"Lack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... popular lectures and clear expositions he probably did more than any other man of the century to popularize the many and important discoveries of the scientific world. At first there was much opposition to him, owing to a lack of information on the part of the public as to the import of the doctrine of evolution. Ex-President Gilman of Johns Hopkins University tells what a storm of protest was raised in America when Huxley was invited to deliver the opening address at the founding of the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... many years. That she had had provocation I did not doubt. Adelaide, for all her virtues, was not an easy person to deal with. Upright and perfectly sincere herself, she had no sympathy with or commiseration for any lack of principle or any display of selfishness in others. A little cold, a little reserved, a little lacking in spontaneity, though always correct and always generous in her gifts and often in her acts, her whole nature would rise at any evidence of meanness or ingratitude, and though ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... through the heart of its guiding genius and through the hearts of us all. One who had seen him, as I did, stand uncovered in the presence of his new Washington hand-press, the day that dynamo of Light was erected in the Argus office, could never suppose him to lack humanity or the just ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... of Tree—circumference 4-1/2 ft. from the ground, probable age, height, limb spread; shape, tall, short; symmetry or lack of it. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... another's love,— Well, cherish it, but thou Its lack of strength and depth wilt prove, Should sorrow cloud thy brow. Though she may own a statelier form, A fairer cheek than mine, Her heart cannot so well and warm, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... and departed. Gutturals sounded lazily. The sergeant reappeared and behind him shuffled a native. Clad only in a dirty loin-cloth, his brown skin was wrinkled in scaly folds upon his chest and belly; his face was like an ancient tortoise; the small lack-lustre eyes were bloodshot and furtive; the limbs were almost fleshless. He squatted upon the ground and with lowered lids appeared to be absorbed in the contemplation of a white man's table leg. Zu Pfeiffer regarded ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... regarding them as pernicious substances, and likely to prove the ruin of mankind if brought into the light of day. I see that iron is brought out of the same dark pits as gold and silver, in order that we may lack neither the means nor the reward of murder. Thus far we have dealt with actual substances; but some forms of wealth deceive our eyes and minds alike. I see there letters of credit, promissory notes, and bonds, empty phantoms of property, ghosts of sick Avarice, with ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... sorry for having laughed when he told the story. He had not supposed that Donna Sabina knew much about the old agent, and after dinner he apologized to his ambassador for his lack of tact. ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... able, not after such a night; besides, I don't believe you could, anyhow. You're getting flabby from lack ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... first time that I might form an opinion about him myself. Unfortunately, the verses on which I happened to come were too deep for my intellect, and I had not the patience to read them twice. I was so absolutely sure of the power of my mind that I ascribed my lack of understanding to the poet. Then his poems were so different from the easy, rhythmic, oratorical verses on which I had been brought up. In Palamas, I missed those pleasant trivialities which attract a boy's mind in poetry. One thing, however, was clear to me ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... Barbadoes, to seek another place. Mr. Richard Denton, who is sound in faith, of a friendly disposition, and beloved by all, cannot be induced by us to remain, although we have earnestly tried to do this in various ways. He first went to Virginia to seek a situation, complaining of lack of salary, and that he was getting in debt, but he has returned thence. He is now fully resolved to go to old England, because his wife, who is sickly, will not go without him, and there is need of their going ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... out the soil. In any case we were mostly forced to disregard it. Perhaps a more fruitful source of failure even than the lack of loam was the attempt to apply calculation and mathematics to gardening. Thus, if one cabbage will grow in one square foot of ground, how many cabbages will grow in ten square feet of ground? Ten? Not at all. The answer is one. You will find ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... unbroken as usual. I should have imagined that a city, for generations taken possession of by English visitors, would by this time have fallen into our habit of respecting Sunday alike in the interests of man and beast. Of churches, both English and American, there is no lack. Let us hope that the Protestant clergy will turn their attention to this subject. Let us hope also that the entire English-speaking community will second their efforts in this direction. Further, I will ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Jacob had been told That there was corn in Egypt to be sold, He said unto his sons, Why stand ye thus? Go down to Egypt and buy corn for us; That so our craving stomachs may be fed, And not be here and die for lack of bread. Thus Jacob's ten sons were to Egypt sent, But Joseph's brother Benjamin ne'er went. For why, his father said, I will not send him, Lest peradventure some ill chance attend him. And Joseph's brethren ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... wide open. He lay silent for a time. "Barry, boy," he said, now almost fainting for lack of blood, "we have always been brothers, haven't we? even when we differed and fought when we were boys, eh? Nothing, nothing can unbrother you and me, Barry. I hand on all my rights to you ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... all? I doubted it. Of time they had scarcely the idea; of their own age they knew nothing! Lona herself thought she had lived always! Full of wisdom and empty of knowledge, she was at once their Love and their Law! But what seemed to me her ignorance might in truth be my own lack of insight! Her one anxiety plainly was, that her Little Ones should not grow, and change into bad giants! Their "good giant" was bound to do his best for them: without more knowledge of their nature, and ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... lower races of mankind, on the one hand, and of the anthropoid apes on the other, which will undoubtedly take place, the gulf will be greater than ever, since the baboons will then bound it on the one side, and the white races on the other. Little weight need be attached to the lack of fossil remains to fill up this gap, since the discovery of these depends upon chance. The last part