA}: whereas the Judaical rites were abolished, whereupon Zanchius noteth,(193) that the Apostle doth not so much speak of things by-past, as of the very nature of all rites, Definiens ergo ipsos ritus in sese, dixit eos nil aliud esse quam umbram. If all rites, then our holidays among the rest, serve only to adumbrate and shadow forth something, and by consequence are unprofitable and idle, when the substance itself is clearly set before us. 4. That reason, Col. ii. 20, doth no less irresistibly infringe ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... ex verbis, verba notionum tesserae sunt. Itaque si notiones ipsae, id quod basis rei est, confusae sint, et tenere a rebus abstractae, nihil in iis quae superstruuntur est firmitudinis. Itaque spes est una in Inductione vera. In notionibus nil sani est, nec in Logicis nec in physicis. Non substantia, non qualitas, agere, pati, ipsum esse, bonae notiones sunt; multo minus grave, leve, densum, tenue, humidum, siccum, generatio, corruptio, attrahere, fugare, elementum, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... storms. The winds raise huge billows about their stern, yea, or from the prow, or even as each wind wills, and cast them into the hold of the ship, and shatter both bulwarks, while with the sail limits nil the gear confused and broken, and the wide sea rings, being lashed by the gusts and by showers ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... was heavy and sickening with the fumes of chloroform. They fairly sent my head a-reeling, but their effect upon the burglar seemed to have been nil. ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin

... une brume epaisse, cette sphere Rampait, monde lugubre ou les pales humains Passaient et s'ecroulaient et se tordaient les mains. On apercevait l'Inde et le Nil, des melees D'exterminations et de villes brulees, Et des champs ravages et des clairons soufflant, Et l'Europe livide ayant un glaive au flanc; Des vapeurs de tombeau, des lueurs de repaire; Cinq freres tout sanglants; l'oncle, le fils, le pere; Des hommes dans ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... this notice than by a silent suppression, that it may remain a memorable instance of the danger incurred by the historian from forged documents; and a proof that multiplied authorities add no strength to evidence, when nil are to be ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... us forget Pyrrhic victory, Parthian dart, and Homeric laughter; quos deus vult and nil de mortuis; Sturm und Drang; masterly inactivity, unctuous rectitude, mute inglorious Miltons, and damned good-natured friends; the sword of Damocles, the thin edge of the wedge, the long arm of coincidence, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... caffein proceeds out of proportion to the shrinkage, for the percentage of caffein constantly decreases with the increase in color. If the roast be carried almost to the point of carbonization, as in the case of the "Italian roast," the caffein content will be almost nil. This is not a suitable coffee for one desiring an almost caffein-free drink, for the empyreumatic products produced by this excessive roasting will be more toxic by far than the caffein ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... is a trifle," Freydis replied, "although it is the only magic I can perform in an enclosure of buttered willow wands. Now, then, you see for yourself that I am not going to take orders from you. So the figure you have made, will you or nil you, must limp about in all men's sight, for not more than a few centuries, to be sure, but long enough to prove that I am not going ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignes, Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas. Cum volet illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi,— Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis Astra ferar: nomenque erit indelebile nostrum. Quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, Ore legar populi; ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... rot, And the laws of the world are nil; For the bad man is he who is caught And cannot foot his bill. And there is no place called hell; And heaven is only a truth When a man has his way with a maid, In the fresh ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Michael, 'whose chambers I know better than he does himself. A friend of mine—I call him my friend for brevity; he is now, I understand, in Demerara and (most likely) in gaol—was the previous occupant. I defended him, and I got him off too—all saved but honour; his assets were nil, but he gave me what he had, poor gentleman, and along with the rest—the key of his chambers. It's there that I propose to leave the piano ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... who could not do his work properly without the watchful correction of the judge. But Mr. Walters, whose legal training had imbued in him a respect for Latin tags, subscribed to the adage, de mortuis nil nisi bonum. Therefore he began his address to the jury with a glowing reference to the loss, he might almost say the irreparable loss, which the judiciary had sustained, he would go so far as to say the loss ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... probably dead, and "de mortibus nil desperandum!" as Rapaud once said—and for saying which he received a "twisted pinch" from ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... exertions of reverie, as above described; as when it is misplaced on an object, of which the lover cannot possess himself; it may still be counteracted or conquered by the stoic philosophy, which strips all things of their ornaments, and inculcates "nil admirari." Of which lessons may be found in the meditations of Marcus Antoninus. The maniacal idea is said in some lovers to have been weakened by the action of other very energetic ideas; such as have been occasioned by the death of his favourite child, or by the burning of his house, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... ronge un volcan souterrain, Grece qu'on connait trop, Sardaigne qu'on ignore, Cites de l'Aquilon, du Couchant, de l'Aurore, Pyramides du Nil, Cathedrales du Rhin! Qui sait?— ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... and was much discussed at Rome at the time. It has now been lost. He sent it to Caesar, having been bold enough to say in it whatever occurred to him should be said in Cato's praise. We may imagine that, had it not pleased him to be generous—had he not been governed by that feeling of "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," which is now common to us all—he might have said much that was not good. Cato had endeavored to live up to the austerest rules of the Stoics—a mode of living altogether antagonistic to Cicero's views. But we know ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... ad Bubindam occisi A.D. 1690. Decanus et Capitulum maximopere etiam atque etiam petierunt, ut haeredes Ducis, monumentum in memoriam parentis erigendum curarent. Sed postquam per epistolas, per amicos, diu ac saepe orando nil profecere, hunc demum lapidem statuerunt; saltem ut scias hospes ubinam terrarum Schonbergenses ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various

... mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum, Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur: Et, velut ante acto nil tempore sensimus aegri, Ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis; Omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu, Horrida, contremuere sub altis aetheris auris; In dubioque fuit sub utrorum regna cadendum Omnibus humanis esset, terraque, marique: ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... all my heart. I wish you knew; I wish you knew. I would that all the world knew. But we shall live through it, no doubt. And if we do not, what matter. 'Nil conscire sibi,—nulla pallescere culpa.' That is all that is necessary to a man. I have done nothing of which I repent;—nothing that I would not do again; nothing of which I am ashamed to speak as far as the judgment of other men is concerned. Go, now. They are making up sides for ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... remaining to account for 7126. These shares, held by Smoke Bellew and Jack Short, value nil, may be obtained gratis, for the asking, by any and all residents of Dawson desiring change of domicile to the peace and solitude ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... It is a consolation to reflect that the New York critics did everything in their power to push along a project that would have been of great value to this metropolis. It was foredoomed to failure, because it depended upon the iniquity known as "quick returns." De mortuis nil nisi bonum. (I ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... the Grand-I-Vert, named Francois Tonsard, commends himself to the attention of philosophers by the manner in which he had solved the problem of an idle life and a busy life, so as to make the idleness profitable, and occupation nil. ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... especially in the Latin countries, where class barriers are more formidable, the situation differs materially, and to the disadvantage of the girl. If she makes an overture, it is an invitation to disaster; her hope of lawful marriage by such means is almost nil. In consequence, the prudent and decent girl avoids such overtures, and they must be made by third parties or by the man himself. This is the explanation of the fact that a Frenchman, say, is habitually enterprising in ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... corner of real "bad lands," and lumpy ridges, hogbacks, and barren buttes arose on all sides like waves in a sea. So numerous were they that unless riders passed directly by the sheepmen's hiding place the chances of discovery were almost nil. At one spot only was it visible, and that was a place where the edges of two hogbacks failed to ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... anything rather than a living tongue. To a later race of stylists, who have gone as far as Samoa and beyond in the quest of exotic perfumery, Borrow would have said simply, in the words of old Montaigne, "To smell, though well, is to stink,"—"Malo, quam bene olere, nil olere." Borrow, in fact, by a right instinct went back to the straightforward manner of Swift and Defoe, Smollett and Cobbett, whose vigorous prose he specially admired; and he found his choice ill appreciated by critics whose sense of style demanded that a clear glass window ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... [18] 'Nil mihi rescribas; attamen ipse veni.' Ovid, Heroides, i. 2. Boswell liked to display such classical learning as he had. When he visited Eton in 1789 he writes, 'I was asked by the Head-master to dine at the Fellows' table, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... G[e][o]n, &c.) that appears in North Armenia, again appears in connection with the Nile; while again the name "Nile" has wandered back to the confines of Persia, and one of the Euphrates branches is still called "Shatt-en-nil." The ancients, indeed, had very curious ideas about the Nile. Its real sources being so long undiscovered—no Speke or Grant having appeared—imagination ran wild on the subject. Not only so, but it is remarkable that the name Cush should ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... habent, nisi ab alijs nationibus mittatur, vel donetur eisdem. In hyeme, nisi diuites sint, lac iumentinum non habent. Millium cum aqua decoquunt, quod tam tenue faciunt, qud non comedere sed bibere possunt. Et vnus quisque ex eis bibit cyphum vnum vel duos in mane, et nil plus in die manducant. In sero vnicuique parum de carnibus datur, et brodium de carnibus bibunt. In state autem, quia tunc habent satis de lacte iumentino carnes rar manducant, nisi fort donentur eis, aut venatione aliquam bestiam ceperint, siue auem. [Sidenote: Poena adulterij.] Legem etiam siue ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... of the white colony—more exactly, 78 out of 250—had not reappeared, but the conditions for its re-appearance were highly favourable. The earth was all water, the vegetation all slime, the air half steam, and the difference between wet and dry bulbs almost nil. Thoroughly dispirited for the first time, I was meditating how to escape, when H. M. Steamship "Torch" steamed into Clarence Cove, and Commander Smith hospitably offered me a passage down south. To hear was to accept. Two days afterwards (July 29, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... been said, De mortuis nil nisi bonum; but, while fully acknowledging the force of the remark, as also the great scientific attainments and love for natural history which distinguished the illustrious traveller, I cannot allow anyone who reads his entertaining works to be misled ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... (s) altisono vixque Marone minor. (t) Flammiferos agitante suos sub sole jugales (u) Vivimus; eloquium deficit omne focis. Hoc demum accipias, multa fuligine fusum Ore sonaturo; non cute, corde valet. Pollenti stabilita manu, [(w) Deus almus, eandem Omnigenis animam, nil prohibente dedit] Ipsa coloris egens virtus, prudentia; honesto Nulus inest animo, nullus in arte color. Cur timeas, quamvis, dubitesve, nigerrima celsam Caesaris occidui, candere (x) Musa domum? (y) Vade salutatum, nec sit tibi causa pudoris, (z) Candida quod ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... senectus, si nil quicquam aliud viti adportes tecum, cum advenis, unum id sat est, quod diu vivendo multa quae non ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... information regarding the roads, trails and villages of the north country which filtered down as far as the English officers who controlled the various field operations of the Expedition turned out to be nil or erroneous. Thereby hang many tales which will be told over and over wherever veterans of that campaign are ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... is nascitur non fit—Imagination. It is the great defect, I think, of some of our best modern writers. They are marvellously FIT and terribly little NASCITUR. It is why I can never concede the highest palm in her craft to G. Eliot. Her writing is glorious—Imagination limited—Dramatism—nil! ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... copia for co-opia; malo for ma(v)elo; cogo for co-ago; amasti for ama(v)isti; como for co-emo; debeo for de(h)abeo; junior for ju(v)enior. nil for nihil; ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett

... confess, that, in the late discussion of the Remonstrants, with so much choler and heat, there was a great oversight committed, and that,—whether we respect our common profession of Christianity, 'quae nil nisi justum suadet et lene,' or the quality of this people, apt to mutiny by reason of long liberty, and not having learned to be imperiously commanded,—in which argument the clergy should not have read their first lesson. ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... were a fiasco in the military sense. The damage inflicted by the bombs was not at all in proportion to the quantity of explosive used. True, in the case of Antwerp, it demoralised the civilian population somewhat effectively, which perhaps was the desired end, but the military results were nil. ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... virtuous and wise man, that having nothing, he has all. This is just his antipode, who, having all things, yet has nothing. He is a guardian eunuch to his beloved gold: Audivi eos amatores esse maximos sed nil potesse. They are the fondest lovers, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... the nature-mystic, then, to be wholehearted in defence of his master principle. Homo sum, et humani a me nil alienum puto—so said Terence. The nature-mystic adopts and expands his dictum. He substitutes mundani for humani, and includes in his mundus, as did the Latins, and as did the Greeks in their cosmos, not only the things of earth but ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, when en route to Paris, kindly took charge of some cases of specimens for analysis. But the poorest stuff had been supplied to him by M. Marie; and the results, of which I never heard, were probably nil. The samples brought to England, by order of his Highness the Khediv, were carefully assayed. The largest collection was submitted to Dr. John Percy, F.R.S. Smaller items were sent to the well-known houses, Messrs. Johnston and Matthey, of Hatton Garden, and Messrs. Edgar Jackson and Co., ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... after dropping bombs on seaside resorts, to wander over the city of London in the hope of spreading destruction there, did little real damage and their net effects, from a military point of view, were practically nil. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... minute salt crystal, so rare and costly to obtain that it may be counted as about three thousand times the price of gold in the market. But of the action of PURE radium, the knowledge of ordinary scientific students is nil. They know that an infinitely small spark of radium salt will emit heat and light continuously without any combustion or change in its own structure. And I would here quote a passage from a lecture delivered by one of our prominent scientists in 1904. "Details concerning the behaviour of several ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... intoxicated spook. Roger wouldn't believe me when I told him about it afterwards. He said I was drunk myself and that he heard me tumbling up the stairs to bed. Which is a lie. I did see it, and it was drunk. I heard it hiccough! I wouldn't say it was drunk if it wasn't. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, Quinny, and it would be a very dirty trick to slander a poor bogey that can't defend itself. It looked very like its descendant, Lord Middleweight, and it had the same soppy grin that he has when he thinks he's said something ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... sent it rippling past her lips, something like terror took possession of her; for the strength seemed going out of her limbs, and the rock appeared to recede before her; but the unconquerable blood of the Pilgrims was in her veins, and "Nil desperandum" her motto; so, setting her teeth, she ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... under one year of age perish in the United States, according to estimates based on census figures. Outside of accidental deaths, which are but a small per cent., the mortality should be practically nil. It is natural for children to be well, and healthy children do not die. If an army of about 280,000 of our men and women were to perish in a spectacular manner each year it would cause such sorrow and indignation that a remedy would soon ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... ad nos neque pertinet hilum, quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur. et velut anteacto nil tempore sensimus aegri, ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis, omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris, in dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum omnibus humanis esset terraque marique, sic, ubi non erimus, cum corporis atque animai discidium ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... as with the attendants, his speech was almost nil—laconic words in various languages, clipped phrases that sometimes combined Russian, French, or German, other ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... Why did he insult me, I ask you? Look at these suicides, too, how common they are, you can't fancy! People spend their last halfpenny and kill themselves, boys and girls and old people. Only this morning we heard about a gentleman who had just come to town. Nil Pavlitch, I say, what was the name of ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... their gratitude need an object to expend itself upon. One thing above all the rest heightened the respect, nay almost the veneration, of Danglars for Cavalcanti. The latter, faithful to the principle of Horace, nil admirari, had contented himself with showing his knowledge by declaring in what lake the best lampreys were caught. Then he had eaten some without saying a word more; Danglars, therefore, concluded that such luxuries were common at the table of the illustrious descendant of the Cavalcanti, who ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the dock-people had generously charged me "nil" for dues. I had letters for France from the highest authorities to pass the Rob Roy as an article entered for the Paris "Exhibition;" and when the douane and police functionaries came in proper state at Boulogne to appraise her value, and to fill up the numerous forms, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... there must be a majority of all the legal voters; and as there are hundreds who cannot be induced to go to the polls, you can easily see, if this amendment carries, it will make the Act as good as nil. Maltby could not have been elected had it not been for the help he received from the association, and he will do anything to retain their good will; for it is only by their favor he can hope to ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... perfectly friendly spirit) you will carefully consider the consequences which such a voyage might produce, and, frankly speaking, I consider that your chance of bringing it to a successful termination is Nil. ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... common practice is in reference to flat slabs supported on four sides. Grashof's formula for flat plates has no application to reinforced concrete slabs, because it is derived for a material strong in all directions and equally stressed. The strength of concrete in tension is almost nil, at least, it should be so considered. Poisson's ratio, so prominent in Grashof's formula, has no meaning whatever in steel reinforcement for a slab, because each rod must take tension only; and instead of a ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey

... Prejudice and Passion, & they have brought the Contest to an equitable & amicable Issue, which would certainly have been to your own Satisfaction. If Difficulties stared you in the Face, it is a good Maxim NIL DESPERANDUM; and are you sure that it was impracticable for you, by Patience and Assiduity, to have restored "Order & Distinction" and renderd the publick offices of ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... might appear that I, the visitor, am manipulating Mersey to speak the thoughts I wished to communicate, the facts are almost the opposite. My control over either Mersey's body or mind is practically nil. ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson

... spent in disposing of the reduced loading, and making preparations for leaving this fatal camp. The rain continued to fall heavily throughout the day, which could not under the circumstances, have increased the cheerfulness of the party. The Leader, however, closes the entry in his Diary with "Nil Desperandum" merely marking the day of the week in ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine

... Carrington, "the fact of the matter is, Mr. Rattar, that, as you yourself said, the direct evidence is practically nil, and one is forced to go a good deal by one's judgment of ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... totemism, when dissected, there is no religion, just as in the child's drum, when cut open, there is—nothing. Yet, we may reflect, on the battle-field from a drum proceeds a great and glorious sound, inspiring men to noble deeds. Whereas ex nihilo nil fit: from nothing naturally nothing comes. If, however, something does come, it is not from nothing that it comes. Amongst the most primitive savages known to us, men are united to their totems, as Frazer admits, by ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... signing and counter-signing I had to go through before I could see that set of papers, and the extent of circumlocution and idiocy I had to encounter in a general way before I could complete my investigation. The result was nil; and after working like a galley-slave I found myself no better off than before I began my search. Your extracts from Matthew's letters put me on a new track. I concluded therefrom that there had been a marriage, and that the said ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... with the small grandson the next day. He was ready in his fairy-page trimness to go to the early service at the Minster; but he was full of the colonial nil admirari principle, and was quite above being struck by the grand old building, or allowing its superiority—either to papa's own church or Auckland Cathedral. They took him to present to Mary on their way back from ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... law, neglected nothing that could sap little Ginx's vitality, deaden his instincts, derange moral action, cause hope to die within his infant breast almost as soon as it was born." Every pauper was to them an obnoxious charge to be reduced to a MINIMUM or NIL. The Baby's constitution alone prevented ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... contained in the most widely used American hymnals down to 1880 the average number of hymns of purely American origin was not quite one in seven; the proportion would be a little larger now. And the number of Methodist poets is almost nil, in spite of the fact that the compiler is a Methodist and the volume is issued from the official Methodist Publishing House. But if we thought that this would be any barrier to its wide circulation in Methodist homes we should be deeply ashamed ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... constant which varies from 1.3 to 2 in various qualities of iron and steel. For ductile iron or mild steel it may be taken as 1.5. For a statical load, range of stress nil, [Delta] 0, k{max.} K, the statical breaking stress. For a bar so placed that it is alternately loaded and the load removed, [Delta] k{max.} and k{max.} 0.6 K. For a bar subjected to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... resources were almost nil. Christophe had only the copying and transcriptions of music given him by Hecht. Olivier had very unwisely thrown up his post at the University during the period of depression following on his sister's death, which had been accentuated by an unhappy love affair with a young ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... heels of resolve Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto I am human, nothing that is human can I regard as alien to me Love is at once the easiest and the most difficult Love overlooks the ravages of years and has a good memory No judgment is so hard as that dealt by a slave to slaves ...
— Quotations From Georg Ebers • David Widger

... permanet aevo. Percutit injustos ira molesta Dei; Quem neque praemeditans latuit Nero, funera cujus Distulit adversa in tempora longa vice. Occidit ergo miser, Divumque hominumque favore, Traduxitque illuc sors malesuada virum. Nil gravius pugnare Deo, pugnare feroci ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... did not think at nil. I suppose you would have left me in ignorance forever, if I had not heard ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... of the war our communications with America are slow and irregular. In the beginning they were nil. From the end of July to the middle of August we received neither letters, telegrams, nor papers. I suppose it was the same with you concerning direct news from us. Our adversaries had the field all for themselves ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... sometimes mistaken and their power to realize them generally imaginary. They have made numerous and costly mistakes already, which they now frankly avow. If they persisted in their present plan they would be adding another to the list. And as to their power to help us positively, it is nil. Their initial omission to send a formidable military force to Poland was an irreparable blunder, for it left them without an executive in eastern Europe, where they now can help none of their protegees against their respective ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... a sailing-vessel that was captained by a kind kinsman of Bates, so the fare was nil, in consideration of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... heard all the best performers with my own ears,' pursued Mr. Ratsch, suddenly frowning, 'and compared with the late Field they were all—tfoo! nil! zero!! Das war ein Kerl! Und ein so reines Spiel! And his own compositions the finest things! But all those now "tloo-too-too," and "tra-ta-ta," are written, I suppose, more for beginners. Da braucht man keine ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... Medicus coram te sistet, amice Fac circumspecte, et te sine labe geras: Inveniet namque ipse meis quoque plurima scriptis, Non leve subsidium quae sibi forsan erunt. Si quis Causidicus chartas impingat in istas, Nil mihi vobiscum, pessima turba vale; Sit nisi vir bonus, et juris sine fraude peritus, Tum legat, et forsan doctior inde siet. Si quis cordatus, facilis, lectorque benignus Huc oculos vertat, quae velit ipse legat; Candidus ignoscet, metuas nil, pande libenter, Offensus mendis non ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... the huge reflecting telescope was nearly three hundred inches in diameter, and was powerful enough to spot a spaceship leaving Sator. Its military usefulness, however, was practically nil, since painting the ships black made them ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... connection, and my connection, with the matter cannot possibly be established by the police. The incident is regrettable, but the emergency was dealt with—in time. It represents a serious deficit, unfortunately, and your own usefulness, for the moment, becomes nil; but we shall have to look after you, I suppose, and hope for ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... were, too, good times, when the troopers would trek across the Delta to the Barrage du Nil, a pleasant spot where the Nile divides into its delta streams and canals. Here they would bivouac for the night beneath shady plantations of lebbak trees in beautiful gardens. In the daytime they swam their horses in the river. A jolly form of amusement there was the blanket-tossing ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... me! Do you think the kindness has missed its due effect? No, no, I am glad,—(knowing what I now know,—what you meant should be, and did all in your power to prevent) that I have not received the picture, if anything short of an adequate likeness. 'Nil nisi—te!' But I have set my heart on seeing it—will you remember ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... heart is final death: fain would an Ens not end in Nil; Love made the senti'ment kindly good: the Priest perverted ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... of the bizarre about every thing I saw—but then the world is made up of all kinds of persons, with all modes of thought, and all sorts of conventional customs. I had travelled, too, so much, as to be quite an adept at the nil admirari; so I took my seat very coolly at the right hand of my host, and, having an excellent appetite, did justice to the good cheer ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... of July, the Russian Government sought to prevail upon Great Britain to proclaim its complete solidarity with Russia and France, and on the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg pointing out that "direct British interests in Servia were nil, and a war on behalf of that country would never be sanctioned by British public opinion," the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs replied that "we must not forget that the general European question was ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... had felt his pulse for the last time, he cried out suddenly, "I have made a statement of my affairs, the liabilities are numerous—the assets nil; but I rely on the clemency of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... he laughed, rather bitterly, I thought—"when every trade requires capital, and the only trade I thoroughly understand, a very large one. No, no, Phineas; you'll not see me setting up a rival tan-yard next year. My capital is NIL." ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... distich," he added, "should now become your motto: "Inveni portum. Spes et fortuna valete; Nil mihi vobiscum est: ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... it were missing altogether. One of the party would walk on to find the way, and later I would go forth to find him. We could see the road stretching away in front of us for kilometres; but between us and it there would be twenty yards of nil. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various

... up, the damage from the artistic point of view is almost nil; it simply calls for some work by carpenters ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina Sapientum templa serena; Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre Errare, atque viam palanteis quaerere ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... heavy and sickening with the fumes of chloroform. They fairly sent my head a-reeling, but their effect upon the burglar seemed to have been nil. ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin

... Convention repealed its ordinance nullifying the Tariff, and agreed to the collection of the duties now imposed. It followed this concession by another ordinance nullifying the Force Bill. The practical effect of this was nil, for there was no longer anything to enforce. It was none the less important. It meant that South Carolina declined to abandon the weapon of Nullification. Indeed, it might plausibly be urged that that weapon had justified itself by success. ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... 'Religion is rot, And the laws of the world are nil; For the bad man is he who is caught And cannot foot his bill. And there is no place called hell; And heaven is only a truth When a man has his way with a maid, In the fresh keen hour ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... aut mare Thuscum, Tanto cum strepitu ludi spectantur; et artes, Divitiaeque peregrina, quibus oblitus actor Cum stetit in Scena, concurrit dextera laevae. Dixit adhuc aliquid? Nil sane. Quid placet ergo? Lana Tarentino violas ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... forcible than classical—had quite a piratical flavour, in fact; and my friend of "the wonderful works of God" looked up with a deprecating air. Its effect on George was nil, except perhaps to ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... perfect gas naturally becomes much greater as the solution becomes more diluted. It then imitates gas in some other properties; the internal work of the variation of volume is nil, and the specific heat is only a function of the temperature. A solution which is diluted by a reversible method is cooled like a gas ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... carectarum nil quia per firmarium. Item pro eorum duspot (xij'd) nil, causa predicta. Item pro eorum forlot ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various

... Valachria terris, Oceanus tumidis quam vagus ambit aquis. Nulla ubi vox avium, pelagi strepit undique murmur, Coelum etiam larga desuper urget aqua. Flat Boreas, dubiusque Notus, flat frigidus Eurus, Felices Zephyri nil ubi juris habent. Proque tuis ubi carminibus, Philomena canora, Turpis in obscoena rana ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... drove past the first Montenegrin block-house, we were reminded of a ride which we once took to it, while our knowledge of the border dangers was nil. On that occasion we had cantered, innocently, straight towards it, and were amused to see its little garrison promptly turn out. A man came running towards us motioning us to halt. This unmistakable request ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... knows when he may get the letter, which "asks him to come home at once, but only gives to him such information about the Will as has already been given to every member of the testator's family." And that is nil. I dare say we shall be kept waiting for months before we get hold of the estate which is ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... lost. He sent it to Caesar, having been bold enough to say in it whatever occurred to him should be said in Cato's praise. We may imagine that, had it not pleased him to be generous—had he not been governed by that feeling of "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," which is now common to us all—he might have said much that was not good. Cato had endeavored to live up to the austerest rules of the Stoics—a mode of living altogether antagonistic to Cicero's ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... ingrederis grato victoria plausu. Dumque fores alijs, vitamque et regna tuetur Ianitor externus, cingunt tua limina ciues: Dumque alijs sordet sapientia regibus, almo Pegasidvm tu fonte satur, tot Appollinis artes Aurea vaticina fundis quasi flumina lingua. Nil nostri inuenere dies, nil prisca vetustas Prodidit, in linguis peragunt commercia nullis Christiadvm gentes, quas te, diuina virago, Iustius Aoniae possint iactare sorores. Audijt haec inundus, cunctisque in finibus ardet Imperio parere tuo: et quae forte recusat Miratur vires regio ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... numerous and costly mistakes already, which they now frankly avow. If they persisted in their present plan they would be adding another to the list. And as to their power to help us positively, it is nil. Their initial omission to send a formidable military force to Poland was an irreparable blunder, for it left them without an executive in eastern Europe, where they now can help none of their protegees against their respective enemies. Poles, Rumanians, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... said he. "As the schoolmen labored most intellectually and scientifically—practical result, nil, so these labor harder than other men—result, nil. This is literally 'beating the air.' The ancients imagined tortures particularly trying to nature, that of Sisyphus to wit; everlasting labor embittered by everlasting ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... his ashes. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. The directors are meeting now to elect his successor. Only one name has been mentioned. There's only one editor we'll hear of for the paper. Won't you come back ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... accordingly but, at the end of that time, the young Prince had learned nothing, his mind being wholly occupied with play and disport; and when summoned and examined by his sire, behold, his knowledge was as nil. Thereupon the King turned his attention to the learned once more and bade them elect a tutor for his youth; so they asked, "And what hath his governor, Al-Sindibad, been doing?" and when the King answered, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... after the repeal of the corn laws and of the prohibition of imports of live stock, the imports of live stock, meat, and dairy produce were, except from Ireland, almost nil[714]; since then they have increased enormously, and in 1907 the value of live cattle, sheep, and pigs imported was L8,273,640, not so great, however, as some years before, owing to restrictions imposed; ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... he must have done so as such a man probably would, in strict honor as to deed, word, and definite thought, but under occasional accesses of passion of which he said nothing, and which in all probability and by grace of God refined down to nil, or nearly so, as he got accustomed to look in honor at so beautiful a thing. (He may have left off the undraped after her death.) First, her figure is absolutely fine Gothic; I don't think any antique is so slender. Secondly, she has the sad, ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... days in a cataleptic trance for the coming of the supply ship. If the ones who remained within suspected anything—anything at all!—then his chances of coming out of this alive were practically nil. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Hungary or on Bright's Spanish authority, whatever that may have been. His knowledge of the strange history of the Gypsies was very elementary, of their manners almost more so, and of their folk-lore practically nil. And yet I would put George Borrow above every other writer on the Gypsies. In Lavengro and, to a less degree, in its sequel, The Romany Rye, he communicates a subtle insight into Gypsydom that is totally wanting in the works—mainly philological—of Pott, Liebich, Paspati, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... ever been made from beyond the gate of death—and even such supposed phenomena are inextricably intertwined with quackeries and deceits—it is an abnormal and not a normal thing. The scientific evidence for the continuance of personal identity is nil; the only hope lies in the earnest desire of ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... destructives?] on pent cro're" &c. Leonardo always writes Ermini, Erminia, for Armeni, Armenia (Arabic: Irminiah). M. RAVAISSON also deviates from the original in his translation of the following passage: "Or tu ne crois pas que le Nil ait mis plus d'eau dans la mer qu'il n'y en a a present dans tout l'element de l'eau. Il est certain que si cette eau ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... pricked so quickly! It is a consolation to reflect that the New York critics did everything in their power to push along a project that would have been of great value to this metropolis. It was foredoomed to failure, because it depended upon the iniquity known as "quick returns." De mortuis nil nisi bonum. (I ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... faults which are only pardonable in old men, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to that sort of tranquillity. But a young man should be ambitious to shine, and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and, like Caesar, 'Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.' You seem to want that 'vivida vis animi,' which spurs and excites most young men to please, to shine, to excel. Without the desire and the pains necessary to be considerable, depend upon it, you never can be so; as, without ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... The old lady, owing to her great age, was also virtually an invalid; so that both she and her daughter scarcely ever left their room, and hence their influence upon young Ernst's education and training was practically nil. His uncle, however, after an abortive attempt to follow the law, had settled down to a quiet vegetative sort of existence, which he regulated strictly according to fixed rules and methodical procedure; and these he imposed more or less upon the household. Justizrath Otto (or Ottchen, as ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... and such news, Philibert!" replied the Governor in at one of despondency. "It needs the wisdom of Solon to legislate for this land, and a Hercules to cleanse its Augean stables of official corruption. But my influence at Court is nil—you know that, Philibert!" ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... trifle," Freydis replied, "although it is the only magic I can perform in an enclosure of buttered willow wands. Now, then, you see for yourself that I am not going to take orders from you. So the figure you have made, will you or nil you, must limp about in all men's sight, for not more than a few centuries, to be sure, but long enough to prove that I am not going ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... of two places, A and B, on a given day, his witnesses for each place must be prepared to answer for the whole day. If they can only prove that he was not at A in the morning, and not at B in the afternoon, the evidence of his absence from both is nil, because he might have been at B in the morning and at ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... the Romans, Consiliis armisque sua moderamina summa Arbitrio tractare suo: nil juris in hac re Pontifici summo, modicum concedere regi Suadebat populo. Sic laesa stultus utraque Majestate, reum geminae se fecerat aulae. Nor is the poetry of Gunther different from ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... doctor, but nil desperandum was my motto, so I went to work at my crucible again, with redoubled energy, and made an ingot nearly every second day. I determined this time to put them in some secure place myself; but the very first day I set my apparatus in order for the projection, the girl Marion—that is my ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... protection who were in power felt compelled to concede something—or to appear to do so. Congress appointed a Tariff Commission of which the Chairman was secretary of the wool manufacturers' association, and after a report the tariff act of 1883 was passed. The net results were almost nil. Some rates were lowered, while others were raised with a definite protectionist purpose. The average rates for the next seven years, 1884-1890, were 45 on dutiable (an increase of nearly 2 per cent) and 30 on free and dutiable (unchanged as compared ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... not now advance many steps, without spying eyes to track and denounce him. Her own helplessness struck her with the terrible sense of utter disappointment. The possibility of being the slightest use to her husband had become almost NIL, and her only hope rested in being allowed to share his fate, whatever ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... anger had wholly left her, but her fear remained. A terrible sense of responsibility was upon her, and she was utterly at a loss as to how to cope with it. Her influence over this man she believed to be absolutely nil. She had not the faintest notion how to deal with him. Lady Carfax would have known, she reflected, and she wished with all her heart that Lady Carfax ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... January, and thus far the opportunities for skating that had come to the young people of that section of country where Scranton was located, had been almost nil; which would account for the enthusiasm of the lads when Thad announced how rapidly the thermometer was giving promise of ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson

... vitality, deaden his instincts, derange moral action, cause hope to die within his infant breast almost as soon as it was born." Every pauper was to them an obnoxious charge to be reduced to a MINIMUM or NIL. The Baby's constitution alone ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... respuis actus Merito rector cohibere modo. Nam cur tantas lubrica uersat Fortuna uices? Premit insontes Debita sceleri noxia poena, 30 At peruersi resident celso Mores solio sanctaque calcant Iniusta uice colla nocentes. Latet obscuris condita uirtus Clara tenebris iustusque tulit 35 Crimen iniqui. Nil periuria, nil nocet ipsis Fraus mendaci compta colore. Sed cum libuit uiribus uti, Quos innumeri metuunt populi 40 Summos gaudent subdere reges. O iam miseras respice terras Quisquis rerum foedera nectis. Operis tanti pars ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... trip is to be carried out in the spring; for although, as we shall endeavour to show later, the scenery is then at its best, still, since it is not the season, only one or two hotels are open in each resort, and society is "nil." ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... Nil mortale loquor; coelum mihi carminis alta Materies; poscunt gravius coelestia plectrum. Muscosi fontes, sylvestria tecta, valete, Aonidesque deae, et mendacis somnia Pindi: Tu, mihi, qui flamma movisti ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... by the unconscious mass. It is needful however, that these individualities should not be in too pronounced disagreement with received ideas. Were they so, to imitate them would be too difficult and their influence would be nil. For this very reason men who are too superior to their epoch are generally without influence upon it. The line of separation is too strongly marked. For the same reason too Europeans, in spite of all the advantages ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... Petri hausissent aequora vasta ratim, Inviolata fides aeterno permanet aevo. Percutit injustos ira molesta Dei; Quem neque praemeditans latuit Nero, funera cujus Distulit adversa in tempora longa vice. Occidit ergo miser, Divumque hominumque favore, Traduxitque illuc sors malesuada virum. Nil gravius pugnare Deo, pugnare feroci Fortunae. Vinci magnus ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... when he looked at it, and the first thing he did was to try to discover what object, if any, such a hole could have. He got a piece of candle, and by enlarging the aperture a little was able to examine what lay beyond. The result was nil. The trunk-room, although heated by steam heat, like the rest of the house, boasted of a fireplace and mantel as well. The opening had been made between the flue and the outer wall of the house. There was revealed, ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... morals, religion, and history; and a library which aspires to be complete must comprise, in addition to imaginative works, all these branches of intellectual activity. Comprising all these branches, it cannot avoid comprising works of which the purely literary interest is almost nil. ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett

... insubordination. My native attendants pointed out an extensive weir, 200 feet long and five feet high; they said it was the property of a family, and emphatically remarked, "that white men had stolen it and their country;" the Yow-ew-nil-lurns were the original inhabitants. "Tapoe," the Mount Napier of Mitchell, is an isolated hill of volcanic formation; the crater is broken down on the west side to its base. The great swamp is skirted by low hills and well grassed open forest land; the natives ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... me. Granted that I am very glad the railway was made and use it when I find it convenient, I do not suppose that those who projected and made the line allowed me to enter into their thoughts; the debt of my gratitude is divided among so many that the amount due from each one is practically nil. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... could not help thinking that there was much of the bizarre about every thing I saw—but then the world is made up of all kinds of persons, with all modes of thought, and all sorts of conventional customs. I had travelled, too, so much, as to be quite an adept at the nil admirari; so I took my seat very coolly at the right hand of my host, and, having an excellent appetite, did justice to the good ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the air, as Hercules invaded hell. The discovery of fire put us in possession of a forbidden secret. Is this unnatural conquest of nature safe or wise? Nil mortalibus ardui est: ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... what you do, miracles or fruitless deeds, You're a man, man, man, if you do them with a will; And no matter how you loaf, cursing wealth or mumbling creeds, You are nothing but a noise, and its weight is nil. ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... miseros! quam totus homuncio nil est, Sic erimus cuncti, postquam nos auferet orcus. Ergo vivamus, dum ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus

... silk: Its colors, ah, how vain The task to name the splendid hues that in that vest obtain! Go, view the rainbow and recount the glories of the sight And number all the radiances that in its glow unite, And then, when they are counted, with pride be it confessed They're nil beside the splendor of the Will J. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... was maintained that history would no longer kindle enthusiasm. No, in their desire to acquire an historical grasp of everything, stultification became the sole aim of these philosophical admirers of "nil admirari." While professing to hate every form of fanaticism and intolerance, what they really hated, at bottom, was the dominating genius and the tyranny of the real claims of culture. They therefore concentrated and utilised all their ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... of other successes were likewise required, namely, the battle at Katholisch Hennersdorf, in Lusatia, and the battle of Kesseldorf, before this peace took place, still we cannot say that the moral effect of the battle of Soor was nil. ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... amongst those beings whose hands are as black as those of apes and their skin tanned like the ancient parchments of an olim; whose complexion is burnt brown by the sun and whose neck is wrinkled like that of a turkey; who are covered with rags; whose voice is hoarse; whose intelligence is nil; who think of nothing but the bread box, and who are incessantly bowed in toil towards the ground; who dig; who harrow; who make hay, glean, gather in the harvest, knead the bread and strip hemp; who, huddled among domestic beasts, infants and men, dwell in holes and dens scarcely covered with ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... [1928]name registered in thy book." Out of this fountain proceed all those cracks and brags,—[1929]speramus carmina fingi Posse linenda cedro, et leni servanda cupresso—[1930]Non usitata nec tenui ferar penna.—nec in terra morabor longius. Nil parvum aut humili modo, nil mortale loquor. Dicar qua violens obstrepit Ausidus.—Exegi monumentum aere perennius. Iamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis, &c. cum venit ille dies, &c. parte tamen meliore mei super alta ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... for hem that been despeyred In love, that never nil recovered be, And eek for hem that falsly been apeyred Thorugh wikked tonges, be it he or she; Thus biddeth god, for his benignitee, 40 So graunte hem sone out of this world to pace, That been ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer

... also due to the Very Rev. Canon Gildea, D.D., M.R., who has kindly read through this book for the "Nil obstat"; and to the courteous Curator of the Library and Museum at Boulogne for permitting us to make a sketch of Caligula's famous tower and lighthouse, which was called Turris Ordinis or Turris Ardens by the Romans, and Nemtor or Nemthur by ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming

... yet a lad by his indomitable grit and personal courage fought his enemy, continued to fight him, and finally conquered him, all by sheer determination never to give in. Let others in his position take heart of grace and continue the struggle, and may they, too, rout their enemy as the S.B. did. Nil desperandum! I may add that an ice-cold bath of an hour in the North Sea in January, and eighteen months' incarceration in a Turkish prison, are not absolutely ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... plains of Mongolia and Tibet, they present the same general characteristics of land surface, climate, flora and fauna, and the same nomadic populations of pastoral or hunting tribes. In them the movement of peoples reaches its culminating point, permanent settlement its nil point. Here the hunting savage makes the widest sweep in pursuit of buffalo or antelope, and pauses least to till a field; here the pastoral nomad follows his systematic wandering in search of pasturage and his hardly less systematic campaigns of conquest. It ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... replied, "The difference between the two sorts of madmen is, that he who is so will he nil he, will be one always, while he who is so of his own accord can leave off being one whenever ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... and another sovereign went by-and-by at the bootmaker's, leaving the damsel with just twenty shillings out of her quarter's wage; but as the need of pocket-money at Kingthorpe, except for the Sunday offertory, was nil, she felt herself passing rich in the possession of that last remaining sovereign. She would have liked to spend it all upon Christmas gifts for her young friends at The Knoll; but this fond wish she relinquished with a sigh. Paupers could not be givers of gifts. Whatever she gave must be the fruit ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... pro tribus tabulis ex nuce cornisate (?) ad continenda nomina librorum e per le cornise de tre banchi vechi ex nuce die supradicta; nil omnino restat habere ut ipse sua manu affirmat, computatis in his illis LX bononenis qui superius scribuntur. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... was a law of the twelve tables, and De mortuis nil nisi bonum is an excellent injunction—even if the dead in question be nothing but dead small beer. It is not my design, therefore, to vituperate my deceased friend, Toby Dammit. He was a sad dog, it is true, and a dog's death it was that he ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... nec Jovis ira nec ignes, Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas. Cum volet illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi; Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis Astra ferar ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... winds, why call you hence away? Why make you breach betwixt my soul and me? Ye traitorous floods, why nil your floats delay Until my latest moans discoursed be? For though ye salt sea-gods withhold the rain Of all your floats and gentle winds be still, While I have wept such tears as might restrain The rage of tides and winds against their will. Ah shall I love your sight, ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... their way through the grey Coolabah trees; the decorated women throwing their leafy missiles with accurate aim into the ranks of the boys, who did not dare to look at their assailants. A Boorah boy must give no evidence of curiosity; the NIL ADMIRARI attitude then begun clings to a black man through life. The women of the tribe express voluble surprise, but a black man never except by the dilation ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... have been present at all; at least Col. Stewart, who was there and was acquainted with every one of note in the army, asserts positively that there was no such man along; nor has any other American account ever mentioned him. His military knowledge was nil, as may be gathered from his remark, made when the defeats of Braddock and Grant were still recent, that British regulars with the bayonet were best fitted to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... legend relates that they were known in the north and suppressed by Harsha. See Ettinghausen, Harsha Vardhana, 1906, p. 86. Nil Sadhana appears to be a name for tantric practices. See Avalon, Principles of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... exactly, 78 out of 250—had not reappeared, but the conditions for its re-appearance were highly favourable. The earth was all water, the vegetation all slime, the air half steam, and the difference between wet and dry bulbs almost nil. Thoroughly dispirited for the first time, I was meditating how to escape, when H. M. Steamship "Torch" steamed into Clarence Cove, and Commander Smith hospitably offered me a passage down south. To hear was to accept. Two days afterwards (July 29, 1863) I bade ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... to render "Caesar's things" to foreign Caesars, demand such total bankruptcy that we must needs repudiate the just debts of home creditors, whose chimneys smoke just beyond the fence that divides us? De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a traditional and sacred duty to departed workers; but does it exhaust human charity, or require contemptuous crusade against equally honest, living toilers? Are antiquity and foreign birthplace ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... pressure. I felt only a certain tightness in the joints of my fingers, and even this discomfort soon disappeared. As for the exhaustion bound to accompany a two-hour stroll in such unfamiliar trappings—it was nil. Helped by the water, my movements ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... Mr. George Osborne. The first English oration was made by Mr. Jedidiah Huntington, in the year 1763, and the first English poem by Mr. John Davis, in 1781. The last Latin syllogisms were in 1792, on the subjects, "Materia cogitare non potest," and "Nil nisi ignis natura est fluidum." The first year in which the performers spoke without a prompter was 1837. There were no Master's exercises for the first time in 1844. To prevent improprieties, in the year 1760, "the duty of inspecting the performances on the day," says Quincy, "and expunging all ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... kitchen), "she was very whimsical, expensive, ill-tempered, and, I'm afraid, a little—upon the— flightly order—a little touched or so;—but mum for that—the lady is now dead; and it is my maxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum. The young squire was even then very handsome, and looked remarkably well in his weepers; but he had an awkward air and shambling gait, stooped mortally, and was so shy and silent that he would not look a stranger in the face, nor open his mouth before company. Whenever he spied ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... affecting and all, true no doubt; altho no one knew the character of this believing penitent either in point of veracity or judgment.—By the testimony of his land-lady in Court, one would not form the best opinion of him; but de mortuis nil nisi bonum. ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... then prevalent in the nervous civilian areas back of the lines, reached us, but its effect, as far as I could see, was nil. Our officers and men were as unconcerned about the reports of enemy successes as though we were children in the nursery of a burning house and the neighbourhood was ringing with fire alarms. German advances before Amiens, enemy rushes gaining gory ground in ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... Bristol's seeking me there; and, eager as I was to give them substance, found them but airy—ultimately was forced to admit them to be nil. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... court. Demurrer to declaration, if there ever was one, overruled. Defendants who are served now, at 8 o'clock p. m., of the last day of the term, ask to plead to the merits, which is denied by the court on the ground that the offer comes too late, and therefore, as by nil dicet, judgment is rendered for Pl'ff. Clerk assess damages. A. Lincoln, ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... Britain were a fiasco in the military sense. The damage inflicted by the bombs was not at all in proportion to the quantity of explosive used. True, in the case of Antwerp, it demoralised the civilian population somewhat effectively, which perhaps was the desired end, but the military results were nil. ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... understood thing between himself and his protector, Senor Pomponio de Vergara y Puyarola, that his labours need not be otherwise than purely formal. To every one of the intelligent queries on the part of a paternal government it had been his custom, therefore, to append the magic word NIL. Banking system—NIL. Meat export—NIL. Cotton industry—NIL. Agriculture—NIL. Canal traffic—NIL. Teak ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... you once were, And I the same man still, You'd be the gainer by it, For you—you can't deny it— A most uncommon dunce were; My profit would be nil, If you were what you once were, And I ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray

... think at nil. I suppose you would have left me in ignorance forever, if I had not heard from ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. are, while separated, as useful to society as they might be. Each of them tends to create a celibate community, where the chance for meeting possible mates is practically nil. The men's organization has made, so far as we are aware, little organized attempt to meet this problem. The women's organization in some cities has made the attempt, but apparently with indifferent success. The idea of a merger of the two organizations with reasonable differentiation ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... him by Shu Kofa, while Ama Wang, on his side, sought to gain over Shu Kofa by making him the most lavish promises of reward. But that minister proved as true to his sovereign as Wou Sankwei did to the Manchu. The result of the long correspondence between them was nil, but it showed the leaders of the Manchus in very favorable colors, as wishing to avert the horrors of war, and to simplify the surrender of provinces which could not be held against them. When Ama Wang discovered that there was no hope of gaining over Shu Kofa, and thus paving ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... a ship when it's in spacedrive. It's out of normal space-time dimensions. We had a smattering of the theory at cadet school ... anyway, if one did flash into normal space-time—say, for instance, coming in for a landing—the probability of us being at the same place at the same time was almost nil. 'Two ships passing in the night' as the old ...
— Homesick • Lyn Venable

... loyal journal published in Kilkenny—the native town of the young rebel, who in this instance played his first trick on the government—referred to his supposed decease in terms which showed that the rule de mortuis nil nisi bonum found acceptance with the editor. The following are the words of the obituary notice which appeared in the Kilkenny Moderator on or about ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... Guest who comes with him to sup, The Host compounds a strangely mingled cup;— Red Wine of Life and Dregs of Bitterness, And, will-he, nil-he, each ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham

... "De mortuis nil nisi bonum." When For me this end has come and I am dead, And the little voluble, chattering daws of men Peck at me curiously, let it then be said By some one brave enough to speak the truth: Here lies a great soul killed by cruel ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... aurum liuido nil iuuat, imo nocet: quia enim hic inuidiae et otij facibus super ingenuitatem mentis omnium generaliter nobilium principum verebatur in corde: (ingenuitas enim, et rusticitas nunquam cohabitant in cordis vno domicilio) Composuerat ista sibi in hunc finem, vt per se singulos aduocaret aliquos ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt

... the vast majority of your sex, whilst at the same time you could be put to the blush in many things by a school-girl of fifteen. For instance, though I firmly believe that you could at the present moment take a double first at the University, your knowledge of English literature is almost nil, and your history of the weakest. All a woman's ordinary accomplishments, such as drawing, playing, singing, have of necessity been to a great extent neglected, since I was not able to teach them to you ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... Miss Tinne's death is differently told by different authorities; but we believe the above to be a correct version. See Dr. Heughlin's "Reise in das Gebiet des Weissen Nil," etc.; Dr. Augustus Petermann, "Mittheilungen;" Miss Edwards's "Six Life-Studies of Famous ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... of rede to every land, * Whose driving causeth all the world to thrive; Nil is the Nile of Misraim by thy boons * Who makest misery smile with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... an obnoxious charge by any and every means to be reduced to a minimum or nil. Ginx's Baby was reduced to a minimum. His constitution enabled him to protest against reduction to nil. But, just after the bills of costs had been taxed, mulcting the rate-payers of St. Bartimeus in a sum of more than L 1,600, the Guardians were made aware of the name ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... aliis formis substantialibus [sc. materialibus] dicendum est non fieri proprie ex nihilo, sed ex potentia praejacentis materiae educi: ideoque in effectione harum formarum nil fieri contra illud axioma, Ex nihilo nihil fit, si recte intelligatur. Haec assertio sumitur ex Aristotele 1. Physicorum per totum et libro 7. Metaphyss. et ex aliis auctoribus, quos statim referam. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... a later race of stylists, who have gone as far as Samoa and beyond in the quest of exotic perfumery, Borrow would have said simply, in the words of old Montaigne, "To smell, though well, is to stink,"—"Malo, quam bene olere, nil olere." Borrow, in fact, by a right instinct went back to the straightforward manner of Swift and Defoe, Smollett and Cobbett, whose vigorous prose he specially admired; and he found his choice ill appreciated by critics whose sense of style demanded that a clear glass window should be ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... down on every side to the water, in which stunted willow trees with myriad roots—like mangroves—find an amphibious existence. We passed through their groves, hooting as though we were leaving Liverpool, and out into the eau-de-nil waters of the ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... timor. Cicatrix conscientiae pro vulnere est. Fortunam[281] citius reperias quam retineas. Cravissima est probi hominis iracundia. Homo totiens moritur, quotiens amittit suos. Homo vitae commodatus, non donatus est. Humanitatis optima est certatio. Iucundum nil est, nisi quod reficit varietas. Malum est consilium quod mutari non potest. Minus saepe pecces, si scias quod nescias. Perpetuo vincit qui utitur clementia. Qui ius iurandum servat, quovis pervenit. Ubi peccat aetas maior, ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... brought glasses and the "stationary waiter" looked through them. Finally, it will be remembered the "stationary waiter" left the room, casting a glance which indicated "let it be understood that all emoluments are mine, and that Nil is the reward of this slave." Still, Dickens wrote the book as a detective story; he wrote it as The Mystery of Edwin Drood. And alone, perhaps, among detective-story writers, he never lived to destroy his mystery. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... like a slave trying to build up the ruins of the old business. It is difficult, discouraging work, and so far the results are practically nil, but they will come. Something will come! More and more I feel the conviction in my heart that all this trouble and upheaval have been because God has some better thing in store for us both. We have only to wait and be patient, and the way will open.—I don't want to be ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... last new rush in Western Australia or Queensland, or perhaps buried in the worked-out ground of Tambaroora, Married Man's Creek, or Araluen; and by-and-by the memory of some half-forgotten reef or lead or Last Chance, Nil Desperandum, or Brown Snake claim would take their thoughts far back and away from the dusty patch of sods and struggling sprouts called the crop, or the few discouraged, half-dead slips which comprised the orchard. Then their conversation would ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... not letters only, but whole tomes and voluminous treatises about nothing? Why should a fellow like me, who all his life does nothing, be ashamed to write nothing, and that, too, to one who has nothing to do but read it?" And so, with "ex nihilo nil fit," he laughingly ends ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... the Parisian; "it knows neither father nor mother, the commandments of God, nor those of the Church, neither laws divine or human: their member knows no doctrine, understands no heresies, and cannot be blamed; it is innocent of all, and always on the laugh; its understanding is nil; and for this reason do I hold it ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... to ourselves the material arrangement of the starry strata, I have found the following remarkable passage in Kepler's 'Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae', 1618, t. i., lib. 1, p. 34-39: "Sol hic noster nil aliud est quam una ex fixis, nobis major et clarior visa, quia propior quam fixa. Pone terram stare ad latus, una semi-diametro via e lactea e, tunc ha ec via lactea apparebit circulus parvus, vel ellipsis parva, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... with, there is a little sermon to be preached on that torn card. "Nil desperandum" should always be the motto of the competition player, and it is a motto that will probably pay better in golf than in any other game. I think it is very likely that some scores of monthly medals have been lost through a too precipitate destruction of the scoring ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... war our communications with America are slow and irregular. In the beginning they were nil. From the end of July to the middle of August we received neither letters, telegrams, nor papers. I suppose it was the same with you concerning direct news from us. Our adversaries had the field all for themselves and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... Barry, mistress of Louis XV. Here also dwelt Hebert, editor of the foul Pere Duchesne. Both perished on the scaffold. We cross the Cour and leave by the Rue Damiette (L.), turn again L. and descend the Rue du Nil to the Rue des Petits Carreaux. This we follow to the L., and continue down it and the busy and picturesque Rue Montorgeuil, noting (L.) No. 78, the curious house at the sign of the Rocher de Cancale. 72-64 were part of the roomy sixteenth-century posting ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... soon to become the only form of outdoor existence possible for too many inhabitants of the British Isles. But a walk without an object, unless in the most lovely and novel of scenery, is a poor exercise; and as a recreation, utterly nil. I never knew two young lads go out for a "constitutional," who did not, if they were commonplace youths, gossip the whole way about things better left unspoken; or, if they were clever ones, fall on arguing and brainsbeating on politics or metaphysics from the moment they left ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... host of Wakungu, lately returned from the Unyoro war, came to pay their respects to the king: they had returned six days or more, but etiquette had forbidden their approaching majesty sooner. Their successes had been great, their losses, nil, for not one man had lost his life fighting. To these men the king narrated all the adventures of the day; dwelling more particularly on my defending his wife's life, whom he had destined for execution. This was highly approved of by all; and they unanimously said ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... of Jasmin's record for his journeys during these fifty days:—"... At Foix, from M. de Groussou, President of the Communion of Bienfaisance, 33 fr., 50 c. At Pamiers, nil. At Saint-Girons, from the President of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, 16 fr. At Lavaur, from M. the Mayor, 22 fr. At Saint-Sulpice, nil. At Toulouse, where I gave five special seances, of which the two first, to Saint-Vincent de Paul and the Prefecture, produced ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... dedicated to them some specimens of real sailor poetry, combining the names of the staff. With grim humour, the "operation room" bore above it "Nil desperandum"; and the decorated walls of the hospital told the onlookers that "small vessels should keep in shore," that "windmills are not turned by a pair of bellows," that "good things are not found in heaps," that "hasty people fish in empty ponds," that "plenty, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... will be a few trees that will have to be replaced the first few years and is something not to be worried about. Dr. G. A. Zimmerman said, "Why worry about the blight? The wild ones have always had it to a small extent. Spread is so slow it isn't perceptible, damage being almost nil, so let's ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... tell her that he knew Willi! She was sorry to remember how often she had dissuaded her mistress from getting something at the Stores that could be got elsewhere, some little thing on which the tiny commission she received would have been practically nil, or, worse still, overlooked. Her commission had been often overlooked of late unless she kept a very sharp look-out on the bills, which Mrs. Otway had a tiresome habit of ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... still more valuable, on the spiritual and intellectual planes, which you can give; and you can start from this point and practise the spirit of opulence, even though your balance at the bank may be nil. And then the universal law of attraction will begin to assert itself. You will not only begin to experience an inflow on the spiritual and intellectual planes, but it will extend itself to the material ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... and having sternly (not to say with indignation) looked on at the flying waiter while he set the clean glasses round, directed a valedictory glance towards Mr. Grewgious, conveying: 'Let it be clearly understood between us that the reward is mine, and that Nil is the claim of this slave,' and pushed the flying waiter before him out of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... "'Nil conscire sibi;' that ought to be enough for a simple man. But it is not enough for me. It cannot be enough for a man who intends to act as an attorney for others. Others must know it as well as I myself. You know it. But can I remain an attorney for you only? There are some of whom just ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... dirty, ill-smelling beerhouse. They were celebrating something or another, were jingling their money, discussing future earnings, and laughing uproariously. One table was especially absorbed in its noisy gaiety. There sat the celebrated town-rowdy Nil Krasavtsev with three of his friends. They drank, and sang hooligan songs, then paid their bill and went out. One ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... in Italy any more than good society does in most modern states. Roman aristocracy, like all aristocracies, whether of blood or of money, is international in its sympathies, skeptic in its soul. And its influence, in a decisive question of life and death to the nation, is nil. The Prince von Buelow was wasting his time with people who could not decide anything. As Salandra said, with dignified restraint in answer to the vulgar attack upon him made by the German Chancellor,—"The Prince was a sincere lover of Italy, but he was ill-advised by persons who no longer ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... It is the great defect, I think, of some of our best modern writers. They are marvellously FIT and terribly little NASCITUR. It is why I can never concede the highest palm in her craft to G. Eliot. Her writing is glorious—Imagination limited—Dramatism—nil! ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... laughed, rather bitterly, I thought—"when every trade requires capital, and the only trade I thoroughly understand, a very large one. No, no, Phineas; you'll not see me setting up a rival tan-yard next year. My capital is NIL." ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... eighty. His education had been somewhat hurried, but there was no doubt as to his mechanical ability. He took to a car like a young duck to water. He talked motor, thought motor, and would have accepted—I won't say with enthusiasm, for Alfred's motto was 'Nil admirari'—but without hesitation, an offer to drive in the greatest race in the world. He could drive really well, too; as for belief in himself, after six months' apprenticeship in a garage he was prepared to vivisect ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... But nothing came of it; the engineer explained that he was obliged to start work from the south because that was nearest the sea, and saved the need of an aerial railway, reduced the transport almost to nil. No, the work must begin that way; no more ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... humanam per somnia mentem, Nocturnaque quiete docet; nulloque labore Hic tantum parta est pretiosa scientia, nullo Excutitur studio verum. Mortalia corda Tunc Deus iste docet, cum sunt minus apta doceri, Cum nullum obsequium praestant, meritisque fatentur Nil sese debere suis; tunc recta scientes Cum nil scire valent. Non illo tempore sensus Humanos forsan dignatur numen inire, Cum propriis possunt per se discursibus uti, Ne ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... these consequences might safely be predicted as almost certain to result from his engaging in such a career, it by no means the more necessarily follows that, once engaged, he would not have persevered in it consistently and devotedly to the last; nor that, even if reduced to say, with Cicero, "nil boni praeter causam," he could not have so far abstracted the principle of the cause from its unworthy supporters as, at the same time, to uphold the one and despise the others. Looking back, indeed, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... correct the text by this notice than by a silent suppression, that it may remain a memorable instance of the danger incurred by the historian from forged documents; and a proof that multiplied authorities add no strength to evidence, when nil are to be traced ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... may study the Arno in all its ever-changing moods. Seldom is its colour quite the same. The hue of cafe-au-lait in full spate, it shifts at other times between apple-green and jade, between celadon and chrysolite and eau-de-Nil. In the weariness of summer the tints are prone to fade altogether out of the waves. They grow bleached, devitalized; they are spent, withering away like grass that has lain in the sun. [4] Yet with every ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... please her. Peter, their son, has been expelled from the university, in spite of his indifference toward "new" ideas. The children are continually harassed by their father, who bemoans the fact that he has given them an education. Besides, another sadness troubles him: Nil, his adopted son, whom he has had taught the trade of a mechanician,—an alert and industrious fellow,—wants to marry Polya, a girl without a fortune. The father is beside himself, for, if Nil marries, he will never be in a condition ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... Aurelius had a face that never changed—for joy or sorrow, "being an adherent," he adds, "of the Stoic philosophy." The pose of superiority to emotion was not uncommonly held in those times to be the mark of a sage—Horace's "nil admirari". The writers of the Gospels do not conceal that Jesus had feelings, and expressed them. We read how he "rejoiced in spirit" (Luke 10:21)—how he "sighed" (Mark 7:34) and "sighed deeply" (Mark 8:12)—how his look showed "anger" (Mark 3:5). They tell us of his indignant utterances ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... triumphantly captured and preserved for dissection. The men shortly afterwards returned to town, having learnt all that they wanted to learn, and inflicted more damage than they had hoped to inflict. They were bombarded on the journey home, but their casualities were nil. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... execution; it contains passages of lofty thought and real beauty, such as the dream of Pompeius, or the character which Cato gives of Pompeius, and is full of quotations which have become household words; such as, In se magna ruunt—Stat magni nominis umbra—Nil actum reputans si quid superesset agendum (aline ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... of all these systems in their later developments, is their cosmopolitanism. Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto, 'I am a man; nothing appertaining to humanity do I deem alien from myself,' this was the true keynote of whatever was vital in any of them. And the reason of this is not far to seek. We have seen already (p. 82) how the chaos of sophistic doctrine was largely ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... have just observed in yesterday's paper that money matters are in a bad way. There has been a crisis in the city, and your investments have sunk so low that your income will be practically nil." ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... the Divisional Cup Competition, we beat the Divisional Mechanical Transport Column 3—0, and got into the semi-final, when, however, we were badly beaten by the 4th Leicesters at Bishop's Stortford, by 3 goals to nil. In a Brigade paper chase which was held on December 26th, Pvte. Allen of ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman

... been common at one time in southern India. It will be sufficient to give a few examples. The interesting Todas tribe of the Nil'giri Hills practise fraternal polyandry. The husbands of the women are usually real brothers, but sometimes they are clan brothers. The children belong to the eldest brother, who performs the ceremony of giving the mother a miniature bow and arrow; all ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... hole to put one's finger in, looking like a mere spot in the middle of a great white panel; to accumulate so much patient and delicate workmanship on almost imperceptible accessories, and all to produce an effect which is absolutely nil, an effect of the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... res corporales nil nisi materiale continerent, verissime in fluxu consistere, neque habere substantiale quicquam, quemadmodum et Platonici ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Ivan soon discovered that, in winter, regimental duties were practically nil. Half the privates of his regiment had been dismissed to their native villages. The rest, though nominally in barracks, and paraded once or twice a month (very badly), were wont to eke out their half-pay (supposed to be whole, but actually shared with two ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... that the only education which serves is the one that increases human efficiency, not the one that retards it. An education for honors, ease, medals, degrees, titles, position—immunity—may tend to exalt the individual ego, but it weakens the race, and its gain on the whole is nil. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... do not heed his will; The friends who loved him once, now stand afar; His sorrows multiply; his strength is nil; Behold! his character's bright-shining star Fades like the waning moon; and deeds of ill That others do, are ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... tension between the two ladies became greater until it was almost at the breaking point. Several attempts had been made by the distracted husbands to unscrew the strings which they knew were about to snap, but the result was nil. ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... unconsciousness is reached, the unpleasant taste of the ether being thus avoided and the induction period shortened. The mortality from nitrous oxide is small, and from the gas and oxygen in expert hands nil. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of labour is almost nil, and so I am very well off. I begin to see the charms of capitalism. To pull down the stove in the servants' quarters and build up there a kitchen stove with all its accessories, then to pull down the kitchen stove in the house arid put up a Dutch stove instead, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... replied the banterer; "the Chevalier first, and if he leaves anything worth fighting, I; as for you, my poet, your chances are nil." ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath









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