"Insignificant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... insignificant man and held in but little esteem; but I set out to conquer this round expanse under the sky, and those who live beneath the sky upon the earth are all my vassals. Those who do homage to me have peace and security, and live without fear. But I immediately send my captains and soldiers ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... "means, to do what has to be done, no difference how insignificant it may be. What would you think of a lot of knights, who let tramps beat them over the heads because their code of honor did not allow them to fight with tramps? You are going into business now: come to me in a month and tell me if you have kept your word. Then we will speak ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... that some of the small arterial branches coming from the main supply-trunk are connected with other arterial branches coming from some other supply-trunk. Under normal conditions the main arterial trunks supply their respective organs, the little connecting arterioles playing an insignificant part. But let the main supply-trunk be cut off or stopped for whatever reason, and a remarkable thing takes place. The little connecting branches begin at once to enlarge and draw blood from the neighboring uninjured ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... impossible for you to take up the most insignificant pebble at your feet, without being able to read, if you like, this curious lesson in it. You look upon it at first as if it were earth only. Nay, it answers, "I am not earth—I am earth and air in one; part of that ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... days. Strength is the only sustaining force. And is the throne strong enough to resist a general uprising? I doubt it. And I, poor servant that I am, can arrest this movement, even now! I can betray the chiefs of this association. But I am an insignificant person. No matter how great the services may be that I render, a bone or two will be thrown to me to gnaw, and that will be deemed sufficient. But let the Marquis de Fongereues, peer of France, denounce at the Tuileries the formidable association that ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... of the fact that the present volume is but an intrusion at the best; however, I trust my readers will be pleased to overlook the many faults of a bagatelle as insignificant and ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... astonishing fatuity which marked their comments. Billy Fairfax had made the remark about the ship's cat a dozen times. And a dozen times, it had elicited from the others a clamor of similar chatter, of insignificant haphazard detail which began ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... can relish the delights of sound and show, which I have not; for surely mankind would not labour so much, nor sacrifice so much for the obtaining, nor would they be so elate and proud with possessing, what appeared to them, as it doth to me, the most insignificant of ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... revolutions, which were generally put down after much plundering and bloodshed. These bands of armed men went about like regular banditti, disturbing the peace of the whole country. They were not much heard of in Europe, because intercommunication and telegraphy did not exist then as they do now, and insignificant affairs of the kind were ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... little Italian boy who was thus studying French at Autun school. You would scarcely have looked at him twice; for his figure was small, his appearance insignificant, his face sober and solemn, his hair stiff and stringy, and his complexion sallow. The boys made fun of the way in which he talked, as boys are apt to make sport of those who do ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... was to be. The Aztecs, it seemed, had not originally established themselves on the spot where Mexico was built. When they came down from the north country, and across the hills into the valley of Mexico, they were but an insignificant tribe, and as yet mere savages. They settled down in one place after another, and were always driven out by the persecutions of the neighbouring tribes. At last they took possession of a little group of swampy islands in the lake of Tezcuco; and then at last, safe from their enemies, they ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Lopez. Lopez, the former colonel of Dragoons, now commanded the Imperialist reserve, quartered in the monastery of La Cruz around the person of their sovereign. But Lopez had once condemned Murguia to death. A strange solicitude, thought Driscoll, in such a high and mighty person for a little, insignificant, useless warrior as poor Murgie. A strange, a very strange solicitude, and Driscoll could not get ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... mere precept), that a good education and sound bringing-up is of the first and middle and last importance; and I declare it to be most instrumental and conducive to virtue and happiness. For all other human blessings compared to this are petty and insignificant. For noble birth is a great honour, but it is an advantage from our forefathers. And wealth is valuable, but it is the acquisition of fortune, who has often taken it away from those who had it, and brought it to those who little expected it; and much ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... great satire, he bent all his energies, with the utmost seriousness, to writing 'The Dunciad' on the model of Dryden's 'Mac Flecknoe' and irresponsibly 'dealt damnation 'round the land.' Clever and powerful, the poem is still more disgusting—grossly obscene, pitifully rancorous against scores of insignificant creatures, and no less violent against some of the ablest men of the time, at whom Pope happened to have taken offense. Yet throughout the rest of his life Pope continued with keen delight to work the unsavory production over and to ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... this somewhat insignificant Book is, that certain parties, of the pirate species, were preparing to reprint it for me. There are books, as there are horses, which a judicious owner, on fair survey of them, might prefer to adjust by at once shooting through the head: ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of deceit or of treachery on her part had never entered into his mind. This Ernest, his wife's lover, was a pretty boy of about three-and-twenty, with light hair, a turned-up nose, and a small moustache—probably the most insignificant of all his acquaintances. ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... many a rogue has done before him, and found half a hundred persons busy at a table of rouge et noir. Gambouge's five napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his capital stoutly upon the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... people eating is understood to be a very interesting and "brilliant" spectacle, and however insignificant you may be in the social world, you get a reflex of its "brilliancy" when you allow people in their turn to see you eating likewise. A well-cooked, well-served supper is a "function," in which every man and woman who can move a jaw takes part, and though in plain parlance there ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... when applied to these tribes, are exactly the same as if we should call the Scotch the Lord Douglases. Motape was the chief of the Bambiri, a tribe of the Banyai, and is now represented in the person of Katolosa. He was probably a man of greater energy than his successor, yet only an insignificant chief. Monomoizes was formed from Moiza or Muiza, the singular of the word Babisa or Aiza, the proper name of a large tribe to the north. In the transformation of this name the same error has been committed as in the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... The apparently insignificant event that initiated the extraordinary series of adventures, of which this is the narrative, occurred about the hour of 8 a.m. on a certain day of September in the year of our Lord 19—; and it consisted in the delivery by the ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... monastery presents the best specimen of Gothic architecture in England. The east window is a most magnificent affair, sixty-four feet high, and calls forth universal admiration. The very insignificant doorway was, no question, intended by the architect to form a strong contrast with the elevation of the roof. The abbey is cruciform; its ruins are perfect as to the grand outline; and I am sure we should like to pass the entire day within this venerable fane. ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... any other cause, the harmony of the glorious Union of our confederated States—that Union which binds us together as one people, and which for sixty years has been our shield and protection against every danger. In the eyes of the world and of posterity how trivial and insignificant will be all our internal divisions and struggles compared with the preservation of this Union of the States in all its vigor and with all its countless blessings! No patriot would foment and excite ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... you say is neither generous nor worthy of you, since you abuse your superiority. You see me at your feet pleading for an insignificant thing, puerile, childish, foolish, perhaps, but one which would give me pleasure, and you think it heroic not to yield. Do you want me to speak out, well? then, you ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... thirty, or a hundred candles at once; so that as one expires they may begin burning and spreading light which shall shine till Jesus comes. Get light from Christ, then share it; and remember that it is the glory of fire that one little candle may go on lighting hundreds of candles—one insignificant taper may light all the lamps of a cathedral church, and yet not be robbed of its own little glow of flame. Andrew was lit by Christ Himself, and passed on the flame to Simon Peter, and he to three thousand more ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... of the natives are so insignificant, when compared with ours, that I should not have thought of treating of them, if some persons of distinction had not desired me to say something of them, in order to shew the industry of those people, and how far invention could carry them, in supplying those wants which human ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... neglected. What we include in a biography and what we emphasize will be determined by the purpose for which it is written. For pure information, a short account is desirable, but a long account is of greater interest. If a man is really great, the most insignificant events in his life will be read with interest, but a good biographer will select such events with good taste and then will present them so that they will have a bearing upon the more important phases of the man's life and character. Hundreds ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... islands of the Mediterranean; but for the great towns of what is now Belgium and Germany what part might not be left for them to play in the history of the world? In England the towns were as yet insignificant communities compared with such mighty aggregates of population as were to be found in Bruges, Antwerp, or Cologne; but even the English towns were communities, and they were beginning to assert themselves somewhat loudly while clinging to their ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... their new business, compete at these places for slender purses, and often with the help of dishonest tricks. Accidents, as might be expected, are frequent, although the obstacles, with the exception of the river at La Marche, are insignificant. But the pace is pushed to such excess that the smallest fence becomes dangerous. This last objection, however, may be made even to the running at Auteuil, where the course is under the judicious and honorable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... too insignificant to garrison for a permanent conquest for the English. Many of our officers, and all the men, wished very naturally to plunder it; but the captain of the other frigate, now the commander, would not listen to the proposal for a moment. However, we totally destroyed their ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... him, that he breaks away as I did from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards. Behold me, then, at the office of the Daily Gazette, on the staff of which I was a most insignificant unit, with the settled determination that very night, if possible, to find the quest which should be worthy of my Gladys! Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... two days our route continued to lie through the valley, which we entered upon leaving Gap, of the Durance. It is an apparently insignificant but treacherous stream, which by repeated floods has spread ugly devastation over a hill-girdled country that ought to be smiling with peace and plenty. At Guillestre we came in sight of the jagged double peak of Mont Pelvoux, and got a magnificent vista ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... study, each had had a chance to consider the Sanusian situation pretty thoroughly. All but Billie were convinced that the humans were deserving people, whose position was all the more regrettable because due, so far as could be seen, the insignificant little detail of ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... without her his drawing room would lack a great attraction. He had risen high in his profession, and now that he was rich and well known his chief ambition was to make of his house a centre of liberal and intellectual society. He was painfully conscious that the insignificant, overdressed little woman whom in his youth he had made the mistake of marrying was not fit, with her vapid talk and faded prettiness, to be the mistress of a great literary salon. When he could prevail upon Gemma to come he always felt that the evening would be a ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... Gaining the Grand Walk, I saw Mr. Marmaduke's insignificant figure dodging fearfully among the roughs, whose hour it was. He traversed the Cross