"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could it be done? The globe composed of the cubes had but to transport the prisoners to the base of the Cone, press against that base, and open to let the prisoners free—and in the heart of the white-blue column they would be hurled outward from the Moon, into space. The mere prospect of such horror caused the perspiration to break forth anew on the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... foreknowing the future; and expect that those whose ambition incites them to endeavour after a share in the government of their country, should give better proofs of their qualifications for that high trust, than mere specimens of their memory, their rhetorick, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... to dash loose objects about, tearing limbs off trees and hurling them aloft as if they were mere splinters. A cocoanut crashed down, striking the ground near Piang; another fell, and yet another. Then the rain came in torrents. It fell unevenly as if poured by mighty giants from huge buckets. The ground beneath Piang was swaying, undulating. A tree crashed to the ground, tearing ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... mere construction of such a working motor involved nothing new, the real problem involved consisted of the rolling of a piece of steel 300 feet long, 6 inches wide, and a quarter of an inch thick. Another element was the coiling of this strip ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... villein but in that of the originally meaner "landless man." The possession of his little homestead with the ground around it, the privilege of turning out his cattle on the waste of the manor, passed quietly and insensibly from mere indulgences that could be granted or withdrawn at a lord's caprice into rights that could be pleaded at law. The number of teams, the fines, the reliefs, the services that a lord could claim, at first mere matter ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... mere counterfeit patent, which, nevertheless, makes many a country justice tremble. Don Quixote's water-mills are still Scotch bagpipes to him. He sends challenges by word of mouth, for he protests (as he is a gentleman and a brother of the sword) he can neither write nor read. He hath run through ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The other children about the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed the glove not an inch from one of his big tusks, then marched around the tank and ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... that in the time of Augustus the toga had disappeared amongst the lowest plebs, and greatly Augustus was shocked at that spectacle. It is a very curious fact in itself, especially as expounding the main cause of the civil wars. Mere poverty, and the absence of bribery from Rome, whilst all popular competition for offices drooped, can alone explain this remarkable revolution ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... in the late operations in China. The affairs of India became the subject of discussion again in the house of commons on the 2nd of March, when Mr. Roebuck moved for a select committee to inquire into the causes which led to the late war in Affghanistan; but it ended in mere words: the motion was rejected by a majority of one hundred ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the works of Shakspeare in which a direct copy, even to matters of detail, appeared to have been made; and, in spite of all attempts to gloss over and palliate, it was impossible to deny that an unblushing act of mere piracy seemed to have been committed, of which I never could bring myself to believe that Shakspeare had been guilty. The readiness to impute this act to him was to me but an instance of the unworthy manner in which he had almost universally been treated; and, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... without regard to its population, in the senate of the United States. The senate, as it stands, as it was meant to be in the Constitution, is the strongest safeguard which the fundamental law established against centralization, against the tyranny of mere majorities, against the destruction of liberty, in such a diversity of climates and conditions as we have in our vast continent. It is not a mere check upon hasty legislation; like some second chambers in Europe, it is the representative ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... does not possess any single word wherewith to sum up the various categories of things (made by nature or made by man, intended solely for the purpose of subserving by mere coincidence) which minister to our organic and many-sided aesthetic instincts: the things affecting us in that absolutely special, unmistakable, and hitherto mysterious manner expressed in our finding them beautiful. It is of ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... world would probably have been just as rational if the famous ape-like progenitor of man had chanced to become his offspring-assuming an original environment favorable for such transformation. Some criterion besides the mere external and accidental "struggle for existence" and "survival of the fittest" must be furnished to account for a progressive evolution. Does the phrase "survival of the fittest" say much more than that those who happen to survive are the fittest, or that their survival proves their fitness? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... said that the statute confers the guardianship, in case of intestacy, on the nearest agnates; but by intestacy here must be understood not only complete intestacy of a person having power to appoint a testamentary guardian, but also the mere omission to make such appointment, and also the case of a person appointed testamentary guardian dying ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... many a one does not point out these great cities as his most beautiful pearl, but, on the contrary, names some small, by no means remarkable town, for it is his home—the home where those he loves reside. Nay, sometimes it is but a country-seat—a small cottage hidden among green hedges—a mere spot that he hastens towards, while the railway ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... defeat." But he did not allow Jubei to turn questioner in his turn. Swiftly he shifted the argument. He, the cleric, considered Jubei of small account. He would prove to him what a fool he was by the interpretation of a mere thirty-one syllables of poetry. This should be the test of intelligence. The Knight's Way (Budo[u]) had its inner and cryptic meaning expressed in verse. So had the Way of the Buddha (Butsudo[u]). ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... of shadow crossed his face, as he answered, 'One nightin the woodswhere it was a mere little point of light ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Emily; he is fitting up her apartment in a style equally simple and elegant, which, however, you must not tell her, because she is to be surprized: her dressing room, and a little adjoining closet of books, will be enchanting; yet the expence of all he has done is a mere trifle. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... at the house. Young women and young men, all sorts of young men, clever men, men who have done something or who are doing things, men of her own class, gentlemen. She can gauge him by them. They will show him up for what he is. And after all, he is a mere boy of twenty-one. Ruth is no more than a child. It is calf love with the pair of them, and they will grow ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... penguin. This is the first of its kind that we have seen since January last, and it may mean a lot. It may signify that there is land somewhere near us, or else that great leads are opening up, but it is impossible to form more than a mere conjecture ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... is thrown off, it may seem strange to hear one speak of a "half-pupa," and of stages intermediate between the larva and pupa. But the external changes of form, though rapidly passed through, consisting apparently of a mere sloughing off of the outer skin, are yet preceded by slow and very gradual alterations of tissues, resulting from the growth of cells. An inner layer of the larva-skin separates from the outer, and, by changes ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... I said, kissing his profane lips; for I had learned long since never to argue with him. "I am too good to be a mere household drudge. It's an economic waste of superior ability. That's why I am going to be your secretary and save you time and money enough to get and keep a ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... beyond. Then it took three days of constant labor to get through five miles of felled timber and drifted wood. Some of the trees reached quite across the stream, and were four feet in diameter. To add to the difficulties of the pioneers, the country all around was overflowed, except a mere strip a few inches out of water on the very bank. Still they persevered, and the way was opened through to ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... to be looked upon as something more than a mere toy. Its ingenuity and scientific accuracy give it an educational value which is not to be measured by the roughness of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... told of her adventures. But, far more interesting to both than the details of these mere happenings, each revealed to the other the longings, the love, the hopes and fears, that had filled his and her heart during the unhappy ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... battle-cry,— "Freedom! or learn to die!" Ah! and they meant the word, Not as with us 'tis heard, Not a mere party shout: They gave their spirits out; Trusted the end to God, And on the glory sod Rolled in triumphant blood. Glad to strike one free blow, Whether for weal or woe; Glad to breathe one free breath, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... journey—up the Ottawa, across Lake Nipissing, and down the French River—but at length the friar stood on the shores of Lake Huron, the first of white men to see its waters. From the mouth of the French River the course lay southward for mere than a hundred miles along the east shore of Georgian Bay, until the party arrived at the peninsula which lies between Nottawasaga and Matchedash Bays. Three or four miles inland from the west shore of this peninsula stood the town ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... opinion commonly received, but, like many others, indebted for its prevalence to mere want of examination, that a translator should imagine to himself the style which his author would probably have used, had the language into which he is rendered been his own. A direction which wants nothing but practicability to recommend ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... and again worked until evening, and by that time had made sufficient progress in their simple movements to begin to feel that there was after all something more in it than they had fancied. For the first hour it had seemed to them a sort of joke—a mere freak on the part of their young chief; but they were themselves surprised to find by the end of the day how rapidly they were able to change from their rank two deep into the solid formation, and how their spears rose and fell together at the order. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... their eyes from the reflecting mirrors of Anthemius; they were astonished by the noise which he produced from the collision of certain minute and sonorous particles; and the orator declared in tragic style to the senate, that a mere mortal must yield to the power of an antagonist, who shook the earth with the trident of Neptune, and imitated the thunder and lightning of Jove himself. The genius of Anthemius, and his colleague Isidore the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... which all are aware of the universal, possessed by it and a part of it, all members of one body, all notes in one tune, and therefore all the more intensely themselves, for a note is itself, finds itself, only in a tune; otherwise it is mere nonsense. ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... by choice and conscience doth Throw out her full force on another soul, The conscience and the concentration both Make mere life love. For life in perfect whole And aim consummated is love in sooth, As nature's magnet heat rounds ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... the mere mechanism of religion is verily missing that for which religion stands. Here, indeed, it must be owned is, if not our greatest danger, one of the greatest. All life is full of that strange want of intellectual and moral perspective which fails ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... Mariana stoops, at the ghostly counsels of her spiritual guide, that she may twine her life with that of the execrable hypocrite who has wronged her sex so deeply. That, amid the general impunity, the mere telling of some ridiculous lies to the disguised Duke about himself, should draw down a disproportionate severity upon Lucio, the lively, unprincipled, fantastic jester and wag, who might well be let pass as a privileged character, makes the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Dodds had not mentioned that cricket match during the last few days, Hal had not forgotten his promise to get him included in it if possible. Consequently, Dodds's careless inquiry as to whether he intended to come over as a mere spectator disconcerted him very much. However, he swallowed his disappointment, and said that he had ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... of Unitarianism defined. Unitarians not Infidels. Explaining the Bible and Explaining it away. Unitarianism not mere Morality. Unitarianism Evangelical Christianity. Unitarianism does not tend to Unbelief. ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... the House, and again from the House to his own rooms in Pall Mall, his mind was busy with the speech that he was to make at the dinner. He had only to respond to the toast of the guests; few words and simple would be expected. He was thus the more resolved on a great effort; the surprise that the mere attempt at an oration would arouse should pave the way for the astonishment his triumph must create. He had no rival in the programme; the Chairman was Dick Benyon, the great gun an eminent Colonial Statesman who relied for fame on his deeds rather than his words. With his curiously minute calculation ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... home and his children; and the image of Henry, when a bright-eyed, curly-headed, happy child, came up so vividly before him, that it was only by an effort that he kept the tears from gushing over his face. For years he had cherished, in mere self-justification, the bitterest feeling towards his wife; and hundreds of times had he given expression to these feelings in words that smote the heart of Cara with crushing force. Only a little while before he had spoken of her, in the presence of Wilkinson, in a hard and unforgiving ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... not like Bertha's,—mere summer rain which sprang to her eyes with every passing emotion, and fell in sun-broken showers that freshened and brightened her own spirit. Madeleine seldom wept, and when the tears came, they sprang up from the very depth of her true heart, in a hot, bitter current which was less like the bubbling ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... out. And yet the ikon is untouched; it's whole. That's all I have to say. It's the plain, simple statement of fact. Yet you come here with your arguments and try to get away from those facts by mere reasoning. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... people; they had erected stills, and produced a powerful corn spirit from the native merissa; their entire time was passed in gambling, drinking, and fighting, both by night and day. The natives were ill-treated, their female slaves and children brutally ill-used, and the entire camp was a mere slice from the infernal regions. My portion of the camp being a secluded courtyard, we were ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... initiative, Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and required him to proclaim Henry V. king, and to undertake the government during the new sovereign's minority. It is doubtful whether Louis Philippe had at this time formed any distinct resolve, and whether his answer to Charles X. was inspired by mere good nature or by conscious falsehood; for while replying officially that he would lay the king's letter before the Chambers, he privately wrote to Charles X. that he would retain his new office only until he could safely place the Duc de Bordeaux ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... three days and died of the wounds mortifying and the nervous exhaustion brought on by cramps and convulsions. In many cases the corpses were left to feed the kites and crows; and this added horror to the death. Moslems care little for mere hanging. Whenever a fanatical atrocity is to be punished, the malefactor should be hung in pig-skin, his body burnt and the ashes publicly ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... does not know how he got there, and he resolutely declines to accept Captain Niblett's version as the mere offspring of a disordered imagination. He also denies the truth of a statement circulated in the town that night that, instead of replying to a leading question in the manner plainly laid down in the Church Service, he ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... out of mere curiosity," he went on. "And pray don't answer me unless you can answer without betraying any confidence which may ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... apostolic Father, he here edits and annotates letters which have long since been discredited by scholars of all classes, and which he himself confesses to be apocryphal. The Acts of Martyrdom of Ignatius—which he also acknowledges to be a mere bundle of fables—he treats with the same tender regard. Nor is this all. He gives these acts, or large portions of them, in Latin and Greek, as well as in Coptic and Syriac; and annotates them in addition. He supplies, likewise, English translations. It may be argued, that the publication ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... an occasional table beside the glass that he drained on entering; and forthwith set his back to a fire which seemed in keeping with the advanced hour, and doubly welcome in an apartment so vast that the billiard table was a mere item at one end, and sundry trophies of travel and the chase a far more striking ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... to the utmost of the poor power within, in accordance with the high principles enshrined in either heart. Yet what a mockery that forgetting seemed, now that it was laid before them naked and bare! The heart turning sick to faintness at the mere sight of each other, the hands trembling at the mutual touch, the wistful eyes shining with a glance that too surely spoke of ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... differ from those already in existence in that they are not intended for School use, or for Examination purposes; and that their aim is to educate, rather than to inform. The enumeration of mere details will be avoided, except in so far as they illustrate the working of general laws, and the development of principles; while the historical evolution, both of the literary and scientific subjects, will be kept in view, ...
— Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Publications July, 1890 • John Murray
... obviously destined to figure among her sources of national well-being and centers of culture into dead towns that paralyze her effort and hinder her progress. In a word, Belgium had had no political existence for her own behoof. She was not an organic unit in the sodality of nations, but a mere cog in ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... which I had to go was very high. In winter it was covered with snow, and the sheep needed no watching from above. If I were to see sheep dung or tracks going down on to the other side of the mountain (where there was a valley with a stream—a mere cul de sac), I was to follow them, and look out for sheep; but I never saw any, the sheep always descending on to their own side, partly from habit, and partly because there was abundance of good sweet feed, which had been burnt in the ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... me off from the spot on which we were standing. At the same time down came a deluge of rain—not in mere drops, but in regular sheets of water. It wetted us to the skin in a few moments. Larry, now seizing my other arm, dragged me forward. As we looked back for a moment, we observed the sea rising in a mountain billow, hissing and foaming, and approaching the shore. It was but the first, however, of ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... atrocious foggy gray; never in order, never combed, Bean thought. The brows were heavy, and still curiously dark, which made them look threatening. The eyes were the coldest of gray, a match for the hair in colour, and set far back in caverns. The nose was blunt, the chin a mere knobby challenge, and between them was the unloveliest moustache Bean had ever been compelled to observe; short, ragged, faded in streaks. And wrinkles—wrinkles wheresoever there was room for them: across the ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... also that for a time he was so confounded by the apparition of his enemy as to be unable to bring his mind to work properly on the subject. 'Let him do his worst,' he kept on saying to himself; 'let him do his worst.' But he knew that the brave words, though spoken only to himself, were mere braggadocio No doubt the man would do his worst, and very bad it would be to him. At the moment he was so cowed by fear that he would have given half his fortune to have secured the woman's silence,—and the man's. How much better would it have been had ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... fossil-shells and bones of animals imprisoned there, which tell us that creatures, all in some way unlike any we now know, once lived and died, and are still to be found, not in their ancient forms in rushy mere of tangled jungle, but in "graves of ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... Mexia, who somewhat burned to wipe out the memory of his lost battery at the river's mouth. And as blind Fortune's dearest favor flutters often to the lackey while the master snatches vainly, so it befell in this case, for Mexia's chance raid, a piece of mere bravado to which De Guardiola had given grudging consent, was productive of results. Bravado for bravado, interchange of chivalric folly, of magnificence that was not war,—forth to meet the Spaniard and his company must go no greater force ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... words, and answered, "I tell you again that Siegfried is a king far nobler and richer and higher than any other king on earth. Think you that my brothers would have given me to a mere vassal to ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... not be a very severe penance for an island on which the rainfall averages 124 inches per year; but when vegetation suffers from the cruelty of four almost rainless months, promises and slights amount to something more than mere discourtesy. How genuine the thanksgiving to the soft skies after an incense-stimulating shower. Insects whirl in the sunshine. Among the pomelo-trees is a cyclone of scarcely visible things. Motes and specks of light dance in disorderly figures, to be detected as animated objects only by gauzy ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... overview: At independence in September 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the center and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... nothing more significant than the increasing social discontent regarding the present status of the home. Criticism of our family conditions comes both from the enemies and from the friends of the home. A radical and vigorous school of thought finds in the family of today a mere social and moral anachronism, to be pushed aside as quickly as possible. Another group of thinkers, on the other hand, sees in the changes that are already taking place in the conditions of family life, a hopeless deterioration. In such ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... association, though Charley's face used to haunt him in his sleep. Excitable, eager, there was an elemental adaptability in the baker, as easily leading to Avernus as to Elysium. This appealed to Charley, realising, as he did, that Maximilian Cour was a reputable citizen by mere accident. The baker's life had run in a sentimental groove of religious duty; that same sentimentality would, in other circumstances, have forced him with equal ardour into ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and looked below at the house—a doll's house; at the toy corrals and tiny sheds and stables. Slim, walking down the hill, was a mere pigmy—a short, waddling insect. At least, to a girl unused to gazing from a height, each object seemed absurdly small. Flying U coulee stretched away to the west, with a silver ribbon drawn carelessly through it with many ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... that he should strike Imogen in her page's dress, not recognizing her; he is ever too quick—a mere creature of impulse. More characteristic still is the way he forgives Iachimo, just ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... friends who have helped me, I desire especially to express my obligation to Edward S. Curtis, whose wonderful volumes of The North American Indian have been an inspiration, and whose Indian pictures for this book of mine possess a solid value in art and ethnology far beyond the mere illustration of text. ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... of it? why doesn't it grow bigger with the rest of the tree? when does the tree 'consolidate itself'? when is it finally consolidated? and how can there be always marrow in it when the weary frame of its age remains a mere scarred tower of war with the elements, full of ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... unionism will ever become popular enough to endanger the foundations of the American political and social order, I shall not pretend to predict. The practical dangers resulting from it at any one time are largely neutralized by the mere size of the country and its extremely complicated social and industrial economy. The menace it contains to the nation as a whole can hardly become very critical as long as so large a proportion of the American voters are ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... anchored opposite the point where the cliffs are mentioned in the charts as thirty feet high. In the morning, accompanied by the native troopers Jemmy and Jackie, I went north-westerly over slightly timbered grassy plains, and reached in about a mile a waterhole, and in about another mile a narrow mere, which I called Woods Lake, extending northerly and southerly at least for a mile or so in an unbroken sheet of water. I went southward along the edge of Woods Lake to a clump of box and tea-trees, and while I ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... dry clothing laid out before it. He began to undress, casting his coat into one corner of the room, with a gesture of exasperation, and his waistcoat into another. He tugged at his bootlaces angrily, muttering to himself meanwhile mere scraps of speech in which the words 'beer,' and 'waste,' and 'guzzling beasts,' were audible. When he had stripped completely, he gave himself a lusty towelling from head to foot, and then struggled into the warm, dry raiment prepared for him. As at the completion ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... nothing, a mere tag of poetry as familiar to every schoolboy as his ABC, but if the timely mention of it was a sign that the cloud was dispersing further, what would be the next train of thought to emerge from darkness and oblivion? Had Philippa been more vigilant ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... Island, and, I suppose, the other bank, and, therefore, the American Fall. The joke—I do dislike to have to explain jokes, especially to you cool, unsympathising Bostonians—is the ridiculousness of any mere human person claiming to own such a thing as the Niagara Falls. I believe, though, that you are quite equal to it—I ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... exceeding some 20 miles is a severe handicap to the progressive development of wireless telegraphy in this field. It is a totally inadequate radius when the operations of the present war are borne in mind. A round journey of 200, or even more miles is considered a mere jaunt; it is the long distance flight which counts, and which contributes to the value of an airman's observations. The general impression is that the fighting line or zone comprises merely two or three successive stretches of trenches and other defences, representing a belt five ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... exhibition the "Stovepipes" were not mere street corner ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious occupation was the separating of citizens from their coin and valuables. Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks without noise ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... reality—"they neither marry nor are given in marriage." Her warm and living thoughts spent themselves on one theme only—the redressing of a spiritual balance. She was no longer a beggar to her husband; she had the wherewithal to give. She had been the mere recipient, burdened with debts ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... delicately suggesting that I appeared to be much exhausted, and that a glass of wine would do me good. Like most youngsters, however, I was too proud to yield to the weakness which had momentarily overpowered me, so, rallying with an effort, I murmured that it was a mere nothing, and turned the subject by asking his permission to muster my men in the waist that I might ascertain exactly who were the missing ones. The permission was at once accorded, and I then discovered that, of the entire crew of the Dolphin, the surgeon, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... Dante Alighieri taught to it the might of that vulgar tongue in which the child babbles at its mother's knee, and the orator leads a breathless multitude at his will to death or triumph. Teofilo of Empoli discovered for it the mysteries of colour that lie in the mere earths of the rocks and the shores, and the mere oils of the roots and the poppies. Arnoldo of Breccia lit for it the first flame of free opinion, and Amatus of Breccia perfected for it the most delicate and exquisite of all instruments of sound, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... sharp retort. "Garson's my monaker. I shot English Eddie, because he was a skunk, and a stool-pigeon, and he got just what was coming to him." Vituperation beyond the mere words ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... to hear the stingless little native bees humming before I could see them; and as to knowing which tree had honey in it, unless I saw the bees, that was quite beyond me, while a mere toddler would point triumphantly to a 'sugar-bag' tree, recognising it as such by the wax on its fork, black before rain, ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... the gratitude which he professed to the Count of Gouvon and his family, the prudence with which he marked his prospects, the industry with which he profited by opportunity, all faded quickly into mere dead and disembodied names of virtues. His imagination again went over the journey across the mountains; the fields, the woods, the streams, began to absorb his whole life. He recalled with delicious satisfaction how charming the journey had seemed to him, and thought ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... much roasting,' thus writes our Autobiographer, 'I was what you might name calcined. Pray only that it be not rather, as is the more frequent issue, reduced to a caput-mortuum! But in any case, by mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar with many things. Wretchedness was still wretched; but I could now partly see through it, and despise it. Which highest mortal, in this inane Existence, had I not found a Shadow-hunter, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... terrorized. Peasants were shot on mere information, women were imprisoned, attempts were made to obtain revelations ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... bare earth, and a reason suggested for the rule was that if they touched the earth they might make themselves invisible and so escape. The sagacious author of The Striped-petticoat Philosophy in the eighteenth century ridicules the idea as mere silly talk. He admits, indeed, that the women were conveyed to the place of execution in carts; but he denies that there is any deep significance in the cart, and he is prepared to maintain this view by a chemical analysis of the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... horror upon the lifeless body of the otter and cried out, "This creature which you mistook for an otter, and which you have robbed and killed, is my son, Oddar, who for mere pastime had taken the form of the furry beast. You ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... will agree that there is something about it striking and dignified which is obviously not concerned with mere size, is largely independent of elaboration of detail and may therefore be safely attributed to its satisfactory proportions and broad effects of light and shade. Its plan is quite simple consisting of a nave and choir with north and south aisles, a transept not projecting ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... so. The rogue deserves the pillory or branding, but, as he was almost forced into it, and was the mere instrument in the hands of another, it is not a case for hanging him. He might be shipped off to the plantations as a ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... occasionally "Dear Will." They were missives such as a wife might write to a husband long absent, yet upon a mission of deep interest to both. Keith could not fully determine what this mission might be, as the persons evidently understood each other so thoroughly that mere allusion took the place of detail. Twice the name Phyllis was mentioned, and once a "Fred" was also referred to, but in neither instance clearly enough to reveal the relationship, although the latter appeared to be pleaded for. Certain references caused the belief that these letters had been mailed ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... reader will perceive, in these two conversations, lasting perhaps two hours, this slip of a girl, in mere idle curiosity, had touched with her silly chatter the vital, the vulnerable points of Jerry's philosophy of life. Fate had not been fair to me or with him. Less than a year; remained of Jerry's period of probation. In December the boy was to go out into the world. And through an unfortunate ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... was of a naked girl, small, finely made, sitting on a great naked horse. The girl was young and tender, a mere bud. She was sitting sideways on the horse, her face in her hands, as if in shame and grief, in a little abandon. Her hair, which was short and must be flaxen, fell forward, divided, half covering ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... I debated with myself whether the case warranted me or not in sending for Mr. Gryce. As yet there was nothing to show that the girl had come to any harm. A mere elopement with or without a lover to help her, was not such a serious matter that the whole police force need be stirred up on the subject; and if the woman had money, as she said, ready to give ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... memory for this hurried, stealthy evening is J.Y. Copeman, cousin of Charles. 'J.Y.'—for he never carried any graver appellation than mere initials—once a rising lawyer in Vancouver, was now our quartermaster. The gayest and most debonair figure in the division, known and popular everywhere, he was also an incredibly efficient quartermaster. Possibly the same qualities make for success ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... belong to the other, and being employed to explain social customs and physical appearances in actual experience. In the light of such story-telling even the Polynesian creation myth may become a literal genealogy, and the dividing line between folklore and traditional history, a mere shift of attention and no actual change in the conception itself of the nature of the material universe and the relations between gods ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... almost as much of the physical condition of the world at different epochs as they do of its animal and vegetable population. When Robinson Crusoe first caught sight of the footprint on the sand, he saw in it more than the mere footprint, for it spoke to him of the presence of men on his desert island. We walk on the old geological shores, like Crusoe along his beach, and the footprints we find there tell us, too, more than we actually see in them. The crust of our earth is a great cemetery, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... knew Kiddie well enough to be assured that there was some special meaning in this sudden disappearance. It was not a mere playful fancy. Kiddie had gone away intentionally, making no sound, leaving no sign. Clearly he wanted to test ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... formed among the friends of constitutional freedom, for the relief of those, who were arrested on mere suspicion, or on a charge of violating the restrictions on the press; but who were believed to be unjustly suspected, and who had been found entirely innocent, even in the eye of the law, rigid as were its ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... detail that one can become fully sensible of their extraordinary magnificence. Vast streets of almost interminable length, lined by insignificant two-story houses with green roofs and yellow walls; vast open squares or ploschads; palaces, public buildings, and churches, dwindled down to mere toy-work in the deserts of space intervening; countless throngs of citizens and carriages scarcely bigger than ants to the eye; broad sheets of water, dotted with steamers, brigs, barks, wood-barges and row-boats, still infinitesimal in the distance; long rows of trees, forming ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... spirit will not enter here To haunt the holy gloom; I gaze into a mirror mere, A ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... boldness of color. His attempts to express the gay and mirthful, as for instance in the masquerade music of "Traviata" and the dance music of "Rigoletto," are dreary, ghastly, and saddening; while his ideas of tenderness are apt to take the form of mere sentimentality. Yet generalities fail in describing him, for occasionally he attains effects strong in their pathos, and artistically admirable; as, for example, the slow air for the heroine, and the dreamy song for the gypsy mother in the last act of ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... Other forms of these nursery traditions exist, indeed, not only in Italian, but in most European and some Asiatic and African languages. But their classical shape in literature is that which Charles Perrault gave them, in his Contes de ma Mere l'Oie, of 1697. Among the 'early French editions' which Sir Walter knew, probably none were older than Dr. Douce's copy of 1707, now in the Bodleian. The British Museum has no early copy. There was an example of the First Edition sold in the Hamilton sale: another, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... problem. A tree with gifts, Santa Claus coming down the chimney, a treat of candy and nuts—these and many other schemes have been tried with a greater or less degree of success. But the criticism is often made that the true significance of the celebration of the birth of Christ is lost in the mere idea of bartering Christmas presents. "She didn't give me anything last year, so I'm not going to ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... probability of the success of this movement, there is at present some difference of opinion. While a very few pass it by with a slur as a mere temporary sensation of little or no consequence, it is generally regarded as a work of growing strength and importance, both by its advocates and opposers. Petitions and remonstrances are both being circulated with activity, and ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... upon me eloquently as I knelt on the path and made my examination—an examination which that first glimpse when Forsyth came staggering out from the trees had rendered useless—a mere matter of form. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... run the light brigantine down the beach of Algiers and man her for a cruise in Spanish waters? The little ship will hold but ten oars a side, each pulled by a man who knows how to fight as well as to row—as indeed he must, for there is no room for mere landsmen on board a firkata. But if there be a fair wind off the land, there will be little rowing; the big lateen sail on her one mast will span the narrow waters between the African coast and the Balearic Isles, where a convenient look-out may be kept ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... said la Peyrade, humbly, "more than I could dare ask for myself; but, for the result which we both seek, I must tell you frankly that something more is needed. Madame Thuillier has not changed her nature to instantly change back again on the mere assurance by others of your compliance. It is necessary that she should hear from your own lips that you accede to my suit, and that you do so with eagerness,—assumed, indeed, but sufficiently well assumed to induce ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... to me that during the first twenty minutes they hit a single living thing except the four dragoon horses. The walls of the houses on both sides of the street were filled with bullet marks. A curious kind of shallow furrow appeared about halfway down the street. At first it seemed a mere line drawn on the ground. Then it deepened into a little trench with a ridge of dust ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... the voice of the sheikh. "Get up, you lazy sons of dogs!" he was exclaiming in an angry tone. "You have been deceiving me, I find, by passing yourselves off as people of importance, when you are mere servants of servants. Get up, I say;" and he began to enforce his commands by kicks and blows. We sprang to our feet, and Ben, doubling his fists, would have knocked the sheikh down had ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... cloud of dust into the eyes of the rubberneck," and "his foul purpose is foiled." This attempt at piety is also shown in a series of films depicting Bible stories and the Passion Play at Oberammergau, forecasting the time when the moving film will be viewed as a mere mechanical device for the use of the church, the school and the library, as well as ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... and Cloudy, with rain on the Latter part. At 10 departed this Life Jno. Rearden,* (* John Reading.) Boatswain's Mate; his Death was occasioned by the Boatswain out of mere good Nature giving him part of a Bottle of Rum last night, which it is supposed he drank all at once. He was found to be very much in Liquor last night, but as this was no more than what was common with him when he could get any, no farther ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... wall. Fred took advantage of the opportunity and examined him narrowly as to his knowledge of German East and ways of getting there. He was in an aggravating mood that made at one moment a very well of information of him, and at the next a mere garrulous ass. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... is, as its title imports, a plantation sketch dealing with that sort of life in Virginia just after the Civil War. While it is a mere story and hardly a dramatic one, it throws light on the Negro as a constituent part of the southern society of that day. As a student at Harvard before the War a southerner comes into contact with a fellow ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... out of the woods. His relations with the Tractarians had leaked out, and the Record was beginning to be suspicious. If Mrs. Shuttleworth's opinion of him were to become general, it would certainly be a grave matter. Nobody could wish to live and die a mere Archdeacon. And then, at that very moment, an event occurred which made it imperative to take a definite step, one way or the other. That event was the publication ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Devonshire, at what is called a revel. Our mess gave a purse towards the games. We put forward a Cumberland man belonging to the regiment, in the full confidence that he would be the victor of the day; but a youth, a mere youth, threw not only our champion, but all who dared to oppose him. I was stung for the honour of Cumberland; I was loath to see the hero carry his laurels so easily from the field. I accoutred myself in the wrestler's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... found but one end to every vista, and that end grew momentarily in importance until she felt that at all costs he who glowered from afar must learn the falsity of his own imaginings and so restore her peace of mind to her. She looked upon her American friend as a mere means towards that end, a tool to quickly accomplish that which her impatience could no longer delay. So she leaned suddenly forward and ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... has considered, first, the mere fact of the duration of the trial, which they find to have commenced on the 13th day of February, 1788, and to have continued, by various adjournments, to the said 17th of March. During that period the sittings ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... most unscrupulous of self-asserters, the pampered darling of every kind of sophisticated luxury, should thus lift up his voice on behalf of the wage-earners, is an indication that a state of society which seems proper and inevitable to dull and narrow minds is, when confronted, not with any mere abstract theory of Justice or Political rights, but with the natural human craving for life and beauty, found to be an ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... result of these Herculean Efforts to vaporize his Income, he found himself at the age of 40 afflicted with Social Gastritis. He had gorged himself with the Pleasures of this World until the sight of a Menu Card gave him the Willies and the mere mention of Musical Comedy would cause him to break down and Cry like ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... which had employed a greater quantity before. The gold and silver which would go abroad would not go abroad for nothing, but would bring back an equal value of goods of some kind or other. Those goods, too, would not be all matters of mere luxury and expense, to be consumed by idle people, who produce nothing in return for their consumption. As the real wealth and revenue of idle people would not be augmented by this extraordinary exportation of gold and silver, so neither would their consumption be much augmented by it. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... baby too, as soon as we can. You won't get mad if I tell you something?" said Sol, with a half-apologetic laugh. "Mrs. Sol was rather down on you the other day, hated you on sight, and preferred your brother to you; but when she found he'd run off and left YOU, you,—don't mind my sayin',—a 'mere boy,' to take what oughter be HIS place, why, she just wheeled round agin' him. I suppose he got flustered, and couldn't face the music. Never left a word of explanation? Well, it wasn't exactly square, though ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... understood by the commercial people than some other sides of the art. Some of the best of the William S. Hart productions show appreciation of this quality by the director, the photographer, and the public. Not only is the man but the horse allowed to be moving bronze, and not mere cowboy pasteboard. Many of the pictures of Charles Ray make the hero quite a bronze-looking sculpturesque person, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... the timely appearance of Raphael, in the character of a traveler's guide, leading Helon, a young man of her own nation and kindred who has been living unknown at Babylon, protected by the same angel, and destined to be her husband; and to the mere idea of whose existence, imparted to her in a mysterious and vague manner by Raphael, she has remained ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... decoration of the Legion of honor. No man offered a finer image of those old Republicans, incorruptible friends to the Empire, who remained the living relics of the two most energetic governments the world has ever seen. Though the Baron di Piombo displeased mere courtiers, he had the Darus, Drouots, and Carnots with him as friends. As for the rest of the politicians, he cared not a whiff of his cigar's smoke for ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... must go to the spring on a Sunday during service-time, to clean it out and to enlarge the opening. Each must take a spade, hoe, rake, a cake of bread, and a hymn-book with her. But if too much rain falls, the spring must be closed up to a mere crevice, and this ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... to say, that you intend to appropriate five hundred pounds for the mere act of shooting the old dog, when I ran as much risk ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... vice, which is now spreading like a subtle poison through all grades of society, that the present work is directed. The author is not a mere theorist. He speaks from experience—dark and bitter experience. The things he has seen he tells; the words he has heard he speaks again. Some of these scenes curdle the blood in the veins, even when remembered; some of these words, whenever whispered, ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green |
