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Lesser   Listen
adjective
Lesser  adj.  Less; smaller; inferior. "God made... the lesser light to rule the night." Note: Lesser is used for less, now the compar. of little, in certain special instances in which its employment has become established by custom; as, Lesser Asia (i. e., Asia Minor), the lesser light, and some others; also in poetry, for the sake of the meter, and in prose where its use renders the passage more euphonious. "The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace." "The larger here, and there the lesser lambs." "By the same reason may a man, in the state of nature, punish the lesser breaches of the law."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lesser" Quotes from Famous Books



... attractive, if not the most beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of the woods, is White Pond;—a poor name from its commonness, whether derived from the remarkable purity of its waters or the color of its sands. In these as in other respects, however, it is a lesser twin of Walden. They are so much alike that you would say they must be connected under ground. It has the same stony shore, and its waters are of the same hue. As at Walden, in sultry dog-day weather, looking down through the woods on some of its bays which are not so deep but that the reflection ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... complete absence of all light: and upon that indescribable blackness they beheld superimposed the almost unbearable brilliance of enormous suns concentrated into mathematical points, dimensionless. Sirius blazed in blue-white splendor, dominating the lesser members of his constellation, a minute but intensely brilliant diamond upon a field of black velvet—his refulgence unmarred by any ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... escaped from the hunter as he cast his eyes upward. It was a peculiarity in the form of the rocks that had caused him to utter them. He noticed that the lesser one had a sloping ridge that could be easily ascended; and from its highest point the top of the larger might also be reached by ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... warmly plied the French Admiral, that she forced him out of his three-decked wooden castle, and chasing the Royal Sun, before her, forced her to fly for shelter among the rocks, where she became a prey to lesser vessels, and was reduced to ashes. At last, in the reign of William III., the Sovereign became leaky and defective with age; she was laid up at Chatham, and being set on fire by negligence or accident, she burnt ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... L——. My niece Charlotte is not my only niece. I wish you, my dear, as if this was your day of marriage, all happiness; accept these two papers: [The one, Lucy, was a note for 1,000L. and the other for 100L.:] and he said, The lesser note is due to you for interest on ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... was always there; it swung grandly along through the shrill whistling of the storm-wind, the rattling patter of the rain, and the boom and crash of the thunder; it wound soft and low through the lesser sounds, the distant ones, such as the throbbing of the convent bell, the melodious winding of the hunter's horn, the distressed bayings of his dogs, and the solemn chanting of the monks; it rose again, with a jubilant ring, and mingled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... night's temporary camp, and farther on a grove of beautiful pines from which came the sharp ring of the ax. Wider gaze took in a wonderful park, not only surrounded by lofty crags, but full of crags of lesser height, many lifting their heads from dark-green groves of trees. The morning sun, not yet above the eastern elevations, sent its rosy and golden shafts in between the towering rocks, to tip ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... saw Thurid pushing out upon the bosom of the shimmering water in a small skiff—one of those strangely wrought craft of unthinkable age which the Holy Therns, with their organization of priests and lesser therns, were wont to distribute along the banks of the Iss, that the long journey of their ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... A lesser wave swept towards them. It tossed those wooden legs, dreadfully sporting with them, and ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... tried to branch out on all sides, and overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have tried to overmaster other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was small, budding twigs; and this connection of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... including lesser ones, between telling and reading is that the teller is free; the reader is bound. The book in hand, or the wording of it in mind, binds the reader. The story-teller is bound by nothing; he stands or sits, free to watch his audience, free to follow or lead ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... Ronder, laughing. "This drive comes worse on you than myself, I fancy. You're bonier.... What a splendid figure the Bishop is! A great man—really, a great man. There's something about a man of that simplicity and purity of character that we lesser men lack. Something ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... can hear Of human mould with grosse unpurged ear; And yet such musick worthiest were to blaze The peerles height of her immortal praise, Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit, If my inferior hand or voice could hit Inimitable sounds, yet as we go, What ere the skill of lesser gods can show, I will assay, her worth to celebrate, 80 And so attend ye toward her glittering state; Where ye may all that are of noble stemm Approach, and kiss her sacred ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... really superior in its line claims my homage, and this man was the ideal bar-tender, above all vulgar passions, untouched by commonplace sympathies, himself a lover of the liquid happiness he dispenses, and filled with a fine scorn of all those lesser felicities conferred by love or fame or wealth or any of the roundabout agencies for which his fiery elixir ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... "We must necessarily pass through the straits of Gibraltar to get out of the Mediterranean; but as we proposed to examine into the different situations of the lesser divisions of water, first, we will merely sail through a portion of the Atlantic, and have a little information concerning the Bay ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... the Histoire du Peuple Israel, in which scholarship broad, though at times inaccurate in minor details, was supplemented by an exquisite acuteness and a poetic insight which far more than made good any of those lesser errors which a German student would have avoided. At his death, in October, 1892, this monumental work had been finished. In clearness and beauty of style it has never been approached by any other treatise on this or any kindred subject: it is a work of genius; ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... compliment to the lady mayoress and her suite.(179) The number of nobles invited was so great that there was scarcely room for the customary representatives from the principal livery companies, and none at all for members of the lesser companies. The latter were asked to take their exclusion in no ill part, as it was a sheer matter of necessity.(180) Before leaving the Elector was presented on behalf of the city with a bason and ewer weighing 234-3/4 ozs., and a "dansk pott chast and cheseld" weighing 513-5/8 ozs., and engraved ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... visitor to that establishment, and that she had lost in one night some 6,000 pounds. In these circumstances it was remarkable, thought T. X., that she should report to the police so small a matter as the petty pilfering of servants. This, however, she had done and whilst the lesser officers of Scotland Yard were interrogating pawnbrokers, the men higher up were genuinely worried by the lady's own ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... fleet, and on August 14, 1816, the expedition, including his own flagship the Queen Charlotte of 120 guns, the Impregnable of 98, three vessels of 70 guns, the Leander of 50, four smaller frigates and several armed vessels of lesser tonnage, sailed from Gibraltar. One of these, a gunboat, towed by the Queen Charlotte from that port, was placed under the command of Charles Yorke, who had just completed his seventeenth year. The English admiral's force was joined at Gibraltar by ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... for careless and hasty work is not confined to the lesser men. Howells and Hardy have gone with the crowd. Now that Stevenson is dead I can think of but one English speaking author who is really keeping his self-respect and sticking for perfection. Of course I refer to that mighty master of language ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... spinning or live bait, for great lake trout (Jerox) a small fish of their own species and for smaller trout a minnow. There are numberless artificial spinning-baits which kill well at times, the Devon being perhaps the favourite. The use of the drop-minnow, which is trolling on a lesser scale, is a killing method employed more in the north of England than elsewhere. The worm is mostly deadly in thick water, so deadly that it is looked on askance. But there is a highly artistic mode of fishing known as "clear-water worming." This is most successful when rivers are low and weather ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... sins really deserve? Indeed, you deserve much more than you receive—even eternal suffering. But God forgives you and remits the eternal punishment for the sake of Christ the Lord, desiring that you patiently endure the lesser suffering for the utter mortification of the sins inherent in your flesh and blood. To make such lot the less grievous to you, Christ has gone before and left you an example of perfect patience under the most intense suffering, an example equaled nowhere ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... led a placid existence. Those warlike and predacious Indians would not keep the peace, nor would they allow other people to do so. Though they had their capital in Guadaloupe, they extended their military enterprises in every direction, and Cuba, Porto Rico, Hayti, Jamaica, and the lesser islands suffered from their assaults. They were trained to fight from childhood, and attained to great proficiency in arms. Being active voyagers, they had some knowledge of astronomy. When operating in the waters of a hostile country it was ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... lessons in His creation. But they are hieroglyphs, of which the key is lost, till we hear Christ and learn of Him. God has set His glories in the heavens and the earth is full of His mercy, but these are lesser gifts than that which contains them all and transcends them all, even His Son by whom He made the worlds, and— mightier still—by whom He redeemed man. God has written His mercy in the heavens and His faithfulness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... with firs, and forming a constant cascade of about thirty feet, not carried down a regular flight of steps, but tumbling in a natural fall over the broken and mossy stones till it came to the bottom of the rock, then running off in a pebly channel, that with many lesser falls winded along, till it fell into a lake at the foot of the hill, about a quarter of a mile below the house on the south side, and which was seen from every room in the front. Out of this lake, which filled the center of a beautiful plain, embellished with groups of beeches and elms, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... tiger and a leech, a panther and a mosquito, notwithstanding their affinity in the liking of human blood, believe me there is a great difference, and it was perhaps for this reason that we had not previously noticed the onslaught made by these lesser ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... of Wales was his love for sports and his embodiment of qualities which, in everyday life, constitute the English country gentleman. Some reference has already been made to his interest in racing, yachting and shooting. But most of the lesser sports and games were also attractive to him at different periods, and there was hardly one with which he was not more or less familiar. Boating and riding in his University days and fox-hunting at Sandringham from time to time in later years, were incidents of this record. ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... ultimately settled in Timothy's breast found nourishment. The Petricks had adored the nobility, and plucked them at the same time. That excellent man Izaak Walton's feelings about fish were much akin to those of old Timothy Petrick, and of his descendants in a lesser degree, concerning the landed aristocracy. To torture and to love simultaneously is a proceeding strange to reason, but possible to practice, ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... hitherto regarded as incapable of prevention; but, the calculations of our statistics, inexact as they are, have invariably pointed out a widely prevailing social sore, and our moralists may, therefore, be accused of preferring the greater to the lesser evil, the violation of the principle on which society is constituted, to the granting of a certain liberty to girls; and dissoluteness in mothers of families, such as poisons the springs of public education and brings unhappiness upon at least four persons, to dissoluteness in a young girl, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... feel after listening to a beautiful sermon—that you really wish something disagreeable would happen, to give you an opportunity of behaving well and being sweet and unselfish? Well, that's just how one feels in a lesser way to the people one loves on earth. It's how I feel to you at this moment, Arthur darling, when I know you are suffering. I wish I could take all the misery and bear it for you. Is your heart quite ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... excuse or favour them. The hauteur of the noblesse acted as a fatal equivalent to every other crime; and many, who did not credit other imputations, rejoiced in the humiliation of their pride. The people, the rich merchants, and even the lesser gentry, all eagerly concurred in the destruction of an order that had disdained or excluded them; and, perhaps, of all the innovations which have taken place, the abolition of rank has ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... of Victor Hugo's alpine eagle, "qui parle au precipice et que le gouffre entend," and the strenuous mood awakens at the sound. It saith among the trumpets, ha, ha! it smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting. Its blood is up; and cruelty to the lesser claims, so far from being a deterrent element, does but add to the stern joy with which it leaps to answer to the greater. All through history, in the periodical conflicts of puritanism with the don't-care ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... the ship was clear of them and the stench which they had brought aboard. But when the breeze freshened from the right quarter, and we felt our vessel moving toward the open sea, we were too thankful for our escape from a horrible death to think of the lesser evils from which we suffered, though the destruction of such a considerable quantity of our stores was a serious loss, and set Hartog thinking as to whether our immediate return to Amsterdam was ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... are not popular with his countrymen, a foreigner may be pardoned for thinking his classical tragedy, Torrismondo, not attractive—his Sette Giornate (Seven Days of the Creation) still less so—and his platonical and critical discourses better filled with authorities than reasons. Tasso was a lesser kind of Milton, enchanted by the Sirens. We discern the weak parts of his character, more or less, in all his writings; but we see also the irrepressible elegance and superiority of the mind, which, in spite of all weakness, was felt to tower above its age, and to draw to it ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... every other article belonging to it, were forged and manufactured by himself. It is intended as the model of a bridge which is to be constructed across the Delaware, extending 480 feet, with only one arch. The other is to be erected over a lesser river, whose name I forget, and is likewise a single arch, and of his own workmanship, excepting the chains, which, instead of iron, are cut out of paste-hoard by the fair hand of his correspondent, the 'Little Corner of the World' (Lady Smyth), whose indefatigable ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... at the same season are usually very distinct both in form and colour. In the sandy districts of Surrey, in the early spring, the copses are gay with three flowers—the primrose, the wood-anemone, and the lesser celandine, forming a beautiful contrast, while at the same time the purple and the white dead-nettles abound on hedge banks. A little later, in the same copses, we have the blue wild hyacinth (Scilla nutans), the red campion (Lychnis dioica), ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... frame, and coherence. Our sun is the centre of one of the larger systems, which contains a great many small ones within the sphere of its activity, as all the planets which move about it; and these are subdivided into lesser systems that depend on them, as his satelites wait upon Jupiter, and the moon on the earth; the earth again is divided into the atmosphere, ground, water, and other principal parts; these again into the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms. Now, as ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... murderers. So that Demades afterwards made the joke that Drakon's laws were not written with ink, but with blood. It is said that Drakon himself, when asked why he had fixed the punishment of death for most offences, answered that he considered these lesser crimes to deserve it, and he had no greater punishment for more ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... method of attachment is certainly capable of being devised; it is probably only the question of expense that stands in the way of its solution. The consequences, however, of the existing attachment to the saddle are that the weapon must be shorter than that of the Infantry soldier, and hence has a lesser range; but it is precisely the Cavalry that requires to be able to obtain good results at long ranges. Even against Infantry it must always be in a position to obtain decisive results in the shortest time. To obtain these ends it needs a weapon at ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... body of the whole German Empire, with its four kingdoms, six grand duchies, and sixteen lesser principalities and powers united under one emperor. Prussia is a kingdom which forms but one, though the most important, of these constituent parts. The Reichstag is a kind of Upper and Lower House in one; the Bundesrath or Federal Council, with ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... magnificent hanging woods, which at the time I describe were just tinged with the first rich touches of autumn. It was a lovely ride through this fertile vale. On every side I saw myself surrounded by the lofty Carpathians, or the lesser spurs of that grand range of mountains; the higher peaks to the south and south-east were already capped with snow. The village in which I had so agreeably sojourned for a couple of days almost rises to the dignity of a little town, for it has nearly 4000 inhabitants. Considering its situation, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... these were corruptly obtained. [Footnote: See Resolution of House Committee on Private Land Claims, June, 1892, demanding a thorough investigation. The House took no action.—Report No. 1824, 1892.] Scores of other claims were confirmed for lesser areas. During Commissioner Sparks' tenure of office, claims to 8,500,000 acres in New Mexico alone were pending before Congress. A comprehensive account of the operations of the land-grabbers, giving the explicit facts, as told in ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... grades varying from 10 to 22 per cent., in his big machine in 1 minute 28-2/5 seconds. A Marmon stock car reached the top in 1 minute 50-1/5 seconds. Pike's Peak, Mount Washington, Ensign Mountain, in Utah, and lesser mountains elsewhere have also been climbed repeatedly by automobiles. As the mere announcement of the fact vividly exhibits the staying powers of the auto in a long, stiff climb, the engineering ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... number may also be reckoned when we admit to our view bodies which not only seem to be minute telescopic objects, but really are small globes when compared with the mighty bulk of our earth. These lesser planets, to the number of more than four hundred, are also ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... the foundations of our country were laid, along whose shores our earliest homes and home-sites can still be pointed out—and yet almost without a place in our literature. Other rivers, historically lesser rivers, have had their stories told again and again, their beauties lauded, and their praises sung. But this great pioneer waterway, fit theme for an ode, is to-day our ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... of the Sun, when awaiting the encounter with Susanoo, twisted a complete string, eight feet long, with five hundred magatama. Lesser Kami were created by manipulating the jewels. When Amaterasu retired into a cave, magatama were hung from the branches of a sakaki tree to assist in enticing her out. Several other reverential allusions are made to the jewels in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... Sakr-el-Bahr learnt the value of the capture, when he was informed that in addition to a hundred able-bodied men under the hatches, to be sold as slaves in the sok-el-Abeed, there was a cargo of gold and silver, pearls, amber, spices, and ivory, and such lesser matters as gorgeous silken fabrics, rich beyond anything that had ever been seen upon the seas at any one time, he felt that the blood he had shed had ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... barns, one of twenty-eight by thirty-two feet, the other of fifty-five by forty, and fifteen feet post. I have also raised, and expect to finish, within a few days, a malt-house of thirty feet square, and several other lesser buildings which were found necessary. I have cleared, and in a good measure fitted for improvement, about seventy or eighty acres of land, and seeded with English grain about twenty acres, from which I have taken at the late harvest, what was esteemed a good crop, considering the land ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... by a good discipline, would be sure to remain, and would find a stronger security, than any compulsion would be, in the principles of action formed in them by their best lawgiver, education. And as for things of lesser importance, as pecuniary contracts, and such like, the forms of which have to be changed as occasion requires, he thought it the best way to prescribe no positive rule or inviolable usage in such cases, willing that their manner and form should be altered according to the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... instincts, and feelings of a household become changed as the young birds begin to flutter with feathered wings, and have half-formed thoughts of leaving the parental nest! A few months back, Frank had reigned almost autocratic over the lesser subjects of the kingdom of Greshamsbury. The servants, for instance, always obeyed him, and his sisters never dreamed of telling anything which he directed should not be told. All his mischief, all his troubles, and all his loves were confided to them, with ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... The Long-Awaited Woman Tenth Chapter: The Jews and the Romans Eleventh Chapter: Two Davids Come to Beth Twelfth Chapter: Two Lesser Adventures Thirteenth Chapter: About Shadowy Sisters Fourteenth Chapter: This Clay-and-Paint Age Fifteenth Chapter: The Story of the Mother Sixteenth Chapter: "Through Desire for Her." Seventeenth Chapter: ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... wrong to blame any one, that we must not expose iniquity, as 'it will harden the guilty,' that 'none should be punished,' that 'man is a machine, and not to blame for his conduct,' that 'there is no high, no low, no good, no bad,' that 'sin is a lesser degree of righteousness,' that 'nothing we can do can injure the soul or retard its progress,' that 'those who act the worst will progress the fastest,' that 'lying is right, slavery is right, murder is right, adultery is right,' ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... others constructed to plough, sow, and harrow, but not of much value; and a turfing plough for burning sod. Carts and waggons were of many sorts, according to the locality, the greater wheels of the waggon being usually 18 feet in circumference the lesser 9 feet. A useful implement was the trenching plough used on grass land to cut out the sides of trenches or drains, with a long handle and beam and with a coulter or knife fixed in it and sometimes a wheel or wheels. The following is a list of other implements then considered necessary ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... of these two monsters is called Pongo in their language, and the lesser is called Engeco. This Pongo is in all proportion like a man; but that he is more like a giant in stature than a man; for he is very tall, and hath a man's face, hollow-eyed, with long haire upon his browes. His face and eares are without haire, ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... rock particularly abundant in New England, though also found in lesser quantities elsewhere in this country. The first granite quarries that were extensively developed were those at Quincy, Mass., and work began at that point early in the present century. The fame of the stone ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... the larger of the two there was a race-course of a stadium in width, and in length allowed to extend all round the island, for horses to race in. Also there were guard-houses at intervals for the body-guard, the more trusted of whom had their duties appointed to them in the lesser zone, which was nearer the Acropolis; while the most trusted of all had houses given them within the citadel, and about the persons of the kings. The docks were full of triremes and naval stores, and all things were quite ready for ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... thought or fear of accident. In spite of the sliding and the plunging down the long hill, the storm and the darkness brought no thought of fear for herself; her only fear was for those ahead. In supreme moments a horse, like a man when human efforts become superhuman, puts the lesser dangers out of reckoning, and the faculties, set on a single purpose, though strained to the breaking-point, never break. Low in her saddle, Dicksie tried to reckon how far they had come and how much lay ahead. She could feel her skirt stiffening about her knees, and the rain beating at ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... The Woodlands Hotel, picturesquely situated on the side of a lesser mountain, became our abiding-place for all too short a time. Darjeeling is beautifully located upon a ridge, seven thousand feet above water level. The mountain side is picturesque with its sprinkling of villas and bungalows, tall mountains towering up as a background. ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... be bound by the same common laws. The ordinary stars and planets have an ordinary course mapped out for them, and they daren't diverge an inch. But every now and then a comet comes and goes its own eccentric way, and all the lesser lights wonder and ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... approved reasoners differ only in this, that what are with them the exceptions, the extreme cases, he makes the every-day rule. No one denies that on great occasions, in moments of fearful excitement, or when a mighty object is at stake, the lesser and merely instrumental points of duty are to be sacrificed without remorse at the shrine of patriotism, of honour, and of conscience. But the disciple of the New School (no wonder it found so many impugners, even in its own bosom!) is to be always the hero of duty; the law to which ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... the Earls de Warenne, De Valence, and Montgomery, the Barons Hilton and Blenkinsopp, and others of note, were to exchanged. Those of lesser consequence, man for man, were to be returned for ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... place indeed, for it lies deep among green hills, and from the westward slope where the church stands, at their foot stretch great meres to lesser hills toward the sunset beyond. Very pleasant are the trees and flowers of the rich meadows of the island valley, and the wind comes but gently here even at Yuletide, hardly ruffling the clear waters that have given the place its name, "Inys Vitryn," and "Avalon" men called ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... which he dedicated an entire poem—the orchis and the golden-rod, "the aster in the wood and the yellow sunflower by the brook." With these his name will be associated as Wordsworth's with the daffodil and the lesser celandine, and ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... helping mankind to spread his colonies and civilizations throughout the galaxy. The bitter years of galactic war had ended in his childhood, and now human societies throughout the Milky Way were linked together—in greater or lesser degree of union—into a more-or-less peaceful coalition ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... massive beams of the ceiling. The floor of the warehouse, which was partly of stone, was covered with thick matting, and spread upon it were rugs and carpets of Karadagh, Kermanshah, Sultan-abad, and Khorassan, with lesser-known loomings of almost equal beauty. Skins of rare beasts overlay the divans. Furniture of ivory, of ebony and lemonwood, preciously inlaid, gave to the place an air of cunning confusion. There were tall cabinets, ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... whether they had received any secret despatches from the Caesar, indicating his having meditated any deeper designs than usual. And as soon as he heard of the events which had taken place at Antioch, he passed through the lesser Armenia and took the road to Constantinople; but he was seized on his journey by the Protectors, and brought back to Antioch, and there ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... the brandy as he was desired, handed the lesser glass to the captain, and the tumbler he placed in the locked hands of the victim. Slowly and painfully the subdued ruffian raised the glass to his mouth, careful not to spill a drop; then, before draining ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... washed the eyes, face, and nostrils of the camel; that done, from the same depository he drew a circular cloth, red-and white-striped, a bundle of rods, and a stout cane. The latter, after some manipulation, proved to be a cunning device of lesser joints, one within another, which, when united together, formed a centre pole higher than his head. When the pole was planted, and the rods set around it, he spread the cloth over them, and was literally at home—a home much smaller than the habitations of emir and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... all prosperous, in days which prosp'rous be, Nor fearest thou impending ill, which comes by Heaven's decree? We see the orbs of heav'n above, how numberless they are, But sun and moon alone eclips'd, and ne'er a lesser star! And many a tree on earth we see, some bare, some leafy green, Of them, not one is hurt with stone save that has fruitful been! See'st not th' refluent ocean, bear carrion on its tide, While pearls beneath its wavy flow, fixed in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... from Don Carlos already, and will have to bear more, yet the wretched lad is to him as a son of God, a second deity, who will by right divine succeed to the inheritance of the first; and he watches this lesser deity struggling between life and death with an intensity of which we, in these less loyal days, can form no notion. One would be glad to have a glimpse of what passed through that mind, so subtle and so ruthless, so disciplined and so loyal withal: but Alva was a man who was ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... Mr. Ledsam, very much to my chagrin, announce his intention of abandoning a career in which he has, if he will allow me to say so,"—with a courteous bow to Francis—"attained considerable distinction, to indulge in the moth-eaten, flamboyant and melodramatic antics of the lesser Sherlock Holmes. I fear that I could not resist the opportunity of—I think you young ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the gipsies, and she and her doncellas and duenas, as well as those of another senora, her neighbour, were expecting them as eagerly as one looks for a shower in May. They had come to see Preciosa. She entered with her companions, shining among them like a torch among lesser lights, and all the ladies pressed towards her. Some kissed her, some gazed at her; others blessed her sweet face, others her graceful carriage. "This, indeed, is what you may call golden hair," cried Dona Clara; "these are truly emerald eyes."[67] The senora, her ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... nature. Developed by such a process, the thousands of bergs which throng these seas should keep the air and water in perpetual commotion— one fearful succession of explosive detonations and propagated waves. But it is only the lesser masses falling into deep waters which could justify the popular opinion. The enormous masses of the Great Glacier [of Greenland] are propelled step by step, and year by year, until, reaching water capable of supporting them, they ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal. The great masses, therefore, which excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put out of the possibility of danger. Then they form a natural rampart about the lesser properties in all their gradations. The same quantity of property which is by the natural course of things divided among many has not the same operation. Its defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... he looks upon choosing as a presumptuous kind of trying to control nature. I pointed out that one cannot altogether detach oneself from nature and that doing nothing is still choosing not to choose, but he replied that it is the lesser evil, as in choosing not to write a tragedy in five acts, which I had to admit can seldom be wrong. Further he asked, inasmuch as we had neither arranged our meeting nor ordered the quails, were we not at the moment both enjoying the advantage of having acted on ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... is not likely to be mistaken for something else, just as the sun is not likely to be mistaken for a lesser light, a glow-worm or a moon. But one who has not seen the sun might mistake some lesser light for the sun. So an unsaved man may mistake some flash of fancy, some pleasant emotion, for the witness of the ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... were worshipped for themselves alone, the Celts also peopled the earth with spirits, benevolent or malevolent, of rocks, hills, dales, forests, lakes, and streams,[565] and while greater divinities of growth had been evolved, they still believed in lesser spirits of vegetation, of the corn, and of fertility, connected, however, with these gods. Some of these still survive as fairies seen in meadows, woodlands, or streams, or as demoniac beings haunting lonely places. And even now, in French folk-belief, sun, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... been committed by some of their leaders, and prosecutions were directed against the men who had been foremost in support of the movement for extending the franchise. It was pretended that they had suggested designs as well as kindled hopes. The fate of the lesser advocates of the Italian cause is unknown; but Caius Gracchus, against whom an indictment was directed, cleared his name of all complicity in the movement.[491] The effect of these measures of suppression was not to improve matters for the future. The allies were burdened ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... a prize specially reserved for war-chariots in the games of the Athenian hippodrome; being heavier than the chariots generally used, they doubtless had to cover a lesser number of laps, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... were to be found, to collect furs on the debts and to sell goods to those who had not received too large credits, and to the customers of rival traders; this was called "running a deouine."[238] The main wintering post had lesser ones, called "jack-knife posts,"[239] depending on it, where goods were left and the furs gathered in going to and from the main post. By these methods Wisconsin was thoroughly visited by the traders before the ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner

... Civilization has not as yet marred in anything this beautiful sheet of water; even the lumberman has not forced his way to the majestic old pines that tower in stately grandeur above the forest trees of a lesser growth; not a foot of laud has been cleared within thirty miles of it. The old woods stand around it just as God placed them, in all their pristine solemnity, stately and motionless; the wild things that roamed among them in the day of old, are there ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... terribly far away. Then Rick saw his friend's silhouette, as a dark shape against the lesser darkness of the sky. At a guess Scotty was ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... Translator's Introduction On Blessings On The Sabbatical Year On The Sabbath On The Passover On The Day Of Atonement On Tabernacles The New Year On Fasting The Feast-Offering The Sanhedrin On Idolatry The Fathers The Daily Sacrifice On Measurements The Tabernacle The Heifer Hands The Kabbalah Unveiled: The Lesser Holy Assembly Chapter I: Which Containeth the Introduction Chapter II: Concerning the Skull of the Ancient One, and Concerning His Brain; and Concerning the Three Heads, and the Hair, and the Discriminatory ...
— Hebrew Literature

... study. On his return to Greece he founded the Ionian school, and taught the sphericity of the Earth, the obliquity of the ecliptic, and the true causes of eclipses of the Sun and Moon. He also directed the attention of mariners to the superiority of the Lesser Bear, as a guide for the navigation of vessels, as compared with the Great Bear, by which constellation they usually steered. Thales believed the Earth to be the centre of the universe, and that the stars were composed of fire; he also predicted ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... of Ireland, is composed of the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, Monaghan and Tyrone. Formerly it was the seat of the O'Neills, as well as the lesser septs of O'Donnell, O'Cahan, O'Doherty, Maguire, MacMahon, etc. The settlements made by the earlier migrations of the Highlanders were chiefly on the coast of Antrim. These settlements were connected with and dependent on the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... instructed by the States-General to be most punctual in using in his addresses to his Czarish Majesty nearly six years before (Aug. 1651: see Thurloe, I. 196):—"Most illustrious, most potent great Lord, Czar and Grand Duke Alexey Michaelowitz, Autocrator of all both the Greater and Lesser Russia, Czar of Kiof, Wolodomiria, Novgorod, Czar of Kazan, Czar of Astracan, Czar of Siberia, Lord of Plescow, and Grand Duke of Smolensko, Tweer, Jugonia, Permia, Weatka, Bolgaria, Lord and Grand-Duke of Novagrada and the low lands of Zenigow, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... thus for life, or are you living to do no more than make a living? We need to educate our children to set honour, truth, justice, a high life, before all things, to prize noble attainments so that they shall not be content with the lesser prizes of prosperity in things, so that whether we win or lose in the markets of the world we shall stand rich and glorious in manhood, finding the ends of life in the achievement of high character and finding in commerce but the servant ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... imported, duty free! Happy Mr. Roach! Why need he fear the effect of the clause in favor of ship owners? Who will avail themselves of it? But alas for the ship-builders upon the Clyde, in Newcastle and Belfast! Their occupation will be gone. Already building ships at a lesser cost than theirs, this remission of duties will enable Mr. Roach to build them from ten to twenty per cent. cheaper still. What will England then do? Will she grant bounties to her ship-builders, to meet the emergency? She did not do it in 1849, to sustain her wooden ship-builders; ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman

... formula would have been a breach of chapel etiquette. I raised the tune, and every other pair of lungs there joined in without fear of criticism or favor of his neighbors' ears. Some of the duller and lesser children smothered or decapitated a word here and there in the main body of the hymn. All knew the chorus, and it ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... gathering of the Electors is regarded with the gravest apprehension. The Archbishop of Mayence, who but a short time since crowned the Emperor at the great altar of the cathedral, is herewith a thousand men at his back. The Count Palatine of the Rhine is also within these walls with a lesser entourage. It is rumoured that his haughty lordship, the Archbishop of Treves, will reach Frankfort to-morrow, to be speedily followed by that eminent Prince of the Church, the Archbishop of Cologne. ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... acquisition of the sublimest knowledge; the subsequent arrangement principally regards the order of things. After the Parmenides then, the Sophista, Phaedrus, Greater Hippias, and Banquet, follow, which may be considered as so many lesser wholes subordinate to and comprehended in the Parmenides, which, like the universe itself, is a whole of wholes. For in the Sophista being itself is investigated, in the Banquet love itself, and in the ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... prose consisted of words in their best order, while poetry was the best words in their best order, a poetic definition that does not convey a very accurate knowledge of the distinction. Poetry differs from prose not only in the choice and arrangement of words, but also to a lesser degree in sentiment and feeling. However, much verse, though faultless in form, can never be considered real poetry, while much prose ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... order concerning him, and afterward I lay down within my eye. [I am he who hath been without opposition. I have come; do thou look upon me in the Temple of Nem-hra (or Uhem-hra).] I give commands in the words of the divine aged ones, and, moreover, I guide for thee the lesser deities." ...
— Egyptian Literature

... arrows fling?' If that the hands of Time have made their plaything of our life, Till for its long protracted kiss ill-hap upon us spring, Dost thou not see the hurricane, what time the wild winds blow, Smite down the stately trees alone and spare each lesser thing? Lo! in the skies are many stars, no one can tell their tale, But to the sun and moon alone eclipse brings darkening. The earth bears many a pleasant herb and many a plant and tree: But none is stoned save only those to which the fair ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... takes a singularly monstrous form. On the death of the great giant Ymir, whose flesh and bones form the rocks and soils of the earth, and who was slain by the early gods, his blood, which now constitutes the ocean, rushed so copiously out of his wounds, that all the old race of the lesser giants, his offspring, were drowned in the flood which it occasioned, save one; and he, by escaping on board his bark with his wife, outlived the deluge. The tradition here is evidently allegorized, but it is by no means lost ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... friend?" and Mr. Travilla looked fondly into the sweet face so bright and happy, where the beauties of rare intellect and moral worth were as conspicuous as the lesser ones ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... in sleep, beyond the earth's small zone, Adventurously my spirit went alone, Past lesser hells and heavens, where souls may pause To learn the meaning of death's larger laws, Past astral shapes and bodies of desire, Past angels and archangels, high and higher, Until the pinnacles of space it trod, Then, awestruck, paused, hearing the ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... nursed below Tempests and winds and winter nights! Vex not that but one sees thee grow; That One made all these lesser lights. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... go then," I cried; for here came in my inexperience. I thought I was choosing the lesser evil, and I knew that Jack believed it to be so, and also that he had set his heart upon Ehrenberg, for reasons known only to the understanding of a ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... wolf-track by the road-side in the Kyllwald; the first sight of the blue and green Roller-birds, walking behind the plough like rooks in the tobacco-fields of Wittlich; the first ball of Olivine scraped out of the volcanic slag-heaps of the Dreisser- Weiher; the first pair of the Lesser Bustard flushed upon the downs of the Mosel-kopf; the first sight of the cloud of white Ephemerae, fluttering in the dusk like a summer snowstorm between us and the black cliffs of the Rheinstein, while the broad Rhine beneath flashed blood-red in the blaze of the lightning and the fires of ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... heard you say often as much) what is in that huge space betweene the starres and Saturne, ther remaine euer fixed infinite nombers wch may supplie the apparence to the eye that shalbe placed in [Cancer], wch by reason of ther lesser magnitudes doe flie our sighte what is aboute [Saturn], [Jupiter], [Mars], etc. ther moue other planets also wch appeare not. just as I was a saying this comes your letter, wch when I had redd, loe, qd I, what I spoke probablie experience hath made good ; so that ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... have complete authority in directing the movements of the party, and in distributing provisions. The Attoogawnoeuck, or lesser Chiefs, are respected principally as senior men. The tribe seldom suffers from want of food, if the Chief moves to the different stations at the proper season. They seem to follow the eastern custom respecting marriage. As soon as a girl is born, the young lad who wishes to have her for a ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... to retreat. It was a desperate undertaking, and a lesser man would have hesitated and been lost. He had to transport nine thousand men across a strait of strong tides and currents, and three quarters of a mile in width. It was necessary to collect the boats from a distance, and do it all within sight and hearing of the enemy. The boats ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... supreme Spirit was now envisaged as a single all-powerful God, known according to his functions as Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. As Brahma, he brought into existence three worlds—heaven, earth and the nether regions—and also created gods or lesser divinities, earth and nature spirits, demons, ogres and men themselves. Siva, for his part, was God the final dissolver or destroyer, the source of reproductive energy and the inspirer of asceticism. ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... commonplace, as of something which I could not possibly hold for true. I must have distrusted my own senses even, for the beauty that cleft me open dealt directly with the soul alone, leaving the senses wholly disengaged. The Presence was not answerable to any lesser recognition. ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... to its cruel moods and whims, but rather one of a Dominant Breed, a being who could lift his head in defiance to the storm, obey his own will, go his own way. This was no little change. Perhaps, when all is said and done, it marks the difference between man and the lesser mammals, the thing that has evolved a certain species of the primates—simply woods creatures that trembled at the storm and cowered in the night—into the rulers and ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... of the repeating rifle to make sure the cartridge was in place. Then he, too, passed through the wicket and went to stand in the shadow of the slab-floored porch, redolent of memories. He had forgotten the lesser vengeance in the thirst for the greater,—that he had come to fling their misfortunes into the faces of the father and the son, and to tell them that the work was his. He heard only the voice of the savage in his heart, and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... in ships of some magnitude, and must therefore have in a degree been cultivated, if not by the liberal, at least by the mechanic arts. In fact, the principal colonies-which we find these countries to have received were sent from Phoenicia, or the Lesser Asia, or Egypt, the great fountains of the ancient civility and learning. And they became more or less, earlier or later, polished, as they were situated nearer to or further from these celebrated sources. Though I am satisfied, from a comparison of the Celtic tongues with the Greek and Roman, that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... it. The premonition was as formless and amorphous as a cloud, and, though he could not see any shape to his fear, or define its limitations, it grew darker ere he slept. He considered what might happen and, putting aside any lesser disaster, tried to imagine what the morning would ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... vigorous cutting, and also prevents them from assuming the branchy form of trees which receive too much side light. The fire danger is much reduced by resultant shading of the ground and slightly by the lesser cover of debris. In short, he makes the most economical use of the ground, and the capital represented by the trees he ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... [Footnote 87: I.e. greater Calorie, distinguished from the lesser calorie by the capital C.] used for food calculation, is approximately the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound (pint) of water through 4 degrees F. If one pint of water were placed over a lighted burner and heated until it increased ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... Lesser Clapper Rail is scarcely distinguishable from the true Clapper, except by its reduced size; and in every part of America it appears to be a somewhat rare species. It confines itself to the fresh-water marshes, and thereby ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... the ground that the campaign in Sicily was not completely finished, and that he did not deserve a third triumph, so far gave way as to lead the greater triumphal procession as far as the Alban Mount, and only to enter the city in the lesser form which the Greeks call euan, and the Romans an ovation. The general conducts this, not, as in the triumph, riding in a chariot and four with a crown of laurel, and with trumpets sounding before him, but walking on foot in low shoes surrounded by flute players, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... most part, valuable to the world as creating an atmosphere of spirituality, which raises the general level of religious feeling in those who come within its area; India has especially profited by the considerable number of such Mystics found within its borders in past times, and to a lesser extent to-day; every one who practises, for instance, meditation, knows that it is easier here than elsewhere, and all sensitive persons feel the Indian "atmosphere". Outside this, such Mystics occasionally write valuable books, containing high ideals of the spiritual ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant

... vigorously maintained by the English ambassadors against those of France. The latter contended, that Christendom was essentially distributed into the four great nations and votes, of Italy, Germany, France, and Spain, and that the lesser kingdoms (such as England, Denmark, Portugal, &c.) were comprehended under one or other of these great divisions. The English asserted, that the British islands, of which they were the head, should be considered ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... we rode through Normandy to Paris, across the lowlands of western France to Bordeaux, eastward over the Lesser Alps to Marseilles, and along the Riviera into Italy. After visiting every important city on the peninsula, we left Italy at Brindisi on the last day of 1890 for Corfu, in Greece. Thence we traveled to Patras, proceeding along the Corinthian ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... Chicago a convention has come to be regarded as an every-day occurrence. If it is not a convention of one of the great parties, then some lesser body is in session; always some band of delegates is reported as either arriving in or departing from the city. There had been little stir when the Plutocratic convention was in progress three weeks before. The result of ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... which is usually the first exercise in which these young athletae of intellect try their strength, he had already distinguished himself; and, in conjunction with his friend Halhed, had translated the seventh Idyl, and many of the lesser poems of Theocritus. This literary partnership was resumed soon after their departure from Harrow. In the year 1770, when Halhed was at Oxford, and Sheridan residing with his father at Bath, they entered ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... awaiting the approaching spectacle with pleased and animated countenances, and in seeming forgetfulness that so many of their own number had graced former displays, and, by their degradation, had afforded amusement to other equally unsympathetic concourses. Among them, the lesser Romans—citizens in name, indeed, but, from their poverty and the overbearing exactions of the patricians, almost as much in slavery as those around them—disdainfully asserting their free birth, and in turn contemned by the slaves themselves, as men to whom liberty was ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... by the approbation of the Jewish Sanhedrim, there being an excellent provision in the law of Moses, that even in criminal causes, and particularly where life was concerned, an appeal should lie from the lesser councils of seven in the other cities to the supreme council of seventy-one at Jerusalem; and that is exactly according to our Savior's words, when he says, "It could not be that a prophet should perish out of Jerusalem," ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... LESSER. This form of the comparative of little is accounted a corruption of less. It may, however, be used instead of less with propriety in verse, and also, in some cases, in prose. We may say, for example, "Of two evils choose the ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... advertisements—the bishop's secret coat of mail, the angry discussion between two Hamiltons in the very presence of Arran the head of the house, when he was himself willing to grant licence to Angus "to speak with the Queen's Grace and thereafter depart out of the town"—and all the lesser evidences of danger and conspiracy, the Earl and his band prepared themselves for the worst. "This young lord haisted him to his armour, and caused his friends and servants to do the same, and went right peartlie to the gate, and stood ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... into a yet wider sweep. It goes from the wooing of a nation to the wooing of a race, from Jew distinctively to Roman representatively, from Annas standing in God's flood light rejected to Pilate in nature's lesser light obscured, from God's truant messenger nation to the world's mighty ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... for him!' The lover, I mean, not Don Nicasio. And you began to work upon the husband, who, up to that time, had let things slide, either because he did not believe, or else because he preferred to bear the lesser evil—" ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... life, and philosophy, and the government of the state, and temperance, not like men picking out thorns, like the Stoics, or laying bare the bones, but like men who knew how to handle great subjects elegantly, and lesser ones clearly. What, therefore, are their consolations? What are their exhortations? What also are their warnings and advice written to the most eminent men? For their practice in speaking was, like the nature of the things themselves, of a two-fold character. For whatever is made ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... been noticed by his teachers. They had failed to bend his will, at least on important points. In lesser details his Italian adroitness seems to have been of service; for the officer who inspected the school reported of him: "Constitution, health excellent: character submissive, sweet, honest, grateful: conduct very regular: has always distinguished ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... think—but you don't know all. Siward, I say to you that if you are man enough to take her, take her! And I say that of the two risks she is running to-day, the chance she might take with you is infinitely the lesser risk. For with you, if you continue slowly losing your fight, the mental suffering only will be hers. But if she closes this bargain with Quarrier, selling to him her body, the light will go out of her ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... together with Mr. Eliot, the turnkey; after they had got out they intended to have fired a slack of bavins [firewood] adjoining to the prison, and thereby amused the inhabitants while they got clear off. Burnworth's mother was confined for this attempt in his favour, and some lesser implements that were sewed up in the waistband of their breeches being ripped out, all hopes whatsoever of escape were now taken away. Yet Burnworth affected to keep up the same spirit with which he had hitherto behaved, and talked in a rhodomantade to one of his guard, of coming in the night ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... and reputation; for I dislike to display any eccentricity of my own, this one rather more so than any other. There is in a grave disposition, when carried to the point of stiffness and ill-grace toward women, something coarsely pedantic, that is unbecoming in great talents and ridiculous in lesser ones. I retire afterward, and I work rather late in the library. That's the ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... assisted the king by their counsels. When hot water of crystal clearness had been poured into the bath, the more celebrated of the two physicians dipped the tip of his little finger in, and looking inquiringly at his colleague, said "Hum." On which the physician of lesser degree dipped in his little finger and said "Hem." And after this the water always proved to be of the right temperature, and did the young princess no harm whatever. The king himself on these occasions always dropped—with much state—a few drops of exquisite ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... gentleman was out of office acted as his private secretary. Mr. Rodney was the most official person in the ministerial circle. He considered human nature only with reference to office. No one was so intimately acquainted with all the details of the lesser patronage as himself, and his hours of study were passed in the pages of the "Peerage" and in penetrating the mysteries of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... would be Ulick's turn, and he feared she would beat him more than she had beaten the boy—for she hated him, whereas she was only vexed with the boy—she would give him bread and water—he had often had a beating and bread and water for a lesser wickedness than the bringing of one of the village boys into the garden to ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... stipulated conditions, his own subjects would be justified in taking arms against him at the duke's orders. A similar clause occurs in certain treaties between an earlier French king and his Flemish vassals, but always to the advantage of the suzerain, not to that of the lesser lords. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... Don Juan de Albarado Bracamonte, when fiscal, had so negotiated that the said occupation be assigned to him. The father petitioned me that since the said Sangley Chinese spend so much in aiding my service and pay so fully the salaries to their alcalde, and chief of guard, lesser protector, and to the ministers of instruction, without any expense therein to my royal treasury, it be ordered that the said fund cannot be altered or suppressed, unless the said Chinese should voluntarily wish to do away with it or to make some alteration, or change certain of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... the answer came back after the accustomed fashion: "Slay, hang without respect to the forms of law; send lesser culprits, if ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... his "Lesser Parallels," says that Aristonymus Ephesius, son of Demonstratus, being tired of women, had carnal knowledge with an ass, which in the process of time brought forth a very beautiful child, who became the maid ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... thus, south of the Santa Cruz, they are between eight and nine hundred feet in height, with their horizontal strata abruptly cut off, showing the immense mass of matter which has been removed. Nearly this whole line of coast consists of a series of greater or lesser curves, the horns of which, and likewise certain straight projecting portions, are formed of hard rocks; hence the concave parts are evidently the effect and the measure of the denuding action ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin

... little trouble. He seldom criticises, but when he does his criticism is always of a valuable nature; and he is particularly courteous and helpful to young officers. But, like lesser men, he has his fads. These are two—feet and cookery. He has been known to call a private out of the ranks on a route-march and request him to take his boots off for purposes of public display. "A soldier marches on two things," he ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... that life from which my thoughts have taken their start in this sermon. Surely if there was any one characteristic in it more distinct and lovely than another, it was that self was dead and that Christ lived. There may be sometimes a call for the actual—which is the lesser—surrender of the bodily life, in obedience to the call of duty. There have been Christian men who have wrought themselves to death in the Master's service. Perhaps he of whom I have been speaking was one of these. It may be that, if he had done like so many of our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... Massinissa, they now began openly to interfere in favour of the neighbouring prince. The dispute which had been pending for more than thirty years between the city and the king as to the possession of the province of Emporia on the Lesser Syrtis, one of the most fertile in the Carthaginian territory, was at length (about 594) decided by Roman commissioners to the effect that the Carthaginians should evacuate those towns of Eniporia which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... closer acquaintance, with Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, Hans Holbein, Thomas Shadwell (forgotten laureate), Carlyle, Whistler, Edwin Abbey, George Meredith, Swinburne, Holman Hunt, William Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Oscar and Willie Wilde, Count d'Orsay, George Eliot, and a host of lesser but equally adorable personalities whose names must come "among those present." It should show us its famous places. It should afford us peep-holes into the studios of famous artists—Augustus John's studio is a revelation in careful disarrangement; it ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... the tents and lines of armed men, the whole just beginning to stir with the first movements of the day. In the midst rose a splendid pavilion, adorned by flags, before the door of which stood a train of horses and attendants, while lesser tents were pitched all round it, each one displaying the ensign of some great officer. Crowds of men could be seen pushing to and fro, catching up their weapons and falling into some sort of military order, while others brought up horses and elephants, the caparisons ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... a quick eyeshot to right and left in the lesser gloom of the open. "I was afeard even the chief might miss the place in the dark. Down the bank to the river!—quick, man, and cautious! If they smell us out now, we're no better than buzzard-meat!" And when we reached the water's edge: "You ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... suddenly full of noise, for a tall youth in a bath-robe, attended by a little army of assistants, had entered the ring. One of the army carried a bright green bucket, on which were painted in white letters the words "Cyclone Al. Wolmann." A moment later there was another, though a far lesser, uproar, as Kid Brady, his pleasant face wearing a self-conscious smirk, ducked under the ropes and sat down in the ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... stipulating that goods carried in their ships, not being contraband, should be free. In 1778 France, in order to injure England, declared its adoption of the principle that neutral ships made neutral goods. The lesser Baltic nations, which largely exported naval material, were anxious to protect their commerce from England, specially as she was rigorous in her view with regard to contraband goods; and they looked to Russia to help them. Frederick of Prussia, always eager to do England a ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... there were other rival entertainments: "The Flying Scud" was at Wallack's, the "Black Crook" was at Niblo's, John Brougham at the Olympic; and there were at least a dozen lesser attractions. New York was not the inexhaustible city in those days; these things could gather in the public to the last man. When the day drew near, and only a few tickets had been sold, Clemens ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... the court, his black coat-tails, his white napkin streaming behind, proclaiming to all the world that he was engaged on the Signorina Americana's bidding; for persons of lesser note he still preserved a ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster

... private school on Wandsworth Common. My brothers and I were their schoolfellows. The Barretts were Irish boys; I think (but I speak very doubtfully) from Cork. Eton Barrett was a boy of more than ordinary talent. He was a genius among the lesser lights around him. I remember his writing a play with prologue and epilogue, which was performed before the master and his family, &c., with so much success, that the master prohibited any future dramatic performances, fearing, that he might incur blame for encouraging ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various



Words linked to "Lesser" :   greater, lesser centaury, lesser whitethroat, little, lesser prairie chicken, lesser panda, Lesser Sunda Islands, small, lesser peritoneal cavity, lesser wintergreen, lesser rorqual, lesser yellow trefoil, lesser anteater, lesser burdock, lesser galangal, lesser scaup duck, lesser kudu



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