Walk, and twenty yards farther on dived into an opening in the high hedge bounding the Wilderness. Before he had made six paces I had him by the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... at what he believed to have been base treason on the part of his mother,—all this rushed upon him with fearful force, and he stood again motionless, a picture of wild perplexity. His face betokened the state of his mind. Shyuote did not dare to inquire of him further than to ask a very insignificant question,—namely, who the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... me nearly the whole evening, and talked all the time ... The words would seem insignificant and absurd, were I to write them down; but with him, tone, manner, expression, all speak and say more than words, and yet his very words signify more, depict better, and penetrate more deeply than those of others. I keep them in my ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... done Nothing, it becomes a Piece of Justice to enquire whether they have in Reality been such unconcernd or impotent Spectators of their Countrys Misery and Want. Dr Franklin has the Honor of being Mr Deans venerable Friend; Mr Lee, an insignificant or troublesome Colleague. And yet Mary Johnsons assiduous Applications procurd the sending a Ship loaded with Merchandise & Stores to the Value of twenty five Thousand Pounds Sterling; and this Negociation was settled before ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... and stormy years of battle, and led by a renowned general, bent on destroying the city and putting all its inhabitants—men and women, old and young—to the sword? Ambition and shame alike stimulated the Swedish general, as he thought how this insignificant country town had so long thwarted all his best efforts. His men, on the other hand, were inspired by thirst for plunder and a burning desire to avenge all the toils and troubles they had endured amid the severities of that ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... that this case is given only as an illustration of a principle which is applicable to all cases. The act of opening and shutting a door in a noisy manner is altogether too insignificant a fault to deserve this long discussion of the method of curing it, were it not that methods founded on the same principles, and conducted in the same spirit, are applicable universally in all that pertains to the domestic management of children. And it is a method, ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... passenger-ship Lusitania was torpedoed off the south coast of Ireland with the loss of 1100 souls, many of them women and children, and some of them Americans; and the news was hailed in Germany with transports of delight from ministers of religion and all but an insignificant section of the people; medals were officially struck to commemorate the deed. British lives had been lost through Russian action off the Dogger Bank in 1904 without provoking war, and the sinking of the Lusitania did not precipitate war between Germany and the United States. But it eased ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... province of history to record great influences, whether they come from the people, from great popular ideas, from literature and science, or from a single man. The lives of individuals are comparatively insignificant in the history of the United States; but the lives of such men as Caesar, Cromwell, and Napoleon, furnish very great subjects for the pen of the philosophical historian, since great controlling influences emanated from ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the comparative critic becomes too much of a universal lover, and too little of an enthusiast, that he has an irritating and ungentlemanly habit of seeing blemishes in the greatest, a pottering and peddling fancy for discovering beauties in the most insignificant; that he lacks the exclusiveness and the fastidiousness of intellectual aristocracy, the fervour and rapture of aesthetic passion. To this, one can answer little more than, "It may be so." Certainly the critic of this kind will ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... his audience. However, he was a sport, and let them do as they liked; so they drank his health and sang: He's a Jolly Good Fellow! Several old boys came down, FitzMorris with an eyeglass and a wonderful tie; Sandham, as usual, quite insignificant; Armour wearing the blue waistcoat of a Wadham drinking club. Meredith had been expected, but at the last moment he had found his debts so much in excess of a very generous allowance that he would have to retrench a little. It was a pity; ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... all the carts and horses down into a hollow where there was a water-hole, and to wait there for further orders. Tugendheim was bidden come with us on foot; and without any explanation he led us all toward a low ridge that faced us, rising here and there into an insignificant hill. It looked like blown sand over which coarse grass had grown, and such it proved to be, for it was on the edge of another desert. It was fifty or sixty feet high, and rather difficult to climb, but he led us straight up it, cautioning us to be silent and not to show ourselves on the far side. ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... from under shaggy eyebrows. His age was scarcely beyond thirty, but one would have put it ten years later, for there were lines on his brow and threads of grey in his hair. His companion was slim and, to a hasty glance, insignificant. He wore a peaked grey beard which lengthened his long, thin face, and he had a nervous trick of drumming always with his fingers on whatever piece of furniture was near. But if you looked closer and marked the high brow, the keen eyes, and the very resolute ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... the age of forty, was nothing more than a respectable but unknown tradesman who had experienced no extraordinary crises, whose few existing utterances were dull and insipid, and whose life seemed destined to remain as insignificant and unsung as ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... and passing, I saluted him, which he pleasantly returned, without a murmur as to the justice of the fine. Subsequently, on several occasions, he placed me under obligations to him for favors. Personally, insignificant as I may have been to him, he recognized in me for the time being a custodian of the majesty of the law, which he knew he had violated. When it shall happen as a rule and not as the exception that men will esteem, applaud and sustain the honest administration of the law, irrespective of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... lay below, hugging the river, a relic of the days when steamboats plied up and down the stream and railways were remote, a sleepy, insignificant, intensely rural hamlet of less than six hundred inhabitants. Its one claim to distinction was the venerable but still active ferry that laboured back and forth across the river. Of secondary importance was the ancient ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... looking back upon this scene conducted by candlelight in the front parlour, that my Mother was much baffled by the logic of my argument. She had gone so far as to say publicly that no 'things or circumstances are too insignificant to bring before the God of the whole earth'. I persisted that this covered the case of the humming-top, which was extremely significant to me. I noticed that she held aloof from the discussion, which was carried on with some show of annoyance by my Father. He had never gone quite ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... sold books with an assiduous devotion to business, never trusting to others what he could do himself. He was proud of his collection and its extent. He bought books and pamphlets at auction literally by the cart-load, every thing that nobody else wanted being bid off to Burnham at an insignificant price, almost nominal. He got a wide reputation for selling cheaply, but he always knew when to charge a stiff price for a book, and to stick to it. Once when I was pricing a lot of miscellaneous books picked out for purchase, mostly under a dollar a volume, we ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... moved. Her conceit, her abnormal all-embracing conceit was wounded—yes, even by so insignificant a creature as the Dean's Ernest; but she was also unexpectedly touched. She would have greatly preferred not to be touched, but there it was, she could not help herself. She did not know that, in all her life before, anyone had ever fought ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... from an insignificant province, from a despised race, proclaimed by a mere handful of ignorant workmen, demanding self-control and renunciation before unheard of, certain to arouse in time powerful enemies in the highly cultivated and critical society which it attacked, the odds against it were tremendous." (Ibid., ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... by thirty feet; in 1790 it missed the original mark at least sixty-five feet; in 1797, one hundred and fifty feet; and in 1806, nearly two hundred and fifty feet. These were "high-water" years. The "high waters" since then have been so insignificant that I have scarcely taken the trouble to notice them. Thus, you will perceive that the planters need not feel uneasy. The river may make an occasional spasmodic effort at a flood, but the time is approaching when it will cease ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... friendly, insignificant little Miss Murray was Miss Cottle, a large, dark, morose girl, with untidy hair, and untidy clothes, and a bad complexion. Miss Cottle was unapproachable and insolent in her manner, from a sense of superiority. She was ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... against Israel, for like a swarm of locusts he flew upon them; and the name furthermore designates the purpose of this enemy, who came to suck the blood of Israel. [137] This Amalek was a son of Eliphaz, the first-born son of Esau, and although the descendants of Jacob had been weaker and more insignificant in earlier times, Amalek had left them in peace, for he had excellent reasons to delay his attack. God had revealed to Abraham that his seed would have to serve in the land of the Egyptians, and had put the payment of this debt upon Isaac, and after his death, upon ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... golden valley meadows beside her peaceful little friend, she gathered a gradual resolution without sight of agencies or consequences, Lord Ormont was kept from her by the struggle to master his Charlotte a second time—compared with which the first was insignificant. And this time it was curious: he could not subdue her physique, as he did before; she was ready for him each day, and she was animated, much more voluble, she was ready to jest. The reason being, that she fought now on plausibly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... up to Mrs. Meldrum with arms flourished for an embrace. My immediate impression of her had been that she was dressed in mourning, but during the few moments she stood talking with our friend I made more discoveries. The figure from the neck down was meagre, the stature insignificant, but the desire to please towered high, as well as the air of infallibly knowing how and of never, never missing it. This was a little person whom I would have made a high bid for a good chance to paint. The head, the features, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... swiftly. Hazel explained, "They were interested in different things," and "Milly doesn't care for ideas, you know." Mrs. Fredericks, who considered herself to be in the flood-tide of the modern intellectual movement, had few moments to spare for her insignificant friend. Milly realized this with a touch of bitterness. "I can't do anything for her in any way. I can't help on her game." She knew that these ambitious, modern, intellectual women, with whom she had been thrown, had no use for people "out ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... the dying city with the wall of living green, north, west, and south, towering ever higher and preparing to carry out the sentence already passed, and the victim becomes insignificant in the presence of the executioner. I was reminded of the well where Gootes died for here except on one small side the grass rose like the inside of a stovepipe to the sky; but I suffered neither the same despair nor the unaccountable elation I had upon ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... arrived at the junction of the rivers and proceeded some way down the Sabaki, beside which the Tsavo looks very insignificant. Several islands are dotted about in mid-stream and are overgrown with tall reeds and rushes, in which hippo find capital covert all the year round. As with the Tsavo, the banks of the Sabaki are lined with trees of various kinds, affording most welcome shade from the heat of the ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... that an Austrian force had been reported approaching from the south, moving on Krupanie, and that it had seemed so insignificant that a small detachment of third reserve troops had been sent to hold it back. But this enemy force now developed into three ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... is the coral-insect of the South," said the voice within; "insignificant in himself, he rears a giant structure—which will yet cause the wreck of the ship of state, should its keel grate too closely on that adamantine wall. 'L'etat c'est moi,' said Louis XIV., and that 'slavery is the South' is as true an utterance. Our staple—our ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... overpowered. This demigod had brought HER a gift. He had thought about her—insignificant her! True, she had talked with him, had even taken walks with him, but those things had not been significant. It had seemed he merely condescended to the daughter of a martyr to his cause. He had been paying a tribute to her father. But a gift—a personal gift ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... of our language is numerous prose.' JOHNSON. 'Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose[742]. Before his time they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded.' Mr. Langton, who now had joined us, commended Clarendon. JOHNSON. 'He is objected to for his parentheses, his involved clauses, and his want of harmony. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the gloom from east to west, followed by one in the opposite direction. Without intermission, one blaze after another and thunder crashing until our eyes were blinded and our ears deafened, a thousand times ten thousand pieces of artillery thundered away. We seemed utterly helpless and insignificant. "How wonderful are Thy works," came to my mind. Still no wind; ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... of the girl was singularly compelling; there was something vividly impressive about her just now, though her pallid, prematurely mature face and the thin figure in the regulation black dress and white apron showed ordinarily only insignificant. "Tell me now," she repeated, with a monotonous emphasis that somehow moved Sarah to obedience against her will, greatly to ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... of the whereabouts of the treacherous hole in the drift, did I manage to keep on my legs. On gaining the opposite bank, I scooped up and drained off a helmetful of the precious fluid, and then urging on through the next ford—an insignificant one compared to the first—gained admission at Fermistone's hotel, after being duly cross-questioned through the keyhole of the door. Some hot tea and whisky was recommended by the host, and palatable ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... flightier substance notwithstanding her business talents, waved aside the remark as insignificant and without bearing upon ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... Scavenger-Executioners in French costume, for Count Rothenburg's behoof, made haste to load Gundling with Rathships, Kammerherrships, Titles such as fools covet;—gave him tolerable pensions too, poor devil, and even functions, if they were of the imaginary or big insignificant sort. Above all things, his Majesty dressed him, as the pink of fortunate ambitious courtiers. Superfine scarlet coat, gold buttonholes, black-velvet facings and embroideries without end: "straw-colored breeches; red silk stockings," ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... faces, and into the nostrils and eyes of the horses, filling every crevice in the carts. Fortunately, comparatively few take flight on a windy day, otherwise it would be impossible to make headway against such an infinite host in rapid motion before the wind, although composed individually of such insignificant members. The portions of the prairie visited by the grasshoppers wear a curious appearance. The grass may be seen cut uniformly to one inch from the ground. The whole surface is covered with the small, round, green exuviae of these destructive invaders. They frequently ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... it suits me to a dot. I begin, to-day, to entirely recast and re-write the first two-thirds—new plan, with two minor characters, made very prominent, one major character cropped out, and the Twins subordinated to a minor but not insignificant place. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cold moon of dawn hung over the westering snow fields but the golden fleeces of sunrise shone above the maples up at Ingleside. Joe took his pale little bride in his arms and she lifted her face to his. Rilla choked suddenly. It did not matter that Miranda was insignificant and commonplace and flat-featured. It did not matter that she was the daughter of Whiskers-on-the-moon. All that mattered was that rapt, sacrificial look in her eyes—that ever-burning, sacred fire of devotion and loyalty and fine courage that she ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... certain physical suffering. But of all agonies, none could approximate to that induced by Death. When that rumour reached her, she realized that hope had given her some measure of support, and how insignificant all other trouble is beside that awful blank, that mystery, whose single revelation is the houseless soul's unreturning flight from the only world we are sure of. When the contradicting rumour came, she clutched at hope and clung ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... herself what had she done to offend him; again and again she pondered over the smallest and most insignificant actions—the lightest words—of the past few weeks, in order to discover some clue to the mystery of ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... plant whose seed is much more beautiful than its flower. By the way, I have two, for the Spindle Tree is in seed, which has a quite insignificant blossom. But the plant I mean is a wild peony, which I dug up in a brake on the slopes of Helikon. It is a single white whose flower lasts, perhaps, three days. It makes a large seed-pod, which burst a short time ago, and revealed blue-black ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... a pioneer. He came to Victoria in 1859 and is one of the best informed men in the city concerning the history and material development of this portion of the province, and he himself has taken no insignificant part in affairs of a general public nature. He has written many reminiscences of early days in Victoria and is a recognized authority ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... need we affect surprise when the profounder domain of providence refuses to yield up its secrets? That the ways of God are mysterious is a logical necessity. The Infinite disparity between the human and the Divine intelligence involves it. Insignificant as a lady's finger ring may seem when compared to one of the mighty rings of Saturn, the human mind, in the presence of the Divine, is infinitely more so. Well hath the Scriptures said, "Far as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... world. "It can," he says, "not be charged as a crime upon natural science, that it has destroyed materials hitherto used by the poets. Such losses are of small consequence to the true poet, but may, indeed, be painful to the many dabblers in the poetic art, who think they have rendered the insignificant poetic by tricking it out in gewgaws from the poetic armory of a vanished era." The fifth, entitled, "The Existence of all things in the Domain of Reason," is the profoundest and most significant of these essays, and more than the others brings out in form as simple and popular as could ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the inauguration were concluded, Genghis Khan returned, with the officers of his court and his immediate followers, to Karakorom. This town, though nominally the capital of the empire, was, after all, quite an insignificant place. Indeed, but little importance was attached to any villages or towns in those days, and there were very few fixed places of residence that were of any considerable account. The reason is, ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... why, but these peculiarities, which some people call insignificant details, and some never notice at all, are for me the very places themselves. They rise instantly before my eyes when the name of the country is mentioned; just as when I was away the mere mention of the word "home" brought a vision of Bessmoor and its mysterious ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... ferry was greatly exaggerated, as usual on such occasions, by the friends of the movement. It was called "a great concourse of citizens," but Hamilton, who was then in Philadelphia, and whose truthfulness has never been questioned, placed the number at an insignificant figure. In a letter to a friend, he said, "It is seldom easy to speak with absolute certainty in such cases, but from all I could observe, or have been able to learn, I believe the number would be stated high at a hundred persons." Of a meeting convened at evening to receive Mr. Genet, Hamilton ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... we reached our destination upon Christmas Eve, weary and homesick; yet our Christmas dinner in this insignificant town was choice and recherche, the quality and variety of the wines being worthy of the cellar of a connoisseur. Our business success here was greater than in ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... silvered, and his cheek rosy as a December apple. His hazel eyes twinkled with satisfaction as he remembered the family had now produced two privy councillors. Lord Pomeroy was there, the great lord who had returned William Ferrars to Parliament, a little man, quite, shy, rather insignificant in appearance, but who observed everybody and everything; a conscientious man, who was always doing good, in silence and secrecy, and denounced as a boroughmonger, had never sold a seat in his life, and was always looking out for able men of character to introduce them to public affairs. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... all tourists in Switzerland naturally repair. Did it never occur to Mr Cooper that one young fool of an Englishman, during his tour, might have been the author of all these obnoxious remarks, and is the folly of one insignificant individual to be gravely commented upon in a widely disseminated work, so as to occasion or increase the national ill-will? Surely there is little wisdom and ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... not, for it does not often fall to the lot of mortal man to find in one little, insignificant figure, dwarfish alike in soul and body, such a compound of selfishness, duplicity, meanness, and vulgarity, as was centered in the object of ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... in the palm of his hand. Taken alone, each one was insignificant, proved nothing whatever. Taken all together, they assumed vast proportions, became convincing, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... man pitying his poor, dumb, unconscious companion, and the little dog that trots in to attend the morning prayers, because their life is so brief, and, more particularly, because it is so insignificant. He recognizes the feeble likeness between himself and them, and appreciates also the tremendous difference. He does not think that he would be glad to exchange his lot of labor and care for their carelessness and content, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... supposed to be, and the prospect of its speedy evacuation. Karaiskakes refused to move, answering each appeal by unreasonable demands upon Lord Cochrane for supplies of ammunition and provisions, which it was no part of his duty to supply out of the residue of the insignificant sum of 8,000l. supplied to him out of the Greek loan for naval purposes.[4] It may be that Karaiskakes—a bold and shrewd man—was not personally responsible for his inactivity. His army was little more ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... with my section about two hundred yards in front of the centre square, and sat down. They were standing in perfect order and steadiness, and I knew they would not disturb that steadiness to pick a quarrel with an insignificant section. I alternately looked at them, at the regiment, and up the hill to my right (rear), to see who was coming to ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... makers of a merely nominal marriage. Their mutual feelings towards each other were a quantity unknown to either; but about a third person they were equally outspoken and unanimous. Thus they had fewer disagreements than many a loving couple, and perhaps more points of insignificant contact, while all the time there was not even the pretence of love between them. Their lives made a chasm ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... will probably maintain; but fleet steamers are giving more southern ports a chance. Charleston, South Carolina, is second only in importance. In the spring of '79, every week four steamers were loaded for New York, and strawberries formed no insignificant proportion of the freight. Indeed, the supply from Charleston was so large that the price in April scarcely repaid the cost of some shipments. The proprietor of a commission house, largely engaged in the Southern fruit trade, told me he thought that about one third as many ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... that he would resign his place to another for whom they had more respect. This motion put the Great Chamber all in a ferment, which was felt in the Fourth, where the gentlemen of both parties hastened to support their respective sides, and if the most insignificant lackey had then but drawn a sword, Paris would have been all in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... here to-night stands at the bar to answer if chivalry or darkness inhabits his bosom. To judge us sits womankind in the form of one of its fairest flowers. In her hand she holds the prize, intrinsically insignificant, but worthy of our noblest efforts to win as a guerdon of approval from so worthy a representative ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... sisters were worshipers of soap and sand, and these two tutelary deities had kept every board of the house-floor white and smooth, and also every table and bench and tub of household use. There was a sacred care over each article, however small and insignificant, which composed their slender household stock. The loss or breakage of one of them would have made a visible crack in the hearts of the worthy sisters,—for every plate, knife, fork, spoon, cup, or glass was as ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... or notable cathedral, but its delightful Early English choir with its magnificent east window will ever redeem it from being insignificant or uninteresting. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... that his driver was always boss, and acted accordingly; but not so with Tuberculosis. He believed that his own judgment in certain matters of conduct was best. For instance, it was absolutely against his principles to ever cross a stream, no matter how well it was bridged or how insignificant its size. Yet, after many experiences, seasoned with a little strenuous persuasion from the end of an alder limb, he began slowly to change his views. However, he positively had no use for burned stumps, and when it came ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... from the coast one reaches the water-shed, or "divide" (an American term which South Africans have adopted), one finds that on the farther or northerly side there is very little descent. The peaks which when seen from the slopes towards the coast looked high and steep are on this inner side insignificant, because they rise so little above the general level of the plateau. This plateau runs away inland to the west and north-west, and occupies seven-eighths of the surface of South Africa. It dips gently on the north to the valley ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... provided her with money and necessaries. He had but few remaining hopes in his heart, but among them was the firmly implanted one that Petronelle was too insignificant to draw upon herself the terrible attention of the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... best friend—an insignificant little lady who sat at the foot of the table—told, in spite, of Louison's protest, how the latter had taken three poor seamstresses up to her own rooms, and had them sew the whole of the night before the fete in the hippodrome. She had given the poor girls coffee and ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... had a fixed focus, and was designed for looking at stars. Consequently, the field of vision was extremely narrow at the short distance across the water, and Rick could only manage to get Merlin and his small, insignificant-looking companion into the frame. What's more, they were upside down, as is common in reflecting telescopes. The boy knew there was an erecting prism in the case, a device that would put the image upright, but it couldn't be used with the camera. Anyway, it wouldn't ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Wanton; for she discovers not one pang of remorse till the last act, and that seems to arise more from the external distress to which she is then exposed, than to any compunctions of conscience. She still loves and doats on her base betrayer, though a most insignificant creature. In this character, Rowe has been true to the sex, in drawing a woman, as she generally is, fond of her seducer; but he has not drawn drawn a Penitent. The character of Altamont is one of those which the present ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... of God simply transforms and revolutionizes the entire scale of human experience. It simplifies all perplexities, it offers the solution for all problems. It illuminates the small and the apparently insignificant occurrences which, nevertheless, contrive to play so large and often so determining a part in our days, as well as places in high relief the great questions that beset one in his ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... That orbit, it tells us, passed through celestial spaces cold enough to chill this heated globe, and of course to consolidate it externally. We know, from the action of similar causes on a smaller scale and on comparatively insignificant objects immediately about us, what must have been the effect of this cooling process upon the heated mass of the globe. All substances when heated occupy more space than they do when cold. Water, which expands when freezing, is the only exception ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... of rifles and crash of shells, that I merely mechanically wake at the appointed hour, mechanically perform my duty and as mechanically fall asleep again. My ego has been crushed out of me, and I have become, doubtless, quite rightly so, an insignificant atom in a curious thing called a siege. No mortal under such circumstances, no matter how faithful to an appointed task, can put pencil to paper, and attempt to sketch the confusion and smoke around ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... however insignificant in the great world of politics and business, is one of pleasing interest to the friends of American science, and it has been thought proper that the following record of it should be preserved in a permanent form. I ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... on that point, Mr. Titmouse?" inquired Mr. Gammon, with a smile; "pray let us, my dear sir, at once proceed to your rooms—time is very short and valuable. I should vastly like to look at these same insignificant papers ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Coffee is of minor, almost insignificant, importance in the agriculture of Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina. In Uruguay the climate is altogether ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to Paecilasma and Lepas: in habits, also, this genus agrees with Scalpellum, and if it had possessed a lower whorl of valves, it would have quite naturally entered that genus. It is unfortunate, that so insignificant and poorly characterised a form should require a generic appellation. In natural position, it appears to lead from ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... with admiration for the sound of their own lecturing voices, visionaries who waste their lives on fantastic impossibilities, or quacks whose ambition soars no higher than our corns. Thus Society escapes, and the illimitable power of Chemistry remains the slave of the most superficial and the most insignificant ends. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... stricken patients. He was nevertheless guilty of a number of indiscretions which rendered him odious to a large proportion of the population. His pettiness of spirit was incessantly asserting itself. No person in the community, however insignificant, was beneath his wrath when his sense of personal dignity was wounded. On one occasion a wretched woman of intemperate habits and loose character was brought before him in the Mayor's Court. She was loquacious and abusive, and Mackenzie, in a rage, ordered her to be placed in the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... say, the mighty empires of Babylon and Nineveh and Phoenicia and Elam failed, while a little territory including the valley of the Jordan, called Palestine, containing a small and insignificant branch of the Semitic race, called Hebrews, developed a literature, language, and religion which exercised a most powerful influence in all civilizations ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... miserable system, how superior was England, as a land for the traveller, to all the rest of the world, Sweden only excepted! Bad as were the roads, and defective as were all the arrangements, still you had these advantages: no town so insignificant, no posting house so solitary, but that at all seasons, except a contested election, it could furnish horses without delay, and without license to distress the neighboring farmers. On the worst road, and on a winter's day, with no more than a single pair of horses, you generally ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... escaped the grounds and the cattle; I could not escape the house. A lady with silver hair, a slender silver voice, and a stream of insignificant information not to be diverted, led me through the picture gallery, the music-room, the great dining-room, the long drawing-room, the Indian room, the theatre, and every corner (as I thought) of that interminable mansion. There was but one place reserved, the garden-room, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dear, if I bid you think of it. I think of it,—more I know than I ought to do. I have been so placed that I could do but little good and little harm to others than myself. The females of a family such as ours, unless they marry, are very insignificant in the world. You who but a few years ago were a little school girl in Brotherton have now been put over all ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... cows, Howe attempted no offensive operations. As already shown, the regulars returned from Lechmere's Point as soon as the provincials assembled in numbers, and no attempt was made to hold the little hill. Other skirmishes there were from time to time, but these were insignificant, ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... but that is akin to the sexual instinct, and shares its barbarity: he lays before you also the greater gift of himself. To pursue his secret has something of the fascination of a detective story. It is a riddle which shares with the universe the merit of having no answer. The most insignificant of Strickland's works suggests a personality which is strange, tormented, and complex; and it is this surely which prevents even those who do not like his pictures from being indifferent to them; ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... An apparently insignificant event happened about this time, that set in motion influences of great moment, the effects of which are still to be felt and seen. Robert Davis' sister in Michigan was a regular subscriber to a religious journal. At this time she felt led to send ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... not been long in the country, sir," said Coja Solomon, with a shrewd look at Desmond, "and therefore you will find it hard to believe, perhaps, that these goods, so insignificant in bulk, are worth over two lakhs of rupees. A precious load indeed, sir. This delay is naturally a cause of vexation to my distinguished superior, but it is not due to any idleness or inattention on my part. It is caused by the surprising difficulty of getting ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... three moons; a big one, fifteen hundred miles in diameter, and two insignificant twenty-mile chunks of rock. The big one was fortified, and a couple of ships were in orbit around it. The Nemesis was challenged as she emerged from her last hyperjump; both ships broke orbit and ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... depended mainly upon Ferozepore for the supply of munitions of war. The fort had been allowed to fall into bad repair, and the mutineers had no difficulty in forcing their way inside; there, fortunately, they were checked by the wall which surrounded the arsenal, and this obstacle, insignificant as it was, enabled the guard to hold its own. Originally this guard consisted entirely of Native soldiers, but, as I have already recorded, after the outbreak at Meerut, Europeans had been told off for the charge of this important post; so strong, however, here as elsewhere, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... to suppose that all the solar heat is wasted save that minute fraction which is received by the earth. Out of every twenty million dollars' worth of heat issuing from the glorious orb of day, we on this earth barely secure the value of one single cent; and all but that insignificant trifle seems to be utterly squandered. We may say it certainly is squandered so far as humanity is concerned. No doubt there are certain other planets besides the earth, and they will receive quantities of heat to the extent of a few cents ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... to say here that, contrary to the general idea which exists, Her Majesty always expressed her thanks for any present or service rendered, no matter how insignificant. ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... acquiring tropical dependencies, and improvements in the means of communication were bringing all the races of the world into close contact. The ordinary man now finds that the sovereign vote has (with exceptions numerically insignificant) been in fact confined to nations of European origin. But there is nothing in the form or history of the representative principle which seems to justify this, or to suggest any alternative for the ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... any public measure for helping on the education of the people, Government were to abstain from introducing the element of religion at all into their part of the scheme; and this not because they held the matter to be insignificant,—the contrary might be strongly expressed in the preamble of their Act,{13}—but on the ground that, in the present divided state of the Christian world, they would take no cognizance of, just because they would ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... to him, an enormous percentage of the bird—were perfectly useless. He was now beginning to understand that sheep and cows were also hollow as far as good meat was concerned; the flesh they had was only a mouthful in comparison with what they ought to have considering their apparent bulk: insignificant, mere skin and bone covering a cavern. What right had they, or anything else, to assert themselves as so big, and prove so empty? And now this discovery of woman's falsehood was quite too much for him. The ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... dancer are far from insignificant to the character he is representing. Their expression should be strictly conformable to his subject. The eye especially should speak. Thence it is that the Italian custom of dancing with uncovered faces, cannot but be more ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... another example of the immense strides accomplished in the art of seed-saving. Formerly the colours were few, and the blossoms comparatively insignificant. Now the single strains produce large flowers, beautiful in form, including self colours and others which are striped, blotched, and veined, in almost endless diversity. Some are plain-edged, others elegantly fringed. The double varieties also come so nearly true to their types that there ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... a brief account of Abraham bar Hiyya's teaching, he thinks it is the duty of rational man to know how it is that man who is so insignificant was given control of the other animals, and endowed with the power of wisdom and knowledge. In order to gain this knowledge we must investigate the origins and principles of existing things, so that we may arrive at an understanding of things as they are. This the wise ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... still another personage, a very young man still, but a deep-thinking, hard-working student, fagging steadily at mathematics and deep in the works of Stevinus, who, before long, might play a conspicuous part in the world's great drama. But, previously to 1590, Maurice of Nassau seemed comparatively insignificant, and he could be spoken of by courtiers as a cipher, and as an unmannerly boy just let loose ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