of the chapter is devoted to a discussion of the earlier stages in the genealogy of man. Here Darwin accepts in ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... exercise her hypnotic control. For Alice, indeed, the Baroness entertained a peculiar affection. The fact that she was the child of the man to whom she had given the strongest passion of her life, and the girl's lack of personal beauty, and her unfortunate physical condition, awoke a medley of love, pity and protection in the ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a fuller and more intimate control be authorized. This was promptly granted and as promptly abused. Such limitations as the law still imposed upon encomendero power were made of no effect by the lack of machinery for enforcement. The relationship in short, which the law declared to be one of guardian and ward, became harsher than if it had been that of master and slave. Most of the island natives were submissive in disposition and weak in physique, and they were terribly driven ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... have gone without lights, for the fruits of the "patawa," already described, when submitted to pressure, yield a pure liquid oil, without any disagreeable smell, and most excellent for burning in lamps. So, you see, there was no lack of light ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... impulsively, "if you want a reliable man for the night, I am ready to sacrifice myself for my friend—such a soul as he has! I have long thought him a great man, excellency! My article showed my lack of education, but when he criticizes he ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Beverly Clarenden and Mat Nivers were sitting with their feet crossed under them, tailor fashion, facing each other and talking earnestly. Over by the fort, Esmond Clarenden stood under a big elm-tree. A round little, stout little man he was, whose sturdy strength and grace of bearing made up for his lack of height. Like a great green tent the boughs of the elm, just budding into leaf, drooped over him. A young army officer on a cavalry horse was talking with him ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... van division of nine ships, had got ahead of the rest and offered a tempting opening for attack in superior force. If de Grasse had grasped his opportunity he might have inflicted a crushing blow on Rodney and upset the balance of superiority. But the lack of aggressiveness in the French doctrine was again fatal to French success. De Grasse merely sent his second in command to conduct a skirmish at long range—and thus threw his ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... our father, "is because I fear thy power, and quail before the lightnings of thine eye—that I am faint is because I lack food." ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... mutinous way when the adjutant read the act the next day on dress parade, and tossed up their caps and shouted with the rest; but they did these things for the same reasons that impelled hundreds of others in camp to do them—because they knew it would not be safe to show any lack of enthusiasm. ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... he had; for he was sleeping sweetly, with open lack-lustre eyes, and a maudlin smile at the ceiling; while the negress, with her head fallen on her chest, seemed ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... hands dropped, the dancers' legs had grown stiff. Intoxication had cooled and given place to heaviness; lips were breathing feverishly. Only three couples were now turning in the middle of the room, then two, then none. There was a lack of arm-chairs for the men; the ladies hid their yawns behind their fans. At last the music ceased, and as no one said anything, a dead silence spread through the room. Candles began to splutter and ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... flavored shafts of sarcasm, he made no enemies and his kind heart and sterling honesty were respected far and near. He was considered a doubter and skeptic, and though seldom seen at church, as he had originally contributed his share when that edifice was built, his lack of ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... visible, they must shine; but there was a rich depth in her tones, which imparted to her lightest words an intonation of feeling, and told the hearer that her vocal chords were in close communication with her heart. Though her countenance did not lack the radiance of youthful gladness, there was so much thought mingled with its brightness that even her mirth conveyed the impression that she had suffered ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... inspiration to sing the wondrous experiences of the much-travelled man had come to him. The note struck in these lines is maintained throughout the remainder of the fragment. It is a note of ironic persiflage which is plainly indicated to the reader. In lack of a better Pegasus, a broomstick will serve the poet's purpose, and the reader is invited to take or leave the gibberish as he pleases. Then follows a description of the shoemaker, who is represented ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... they had to traverse. Besides the grog-shops already mentioned there were numerous coffee-houses, where, from diminutive cups, natives of temperate habits slaked their thirst and discussed the news—of which, by the way, there was no lack at the time; for, besides the activity of Osman Digna and his hordes, there were frequent arrivals of mails, and sometimes of reinforcements, from Lower Egypt. In the side-streets were many smithies, where lance-heads and knives were being forged by ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... groin, and think how many fires, how many kitchens, cooks, pastures, and ploughed lands; what orchards, stews, ponds and parks, coops and garners, he could spare; what velvets, tissues, embroideries, laces, he could lack; and then how short and uncertain his life is; he were in a better way to happiness than to live the emperor of these delights, and be the dictator of fashions; but we make ourselves slaves to our pleasures, and we serve fame and ambition, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... men that went up Caney Fork on a short trip, killed one hundred and five bears, seventy-five buffaloes, and eighty-seven deer, and brought the flesh and hides back to the stockades in canoes; so that through the winter there was no lack of jerked ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... time to take breath and order: the fewest of them ever got fairly ranked, none of them ever stood above one push: all goes rolling wildly back upon the centre about Leuthen. Chaos come on us;—and all for mere lack of time: could Nadasti but once stretch out one minute into twenty! But he cannot. Nadasti does not himself lose head; skilfully covers the retreat, trying to rally once and again. Not for the first few furlongs, till the ditches, till the firwood, quagmires are all done, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... the nest, and the nest itself disturbed as little as possible. Chemistry and electricity also appeal to a boy's love of experimentizing and of making electrical contrivances, easily constructed of the commonest materials. As to hand-work, the lack of which in ill-health has made so many a man a torment both to himself and others, there ought to be no difficulty with regard to that. Carpentering, wood-carving, repousse-work in metal, bent-iron work, mosaic work, any of these, except possibly the last, may ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... natives for pitching their canoes; the bark of the young branches is made by them into cloth; and of the wood, which is durable and of a good colour, they build their houses. So you see, lads, that we have no lack of material here to make us comfortable, if we are only clever enough ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... one after the other, until the whole place was in flames. Finally, we turned our attention to the seven dwelling-houses on the hillside. These proved, to our astonishment, to be most elegantly and sumptuously furnished in every respect, the only peculiarity noticeable being a lack of uniformity among the articles contained in some of the houses, plainly showing that they had been gathered together at different times and from different places. Evidences of female influence were abundantly ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... continuity of effort—without a certain duration or repetition of purpose—the soul is never deeply moved. There must be the dropping of the water upon the rock. De Beranger has wrought brilliant things—pungent and spirit-stirring—but, like all impassive bodies, they lack momentum, and thus fail to satisfy the poetic sentiment. They sparkle and excite, but, from want of continuity, fail deeply to impress. Extreme brevity will degenerate into epigrammatism; but the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... quite agree with you that England can put nothing worth calling an army in the field, and that it would be madness to send a fine regiment out of the country at the present moment. But everyone knows the lack of wisdom with which we are governed, and the miserable slowness of our military authorities. It is not likely even to occur to any one to countermand our orders, but it will certainly be disgusting in the extreme to have to start just at ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... very hard troublesome sorrows and worries, on which I suffer violently. I lost all my fortune, and I am ruined by Russia. I am here at present without means and dental practice, and my restaurant is impeded with lack of a few frivolous pounds. I do not know really what to do in my actual very disgraceful mischief. I heard the people saying Your propitious magnanimous beneficent charities are everywhere exceedingly well renowned and considerably gracious. Thus I solicit and supplicate Your ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... ought more warie bee. There thou must walke in sober gravitee, And seeme as Saintlike as Sainte Radegund: Fast much, pray oft, looke lowly on the ground, And unto everie one doo curtesie meeke: These lookes (nought saying) doo a benefice seeke, And be thou sure one not to lack or long. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... of Saint Augustine. He was the impersonation of intellect,—like Newton, Leibnitz, Spinoza, and Kant,—which overbore the impulses of his heart. He had no passions except zeal for orthodoxy. So pre-eminently did intellect tower above the passions that he seemed to lack sympathy; and yet, such was his exalted character, he was capable of friendship. He was remarkable for every faculty of the mind except wit and imagination. His memory was almost incredible; he remembered everything he ever read or heard; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... though they are not genuine feldspathic products they are highly esteemed and in demand everywhere. Now you must own, Theo, that I have given you a pretty complete outline of the pottery and porcelain-making of the European countries. Holland and Belgium, as I have told you, lack both clay and fuel and therefore had not a fair chance to compete with the other nations; but they did make some little porcelain. Sweden also turned out a little. Denmark gave a real contribution to the world in its ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... runs up to SPITTA and pushes and nudges the latter's arms and legs in order to produce the desired tragic pose.]—First of all, you lack the requisite statuesqueness of posture, my dear Spitta. The dignity of a tragic character is in nowise expressed in you. Then you did not, as I expressly desired you to do, advance your right foot from the field marked ID into that marked IIC! ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... popular writer in the whole course of English Literature thus far, is hardly to overstate his claims; and the principal reason is that, with a blundering and improvident nature, a want of dignity, a lack of coherence, he had a great heart, alive to human suffering; he was generous to a fault, true to the right, and ever seeking, if constantly failing, to direct and improve his own life, and these ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... place, he was greatly struck with the orderliness and civilization he found there. "I account this one of the best journeys I have made for many years," he says. Many little manufactures were carried on, in particular one of drums, which were used for lack of bells in some of the American settlements, as a ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... being closed by counter-currents. And if they closed, one after the other, more rapidly than the advance of the submarine, what was finally to become of the submarine crew? Would they not perish for lack of air? Dave did not share the cheerful mood of the Doctor and the crew; it was his ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... a great degree the complementary relation of highlands and lowlands. The plains possess what the mountains lack. This is a fundamental fact of economic geography, and inevitably leads to historical results. The marauding expeditions of mountain peoples first acquire historical importance, either when the raids after long continuance end in the conquest of the lowlands, and thus ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... he was gone, provoked to great contempt by her expression before him, "thou wilt make me despise thee in spite of my heart. But, pr'ythee, manage thy matters with common decency, at least."—"Good lack! Common decency, did you say? When my sister Polly is able to shew me what it is, I shall hope to be better for her example."—"No, thou'lt never be better for any body's example! Thy ill-nature and perverseness will continue to keep thee from that."—"My ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... community as a whole and engineered by the health officers. But health officers can do little toward the necessary work of inspection and elimination without funds, and therefore the support of the campaign must manifest itself in increased appropriations for public-health work. Very often it is lack of funds which prevents the health officers from taking the initiative in the antifly crusades, and there must necessarily be much agitation and education before they can profitably take up the work. Right here lies a field ...
— The House Fly and How to Suppress It - U. S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1408 • L. O. Howard and F. C. Bishopp
... To be so near to death has done me good; I shall not lack courage any more till the wind blows on my grave. Since I saw you, Monsieur, I have been in three Institutions. They are palaces. One may eat upon the floor—though it is true—for Kings—they eat too much of skilly there. One ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... first author read for pure pleasure? The answer is that the student would not then comprehend the stages of growth of the new world ideals, that he would not view our later literature through the proper atmosphere, and that he would lack certain elements necessary for a sympathetic comprehension ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... pushed open the door and slipped into the nearest seat by the fire just as the singing was concluded, and the Rev. John Birge began to read; and the words he read were about that strange old story of the great company and the lack of food, and the lad with the five barley loaves and two small fishes, and the multitude that were fed, and the twelve baskets of fragments that remained—story familiar in all its details to every Sabbath-school scholar in the land, but utterly new to Tode, falling on his ear for the first ...
— Three People • Pansy
... learning and virtue; but he resigned it and went into solitude that he might give his whole time to study. For years thereafter he lived alone in a hut among the mountains; studying without a fire in winter, and without a fan in summer; writing his thoughts upon the wall of his room—for lack of paper;—and using only ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... air and water pollution because of a lack of waste conversion equipment; Gulf of Riga and Daugava River heavily polluted; contamination of soil and groundwater with chemicals and ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... sticky taste and the relief of spring seems yet far away. After the desert air the steam heat was stifling and nauseating. Jack's head was a barrel about to burst its hoops; his skin drying like a mummy's; his muscles in a starchy misery from lack of exercise. He felt boxed up, an express package labelled and shipped. When he crawled into his berth at night it was with a sense of giving himself up to asphyxiation at the whim of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... in an object which its sensuous attributes might permit one to discover in it. In the case of the man with the so-called untrained sense, therefore, it is questionable whether the failure to see, hear, etc., is in many cases so much a lack of ability to use the particular sense, as it is a lack of practical interest in this phase of the objective world. In such processes as induction and deduction, also, it is often the external relations of objects rather than their sensory qualities that chiefly interest us. Indeed, ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... change from my well-appointed lodgings in Cambridge and my luxurious surroundings at the Cock and Supr to a distinctly shabby theatrical boarding-house, where the guests plainly exhibited traces of the lack of proper ablutional facilities and the hallways smelt of cabbage and onions, was a distinct shock to my highly sensitive tastes. However, my new acquaintances proved warm-hearted and hospitable and did everything in their power to make me feel at my ease, with ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... am I thus than I was then!" The persons who heard me speak these words reported them to the castellan. He was greatly annoyed, and exclaimed: "Ah, God! that fellow lives and triumphs in his infinite distress, while I lack all things in the midst of comfort, and am dying only on account of him! Go quickly, and fling him into that deepest of the subterranean dungeons where the preacher Foiano was starved to death. [1] Perhaps when he finds himself in such ill plight he will ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... wealth and power to helpless indigence; Extravagance to trenchant penury, And all extremes of want and misery. Some blest by wealth, some cursed by poverty; Some in positions neutral to them both; Some wore a gaunt and ill-conditioned look Which told its tale of lack of nourishment; While others showed that irritated air Which speaks of gout and pampered appetite; Some following vocations quite reverse From those which nature had endowed them for; Some passed with face self-satisfied and calm, As if the world bore nothing else but joy; ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... habit grew on him with years. His methods of work were homely and painstaking, reminding us somewhat of Lincoln; and the laborious carefulness of his military plans seemed to European critics to imply a lack of genius. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... a generation or so back, for boys to take quite an embarrassing interest in the newcomer. He was asked a rain of questions, and was, generally, in the very centre of the stage. Nowadays an absolute lack of interest is the fashion. A new boy arrives, and there he is, ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... now very low indeed; we were reduced to just a few scraps. Fortunately, however, we caught two seals and four emperor penguins, and next day forty adelies. We had now only forty days' food left, and the lack of blubber was being keenly felt. All our suet was used up, so we used seal-blubber to fry the meat in. Once we were used to its fishy taste we enjoyed it; in fact, like Oliver Twist, we ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... solacing himself with these sights which captured the vision, till he chanced to cast a glance at the window which Alaeddin by design had left unwrought and not finished like the rest; and, when he noted its lack of completion, he cried, "Woe and well away for thee, O window, because of thine imperfection;"[FN184] and, turning to his Minister he asked, "Knowest thou the reason of leaving incomplete this window and its framework?"—And Shahrazad ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Street filled him up to the brim with contempt for politicians. It was not so much their want of brains that troubled him, but their total lack of character. Only here and there did he come across a man who had the properties of leadership in even a minor degree: for the most part they had no eyes for the horizon or for the hills whence cometh man's salvation; they were all ears, and those ears were ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... good taste in Fashion which repels the mere insolence of flank—which requires persons to be either agreeable, or brilliant, or at least original—which weighs stupid dukes in a righteous balance and finds vulgar duchesses wanting. But in lack of this new authority this moral sebastocrator between the Sovereign and the dignity hitherto considered next to the Sovereign's—her Grace of Winstoun exercised with impunity the rights of insolence. ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... returned to his home circle garrulous about his Russian strike experiences, but oppressively reticent about certain dark mysteries, which he alluded to under the resounding title of Siberian Magic. The reticence wore off in a week or two under the influence of an entire lack of general curiosity, and Leonard began to make more detailed allusions to the enormous powers which this new esoteric force, to use his own description of it, conferred on the initiated few who knew how to wield it. His aunt, Cecilia Hoops, who loved sensation perhaps rather better than she loved ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... to him to see there those who had been so kind to him. Had he known when they would arrive, food would have been ready for them; and he assured them that, however long they might stay, they would be most heartily welcome, and that there should be no lack of provisions. They had done an immense service to him, and to all the other chiefs on the river, by breaking up the power of one who preyed upon all his neighbors, and was a scourge to trade. As there were ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... Connolly soon fled to Europe. Sweeny afterwards settled for $400,000 and returned. Hall's case was presented to a grand jury which proved to be packed. A new panel was ordered but failed to return an indictment because of lack of evidence. Hall was subsequently indicted, but his trial resulted in ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... more interesting as the lack of news from the investigators restored a sort of hopeful optimism to the breasts of the anxious company. Those who had maintained a stubborn air of bravado, now became almost offensively jaunty. Others, frankly terrified at the outset, sauntered ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... prisoner who did the honours: Caesar was charmingly courteous; the governor thought he would profit by this lack of restraint to put to him certain questions as to the manner of his arrest, and asked him as an Old Castilian, for whom honour is still of some account, what the truth really was as to Gonzalvo's and Ferdinand's breach of faith, with him. Caesar appeared extremely inclined to give him ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... characterized by its low specific gravity, light color, lack of fibrous structure, blowpipe reactions, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... arming the slaves; and to incite them to insurrection without arms, and without the certainty of support at first and protection afterward, would be merely sacrificing them to no good end. It is true, the war may lack the ardent stimulus that would for a time be imparted to it by a direct and obvious moral purpose. But we doubt whether the impulse thus gained would hold out long against the immense practical obstacles with which it would be confronted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... the truth of the latter prediction by springing off his bed and regarding his visitors keenly. There was now, at all events, no lack of sanity ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... fourth quarter of the sixteenth century until the date of Abel Tasman's voyages, 1642 to 1644, there was a period of vague speculation about a supposed great southern continent. The maps of the time indicate the total lack of accurate information at the disposal of their compilers. There was no general agreement as to what this region was like in its outlines, proportions, or situation. Some cartographers, as Peter ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Plagal Modes. These modes, called Phrygian, Dorian, Lydian, etc., are merely different presentations in the regular order of the notes of the C Major scale—first, with D as the initial or tonic note, then with E et seq. They lack the sentiment of a leading seventh note. In these weird keys Plain Song was conceived for psalms, graduals, introits, and other offices of the primitive church. Such music was generally called Gregorian, ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... into the most deplorable and wretched conditions. Our animals, owing to lack of fodder, began to give in. Scores of these we had to leave behind, some of them in excellent condition, but so starved that they could proceed no farther. The result was that hundreds of burghers had to walk, and they suffered ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... after reaching middle age, are usually heavy and lack agility, but my grandmother was in this also an exception. She was fully sixty when I was born; and when I was seven years old she swam across a swift and wide stream, carrying me on her back, because she did not wish to ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... for him (whether she acknowledged this or not) and because he did not come, Angela thought of the man every moment, without being able to put him out of her mind. He had shown such astonishing tact as well as pluck last night, and was so good-looking, that his very lack of cultivation made him more interesting as a study. She would have liked to ask the hotel people about him; whence he came and what was his name; but, of course, she did nothing of the sort. All she did was to make various pretexts for lingering in the hall till nearly luncheon time; and then ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... a hard one in Baileyville, the manufacturing village where they lived. Most of the mills were running on half time and many of the employes had been turned away for lack of work. In consequence worry and uncertainty hung over everybody. Who would be the next to go, they speculated. One never could predict where the axe would fall, or be sure he might not be the victim elected ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... batteries without firing at them. They came to anchor off Constantinople, and while there some attempts at negociation were renewed on shore. These negociations, however, were all rendered abortive, partly by the skill of the French envoy, Sebastiani; partly by the lack of ability in our ambassador, Mr. Arbuthnot; partly by the victories that Napoleon was gaining over the Austrians and Russians; and partly by the neutral ground which the Austrian envoy took, and the shuffling and tergiversation of the ministers of Spain and Holland. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... then calling in pantomime to aid his lack of French, he produced the first letter Jack had ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Tattlesnake, Voice, City, Desdemona, Bullfrog, and Yellow Boy claims. Del Nelson, astounded by his achievement, within the year drowned himself in an enormous quantity of cheap whisky, and, the will being incontestible through lack of kith and kin, left his ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... conciliation is the direct appeal to a dominant emotion. If an arguer can find some common ground on which to meet his audience, some emotion by which they may be moved, he can usually obtain a personal hold that will overcome hostility and lack of interest. In deciding what emotion to arouse, he must make as careful and thorough a study of his audience as he can. In general, the use of conviction need vary but little to produce the same results on different men; processes of pure reasoning ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... and was about to reply with a sarcastic compliment upon the elegance of his illustration, when a look of pain upon Miss Warren's face checked me, and I said nothing. Lack of delicacy was one of Mr. Hearn's gravest faults. While courtly, polished, and refined in externals, he lacked in tact and nicety of discrimination. He often said things which a finer-fibred but much worse man ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... The lack of air is considered by many astronomers to furnish the explanation of the enormous number of "craters" which pit the moon's surface. There are about a hundred thousand of these strange rings, and ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... the battalion met a French Infantry Regiment on the march. The French regiment's road discipline was rather more lax than the British, and many tolerantly amused criticisms were passed on the loose formation, the lack of keeping step, and the straggling lines of the French. The criticisms, curiously enough, came in a great many cases from the very men in the Towers' ranks who had often "groused" most at the silliness ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... Willy, whose lack of reserve and extreme indiscretion his friends accepted good-naturedly, "is a ruined officer of the Austrian army. He ran away from his gambling debts. I don't know whether he got out of the army or was put out. At any ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the discussion was concerning Agatha's lack of vanity; a virtue not very common at that time among the women ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... pass through two phases. First, the inertia of the unorganized labor is too often stirred only by demagogic means. After organization through these and other agencies, the lack of balance in the leaders often makes for injustice in demands, and for violence to obtain them and disregard of agreements entered upon. As time goes on, men become educated in regard to the rights of their employers and to the reflection of these rights in ultimate ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... Cursed be these twisted lanes! I have missed the clue Of the close labyrinth. Nowhere in sight, Just when I lack it, a stray gaberdine To pick me up my thread. Yet when I haste Through these blind streets, unwishful to be spied, Some dozen hawk-eyes peering o'er crook'd beaks Leer recognition, and obsequious caps Do kiss the stones to ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... hundred men in a small ship meant crowded quarters, and lack of room everywhere except on the fighting deck. But as the fleets hugged the shore, and generally lay up for the night, the crews could mostly land to cook, eat, and sleep. In the Persian ships belonging to many nations, and some of them to the Greek cities of Asia, Xerxes took the precaution ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... result of a system which assumes for its starting-point that desire is evil in itself, that every desire is per se a form of bondage, independently of the nature of its object. The majority of the followers of this philosophy may lack sufficient resolution to carry it out rigorously to its practical conclusions; but whether their ideal is to be realised in this world or in some other, the utter extinction of desire means nothing else than absolute apathy, without feeling ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... what all this means? Why did you excuse the chief of police, who evidently had not done his duty and been guilty of a lack of vigilance? And why did you let these rascals go, instead of having them ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... pity that there is such a lack of enterprise in the various European settlements on the East Coast of Africa. Were it otherwise a large trade in valuable woods and other products would assuredly spring up. Ebony and lignum vitae abound; Dr. Livingstone used ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... the last analysis, would it not show a lamentable lack of logic, if one were glad to have it otherwise? It is inconsistent to love life, and none the less to endeavor constantly with every possible device to drag it over to your side, to win it over to the finesses and melancholies, the entire diseased nobility ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... summoned to the skies. Said Peter: "Your intentions Are good, but you lack enterprise Concerning ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... was as dirty as it is possible to be, while still making it just about possible to do the OCR and subsequent editing. This latter was very hard work. The scans came from the Canadiana Online collection. No doubt there is a reason for this lack of quality. But there was a reason for persevering with the editing process, endless as it seemed to be for several weeks, and that was that I do believe this book to be very great literature, even though it has not hitherto been recognised as such by the world ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... landing of a mustang pony which he had gotten for me in Mexico, and which had been shipped from Vera Cruz to Baltimore in a sailing vessel. I was all eyes for the pony, and a very miserable, sad-looking object he was. From his long voyage, cramped quarters and unavoidable lack of grooming, he was rather a disappointment to me, but I soon got over all that. As I grew older, and was able to ride and appreciate him, he became the joy and pride of my life. I was taught to ride on him by Jim Connally, the faithful Irish servant ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... charge the nobles of France with lack of bravery. The only charge was that their bravery was almost sure to shun every useful form, and to take every noxious form. The bravery which finds outlet in duels they showed constantly; the bravery which finds outlets in street fights they had shown from the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... so long as he has not achieved the maturity that comes with pairing-time. Even in this initial stage the word "worm" is out of place. We French have the expression "Naked as a worm" to point to the lack of any defensive covering. Now the Lampyris is clothed, that is to say, he wears an epidermis of some consistency; moreover, he is rather richly coloured: his body is dark brown all over, set off with pale ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Meredith had been loud and frequent in complaints over his lack of stock and labour with which to cultivate his farm. Had he been better situated, however, it is probable that his groans would have been multiplied fivefold, for he would have seen whatever he did rendered ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... didn't catch them, it wasn't for lack of trying," said Herb. "People looked at me as though they thought I was crazy when I asked them questions about the fellows we were after. I didn't even know enough about them ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... suffering, just as the city is suffering, from a lack of that purposeful organization which will order the parts aright and subject the processes to the most important and ultimate purposes. The city is simply an aggregation of persons, scarcely having any conscious organization, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... manners, or as signifying some horrible immorality, in which case the offender would not have the chance of repeating his well-intentioned mistake. But within the limits of Western enlightenment to bow is mere civility, and may be taken as a preface to conversation; to omit it is to show lack of breeding and to court hostility. Therefore, N.B. Rule in travelling—Bow to everybody. And this, by the way, is, after all, only Sir Pertinax Macsycophant's receipt for getting on in the world by "boo'ing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... they might marry. But in the thirties they have visions of the future which are deeply disturbing; and in the forties they face the tragedy of a lonely old age. Some men and women there must always be whose lives lack the fulfilment of family life because of ill health or the accidents of personal relations. But most women, if they are willing to pay the same price for a significant family life that they so gladly pay for professional success, will find the ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... plotting minds cannot understand the spiritual and the holy; sinful souls are out of harmony with the virtuous; the children of darkness cannot find peace with the children of light. And not only is there a lack of sympathy in the worldly-minded for the men and women who are led of God, but there is often positive hatred for them—a hatred which spends itself in actual, persistent persecution. To be devout, to refrain from sinful words and sinful deeds, to shun the vain and dangerous ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... artificially reared on chopped meat and other soft foods, suffer from a lack of development in the stomach walls, and also, probably, in the rest of their digestive apparatus. The first case I saw of the stomach of an artificially reared trout was a two-year-old trout, upon which Dr. ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... often the vine-grower is so ignorant of his business that he shows one wine which is 'tart' and 'sour,' and even praises it. I find those wines are generally exceeding three years old, and I attribute it to the lack of cellar knowledge and treatment, because in the same cellar where I find large quantities of bad wine I find this year's and last year's wine good, and promising well; but if longer kept, and so treated, after a few years it ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... them here to keep it, / for ne'er the same I'll touch. Yea brought I from my country / of mine own wealth so much, That we upon our journey / may be full well supplied, And ne'er have lack in outlay / as in ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... a man endowed with the gift of receiving direct impressions of life and things, of perceiving especially the deeper and more fundamental truths of existence intuitively instead of intellectually. Such perceptions, he admitted, might lack the apparent clarity of reasoned conclusions, but would approach nearer to the truth. For life must be understood from within, must be spiritually discerned. It could never be comprehended by mere intellect or catalogued by ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... to the inferior class of servants, laundress, sempstress, chambermaids, and the like, who had much more liberty than their betters, and not such a lack of occupation as Anne soon perceived ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and has to be pumped. He doesn't lose the thread of the discourse. His failure to talk on details of his early life seem to the interviewer due to unwillingness rather than lack of memory. While his age is advanced, his mind is sharp for one who ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... of the evils of international finance runs any risk of being "gravelled for lack of matter." The theme is one that has been copiously developed, in a variety of keys by all sorts and conditions of composers. Since Philip the Second of Spain published his views on "financiering and unhallowed practices ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... so very much more to tell, Mona—it is the oft repeated story of too much love and trust on the part of a pure and lovely woman, and of selfish pleasure and lack of principle on the part of the man who won her. When your mother was eighteen—just your age to-day, dear—she fell in love with Richmond ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the Apostle thinks of his lack of like-minded companions as being a reason for depriving himself of the only like-minded one who was left with him. He felt that Timothy's sympathetic soul would truly care for the Philippians' condition, and would minister to it lovingly. He could rely ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you didn't come, because I might...." Bostil broke off his speech and began again. "You don't lack nerve, Slone. What'd you have to ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... stretches had to be traversed on horseback. The country along the seaboard was generally well supplied with food, but the supply was nowhere near large enough to furnish regular permanent subsistence for an army. A lack of munitions seriously threatened the Colonists' ability to fight at all, but the discovery of lead in Virginia made good this deficiency until the year 1781, when the lead ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... conditions have so much to do with success in both fields that they must be considered by both. The three processes are not only interrelated, they are interlaced, intertwined, as the strands of a braided cord. And just as the cord would be incomplete, just as it would lack strength, if any of the strands were to be omitted, or if the braiding were to be haphazard, so the life would be incomplete, one-sided, weak, should these three processes not go on side by side under the fostering care of an intelligent unifying agency. Indeed, if there is ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... of ammunition and supplies will be sent with the troops, so that they may not suffer from lack of material ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 24, June 16, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... in the presence of persons of high standing, found it impossible to forget his humble birth, and suspected that in some way there was always a lack of gentility about him; while with companions of more modest pretensions he must maintain the distant dignity which he fancied appertained ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... Does he choose beggars as the representatives of substance because they lack ambition—that being shadow? Or does he take them as the shadows of humanity, that, following Rosincrance, he may get their shadows, the shadows therefore of shadows, to parallel monarchs and heroes? But he is not satisfied with his own analogue—therefore ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... out into the air a wavering, quavering, doleful lamentation which seemed to lack strength to unfold itself, and yet flagged on; at the sound of which doors in back streets burst sullenly open; workmen ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... already gliding about the wharf awaiting the head steersman's signal. I had last seen him on the church steps and ran back from the river to learn the cause of his delay. Now Hamilton is not a Catholic; neither is he a Protestant; but I would not have good people ascribe his misfortunes to this lack of creed, for a trader in the far north loses denominational distinctions and a better man I have never known. What, then, was my surprise to meet him face to face coming out of the chapel with tears coursing down his cheeks and floor-dust thick upon ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... history,—they were also their Bible, their treasury of religious traditions and moral teaching. With the Bible and Shakespeare, the Homeric poems are the best training for life. There is no good quality that they lack: manliness, courage, reverence for old age and for the hospitable hearth; justice, piety, pity, a brave attitude towards life and death, are all conspicuous in Homer. He has to write of battles; and he delights in the joy of battle, and ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... did not tell them stories, and he stared at me; if he did not teach them history, and he said, 'O yes, they had a little Scripture history— from the New Testament'; and repeated his lamentations over the lack of results. I had not the heart to put more questions; I could but say it must be very discouraging, and resist the impulse to add that it seemed also very natural. He looked up—'My days are far spent,' he said; 'heaven awaits me.' May that heaven forgive me, but I was angry with the old man and ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... through the water was a revelation to us all, especially when the wind fell quite light, as it did toward the close of the afternoon. Then, indeed, when our speed had dwindled to about four knots, and our canvas collapsed at every roll of the vessel for lack of wind to fill it, we were able to hold our own with the brig; while still later, when the wind had fallen so light that the horizon had become invisible and the oil-smooth surface of the ocean showed ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... intended to secure for science a foothold in the workshop, to assist with the light of reasoned theory the progress of arts and industry, till then fettered by many a prejudice and hindered through lack of knowledge; on the other hand, they sought to raise that part of the nation engaged in industry to such a love of culture as would secure to it its ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... lack of convincing evidence, but rather a feeling of curiosity, that prompts them to call for the reading of the letter, which the hunter now holds conspicuously in his hand. Its contents may have no bearing upon the case. Still it can be no harm ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... fitted to assume the position of the first lady of the town. Peggy, moreover, possessed a will of her own. This was revealed to him more than once during their few meetings, and if proof had been wanting, the lack was now abundantly supplied. She would make an ideal wife, and he resolved to enter ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... and the Russian had both been wounded, and were in a French field hospital at the time the newspaper account of their adventures went to press. Neither were badly hurt, but they were extremely weak from lack of food and loss of blood, to say nothing of old wounds scarcely healed when they had started on their dash for freedom. The Russian officer (said to be a nephew of Prince Sanzanow, Russia's ambassador to England) considered that he owed his life to the aviator; and it was believed ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... said the man in black, addressing the farmer, "politeness is but a very shadow, as the poet hath it, if the heart be wanting. I saw, to-night, in a strictly polite family, so marked a presumption of the lack of that natural affection of which politeness is but the portraiture and semblance, that truly I have been grieved in my ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... of anything before him. The things he saw were not the things around him. He was moving in a multitude again. He was walking among them with pity in his heart—a great pity for their ignorance, their lack of vision; and he was giving them knowledge and restoring light to their eyes, to widen their range of vision, so that they could take things in their true perspective. He was full of a great sympathy for their shortcomings, recognizing ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... would have done more to commend the doctrine than a ton of dogmatic self-confidence. 'Hear it, and know thou it for thyself.' Take it into thy mind. Take it into thy mind and heart, and take it for thy good. It was a frosty ending, exasperating in its air of patronage, of superior wisdom, and in its lack of any note of feeling. So, of course, it set Job's impatience alight, and his next speech is more desperate than his former. When will well-meaning comforters learn not to rub salt into wounds while they seem ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... public speaker, his ideas were not diffuse enough; or rather, he appeared to lack fluency to make a long, and what is called an elaborate argument upon any matter, however grave or momentous. In a cause in which he was employed as associate counsel with General Hamilton, an incident occurred, in relation to Chief Justice Yates, not unworthy recording. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... home-like quality. Some of the best are richly adorned, but there is a certain bareness and an absence of color. As is usual with customs unlike our own, and which we are therefore prone to regard as inferior to ours, there are excellent reasons for Cuban interior decoration, or rather the lack of it. A little experience, or even a little reflection, shows clearly the impossibility of anything resembling American house decoration in such a climate as that of Cuba. Our warm colors, hangings, upholstered furniture, rugs, and much else that we regard as essential in northern ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... though he be the possessor of much assurance, is sadly deficient in manners; and no doubt the super-abundancy of the former is caused by the great lack ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... kept him where he was. To fail at the last moment for lack of perseverance would have been utterly uncharacteristic of him. It was his custom to stand his ground to the ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell |
