"Gratuitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most deeply. Ellen H. Sheldon, of Washington, for a number of years had served as national recording secretary and had endeared herself to all. She was a clerk in the War Department and her entire time outside business hours was devoted to gratuitous work for the association. Her reports were accurate and discriminating and Miss Anthony felt in her death the loss of a valued friend and helper. Julia T. Foster, of Philadelphia, who passed away November 16, was as dear to her as one of her own nieces. A sweet ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... would, I presume, to most of you, be gratuitous. If it were not, and you chanced to be in a sick state of body in which you disliked peaches, it would be, for the time, to you false information, and, so far as it was true of other people, to you useless. Nearly the whole study of aesthetics is in like manner either ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of inattention and starvation. He knows that it profits him nothing to waste time and money upon a disabled industrial slave. The multitude of laborers from which he can recruit his necessary laboring force is so enormous that solicitude on his part for one that falls by the wayside would be a gratuitous expenditure of humanity and charity which the world is too intensely selfish and materialistic to expect him. Here he forges wealth and death at one and the same time. He could not do this if our social system ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... a few days after, she received, addressed in Lord Fitzjocelyn's handwriting, an Illustrated News, with a whole page containing 'the reception of Mrs. Dynevor of Cheveleigh,' with grand portraits of all the flounces and veils, many gratuitous moustaches, something passing for Oliver standing up with a wine-glass in his hand, a puppy that would have perfectly justified Mr. Ponsonby's aversion representing Lord Fitzjocelyn, and no gaps ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had heard rumours of his wild doings, invited him repeatedly to dinner, and did his best, by advice and warning, to keep him out of harm's way. Young Philip had a horror of preceptors, paid or gratuitous, and treated the plenipotentiary with the same coolness as he had served the Huguenot tutor. When the former, praising the late marquis, expressed—by way of a slight hint—a hope 'that he would follow so illustrious an example of fidelity to his prince, and affection to his country, by treading ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... that he had any spiritual nature. He was very superstitious. He carried about with him a hideous little porcelain god, which he was in the habit of alternately reviling and propitiating. He was too intelligent for the commoner Chinese vices of stealing or gratuitous lying. Whatever discipline he practised ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... supposition shows him to us as a man in an agony of self-preservation; the second as a fiend, delighting in gratuitous deceit and cruelty. ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his time in sanitary work rather than in treating sick individuals, but it is, of course, impossible for him always to refuse to treat such persons, and we encourage gratuitous work for the poor when it can be carried on without interfering too ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... saddle awaiting the new-comer. To meet on such a road in Spain without pausing to exchange a salutation would be a gratuitous insult, to ride in solitude within hail of another traveller were to excite or betray the deepest distrust. It was characteristic of Conyngham that he already waved his hand in salutation, and was prepared to hail the ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... which has elected me to its membership. It is forced upon me by the remarks that have been made to look at the personal side of the matter. Gentlemen have been insisting that I am seeking reparation for an insult which they acknowledge has been offered me; which they acknowledge has been gratuitous, and to which all the publicity has been given which lay within the power of the officers of this club. Very well, then, far as it was from my original intention, I present my personal grievance and I claim redress. The vote of censure ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... reflection rendered this hypothesis untenable; it was too evident that the account he gave of things must repeatedly have contradicted her own knowledge. Within an hour or two of his meeting them Lyon had seen her confronted with that perfectly gratuitous invention about the profit they had made off his early picture. Even then indeed she had not, so far as he could see, smarted, and—but for the present he could only contemplate ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... black broth, first by Sandys, then by Burton, again by Blount, and concurred in by James Howell (1595-1666), the first historiographer royal, gave rise to considerable controversy among Englishmen of letters in later years. It is, of course, a gratuitous speculation. The black broth of the Lacedaemonians was "pork, cooked in blood and seasoned with ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... having the hostility of Tunis, flanking as it did the trade routes to the Levant. The British had then quite enough on their hands, without detaching an additional force from the north coast of the Mediterranean, to support a gratuitous quarrel on the south. As a matter of mere policy it ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... ciphers. If they are ciphers, cabinet government, which is equivalent to constitutional government, will receive a rude blow. If they are not ciphers, the cabinet will be considering matters of the utmost importance in the absence, and the gratuitous absence, of two of its most important members. 'The Standard,' ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... the burgh, who was expected to stand their friend at court in such matters as concerned their common weal, and to lead their civil militia to fight, whether in general battle or in private feud, reinforcing them with his own feudal retainers. This protection was not always gratuitous. The provosts sometimes availed themselves of their situation to an unjustifiable degree, and obtained grants of lands and tenements belonging to the common good, or public property of the burgh, and thus made the citizens pay dear for the countenance which they afforded. Others were satisfied ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... theatrical affiliations in the years between 1583 and 1594 has been engendered by the utterly gratuitous assumption that he joined the Queen's players upon the organisation of that company by Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels, in 1583, leaving the Earl of Leicester's players along with Robert Wilson, John Laneham, and Richard Tarleton at that time. We have conclusive evidence, however, against ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... professional music. On the contrary, we can lay it down as a general rule, that the costlier the music, the smaller is the average attendance. The afternoon service at Trinity Church, for example, is little more than a delightful gratuitous concert of boys, men, and organ; and the spectacle of the altar brilliantly lighted by candles is novel and highly picturesque. The sermon also is of the fashionable length,—twenty minutes; and yet the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Depana-kara on the shores of the fresh water [?] sea. This place, giving incomparable favors, is agreeable and useful in all respects to the spotted deerskin of an ascetic. A safe boat given also by him who built the gratuitous ferry daily transports to the well-guarded shore. By him also who built the house for travelers and the public fountain, a gilded lion was erected by the ever-assaulted gate of this Govardhana, also another [lion] by the ferry-boat, and another by Ramatirtha. Various kinds ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... and then and receipts drawn up. Then, saying that Mick would come for the horse on the day following, and after offering a little gratuitous advice on seed-wheat and ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... insolvent circus. I mounted the noble animal to go to the Bois, but at the Place de la Concorde he began to waltz around it, and I was obliged to get rid of this dancing quadruped at a considerable loss. So your contribution to La Guepe would have to be gratuitous, like those of all the rest. You will give me the credit of having saluted you first of all, my dear Violette, by the rare and glorious title of true poet. You will let me reserve the pleasure of intoxicating you with the ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... to understand, then, that the magazine is supported altogether by gratuitous contributions?" said Beulah, unable to repress ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... dawn of his career in 1857, as a railroad owner, Gould had the opportunity of securing valuable and gratuitous instruction in the ways by which railroad projects and land grants were being bribed through Congress. He was then only twenty-one years old, ready to learn, but, of course, without experience in dealing with legislative bodies. But the older capitalists, veterans ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... Persis, and she echoed Diantha's sigh. The doctor's appearance suggested that she might be needed to act as nurse in some household too poor to pay for professional care. For a dozen years the old doctor had called on her freely for such gratuitous service, and his successor had promptly fallen into a similar practise. At this juncture Persis felt a most unchristian reluctance to act the part of ministering angel in any sick room. Nothing adds ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... the warden and steal a little extra, when he stepped out of sight, thus occasionally enjoying the genial warmth; if detected, however, to receive a gratuitous lecture. Finding, at length, that this extra labor was preying sadly upon their health, and having repeatedly importuned the warden for relief in vain, they turned to his wife, who informed him of the ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... where we had passed the night, and breakfasted with the Djebalye, for which payment was asked, and readily given. The conveying of pilgrims is one of the few modes of subsistence which these poor people possess, and at a place where strangers are continually passing, gratuitous hospitality is not to be expected from them, though they might be ready to afford it to the helpless traveller. The two days excursion to the holy places cost me about forty piastres, or ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... wrong in all awkwardness, a want of nature somewhere, and we feel affronted even still, after we have taken the Bornnatural[48] to our heart, and admire and love him, at his absurd gratuitous self-befoolment. The book is at first sight one farrago of oddities and offences—coarse foreign paper—bad printing—italics broad-cast over every page—the words run into each other in a way we are glad to say is as yet quite original, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... they treat as criminal barbarians. Others are animated in this cause purely by ambition, and by finding that it is a capital subject to talk upon, and a cheap and easy species of benevolence; others have satisfied themselves that slavery is a mistaken system, that the cruelty of it is altogether gratuitous, and that free labour will answer the purpose as well or better, and get rid of the odium; and thousands more have mixed feelings and opinions, compounded of some or all of the above in various degrees and proportions, according to the bent of individual character; but there are some persons ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... much joking and laughter, particularly between Master Simon and a hale, ruddy-faced, white-headed farmer who appeared to be the wit of the village; for I observed all his companions to wait with open months for his retorts, and burst into a gratuitous laugh before ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... are—1. Gratuitous lodging to all comers for a space of from three to nine days as the rector may think fit. 2. A school. 3. Help to the sick and poor. It is governed by a president and six members, who form a committee. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... upon this subject, but by the principle they have assumed with reference to it have precluded even the means of negotiation. It becomes not the self respect of the United States either to solicit gratuitous favors or to accept as the grant of a favor that for which an ample equivalent is exacted. It remains to be determined by the respective Governments whether the trade shall be opened by acts of reciprocal legislation. It is, in the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... though, your dad would hardly listen to me. He would put any advice I might give him down to gratuitous impertinence and cubbish presumption." ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... them. All I am certain of in their personal relation to each other is that cruel pinch on the upper part of the arm. That I am sure I have seen! There could be no mistake. I was in too idle a mood to imagine such a gratuitous barbarity. It may have been playfulness, yet the girl jumped up as if she had been stung by a wasp. It may have been playfulness. Yet I saw plainly poor "dreamy innocence" rub gently the affected place as she filed off with the other performers down ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... ever handed out more gratuitous advice than Philip Armour. He was the greatest preacher in Chicago. With every transaction, he passed out a premium in way of palaver. He loved the bustle of business, but into the business he butted a lot of talk—helpful, good-natured, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... suppression of criticism? Certainly, to some extent. For even if the professional critics tell little more than the amateurs who offer friendly advice, their remarks have a greater weight—partly, indeed, because in a sense they are not gratuitous. All observers have noticed the fact that we rarely act on the opinion of mere friends, however sound. Moreover, no one can deny that when the critics, belonging as they do to many schools of thought and thoughtlessness, agree, they are likely to ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... that prodigious collection of monkeys that forms so large a part of the population of the Jardin d'Acclimation in Paris; and yet, as this curious account has not been questioned, so far as we are aware, by those who ought to know the facts, it is hardly gracious in us to begin the relation of it by gratuitous skepticism. A Bordeaux ship-owner, who is noted for insisting on a strict obedience to instructions on the part of his captains, some time ago gave written orders to one of the latter to bring back from Brazil, whither he was going, one or two monkeys—"Rapportez-moi 1 ou 2 singes." The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... excuse his irresolution to himself; whereas Lovelace speculates so long and so seriously upon the marriage, that we are bound to consider his far-fetched arguments as sincere. And the supposition makes his wickedness gratuitous, if we believe in his sanity. Lovelace suffers, again, from the same necessity which injures Sir Charles Grandison; as the virtuous hero has to be always expatiating on his own virtues, the vicious hero has ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... observe with gratitude that almost all of the pleasures that are connected with this pursuit—its accompaniments and variations, which run along with the tune and weave an embroidery of delight around it—have an accidental and gratuitous quality about them. They are not to be counted upon beforehand. They are like something that is thrown into a purchase by a generous and open-handed dealer, to make us pleased with our bargain and inclined to come back ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... young, although as I said, he is not likely to fall into the foolishness of conceit which belongs to the poetaster, is yet too apt in his zeal of dedication to talk much of his 'art,' or, at least, think much; also to disparage life, and to pronounce much gratuitous absolution in ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... cried the high-born dame. "Do ye na ken, woman, that ye are bound to be liege vassals in all hunting, hosting, watching, and warding, when lawfully summoned thereto in my name? Your service is not gratuitous. I trow ye hae land for it.—Ye're kindly tenants; hae a cot-house, a kale-yard, and a cow's grass on the common.—Few hae been brought farther ben, and ye grudge your son suld gie me a day's ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... famous 'Cogito, ergo sum'—'I think, therefore I am.' By many of his followers, however, this second verification of his is deemed to be by no means so satisfactory as it was by himself, Professor Huxley more especially taking vehement, though, as I make bold to add, somewhat gratuitous, exception to every single word of the most celebrated of Cartesian formulae. No doubt the premiss of the formula assumes the conclusion, but it likewise includes as well as assumes it. No doubt, since 'I think' is but another way of saying 'I am thinking,' to say that 'I think' ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... beginning, been strongly resented by the Belgian people, who felt the humiliation of entertaining foreign garrisons in their own towns. Now that the Dutch had proved unable to defend the Barrier, its re-establishment was still less justified and was considered as a gratuitous insult. Nothing did more to deepen the gulf between the Southern and Northern Netherlands than the maintenance of the Barrier system, combined with the repeated actions taken by the Dutch to ruin the trade of Ostend and to enforce the free import of certain goods. The popularity ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... not left the baroness's side since the catastrophe. She could not see the unconscious face on the pillow for tears. Was there ever such barbarous, such gratuitous cruelty as young Treumann's? His mother had been in once or twice on tiptoe, the last time to tell Anna that he was leaving, and would she not come down so that he might explain how sorry he was for having unwittingly done so much mischief? But Anna had merely shaken her head ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... a Universal Duty Want of Poor-Law in France Appeals for Help in Times of Distress Jasmin Recitations entirely Gratuitous Famine in the Lot-et-Garonne Composition of the Poem 'Charity' Respect for the Law Collection at Tonneins Jasmin assailed by Deputations His Reception in the Neighbouring Towns Appearance at Bergerac At Gontaud At Damazan ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... he acknowledged a sneaking wish that he might be at hand again, in such event, a second time to give gratuitous ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Sentinel. The sight of a Federal editor aroused Mr. Randolph's anger, and he at once insolently demanded that the floor of the Senate be cleared, forcing Major Russell to retire. Mr. Lloyd took the first opportunity to express his opinion of this gratuitous insult, and declared, in very forcible language, that, as he had introduced Major Russell on the floor, he was responsible therefor. Mr. Randolph indulged in a little gasconade, in which he announced that his carriage was waiting at the door to convey him to Baltimore, and at the conclusion ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... hundred idle stories, due perhaps as much to the wonder of her sorrowful beauty, as to any justification in knowledge, of her boundless extravagance, her magnificent fantasies, her various perversity, rumour pointing specially at those priceless diamonds, the favours not altogether gratuitous it was said of exalted personages. And with all deductions made, for malice, for the ingenuity of the curious, the impression of her perversity was left; she remained enigmatical and notorious, a ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... present it is very far from possessing. However needless and unwise their determination to 'thee' and 'thou' the whole world was, yet this had a significance. It was not, as now to us it seems, and, through the silent changes which language has undergone, as now it indeed is, a gratuitous departure from the ordinary usage of society. Right or wrong, it meant something, and had an ethical motive: being indeed a testimony upon their parts, however misplaced, that they would not have high or great ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... thoroughness with which all difficulties have been considered and all unjustifiable suppositions avoided, at every reperusal of Mr. Darwin's pregnant paragraphs, the novice in biology is apt to complain of the frequency of what he fancies is gratuitous assumption. ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... hypothesis be objected to—not the imperfect generalization of phenomena, but a gratuitous assumption for the sake of collating them, this, although ground which should be trodden more cautiously, appears in certain cases unavoidable; in fact, is scarcely separable from theory. Had men not "lectured learnedly" about the two fluids of electricity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... of travel was toward Winnipeg. Sam was perfectly aware of the discrepancy, but he knew better than to offer gratuitous explanation. ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... is of the things in between, of America in the making, that these new writers, whose lack of pure beauty we deplore, and whose occasional gratuitous ugliness we dislike, are writing. They are protesting against its sordidness and crudity far more effectively than the cloistered reader who recites Shelley, saying "Why can't they write as he does." Like all that is human they share the qualities ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... to punish me for this gratuitous perversion of the truth, the words were hardly out of my mouth when I heard a loud crack on the ice, and a splash as of the sudden immersion of some daring adventurer; then all was still—the snow-flakes fell softly against the window panes. ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... me then in this way: I was to go in alone and order for my friend outside a pint of "mull and bitter, in a tankard." The potman, he informed me, would bring it out to him. The expense of this refreshment was not heavy; it came to one penny ha'penny. The services of the obliging potman were gratuitous. I found my friend in the pathway outside with the tankard between his hearty face and the sky. When he had concluded his draught, he thanked me, smacked his lips, wiped his mouth with a large handkerchief, and hurried away, as, he said, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... from the places where the child has to read, and the prolonged effort of accommodation induces myopia. Other minor generalized maladies were also described: an organic debility so widely diffused that hygiene prescribed as an ideal treatment a gratuitous distribution of cod-liver oil or of reconstituent remedies in general to all pupils. Anemia, liver complaints, and neurasthenia were also ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... Lancashire Witches, are described with more striking effect because of Ainsworth's early reading in the school of terror. In Auriol, which was first published in Ainsworth's Magazine (1844-5) under the title Revelations of London, was issued in 1845 as a gratuitous supplement to the New Monthly, and greeted with derision,[125] Ainsworth handled once again the theme that fascinated Lytton. The Prologue (1599) describes the death of Dr. Lamb, whose elixir is seized by his great-grandson. In 1830 London is haunted by a stranger, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... are never gratuitous or invented. They grow out of conflicting elements in a genuine problem—a problem which is genuine just because the elements, taken as they stand, are conflicting. Any significant problem involves conditions that for the moment contradict each other. Solution ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... apparently original action. That a criminal was reared among male factors mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father or mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems less deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The founder of a sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when we know how or by what the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the army, whenever able, were required to pay a nominal sum for lodging. Better beds and conveniences were furnished them, but if they were willing to take private's "fare," they paid private's "fee," which was gratuitous. As a general rule, however, the officers kept apart from the men, for the officer who pushed himself in the private's quarters was looked upon as penurious and mean. It was only in times of the greatest necessity that ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... the masters' stipends were enlarged, and the surplus money set apart for college exhibitions. The head master receives L900 a year, the second master L400. The education is entirely gratuitous. The presentations to the school are in the gift of the Master of the Mercers' Company, which company has undoubtedly much limited Dean Colet's generous intentions. The school is rich in prizes and exhibitions. The latest chronicler of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... improvements than the certainty of reward to the person who first introduces one. The moment, however, that the improvement is imitated by all producers, the advantage gained by it becomes the common good of the whole nation.(646) These are, as J. B. Say says, conquests made over the gratuitous productive force of nature. As a consequence, the value in use of a people's resources increases; generally, also, their value in exchange, in so far as the production of the now cheaper goods increases in a degree greater than ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... your dinner, because we don't stay here long. What is your scout's name?" And when he had been told it, he turned to Mr. Filcher and asked him, "What the doose he meant by not waiting on his master?" which, with the addition of a few gratuitous threats, had the effect of bringing that gentleman to his master's side, and reducing Mr. Verdant Green to a state of mind in which gratitude to his companion and a desire to beg his scout's pardon were confusedly ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... amusement and surprise. One good thing was, that nobody's name and fame could be really injured by any thing DeQuincey could say. There was such a grotesque air about the mode of his evil speaking, and it was so gratuitous and excessive, that the hearer could not help regarding it as a singular sort of intellectual exercise, or an effort in the speaker to observe, for once, something outside of himself, rather than as any token of actual feeling towards the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... great judgment, of late encouraged the collection of chestnuts in Windsor Park, and by giving a small reward to old people and children for every bushel collected, has not only found an occupation for many of the unemployed poor, but, by providing a gratuitous food for their pig, encouraged a feeling of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Conseil general. No such proposition was ever made to me before. I could not submit to it. The prefect has been unusually busy of late. The schoolmaster has been required to send in a list of the peasants whose children, on the plea of poverty, receive gratuitous education. The children of those who do not vote with the prefect are to have it ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... obliged to flee. But, inasmuch as the king's lettres de cachet in that time permitted no appeal, they are also passed over in history as being devoid of interest or historic significance. It may be added that the soldier-king had simply perpetrated a gratuitous outrage, and had not set the claims of law and right aside. He threatened to hang Wolf, and this threat he could have carried out with the help of his soldiers. Even brute force is not devoid of dignity when it acts openly and above-board. He did not insult his courts by asking them to condemn scientific ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the Gospels, the public life of Jesus having been shorter and less eventful than the life of the founder of Islamism. Meanwhile, the attempt to find a guiding thread through this labyrinth ought not to be taxed with gratuitous subtlety. There is no great abuse of hypothesis in supposing that a founder of a new religion commences by attaching himself to the moral aphorisms already in circulation in his time, and to the practices ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... carpenters, masons, slaters and tilers, tinmen, firemen, needlewomen, &c., while the inventory of objects used by this formidable array of workpeople comprises no fewer than 1,500 distinct heads. A medical man attached to the establishment gives gratuitous advice to all those employed, and a chemist dispenses drugs and medicines without charge. While suffering from illness the men receive half-pay, but should they be laid up by an accident met with in the course of their work ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... observations; and with justice: for we know that an already formed belief will greatly tinge the most honest seeings and hearings of very sensible and honourable heads. But this is a far different thing from impeaching, in a manner entirely gratuitous, the moral honesty of the record of a historical fact, made by men at ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... something extremely odious in this sudden offer of money. It was the first time any one had offered to pay him, and it seemed to put him on a level with a common day-laborer. His first impulse was to resent it as a gratuitous humiliation, but a glance at Mrs. Van Kirk's countenance, which was all aglow with officious benevolence, re-assured him, and his ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats had advanced no dogmas which he was bound to support by examples, his nonsense therefore is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and being bitten by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than rivals the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... smart and Superior Persons, prosperous City Merchants, who regard pictures with respect, as a paying investment, young Commercial Men, whose feeling for Art is not precisely passionate, but who have turned in to pass the time, and because the Exhibition is gratuitous, earnest Youths with long hair, soft hats, and caped ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... more than begun Scott's publishers offered him a thousand pounds for the copyright, and as this soon became known it naturally gave rise to varied comment. Lord Byron thought it sufficient to warrant a gratuitous attack on the author in his 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.' This is a portion of ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... Poet-Laureate David to the "Atlantic" with a burning lyric, and Major-General Joab to the privacy of his tent, there to calm his perturbed spirit with Drake's Plantation Bitters. In humble imitation of another, I would state that this indorsement of the potency of a specific is entirely gratuitous, and that I am stimulated thereto by no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... notes are always associated with ideas." The youth who were educated at the public schools of ancient Mexico—for that realm, so far from neglecting the cause of popular education, established houses for gratuitous instruction, and to a certain extent made the attendance upon them obligatory—learned by rote long orations, poems, and prayers with a facility astonishing to the conquerors, and surpassing anything they were accustomed to see in the universities of Old Spain. A phonetic ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... the mad photographer burst out of his den and proclaimed to all the world that nothing meant very much in his life and that it would be absolutely immaterial to him if the paper and its entire staff should suddenly be visited with flood, fire and famine. After this gracious and purely gratuitous piece of information he again withdrew, but strange mutterings still continued to issue forth from his lair. While I was sitting in the office the editor happened to drift in from the adjacent room crisply attired in a pair of ragged, disreputable trousers and a sleeveless ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... musketry from the shore was silenced. At day-break they made farther reprisals, and in order to terrify the natives, landed and set fire to the village—an act of barbarity which appears to have been entirely gratuitous and uncalled for. After they had passed the scene of this unfortunate rencontre, the river increased in breadth to one thousand yards; the banks were higher, and the woods were more frequently diversified with plantations of bananas, plantains ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... parish, and obtain from him a guide to the severest cases of destitution. The guide would be a Scripture reader, and, as far as I remember, always a woman. I do not know whether the labours of these good creatures were gratuitous - they themselves were certainly poor, yet singularly earnest and sympathetic. The society supplied tickets for coal, blankets, and food. Needless to say, had these supplies been a thousand-fold as great, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... spite, the low fierce cry of triumphant malice, the long-drawn shriek of futile rage. There was commonly an element of unreason, extravagance, even grotesqueness, in the hatreds that caught his eye; he had a relish for the gratuitous savagery of the lady in Time's Revenges, who would calmly decree that her lover should be burnt in a slow fire "if that would compass her desire." He seized the grotesque side of persecution; and it is not fanciful to see in the delightful chronicle of the Nemesis inflicted upon "Sibrandus ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... since all the carbon assimilated by the ferment is derived from sugar, its nitrogen from ammonia and phosphorus from the phosphates in solution. And even all said, what purpose can be served by the gratuitous hypothesis of contact-action or communicated motion? The experiment of which we are speaking is thus a fundamental one; indeed, it is its possibility that constitutes the most effective point in the controversy. No doubt Liebig might say, "but it is the motion of life ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... their shallow sentences. "Jerome admits, indeed, with specious but doubtful humility, the inferiority of the unordained monk to the ordained priest," says Dean Milman in his eleventh chapter, following up his gratuitous doubt of Jerome's humility with no less gratuitous asseveration of the ambition of his opponents. "The clergy, no doubt, had the sagacity to foresee the dangerous rival as to influence and authority, which was rising up ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... Sunrise was entirely outside the circle of its electric currents. This was the former day-editor, who had been appointed by the proprietors to take Rossi's place, and was now walking about with a silk hat on his head, taking note of everything and exercising a premature and gratuitous supervision. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... thought, there were lively passages between the two. It is customary to lay at Castro's door all the blame for the sequel. Nothing is likelier than that Leon de Castro was incoherent in his recriminations and provocative in tone: it is further alleged that his commentaries on Isaiah contained gratuitous digs at the views on Scriptural interpretation ascribed to Luis de Leon. It may well be that Luis de Leon, who had in him something of the irritability of a poet, took umbrage at these indirect attacks, and entered upon the discussion in a fretful state of mind. According to Leon ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... am sorry that our journal has fallen so into neglect; but I see no chance of amendment. All my scribbling propensities will be far more than gratified in writing nonsense for the press; so that any gratuitous labor of the pen becomes peculiarly distasteful. Since the last date, we have paid a visit of nine days to Boston and Salem, whence we returned a week ago yesterday. Thus we lost above a week of delicious autumnal weather, which should have been spent in the woods or upon ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... problem—to account for the origin and establishment Of Christianity in the world, with a denial at the same time of its miraculous pretensions—a problem, the fair solution of which is obviously incumbent on infidelity—has necessitated the most gratuitous and even contradictory hypotheses, and may safely be said still to present as hard a knot as ever. The favourite hypothesis, recently, has been that of Strauss—frequently re-modified and re-adjusted indeed by himself—that Christianity is a myth, or collection of myths—that ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... great trouble and perplexity, to the court in which the mother of Johnny Wickes lived; and he betrayed no shame at all in confronting the poor woman—half starved, and pale, and emaciated as she was—whose child he had stolen. It was in a tone of quite gratuitous pleasantry that he described to her how the small lad was growing brown and fat; and he had the audacity to declare to her that as he proposed to pay the boy the sum of one shilling per-week at present, he might as well hand over to her the three months' pay which ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... their ordinary spring work, and put in the crops, it was found necessary to adopt the plan of distributing free rations. On March 20, therefore, a reduction of twenty per cent. of the numbers employed on the works took place, and the process of reduction went on until the new system of gratuitous relief was brought into full operation. The authority under which this was administered was called the 'Temporary Relief Act,' which came into full operation in the month of July, when the destitution was ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... which it is needless to trouble Congress, the Count de Vergennes communicated to me yesterday his Most Christian Majesty's determination to guaranty a loan of ten millions, to be opened in Holland, in addition to the six millions granted as a gratuitous gift, and the four millions appropriated for the payment of bills of exchange drawn by Congress on their Minister Plenipotentiary. The purchase money of the clothing, which must be an affair of private contract, and the value of the military effects which may ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Sentences Remitted to Hard Labor Early Consultations with Rebels Emancipation Exemption of American Consuls from Military Service Female Spy First Overtures for Surrender from Davis Five-star Mother Fort Pillow Massacre Four Score and Seven Years Ago Gettysburg Gratuitous Hostility Greenback Habeas Corpus Harmon's Sandal Sock Hawaiian Islands Indians Irresponsible Newspaper Reporters and Editors Keep Cool Kindness Not Quite Free from Ridicule Labor Last Public Address Lecture on Liberty ...
— Widger's Quotations from Abraham Lincoln's Writings • David Widger
... outset of their connubial partnership, they started under the most favorable auspices—for, whereas other couples marry for love or money, they got married for 'nothing' taking advantage of the annual gratuitous splicings performed at Shoreditch Church on ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... to explain her reasoning, her contempt for convention. It would be gratuitous. As for him, women had never constituted a temptation. He knew that he loved this simple, ingenuous girl with a tenderness of passion that was wholly free from the dross of mesmerism. With that he ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Lavinia was an authority in affairs of the heart, by reason of there having anciently existed a certain Mr. Pidger, who played short whist, and was supposed to have been enamoured of her. My private opinion is, that this was entirely a gratuitous assumption, and that Pidger was altogether innocent of any such sentiments—to which he had never given any sort of expression that I could ever hear of. Both Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa had a superstition, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... and as much or more from his salary on the "Gazette." He felt on the high road to success. Seeing that his young compositor was meeting with success and appreciation abroad, Mr. Anderson called upon him more frequently to write paragraphs for the "Gazette." Though this work was gratuitous, Harry willingly undertook it. He felt that in this way he was preparing himself for the career to which he steadily looked forward. Present compensation, he justly reasoned, was of small importance, compared with the chance of improvement. In this view, Ferguson, who ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Two years ago she had drifted into the chorus, but had been altogether unlucky in her various ventures. She wasn't naturally graceful—had been slow learning to dance. Again and again, she'd been dropped at the end of three or four weeks of rehearsal (gratuitous of course) and seen another girl put in her place. When this hadn't happened, the shows she had been in had failed after a ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... very quietly, "I promise you that your behaviour and these gratuitous insults shall cost you your position. Pray God they do not ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... and began several in succession. The first was, "The Instruction of Children by means of the Eye." He wanted gratuitous theaters to be established in every poor quarter of Paris for little children. Their parents were to take them there when they were quite young, and, by means of a magic-lantern, all the notions of human knowledge were to be imparted to them. There were to be regular ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised vengeance-prompted satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the young Shakespeare was a wild, wild, wild, oh such a wild young scamp, and that gratuitous slander is established for all time! It is the very way Professor Osborn and I built the colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet high in the Natural History Museum, the awe and admiration ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... that he intended to restore. Mike McCarthy carried in his pockets books which he read sitting in a chair before the hotel or on the stones before store windows. When on Saturdays the streets were filled with people, he stood on the corners giving gratuitous performances of his magical art with cards and coins, and eyeing country girls in the crowd. Once, a woman, the town stationer's wife, shouted at him, calling him a lazy lout, whereupon he threw a coin in the air, and when it did not come down rushed toward her shouting, ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... little episode, I continued, to some few that remained balancing teaspoons on the edges of cups, twirling knives, or tilting upon the hind legs of their chairs until their heads reached the wall, where they left gratuitous advertisements of various ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke to tempt, even while they frightened him. And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but show its sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals, and the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wild beasts to the saddle, the spectacle of the round-up with its brutish multitudes and its graceful riders, the dust and monotony and excitement and glory of the Trail, and especially the hundreds of incidental and gratuitous adventures of bears and antelope, of thirst and heat, of the joy of taking care of one's self—all these would have filled our days with the glittering, changing throng of ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... from the arsenal had flung three gratuitous bombs at the camp itself, one had fallen in the Serbian hospital yard, and had killed an Austrian prisoner; one had fallen in the top corner of the camp field, but had not exploded. The third had missed, only by a little, the room in which the ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... on a saddle much too large for him, hazed the tired horses with a professional "Hi! Yah! Git in there, you doggone, onnery, three-legged pole-cat you!" A gratuitous command, for the three-legged pole-cat referred to had no other ambition than to shuffle wearily along behind the wagon in the hope that somewhere ahead was good grazing, water, ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... theory that he has all the spending money in the world, and that long after he is dead those on whom he spent it will remember his generosity. Vain hope!—Whatever memory of him remains will be of a different kind. Those who have been bored by his gratuitous attentions will take up the threads of their existence where they left off when he drove them away from their usual haunts. No longer will they have to dodge down alleys and run up strange stairways in an ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... engaged—indeed, during the summer months he was rarely seen at the afternoon service. Not that he cared for being preached at—not he: Mr. Stirn would have snapped his finger at the thunders of the Vatican. But the fact was, that Mr. Stirn chose to do a great deal of gratuitous business upon the day of rest. The Squire allowed all persons, who chose, to walk about the park on a Sunday; and many came from a distance to stroll by the lake, or recline under the elms. These visitors were objects of great suspicion, nay, of positive annoyance, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... so immense an extent, under the administration of supposed infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence, is the great difficulty; that it will ever cease to be, is a pure assumption for the nonce; but if it will one day entirely vanish, it is gratuitous to suppose it might not have ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Fletcher's genius to suppose that this imitation was not beyond his powers. The general character of the play shows that Shakspeare, at any rate, merely contributed to it. It is conceived and developed in the hot and hectic style of Fletcher, and abounds in his strained heroics and gratuitous obscenities. The Jailor's Daughter, a coarse caricature of Ophelia, is one of the greatest crimes against the sacredness of misery which a poet ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... gave displeasure to the artists in general. Nor were they pleased with the mode of admitting the spectators, for every member of the Society had the discretionary privilege of introducing as many persons as he chose, by means of gratuitous tickets; and consequently the company was far from being select, or suited to the wishes of the exhibition. These circumstances, together with the interference of the Society in the concern of the exhibition, determined the principal ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... care much to assert or debate my reasons for the changes of nomenclature made in this list. The {145} most gratuitous is that of 'Lucy' for 'Gentian,' because the King of Macedon, from whom the flower has been so long named, was by no means a person deserving of so consecrated memory. I conceive no excuse needed for rejecting Caryophyll, one of the crudest and absurdest words ever ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... gravity, "is a plan of the Cranby Swimming Bath. The coast near the town being rocky, and in many ways inconvenient for bathing, sea-water is to be pumped into this bath daily by a steam-engine. A professor of swimming is appointed to give gratuitous instruction in his art. The bath is to be in two parts—one for ladies, one for gentlemen—and will have dressing-boxes all round, besides diving-boards and every sort of convenience. At certain hours of the morning and evening it will be open ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... who has twelve hours more than you have each day to reflect and to study you, reads the suspicion written upon your face at the very moment that it arises. She will never forget this gratuitous insult. Nothing can ever remedy that. All is now said and done, and the very next day, if she has opportunity, she will join ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... little waif had indeed been touched by Mrs Willis's sad story, and drawn towards her by her soft, gentle nature—so different from what he had hitherto met with in his wanderings,—and that he was resolved to offer her his gratuitous services as a message-boy and general servant, without requiring either food or lodging ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... prosecution of its gratuitous task, devised the scheme of a Constitution wholly in the interest of its members and of the meagre minority they represented,—and so objectionable in many respects, that not one in twenty of the voters of the Territory, as Governor Walker informed the writer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Mr Ffolliot said stiffly, "against your gratuitous assumption that I care nothing for ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker |
